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As part of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8, we recently released a sample library for accessing Service Bus from Windows 8 metro style applications and a sample metro app demonstrating how to use some basic Service Bus functionality. In this post, we'll take a quick tour around the sample app, get an introduction to the sample library and examine in detail how the sample library works.
Service Bus Sample Browser for Windows 8
To help make getting started really easy, we've built the Service Bus Sample Browser for Windows 8 - this simple metro style application lets you explore and learn about service bus functionality interactively and always keeps you close to the code.
In every sample, bringing up the AppBar in the sample browser (Right Click with a Mouse, or swipe up from the bottom bezel with touch) will allow you to Copy Source Code from the sample to the clipboard for use in Visual Studio.
When you launch the sample browser, you'll find 3 simple samples included:
Simple Queues
Service Bus Queues are durable First In, First Out message queues that permit communication between distributed applications or components. You can learn more about Service Bus queues on WindowsAzure.com. The pattern for using queues is straightforward: someone sends a message to the queue, someone else receives the message later.
In the Simple Queues sample, you can follow a simple example of how to use this messaging pattern within a Windows 8 metro style application.
Simple Topics
Topics and Subscriptions in Service Bus support a publish/subscribe communication model - messages are Sent to a single topic and can then be Received by multiple subscribers. You can learn more about Service Bus Topics on WindowsAzure.com. Using topics is as simple as using queues - someone sends a message to the topic and each subscriber is able to receive a copy of that message later.
In the Simple Topics sample you'll create a Topic, add one or more subscribers to it then send and receive messages.
Peek Lock, Abandon and Complete
Both Queues and Subscriptions support to different ways to receive messages. The first, Receive and Delete, removes the message from the queue or subscription when it is received - if the receiver fails to process the message, then its content is lost. The second, Peek Lock, makes the Receive and Delete operations two separate operations - first a messages is Peeked from the queue by the receiver, later the receiver can Complete the message (deleting it from the queue or subscription and marking it as processed) or Abandon the message (marking it as not completed or unprocessed). A message is returned to the queue or subscription if it is abandoned of its peek-lock times out (by default, the peek lock timeout is 30 seconds).
In the Peek Lock Sample, you try out peek locking yourself. Click each of the shapes to send it to a queue and then try receiving. When you've received a shape, select it to Complete or Abandon the message - Completed messages do not return to the Queue, while abandoned ones do. If you neither complete or abandon a message, you'll observe that it's lock expires and it is automatically returned to the queue.
Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8 - Microsoft.Samples.ServiceBus
To get started download the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8.
To make it easier to consume the Service Bus REST API, we've built a sample library for Windows 8 which wraps common Service Bus primitives like Queue, Topic and Subscription - let's dive straight into some code to illustrate creating a queue, sending a message, receiving the message and deleting the queue. If you are new to the Service Bus, take a look at these how-to articles on Service Bus Queues and Service Bus Topics.
Since we'll be calling Service Bus over HTTP, we need to consider a couple of things:
- Request the Internet (Client) capability in your package manifest: Service Bus is on the internet, so you'll need to make sure your application has permissions to access the network.
- Calls to the network should always be asynchronous: since a network call could take a little time to complete, you'll always want to use asynchronous IO. The Sample Service Bus Library helps out by exposing simple asynchronous methods for every operation.
First up, we need a Token Provider. Token Providers are used by the library to request an authorization token from the Access Control Service (ACS) and attach that token to requests made to Service Bus. You can think of the Token Provider like a set of credentials - it specifies 'who' is trying to perform an action on a service bus resource:
TokenProvider tokenProvider = TokenProvider.CreateSharedSecretTokenProvider(
serviceNamespace: "Your Service Bus Namespace Name, e.g. contoso",
issuerName: "owner",
issuerSecret: "Your Service Bus Issuer Secret, e.g. b66Gxx...");
Next we'll create a queue - this super-simple call specifies the path of the queue to create and uses the default queue description. If you want to tweak the settings on the queue you're creating, you'll find a helpful overload accepting a Queue Description as a parameter:
Queue myQueue = await Queue.CreateAsync("MyQueue", tokenProvider);
With the queue created in Service Bus, we can go ahead and send a message. The samples library makes it simple to send plain text messages or messages whose body is a JSON formatted object. Here, we're just going to asynchronously send a plain text string as the body of the message:
await myQueue.SendAsync("Hello World!");
Receiving a message is just a simple - we'll attempt to receive from the queue using Receive and Delete semantics. If you want to use Peek Lock semantics, you'll find the PeekLockAsync method nearby. Having received the message, we'll extract the plain-text body:
BrokeredMessage message = await myQueue.ReceiveAndDeleteAsync();
string greeting = message.GetBody<string>();
Finally, we're going to clean up after ourselves and delete the queue:
await Queue.DeleteAsync("MyQueue", tokenProvider);
So, there we go - just a few lines of code to create, send, receive and delete entities in Service Bus. In the Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8, we've tried to ensure you have a simple API surface area to get started with and the full power of our REST API surface available when you want it. We're shipping this library as an open source licensed sample to give you the freedom and flexibility to dive deep into the code if you want to and tweak to your heart's content!
We're hopeful that the simplified API surface in the Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8 makes it easy to get started building great Metro Style Apps that are connected with Service Bus - we've tried to reduce the total number of concepts you need to become familiar with to achieve typical scenarios and make it easier to learn about our advanced features as you need them - we're always keen to hear your feedback on how useful this sample library is to you, please let us know you thoughts on the discussion list for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8.
Going Deep: How the Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8 Works
Service bus operations fall into one of two classes: Management or Runtime. Management operations are used to Create, Enumerate, Get and Delete service bus entities like Queues, Topics and Subscriptions; Runtime operations are used to Send and Receive messages. Firstly we'll dive deep into how the Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8 implements Management Operations, and then we'll take a look at how Runtime Operations are implemented.
Management Operations: Create, Get, Enumerate and Delete
The service bus namespace can be thought of as a set of ATOM Feeds, each describing entities that exist at paths beneath it. For example, if a Queue called 'Foo' exists at the Uri: https://contoso.servicebus.windows.net/Foo then we would find an atom entry like this at that address:
Quickly looking over the markup, you'll notice the address of the queue (line 3), the name of the queue (line 4) and the description of the queue that exists here (line 12-25). This pattern is true throughout the namespace - all entities are represented as an XML Entity Description wrapped in an Atom Entry.
Managing service bus entities is achieved by performing RESTful operations on these feeds within a service bus namespace over HTTPS: To create an entity we issue an HTTP PUT, to get an entity we issue an HTTP GET and to delete an entity we issue an HTTP DELETE. Enumeration is performed by issuing an HTTP GET within the reserved $Resources collection at the root of the namespace (for example, /$Resources/Queues).
Each type of entity and sub entity that you can create is represented in a hierarchy of Resource Descriptions. These include the familiar Queue, Topic and Subscription Descriptions and more advanced entities like Rule Description, Rule Filter and Rule Action:
The Resource Description types encapsulate the Content of an Atom entry that represents a service bus entity - when serialized to XML (using the DataContractSerializer) and wrapped in an Atom entry, these types can be used to create, delete, list and represent entities in service bus.
Within the Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8, a Resource Description can be expressed as an Atom Entry by calling the AsSyndicationItem() method; the SyndicationItem type is within System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace which provides classes to work with both RSS and ATOM feeds. Similarly, a Resource Description can be extracted from an Atom Entry by using the static ResourceDescription.Create<T>(SyndicationItem) method and specifying the expected resource type as the type parameter, T (for example, T could be QueueDescription).
Understanding how we model the descriptions of various service bus entities (as ResourceDescriptions) and how we convert those descriptions to and from Atom (using the ResourceDescription.AsSyndicationItem() and ResourceDescription.Create<T>(SyndicationItem item) methods) we're well prepared to see how the Create, Get, List and Delete operations are implemented. We'll use Queues to examine how management operations are implemented, but the logic for Topics, Subscriptions and Rules is extremely similar.
Let's take a look at creating a Queue:
Queue myQueue = await Queue.CreateAsync("Foo", tokenProvider);
When we call Queue.CreateAsync, we're going to perform the following operations:
- Create an instance of QueueDescription and specify "Foo" as the path;
- Create a NamespaceManager for the service bus namespace specified in the tokenProvider;
- Request that the NamespaceManager create a new Queue with the specified QueueDescription;
- Within the NamespaceManager, wrap the QueueDescription in Atom by calling AsSyndicationItem();
- Request that a SyndicationClient create a new resource with the specified SyndicationItem;
- The SyndicationClient requests an Authorization Token with the TokenProvider;
- The SyndicationClient issues an HTTP PUT with the SyndicationItem as its body and the Authorization Token as a header;
- The HTTP Response is read and loaded into a SyndicationItem by the SyndicationClient;
- The SyndicationItem is returned to the NamespaceManager;
- The NamespaceManager extracts the Content of the SyndicationItem as a QueueDescription;
- The QueueDescription is returned to the calling Queue.CreateAsync method;
- An instance of a Queue is created to encapsulate the newly created QueueDescription.
You can visualize the Queue, NamespaceManager and SyndicationClient as each adding a layer of information to the original intent to create a queue called foo before handing the request off to service bus:
The Queue is a convenience class that encapsulates a Queue's description and also operations like Send/Receive in one place. The Queue type uses a NamespaceManager to Create, List, Get and Delete entities in a Service Bus namespace. The NamespaceManager is responsible for figuring out the full URI that an HTTP Request should be issued against (using the ServiceBusEnvironment) and wrapping Resource Descriptions in Atom (using the AsSyndicationItem method) before using a SyndicationClient to create HTTP Calls. The SyndicationClient is responsible for getting an authorization token (using a TokenProvider) and making HTTP calls (using HTTPClient).
All management operations happen the same way - they're first issued against a high-level abstraction like Queue, Topic or Subscription, passed down to a Namespace Manager for addressing and conversion to Atom then handled by a Syndication Client to perform the actual raw HTTP Request against service bus.
Runtime Operations: Send, Receive, Peek Lock, Abandon and Complete
Sending and receiving messages over HTTP is really simple. To send a message you issue an HTTP POST to the 'messages' collection of a Queue or Topic and to Receive (in receive and delete mode) you issue an HTTP DELETE to the head of the 'messages' collection of a Queue or Subscription. Peek locking is similarly achieved by issuing an HTTP POST to the head of the messages collection to create the peek lock; issuing an HTTP PUT to the lock location to abandon the message and issuing an HTTP DELETE to the lock location.
Service Bus Messages have Headers (like Sent Time, Message Id and Time-to-Live); user-specified message Properties and a body. Over HTTP, Headers are encapsulated as a JSON formatted structure in a reserved HTTP Header named BrokerProperties; user-specified message properties are encapsulated as plain HTTP Headers and the body of the service bus message is - you guessed it - the body of the HTTP Message. Sending a message to a queue is as simple as invoking SendAsync on that queue:
await myQueue.SendAsync("Hello, World!");
Let's take a look at a the HTTP trace for sending this message to get a better idea of what it looks like:
POST https://contoso.servicebus.windows.net/Foo/Messages HTTP/1.1
Host: contoso.servicebus.windows.net
Authorization: WRAP access_token="..."
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Length: 13
Hello, World!
Receiving a message is similarly straightforward - this time we'll Receive and Delete from the head of the Queue:
BrokeredMessage message = await myQueue.ReceiveAndDeleteAsync();
And here's the corresponsing HTTP request and response traces:
DELETE https://contoso.servicebus.windows.net/Foo/Messages/Head?timeout=30 HTTP/1.1
Host: contoso.servicebus.windows.net
Authorization: WRAP access_token="..."
Content-Length: 0
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/plain
Server: Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0
BrokerProperties: {"DeliveryCount":1,"MessageId":"62a7eceab7eb4d52ac741af5f44393ce","SequenceNumber":1,"TimeToLive":922337203685.47754}
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2015 16:23:42 GMT
Hello, World!
You can see here the simple format of a service bus message over HTTP and start to identify some of the metadata available in the BrokerProperties header. Within the Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8, the type BrokeredMessage is used as an encapsulation for a service bus message, its headers, properties and body. Let's walk through how the call to SendAsync actually works:
- SendAsync(string …) is called indicating that a plain-text service bus message should be sent;
- A new BrokeredMessage is constructed and writes the body of the message to a Stream;
- The Queue calls SendAsync(BrokeredMessage) on a MessageSender with the newly constructed message;
- The MessageSender requests an Authorization Token with the TokenProvider;
- The MessageSender issues an HTTP POST specifying the BrokeredMessage's BodyStream as its body;
- HTTP Headers, including any BrokerProperties, user-specified message properties and the Authorization Header are appended to the request.
- The HTTP Response is checked for an OK (200) status code.
The message sender also supports sending more complex types as the body of a message by serializing them to JSON. A MessageReceiver is used in a similar fashion to receive messages from a Queue or Subscription.
Hopefully this quick whirlwind-tour of the Sample Service Bus Library for Windows 8 gives you some pointers to get started. We're really excited to hear your feedback on the library and see the awesome connected apps you build with it - lets us know what you're up to on the discussion list for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8.


