text:
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
I'm in charge of the Queue train today, which means for the first time this week, this is a Star Trek free zone. Admittedly, I can't shake the obsession with the letter Q, so we're just taking things a different route today. Behold: Q.
Darasen asked...
"Perhaps this is better answered by the Priest community but thought I''d ask here. I have been leveling a healing priest through the dungeon finder and was curious about the proper use of "Power Word Shield". I use the spell constantly as it is very mana efficient. I have had some players tell me I should not use it though. A warrior told me he thought the shield kept him from gaining rage (he was unsure) and a Paladin told me that he couldn't get mana back when shielded. So should it be used regularly or not?"
If you're a holy priest, you shouldn't need to use Power Word: Shield much, and probably shouldn't. It's just not a very good use of your mana unless you absolutely need to put up some sort of buffer. As a discipline priest, you should bubble as much as you please... except for one situation, I find.
Warriors, druids and death knights should have no problem with Rage and Runic Power because of your bubbles, that issue has been dealt with over the course of Wrath of the Lich King, those classes will still gain their resources regardless of the absorption. However, protection paladins do still have significant mana issues when there are shields involved. A large portion of a paladin tank's mana regen comes from Spiritual Attunement. The paladin takes damage, that damage is then healed, and a percentage of the healing becomes mana for him/her. If they're absorbing damage instead of being healed, they're not regaining any mana through Spiritual Attunement. It sucks, and in a 5-man dungeon it can cripple mana.
If you need your sweet, sweet Power Word: Shields to heal a paladin through a random heroic, you can still use them. But the paladin will probably need to sit and drink more frequently.
Gurluas asked...
"Will Cataclysm come with a function to rename your guild?"
wolfess79 asked...
"I'm sure this has been asked and answered a million and one times, but what sense does it make to allow the Cataclysm races Worgen and Goblins to be DKs if their origin events are happening after the demise of Arthas as the Lich King? I don't understand the lore behind this."
It's like the return of Onyxia. No lore, but maximizing fun. There's nothing to understand except that Blizzard thinks it would be enjoyable.
Zalaron asked...
"When in BRD - Upper from dungeon finder, which boss do you have to kill, in what order and any other requirements, to get the Satchel? I have been in it several times and never gotten the satchel. Any advice would be helpful!"
I don't actually know the answer to this, but I thought I would bring attention to the question because hopefully someone reading this will. I believe this bit here is bugged, because killing the Emperor certainly does not count as the 'end' which is very strange. I don't know if the requirement is something else in BRD, or if there's a very specific order you need to do things, but my gut says it's just plain bugged.
Update: I am a baboon and forgot that the latest WoW Rookie already tackled this. You need to keep the Princess alive!
Update #2: Or, according to the comments, this may not actually be true. Who knows! Let's just say it's a bug.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!


text:
Looking for more functionality from your body armor? This Kevlar gauntlet packs enough gadgetry to make Batman proud—and by proud, I mean envious.
The Armstar is the brainchild of Dave Brown and was originally developed in response to a string of mountain lion attacks near his Southern California home. The Armstar incorporates a 300,000-volt arc device for stunning assailants, 720p video camera, flash light, and even an iphone dock (though I'm not entirely sure why) into its tough Kevlar frame. A rechargeable Li-Ion battery pack provides power for the menagerie of gadgets. No price is given and there's a minimum order of ten gauntlets, do you'll either need the rest of your posse to throw in or grow a bunch of extra left arms. [Armstar via Cult of Mac]

subset: commoncrawl


text:
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European leaders meet on Wednesday to discuss tax policy and specifically their concerns over how a number of high-profile international companies have managed to pay next to no tax on their vast sales revenue generated in Europe.
Following is a summary of several recent cases and links to the Reuters stories on each one.
An investigation by the U.S. Senate showed this week that the maker of iPads and iPhones had paid just 2 percent tax on income of $74 billion over the past three years, largely by exploiting an unusual loophole in Ireland's tax code.
Ireland has said it is not to blame, and Apple has defended its practices, which are legal. But the Senate report has added to the furor surrounding tax avoidance by major companies.
Despite generating $18 billion of revenue in Britain from 2006 to 2011, the Internet search giant paid only $16 million in taxes to British authorities. Google says it does not have a sales presence in Britain and therefore cannot be considered resident for tax purposes, lowering its obligations.
An investigation by Reuters has shown that some of the 1,300 people employed by Google UK Ltd are engaged in sales-type work or have titles that suggest involvement in sales and marketing activities, but Google says it hires people with a sales background even if they are not directly involved in selling.
The British parliament has called Google executives before a hearing to try to understand more about its activities.
Starbucks came under criticism last year after Reuters revealed that the coffee chain paid only 8.6 million pounds ($13 million) in taxes on 3.1 billion of revenues since 2000.
Starbucks has said it is down to where the company books its profits. Accounts filed for its British, German and French units, which make up 90 percent of European revenues, show a loss of $60 million in 2011, hence very little tax.
However, Starbucks told investors that its European business were actually profitable, making $40 million in 2011. The gap is all down to clever tax planning and exploiting loopholes.
The Internet retail company runs the bulk of its European operations out of Luxembourg, allowing it to minimize the amount of tax it has to be pay on revenue generated in other European countries.
But the tax avoidance mechanism has also allowed Amazon to dramatically cut its U.S. tax bill, an investigation by Reuters has shown, with the company paying a tax rate of around 5.3 percent over the past 5 years. The U.S. tax authorities have asked Amazon to pay back taxes totaling $1.5 billion, a demand that the company has said it will "vigorously contest".
The world's largest mobile phone operator has managed to gradually reduce the amount of tax it pays in Britain over the past decade by using legal tax avoidance schemes, including registering profit in other jurisdictions, such as Luxembourg.
A Reuters examination of statutory filings by Vodafone across Europe over the past 16 years shows that the British taxman has frequently gone empty handed, losing out on perhaps has much as 1 billion pounds ($1.51 billion) in revenue.
(This version of the story corrects the Starbucks revenue figure.)
Reporting By Anders Melin; editing by Luke Baker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.


text:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission acted improperly when it failed to consider all the risks of storing spent radioactive fuel onsite at the nation's nuclear power facilities, so ruled a federal court on Friday.
In a unanimous ruling (PDF), a three-judge panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia found that the NRC's "Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision"–the methodology used for evaluating the dangers of long-term waste storage–was woefully inadequate:
[The Nuclear Regulatory Commission] apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository. . . . If the government continues to fail in its quest to establish one, then SNF (spent nuclear fuel) will seemingly be stored on site at nuclear plants on a permanent basis. The Commission can and must assess the potential environmental effects of such a failure.
Writing for the court, Judge David Sentelle made no bones about the shortcomings of the NRC's magical, one-size-fits-all method of assuming a future solution for the nuclear waste storage crisis. Spent fuel "poses a dangerous long-term health and environmental risk," he said.
The suit was brought by the attorneys general of Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont, in coordination with the Prairie Island Indian Community of Minnesota and environmental groups represented by the National Resources Defense Council.
The decision harshly criticized regulators for evaluating plant relicensing with the assumption that spent nuclear fuel–currently stored onsite in pools and dry casks–would be moved to a central long-term waste repository. As discussed here before, the only option seriously explored in the US was the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. After years of preliminary construction and tens of millions of dollars of dollars spent, Yucca was determined to be a bad choice for the waste, and the Obama administration's Department of Energy and the NRC halted the project.
Despite the wishful reporting of some nuclear advocates, the Yucca repository is nowhere near ready, and even if it were an active option, the facility would be many years and maybe as much as $100 million away from completion. Still, the nuclear industry and its acolytes have challenged the administration to spend any remaining money in a desperate attempt to keep alive the fantasy of a solution to their waste crisis.
Such zombified hopes, however, do not qualify as an actual plan, according to the courts.
The judges also chastised the NRC for its generic assessment of spent fuel pools, currently filled many times over capacity at nuclear plants across the United States. Rather than examine each facility and the potential risks specific to its particular storage situation, the NRC had only evaluated the safety risks of onsite storage by looking at a composite of past events. The court ruled that the NRC must appraise each plant individually and account for potential future dangers. Those dangers include leaks, loss of coolant, and failures in the cooling systems, any of which might result in contamination of surrounding areas, overheating and melting of stored rods, and the potential of burning radioactive fuel–risks heightened by the large amounts of fuel in the storage pools and underscored by the ongoing disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The decision has immediate ramifications for plants in the northeast seeking license extensions–most notably Entergy's Indian Point facility, less than an hour's drive from New York City, and their Vermont Yankee plant, which is operating despite seeing its original license expire in March.
New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released a statement, which reads, in part:
This is a landmark victory for New Yorkers, and people across the country living in the shadows of nuclear power plants. We fought back against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rubber stamp decision to allow radioactive waste at our nation's nuclear power plants to be stored for decades after they're shut down – and we won. The Court was clear in agreeing with my office that this type of NRC 'business as usual' is simply unacceptable. The NRC cannot turn its back on federal law and ignore its obligation to thoroughly review the environmental, public health, and safety risks related to the creation of long-term nuclear waste storage sites within our communities.
And William Sorrell, Vermont's AG, concurred:
This outcome illustrates how important it is for states to work together on environmental matters of national importance. Today's decision is a major victory for New York, Vermont, and all other states that host nuclear power plants. The court confirmed what Vermont and other states have said for many years now—that the NRC has a duty to inform the public about the environmental effects of long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel, particularly when it is occurring at nuclear power plants that were never designed to be long-term storage facilities.
Indeed, plants were not designed nor built to house nuclear waste long-term. The design life of most reactors in the US was originally 40 years. Discussions of the spent fuel pools usually gave them a 60-year lifespan. That limit seemed to double almost magically as nuclear operators fought to postpone the expense of moving cooler fuel to dry casks and of the final decommissioning of retired reactors.
But, as reported here last fall, outgoing NRC chief Gregory Jaczko was exploring the possibility of using onsite storage for 200 to 300 years. How these metrics will change when the new head regulator, Allison Macfarlane, is confirmed is not yet known–but Macfarlane is on record as both a Yucca skeptic and an advocate for regional interim waste storage facilities. That plan, however, has many critics, as well, can only take fuel already cool enough to be removed from pools, and, of course, has not been so much as sited or designed, let alone constructed.
While no nuclear plants will close today as a result of this decision, it should also be noted–because some reports assume otherwise–that this finding does not mean Yucca Mountain must open, either. The ruling does, however, underscore the waste crisis–and it is a crisis–faced by the US nuclear industry. No only is it generating approximately 2000 tons of new waste every year that will need an eternal resting place, pools at some plants are so full it actually complicates refueling and maintenance (since fuel needs to removed from reactors and kept cool for both procedures). Plant operators are desperate to have the federal government take on the costs and the risks of waste storage.
But without anything even close to a plan for a long-term repository, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cannot assume a solution, says the court. Instead, it must look at reality–something the entire country would best be advised to do when evaluating the future of this dirty, dangerous and expensive energy source.


