text:
Many dealerships claim they provide a great car-shopping experience, but we guarantee one at Brown's Car Stores. If you want to know what separates Brown's from the rest of the DC-Metro area, it starts with the people. Our staff -- many of whom have been with Brown's for decades -- allows you to enjoy your experience because we emphasize helping people buy a car rather than selling them on one.
In addition to top-notch customer service, our Buy Happy philosophy includes a long list of guarantees after you leave our facility in your dream car. Find out more about what your Buy Happy experience at Brown's entails!
- Our "Buy Happy" Philosophy
- A straightforward, below-market sale price from the start.
- Pre-owned vehicles available below Kelley Blue Book prices.
- Price Match Guarantee: We shop our competitors so that we can offer you the best possible price.
- Brown's 3-Day Used Vehicle Exchange Policy: If you a buy a pre-owned vehicle from our dealership and you aren't satisfied with your purchase, you can bring it back within three days of delivery for an exchange.
- 3-Month/3,000-Mile Powertrain Warranty on every Brown's certified used vehicle.
- Free CARFAX report with every vehicle we sell.
- We'll buy your car even if you don't buy from us.
- 5,000 new and used vehicles for 15 top brands.
- 26 convenient locations throughout Virginia and Maryland.
- FREE annual Virginia State Safety Inspection.
- Factory-trained, ASE- and I-CAR-certified technicians, who participate in ongoing auto body repair training programs.
- FREE multi-point inspection every time you stop in for service.
- FREE written auto body repair estimate.
- Available towing services and car rental arrangements.
- A written lifetime warranty for your auto body and paint repair work for as long as you own the vehicle.
Service and Collision Center Guarantees


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The first time I met Mary Stewart Adams, we were weeding a carrot bed. Dirt lined the creases of her fingers. Her eyes never left a neat row of intricate greens, pulling and tending with equal care. But even then, when Adams could not have been more connected to the Earth, her head was firmly planted in the clouds. She spoke of the moon, stars, constellations, comets, planets. She explained the necessity for darkness, the importance of seeing and soaking in celestial stories.
"Someday, we'll have a protected place for night sky viewing," she said, wiping a streak of soil from her cheek. "We need to reconnect with the stars. I want to help make this happen, not just as a hobby. I'm working toward making it my career."
I remember it clearly because while she spoke, I kept picturing her as an untethered helium balloon, floating on the wind.
A decade has passed since we first worked alongside each other at a small farm in Petoskey. Now, we're sitting in a downtown Harbor Springs coffee shop, talking about how she turned her dreams into reality, as the director of Emmet County's International Dark Sky Park.
"Most people just politely nodded," Adams says with a laugh, remembering when the park was only a glimmer. "I was raising four kids, trying to make it all work. I know it sounds out there, but I've known all along what I was supposed to do with my life.
"Plus," she smiles, "I'm stubborn, educated, and ambitious. I had a single-mindedness about what I was doing, and never stopped believing everyone would eventually get on board. I mean, who doesn't love the stars?"
Her success could be a result of her unwavering conviction. It might be proof a person can manifest their own destiny. Or perhaps, Adams tapped into a deep truth within all of us, a desire to be connected to something as mysterious and ancient as the heavens. No matter how it happened, one thing is clear: Adams put Emmet County on the map as one of the best places for stargazing on the planet.
"I planted star seeds everywhere," she says, lifting a hand up and sprinkling imaginary dust across the table. "I kept thinking, If enough people hear me speak, I'll be able to make this happen. Eventually, these ideas began to sprout into realities."
In 2009, Adams—who by then had established herself as an expert in star lore—joined forces with a handful of other folks concerned about light pollution in the night sky. Eventually, she went to the Emmet County Board of Commissioners with a bold plan: to formally designate the Headlands, a 600-acre county-owned parcel on the shore of Lake Michigan near Mackinaw City, as an International Dark Sky Park.
By 2011, the Headlands was awarded a "high silver tier" designation by the International Dark Sky Association, becoming one of only 10 designated dark sky parks in the world. This was an enormous commitment on the part of Emmet County, reflecting an intensive application process to meet and exceed guidelines for lighting ordinances, community outreach, and more, all geared toward preservation of a pristine nighttime environment.
"It's a quality-of-life issue, to be able to have access to a truly dark sky. There are anywhere between 7,000 and 10,000 objects to see at night with the naked eye. That's what we wanted most, to provide a place where people know they can come and gaze up and be connected."
Establishing a protected nocturnal habitat was only the beginning for Adams. She says ever since age 18, when she found astrological studies as a way to make sense of the rhythms in her own life, she's felt called to learn and teach the cultural connections between Earth, sky and people.
"Ancient cultures have a wisdom we don't have anymore, a story about the unfolding human biography, a story of place. Part of my dream has always been to have a spot to story-tell about the stars," she says, pulling a pile of well-worn, dustjacket-less books from her bag.
Science has evolved the way we view the night sky, Adams adds, noting technology makes it possible to see some 9 million objects in the sky. It's a far cry from what was visible during the time mythology ruled discussions about what went on in the heavens.
"It's a huge leap, and for the most part, scientists, not poets or artists, are now our storytellers. I think it's part of my job to speak on behalf of 'once upon a time.' "
To keep from being written off as too out there, or just plain weird, Adams has strived to ground her world of star stories with credibility. She's won awards like Environmentalist of the Year from the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, has been invited to speak at international conferences, and is a hit with state-level tourism experts. She also received a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council, with support from the Emmet County Board of Commissioners, to help build a one-mile paved Dark Sky Discovery Trail at the Headlands.
The Discovery Trail isn't about the hard science of planetary study. Instead, it's a collection of cultural docents, indigenous artwork, and regional photography, all geared toward interpreting humanity's relationship to what exists above this world.
"Astronomy is the mythology of our time. We need to safeguard the human imagination, to recognize the importance of having a space to just dream and get scared and lost, and then, find our way," Adams says, opening one of the books she's stacked beside her. It's been read so many times, the spine slides loose from its pages.
"Fairy tales," Adams says, her voice taking on the cadence of lake water lapping against shoreline, "are not just make believe. There is a wisdom in true fairy tales, a morality. There's a reason Einstein said, 'If you want your children to be smart, read them fairy tales.' New ideas come from them, but they also carry a prophetic quality. We can get really technical about the night sky, but much of what we do at the Headlands isn't geared toward scientific questions. We identify constellations, not just to connect the dots of stars in the sky, but to tell their tales. Stars were the first storytellers."
The 2013 Headlands Dark Sky programs are rich with celestial happenings and tales to go with them. From the story of the "grand sextile" (a rare configuration involving seven planets), to the astronomy of the Great Lakes, to learning about how indigenous cultures practiced naming full moons each month, every monthly program is geared toward contextualizing naked-eye viewing, although binoculars and telescopes are welcome.
It's worth the trip to the northern Emmet County park just to hear Adams tell a story—sometimes wearing a cloak, and always in the rhythmic tone of a true tale-spinner. Listening to Adams is like being transported to a different space and time, or at the very least, like floating away for a short while.
"It's important to be mindful, to remember we are still connected to this place even as we explore the stars," Adams says of one purpose behind her storytelling rituals. "There is a rich history in Northern Michigan, and we become part of that story when we open up to natural wisdom and rhythms of the sky, while keeping ourselves firmly planted in the here and now."
Coming back to the present moment is a cinch at the Headlands, a vast natural playground with easy access to dark sky viewing areas. While events are extremely popular, a nighttime visit to the Headlands can happen whenever—the park is open 24 hours a day, every day, at no charge—and it boasts 4.5 miles of year-round trails, plus a self-guided cell phone tour detailing points of interest.
Most of all, however, it offers a chance to fully witness what happens after the sun slips into Lake Michigan. Sitting on the beach at the Headlands, there's no need to speak stories out loud. The old-growth forest becomes a watchful shadow in the background. Stones, smooth from eons of waves, grow warm when palmed. A watery horizon creates a second sky.
"We are made of star stuff," Adams says of what makes having a dark sky park so important. "When we started talking about this, when we let stars take center stage, the community showed up. The people in this incredibly special place in Northern Michigan, they get it. We all understand how restorative it is to be on the beach, and sit on the ground, and wait for the stars. You know they are there long before you can see them. All of a sudden, they appear, like magic. To touch that moment, it's a sacred experience, and we can access it every single day."

subset: commoncrawl


text: International Journal on Bioinformatics & Biosciences (IJBB) http://airccse.org/journal/IJBB/ijbb.html Scope & Topics Bioinformatics is the application of information science and technology to the field of biology to increase the understanding of all biological process. The aim of this journal is to publish all the latest and outstanding research articles in all areas of bioinformatics and Biometrics. Researchers and scientists from the fields of biology, computer science, mathematics, statistics, and physics are invited to share their developments and new techniques in the fields of Biometrics and Bioinformatics. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following: Biomedical modeling and computer simulation Bioinformatics databases Bio-grid Biomedical image processing (segmentation, registration, fusion) Bio-ontology and data mining Parallel algorithms for biological analysis Parallel architectures for biological applications Phylogeny reconstruction algorithms Protein structure prediction Sequence assembly Sequence search and alignment Signaling and computation biomedical data engineering Simulated annealing Statistical analysis Stochastic grammars Support vector machines System biology DNA assembly, clustering, and mapping Telemedicine Computational genomics, Intelligence, proteomics, structural biology E-health Genetic algorithms Hidden Markov models Fuzzy logic Molecular evolution and phylogeny Molecular modeling and simulation Molecular sequence analysis High performance computing Neural networks Machine learning Data visualization Paper Submission ================= Authors are invited to submit papers for this journal through E-mail : email@example.com (or) email@example.com. Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication while being evaluated for this Journal. Important Dates =========== Submission deadline : 15 October, 2011 Acceptance notification : 25 October, 2011 Final manuscript due : 31 October, 2011 Publication date : determined by the Editor-in-Chief For other details please visit http://airccse.org/journal/IJBB/ijbb.html