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Movie review: 'Cars 3' gets back on track
"Cars 3" never fires on all cylinders, but it has considerably more horsepower than the franchise's last chapter. First-time director Brian Fee revs things up with a return to what made Pixar guru John Lasseter's original 2006 'toon great. "Cars" again is colorful, funny and sweet. Fee — and a team of screenwriters — insert just enough heart, humor and silly sight gags to coast along to the checkered flag. The path is predictable, but what "Cars 3" lacks in freshness it makes up for in visuals, spectacular race sequences, and nostalgia in telling the story of washed-up racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) trying to regain his former glory.
The relationship between the hotshot McQueen and his wise gravelly voiced mentor, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), is the heart and soul of franchise. And so, the filmmakers dust off Doc and resurrect Newman, who died in 2008, to again lend the movie a hearty dose of gravitas. He plays an integral part via flashback, using past dialogue and other unused lines from previous recording sessions. It's something special.
Younger, faster and sleeker racers are taking over the Piston Cup circuit. McQueen's new rival is the cocky rookie Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer). Coming off his worst season ever, McQueen has one last chance to race — the Florida 500. If he wins, the No. 95 car stays on track. Lose, and he becomes a Rust-eze brand ambassador — which is ironic considering "Cars" is one of the most profitable merchandising phenoms in Disney/Pixar history. This installment is no exception. There's plenty of new toys to go around, including Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), the spunky yellow racing trainer and technician who works at the fancy new Rust-eze Racing Center owned by Sterling (Nathan Fillion). Stodgy, old dirt-track McQueen clashes with the modern training style of Cruz, dubbed the "maestro of motivation." Conflict develops faster than you can say "Ka-chow." McQueen is her "senior project." Cue a series of geezer jokes.
Wise old Doc — the once Fabulous Hudson Hornet — was always the person, err car, to keep McQueen in check. Since Doc is gone, McQueen does the next best thing — seek out Doc's mentor, an old-timer called Smokey, voiced by Kingston's Chris Cooper, adding additional heft with his own distinct voice and sage advice. Smokey also reveals details about Doc that deepen the bond between he and McQueen to reframe the younger racer's outlook. Old-school training montages right out of the "Rocky" playbook ensue, as McQueen works on precision (to be "smarter, not faster") steering through a field of hundreds of mooing tractors instead of maneuvering on car treadmills and racing simulators like the young'uns. A forklift named Sweet Tea (Andra Day) sings Springsteen's "Glory Days" in a karaoke bar. Cruz and McQueen eventually find common ground. And in the end, she might just be your new favorite character in the boy-friendly franchise that's clearly shifting gears to target girls — who buy toys, too.
As far as the script, "Cars 3" is a little bit pedestrian, with excursions to places like a backwoods demolition derby to pad out the story. The script doesn't call on the rest of the original Radiator Springs crew: Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), Luigi (Tony Shalhoub), Sally (Bonnie Hunt), Mack (John Ratzenberger), Fillmore (Lloyd Sherr) and Ramone (Cheech Marin) to do anything but cheer on McQueen.
In the canon of Pixar films, "Cars 3" is several laps behind its siblings like "WALL-E," "Up" and the "Toy Story" trilogy. Those films packed genuine emotions. "Cars 3" doesn't, but it is a good enough diversion for the family, fueled with positive messages about persistence, friendship and achieving dreams. As McQueen says, "This one's for you, Doc."
— Dana Barbuto may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com or follow her on Twitter @dbarbuto_Ledger.
"Cars 3"
Cast: Owen Wilson, Chris Cooper, Paul Newman, Larry the Cable Guy, Nathan Fillion, Cristela Alonzon.
Grade: B

subset: commoncrawl


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Effective January 1, 2017, UPS will change its requirements for shipping lithium batteries by air. These changes support our continuing efforts to ensure the safety of our employees while at the same time meeting the needs of our customers.
The change will require that all U.S. Air and international Air shipments of lithium ion or metal cells and batteries shipped without equipment by a UPS Air service be prepared and shipped as fully regulated dangerous goods. Beginning January 1, 2017, UPS will no longer allow air shipments under reduced regulations, such as:
Shippers will need to enter a UPS Dangerous Goods service agreement before shipping lithium ion or lithium metal batteries without equipment by air. This requirement does not apply to UPS® Ground shipments. Additional service fees may apply to these changes.
The following list of services are applicable to these changes:
UPS Next Day Air®, UPS 2nd Day Air®, UPS 3 Day Select®, UPS Express Critical®, UPS Worldwide Express Plus®, UPS Worldwide Express®, UPS Worldwide Express Freight®, UPS Worldwide Saver®, UPS Worldwide Expedited®, UPS Express® Freight, UPS Air Freight Direct®, UPS Air Freight Consolidated®, UPS Next Day Air® Freight and UPS 2nd Day Air® Freight, as well as Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico using UPS Ground.
Questions about shipping dangerous goods with UPS may be directed to your UPS sales professional.
UPS transports dangerous goods to and from approved countries or territories.
Learn How To Ship and Pack Many Battery TypesOpen the link in a new window
UPS tracking solutions show your shipment's progress, no matter the destination.
With global shipping and distribution services, we can help you take the next step.