text:
Continuing Education CreditDegree courses, seminars and other continuing education programs offered through Capital University Law School Graduate Law Programs qualify for mandatory continuing education credits for the Ohio Bar and continuing professional education credit for the Ohio Board of Accountancy. Other state bar and accounting authorities usually accept certificates of attendance for fulfillment of mandatory continuing professional education.
Practicing Attorneys:Attorneys are eligible to receive CLE credits for law school courses. Under CCLE Regulation 402 you can receive three hours of CLE credit for each semester hour of a course completed at an ABA-accredited law school. You do not need to take an exam to obtain CLE credit. The course may be completed on an audit (not for academic credit) basis. You would need to complete Form 4, Request for Law School Attendance and return it to the Supreme Court of Ohio, Commission on Continuing Legal Education office with any attachments within 30 days after the course has concluded. Office of Professional DevelopmentThe Law School's Office of Professional Development is available to assist graduate law students in career counseling and employment.
AccreditationCapital University is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Commission on Institutions of Higher Education and is authorized to offer degrees by the Ohio Board of Regents. Capital University Law School is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools.ParkingParking is free for students in the Capital University Graduate Law Programs. LibraryThe law library houses more than 250,000 volumes. A reference librarian is available to assist students. The law library is available 7:00 am – 11:00 pm for currently enrolled students.
Find us on:
See more services


text:
There's something vaguely disappointing about a Mandel Mailbag in which I can't find a comment or two to mock, but it happens now and then.
In today's Mailbag, he makes two valid points about fan attitudes regarding the BCS/playoff debate. First,
What drives me absolutely bonkers, however, is that no matter how many articles (or books) have written about this subject, no matter how detailed an explanation we provide, there is still a large segment of the public that continues to make blanket assumptions about what's best for the sport without taking the time to truly digest the issues behind this "rediculosity."
To which he adds…
If I had any pull with the folks at Gallup (and if they weren't so preoccupied with this whole election thing), there's a public-opinion survey I'd love to see them undertake. A whole host of largely unscientific polls have shown there's about a 70-30 split among sports fans between those who want to see college football go to a playoff and those who don't. I don't doubt that to be the case.
But what I want to know is, among that 70 percent, how many are diehard college football fans, and how many are more general sports fans who follow college football no more closely, if not less, than they do baseball, the NFL or the NBA? My entirely unfounded theory is that it would be much closer to 50-50 among the diehards because they're more apt to recognize exactly what I described above.
Mandel isn't arguing against a four team playoff here – quite the contrary, he states that he favors it – nor demeaning its proponents. What he's complaining about is how easily those folks are willing to dismiss the motives behind an opposing viewpoint. And while he quickly acknowledges that some of the reasons don't hold much water, he notes one serious argument that shouldn't be easily dismissed.
… Quite simply, college football's leaders universally believe that the regular season is more important than the postseason.
When the commissioners spoke last week of the BCS' "good health," they did so in the context that it's been an immeasurable boon to the season as a whole, as evidenced by rising attendance and TV ratings. If there's one thing the commissioners made abundantly clear last week, it's their belief that a gripping, 12-week regular season with an often-unsatisfying finish is still preferable to a fool-proof postseason that risks devaluing the 12 weeks before it.
I know a lot of people don't buy that argument, but look at college basketball. Each year, at the beginning of the season, many of the best teams in the country square off in various preseason tourneys (the NIT, the Maui Invitational, etc.) — and only the most diehard fans pay any attention to it.
Meanwhile, on Sept. 13, USC will play Ohio State in football, and the entire country will be watching. The same game would take on far less significance were there to be a full-on playoff. As long as both teams ended up winning their conference (or finishing high enough in the rankings), the result would have no effect on anything. And remember, most major athletic departments are funded primarily by football revenue, chiefly home ticket sales. As soon as fans start tuning out those early-season games (and they would), there goes the cross-country team. [Emphasis added.]
Take note, John Feinstein.
Mandel doesn't think the plus-one would cause that kind of damage, but is willing to concede that the "camel's nose in the tent" argument about expanded playoffs is credible.
Hard to argue with that…
UPDATE: Well, not if you're Matt Zemek, who poses this question to college football fans in urging a BCS boycott: Do you really want your sport to become healthy…
By "health", he means "national championship playoff". He grudgingly concedes that there might be another way to look at the well-being of the BCS, though.
… When Swofford proclaimed the patient to be healthy, he was right in a certain, narrow sense. The BCS, after all, is indeed filling the coffers of the conferences with loads of cash. The bowls are lucrative. TV eats them up. Profits are being made in the current setup. So yes, in that sense, the BCS is healthier than ever.
Yeah, there is that.
UPDATE #2: A summary of the cons to both sides of the argument is laid out at Garnet and Black Attack. I could pick nits with a few of his points (the NCAA has had a D-1 basketball tourney since 1939, which I wouldn't call a recent development, for what it's worth), but overall it's pretty well done.


text:
LOS ANGELES — Under siege, and in need of a quick fix? Build a brick wall.
It's the model Pete Carroll used at USC a decade ago, and it's now the turnaround method for Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly. In his third season in South Bend, Ind., Kelly has orchestrated a fantastic turnaround for the top-ranked Fighting Irish, in large part because of a revamped, revitalized and terrorizing defense.
Notre Dame visits the Coliseum on Saturday night, and if the Trojans are to hand the Fighting Irish their first loss of the season and end their rivals' national-championship hopes, they will need to solve a defense that has allowed only eight touchdowns in 11 games and has allowed the sixth-fewest yards in the country.
Plus, USC has to do it with a 19-year-old quarterback who has never started a college game.
"Hardly anybody has done anything against them all year," USC coach Lane Kiffin said plainly this week when asked about facing a dominating defense, the type that used to be commonplace at the Coliseum.
Highlight clips of Carroll's success at USC usually feature the offensive stars: Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, Mike Williams, etc. But that was the second wave. When he took over in 2001, Carroll first build his foundation on defense, around players such as Shaun Cody, Matt Grootegoed and Kenechi Udeze.
In 2000, Paul Hackett's final season in charge, USC ranked 79th in the country in scoring defense (28.1). In Carroll's first season, the Trojans improved to 11th (17.9). In Hackett's last season, USC ranked 39th in total defense. Under Carroll, the Trojans moved up to 29th in 2001 and sixth in 2002. Defense set the tone.
Kelly has mirrored that strategy, and since his arrival, Notre Dame's defense has been on a crash diet, shedding points and yards at a rapid rate.
Kelly and defensive coordinator Bob Diaco, whom Kelly brought with him from Cincinnati, took over in 2010 and installed a 3-4 defense. Something had to be done. In Charlie Weis' final season as Notre Dame coach, the Fighting Irish allowed an average of 25.9 points (64rd in the NCAA) and 397.8 yards (86th) per game.
In Kelly's first year, Notre Dame's yards-allowed per game dropped to 357.2 (50th). In 2011, it dropped to 344.7 (30th). This year, the Fighting Irish allow 287.8 yards, the sixth-best total in the country. Notre Dame is tied with Alabama for the stingiest defense in the country, with an average of 10.1 points allowed per game.
"They do a lot well," USC center Khaled Holmes said. "Their front seven is one of the best in the country, for sure. They're big, strong, athletic guys. They know their scheme and they do it really well. They're a great defense."
Kiffin called Notre Dame "an old-school football team" and meant it as a high compliment.
Defensive end Stephon Truitt has 12 sacks, two away from breaking the school's single-season record, but Notre Dame's defense is led by linebacker Manti Te'o, who nearly chose USC out of high school but now is a Heisman Trophy candidate and leads the Fighting Irish with 98 tackles and six interceptions.
The Te'o-led front seven is fearsome, and Notre Dame allows an average of only 92.2 rushing yards.
"Stopping the run is what we're built on," Kelly said this week.
Usually, yes, but won't that change this week?
USC quarterback Matt Barkley suffered a shoulder injury last week, so in steps redshirt freshman Max Wittek, who will make his first college start and has thrown only nine passes this season. Won't Kelly alter his game plan a bit and focus on making life miserable for Wittek?
"At this point, for us to go into one game and say, 'All right, we're going to do different things to confuse Max,' that's really crazy," Kelly said. "This guy has watched football all year. He's going to be watching film. He knows our defense. So we're going to do what we do, because that's gotten us to this point."
Watching film probably can't prepare Wittek for what he will see in person, that being a Notre Dame defense that has allowed only two opponents (Purdue and Pittsburgh) to score more than 14 points in a game.
"They're a great defense," Wittek said. "They've got playmakers all over the field. … But every defense does have their soft spots. Theirs are obviously limited, being such a great defense, but we are looking forward to taking advantage of some of those soft spots.
"I just want to get that first snap, maybe that first hit, out of the way, and then I'll be ready to go."