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The adult film industry will survive and thrive if it can evolve its X-rated content onto wearable devices such as Google Glass, as well as mobile phones and tablets, and if it can meet global demand for more ways to view pornography privately, digital media experts said Friday in Hollywood. That was one of the messages those who produce, direct, perform and promote porn took away during the final day of the XBIZ 360 conference at the W Hollywood Hotel. The event focused on the work behind the scenes of the adult film industry. Many owners of production companies from the San Fernando Valley – sometimes nicknamed Porn Valley – said they appreciated the opportunity to talk about the business with those from Canada, Europe and Australia. And many agreed that the conference was a reflection of how the adult film industry has evolved into a corporate culture. The days of gonzo porn and shooting inside moving vans have given way to digital media, legal practices and even promoting feminism. 'What I like about this conference is the ability to meet people you normally wouldn't meet,' said Miles Long, a director and cinematographer who was on a panel to discuss if the industry should embrace 4K HD, which has four times as many pixels as standard high definition. 'It was great to have an intellectual conversation about this,' he said. 'I like this more than the tradition-style conventions.' One of the best attended discussions of the day was a demonstration of how adult films could be viewed as well as produced with Google Glass, a tiny optical display on a headset worn like glasses.
, which bills itself as the world's first and largest adult app store, created a promotional short that can be seen on
. It features porn superstar James Deen showing how Google Glass can be used to shoot porn from a performer's point of view. Mikandi developed an app exclusively for Google Glass, but there are still legal obstacles to the technology, including Google's policy against content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts or sexually explicit material viewed on its optical display. In addition, the quality of the film and battery life remain challenging for filmmakers considering it. But all those issues didn't trouble producer Brick Yates, a San Diego-based adult film producer who wore a beta version of Google Glass at the conference. He said he believes Google Glass or a version of it, will evolve with consumer demand. 'As far as technology goes, that's where the porn industry goes because everyone knows the porn industry were the pioneers,' Yates said. But some are skeptical.
found that of those who responded to an online poll over a two-month period, 44 percent believe the 4K Ultra HD format won't have an impact on the industry. Another 39 percent said it was too early to tell. In another poll about Google Glass, 51 percent said they thought it was too early to tell if the optical head gear would have an impact, while 35 percent said it was just hype. The conference was held just as the adult film industry is facing a critical challenge to its continued existence in Los Angeles because of Measure B, a law passed in late 2012 that requires performers to wear condoms while shooting certain sex scenes. The law was passed in Los Angeles County over the objections of the adult film industry, which has argued its own testing standards for sexually transmitted diseases works better. While a lawsuit against Measure B is pending, production companies have hesitated to shoot films in Los Angeles County. FilmLA, the nonprofit that processes permits for motion picture, television and commercial production across Los Angeles, reported Friday that adult film companies obtained 39 permits in 2013 compared with about 500 in years before. A decision on Measure B by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals could be heard as early as March.


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A 64-year-old man walked into a southeastern Michigan police station today and opened fire, precipitating a shootout that ended with him dead and a police officer wounded, police said.
The man, who was not immediately identified, entered the building that houses the Southfield Police Department around 2:20 p.m. with a handgun and pointed it at an officer sitting behind bullet-proof glass, said police spokesman Lt. Nick Loussia.
Refusing requests to put down the gun, the man started firing at the desk officer, according to Loussia. The first officer to respond - a sergeant in his 50s who has been with the Southfield force for more than 25 years - was shot in the shoulder, said Loussia.
That officer and others returned fire, hitting the shooter. Both wounded men were treated at the scene and moved to a nearby hospital, the police spokesman said.
The 64-year-old later died from his injuries at the hospital. Loussia said authorities do not know why the man opened fire at the police station.
The wounded officer, meanwhile, is in stable condition. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the officer and his family," Loussia said.
A similar incident less than two years ago about 15 miles to the southeast, in Detroit, prompted police in Southfield to take additional security precautions, according to Loussia. In that case, a 38-year-old man accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl wounded four officers when he opened fire in a Detroit police station, before he himself was shot dead.
In addition to protective glass around the desk area, only the lobby of the police station in Southfield - a city of about 72,000 people - is open to public, said Loussia.
Sounds like suicide by cop. How tragic.
I'm sure the police know why this guy came in to the station with a gun.
We'll never know now.
They made sure of that.
Poor old guy must have been at his wits end. I'm glad the cop didn't die. I wonder if he had been brutalized by the police in the past. Most of the people I have met in my life that hate cops have at some point been physically hurt by them. I wish the police would be less about hurting and more about helping.
"Poor old guy"?? Excuse me? He's a year younger than I am, and I don't consider myself old. Good grief.
I agree with the "poor" part, he clearly had some problems, but he wasn't "old". Unless you're thirteen yourself.
terry sorry to tell you but your old
Sad he had to endanger the lives of others to kill himself, I hope the police officers recover and it's a good thing he won't be hurting anyone else.
I have known so many bad cops in my life. Most of them where I live are just criminals with a badge. Can't say how these cops are, but I would guess there are a few bad apples. We will never know if he had a bone to pick with one of them or not, since the cops have a way of looking out for themselves.
What kind of police station is it that a guy can walk in with his gun?
Most police stations are open to the public. That's why the guy at the front desk has bulletproof glass.
One less black Obama Democrat on welfare in Detroit.
Other news outlets have now identified the man who was shot in the Southfield police station on Veteran's Day. He was a troubled military veteran with no criminal record who had been battling throat cancer for a number of years. Harold Joseph Collins did not respond when the officer asked if he could help him, because he was unable to speak. This has got to be one of the saddest cases of suicide by cop I have ever heard of happening. The guy even fired an empty chamber in his weapon first.
My sympathy goes out to this troubled soul, & his family. Plus the police officers with their families. This is a tragedy for everyone involved. May they all find help, & peace.
I'm sorry but ANYONE who opens fire on an innocent person else deserves no pity. I don't care what disease he'd been battling.
(I do believe that assisted suicide should be allowed. People should have the right to die with dignity.)
Wanna write about politics? Then go to theopinionist dot ORG and let us know what your writing is made of!
You may make some money from it!
It wasn't too long ago, I recall someone on here wrote that nobody would shoot a gun in a police station b/c everyone is armed...
Police are a little different than armed citizens. As a general rule, they are expected to defuse a situation without drawing their weapons. They were trying to talk this guy down.
Also, bulletproof glass works both ways. The shooter likely saw any officers moving into position to get a shot on him.
tired of living, scared of dying
Yes, it does appear to be SBC. Or he was mentally imbalanced. Could be that he was diagnosed with a fatal disease and decided his best option was to end it by firing at a room full of cops. The problem with SBC is that you are deeply impacting another person's life - the cops who killed him, no matter how jusified their actions, still have to live with the reality that they took a human life.
Ala Ak-BANG! One more wannabe terrorist down for the count.
PURE Michigan !!


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Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Posted by Piaw Na at 12:42 PM 0 comments
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I'm a husband, father, author, cyclist, sailor, travel addict, and Silicon Valley software engineer. I've written 4 books and actively review books on this blog. Comments on this blog are aggressively moderated against link-spam and rude or meaningless comments.