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Although we haven't covered it for a while, the search for gravitational waves has continued unabated. The light interferometer gravitational wave observatory (LIGO) detector has started its fifth science run and is now operating at the sensitivity it was designed for. The question that arises fairly often is "how sensitive is sensitive enough?" Its answer takes you deep into both quantum mechanics and general relativity.
General relativity applies because, well, you require general relativity to generate the waves (no such phenomena are predicted by Newtonian gravitation). While objects with masses and densities sufficient to generate waves that are detectable mean that their properties are dominated by quantum mechanics. This makes it fertile ground for that weed of scientific discourse: rampant speculation. Last year, we reported on some work that looked at various types of neutron stars that might be detectable.
Some recent work from Southampton follows up on that work by examining how the core of a neutron star can be deformed and create mountains on the stellar surface. This deformity then generates gravitational waves, which we can detect. The researchers focus on a particular brand of neutron star that is though to have a crystalline core made up of free quarks—quarks are the particles that make up protons and neutrons, which form the nucleus of atoms—surrounded by a liquid crust of neutrons. Calculations have shown that these crystals could be very rigid, meaning that the huge gravitational force that keeps a neutron star so compact may not be able to crush it into a perfectly symmetrical shape. The researchers performed some fairly simple calculations to show what the maximum ellipticity of such a star core could be. The two key parameters that they explore are the maximum strain that the crystalline core could withstand and the density at which such crystals form. These two parameters are not very well known, with the strain having an uncertainty that spans about an order of magnitude, while the values for the critical density cover another factor of two.
The results are quite promising. LIGO is already sensitive enough to detect neutron stars that are right at the extreme edge of deformation. The sensitivity of LIGO is going to increase with observation time so it should be able to detect the existence of really extreme stars. These stars would show that the transition density falls within our estimates but the maximum strain the core can withstand must be near its maximum possible value. In the near future LIGO is going to be upgraded and, upon completion, it will have an order of magnitude better sensitivity. This should allow the detection of these stars no matter what strain the core can withstand or at what density the core to crust transition takes place.
In the introduction, I made a fairly flippant remark about the how rampant speculation is some sort of weed. This isn't quite accurate; speculation like this is fine because it it postulates the existence of strange objects based on what we already know about physics. THis is unlike the speculation that is common within the crank community, where large amounts of hard won empirical evidence must be thrown away to accommodate a pet idea.
Physical Review Letters, 2007, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.231101


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It Takes a Village
IF YOU'RE in a French mood, a bit of Lyon can be found at SE Clinton Street and 21st Avenue, in a converted 1890 house recently relabeled St. Jack. For the full effect, stroll through the dining room in the morning light to the former bedroom that now serves as pâtisserie. Squint a little, and you're suddenly inside a Chaim Soutine painting: a wooden table, hands turning dough in a cloud of flour.
Steps beyond lies a cozy zinc counter where you can grab coffee and simply point to whatever begs from vintage cake plates beneath dramatic glass lids. Far from the cold industrial chic of many Portland bakeries, St. Jack offers something intimate and unexpected, from irresistible canelé cake towers of candied crust and springy, custardy centers to made-to-order madeleines—little models of perfection—served warm, teeny, and tender by the half-dozen. Everything's $2–4. It's like dim sum in a French roadhouse.
As darkness falls, St. Jack metamorphoses into a three-room riff on a bouchon, one of the jolly, cramped, offal-loving dens of informality that helped make Lyon, snuggled near the base of the Alps, the beating heart of French food culture. In the dining room, soft light settles over black chairs and Ikea countertops reborn as tables as the Amélie-cute pâtisserie gets dark and sexy with thick, dripping candles. Hearty meals parade out of the kitchen on jumbo white plates. You won't find regional legends like cocks' combs, calves' muzzle, or salade de groin d'ane (literally, "donkey snout" salad). But bubbled-over crocks of macaroni gratin pounded with bacon lardons and boisterous plates of blood sausage leave no doubt: Lyon is in the house, rich, rustic, and throwing jabs. At the bar—a cobalt-black force occupying a third of the dining room—young mix masters seem to mind-read your mood, swooping in at the right time with the right drink. In a city beset by modern "mixology" (a cocktail movement in love with weird, overly strong formulas that can taste like air freshener), St. Jack strolls its own way with lip-smacking balance and a food-friendly mind-set.
Were St. Jack actually in the Alps, it would be a common thing: a village spot serving three meals a day. But as Portland cooks up a homey French new wave, returning more to the bone than the brain, St. Jack is claiming its own turf: a neighborhood restaurant as local talent incubator, and the latest Portland restaurant project from ChefStable, the company quietly behind many recent hits in the food scene. Mastermind Kurt Huffman handpicks culinary dreamers and lets them do what they do best while he dogs the books and boring details that chefs notoriously mangle, splitting ownership and profits at varying percentages. So far, ChefStable's charm bracelet boasts Andy Ricker's Ping and Christopher Israel's Grüner. Huffman also has restaurants in the works with food-cart star Nong Poonsukwattana of Nong's Khao Man Gai and Italian food legend Cathy Whims of Nostrana.
St. Jack grew out of Huffman's decade in Lyon running the region's first microbrewery. But it's also a savvy next step in a talent-scouting program that reaches beyond the typical next-great-chef search to evaluating every employee, not just for their talent, but for their potential to someday make their own mark. Lyon food lover (and co-owner) Aaron Barnett divines pig parts at the stove. Blossoming 26-year-old Alissa Rozos, with whisking creds from New York's celebrated Daniel restaurant, makes the pâtisserie rise. Up-and-comer Kyle Webster rules the bar, impressively. And Trent Pierce, who made waves at the now-shuttered Fin (and is on deck with his own ChefStable project), just launched an all-day-Sunday brunch and raw seafood bar, Lyon style. Everyone is invested and ambitious, down to the barista-turned-waiter who can't wait to pull your after-dinner espresso.
Overall, the cooking displays the generosity and passion of the house, warm and heaping, with everything under $20. Roasted trout arrives, head and all, on a plate landscaped with rugged lentils. Barnett treats frog legs with respect, super-tender and brightened with tradition: parsley, lemon, and butter. Fried tripe is already the stuff of whispers. His strongest move is an elegant ragout of escargot and smoky sausage, almost black in its intensity, hiding beneath a beautiful, billowing dome of mahogany pastry that releases a giant burst of steam when prodded with a fork.
On some nights, Barnett's standards teeter. Bacon lardons smother a salade Lyonnaise. A hulking half-baked apple threatens a tarte tatin. And a golf ball of whipped pork fat—your liver hurts just looking at it—can't rescue underwhelming steak frites. These easily reworked dishes aside, St. Jack still needs some wow factor—a stronger voice, a better balance of rich flavor and quiet moments (Portlanders lacking iron stomachs of Lyon), and, most of all, a point of view.
The same can be said for the wine options. A journey to Lyon is not complete without good regional reds and drink-now beaujolais served in copious portions at a very good price. In the old country, a bouchon owner would visit old winemakers, carry off a few gallons, and fill some unlabeled bottles. St. Jack is trying admirably to translate the style, snooping out local wineries' bulk surplus, then repackaging it in glass pours and les pots lyonnais—three-quarter-sized bottles that go for $15–30, a good price for Oregon's notoriously expensive quaffs. But the plan offers more in infectious enthusiasm than insight and discovery. A Seven of Hearts 2009 pinot noir won't have you shouting "Bring on another pot!"
But like much at St. Jack, the wine program is a step in an interesting direction, with a sense of people onto something. That's why I'm already a St. Jack regular, clinking the terrific cocktails, nibbling on the Lyonaisse onion tarte crowned with a beautiful poached egg and the éclairs swollen with chilled cream. The incubator is humming. Ideas are growing. Patience will yield plenty of future rewards.