text:
US states Illinois and Iowa said at least 105 cyclospora infections were being treated. The franchise had pulled salads off the menu from over 3,000 stores across the US.
The Iowa and Illinois health departments said on Thursday that they were investigating cyclospora infections linked to salads at McDonald Corp's restaurants.
McDonald's shares fell 1.4 percent after-hours on Thursday.
The Illinois Department of Public Health said it had seen about 90 cases, and the Iowa Department of Public Health said it had recorded 15 cases.
In about one-fourth of the Illinois cases people reported eating salads from McDonald's in the days before they became ill.
McDonald's, the world's largest restaurant chain, said in a statement that it had been in contact with public health authorities in both states.
It said that it had voluntarily stopped selling salads at the approximately 3,000 affected US restaurants until it could switch to another lettuce blend supplier.
"We are closely monitoring this situation and cooperating with state and federal public health authorities as they further investigate," the company said.
The parasite, cyclospora cayetanensis, infects the small intestine, typically causing watery diarrhea and frequent, sometimes explosive bowel movements. It is spread by ingesting food or water contaminated with feces and not directly from one person to another.
Several outbreaks have occurred in the United States in the past several years, especially during the summer months, that had been linked to imported fresh produce including raspberries, basil, snow peas, and lettuce.


text:
|Mr Geniaus at work
At Rootstech Mr Geniaus had access some of the best genealogists in the US and he asked each of them for guidance with his problem but despite following their advice his searches brought no results.
Unlike me Mr Geniaus likes to plan far ahead so we already agreed that we will stay on after Rootstech and spend a week researching in the Family History Library and we'll include in our itinerary New York where there is a copy of Maria's mother's probate file from 1902 held in the Surrogate's Court. Perhaps this will hold a clue to Maria's whereabouts after 1902!
I think I have a family history convert!


text:
Wax Fangs
Wax Fangs History
The history of wax candies like Wax Fangs has been difficult to track down. They were originally created by the American Candy Company in the early 1900s. Later the brand was sold to Concord Confections which is now part of Tootsie, the current manufacturer.
Wax Fangs Memories
Oooooooo good old Wax Fangs. It started on Halloween. I had a great costume and I was ready to go scare people. I was walking outside and saw a Wax Fang. It would fit my costume. So I went into the store and got the Wax Fang. I opened it and it smelled good. I put them it my mouth and they looked cool. I got two more.
After that, I started walking to a house. I still made the Wax Fang intact in my mouth. Well that's what I thought. When I got to the first house they started laughing at me. I didn't know why. Then I saw my face in a mirror. My fangs weren't there. but my teeth were red. I went back to the store to get more. On the way to the store I eat the ones that I had. ~ David from New York
When I was a kid, I got some wax fangs in a cereal box I had been bugging my mother about for months. She had bought many boxes of this cereal only to get regular wax lips instead of fangs. When I FINALLY got some fangs I had them for about 10 minutes and my brother stepped on them by accident. I never got another pair, and 20 years later, I still mess with him about it. ~Matt from Texas


text:
Oct 9, 2017
Simplistic, direct and informative. This course helped me refocus my competencies and updated my resume writing strategies. Great examples and resources to utilize.
Feb 20, 2020
It is a detailed course... a lot of new contents that i never found on any other site specially in such an organized manner. highly recommended.
By Muhamad A B A B•
Aug 24, 2020
Very helpful, step-by step guide in writing effective cover letter and resumes. Provide ample examples and tutor can explain topics succinctly.
By Deborah O•
May 4, 2021
This course covered the fundamentals of resume writing; however, it was somewhat outdated as it was still mentioning sending necessary application documents via snail mail (despite a discussion about ATS). What was most distressing is that I posted several questions and comments - some of which were a request for help - and never once could I find a response. Please do not set up a Discussion Forum if no one is going to monitor it and respond!
By Raj K S•
Jun 3, 2016
Every time one hear if you are not getting an interview call then it means your resume writing skills are not excellent, you are not able to project your self, you are not able sell your self or you might be overqualified / under-qualified. If you ask them for help, 90% are not in a position to guide you, 9% would support you, provide some reasons, but you still you feel handicap. I am lucky to find my 1% who hold my hand and walked me through each stage , educated me with the explanation why to write like this way in 21st century.
In my view it is the right time everyone must gain this skill of 21st century resume and cover letter writing . We need to overwrite now, the old traditional way of resume and cover letter writing.
Thanks to Charles Duquette and Daniela C. Wagner-Loera for making this excellent course easy to understand.
By Tamanna K•
May 19, 2019
Hands down this is the best course on understanding resume writing. If you are looking for a course to understand the basics of cover letter writing and resume writing, then this is the course you absolutely need to take. The instructor, Mr. Duquette has done such a fabulous job, right from creating the content to explaining it. The language is really simple and very clearly explained (with examples). I can not thank Mr. Duquette enough for putting together this very concise and well-explanined course. I have truly learned a great deal.
By Qamar I•
Feb 21, 2020
It is a detailed course... a lot of new contents that i never found on any other site specially in such an organized manner. highly recommended.
By Carolina S G•
Oct 3, 2016
Extremelly clearifying. The directions are comprehensible, and the course helped me to increase the job opportunities dramatically!
By Heidi B B•
Oct 5, 2017
This course was much more informative and helpful than I had imagined it would be. The videos were all worthwhile, along with the quizzes and assignments. For me, returning to the workforce after a prolonged absence, the insights regarding the job recruitment process in today's world were invaluable. I have been inspired, motivated and encouraged! I am very grateful I had the opportunity to study this subject, and have already signed up for the other courses related to this one.
By Snehal D•
Mar 24, 2017
It is an excellent course. Anyone who is new or old to the current job market must consider taking it. I will highly recommend since I learned new strategy and insight into how to write Resumes, Cover Letter and Follow-Up letter and most importantly what I shouldn't do to jeopardize my chances of success. I may revisit other areas as time permits.. Thank You.
By Thịnh L Q•
Jul 30, 2019
The best resumes writing course I have ever had.
The lecturer Charles Duquette is outstanding. I love his presence and charisma. I even remind me of Tywin Lannister (my favorite character in Game of Thrones)
This course is rich with extra material for me to read after the lectures.
Thank you so much for this course. I helped me a lot.
By Albert K•
Jun 10, 2019
Excellent course. Very informative. Also for me as living in Germany it was very interesting to find out about some cultural differences in writting winning resumes. The course is well founded and Mr Duquette is very credible.
By Fabiana B•
Sep 13, 2019
I felt so much more confident after taking this course! I acquired the necessary vocabulary to make my resume and cover letters stand out! Fingers crossed I will receive job offers. I am very grateful this course was offered!
By Gabryella C•
Oct 10, 2017
Simplistic, direct and informative. This course helped me refocus my competencies and updated my resume writing strategies. Great examples and resources to utilize.
By Héctor R•
Oct 30, 2019
I went over the resume writing, and it is a breakthrough the way it is presented. I loved the training and left me motivated.
By Rachita C•
Oct 15, 2016
One of the most compelling and amazing courses on Coursera. Teaches you the essentials required to survive in the 'market'.
By Zuzana V•
May 21, 2016
I really liked this course because it is very specific, shows very good examples and provides practical resources.
By JaneVillablanca•
Jul 2, 2020
Very innovative and practical course which may increase your chances of being noticed by potential employers.
By Victor C•
Jan 5, 2017
Excellent, It was concise but without missing details, It also included a lot of examples. Thank You.
By Venkatesh M•
May 3, 2017
Very useful and informative course covering key aspects to be taken while writing resumes...
By Iram B•
Jul 31, 2018
It was an eye opener and pointed out what we so foolishly overlook while writing resumes.
By Amin k•
Mar 6, 2020
This is a great course and it helps you to learn how to write a high-quality resume.
By Dirisu E•
Mar 19, 2020
This course has broaden my knowledge on resume writing.
By Mercy O•
Mar 17, 2020
It was a great course, I came away with new knowledge
By Athita V•
Mar 19, 2019
Good advising for developing effective resume.
By Katherine Z•
Sep 30, 2016
Very helpful insights and great examples!
By Jekaterina•
Aug 9, 2017
This course is very helpful. Thank you.