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In both iOS 4 and iOS 5, Apple gave the Mail app major overhauls. Even in iOS 6, Mail gained some significant new features. This time around, in iOS 7's version of Mail, the biggest changes are to the look-and-feel, thanks to the systemwide makeover iOS 7 has received. But if you look closely, you'll find a number of nice improvements behind the face-lift.
Marquee mailboxes
In iOS 6, you could rearrange the Inboxes section at the top of the main Mailboxes screen, choosing whatever order you preferred for VIP, Flagged, and the individual account inboxes.
iOS 7 goes a big step beyond that by letting you customize the special views that appear here. Tap Edit when viewing the Mailboxes screen, and not only can you rearrange your current mailboxes, you can hide ones you don't use, and you can add a number of new special views. Tap each item to enable or disable it, and drag the horizontal-lines icon on the right to rearrange the order of items.
Yes, VIP haters, this means you can finally disable the VIP view. But even more useful are the various special views you can enable here: Unread (all unread messages), To or CC (messages specifically addressed to you), Attachments (messages with attachments), All Drafts (all draft messages across all your accounts), All Sent (the same for sent messages), and All Trash (the same for deleted messages). With the obvious exceptions of All Drafts, All Sent, and All Trash, these views include only messages contained in your various inboxes.
In addition, you can further customize the Mailboxes view by adding frequently accessed folders. While in Edit mode, tap Add Mailbox to select any mailbox visible on your device. Mailboxes you add here appear right on the main Mailboxes screen for quick access—no more having to dig deep into (and out of) your account hierarchies to access your favorite folders.
Unfortunately, despite the addition of these "smart" mailboxes, iOS still doesn't support OS X's Smart Mailboxes feature.
Search everywhere
iOS 6 enhanced Mail search by letting you search the body of messages. But you couldn't search all your email from within Mail—only messages in the current mailbox. (The workaround was to use a Spotlight search from the Home screen.) In iOS 7, if you scroll up to the Search field at the top of any message list and perform an email search, the default is to search all your mailboxes: inboxes, filed mail, sent mail, trash—everything. (If you look carefully, you see a tiny bit of text on each message that tells you where it was found; if you open a message from the search results, you'll see—just below the date received—the account and the mailbox in which it was found.)
What if you want to limit your search to just the current mailbox? At the top of the search results list, you'll see tabs for All Mailboxes and Current Mailbox. Tap the latter to limit the search.
Even better, in our testing, Mail's search is significantly faster in iOS 7, so even though it's combing through many more messages, it's just as fast as before—and oftentimes faster.
Undo actions
Heavy users of Mail are all too familiar with these scenarios: You want to file a message, but when the Move screen appears, you accidentally tap the wrong mailbox. Or you go to delete a message and realize, just as you tap the trash can button, that you actually want to keep it around. In iOS 6, the way to undo these actions was to navigate all the way back to the main Mailboxes screen, then navigate down to the mailbox into which the message was moved, then find and view the message, and then move the message back to its original location.
In iOS 7, on the other hand, you can simply use the standard Undo gesture: Shake your device, and, depending on the previous action, you see either an Undo Move or an Undo Trash dialog box on the screen. This box provides Undo and Cancel buttons; the former moves your message back to its original location. (If you just use Undo and then decide that, no, you really did want to move or delete the message, giving your device another quick shake brings up a dialog that includes options to Undo, Redo Trash or Redo Move, or Cancel.)
See annotations
Mail in iOS has long let you see a preview of any PDF attached to an email message. But prior to iOS 7, this feature came with a major limitation: The preview omitted any annotations added to the document. Mail in iOS 7 doesn't fix this limitation completely, but it goes a long way toward that goal: When you view a PDF attachment within iOS 7 Mail, the preview correctly shows most annotations.
What exactly does "most" mean? In our testing, text, text formatting (highlight, underline, and strikethrough), shapes, lines, arrows, signatures, and even speech and thought bubbles appear correctly in PDF previews. Notes, however, do not.
The swipe switch
In iOS 6 and earlier, you could right-swipe any message in a list to bring up a Delete button; tapping that button would move the message to the Trash mailbox. This gesture has changed in iOS 7: you now swipe left on a message in list view. While this will likely trip you up the first few days you use iOS 7, it's not just change for change's sake: In addition to a Trash button, you also now get a More button. Tap it, and you get all of the actions you'd get if you tapped the flag button while actually viewing the message: Reply, Forward, Flag/Unflag, Mark As Unread/Read, Move To Junk, and Move Message. If you've ever wished you could perform actions on a message without having to open it first, now you can.
iOS 7 is also big on edge swiping, and Mail takes advantage of that feature too. While there's still a left-facing arrow at the top of every view that takes you up a level in the message or mailbox hierarchy, you can also opt to place a finger (or thumb) on the very left edge of the screen (as if you're grabbing that edge) and swipe to the right to perform the same navigational action—the current view slides off to the right to reveal the previous screen. This makes for quicker navigation. (Note that on the iPad version of Mail, in portrait orientation, this swipe action will view the current mailbox's message list.)
From whom?
Many IMAP and POP email accounts let you use multiple, custom From addresses. Prior to iOS 7, Mail in iOS supported that feature to some degree, but even configuring multiple addresses was a bit of a pain. In iOS 7, the feature is finally fully supported.
To add additional From addresses for an account, just go to the account's screen in the Settings app (under Mail, Contacts, Calendar). For IMAP accounts, tap the Account button to view the account's details, then tap the Email field under IMAP Account Information; for POP accounts, the Email field is on the main account-settings screen. Tap Add Another Email and enter the additional email address; repeat as many times as you need to add all your desired From addresses. (Be sure to tap Done, not Cancel, when existing the account-details screen in order to save your changes.) Your new From address(es) appear as options when creating new messages.
Unfortunately, this feature has some limitations. First, some email servers force the From address to be the one used to log in to the sending mail server. You'll want to try sending a few test messages to see if your particular server allows alternate From addresses. Second, the feature works only with IMAP and POP accounts. It doesn't work with iCloud accounts (though you can set up email aliases on the iCloud.com website) or Exchange accounts. It also doesn't work with Gmail accounts set up using iOS's Gmail option, though it appears to work if you set up your Gmail account as IMAP. I say appears because in my testing, Gmail is one of the services that enforces the sending account.
Another minor-but-useful change relating to sending addresses is that when sending to a frequently used contact, Mail will try to pick the "best" sending account. For example, even though my default sending account is my iCloud address, when creating a message to send one of my Macworld colleagues, or to a PR contact I frequently email from my Macworld account, Mail automatically changes the From account to my Macworld address. Similarly, if I'm sending to a Google group that I usually interact with using my Gmail account, whenever I address a message to that group, Mail switches the From address to my Gmail address.
Note that this feature works only when you're in one of the "all accounts" mail views, such as All Mailboxes, All Inboxes, and the like. If you're currently in an account-specific mailbox, Mail will always set the From address to that specific account's default address.
Minor Mail changes
In addition to inheriting the new look and feel of iOS 7, Mail's visuals have seen some minor changes. For example, when you're viewing any mailbox list or the main Mailboxes screen, small text at the bottom of the screen tells you when Mail last checked for new messages and how many unread messages are in the current message list.
On the other hand, Apple has eliminated iOS 6's useful # of # display: When viewing a message, this bit of text appeared at the top of the screen and told you both the number of messages in the current mailbox and where in that mailbox the current message resided (for example, 7 of 29). It was a useful bit of information that we hope Apple brings back at some point.
Apple has added a new option to the message-status menu when viewing a message. Tap the flag button, and in addition to Flag/Unflag and Mark As Read/Unread buttons, you now get a Move To Junk button that moves the current message to the Junk mailbox. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to tie in with iCloud's spam filtering—the app won't remember to put future messages from this sender, or with the same subject line, into the Junk mailbox.
A very minor change is that when composing a message on an iPhone or iPod touch, if you select some text or tap and hold in message text, the formatting popover menu that appears now groups Quote Level and 'Insert Photo or Video' together. In iOS 6, these options appeared separately, so it took an extra tap on the right-arrow button to get to Quote Level. Another minor appearance tweak is that when filing a message on your iPhone, you now see a tiny preview of the message on the screen where you choose the destination mailbox (the iPad always displayed message previews). And if you normally hide email headers, the Detail text that you tap to view more information is now 'more' and is located directly adjacent to the short header text.
As mentioned in our roundup of changes in the Settings app, a new option in the Mail, Contact, Calendars pane lets you choose whether message flags appear as colored circles or flags. And in the Contacts section, you can tell iOS to display nicknames for those contacts to which you've assigned a nickname—this setting affects Mail in that messages display the nicknames of email senders when available.
Similarly, a few settings are no longer available: the option to choose how many recent messages to show, and, when configuring some mail accounts, the Archive Messages option. Also, Hotmail is no longer an option when you're setting up a new mail account.


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Good Afternoon people,
Is there anybody out there or are you all still at your Royal Wedding street parties? I tried my best to stay away from those, I managed to get away with taking the kids over the green where a bouncy castle had been set up. Duty done, I slunk back home to pretend jog on the Wii. I'm not a social butterfly. Good luck to the couple - they seemed genuinely happy, yes I did watch up until they said their vows... (I was blackmailed with copious amounts of tea) and Devvie wanted it on so she could see the dress. It all got a tad religious for me after that so I went back to unpicking bad stitching on my monster... later post for that.
Sticking with the Royal Wedding, there was a crowns and tiara's competition at school yesterday. I didn't realise (should have with hindsight) till we got a reminder text from the school on Wednesday evening. Pheeb's decided she still didn't want to bother so there's Ruby and I down the stu-stu-studio yesterday morning cobbling together a tiara out of cardboard and ribbon. I covered it in paper, stood back and let her loose on my stash. A whole packet of sticky ribbons, numerous gems and butterflies later...
Guess who won the tiara competition in her class? I was so pleased. Both her and the little boy who won the crown comp had a very obviously homemade crown/tiara - there were so many shop ones there. She came out of nursery proudly clutching a commemorative box of clotted cream fudge and handed it straight to me, the one on the Slimming World plan *g* We opened them today, obviously, and I did accept two! Very yummy.
Which leads me seamlessly onto my next thankful. Being well and truly back on the plan. I started properly on Tuesday and also started the Couch to 5K program on the same day, a program that promises to take you from couch potato to running 5K in 9 weeks. Eek. I've started keeping my fit blog regularly again and have had a sneaky peek at the scales before weigh-in on Saturday. It's looking promising. Hopefully the paaaaaaaaaiiin from the program will ease with time.
Next up. Guess what? I have my first commission/sale!! How amazing is that? Am so pleased, excited, nervous and terrified - I wont say who it's for in case she doesn't want me to but I hope she realises how chuffed I am to be asked and am so excited to get cracking with making the canvas now.
Next up is discovering an amazing and CHEAP online class starting soon. Do you want to learn to draw or paint realistically? Check out this bona fide VIKING on Darcy's blog. Then come play! I've emailed to say I want to join up and just as soon as Paypal is set up I'll be registered! Woohoo! Yes. My name is Carmen and I am an online class addict.
The class is aimed at everyone no matter what skill level you are at. Come on... come plaaay. Who wants to be brave and flick paint at the viking?
So, what rocked your World this week? Why not hop over to Virginia's and join in the feel good look back on the week :)