text:
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Pleasanton Towing Pros
A tow truck provider in Pleasanton, California
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Pleasanton Towing Pros
5243 Genovesio DrPleasanton California 94588United States
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Our Newest Profiles


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If you're befuddled by watches filled with gauges and covered with buttons, then Click Watches has a new design that caters to luddites like you. The Wall Switch is just one giant rocker button that toggles between the time and date when flicked. Easy peasy.
It also sports a very minimalist aesthetic since the Wall Switch has no obvious display. Instead, the numbers magically appear beneath its surface thanks to a set of bright red LEDs and a thin plastic facade they're visible through.
It's also got some lovely fade in/fade out animations when the display is activated, and will automatically shut off after a few moments to prolong battery life. Of course, that minimal functionality does make its $100 price tag a little tough to swallow, but at least you get your choice of four stylish colors with matching bands. [Watchismo via Dvice]


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Farm bill plan advancing, but its future unknown
REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- Top agriculture members of Congress can be ready with a backup farm bill quickly, but it is not clear if it ever will see the light of day.
REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- Top agriculture members of Congress can be ready with a backup farm bill quickly, but it is not clear if it ever will see the light of day.
U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat representing western Minnesota, is one of the four negotiating what could be a set of new federal farm policies, which he said could be honed within a week.
"All I can do is speculate on what's going on," he said Tuesday at Farmfest, an annual southwestern Minnesota gathering of all things agriculture.
The question about what will happen with the farm bill, to fund agriculture programs for five years, is unanswerable at this point because of a split among House Republicans.
"This is unchartered territory," U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, a southern Minnesota Democrat, told hundreds of farmers attending a Farmfest farm bill forum.
A variety of national and state farm bill experts said a group of far right-wing Republicans opposes the bill, which raises doubts about whether the Republican-controlled House can pass any compromise reached with the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Senators long ago easily passed their version of the farm bill. The House defeated one on its first try this year, then came back and passed one without the a section that funds food stamps and other such programs. The nutrition and farm bills were merged in the 1970s to obtain both urban and rural support for the two measures.
The House is to take up a food stamp bill when it returns from a five-week vacation in early September.
Peterson said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, promised him that he would appoint farm bill negotiators right after that vote, no matter how the vote comes out.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Hoeven, R-N.D., already have been appointed two of the Senate negotiators and Peterson, as the leading House ag Democrat, will be part of the House team.
In the meantime, Peterson, the House ag chairman and the two top ag senators have been talking about what could come out of negotiations.
"I know what the final bill is going to look like," Peterson told farmers Tuesday. "I can't tell you what it is going to be."
Later, however, he said it would be much like policies discussed last year, so few surprises would be likely.
But, Peterson added, more than any time during his time in the House he does not know what will happen, mainly because winning a House vote is uncertain.
"It is more likely that we have an extension (of current law) than we get this bill done..." said Peterson, the top-ranking House ag Democrat. "I hope I'm wrong, but we will see."
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., said an extension would be "a disaster." New laws, including provisions he wrote to help farmers' efforts to boost energy production, are needed, he said.
Peterson said he could accept a two-year extension, saying that no farm bill can pass next year since it is an election year.
President Roger Johnson of the National Farmers Union told the Farmfest crowd said "they have plenty of time" because "the drop dead date really is the first of the year."
Peterson quoted Boehner as saying: "We have to let this play out."
The biggest dispute in the farm-nutrition bill is how much to cut food stamps in the next 10 years. Senators voted to chop $4 billion, but House Republicans now want to cut 10 times that amount.
Because of the GOP food stamp stance, Peterson said, "I can almost guarantee you the majority of Republicans in the House will oppose" what comes out of negotiations.


text:
Showing Collections: 1 - 1 of 1
Mary Hale Woolsey papers
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: MSS 2294
Contains manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence (business and personal), scrapbooks, published and unpublished music, personal writings and literary works (poems, short stories, etc.) created and collected during Woolsey's career as a writer of adult and children's literature and as a composer of popular music.
Dates: 1910-1969
Found in: L. Tom Perry Special Collections