text:
The subject of this photograph isn't an undead monster dragging its bones across the beach or some macabre temple designed to line up with the sun. It's just the sun peeking through the hollow eye of an ordinary fish skull.
Photographer Mike Dotsch took this picture after he happened upon this skeleton:
Came upon these fish bones while walking on the shore of Lake Huron near Alpena, Michigan. I lowered my old bones to sand level and caught the sun peeking through his empty, sandy eyes.
It's amazing how otherworldly something so ordinary can look, seen from the proper angle.
Sunrise Through Dead Eyes [PopPhoto via Laughing Squid]


text:
Battleship is superficially based on an old board game, but really it's the latest in a long line of movies about alien forces coming to our planet and trashing the place. And this movie proves what we've suspected for a long time: the Hollywood alien invasion picture relies on a whole series of ridiculous contrivances and cliches to work.
This movie basically lays bare how nonsensical the whole enterprise is, and that's part of why it's actually pretty fun to watch.
First of all, a non-spoilery opinion: As "aliens blow shit up" movies go, Battleship is much, much better than The Darkest Hour or Skyline, but maybe not quite as good as Battle: Los Angeles. If you liked the first Transformers (as I did) then you'll probably like this film too. Battleship is a perfectly sturdy film that's about 30-45 minutes too long but manages to deliver a decent amount of human-alien combat and strategy. It's a perfectly adequate dose of summer movie crack.
Okay, now for the spoilers.
After an incredibly slow opening act where we get to know our human characters (more on them later), Battleship moves on to hit all of the notes you'd expect from this sort of movie, with a workmanlike precision. Big alien ships descending to Earth? Check. Fiery destruction trashing a city, with people running and screaming? Check. Stand-off between the U.S. military and the aliens, in which the aliens totally hand us our asses? Check. One seemingly insignificant human comes up with a brilliant plan to fight back? Check. And without giving too much away, the aliens who seem unbeatable at first suddenly turn out to have a basic weakness? Check.
At least this time, the aliens aren't allergic to water. That would be especially regrettable, since they're on the ocean.
Obviously, with a movie like Battleship, the key is to shut off your brain and enjoy the things going boom and the military combat — the movie's writers even said so when we talked to them a while back. That said, there are two kinds of "shut off your brain" movies: The ones where you can't help thinking of all the stuff that makes no sense when you're in the parking lot outside the movie theater, and the ones where you can't help noticing all the nonsense while you're in the middle of the movie. This is definitely the latter.
And Battleship, while being reasonably fun, does lay bare just how arbitrary the alien invasion film is, and how much it's like romantic comedies. Romantic comedies always feature a few standard tropes, from the "meet cute" to the "getting off on the wrong foot" to the random circumstances bringing the character, to the final crisis where someone learns the truth, to the "getting on a plane/getting married" conclusion. It's the same thing with alien invasion movies, from the first contact to the last ass-whuppin'.
What's really fascinating about Battleship, though, is how much the aliens' behavior doesn't make sense. (Although, having read Peter David's novelization, I know David comes up with plausible explanations for everything, which either were cut from the movie or were never there.) The aliens' behavior has very little logic, apart from the logic of the alien invasion story.
In a nutshell, the aliens arrive and suffer a setback, which is reasonably plausible and gives the aliens an immediate objective. And then they go to Hawaii and create a dome of solid water that nobody can go in or out of, trapping three Naval vessels inside with them. This sets up the whole conflict of the movie, because there are just three vessels on their own, against the alien scouting party. But the aliens, having sequestered the island and completely decimated all military resistance, then turn weirdly squeamish. We keep seeing through "alien-vision," in which threats are red and non-threats are green — and the aliens refuse to hurt anyone who isn't a threat. That in turn, means all you have to do is stand still and look harmless, and the aliens will walk right past you. There are a bunch of scenes where soldiers take advantage of this, standing and keeping their hands down, so the aliens will ignore them until they're ready to attack.
Let me just repeat that: The way to outsmart the aliens is to stand still and look friendly, and they'll leave you alone until you're ready to attack them. Even if you're a soldier, on board what they already know is a military vessel.
These are not particularly ruthless invaders, let's just say that.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a movie being contrived. Some of the best movies ever made are hella contrived. The world would be a poorer place if we all surrendered to the tyranny of strict plausibility, especially when it comes to stories about aliens with crazy hipster beards coming down and shooting giant pegs at naval vessels. The thing that's kind of beautiful and baffling about Battleship, though, is how blatant it is — probably because you already know what kind of movie it is before you pony up your ten-spot, and thus a certain amount of good will is factored in.
We've already talked before about how if aliens really did invade, they'd eat us for breakfast — even if they were just a small scouting party, like the one in Battleship.
That said, the combat in Battleship is really fun. The ships are the stars of the film, both the human naval vessels and the alien ships, and there is a lot of clever strategy and to-and-fro about how to cope with these unstoppable new foes. The big thrill of this sort of movie is in the problem-solving, as much as it is in the explosions and scowling, and Battleship delivers on that score. To the extent that Battleship feels like it's based on a game, it's one of those combat strategy games where you have to roll lots of twenty-sided dice or monitor a ton of different little screens on your computer. Not so much with the calling out letters and numbers, although the movie does nod towards that.
And the emphasis on strategy and clever battle maneuverings is what saves Battleship from collapsing under the weight of all its contrivances. If witty banter and sexy eye candy are the glue that hold most romantic comedies together, then problem-solving and resourcefulness are what make alien invasion films feel like more than just a formula unspooling.
So in a film like Battleship, the aliens are meant to be ciphers, because they're main point in the story is to be unbeatable until they're beatable. The humans, meanwhile, are pretty familiar too, although we get a lot more development of them than we do of the aliens.
The main human character is Alex Hopper, who's played by Taylor "John Carter" Kitsch, and he has the same arc as Captain Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek: He's a guy who should be great, but he's an underachieving screw-up, until disaster strikes and he's the only one on the scene who can save the day. This storyline is levened somewhat by giving Hopper a more over-achieving brother, "Stone" Hopper, who's played by Vampire Eric from True Blood. Hopper is in love with Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), a sparky physical therapist — but he can't get the approval of her father the admiral (Liam Neeson, scowling.)
Honestly, the problems of the Hopper family are not that fascinating, for the most part. On the other hand, Rihanna is actually quite fun as a weapons officer who just really enjoys shooting things. That's her whole character: She likes to shoot big guns. And with that one characteristic, she feels more real and alive than the other characters, whom we get endless development of. Maybe because this is a movie about shooting things, so Rihanna's desires and the audience's are perfectly aligned. In any case, if they make the sequel, it should star Rihanna and the main character conflict should be over her wanting to shoot things, and other people perhaps not wanting her to shoot them.
Alex Hopper's arc, from fuck-up to fucking badass, moves like clockwork, at exactly the same pace as humanity's arc from being pwned to pwning. There's nothing much in Battleship that you haven't seen before, but it's delivered well, and once the actual fighting starts, the movie never really lets up. If Battleship does show us quite how contrived the alien invasion genre has gotten, it also provides us with plenty of evidence of why we still love it.


text:
Trier par :
Home Cinéma(1)
Ajouté à votre panier
Trier par :
Onkyo AV-ReceiversAt Onkyo we produce AV-receivers for everyone and divide them into three distinct series:
SR-Series: The SR-series is a great, low-cost choice for newcomers in the world of home cinema and includes some of our most slimmed models while letting you control surround systems of up to 7.2 or 5.2.2 channels. The features include excellent video and audio reproduction with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization, as well as 4K/60p support.
NR-Series: The NR-Series takes everything that's good from the SR-series while adding networking and multiroom capabilities. Spotify Connect, TuneIn, Deezer, Chromecast built-in, Airplay 2, Works with Sonos and FlareConnect are only some of the integrated services. The NR-Series is perfect choice if you're looking to get as much as possible while on a budget, and on the latest TX-NR696 you will even find a THX certification.
RZ-Series: Bring the grand cinema experience home with the RZ-Series, celebrated and award-winning AV-receivers by Onkyo. Only top-quality components are used to give you the best there is in audio and video performance, with features such as IMAX Enhanced, THX Ultra certification and multiple zone control. Entertainment around the house in incredible resolution has never been easier.
Les prix se chargent
Disponibilité des produits par magasin


text:
Justice official: Complaint filed Edward Snowden
WASHINGTON (AP) — A sealed criminal complaint has been filed against Edward Snowden in the National Security Agency surveillance case, a Justice Department official said Friday.
The official declined to specify the criminal charges against the former NSA contractor who has admitted providing information to the news media about two highly classified NSA surveillance programs.
The official, who spoke anonymously, was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name.
The Washington Post quoted unnamed officials as saying that Snowden was charged with espionage, theft and conversion of government property. The newspaper said that the complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered.
The Espionage Act carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
Disclosure of the criminal complaint came as President Barack Obama held his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board as his intelligence chief sought ways to help Americans understand more about sweeping government surveillance efforts exposed by Snowden.
The five members of the obscure Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board huddled with Obama for an hour in the White House Situation Room, questioning the president on two NSA programs that have stoked controversy.


text:
Do you ever wonder who's head you are covering up when you make one of our many fun Starring You eCards? As you know we typically use an employee as an actor or model for a new video, but did you know our faces are also the grey default heads? We recently had a photo shoot of some of us here to make some new ghost heads for the site. It was school picture day all over again and with the help of our trusty photographer, Anthony, we got some great faces!
So go ahead…cover up our mugs with your faces & make some Starring You videos!


text:
When we passed along word of reports that Microsoft's next console would use an Internet-connected account to stop used game sales earlier this week, the vast majority of commenters were heavily against the idea. It turns out they have an ally in a major game retailer that doesn't often get much love from the Internet throngs.
GameStop is taking to the press to try to highlight just how damaging a used-game-free system would be to a hardware maker's brand. Speaking to Bloomberg, GameStop spokesman Matt Hodges said the company's surveys of customers show that they would be much less likely to purchase a console that didn't let them buy or sell their used games.
"We know the desire to purchase a next-generation console would be significantly diminished if new consoles were to prohibit playing pre-owned games, limit portability, or not play new physical games," Hodges said.
Though GameStop hasn't released specific numbers from the survey, Hodge's statement definitely gels with the reaction that the used-game blocking idea received from online forums and writers. Then again, GameStop isn't exactly an uninterested, neutral observer in this matter. The company makes roughly half of its profits by reselling used games for much more than it pays for them, and GameStop stock dropped about 6 percent immediately following the Edge report (though it has mostly recovered since then).
Still, gamers committed to the idea that physical games should be theirs to buy and sell should take the PR help wherever they can get it. If Microsoft hasn't completely finalized this rumored design decision yet, the public reaction to the mere hint of it should have the company thinking twice.