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Tea With Chris is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Friday. Here are a few of our favourite things from the Internet this week:
Carl: A little behind the curve, but my favourite thing I found out about this week was the Occupy Wall Street protesters' invention of "the human microphone": Someone speaking calls out, "Mic Check," and then the crowd repeats back what they are saying, in unison, phrase by phrase.
Here's Michael Moore using it:
The human microphone is ingenuity responding to necessity: The police have banned real mics, amps and megaphones from the gathering (as someone in the YouTube comments says, this is "free speech" in a society where the courts have ruled that corporations can spend as much as they like amplifying their messages). It's also culture responding to history – the call-and-response structure directly recalls church, and particularly the African-American gospel tradition, which radiates out through a lot of the greatest American music.
There are additional effects too, hilarious and poignant and challenging ones: First, of course, the technique means that every speech takes at least twice as long. It's kind of Slow Discourse, on the model of Slow Food and other Slow Movements – with the implication that what each person has to say, and the crowd's process of (literally) chewing it over, is a higher priority than the efficiency of the communication and decision making. What's more, in repeating a speaker's words, the crowd simulates affirming and agreeing with them, which of course the individuals may not, in fact. In that act of repetition they experience what it might be like to agree, probably before they begin to think about disagreeing or critiquing. That's the reverse of the adversarial debate culture that permeates so much of western politics, a kind of deep-listening technique, and the kind of happy accident that the spontaneity of Occupy Wall Street seems to make possible on many levels.
When my old friend Naomi Klein spoke at the gathering last night, she amusingly began by saying, "I love you" – adding, "I didn't just say that so that hundreds of you would shout 'I love you' back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone: Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder." But she also meant it. The text of her speech, up on the Nation website, explains why, in a manner that may help skeptics get past their doubts.
(By the way, The Nation also has the best piece about Slutwalk I've ever read, for those who are still on the fence about that phenomenon.)
Meanwhile, the week has also seen the rise of #OccupySesameStreet (which I was happy to learn was largely thanks to Patton Oswalt). Because we should not rest while 1% of the monsters consume 99% of the cookies. Don't allow Mr. Hooper to have died in vain.
Chris: The piping-hot music video for Beyonce's "Countdown" underlines why a lot of music critics I know are tipping it as the single of the year: formal experimentation rarely feels this joyful, this confident in its own weirdness. It's an epic in 3:33. And yet, as the clip amply demonstrates, not self-serious; she mugs in fabulous maternity outfits, channels Audrey Hepburn and Anna Karina (or at least that's what all the blinking reminded me of), spawns animated GIFs at record speed. Daunting sample size, but between "Countdown" and those music videos with Gaga, I think B might be sexiest when she's being funny.
Tyler Coates, a genius, refracted the video into this screen-filling multitude of Beyonces.
Someone shot footage of their puppies running around and used Geto Boys' decidedly non-adorable "Still" (chorus: "DIE MOTHERFUCKERS") as its soundtrack. Mildly hyperbolic Youtube commenter: "this is the best fucking thing america has given us."


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[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]
This self paced free learning clinic from Microsoft Learning will introduction your to SQL Azure. This clinic covers the following topics:
- Understanding the SQL Azure Platform.
- Designing Applications for SQL Azure.
- Migrating Applications to SQL Azure.
- Achieving Scale with SQL Azure.
Total time: 2 hours.


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Practice Management
CPA firm tax practice leaders often have a stated or understood (at least to themselves) relatively narrow profile for busy-season individual tax return engagements, due to the firm's owners' experience and competence, its mix of individual and business clients, and other factors. Tax practice leaders should consider whether their firms have appropriate processes and procedures in place to handle engagements that fall below this range in complexity and price.
Why Serve This Market?
A firm's traditional individual tax engagement client profile likely includes preferred criteria for acceptance or continuance, including a minimum price and the client's willingness to cooperate with the firm's method of conducting its individual tax engagements. The client in this traditional engagement provides information and expects tax return delivery according to the firm's schedule, uses the firm's preferred communication methods, and pays the firm's standard prices without complaint. This client might, for example, return a completed organizer with all tax information documents, respond promptly via phone or email to questions, and promptly pay the firm's standard prices.
Notwithstanding these preferences, busy-season tax practice for most firms often includes a mix of information gathering and tax return delivery processes, including mail, email, portal, phone conversations, physical pickup and delivery, and interviews. The engagements likely vary in scope and complexity, with some requiring little more than inputting data from tax information documents and others requiring interpretation of complex facts in light of changing tax laws. A firm's fees for its tax services may range from "free" for a child's return to thousands of dollars for a return with complex business or investment activities. Accordingly, a firm's tax engagements in any given season run the gamut from those for low-touch, low-fee, drop-off clients to high-touch, high-fee, interview clients—and all points in between.
While CPA firms should ensure that individual tax engagements are not beyond their competence and other resources, they should also consider engagements that fall below their traditional criteria (e.g., for simpler or less expensive returns). Any firm may on occasion serve such a client, by choice or otherwise. The firm may simply have misjudged a prospective client's compliance needs or financial means during its acceptance processes and procedures, or a longtime client's tax or other financial circumstances may have changed through, for example, a career change or retirement. In addition, changes in environmental factors, such as the recent financial downturn or the IRS's unenrolled tax return preparer program, may increase or reduce competition so that a firm may choose to serve this market.
Whether these engagements are accepted due to error or intent, a firm's tax practice should have a system in place to adequately and profitably serve these "not-quite-target" tax clients. Additional or alternative processes and procedures may need to be integrated into the firm's existing ones so that the firm's overall tax practice is strengthened rather than diluted. A saying popularly attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius warns, "The man who chases two rabbits catches neither." Tax practitioners are already well-schooled in chasing several types of rabbits one at a time; the challenge is to chase (and catch) one more type of rabbit.
Tax Practice Processes
While each firm's circumstances are unique, the broad areas in which alternative or adapted processes and procedures may be necessary are:
- Acceptance/continuance;
- Classification;
- Staffing and assignment;
- Information gathering and preparation;
- Review, filing, and delivery; and
- Pricing and payment.
Engagement acceptance and, to a lesser degree, continuance processes and procedures for a firm's traditional tax clients tend to center on the firm's practice leaders, who often tailor this process to each client's circumstances. While welcoming to the client, this approach lacks efficiency and is not practical if the firm's goal is to serve a more diverse (and likely numerous) not-quite-target clientele. The author's firm uses an alternative approach centered on a set of streamlined forms for client information and engagement acceptance/continuance that administrative or professional staff can complete quickly.
Because the not-quite-target client may be more likely to show up "cold," the acceptance process should include thorough identification procedures, including inspecting and copying identity and citizenship documents such as driver's licenses, Social Security cards or other tax documents, and passports for clients and any dependents. The author's firm has found that incorporating these additional procedures into the existing acceptance/continuance process reduces errors such as e-filing mismatches and incorrect dependent claims.
Classifying engagements between simpler and more complex returns is a key step in efficiently and effectively integrating the not-quite-target client engagements into a firm's practice, and it needs to happen early in the process so that the engagements can be assigned and routed appropriately. The author's firm does so by assigning an "A," "B," or "C" rating to each engagement based on a relatively small number of factors.
In short, engagements connected to significant clients or including multiple and/or complex investment or business activities are rated A or B, and those without any such criteria are C engagements. A key part of efficiently serving not-quite-target clients is to accurately classify their engagements as B or, more likely, C. The author's firm rates engagements at three points during its work flow:
- Immediately prior to busy season, practice leaders finalize the rating criteria and assign expected ratings to continuing engagements in the tracking system. (This step is performed for new engagements as part of client acceptance.)
- As information is received during busy season, administrative staff record the ratings for continuing engagements on the routing sheet that accompanies the engagement file.
- During an engagement, the preparer and reviewer use the rating criteria to determine whether it should be reassigned.
Staffing and Assignment
While a firm's traditional clients may show up unannounced, and the not-quite-target client may make an appointment, the latter is more likely than the former to prefer "walk-in" service. The higher customer traffic that can be expected when serving this market suggests a firm may need additional administrative and professional staff available to handle the increased workload. The author's firm has found that demand from not-quite-target clients tends to ramp up (and down) earlier in the season than from traditional clients, allowing an earlier start and more consistent work flow throughout the season and resulting in better use of existing staff. Notwithstanding, adequate staffing during the early part of busy season is critical.
Because a return for the not-quite-target client tends to be simpler (i.e., a C or, less often, B engagement), preparation of such a return is well-suited to paraprofessional and less experienced professional staff, and final review and approval can likewise be delegated to nonexecutive experienced staff.
Information Gathering and Preparation
While gathering information to prepare a traditional client's tax return may often be customized to fit that client's needs, efficiency and speed are the primary goals when gathering the information to prepare the not-quite-target client's tax return. Asking these clients to prepare a comprehensive organizer is usually overkill (as well as fruitless in most instances) since these returns for the most part include only a fraction of the information an organizer requests. In addition, the information needed is usually within a relatively few annual tax documents received by the client from third parties and that are otherwise obtained during client acceptance and continuance processes and procedures. To streamline information gathering and return preparation, the author's firm usually accomplishes most of this work for the not-quite-target client in a single interview session with the assigned or on-call return preparer for that engagement.
When the client first arrives, administrative personnel gather selected information as part of the engagement acceptance/continuance process by having the client provide or update contact and dependent information, including copies of any changed or newly issued identification or citizenship documents. Next, the preparer interviews the client and prepares the return during the interview. A client who has scheduled an appointment meets with the return preparer assigned to his or her engagement, while a drop-in client meets with the first available staff preparer.
The firm uses a short checklist of questions for each client in engagements for which abbreviated procedures seem appropriate (e.g., C engagements). The checklist is intended to cover only the narrow range of tax issues that can be expected with such engagements and to identify any issues requiring expanded procedures. The checklist is used as a reference by the preparer during the taxpayer interview, and preparers are required to consult more experienced or senior personnel to resolve any issues encountered during the client interview.
Resolving tax issues during the interview is key to speed and efficiency in this stage of the process because it allows early completion of three important milestones of the tax return engagement:
- The client is available to participate directly in gathering and interpreting all information needed;
- The client can review, question, and understand the results (including the refund available or the balance due) immediately and begin to make arrangements accordingly; and
- The preparer is able to obtain the client's signed engagement letter, consents to use and/or disclose tax information (if applicable), and e-file authorization (or opt-out) during a single session.
Review, Filing, and Delivery
Because of the emphasis on screening and rating engagements, thoroughly gathering information, and securing client involvement earlier in the process, as well as the less complex nature of these engagements in general, an experienced, nonexecutive professional should be able to ensure that the engagement has been correctly classified, review the preparer's work, and take corrective action if necessary. This review should be accomplished promptly upon completion of return preparation, to allow timely feedback to the preparer and involvement of the client (if applicable) in any corrective action.
Immediately following the review, the file may be routed to processing for the return to be e-filed (or bound if it is to be filed as a paper return). While each firm needs to tailor its processes and procedures to its own situation, the author's firm has found that a 24-hour turnaround for review and delivery to processing is workable. Quick turnaround also reduces client follow-up phone calls and emails.
Once an e-filed return has been accepted (and any bank products have been released) or a paper return has been bound, administrative staff should prepare copies for the client and contact him or her with pickup or delivery instructions as usual.
Pricing and Payment
While a discussion of price for tax return engagements is beyond the scope of this column, some general observations are worth noting. Pricing a tax return engagement for the not-quite-target tax client requires recognizing that this client is more accustomed to a price-per-form method (or, increasingly, a fixed software license fee) than an hourly or value-based billing approach. The author's firm has found that the method is less of an issue (most clients do not like formula-based pricing in any form) than is continuity of the price from one year to the next and the overall amount. Of course, tax returns for the not-quite-target client are generally simpler and command a lower price; however, an efficient process can still yield a profitable practice.
A positive aspect of serving the not-quite-target tax client is earlier payment. While many of the more complex (e.g., A and B) tax engagements may require several days (or longer) to prepare, review, and deliver to the client, the author's firm has found that clients are satisfied with the streamlined process that is used for simpler returns and are content to pay their fees at completion of the taxpayer interview. This is days or weeks earlier in most cases than traditional tax clients and significantly increases cash flow in the early part of busy season.
Many not-quite-target tax clients expect and appreciate access to bank products such as instant-issue checks, Automated Clearing House direct deposit, or debit cards to receive tax refunds and pay tax return preparation fees. The author's firm has found that a significant minority of its not-quite-target tax clients regularly use these products. This may be an unfamiliar business practice to many CPA firms, and it does require additional training and control procedures to comply with the requirements for disclosure and use of tax information and with applicable banking laws; however, experience shows that these hurdles are not insurmountable.
Profitable Opportunity
CPA firms of all sizes regularly serve individual tax clients for whom their traditional tax engagement processes and procedures are a poor fit. This leads at best to an inefficient use of the firm's resources and at worst to a dissatisfied client. By standardizing and delegating appropriate elements of a firm's individual tax engagement acceptance/continuance, information gathering, preparation, and review processes and by using a classification system to rate engagements and inform assignment decisions, a firm's tax practice may become more efficient and sufficiently flexible to profitably serve a broader range of clients and to adapt more easily as the needs of existing clients change.
Steven Holub is a national director in the Professional Practice Department of Cherry Bekaert LLP in Tampa, Fla., and is a former chairman of the AICPA Tax Division Tax Practice Management Committee. Kenneth Parker is with Parker and Associates, CPAs, in Jackson, Miss. Michael Crisler is the sole member of Crisler CPA PLLC in Hendersonville, Tenn. Mr. Parker is chairman and Mr. Crisler is a member of the AICPA Tax Practice Management Committee. For more information about "Thinking Outside the Typical Client Profile in Tax Engagements," contact Mr. Crisler at email@example.com.