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Blind Item #2
This C list actor with almost A list name recognition from an acting family is probably the only guy in his conservative church who attends in full makeup.
This C list actor with almost A list name recognition from an acting family is probably the only guy in his conservative church who attends in full makeup.
Posted by ent lawyer at 9:30 AM
Labels: blind item
Alexis arquette
Or David arquette
A Baldwin
An Arquette
A Sheen
David A?
Steven Baldwin
lol@alexis arquette
love him
I'd like to vote for the Bible-thumping Baldwin, please - whichever one that is.
Alex Baldwin. Arquettes are jewish
I think Stephen is the church guy.
Wouldn't anyone notice that he's wearing makeup and maybe ask why? Seems odd.
It's a Baldwin but I'll throw in Scott Caan for funsies...an actor from an actor family who *gasp* wears makeup?!?! Whoda thunk?
OH, fun fact day! Remember how much crap everyone gave Alec Baldwin for saying he'd move to Canada if Bush was elected? It's a family trait!!
Stephen Baldwin threatened to move to Canada if Obama was elected.
Lol 7! But then they realized they'd be doing a public good, and everyone knows how the men of Baldwin feel about that...
His conservative church mustn't be that conservative to accept him
I bet family holidays with the Baldwins are a blast.
Kirk Cameron has a sister who is an actress, Candace Cameron Burr.
I like Angela's guess.
Me too@ sherry
Good call Angela
BAWHAHAHA I'd love to see Kirk Cameron in full on makeup
Does this mean he wears mascara and lipgloss?
Or just a full face of foundation?
The Arquettes aren't really anything. They have an odd religious background.
I love Angela's guess.
Marilyn Manson He's appeared in more movies than you would think - the first being David Lynch's Lost Highway (and lets not forget Party Monster).
Eh, no actors in Manson's family - never mind.
Also, Alexis Arquette is officially a she now, not a he.
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Japan clears discharge of some radioactive water into sea
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant began releasing thousands of tons of radioactive water into the sea Monday evening under an emergency measure approved by the government to make room in storage tanks for far more severely contaminated water.
About 10,000 tons of the water to be released was being taken from a communal storage facility near the No. 4 reactor. Another 1,500 tons was being released from near the No. 5 and 6 reactors — which have faced fewer problems than the other reactors. The amount of water being released is equivalent to the contents of more than four Olympic-size swimming pools.
The water being released has levels of radioactive iodine-131 at least 100 times the legal limit allowed for sea discharge, but the government approved the release to allow water with 100,000 times more radiation than water found in a normally functioning reactor to be removed from the basement of the turbine building at reactor No. 2 and stored elsewhere at the site.
Government officials said the release of the radioactive water into the sea would not pose a threat to humans. Health ministry official Taku Ohara said the ministry nevertheless was considering drawing up radioactivity food-safety standards for fish after high radiation levels were detected in a sand lance, a bottom-feeding fish, caught off the coast of Ibaraki prefecture.
Nuclear experts have assumed that radioactive iodine, which has a brief half-life, would become diluted in the ocean and decay too quickly to contaminate fish, but Monday's finding has raised doubts, said Ohara.
"We think the level found poses no immediate risk to people's health but the point is moot anyway because all sand lance caught in Ibaraki were disposed of," Ohara said. By comparison, the level of radioactive iodine in the fish was twice as high as the limit for vegetables. Currently there are no standards for radioactivity in meat, eggs, fish and grains.
After more than three weeks of cooling the disabled Fukushima reactors by spraying them with thousands of tons of water from fire trucks, concrete pumpers and helicopters, Tokyo Electric Power Co. faces a growing problem of what to do with the vast amounts of contaminated water.
Removing the water from turbine buildings and other structures is vital to allowing workers to restore cooling functions to the site. But with limited facilities for storing the water, the utility and the government are now considering options such as putting it into a "floating island" offshore. Also being discussed is the installation of an undersea barrier, usually used to contain oil spills, that might slow the radioactive water's move offshore.
Tepco reported no success Monday in its efforts to stop highly radioactive water from seeping into the ocean from a concrete pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility believed that the leak was coming from an 8-inch crack and attempted to seal it with polymer, sawdust and shredded newspaper. When that failed, the utility dumped some white bath salts into a pipe near the pit to attempt to trace the flow of the water, but the tracer had yet to show up in the sea.
The company now suspects the leak may be coming from a trench leading to the pit and on Tuesday plans to pour a chemical into the gravel surrounding the trench to try to solidify the area and stop seepage, NHK news reported.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano announced that the government would modify its protocol on restricting vegetable sales from prefectures where significant amounts of radiation have been detected. Instead of banning shipments from an entire prefecture, radiation levels will be monitored weekly at the level of municipalities, and if the detected levels fall below government limits for three consecutive weeks, then shipments will be allowed.
Farmers have been pressing the government to ease restrictions, but the new procedures raised questions about whether municipalities were capable of carrying out thorough checks. Some farmers complained that the weekly testing would not be frequent enough and said their produce was still likely to go to rot.
In Fukushima prefecture, officials announced plans for monitoring radiation levels at 1,400 schools starting Tuesday; a new academic year is to begin Wednesday and many parents are worried about their children being exposed to radiation.
Fukushima officials also have begun checking radiation levels of products manufactured within the prefecture. Many businesses are nervous that their goods might be rejected by buyers unless they are certified as being free of contamination.
In the town of Namie, which sits northwest of the Fukushima plant, just beyond the 18-mile perimeter within which authorities have urged people to evacuate or at least stay indoors, high levels of cumulative radiation were recorded over an 11-day period beginning March 23, the government announced.
The accumulated radiation was 10.3 millisieverts over 11 days, assuming that a person stayed outdoors 24 hours a day. With the government saying that it could easily take months to bring the Fukushima plant under control, the readings are raising fresh questions about the dangers of radiation over a longer period and whether the government's evacuation perimeter is wide enough. Exposure to 100 millisieverts is believed to raise one's risk of cancer by 0.5%.
Despite widespread concern about radiation from Fukushima, the public appears to be divided over whether the government should review its use of nuclear power. The results of a poll by the national Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper published Monday showed that nearly half the respondents favored maintaining the current number of nuclear power plants, while almost a third said they wanted the government to cut back.
The National Police Agency said the death toll in the massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami stood at 12,259 as of Monday evening, with more than 15,000 people still listed as missing.
National broadcaster NHK reported that a dog rescued Saturday by coast guard officers from the roof of a destroyed house floating more than a mile off the coast of northeastern Japan had been reunited with its owner.
The owner of the dog, a 2-year-old mutt named Ban, said she saw the news of the rescue on TV over the weekend and contacted authorities immediately.
Hall is a special correspondent.
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This article is tagged because it NEEDS REVIEW. You can help the Joomla! Documentation Wiki by contributing to it.
More pages that need help similar to this one are here. NOTE-If you feel the need is satistified, please remove this notice.
<form>). Forms created using JForm consist of form fields, implemented as JFormFields. There is a JFormField for each different field type you can find in a form, such as a text field type and a date field type. JForm supports a large selection of standard field types. For a full list, see Standard form field types.
Joomla 2.5 makes it possible to extend standard field types or define your own. For example, if your component manages phone book entries, you might want to define a form field type that outputs a select list of cities. There are several advantages to defining a custom form field type:
A form field type is defined in a class that must be a (not necessarily direct) subclass of JFormField. To work correctly, the class must define at least two methods:
public function getLabel()
getLabel() implementation, custom form field types usually do not define their own
getLabel(). If you leave it out, the inherited method of creating labels will be used. It is recommended to leave out the
getLabel() method for consistency and speed unless you actually want to modify the label's HTML.
public function getInput()
<select> with the cities inserted as
Inside your code, you will have to process the attributes set by the field's user in the XML form definition. Some of those attributes are accessible via protected member variables of JFormField. For example, the
name attribute is available in your code as
$this->name. Similarly,
multiple and
class are also available as properties of
$this. Other parameters you might have defined can be accessed through the
$this->element array: the attribute
size will be in
For a form field type to be usable in JForm, it needs do be a subclass of JFormField. However, it does not have to be a direct child of that class: you can also subclass an existing (standard or custom) form field type and thereby inherit useful code.
If your form field type is quite similar to an existing type, you should subclass that type. Especially if your form field type is a list, please subclass JFormFieldList. You only have to override
getOptions() method to return the options to be shown; the
getInput() method will convert those options to HTML.
To subclass an existing type, for example JFormFieldList, load it by adding the following to after
jimport('joomla.form.helper'); JFormHelper::loadFieldClass('list');
If your form field type is unlike any existing type, subclass JFormField directly.
joomla/libraries/joomla/form/fields/. You should not store custom fields there, nor should you have to use this path in your own code, but the standard types are usually good examples.
administrator/components/<name of your component>/models/fields. You can specify this or another path in your code:
JForm::addFieldPath(JPATH_COMPONENT . '/models/fields');
administrator/components/<name of your component>/models/forms. Use something like the following snippet to specify a path to your forms:
JForm::addFormPath(JPATH_COMPONENT . '/models/forms');
In this section, <ComponentName> represents the camel-cased name of your component and <TypeName> represents the camel-cased name of your form field type. The field's class should be placed in
administrator/components/<name of your component>/models/fields/<name of your field>.php, and look like this:
<?php // Check to ensure this file is included in Joomla! defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access'); jimport('joomla.form.formfield'); // The class name must always be the same as the filename (in camel case) class JFormField<FieldName> extends JFormField { //The field class must know its own type through the variable $type. protected $type = '<FieldName>'; public function getLabel() { // code that returns HTML that will be shown as the label } public function getInput() { // code that returns HTML that will be shown as the form field } }
Warning: this information is partially incorrect and needs to be improved.
Custom field types can be grouped by using an underscore in the field name. A field class with a name for example like "JFormFieldMy_randomField" must be stored in
administrator/components/<name of your component>/models/fields/my/randomField.php. We can prefix our form field names with some group name, then we put an underscore and then a name of a field.
Suppose you're working on your component named com_phonebook and you want to define a field that contains cities. Create the file
administrator/components/com_phonebook/models/fields/city.php and write something similar to the following:
<?php // Check to ensure this file is included in Joomla! defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access'); jimport('joomla.form.formfield'); class JFormFieldCity extends JFormField { protected $type = 'City'; // getLabel() left out public function getInput() { return '<select id="'.$this->id.'" name="'.$this->name.'">'. '<option value="1" >New York</option>'. '<option value="2" >Chicago</option>'. '<option value="3" >San Francisco</option>'. '</select>'; } }
To use the field type City, we need to update the XML file that contains the form fields. Open your XML file located in
administrator/components/com_phonebook/models/forms and add the field in the usual way:
<field name="title" type="City" label="JGLOBAL_TITLE" description="JFIELD_TITLE_DESC" required="true" />
The type name is cAsE-sEnSiTiVe.
In addition, you may need to add the field path to the parent <fieldset>:
<fieldset addfieldpath="/administrator/components/<component name>/models/fields">
E.g. when you need the field as a dropdown in a component as admin/site filter.
//Get custom field JFormHelper::addFieldPath(JPATH_COMPONENT . '/models/fields'); $cities = JFormHelper::loadFieldType('City', false); $cityOptions=$cities->getOptions(); // works only if you set your field getOptions on public!!
As mentioned in the section Form field type class requirements, custom form field types usually do not define their own
getLabel(). If you do want to create a custom label, you can still make use of the
getLabel() that every field type class inherits from JFormField, for example by defining it as follows:
public function getLabel() { return '' . parent::getLabel() . ''; }
This code will underline your form labels. (Please note that if your goal is to underline form labels, using CSS is the preferred way.)
If you want to do something completely different, you can of course also override it completely:
public function getLabel() { // Initialize variables. $label = ''; $replace = ''; // Get the label text from the XML element, defaulting to the element name. $text = $this->element['label'] ? (string) $this->element['label'] : (string) $this->element['name']; // Build the class for the label. $class = !empty($this->description) ? 'hasTip' : ''; $class = $this->required == true ? $class.' required' : $class; // Add replace checkbox $replace = '<input type="checkbox" name="update['.$this->name.']" value="1" />'; // Add the opening label tag and main attributes attributes. $label .= 'id.'-lbl" for="'.$this->id.'" class="'.$class.'"'; // If a description is specified, use it to build a tooltip. if (!empty($this->description)) { $label .= ' title="'.htmlspecialchars(trim(JText::_($text), ':').'::' . JText::_($this->description), ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8').'"'; } // Add the label text and closing tag. $label .= '>'.$replace.JText::_($text).''; return $label; }
This example will add a checkbox before the label.