text:
- The Guardian, Wednesday 10 December 2003
- larger | smaller
Modern antidepressant drugs which have made billions for the pharmaceutical industry will be banned from use in children today because of evidence, suppressed for years, that they can cause young patients to become suicidal.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) told doctors last night not to prescribe all but one of the antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
The exception is Prozac, which is licensed for use in depressed children in the US. But the MHRA will warn that, at best, it helps only one child in 10.
The decision has big implications for drug regulation.
The agency - which is the government's watchdog body on drug safety - has reached this point only after intense pressure from patients and campaigners.
They were concerned about patients - at first mainly adults - who appeared to have become suicidal on the drugs, and others who had got hooked and suffered distressing symptoms when they tried to stop taking them.
Public unease about these potential side-effects prompted the agency to investigate last year. It has looked at the details of clinical trials of depressed children that were in the hands of the drug companies in the late 1990s. These studiesrevealed the problem of suicidal behaviour in children, but the companies did not draw it to the attention of the regulators in the US or the UK.
It has become clear from the investigation that the regulators generally see only a summary of the data resulting from trials. It is prepared for them by the drug company only when it is seeking a licence.
The agency became aware of a problem with Seroxat in children this year only when the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, submitted data from trials which finished in 1996.
Pressure for a change in the regulatory system will inevitably grow.
Two of the SSRI class of drugs have already been banned - or, technically, contra-indicated in children - by the agency.
The first, in June, was Seroxat, which goes by the generic name paroxetine; the second, in September, was Efexor (venlafaxine); joining them now will be Lustral (sertraline), Cipramil (citalopram), Cipralex (escitalopram) and Faverin (fluvoxamine).
Trials on children have not been carried out in all the drugs, but the completed studies show a worrying increase in suicidal behaviour among those on SSRIs compared with those given a placebo (sugar pill).
None of the drugs has a licence for use in children with depression in the UK, but GPs have prescribed more and more SSRIs for children.
It is estimated that as many as 50,000 children on antidepressants in Britain.
The agency will warn that patients should not stop their medication suddenly to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
The ban will cause problems for doctors because insufficient counsellors and psychotherapists are available to offer the alternative treatment of therapy, and the bill to the NHS for such treatment would be much higher than the cost of the drug prescriptions.
Drug companies began clinical trials on the safety and efficacy of the SSRIs in children only after prompting by the US food and drug administration in the early 90s.
David Healy, the director of the North Wales department of psychological medicine, said: "It was standard practice for the FDA approving drugs like Seroxat (Paxil in the US) for adults in 1991 to write to the company and say this drug will also be used in children - it would be helpful if you could run trials in children so we can see what the safety profile is."
But trials that did not produce favourable results were neither published nor sent to the FDA or the MHRA.
The first major Seroxat trial in children was finished by 1996, but the results were not published until 2001. Data was also gathered in 1996 after a trial of Lustral, manufactured by Pfizer, showing that 9% of depressed children on the drug became suicidal.
Dr Healy, whose own researches led to the establishment of the SSRI review, said yesterday: "They should have known by 1996 that there was a problem. GSK and Pfizer were asked to do this by the regulators so that we knew what the safety issues were."
The drug companies dispute that a problem exists. Only a tiny minority of children taking the drug become suicidal and their depression could be the real cause, they claim. GSK says several trials, not just one, were needed to establish whether its drug caused problems.
The SSRI review group, which has advised the Committee on the Safety of Medicines of the agency to ban the drugs from use in children, will now look at the safety and efficacy of the drugs in adults.


text:
Today is the 14th anniversary of my retirement from full-time employment. I take special delight in this annual observance because my retirement capped a subtle campaign to arrange the end of my employment on terms very favorable to me. The success of the campaign brought a profitable end to my tense relationship with my boss.
I liken the campaign to fly-fishing: I reeled in a big fish by accurately casting an irresistible lure then playing the fish into my net. I have long wondered if my boss ever grasped what I had done and how I had done it. The key was patience; more than a year passed between my casting of the lure and the netting of the fish (early retirement with a financial sweetener).
Without going into the details of my "fishing expedition," I can translate them into the elements of success in any major undertaking:
- strategy — a broad and feasible outline of a campaign to attain a major objective;
- intelligence — knowledge of the opposition's objectives, resources, and tactical repertoire, supplemented by timely reporting of his actual moves (especially unanticipated ones);
- resources — the physical and intellectual wherewithal to accomplish the strategic objective while coping with unforeseen moves by the opposition and strokes of bad luck;
- tactical flexibility — a willingness and ability to adjust the outline of the campaign, to fill in the outline with maneuvers that take advantage of the opposition's errors, and to compensate for one's own mistakes and bad luck;
- and — as mentioned — a large measure of patience, especially when one is tempted either to quit or escalate blindly.
Patience is not a virtue that accrues to amorphous masses, like nations. It can be found only in individuals or groups of individuals who share the same objectives and are able to work together long enough to attain those objectives. Whether such individuals or groups lead nations — and lead them wisely — is another matter.
Related post: A Grand Strategy for the United States


text:
The Sine Wave of Funny
Have you ever heard a super-repetitive joke that seemed kinda funny at first, but the longer you watched it, the funnier it got? When I first noticed this principle at work in a certain kind of (generally absurdist) comedy years ago, I invented a little pseudo-academic classification to explain the phenomenon: I call it the sine wave of funny. Here's how it works:
There's a certain ineffable thing about jokes that operate according to the sine wave of funny that make them work; not just any joke repeated over and over will work. It takes a special kind of joke to really engage the sine wave of funny. When this happens, though, it's like magic -- it's like the joke goes into hyperdrive, and you never want it to end. And the really amazing thing about these kinds of jokes is that, at first, they don't really seem that funny at all. They're chuckle-worthy, at best. (In fact, you might invert the sine wave on this graph -- initially, your patience is tested by the joke ... then it becomes funnier and funnier. Then not so funny. Then even funnier than before. And so on.)
Time for some examples. Here's a classic one from The Simpsons:
It's not that funny at first -- then at some point around the middle, the sine wave kicks in. (Actually, I think it'd be funnier if the clip were even longer.) Now, if that wasn't your style -- the sine wave is a very personal thing, you see -- try this on for size. It's a promo for the upcoming film Strange Wilderness (thanks for pointing this out, Higgins!):
Lastly, we've posted this video before, but there's a reason it's gotten more than nine million hits on YouTube ... and that reason is the sine wave of funny. Allow me to illustrate:
Now that you've got the principle down, what are your favorite sine wave of funny jokes?