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Matters of Taste: Fermentation might smell bad, but the food is good
When Aniko Zala first nibbled on kimchi, the spicy Korean cabbage mixture bit her back.
"I always loved sour flavors," she said. "I couldn't handle the funk at first."
The dish eventually grew on Zala, though, and kimchi is now one of many fermented foods that she makes and stocks at her Blendon Township home.
Although the pungent aromas and occasional scum of fermentation can be overwhelming to novices, the method of preserving vegetables, grains and dairy need not be.
"People think it's a lot harder than it is, and that you have to be more precise than you need to be," said Zala, who runs Wild Origins, a local herbalist business. "You only need a jar, some vegetables, some salt and some water."
Fermentation's surge in popularity is actually a resurgence, said Valente Alvarez, a food scientist and director of the Food Industries Center at Ohio State University.
The food-processing method is one of the oldest there is. Archaeologists have found evidence of a fermented alcoholic drink — a fruit, rice and honey concoction — dating to 7000 B.C. in China. Sailors staved off scurvy by scarfing down vitamin-rich sauerkraut packaged in casks to last for years, Alvarez said.
"It's existed as long as humans have existed," he said of fermentation.
What is fermentation?
If you've ever eaten soy sauce, summer sausage, yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut or vinegar, you have already sampled a variety of fermented foods.
Zymology, the science of fermentation, harnesses microorganisms to convert carbohydrates into alcohols or acids.
Take milk, for example. On its own, milk has a mild, sweet flavor. When it's fermented, bacteria convert lactose, a milk sugar, into acid, producing cheese or yogurt with a tangy, sour taste.
Another type of fermentation — one that transforms sugar into ethanol — produces wine, beer, ciders and some spirits.
Fermentation also includes the process by which bread is leavened when yeast converts sugar into carbon dioxide.
"Fermentation can occur in any food," Alvarez said. "The only commonality is the distinct acid flavor that all fermented products have."
He emphasized that the process is distinct from both pickling (which involves preserving in acetic acid) and curing (which uses salt or sugar to draw the moisture out of a food such as prosciutto).
How does fermented food differ from rotten food?
Bacteria have an unpleasant reputation, Alvarez said, but fermented foods exemplify the sterling variety.
"People don't realize fermented food has good bacteria," he said. "We see all bacteria as bad, but the only bad ones are pathogens."
Fermented foods are more acidic, which can actually inhibit the growth of pathogens such as E. coli, salmonella and listeria.
Research shows that fermented foods can have enhanced nutritional properties and that the living microorganisms they contain function similarly to probiotics, which are good for the digestive system.
How can I sample it?
Fermentation expresses itself differently across cultures, so trying unfamiliar cuisines probably will introduce you to different fermented products.
Kefir (a milk product) has spread from its Russian and central Asian origins. Miso (a soybean paste) is a staple in Japanese seasoning. Dosas (pancakes) hail from India, skyr (a soft cheese) from Iceland and chorizo (pork sausage) from Spain and Portugal.
You also can ferment foods at home. Zala ferments a variety, from cabbage and carrots to spaghetti squash, turnips, tofu, teas, beets, green tomatoes and hot peppers.
She recommends playing with flavors by tossing in bonus ingredients such as grape leaves, turmeric, garlic, ginger and spices. Fermentation is best approached as an experiment, she said.
"This is a live food. It's living; it's changing. It's never going to be exactly how you imagine."
The only constant for Zala is her concerted effort to label the exact ingredients and start date for every batch, to help her track what worked and what didn't. Beyond that, she said, the process is all play.
"Homogenization is boring," she said. "You always know what you're going to get at the grocery store or ordering fast food."
Fermentation, on the other hand, promises an element of surprise, she said: "You're taking back that creativity."
4-6 cups chopped vegetable of choice (cabbage, carrots and onions work well)
about 1 gallon water (unchlorinated)
salt (not iodized, preferably sea salt)
canning jars
plastic sandwich bags
Chop vegetables, to your liking, into chunks, slices, strips or coins.
Using a fist, pack them down into a canning jar.
In a separate bowl, make the brine with a ratio of 4 cups water to 2½ tablespoons salt.
Pour brine into jar until water level rises above the vegetables. Fill a plastic bag, one per canning jar, with tap water and use to pack the rest of the jar. The bag should act as a weight to keep the vegetables from floating to the brine's surface, and push out any air from the jar.
Put the jars on a tray, as they will leak water as they ferment.
Leave at room temperature and begin tasting the mixture after a week. Continue fermenting until desired taste is reached, then refrigerate and enjoy. Ferments will stay safe and tasty in the refrigerator for months, even years.
— Marion Renault explores the science of food in her monthly Matters of Taste column for The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. She can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com or follow @MarionRenault on Twitter.