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Back in my day things were different! If I wanted to play a video game I had to use one joystick to move and aim! In the snow! Come to think of it, it wasn't that bad at all. Acast010 thinks that this generation is a lot worse—not the games though. He says the gamers are the problem.
I am incredibly tired of this generation. And sadly, it's not this generations games...It's the gamers themselves. Every other post I see is someone bashing a game or genre of games; or stating how the industry has grown stale and we need a "crash" so that new and exciting games can come out.
Well I hate to break it to you, but do you remember last generation? The PS2/GCN Generation? (Don't even bring Dreamcast into this, because that console lasted a whole six months) How about every game was a platformer or RPG. Every damn game had either jumping or some androgenous boy/girl trying to save the world from another androgynous boy/girl.
We finally get a powerfull set of consoles (and to PC gamers, no one cares about your rig btw) that really push forward on gaming. We get amazing new IP's (Assasins Creed, Uncharted, Red Dead, LA Noire, Bioshock, Demons Souls, Mass Effect, Gears of War, this is all off the top of my head btw) We even get some of our old favorite games brought back with new life into the main stage (Fallout 3 for example).
Yet, all I ever hear is this "WAAA WAA SEQUELS EVERYWHERE!"
In the previous generation all people would ever scream for would be a sequel to their favorite games. Yet now we have them, and we bitch. I used to think it was the games; now im certain it's "gamers."
Bashing down scores on Metacritic because they dont like the changes. Starting inane and immature feuds between gaming franchises. Is this what we have become? A group of entitled little brats that scream for Duke Nukems release, but when we finally get our hands on it..."It's too vulgar," or "OMG TWO WEAPON LIMIT?!" Wait till Half-Life 2 Episode 3 comes out. You honestly feel Valve wont make some changes to the game's mechanics that were put into play 10 years ago?
What ever happened to just treating gaming as a fun hobby that we can all enjoy? I think I realized what the problem is and it's very simple. A lot of "gamers" treat this hobby as that small indie band you loved during college. The band gets popular and other people like it. People who have never even heard of the band or their EPs and Demos. Yet you hate those people, and you hate that band even more for being sellouts.
Lets go back to games being just that. Video Games. Where we can just enjoy them and have F-U-N. It doesn't have to be about being "pro" or the tournaments or how "Hardcore" someone is (how retarded is that statement? Being Hardcore about a game? Think about that for a second)
Yes DLC is getting out of control; yes some companies are doing the "right" thing and others arent. But gaming is a business, and a big one at that. It's going to keep chaning and evolving. Unfortunately, I don't see it as being that niche thing you and your 3 only friends used to do on friday nights. It's evolved. I think it's time we evolve with it.
About Speak Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have a forum on Kotaku called Speak Up. That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best Speak Up posts we can find and highlight it here.


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Winter Is Here: 'Game of Thrones' LEGOs Bring on the 'Song of Ice and Fire'
LEGO isn't in the habit of making sets based on extremely violent and highly sexualized HBO fantasy series, but thankfully, someone is out there filling that niche. Custom LEGO creation company Citizen Brick revealed their latest creation and it's a doozy: 13 minifigs based on characters from 'Game of Thrones.'
If you happen to fall into the middle of the venn diagram compiling LEGO fans and 'Game of Thrones' fans, start saving your pennies: this limited-time-only collection will set you back a steep $220 for the lot of them, or you can buy them in packages of three for $55 each. Yeah, that's a lot of money, but look at how cool and cute they are! Check out the adorable Jaime with his little cape! Applaud the choice of a goblet as Tyrion's accessory! Admire how plastic truly is the best way to capture Jon Snow's continuously blank expression! If you're a dork with tons of disposable income, this collection is a must buy.
As you can see, the set includes Khal Drogo, Daenerys Targaryen, Melisandre, King Joffrey, Tyrion Lannister, Varys, Jon Snow, Ygritte, a White Walker, Jaime Lannister, Arya Stark and Brienne of Tarth. If you order them all now, you'll get a 13th figure: Sir Typesalot, who looks suspiciously like 'A Song of Ice and Fire' creator George R.R. Martin.
Here's Citizen Brick's official description of the set:
Dragons! Knights! Totally inappropriate family relations! Join the adventure as these brave fighters cross swords with some of the most fearsome foes in the realm. Whether defending their kingdom or clamoring for the crown, these minifigs are ready for a battle royale to the death. Horde the complete series of stunning figs before every character you like is killed off. Your honor is at stake!
Citizen Brick is proud to unveil our most ambitions effort to date – The Dragon Sword Fighter Force! Four different sets of three minifigs packaged in full color blister cards. Every sets comes with crazy detailing: uniquely pad printed body parts, weapons, and custom cloth elements. Best of all, purchase all four sets at once and get a 13th bonus fig (while supplies last).
If you are already a LEGO collector and already have a fair share of medieval sets, you've got to get these. Nothing will spice up your castle building play time quite like morally dubious characters committing incest and cutting each other's heads off! Purchase these figures here.


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The key to the next generation of biofuels isn't growing in a field; it's mutating in a lab. By swapping natural genes in yeast and bacteria for synthetic ones, scientists have tricked the microbes into producing hydrocarbons--creating, in essence, billions of tiny refineries to turn simple sugars into environmentally friendly diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and biocrude.
"We've been making a lot of things using micro-organisms for a long time," says Jim McMillan, biorefining process R&D manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). "The real breakthrough here, I think, is recognizing that you can get these microbial factories to produce these very high-energy fuel molecules, like hydrocarbons."
Moonshine, penicillin, even certain cheeses all rely on millions of similar little helpers. But recent advances in genetics have allowed researchers to design genes on computers and splice them into a microbe's DNA, no longer simply refining the natural abilities of microorganisms, but creating in them new talents entirely.
More From Popular Mechanics
"Essentially, we take what would normally be converted into triethylglycerides--effectively, fats--and divert that off into these hydrocarbons that we care about," says Greg Pal, a senior director at LS9 in San Francisco, which hopes to bring bacterial diesel fuel to commercial scale by 2011.
Amidst increasing criticisms of ethanol's shortcomings--lower energy density, energy-intensive production and distillation, and the inability to transport the fuel within existing pipelines--a growing handful of companies are betting that the biofuels of the future will look almost identical to the petroleum-based fuels of the present.
"It's getting easier and easier, but it still takes a decent amount of effort to engineer a biological system into doing something that you want it to do," says Neil Renninger, co-founder of four-year-old Amyris Biotechnologies, a company that previously engineered microbes to churn out inexpensive antimalarial drugs. "So before going down the route of engineering a bug to make a biofuel, we wanted to make sure we were making the best biofuel possible."
Amyris first studied the highest performing compounds of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, then tinkered with the genetic structures of E. coli and yeast to produce bioequivalents, Renninger says, leveraging the same cutting-edge technology previously employed to produce pharmaceutical-quality medicines at commodity-level prices. The company recently announced a deal with the Brazilian sugar and ethanol manufacturer Crystalsev to launch a joint facility south of São Paulo, giving Amyris access to 2 million tons of sugar to feed its mutated strains of yeast. It projects commercial production of some 30 million gallons of diesel as early as 2010, with production of gasoline and jet fuel roughly one and two years behind, respectively.
LS9 plans to open a pilot facility this summer and a 50- to 100-million-gallon plant three years later, producing a drop-in replacement for diesel, as well as a biocrude to be processed in traditional refineries. Rogue scientist J. Craig Venter, who helped lead an international consortium of scientists to map the human genome, has announced plans to engineer bacteria able to create hydrocarbons not just from sugars, but from CO2 pulled straight from the atmosphere.
"If you look at where sugar cane is in Brazil, or at where biomass will be here in the near future, we're pretty confident that we can compete with oil around the $50-a-barrel range," Pal says. "The key driver of the cost really is the cost of raw materials."
For the moment, microbial hydrocarbons, like ethanol, rely on an inexpensive supply of simple sugars to convert into fuel. In the United States, that supply has traditionally come from the starches found in corn kernels, a feedstock with questionable environmental benefits and marginal economic ones. Until technologies exist to easily derive sugars from tough cellulosic material, such as corn's remaining stalks, leaves and cobs, companies like LS9 and Amyris are likely to feed their fuels with sugar cane--a relatively green source of easy-to-use sucrose, albeit one with limited domestic potential.
As the world continues to consume some 150 million gallons of oil every hour, any potentially game-changing solutions will need not only to work, but to work cheaply and at truly massive scales.
"We could be harvesting on a sustainable basis over a billion tons of dry biomass in the United States if we got serious about it, and that would get us somewhere close to 30 percent of our liquid transportation fuels," NREL's McMillan says. "So while sucrose is undoubtedly part of the solution, to really get that huge volume impact, you have to go to those cellulosic feedstocks."