text:
GEER v. MATHIESON ALKALI WORKS(1903)
This is an appeal from an order dismissing appellants' bill for want of due service of process.
The suit is in equity, and was commenced in the supreme court of the state of New York to set aside the conveyance made by the Mathieson Alkali Company to the Castner Electrolytic Alkali Company, on the ground that the conveyance was fraudulent. The directors of the former company were made defendants. On the petition of the defendant companies the case was removed to the circuit court of the United States for the southern district of New York, on the ground that the controversy was wholly between citizens of different states, and separable as to them. The appellants made the motion in the circuit court to remand the case to the state court, but the motion was denied, the circuit court saying:
The Mathieson Alkali Works (which we shall designate hereafter as the Mathieson Company) then moved the court to set aside the summons and the service thereof, on the ground that it, the Mathieson Company, was, at the time of the service of the summons, a foreign corporation, and at that time, and for some time before, had no place of transacting business in the State of New York, and transacted no business therein. Affidavits were presented on the motion, and it was granted.
The appellants were plaintiffs in the court below, and we will so call them They are stockholders in the Mathieson Company. Some of them are citizens of the state of New York, some citizens of states other than Virginia, and some citizens of Great Britain and Ireland. It is alleged that the defendant corporations are Virginia corporations, and that each has an office and place of business in the city of New York, and that all but two of the directors of the Castner Electrolytic Alkali Company, hereafter called the Castner Company, resided there, and that the property, to recover which the suit is brought, is situated in the state of New York.
The purpose of the Mathieson Company was to manufacture salt, soda, soda ash, bleaching powder, and other minerals, and to carry on a general merchandise business, and engage in agriculture and stock raising.
The bill is very voluminous, and it is enough to explain the contentions in the case to say that it recites the organization and history of the Mathieson Company; the erection and operation by it of a manufacturing plant at Saltville, Virginia; the leasing by it from the Niagara Falls Power Company of land and power at Niagara Falls, and the establishment of a plant there for the manufacture of the commodities mentioned in the charter of the company, and the carrying on of a profitable business. The bill alleges, on information and belief, that the defendants Arnold and Wilson are, respectively, the president and financial agent and manager of the company; the defendants Agar and Ely, their attorneys; Gladding, an employee of [190 U.S. 428, 430] some sort, and the directors other than Arnold and Wilson are dummies, without substantial interest in the company. That Arnold and Wilson have conducted the affairs of the company with great secrecy, and for their own interests; that Arnold is a member of the firm of Arnold, Hoffman, & Co., dealers in chemicals, in the city of New York, and by arrangements nominally between the firm and the company, but really between Wilson and the firm, the latter has had the exclusive sale and disposition of the products of the company since the organization, the details of which the plaintiffs are ignorant, because they have been kept secret from the stockholders. That, though dividends have been earned, none have been declared or paid, but have been appropriated by Arnold and Wilson. That they, with the other directors, have confederated and conspired to fraudulently dispose of, and do away with, substantially all of the property of the company, and have attempted to do so by means of the conveyance to the Castner Company, set out in the bill; and, to better conceal their acts, have obtained no certificate from the secretary of state, or designated any person upon whom process can be served. That the Castner Company was promoted and orgaized by the defendants Arnold and Wilson, and is controlled by them, and they are chiefly interested in its affairs. That plaintiffs only obtained knowledge of the existence of that company within the past few days, and of the conveyance to it, but have no precise knowledge of its affairs, and believe that the great body of the stockholders of the Mathieson Company are ignorant of the existence of the Castner Company or of the conveyance to it. That, by a communication from the secretary of state, it appears that the Castner Company was incorporated April 30, 1901, under the laws of Virginia, and that its officers consisted of a president, vice president, and seven directors; and a provision in the articles of incorporation show that the defendants Wilson, Arnold, and Agar are directors, and that Richard T. Wilson, Jr., a son of the defendant Wilson, is also a director. It is alleged that the other officers and directors are mere servants and instruments of the defendants Arnold and Wilson, and they created and organized the Castner Company as a means and contrivance to cheat and defraud the cred- [190 U.S. 428, 431] itors and stockholders of the Mathieson Company by means of the conveyance to the Castner Company. The conveyance is set out in full. It recites that it is executed for and in consideration of one dollar, and other valuable considerations, and purports to convey certain patent rights and all of the property of the Mathieson Company in the state of New York. The bill also alleges the property conveyed was delivered to the Castner Company, and it is in the possession thereof; that the patents and property conveyed are 'essentially necessary' to enable the Mathieson Company to carry on the business for which it was organized, and their conveyance in effect wholly destroys the business of that corporation and renders its capital stock utterly worthless, and deprives the creditors of the corporation, of whom there then were and are a large number, and for a large amount in the aggregate, of all remeay for the collection of their debts. That the conveyance is ultra vires, and the defendant directors are trustees and agents of and for the stockholders, and had no power to convey away the property and patents of the company essential to the carrying on of its business. And, by reason of the facts alleged, the defendant directors are unfit persons to have the charge and management of the affairs of the company, and that a receiver of the corporation should be appointed, and the defendants enjoined. That, for the reasons set forth, plaintiffs have not applied to the defendant The Mathieson Company to bring this action, being advised that its directors 'would not be proper persons to prosecute an action in the name of the company, which was practically an action to redress frauds they themselves had committed.'
The specific relief asked is stated in the opinion.
Messrs. W. W. MacFarland, and MacFarland, Taylor, & Costello for appellants.
Messrs. Alfred Ely and Agar, Ely, & Fulton for appellees.
Mr. Justice McKenna, after stating the facts as above, delivered the opinion of the court:
The facts and arguments by which it is attempted to sustain the service on the Mathieson Company are the same as [190 U.S. 428, 432] were presented in the case of Conley v. Mathieson Alkali Works, decided May 18 of this term. 190 U. S. --, ante, 728, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 728. On the authority of the case the service in this must be held insufficient to give jurisdiction of the Mathieson Company, and the order of the circuit court setting aside the service of summons must be affirmed if the case was properly removed to that court. And this depends upon the question whether the complaint exhibits a separable controversy between the plaintiffs and the companies.
A suit may, consistently with the rules of pleading, embrace several distinct controversies. Barney v. Latham, 103 U.S. 212 , 26 L. ed. 517. It was said in Hyde v. Ruble, 104 U.S. 409 , 26 L. ed. 824: 'To entitle a party to a removal under this clause [2d clause of 2 of the act of 1875 ( 18 Stat. at L. 470, chap. 137, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 508), same as 2d clause in the act of 1887, (24 Stat. at L. 552, chap. 373, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 582)] there must exist in the suit a separate and distinct cause of action in respect to which all the necessary parties on one side are citizens of different states from those on the other.' In other words, as expressed in Fraser v. Jennison, 106 U.S. 194 , 27 L. ed. 132, 1 Sup. Ct. Rep. 171 'the case must be one capable of separation into parts, so that, in one of the parts, a controversy will be presented with citizens of one or more states on one side, and citizens of other states on the other, which can be fully determined without the presence of any of the other parties to the suit as it has been begun.' And, when two or more causes of action are united in one suit, there can be a removal of the whole suit on the petition of one or more of the plaintiffs or defendants ( now only the defendants) interested in the controversy which, if it had been sued on alone, would be removable. Hyde v. Ruble, 104 U.S. 409 , 26 L. ed. 824. See also Ayers v. Wiswall, 112 U.S. 187 , 28 L. ed. 693, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 90. The application of these principles to the case at bar will be seen by the relief prayed for.
The relief prayed against the companies is as follows: Against the Mathieson Company, that the conveyance in its name be adjudged fraudulent and void, and that the same be annulled; that a receiver of its works be appointed; that its directors be enjoined from making any further disposition of its property; that it be required to make a full disclosure in respect to all of the premises set forth and alleged, and that [190 U.S. 428, 433] the complainants have access to all books, records, and papers, including the stock book. Against the Castner Company, that it may be required to account for all acts and doings in the premises set forth; to make good and pay all of the damages sustained by complainants to the Mathieson Company by reason thereof; that it be adjudged to reconvey the property so wrongfully conveyed to it in the name of the Mathieson Company; that it account for and pay all of the income, earnings, and revenue of the property since the date of the conveyance.
To the relief asked against the companies, were the directors of the Mathieson Company necessary parties? In Winch v. Birkenhead, L. & C. Junction R. Co. 5 De G. & S. 562, it was held, in a suit by a stockholder of the corporation in behalf of himself and all other stockholders, to restrain the performance of an ultra vires agreement, that it was not necessary that the directors should be made parties. It was said by the Vice Chancellor: 'The act that is sought to be restrained is the act of the company. It is quite sufficient if there is an order restraining the company. The company itself cannot act except by means of its officers, It appears to me that the suit is properly framed, by the relief being sought against the company alone.'
Hatch v. Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co. and Same v. Same, 6 Blatchf. 105, Fed. Cas. No. 6,204, were suits brought by the plaintiff in each in behalf of himself and all other stockholders of the defendant corporation, to restrain it from executing a contract which was alleged to be in excess of its powers. The plaintiff was a citizen of New York. The suits were brought in the supreme court of the state of New York. The individual defendants were directors of the corporation, and resided in the state of New York, except one, who was a citizen of the state of Illinois. In the second suit one Denham was made a party, who was the treasurer of the company, but not one of its directors. His citizenship does not appear. The plaintiff in the second suit alleged that the committee of directors had determined to close the transfer office of the company in the city of New York, and to remove all of its books, moneys, securities, and property beyond the jurisdiction of the [190 U.S. 428, 434] court; that the defendants had refused to permit any transfer of the shares of stock on the books of the company. Judgment was prayed in the first suit for an injunction against the execution of the illegal contract, and of the acts which were alleged to be contemplated in the performance thereof. In the second suit judgment was prayed for the same injunction, and an injunction against the other acts alleged. On the petition of Tracy and the company, the cases were removed to the circuit court for the southern district of New York, and a motion was made to remand. The motion was heard by Mr. Justice Blatchford, who was then United States district judge, who said:
And describing the suits, said further:
Heath v. Erie R. Co. came up before the same learned justice, and is reported in 8 Blatchf. 347, Fed. Cas. No. 6,306, 8 Blatchf. 413, Fed. Cas. No. 4,513. It was a suit by stockholders against the railway company and Jay Gould, James Fisk, Jr., and Frederick A. Lane, who were directors of the company. The object of the suit was to restrain ultra vires acts. The bill prayed for an injunction, for a receiver, for an accounting by Gould, Fisk, and Lane of the profits made by them, and that they 'make payment and compensation to the company, for the benefit of the plaintiffs and the [190 U.S. 428, 436] other bona fide shareholders, to the full extent of all such profits, benefits, gains, and advantages, and of all such damages, losses, and injuries.' The bill was demurred to, on the ground, among others, that the other directors, fourteen in number, were not made parties to the bill. The court overruled the demurrer. The main part of the opinion, which was very elaborate, is devoted to the consideration of the right of the stockholders to maintain the suit, which right was sustained on the authority of many cases. Of the ground of demurrer that the other directors had not been made parties, the court said:
It was, however, said by Lord Cairns in Ferguson v. Wilson, L. R. 2 Ch. 90, and it was held in Clinch v. Financial Corporation, L. R. 4 Ch. 117, that it was proper in a suit by a stockholder to restain ultra vires acts of a corporation to join as defendants the directors of the corporation. This ruling is reconcilable with the other cases. The reconciliation lies in the distinction between proper and indispensable parties in view of the statute providing for the removal of causes to the Federal courts. Barney v. Latham, 103 U.S. 212 , 26 L. ed. 517.
But relief is prayed against the individual defendants as follows:
If it be conceded that, in a suit which seeks such relief, the Mathieson Company is a necessary party, it is certain the Castner Company is not. Besides, the relief is distinct from-separable from, to keep to the language of the cases-that which is sought as a result of the grounds of suit against the companies.
It follows from these views that the bill exhibits a controversy between the plaintiffs and the defendant companies, to which the individual defendants are not necessary parties, and the case was rightfully removed to the circuit court.
The order of the latter court setting aside the service of summons on the Mathieson Company, and dismissing the bill for want of jurisdiction of that company, is affirmed.