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[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/03/10/art.getty.shinseki.jpg
caption="Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial a plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance."]WASHINGTON (CNN) – Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance, but was told by lawmakers that it would be "dead on arrival" if sent to Congress.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray used that blunt terminology, telling Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. She made the remarks during a Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing about the 2010 budget.
No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama opposing the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration. The groups also noticed an increase in "third-party collections" estimated in the 2010 budget proposal—something they said could only be achieved if the VA started billing for service-related injuries.
Asked about the proposal, Shinseki said it was under "consideration."
"A final decision hasn't been made yet," he said.
A second senator, North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, said he agreed that the idea should not go forward.
"I think you will give that up" as a revenue stream, if it is included in this April's budget, Burr said.
Sen. Murray said she'd already discussed her concerns with the secretary the previous week.
"I believe that veterans with service-connected injuries have already paid by putting their lives on the line," Murray said in her remarks. "I don't think we should nickel and dime them for their care."
Eleven of the most prominent veterans organizations have been lobbying Congress to oppose the idea. In the letter sent last week to President Barack Obama, the veterans groups warned that the idea "is wholly unacceptable and a total abrogation of our government's moral and legal responsbility to the men and women who have sacrificed so much."
The groups included The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
At the time, a White House spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the option was being considere
Demos have never done anything good for the service member active or retired. Cut numbers, small pay raises, stop equip,cut contracting on military posts and on and on. You people that listen to Obama and voted for him deserve what you get. When I was drafted in 68 we were told how the gov. would take care of our medical after retirement and now we have to pay for it and wait weeks for an appointment.
Obama screwing the military? Say it ain't so!!!!
I see true obamamaniacs are still trying to blame Bush for everything their hero proposes–they simply will not believe what he really stands for. THEY WERE WARNED! and they chose to ignore–he is also "considering" talking to the Taliban..you probably do not believe that, either...fools.....
After President Obama worked sooooo hard to get more and a bette GI bill, this sounds really "fishy" and something a crooked republican just might have stirred up!!!
After getting their cake, they want to eat it too. They must find someone to pay for that pork. That someone must be vilified and unwanted and therefore Indefensible – vets the regular scapegoats.
The Dems have already stated the Reps were unwanted and unneeded; their speech and acts demonstrate that also applies to the vets as well. Used and discarded like diapers – again.
Obama is a disgrace to the office of President and "Commander-in-Chief" for even considering billing vets for service-related injuries.
Some of you sound ridiculous. How is Obama Marxist and Socialist by making veterans pay for their own insurance? That sounds like a Republican move to me.
Not only do I disagree with the idea of billing a private insurance company for injuries sustained during military duty, I believe the administration should find a way to do even more for my fellow Brothers and Sisters in Arms. My solution to this problem, and I know a lot of you will balk at me, is to raise taxes to help pay for the care of wounded vets. What makes the US Military so great, is that it is all volunteer. No one is here that doesn't want to be here. Without us, the simple freedoms everyone enjoys, such as blogging here, would not exist. To the 1% of Americans who have EVER chosen this life of hardship and served this great nation, I am proud to be counted among your ranks. To the other 99%, freedom truly isn't free, it is paid for in blood by brave men and women. You will never know what it is like to walk a mile in our boots, and I am not asking you to do so. What I am asking is, please, defend out Vets, tighten the belt a little, spend a little less on the luxuries you enjoy, and spend a little more taking care of those few who have sacrificed so much for so many.
I'm in no way surprised at this ! Imagine if Bush had suggested this ? Typical Democratic disgust towards our armed forces ! HEY, Next time to save more money, just make them pay their way home from overseas !
A final note on the 'proposed' bill. The largest group lobbying on behalf of the Army has nothing in its alerts or files about this matter. If it was of grave concern, the group would be all over Congress and the President.
For the Bush loving right wing, watch for this one. It shows how much concern the republicans have for their Army."The Pentagon allegedly endangered U.S. soldiers by implementing and covering-up dangerously toxic waste-incineration practices at Balad Airbase in Iraq during years past, as revealed in a leaked Air Force memo" Story broke today-AF memor dated 2006. I don't recall Obama being in the WH then.
@ Will Clemins, who made fun of "trying to buy perpetual votes of the "poor, sick, disabled, downtrodden, helpless, etc"."
Please visit Ellis Island.
Please help my son,he had a serious head injury,thats why he wont come out of the cellar and listens to Rush Limbaugh all day and night.
This is yet another example of CNN making news as long as the administration looks bad. We never see any thing negative on the GOP on this blog. Why!!!..because CNN is carrying water for the Republicans
Republicans kill me with the dumbnesia... Most republicans voted against benefits for vets. What is it about having a political party makes people so ridiculous? Why can't people function on common sense? Why would the party make the difference? As an independent the Democratic approach helps more, and right now, what people need is help.
Every worthless low-life in the country gets money from the Obama gang but if you're one of the country's heroes, as our military vets are, you only get the shaft.
Change you can believe in.
As a member of the Veterans Administration Health Plan and a VIETNAM "COMBAT" VETERAN. I have private insurance with the Aetna PPO plan and have chosen to use the VA for my RX, Lab and Doctor visits. They have given me caring and professional service on each and EVERY visit. Not to mention the free pnemonia and flu shot clinics each year/etc.. I have always paid a copay and they then bill Aetna for the remainder of the services. Aetna gladly pays the difference as it is much cheaper than it would cost on the outside in the private medical system. This has been the case now for the past 5 years that I have been part of their healthcare system.
Those of us who can afford to pay something should do so which allows those who can not to receive the free care they earned and deserve.
I can not understand all the fuss because those Vets unable to pay will always continue to receive free care.
What most of you do not know is that retired military vets already pay for their health care. I am a retired vet and when I went on active duty I was promised free healthcare for life if i served 20 years. After serving 24 years I was told I would have to pay an annual fee for my care. Our elected officials have done nothing but taken away almost every benefit we were promised. If it were their benefits you can be sure they would get them for free.
Will Clemins March 10th, 2009 5:08 pm ET
"We Americans love it the way it was before the dems screwed it all up trying to buy perpetual votes of the "poor, sick, disabled, downtrodden, helpless, etc"
"We Americans"??? So Will, the only "real" Americans out of the 350+ million legal US citizens are the ones who agree with you?
Yeah, whatever......hope all that anger gives you heartburn.
haven't read much on veteran issues but this doesn't sound right. the government should provide legal and moral responsibilities to care for the service-related injuries our brave men & women received because they were on the front line defending our country's freedom. especially, they are often being sacrifice not solely for war but shameless political agenda as well.
of course, if they are employed after they return from service, the post-service injuries will be a different story.
What part of the insurance companies paying don't you republicans understand?
Just the idea of it is insulting. The fact that it is being considered is shameful. Although I don't believe this country would allow the Obama administration to get away with this, I'm sorry the troops know it was even thought of.


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By Caitlin Kelly
We recently lost — we being the global community of journalists — two women who made profound differences in the lives of their many grateful editors, colleagues and readers.
Too often, journalism appears to be a business dominated by men: publishers, editors-in-chief, front-page bylines.
Talented, brave women also shape much of what we see, hear and feel.
One, shot dead while sitting in a car in Afghanistan, was Anja Niedringhaus, 48, a news photographer from Germany; in the car with her, also shot (but recovering) is Associated Press veteran correspondent, and Canadian, Kathy Gannon.
The other, Heather Robertson, is a Canadian journalist who led a life-changing lawsuit against Canadian publishers who, in a land grab, decided to "re-purpose" thousands of articles and earn handsome profits from them — without bothering to share those profits with the writers who had actually created them and their economic value.
Two lawsuits took decades to move through the Canadian courts, but they gave many writers fantastic windfalls; I got two five-figure payouts thanks to her work, which allowed me to breathe more easily in lean times, which every freelancer faces at some point.
Here's Heather's obituary from The Globe and Mail,written by my friend, Toronto writer David Hayes:
"Heather was a Canadian nationalist and a feminist," says her friend and fellow writer, Elaine Dewar. "Her voice was clear, honest and rigorous in a way that was uncommon at the time."
She embodied her grandfather's crusading convictions outside of her writing life, too. Aware that writers were underpaid and often treated churlishly by publishers, she co-founded both the Writers' Union of Canada and the Professional Writers Association of Canada. Her biggest coup, though, came in the 1990s when she became the lead plaintiff in two lawsuits against the country's largest media corporations, including The Globe and Mail, over the electronic rights of freelance journalists. (Ms. Dewar remembers that Ms. Robertson was smart enough to be afraid of the responsibility and brave enough to ignore her doubts.) The eventual settlement of more than $11-million remunerated many freelancers for lost income and established that publishers could not simply re-purpose a writer's work on databases or the Internet without credit or payment.
Here's a long, thoughtful appreciation of Anja — with many of her photos — from The New York Times' Lens blog:
She was long accustomed to the field, and to the dangers getting to it, and back to it. She wrote an essay, 'Emotions Speak Through Images,' for Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, in which she wrote of her compassion for civilians she met in Bosnia, Iraq, Gaza and elsewhere. She said she wanted to 'understand the situation through their eyes' during an American raid on a house in Baghdad in 2004. But she was also struck by the youth of the American Marines, 'just out of school, young boys.'
In a passage, she described how after the 2003 invasion of Iraq she slipped across the border from Kuwait into Basra by hiding inside a Kuwaiti fire brigade truck, then joined up with her A.P. colleagues.
"I remember watching a fierce battle around the city's university. Shells started to land nearby, and most journalists left the scene," she wrote. "I had just put on my bulletproof vest when another shell landed so close to me that it injured three of my colleagues. I escaped with bruises and was able to drive them to safety in our Jeep, even though it was also hit, and two of its four tires were flat. One of my colleagues, a Lebanese cameraman, had shrapnel close to his heart and was immediately operated on by a British Army doctor in a makeshift tent. We were flown out to Kuwait for further treatment. Three days later I returned to Iraq in a rented Jeep from Kuwait."
And, another, from AP colleague David Guttenflelder:
I honestly don't think that the AP could have covered that war without her influence. Our entire staff was raised in her image. I'm sure that even now, when they go out the door with their cameras they ask themselves "What would Anja do?" I think maybe every AP photographer has asked themselves that at one point…
"She was one of the best people I've ever known. I was so lucky to have known and worked with her. I'm just one of countless people all over the world to have loved Anja. We are all totally devastated," Guttenfelder said.