text:
The spirit of this age – at least in the West – is post-modernity, which views reality as subjective and truth (if it even exists) as individual and relative.
It is not all bad, but neither is it Christ!
Steeped in a post-modern culture, Western Christians are increasingly re-defining Jesus through post-modern sensibilities that we've uncritically inherited from the world.
As a result, we focus on a personal, highly individualistic relationship with Him – which is often driven more by our own needs, our own hurts, and our own insecurities than by Jesus Himself.
And so the primary focus of our faith becomes "me and my relationship with Jesus" or "our own little clique's relationship with Jesus".
Existential Pietism
This belief that Jesus is all about subjective relationships is rooted in existentialism and pietism.
Like so many other "-isms", existentialism and pietism have taken different forms throughout church history, only to emerge and die and then re-emerge time and again – but always with the claim of being new and novel. But where existentialism retreats from anything that is not about a personal experience of Jesus, pietism says that a personal experience of Jesus is the answer to all that ails us, the church, and society.
There is seldom anything new under the sun – especially when it comes to fringe theologies – and the spiffy new post-modern garb of today's existentialism and pietism bears neat sounding designer labels like "Beyond Evangelical" (with more of an emphasis on the existentialism) and "Emergent" (which is heavier on the pietism).
Like most great errors in church history, existentialism and pietism are rooted in enough truth to be very alluring. But truth out of balance can be the most deceptive of all.
In fact, Jesus is both subjectively relational (i.e., as the Living Word, He relates to me, speaks to me, and dwells within me personally) and objectively propositional (i.e., He defines and proclaims absolute truth through His written word as Lord over all creation – independent of my sensitivities and opinions!).
The problem, however, is that post-modern Christians want the subjectively relational Jesus, but seem to discount – if not deny – the objectively propositional Jesus.
They do this by wanting to avoid the offense of propositional declarations, standards, doctrines and creeds (even though their own stance is driven by theology and creed, but just not a fully Biblical theology or creed!) – or by being critical of those who dare inject God's objective truths into the great debates of our age.
But like two sides of a coin, you can't authentically have one Jesus without knowing the other Jesus. And any attempt to promote one side of Jesus to the neglect of the other can't help but become gross error.
Which Jesus?
Christians steeped in post-modernity, whether under the banner of "Beyond Evangelical" or "Emergent" or whatever other "us" verses "them" label is in vogue today (but gone tomorrow), need to be asked: Are you of Christ, or of this age?
If you embrace a solely relational Jesus, and deny or discount that He also relates to us and to His creation propositionally through objective truth that applies to and defines all reality, then you are not of Christ as He has authentically revealed Himself to be.
You see, Jesus cares deeply about me, but He is more than about me. He created all and thus defines all. And through His Kingdom, He asserts His authority and Lordship over all aspects of that creation – which is more than just me!
The authentic Jesus relates to me personally and subjectively, but He bids me to become a disciple who submits to His objective Lordship so that I can advance His kingdom – not only relationally, but also propositionally. And I do so as I increasingly understand, affirm and apply His objective Lordship – borne of His redemptive life in me – to all spheres of life, culture and history.
See Part 2 of Beyond Evangelical?
~ Jim


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Arkansas Senate approves 12-week abortion ban
And, Senate voted 19-14 to override Gov. Beebe's veto of bill banning 20 week abortions
The Arkansas Senate has given final approval to a bill banning most abortions in the state 12 weeks into a pregnancy.
By a 26-8 vote Thursday, the Republican-led Senate approved the 12-week ban and sent it to Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe's desk. Beebe has called the proposal unconstitutional, but has not said whether he'll veto the measure.
The proposal originally would have prohibited abortions as early as 6 weeks into a pregnancy, but it was amended to change that timeline and to add more exemptions after facing objections in the House. Click here for more information on original bill.
The ban includes exemptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother and lethal fetal conditions. Doctors who violate the prohibition would have their licenses revoked by the state Medical Board.
See below for vote totals:
The Arkansas Senate voted 19-14 Thursday to override Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of a bill that will ban most abortions after 20 weeks. The bill, which has an emergency clause, takes effect immediately.
How members of the Senate voted:
Republicans (19): Bledsoe, Caldwell, Clark, Dismang, English, Hendren, Hester, Hickey, Holland, Hutchinson, Irvin, Key, King, Lamoureux, Sample, Sanders, Stubblefield, Williams, Woods
Democrats (14): Bookout, Burnett, Cheatham, Chesterfield, Elliott, Flowers, Ingram, Johnson, Lindsey, Maloch, Pierce, Teague, Thompson, Wyatt


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New Years Resolutions for 2010
Can you believe that it is 2010? We are already a decade into the 'new' millennium.
To mark this special year, which also happens to be divisible by 5 and you all know how much I love numbers, I have committed myself to 10 resolutions for this new year.
I actually had a grand plan of revealing each resolution on each new day of the first 10 days of the new year via Twitter. Unfortunately, this did not work out as planned. Nevertheless, this is the long awaited and eventual blog post to sum everything up. Without further ado, I present to you, my new years resolutions for 2010:


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(CNN) – Thousands of tea party activists gathered Wednesday outside the Capitol in loud protest of the Internal Revenue Service, seeking to keep the beleaguered agency's scandal afloat nearly six weeks after the news first broke.
A range of congressional representatives and popular conservative speakers took to the podium as they fired off zings and digs at the IRS and the Obama administration for close to four hours.
"Anybody want to fire some IRS agents? Why don't we start with the 16,000 IRS agents that are going to implement Obamacare?" Sen. Rand Paul charged at the beginning of his brief speech.
With the crowd straining their necks and smiling broadly as Paul took the stage, the Republican senator from Kentucky said he was "horrified that my government has gotten out of control."
IRS officials have repeatedly said that the scrutinizing of tea party groups was not done out of political bias.
But the activists gathered Wednesday were not so convinced.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, gained big applause when he declared that the IRS needs to be abolished. "And I've got a second idea: We need to take every one of those IRS agents and put them on our southern border," he said, drawing laughs.
"Now that's mostly a joke," he continued. "But I got to admit that if you were coming over illegally and you crossed the river and saw an army of IRS agents, you'd turn around and go home."
Conservative personality Glenn Beck unleashed a stream of fiery rhetoric. At one point he used a harsh anecdote about how slave owners learned to maintain control over their captives by watching circus masters chain and abuse elephants.
"Frederick Douglass was lucky enough to grow up in a house where he was taught to read, and to write, and to think. He knew that God did not make men to be masters over other men," he said.
"It is time that Americans remind themselves of this truth again, and rise up against the intimidation before the handful of peanuts from our new political circus masters are considered kindness, instead of the symbol of evil cruelty which they are," he added.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, chairwoman of the House tea party caucus, stated it's been 100 years since the beginning of the U.S. tax code. Firing up the crowd, she asked, "Don't you think that a century of oppression is enough?"
The four-term congresswoman, who's not seeking re-election next year, described herself as an "insurgent" as she talked about her former job at the IRS as a tax lawyer.
"I believe if you understand the enemy from the inside out, that's the best way to defeat them!"
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, came up with his own definition of the IRS.
"Somebody asked me recently, 'well what's the IRS mean?' I said, 'It's Really Sickening. That's what it means to me. It's Really Sickening'."
While organizers were promoting the rally as the tea party movement's biggest event since 2010, the turnout was smaller than expected. Many blamed the smaller audience on the fact it was happening midweek on a Wednesday.
"The tea party never went away," said Bob Mason, one of the attendees. "We just paid more attention at home."
Mason was dressed in colonial garb with a bright blue jacket and matching tri-corner hat. Most attendees though opted for the traditional yellow "Don't tread on me" t-shirt.
- CNN's Eric Marrapodi and Erin McPike contributed to this report.
I'd love to know how many of these "protesters" are being paid by either government welfare or the Koch brothers.
Why do they always mark their signs by marring Obama's teeth? Teeth envy?
The Real Tom Paine –
You might me a liberal/communist if your all inclusive argument is telling someone they're a racist.
California, a little FYI: I've never used that argument, but if you want me to, I will. I don't want you to feel neglected or ignored.
Dominican mama 4 Obama
Jeff Brown in Jersey
Why aren't these people working?
Because they are from Red states and thus on welfare, food stamps, medicare, and accepting hand-outs from their new benefactors (besides the government that is) the Koch brothers. That's why they can be bused into DC in the middle of the work week to protest against their sole source of income: the government and the soshualist programs that keep them glued to their mailbox every first of the month.
BAM! You're on a roll ... !
It was a Conservative Republican supervisor in the IRS Cincinnati office that was responsible for the
program which started under the Bush Administration and was further confused by the Citizens
United Supreme Court decision. The GOP are screaming scandal and this (Republican) supervisor says in his sworn
testimony that the White House had nothing to do with the program. But you have to admire the GOP, they
never let FACTS interfere with the LIES they tell on President Obama.
FIring IRS agents would please the GOP almost as much as a tax cut for the wealthy. After all it is the wealthy that are
most frequently audited because "that is where the money is" and more than a few of the wealthy are like Mitt Romney and hide their money offshore. The USA is an great place to earn a fortune but ask the rich to pay taxes. Oh No not a penny.