text:
"I guess we are nearer Mexican soil than any other National Gaurdsmen. So if anything happens the old Eight will be right there." –Letter from Sam Avery, 7/4/16
The Mexican Revolution lasted from 1910-1920 and was the first major civil war of the 20th Century. It began in 1910 with an uprising led by Francisco Madero against the dictatorship of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, spanned the period of the Great War and involved multiple opposing factions which relied on competing German and American support.
In 1913, power changed hands from Francisco Madero to General Victoriano Huerta who in February had seized the Presidency in a coup initially supported by the United States. As Huerta's rule evolved into a ruthless dictatorship supported with arms and finances from the German Empire, a series of diplomatic crises occurred culminating in the "Tampico Affair" on April 9, 1914 which involved the temporary seizure and imprisonment of nine American sailors by Huerta loyalists. In response to this provocation the United States then occupied the Port of Veracruz to restrict Mexican commerce, and threw its support behind the opposition forces of Venustiano Carranza who finally defeated Huerta's armies in battle and wrested control of the Presidency on July 15, 1914. Huerta went into exile abroad in England and Spain where he continued to plot a return to power with German support, the goal of which was to keep the United States distracted from direct involvement in the Great War in Europe. Huerta finally returned to the United States in April, 1915 in order to complete his counter-revolutionary plans, but was arrested in El Paso, Texas on June 27 and imprisoned at Fort Bliss for conspiracy to violate U.S. neutrality laws.
After Venustiano Carranza finally took control of the Mexican Presidency in 1914, some of his former military commanders including Generals Francisco "Pancho" Villa and Emiliano Zapata became disillusioned with his lack of promised reforms (especially concerning land redistribution) and turned against him, taking their rebel armies into the field once more. Major engagements between the warring factions and attacks against American interests continued throughout 1915-1916, including a massacre of Texas businessmen on a train near Chihuahua, Mexico and numerous cross-border guerilla incursions into Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Despite the fact that his Presidency had been formally recognized by the United States, Carranza adopted a hostile posture towards America and instead continued to openly curry favor with the German Empire for financial and military aid. German Army reservists living as expatriates in Mexico also recieved commissions in the "Constitutionalist" army, and were actively serving in the Northern Forces south of the U.S. Border.
On March 8, 1916, Pancho Villa crossed the United States border with 500-1000 men and raided Columbus, New Mexico. His motives were two-fold; retaliation for the continued American recognition of Venustiano Carranza's government, and a bid to provoke direct American military intervention in Mexico that would ultimately weaken Carranza's hold on power. Villa's raid destroyed the town and left 24 American soldiers and civilians dead. In response, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched General John J. Pershing and a force of 10,000 regular U.S. Army troops into Mexico on a Punitive Expedition to attempt Villa's capture. Numerous skirmishes with bands of insurgents and even outright battles with Mexican Army units ensued.
President Wilson also sent several divisions of Army and National Guard troops to protect the southern U.S. border against further Mexican raids and counter-attacks which continued to disturb the Border Region in Arizona and Texas from 1917-1919.
Sgt. Sam Avery of K Co., 8th Mass. N.G. was among them…
Read Soldier's Mail from South on the Border here.
"Moxie For Mine"
"Three Letters From Home"


text:
Russell: President's Budget Is Wrong on Oil and Natural Gas, Again
As Congress begins its annual budget process, oil and natural-gas production continues to increase across the United States, giving us a chance to reinvigorate our economy while finally reversing our dependency on sources of energy from unstable regions of the world. Unfortunately, the president's 2014 budget proposes to reverse this progress by eliminating critical energy tax provisions that stimulate investment in safe domestic-energy production.
Despite the administration's rhetoric, Congress should know that the tax policies that govern independent producers are not credits, subsidies or handouts. These provisions and deductions, which are available to nearly every American industry, enable continued investment in U.S. energy exploration and production. Independent energy producers — companies with an average of 12 employees, which drill nearly 95 percent of the nation's oil and gas wells — are at the heart of America's great energy revival. The current provisions in the tax code that promote continued American energy production are key to the success of these small operators.
So to better educate lawmakers and the public about energy taxes and their effect on U.S. production, we are launching the Energy Tax Facts campaign. Energy Tax Facts will explain the often complicated tax provisions and policies that apply to American independent oil and natural-gas producers and why some of these provisions are so critical.
Take, for instance, the intangible drilling costs (IDC) deduction, which the administration's budget targets for elimination. IDC are expenses that operators incur at the well site that don't by themselves produce a physical asset for the producer. These costs include things such as labor and site preparation and equipment rental fees — costs that have no salvage value after they are spent. These are the same tax deductions available to many American industries: to farmers for fertilizer, technology companies for research and development, even bakeries for sugar and eggs. These are all upfront costs with no guaranteed return on investment facing nearly every American small-business owner, no matter the industry.
This tax provision has been around for 100 years because even a century ago Congress realized this deduction was a normal business expense. Removing this provision from the tax code would not only strip away roughly 25 percent of the capital available for independent producers to continue looking for new oil and natural gas but also diminish the many economic benefits created by those activities including the 4 million direct, indirect and induced jobs supported by America's independents in the lower 48 states.
Exploration and production of American energy is a capital-intensive process, and drilling a well does not guarantee resource production or return on investment. Historical provisions, such as the IDC deduction, are key to allowing independent producers to continue investment and exploration here in the United States. While the president's 2014 budget says that cutting these deductions would provide $4 billion in government revenue, independent producers' onshore upstream taxes alone generated $67.7 billion in 2010. Many members of Congress understand that removing these tax provisions would lead to less industry activity and could actually generate less total government revenue.
America's independent producers play a pivotal role in advancing our national security and supporting our economy by reinvesting 150 percent of their capital budgets into new energy projects — creating jobs and providing the energy we all rely on every day. I urge the president and members of Congress to visit energytaxfacts.com and learn about how the provisions the administration proposes to eliminate are actually stimulating American economic growth, job creation and energy independence. Any responsible budget plan must not start with harming U.S. small businesses and energy security.
Barry Russell is president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America in Washington, D.C.


text:
Read more about Wall Street's ongoing crisis.
During the bailout of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac—and, at the time of writing, the still-unresolved debate over the bailout of the entire U.S. financial system—the phrase "moral hazard" has become popular, typically in conjunction with the phrase "privatizing profits and socializing losses." It's easy to sympathize: The erstwhile masters of the universe seem to have forgotten the meaning of both moral and hazard. Why should they be helped now?
Still, we might usefully remember what the antiquated jargon "moral hazard" means. The term originated in insurance, recognizing the idea that people with insurance may be careless—for example, paying for secure off-street parking looks less attractive if your car is insured.
Moral hazard can sometimes take extreme forms. According to the St. Petersburg Times, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than two-thirds of insurance claims for the loss of a limb originated in the Florida Panhandle. At the epicenter, "Nub City"—the tiny town of Vernon, Fla.—almost 10 percent of the adult population had lost a limb. One man was said to be insured by dozens of companies when he lost his foot: Fortunately he had been carrying a tourniquet at the time of the accident. He pocketed $1 million. Another man shot his foot off—"while aiming at a squirrel"—just 12 hours after buying insurance. Now that's careless—and that's moral hazard in spades.
Sometimes moral hazard is so severe that it makes insurance impossible. Football players would like to insure against losing football games, and students would like to be compensated if their exams go poorly. Tough luck: Moral hazard makes such insurance contracts absurd. But all these examples exaggerate the problem. So does the archaic use of the word moral. It used to carry no ethical connotation, referring merely to a risk arising from human action rather than natural forces.
Forget the baggage that comes with the word moral. While moral hazard makes insurance more expensive and less efficient, many insurance markets work well enough to be useful. Moral hazard need not destroy them, and it need not destroy financial markets either. If AIG had shot off its own metaphorical foot to claim a government bailout, the argument against the bailout would be compelling. But it didn't, and it isn't.
This perspective can suggest lessons for today's bailouts. The government will not help you replace your possessions if you smoke in bed and your house burns down, but government-funded fire engines will put out the blaze, moral hazard or not. That is partly because fire can spread, and your neighbors should not suffer for your carelessness. The same motive lies behind the current spate of rescues. It is also because a civilized society tries to save people from accidentally burning themselves to death. If the consequence is a little more carelessness, so be it.
A second lesson is that remedies for moral hazard will always be imperfect. Insurance companies could fight moral hazard by checking that your behavior is consistently safety-conscious. Because that's impractical, deductibles have to serve as imperfect proxies. The current bailouts are a strong argument for tighter regulation, but regulators cannot be everywhere, any more than a claims adjuster can ride around in your car all day. Bailouts can save the innocent as well as the culpable, but even when they don't, it is fantasy to expect governments to refrain from them. It is useless to pretend otherwise: Bailouts are inevitable, and sometimes they are even desirable. The moral hazard they provoke is also inevitable. The final lesson: Insurers get paid for the insurance they provide; it would be nice if the taxpayer were shown the same courtesy.


text:
20% Off Regular-Priced Boots or Buy One Get One Half Off all Regular-Priced Items🛍All Shoe Charms BOGO FREE🛍
Your cart is currently empty.
© 2023 ShoeNami
31 products found in GREEN QUEEN
Sign up for our mailing list to receive new product alerts, special offers, and coupon codes.
© 2023 ShoeNami
| Theme by Mile High Themes |
Powered by Shopify


text:
Over the years, I've frequently tussled with conservative/traditionalist Catholics about the response to Vatican II. Almost always, I encounter the hell-in-a-handbasket stance, that's it's all been downhill since Vatican II. But the polling, at least here in the States, doesn't support that. In fact, the only time in the last forty years that Catholic confidence surpassed Protestant was the year the last of MR1 was implemented.
If you trust the same people who suggest the drop in accepting the real presence, they might tell you it's all because of John Paul II bishops and more recently, the cover-up of sex abuse by bishops. The graph of the years 1973-1991:
Gallup took a break in the 90's, then returned to tracking Catholic/Protestant confidence at what was for us Catholics, a very low point indeed:
Anybody remember what happened for Catholics in 2007?
How do you think St Blog's would view confidence in the institution? Above or below 46%?


text:
I was really hoping that Curiosity would scoop up some bacteria and they would announce it and peace on earth would result. Oh well, we are still in suspense…
SAN FRANCISCO — The Curiosity Mars rover has discovered something interesting in a scoop of ruddy sand, but NASA scientists say they're not quite sure what it means.
Sand that was shake-and-baked inside the car-size rover's chemistry kit bubbled off traces of organic compounds, mission scientists said at a news briefing Monday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Such compounds, made of carbon and chlorine, are of the type that, in some cases, indicate microbes in the soil.
But such compounds also could be contamination from the rover itself — or they may have rained onto the surface inside meteorites, said Paul Mahaffy, a mission scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
"It's unclear if the carbon is Martian or terrestrial," Mahaffy said.
As the great philosopher Lazlo Toth said after an earlier Mars mission in 1976, "of course you didn't find life on Mars, you just killed it."
Words to reflect on.