text:
Computer engineers have turned ordinary paper into a display with a UV lighting technique, which could one day help artists work on real-time collaborations from opposite sides of the world.
Researchers from the Naemura Group at the University of Tokyo call the method "paper computing technology". Ordinary paper is coated with a photochromic material, which changes color when light is shone on it. A pen filled with commonly available Frixion thermo-sensitive ink (which disappears when heated) is then used to draw the image, and a digital UV projector with a resolution of 1,024x768 can be used to copy or print that image onto the paper again. A laser illuminates the image from underneath to erase it to an accuracy of 0.024mm — it can even do this automatically, learning where an error has occurred and the user has strayed from their intended line. By syncing the projector and laser up to a camera and computer, a user controlling the latter can make amendments to the image. The team has already been able to generate a few effects such as automatically colouring in an outlined drawing or turning it into a 3D-style image.
[partner id="wireduk"]The images so far used to demonstrate the method aren't exactly complex, but the concept is sound, if a little cumbersome. The Naemura Group's Tomoko Hashida does, however, believe that as the system becomes more streamlined, somewhere down the line it will be used as a Google Docs for artists, with people able to collaborate in real time from anywhere in the world.
"Until now, it's been possible to project things onto paper and use it as a screen, or import things drawn on paper to PC by using a digital pen," Hashida says in the above video report from DigInfo TV. "But the first method uses light, so the results can only be seen in the dark, and with the second method, even if you can import things, you can't access them on paper from the computer.
"In the future, we'd like to enable several people to create one document, like with Google Docs, actually using real-world paper while far apart. We'd also like to enhance the rendering that's possible through collaboration between people and computers. For example, by giving more detailed access than you get by hand, and enabling you to draw large areas at once."
We've already been promised graphene-made e-paper by 2015, but the whole point of the Naemura Group's work is to maintain the sensation of sketching on real paper. When the University of Cincinnati first proposed its prototype for e-paper in 2010, a system that uses an electronic charge to move pixels (electrowetting), it looked to replicate the system using real paper instead of a sheet of glass. This would help reduce cost and accessibility, but also provides the user with an authentic experience. "One of the main goals of e-paper is to replicate the look and feel of actual ink on paper," its creators Andrew Steckl and Duk Young Kim Kim said. "In general, this is an elegant method for reducing device complexity and cost, resulting in one-time-use devices that can be totally disposed after use." If the Naemura Group can make the process faster and speed up the automation, it could be a great way of preserving old school artistry and opening up more collaborative opportunities.


text:
Of the many ways to cheat at professional sports, the simplest are sometimes the most effective. Like, say, a keeper making his goal smaller. Oh, soccer, this whole taking-you-seriously thing isn't going to work out.
Last Wednesday, IFK Göteborg's keeper Kim Christensen took it upon himself to move the posts of his goal toward each other, shaving valuable inches off the opponents' target. How do we know? TV cameras caught it all. Whoops.
Amazingly, this isn't the first time he's done it.
I got the tip from a goalkeeping friend a few years ago, and since then I have done it from time to time," he told the Aftonbladet newspaper. In Swedish football, goalposts rest on top of the playing field, making them prime targets for cheaters.
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The obvious answer would be to make non-adjustable goals, but I suppose that's why I'm not the Allsvenskan Konung.
The match ended scoreless, so while Christensen faces a fine and suspension, his little tactic worked. Which is no surprise. It would be like
•Painting 5 more yards on the field when your opponent is driving.
•Making the opponents hoop a little smaller, like at those carnival games.
•Giving Livan Hernandez a three-foot wide strike zone in the 1997 NLCS.
Oh wait...
Keeper Guilty of Moving Goalposts [BBC]
Danish Goalie For Swedish Soccer Team Is A Cheating Bastard [Sportress of Blogitude]


text:
The U.S. Cyber Policy Blitz
Over the past week, the White House has announced two big plans for improving Internet security. One is an international policy that seeks to promote Internet freedom while cracking down on the theft of intellectual property. The other is a domestic legislative proposal whose key features include tightening data-breach notification laws.
In recent years, dozens of cybersecurity bills have been introduced. One would have required the White House to generate detailed reports on the extent of cybercrime emanating from each nation. But the international strategy announced Monday took a broader tack, calling, among other things, for federal agencies, including the State and Defense departments, to work with counterparts abroad to forge partnerships in crime fighting. The plan recommends establishing Internet security standards and imposing some penalties on countries that don't comply with them.
"This is a milestone in our national effort to ensure secure and reliable networks for Americans, businesses, and government; fundamentally, this proposal strikes a critical balance between maintaining the government's role and providing industry with the capacity to innovatively tackle threats to national cybersecurity. Just as importantly, it does so while providing a robust framework to protect civil liberties and privacy," Howard Schmidt, the top White House cybersecurity official, wrote in a blog post. Later, he told Bloomberg News: "We want nation states to be unified behind a vision like this so we can send a clear message to bad actors that there's going to be no place for them to operate in the international sphere."
The international plan also highlighted the importance of preventing theft of intellectual property. Two years ago, the White House, citing industry estimates, said the toll of such theft was $1 trillion in 2008. The same plan also calls for greater Internet freedoms worldwide, which is an effort to counteract some recent trends. Only last month, the Russian Federal Security Service announced that services like Gmail and Skype should be banned, though the Russian minister of communications reassured the world that the country does not plan to introduce "tight and total police control over the Internet."
Last Friday, the White House also announced elements of a domestic legislative proposal. Its centerpiece was a proposed federal law harmonizing how companies must report data breaches that expose personal information. Right now, this practice is governed by a patchwork of 47 state laws. The Obama administration also said it wants to toughen penalties for cyberattacks, including by expanding racketeering laws so that they would also cover online crime.
Responding to concerns that critical U.S. infrastructure—much of which is privately owned—was vulnerable to cyberattack, the domestic proposal calls for new requirements for financial institutions, power grid operators, and water companies, among others, to develop security plans that would have to be audited for their efficacy. It also would give the Department of Homeland Security a clear mandate to protect government computer networks.
For all their scope, the proposals would stop short in a key way: they wouldn't enhance the government's collection of data about cybersecurity, says Stefan Savage, a computer security researcher at the University of California, San Diego. The White House's efforts would neither require detailed disclosures on the extent of financial losses caused by hacking and cybercrime at home, nor would they generate a detailed nation-by-nation accounting for the sources of cybercrime abroad. Without full data on the sources of the problem and the extent of the actual damage, it's harder to prioritize the allocation of resources, notes Savage. "Cybersecurity generates lots of hyperbole, but absent data about the real costs, it's pretty hard to know that the money you're spending makes sense," he says.
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text:
Teacher, artist, volunteer, lifesaver … at one time or another, Peter Davis, chief of the Galveston Island Beach Patrol, has been all of these.
Today, as an international advocate for drowning prevention, he is using the skills and talents developed through a variety of unique experiences to raise awareness and improve water safety around the world.
A Galveston, Texas, native, Davis says his family has been part of the community for seven generations. He began lifeguarding in high school and joined the city beach patrol after a few years' experience guarding at a local pool. Davis attended Trinity University in San Antonio, where he graduated in 1987 with a psychology degree. His intention was to become an art therapist. He received a graduate degree in fine arts from the University of California, Davis in 1997, but professionally he's forged a career in aquatics.
He took a full-time position on the Galveston Island Beach Patrol in 1992. Since then, he has held a variety of positions in the organization, including lifeguard supervisor, training officer and media liaison.
"Part of the reason that I came into aquatics is that it combines a lot of what I love," says Davis, 46. "Through aquatics, you can do a whole lot of good for people. That's a big pull for me."
As a leader on the beach patrol, Davis has focused a significant amount of energy on developing public education programs geared toward bringing water safety information to Galveston's large Latino immigrant community, which has historically included a large percentage of nonswimmers.
Creative outreach efforts that Davis helped facilitate include school programs, camps, and Spanish-language television media coverage.
Right after college, he spent time teaching in Botswana, Africa. He says that experience showed him what it means to be part of a global community.
The lesson stayed with him, and in 2001 he facilitated an exchange program between the Galveston Island Beach Patrol and Vera Cruz, Mexico. A year later he helped establish a beach lifeguarding program in Venezuela. Since then, both programs have continued to grow, and today there are well-trained guards on the beaches in Mexico and Venezuela, helping to further spread the water safety message in their communities.
In addition to those efforts, Davis is secretary general - Americas Region for the International Lifesaving Federation, focusing on building similar sustainable programs throughout North and South America. He's also involved with the United States Lifesaving Association, currently serving as vice president.
Davis recognized the need for effective communication early in his career and in working with the various Spanish-speaking communities, he became reasonably fluent. Looking ahead, he hopes to foster better communication between various international stakeholder groups, to help address global drowning rates. That means creating connections between various lifeguarding and water-safety groups and partnerships with agencies outside of aquatics, such as public health organizations.
"The lifeguard community has a skill set in a certain area, but it's a very small piece of the global drowning epidemic puzzle," Davis says. "We have to have an overall master plan."