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The main aim of any business is to deliver customer value. In today's world, the customer is the king and the main reason for the survival of any business. How then, can an organization ensure that the customer gets what he wants? The answer—through effective marketing. Marketing has several advantages. Not only does it help promote sales for the business but it also helps build a loyal customer base, leads to increased support from stakeholders and helps keep ahead of the competition.
Organizations invest heavily in marketing and there is always a demand for qualified marketing professionals.
We at KnowledgeHut recognize this and hence bring you a course that will help you prepare for the prestigious Foundation Certificate in Marketing, offered by The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). This course will help you chart out a successful marketing career by arming you with skills necessary to perform well in a support-level marketing role.
With its in-depth courseware, our practical, scenario based workshops will give you an insightful look at the world of marketing and help you pass the certification with flying colors. Join today and unleash your potential!
There are no prerequisites for appearing for the exam but if English is not your first language, you would be required to provide an IELTS Academic Module with an overall score of 6.5 (each component pass being at 6.0 or above) or the Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English at grade B or above, achieved in the past 2 years. Other alternative qualifications may also be considered.
Participants will gain the certification on successfully clearing two mandatory modules: Marketing Principles and Customer communications.
For more information visit: https://www.cim.co.uk/qualifications/foundation-certificate-in-professional-marketing/
Each of the modules can be taken as a stand-alone to gain a module award.
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There are no prerequisites to apply for this course. But if English is not your first language then CIM demands that you provide an IELTS Academic Module with an overall score of 6.5 (each component pass being at 6.0 or above) or the Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English at grade B or above, achieved in the past 2 years. Other alternative qualifications may also be considered.
This course is ideal for candidates who wish to start out on a career in marketing or marketing professionals who want to further their career by revisiting concepts.
The exam is conducted in the form of two modules, both of which need to be passed to gain the credential. One is based on Marketing principles, which is a 90 minute exam, comprised of 50 multiple-choice questions. The second module is Customer Communications, which is assignment based and split into three tasks.
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Any registration cancelled within 48 hours of the initial registration will be refunded in FULL (please note that all cancellations will incur a 5% deduction in the refunded amount due to transactional costs applicable while refunding). Refunds will be processed within 30 days of receipt of written request for refund. Kindly go through our Refund Policy for more details: https://www.knowledgehut.com/refund-policy
Please send in an email to firstname.lastname@example.com, and we will answer any queries you may have!


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capuchin kăp´yo͞ochĭn [key], name for New World monkeys of the genus Cebus, widely distributed in tropical forests of Central and South America. Medium-sized monkeys, they have a body length of 14 to 24 in. (36–61 cm), with a tail up to 20 in. (50 cm) long, and weigh 2 to 4 lb (0.9–1.8 kg). The coat is black or brown, with lighter markings on the chest in some species. The flattened face is naked and pink. Members of some species have manes resembling the cowls of capuchin monks. The tail is partially prehensile, that is, it can be used for grasping but not with the dexterity displayed by most New World monkeys. It is usually carried with the end curled in a spiral, hence the alternate name, ringtail monkey. Capuchins travel in groups through the trees, making loud sounds, and rarely descend to the ground. They feed on leaves, fruit, insects, small animals, and bird eggs. They are easily trained and are well known from circuses and as the classic organ-grinder's monkey. In the wild they use simple tools, such as rocks, for such tasks as cracking the hard shells of fruits. They are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Primates, family Cebidae.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Vertebrate Zoology


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NEW YORK (AP) – Benchmark U.S. crude gave up some early gains Monday on a surprise expansion of German exports and signs of increased oil consumption in China to finish lower. Concerns about the so-called fiscal cliff in the U.S. continued to dog traders and investors.
The German government said exports from Europe's biggest economy rose slightly in October after losing ground the month before. They were 10.6 percent higher than October a year ago.
In China, the world's second-largest economy after the U.S., crude imports last month were the highest in half a year. And for the first time, more than 10 million barrels per day were refined, noted Tradition Energy's Addison Armstrong. The oil data was released a day after another set of figures showed that China's industrial production and retail sales exceeded expectations in November.
Meanwhile President Barack Obama was in Detroit looking for more public support to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, a day after he and House Speaker John Boehner met for the first time to talk about ways to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to start in the new year.
Benchmark crude fell 37 cents to finish at $85.56 in New York. Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, rose 31 cents to end at $107.33 on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
Pump prices fell over the weekend and are now averaging $3.34 a gallon, 6 cents above a year ago. The national average is down more than 10 cents from a month ago.
Other futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange:
• Heating oil fell 1.91 cents to finish at $2.90 a gallon.
• Natural gas fell 9.1 cents to end at $3.46 per 1,000 cubic feet.
• Wholesale gasoline was unchanged at $2.60 a gallon.l


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Did you hear an internet group in Michigan has raised over $63,000 dollars to put a statue of Robocop in downtown Detroit?
No, I'm not kidding.
It's completely true, and a fantastic idea. If not familiar with the Robocop legend, allow me to so inform: Robocop is a cyborg police officer who not only was a one man wrecking crew in stopping crime all over Old Detroit, but he was a robot who so touchingly, was able to retain some of his humanity, his affectionate feelings for his wife and son while he pulled guns of varying sizes and blasted his way through Dick Jones of the evil Omni Consumer Products Company (OCP) and all his henchmen, especially that entertaining, but utter rat bastard Clarence Boddicker, ("guns, guns, guns…") who was responsible for killing Officer Murphy in the first place, before Murphy got all wired up and transformed into Robocop.
So yeah, Robocop saved a city, he saved men, women and children and taught us all a lesson about the evils of corporate privatization, so of course he needs a statue in Mayor Bing's new plans to revitalize Detroit. To not so do would be a crime against justice and humanity.
Yet Mayor Bing will not commit.
Nope, but I bet you can guess what guy will get a statue in Detroit, hands down…guaranteed.
Yeah, the guy responsible for putting out the Dearborn Independent newspaper, the guy whose anti-Semitic, collected writings in that newspaper were put together in a book called "The International Jew," the guy Adolf Hitler mentioned in Mein Kampf and considered an inspiration, who Heinrich Himmler referred to as "one of our most valuable, important and witty fighters."
Henry Ford.
Oh sure, he'll get a statue.
Henry Ford, the same man who in 1938 received the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest award Nazi Germany could give to a foreigner.
Henry Ford, the man whose writings, whose book "The International Jew," was said by convicted Hitler Youth leader, Balder von Schirach who deported 65,000 jews to concentration camps in Poland, to be the "decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades…I read it and became anti-Semitic. The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy."
Yeah, Ford'll get a statue…but not Robocop.
Giving Robocop a statue would be absolutely ridiculous, a farce, silly and an insult…but an insult to who?
The American Nazi Party? Aryan Nations, Idaho and Montana?
I don't get it, but with this in mind, the New Orleans Saints will welcome the Detroit Lions into the Superdome.
The Lions, without their master of personal restraint, Ndamukong Suh, will try and fail to win this game and the Saints will quickly send this team, representative of a town with such misplaced priorities, secret history and a really poor choice in statues back to their fabled Old Detroit, and back to cohabitation with the most evil team in hockey, the Red Wings…
Who dat sey dey gonna beat dem Saints?
Not Henry Ford, not Ndamukong Suh, not the Lions…and certainly not a city who so casually dismisses the greatness that is Robocop in favor of a Nazi sympathizer…
No way.
Enjoy the game! Go Saints!
Have a nice day.


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Roots is an indoor jungle of unique and rare house plants located in San Francisco's Mission District
Regular price
Also known as Dracaena trifasciata 'Bantel's Sensation'
Light: Bright, indirect light is ideal for snake plants, but they can tolerate low light conditions very well. Very dark spaces and full sun for extended periods of time (more than 2-3 hours) should be avoided.
Water: Let soil completely dry between waterings. Allowing the roots to remain wet for long periods of time will lead to root rot.
Family: Asparagaceae
Natural Habitat: tropical western Africa


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Review of The Dark Judges: The Fall of Deadworld, Book 1
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The Orville Is Everything I Love About Star Trek
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