text:
Ingrid Pitt survived a Nazi Concentration Camp and evaded the Communist police to become one of Britain's most beloved horror stars, reigning over Hammer films like The Vampire Lovers. She also rocked Doctor Who. She died last night, aged 73.
Pitt was born in 1937, and her mother was of Jewish descent. Her birth came at an inopportune time, foiling her parents' plan to escape from the Nazis, and Pitt was interned in a Concentration Camp at the age of five. Later, she searched through the European Red Cross refugee camps for her father.
Eventually, she wound up living in East Berlin, where she schemed to become an actress. She writes in her autobiography, Life's A Scream, "I always had a big mouth and used to go on about the political schooling interrupting my quest for thespian glory. I used to think like that. Not good in a police state."
Eventually, she was forced to flee East Berlin on the night of her planned stage debut, jumping into the River Spree to get away from the East German authorities. She was rescued from the river by an American soldier who became her husband. Years later, she was making a film in Berlin, within sight of the border, and she was terrified the East Germans were watching her.
Her first big role came in the 1968 World War II action movie Where Eagles Dare, in which she got to shoot some Nazis towards the end of the film. Rusty White's Film World asked her about this:
RW: How did it feel to shoot the Nazi characters at the end of the film?
IP: I…I had to keep swallowing. I was thinking, "I'm shooting the Nazis."
RW: Was it a cathartic experience?
IP: In some ways it was. You survive something and you have to get on with your life.
As a result of that film, she came to the attention of Hammer Films and appeared in a slew of British horror movies, including Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula, The House That Dripped Blood and The Wicker Man. She told PennyBlood:
In Countess Dracula my day started around 5 am on the days I was doing scenes with the old Countess and went on until 9 pm, sometimes even later. It took around 3 hours to put the make up on and more or less the same to take it off. The rest of the time I had to sit mutely around because if I talked the latex cracked and it was back in the make-up chair again. It was when I took to smoking to still the hunger pangs. It took years to break the habit.
On Wicker Man it was the cold. We were shooting in Winter pretending it was Spring. Even the goose-bumps had goose-bumps. Eddie Woodward fared worst. Most of the final scenes were shot on the cliff top and he only had a night shirt on. He would come to me in between scenes and beg to put his cold feet under my dress.
Pitt appeared on Doctor Who twice — she played Queen Galleia, who gets seduced by the Master, in "The Time Monster," and Dr. Solow in "Warriors of the Deep." After her second appearance, she was commissioned to write a Doctor Who story — "The Macro Men" takes place during World War II, when the U.S. Navy tried to create a destroyer that would be invisible to radar. In Pitt's version of the story, the Navy discovers microscopic creatures that are native to Earth but previously unknown to humans. The script only made it to draft stage before being scrapped, but now it's been made into an audio play by Big Finish Productions.
Pitt also became quite well known as a writer, penning a number of newspaper columns as well as a slew of books. Her novels included Cuckoo Run, Eva's Spell, the children's book Bertie the Bus, Katarina, and The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers.
Rusty White asked Pitt why she liked to play villains after having experienced so much evil first-hand, and she said:
It is more fun to portray the heavy. If you're the victim you are quickly forgotten… or you are pathetic. You remember the heavy.
[Washington Post, plus biographical details from Ingrid Pitt, Queen of Horror by Robert Michael Bobb Cotter]


text:
[Note: This is the fourth in a series of reviews of small, inexpensive cars that feature the kind of technology you'd only have found in high-end vehicles just a few years ago. I'm not an automotive reviewer by trade and am focusing on the tech, but I'm also paying attention to comfort, performance an efficiency. Previous cars reviewed include the 2013 Toyota Prius C, the 2013 Kia Soul and the 2013 Dodge Dart.]
When I launched into these reviews of small cars with sophisticated dashboard tech, one of my early targets was the Fiat 500, the tiny city car that seems ubiquitous on the streets of Houston. The 500 was Fiat's return to America's roadways after nearly three decades of absence, and it's become quite popular. The United States is now the biggest market for the 500, passing even Fiat's home nation of Italy.
But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that the tiny 500 was, well, too tiny. I think it's an adorable car, but it's not something I'd want to ride around in all day. And besides, Fiat's sequel to the 500 caught my eye.
The 2014 Fiat 500L is the second act of the company's U.S. resurrection, helped along by the fact that it's now the majority owner of Chrysler. This gives Fiat a much bigger distribution network in this country, and enables it to begin introducing additional models. The five-door, wagon-like 500L is what Fiat hopes 500 owners will consider when it's time to upgrade from a motorized roller skate.
The model I drove was the 500L Easy, one step up from the base. The Easy starts at $20,995 (that includes an $800 destination charge), and during the 500L's introductory year, Fiat is throwing in the 6.5-inch touchscreen Uconnect package for free. There are three other models – the Pop, which starts at $19,100; the Trekking, a sporty version, starting at $21,195; the high-end Lounge at $24,195. If you check every options box, you can max out the 500L's Lounge model just north of $28,000.
The 500L Easy is just the price point I'm targeting in this series. It's a lot of car – and a lot of tech – for a relatively small amount of cash.
This larger Fiat looks like its smaller predecessor, but only from the front. It's got the rounded grill and bug-eyed appearance of the 500, but on a grander scale. From the side, the 500L looks more like a Mini Cooper on steroids than the larger Mini, the Clubman, does. It also evokes the original Volkswagen van – not the hideous Vanagon, but the one that became an iconic ride for the hippies of the late 1960s.
Like the Kia Soul, which I also reviewed for this series, it's got the kind of design that you're either going to love or hate. Count me among the former.
Inside, there's a remarkable amount of room. The 500L has a high roof and lots of glass for a seriously panoramic view. There's even glass splitting the windshield pillars. A drive through the Hill Country to LaGrange to test the 500L's road mileage was a visual treat. I'd love to cruise New England in the fall in this car and overdose on color.
The 500L has a comfortable ride – you're aware of the road, but unlike the 2013 Kia Soul, you're never punished for that knowledge. The seats are firm (maybe a little too firm) and the front seats are a tad short. The placement of the driver's seat in relation to the steering column has you sitting upright, almost like driving a bus. It's not uncomfortable once you get used to it, and it fits with the cavernous space of the cabin.
All 500Ls come with a 1.4-liter, turbocharged engine. My review car had a six-speed manual transmission. My regular car is a 2001 Ford Mustang with a 5-speed transmission, and it took me a day or two to get used to having a sixth gear. The clutch and gearbox are remarkably smooth – it's certainly an easier car to shift than the Mustang. On some days, it feels like the clutch on my 'Stang is like something I might encounter in the exercise machine area of my gym.
One downside to the shifter – it's positioned in such a way that the suspended armrest between the front seats made me reach slightly to shift. And the parking brake is directly underneath the armrest, which fortunately can be raised out of the way. Still, it's an annoying design in a car that's otherwise well laid-out.
The 500L has a decent amount of pep, and I never felt vulnerable on freeways nor wimpy when it was time to pass a pokier vehicle. When the time came to floor it, the 500L rose to the challenge.
The mileage was just so-so. The 500L is rated at 25 in the city and 33 on the highway, with an average of 28 MPG. On my LaGrange run, I averaged about 34 MPG, but the best I could do in city driving was about 20 MPG.
The 6.5-inch touchscreen uses the Uconnect system from Chrysler. It wasn't quite as a sophisticated as the version in the Dart, however. For example, the 500L's navigation system tells you the speed limit of the road you're on, but in the Dart you get both the limit and your current speed based on GPS estimates. With the 500L, you don't get told how fast you're traveling, but you can optionally have the system warn you when you're going 10 MPH over posted speeds.
As you'd expect, there's stereo Bluetooth support for smartphones. You can have multiple phones connect and tell the system which gets priority when it comes to the telephone feature. The audio system has inputs for an SD memory car, a USB connection and a standard auxiliary jack. Music played via Bluetooth sounded great – there was little difference in quality between Bluetooth and a direct USB connection from my iPhone 5.
In general, the audio quality is quite good from the 500L's 6-speaker sound system, but the Kia Soul remains the champ of the cars I've tested in terms of audio. The 500L has an optional upgrade that features Beats Audio, and I briefly heard this in a different 500L I got to drive, but the Soul was better than even that.
A side-note: I had to give up the 500L before I downloaded iOS 7 onto my iPhone, so I can't say whether the newer OS would wreak havoc in any way. But with iOS 6, the iPod and Bluetooth features didn't fight each other. Everybody played nice.
The Uconnect system supports voice commands, but as is the case with every other car I've tried, this feature was just this side of worthless. Controlling navigation, music selection and other features with your voice in theory is safer than doing it with your hands, but I suspect there may be wrecks caused by people not paying attention to their driving because they're screaming in fury at awful voice recognition.
Strangely, Uconnect will only work if you turn the power to the AM/FM/Sirius XM radio on. There are phone and navigation buttons below the screen, but if you've turned the power off to the radio, those buttons do nothing. To compensate, there's a Mute button. All the other cars I've tried allow the navigation and phone to work independently of the audio system.
The touchscreen is mounted in the center of the dash, with air conditioning controls below it. A second LED screen is set in the middle of the analog instrument cluster. It has its own speedometer, but can also show you trip and miles-per-gallon information, including real-time MPG data.
Of the cars I've tried so far, the Fiat 500L is my favorite, though there are aspects of it that give me pause – not the least of which is the quirkiness of the tech and the less-than-stellar gas mileage. But it's the most fun and most comfortable of the lot to drive, and that speaks volumes.