text:
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think that seeing the picture of a man placing his face against her wife's pregnant body is something beautiful and 'touching,' which is in fact only me acting from a preprogrammed accepted symbolism of seeing motherhood/ parenthood as one of the 'miracles in the world,' which I've had mixed and encountered opinions about throughout my life, yet most likely always having seen it as something rather disgusting and disturbing, within this
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be confuse about motherhood and being pregnant and having children, because of having condemned it for the past second half of my life wherein I have been diligently exposing why Not brining kids into this world is a sane and responsible decision, yet when I read about 'becoming a parent' I obviously react in fear and absolute denial because of the disgust that I've held toward the entire pregnancy process that a woman endures.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to let the moment 'go by' whenever I got this awful reactions by watching both of my niece an nephew's 'birth time' on a screen, wherein I was absolutely horrified by the entire scenario, almost like watching some massacre on the screen and becoming disgusted and having this nausea in my stomach, yet being confused as to not being able to word it to anyone else because: everyone else was just laughing and crying of joy.
I forgive myself that I ever accepted and allowed myself to believe that there was 'something wrong' within me because I would see the point of being pregnant and giving birth as an obvious disturbing process, and within this having mixed-thoughts, perspectives and emotions about it, which indicates that I haven't established my perspective about this for the obvious fear that I have of ever being pregnant which is a point that I have vowed myself to not do in this life.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to keep within me the memory of me feeling guilty the moment that my mother explained the damages done to her body due to her last birthing process which was myself, and as I write this a pulse in the heart comes through as a sense of anxiety that implies I took it personal and believed that: I was the cause of her body being so disrupted throughout my birthing process.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to from that moment on take things personal and believing that anything that would go 'wrong' was my fault, just because of this image and imprint I have of my mother pointing her finger at me when explaining to someone how much her skin and body was fucked ever since she had me, which made feel like the scum of the Earth that had come to ruin her life.
I forgive myself that I ever accepted and allowed myself to have thoughts of me not having been a 'desired baby' and that I had been a 'mistake' just because of all the jokes they would always tell about me being adopted from a bunch of sinful nuns – lol – this is no joke!
Okay lol, I give some context. I was born in a catholic/ nun type of hospital and my parents and sisters would joke with me how I wasn't really their daughter/ sister, but that I had been given in adoption by a 'sinful nun' at the hospital, which would explain 'why' I was such an alien in the family, according to them. 'Funny thing' is that from joke to joke I came to believe that I was actually 'not from the family' and believed myself to really not having been desired – which brings up another point
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to ever take it personal for having been a 'baby girl' instead of the boy that both my parents were expecting me to be. And within this, having lived a life of believing that I wasn't Fully accepted or desired in the family, which fed my pattern of dissociating from it and eventually becoming the direct opposite of 'who they are' in order to establish myself as that which I thought they had seen me as throughout my entire life: an alien, a last moment addition or a mistake.
I forgive myself that I ever accepted and allowed myself to keep thoughts within me of not having been desired in my family, which lead me to this 'low self esteem' and rather self-belittling type of judgment that I embodied as a personality that would decisively imply: I am in this family but not of/ from this family.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to harbor thoughts that me having an umbilical cord around my neck made me create an ultimate hell within my very first experience within my mother's womb, which lead me to spite her for having left me more time in there even if I was ready to get out and was almost a bit 'too late' to come out
I forgive myself that I ever accepted and allowed myself to harbor this 'irrational' irritation if not hatred toward my progenitors for having brought me into this world that I many times claimed to not wanting to be here.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to ever think that I was a last-minute nuisance to my family and within this, feed my own beliefs of 'not being wanted' and essentially victimizing myself, which would come as irrational thoughts because I was never actually told that 'I was not desired/ wanted' – I formulated this all in my head – and I realize that even if such words were uttered from my family members, I would still not have to take it personal as each person is speaking from their own self-experience, which is at the moment for everyone in this world not aligned within a principle of what's best for all, which is how and why Self Forgiveness is the basic way to establish a point of understanding toward one another, because we have all aced in ways that were simply instigated by a survival system within our own minds, which entailed no consideration or common sense regard toward life itself.
I realize that I am simply the product of a basic union of two physical bodies and minds that generated who and what I currently am, which implies that I am equal to and one with everyone else that is also here and that has been exiting/ coming into this world within the same ways wherein: we are all responsible for never having questioned the most basic process of 'giving birth' and establishing common sense as to the realization of what is it in fact that we are bringing to Earth as ourselves, as our 'mint copy' that is certainly requiring proper and specific understanding of how we have created ourselves/ our world – and in that, taking our own lives by the hand, walking a process of self-forgiveness to release any form of usual retaliation and vengeful thoughts toward parents, or 'the system' or whoever else in separation of ourselves
I commit myself to walk this point in Self Honesty to get to a point where I no longer react in absolute horror, disgust, fear and even petrification when thinking, watching, seeing someone pregnant, seeing the birth of a human being in this world – walking in absolute breath to not react emotionally toward it and instead dedicate myself to first remove the conditions that I have accepted as a relationship of cultural brainwashing toward seeing pregnancy as something 'beautiful' in pictures and words – yet revolting in disgust and horror when seeing the real deal of what it entails to give birth and take care of a child.
I commit myself to stop any reaction toward parents that are bringing kids into this world, as I realize that as long as I hold this inherent hatred toward 'them' for 'bringing more children into this world' I am only spiting myself as life as well. So, this is a point that is not yet walked and that I can only at the moment,commit myself to continue educating myself in the Heaven's Journey to Life blog which is the perfect educational platform that is walked as self-forgiveness to actually learn what really goes on within a birthing process from the moment of conception and inception in this world, wherein I am exorcizing all the experiences that I had not been able to give a name to for myself.
I commit myself to breathe every time that I see myself having either emotions and feelings when looking at pregnant women or women with small children – as well as both parents with their children, which is stopping the cultural programming of seeing a family nucleus as something 'beautiful,' without really being aware of what this is actually entailing in a holistic manner from all relationship perspectives that I am most likely not aware of through and by only looking at a picture.
I commit myself to stop the spitefulness that I tend to secretly project onto any pregnant woman that I see on the streets, for having projected this spitefulness toward my sisters and my mother in a way and in that, make sure I walk my own process of removing fear and love and hate and disgust toward pregnancy/ parenting itself as the physical act of brining another child into this world.
"I commit myself to, take responsibility for me as the Mind Consciousness System relationship to and as my Physical-Body, to be/become a living example for generations to come, in standing and living the solution to the current internal and external consequence the Mind is manifesting to the Physical-Body and the World-System of Money is manifesting to the Physical-Existence, within and as the current accepted and allowed relationship of 'give and take' as the 'act of love' as sacrifice, to show that – this 'Love' is not the 'Love' that unconditionally Gift/Give Life, but in fact manifest the relationship of 'death and life' as sacrifice, where one parts gives/dies for the other to take/live that's manifested as the relationship between physicality and energy. And thus, within this: that Energy/Mind is not Life, as there is no real Life existent within this process as the 'death' of the physical and the finite 'life' of and as the Mind/Energy through the physical sacrificing itself, and so – what we're in fact existing as within this existence is Death-itself for and as Survival, as we're always in a constant/continuous process of 'physically dying' – internally and externally as the physical-body and this physical-existence for the Mind to finitely exist/survive and for the World-System of Money to survive. That – if survival exist, through the 'death and life' process of the physical and the Mind/World-System: Life/Living cannot exist." Sunette Spies [*]
This is a life commitment to educate myself and other beings that are willing to be parents, to ensure no more consequence is being born , but instead LIFE is born from the physical. This will most definitely continue as we have ever rarely asked ourselves about that moment of coming into this world and our experiences stemming from that relationship that is talked out later on with our own mother/ father and 'who we are' within 'their world,' and who they are within 'our world,' which is the primary relationship that I see and realize is important to walk in order to remove all the basic system-conditioning that we are all subject to by virtue of coming into this world.
Desteni I Process – The basic course to first establish the most important relationship you'll have: yourself in equality.
Blogs to learn about WHO YOU REALLY ARE as Life
Self-Supportive Interviews:
Life Review – Losing Sight of Life is an interview that 'moved' me in the sense of pondering what am I actually doing with my life and how this point of 'having kids' and being a parent within this world is often side viewed when only pursuing a 'career' – suggested to anyone facing that midlife crisis in life.