text:
In the latest on the ongoing legal dispute between the New York Attorney General (NYAG), cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and stablecoin issuer Tether, the New York Supreme Court has modified an April 24, 2019, preliminary injunction and now Bitfinex is allowed to continue using the Tether reserves that were loaned to it to maintain its ordinary course of business, such as paying employees and consultants. But Bitfinex may not withdraw any further funds from the Tether reserve and must comply with all document requests pursuant to the NYAG investigation. This modified preliminary injunction went into effect on May 16, 2019, and will last for 90 days.
History of the Dispute
On April 24, 2019, the Office of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Commercial Division granted an order submitted by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) requiring Bitfinex/Tether to provide information under the Martin Act. The Court granted a preliminary injunction restricting Bitfinex/Tether from further violating the Martin Act including engaging in "fraudulent, deceptive, or illegal acts," and "employing any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud or obtain money or property by means of false pretense, representation, or promise."
Bitfinex/Tether objected that the OAG gave no warning, despite being in close communication with them, and pleaded to the court to modify the order. There was a hearing on May 6, 2019, and the court found that Bitfinex/Tether needed to produce some more evidence but agreed the preliminary injunction should also be modified.
The primary concern raised by the court is that, on February 21, 2019, the OAG learned that Bitfinex was contemplating a transaction that would allow Bitfinex to draw upon Tether's cash reserves on an as-needed basis. The OAG had serious concerns about the viability of Bitfinex and whether any money it "borrowed" could ever be repaid to the Tether reserves. Bitfinex/Tether disregarded these concerns and established paperwork for a $900 million line of credit with Tether's reserves and notified the OAG two days later, on March 29, 2019. As it turned out, $625 million had already been borrowed back in November 2018, so this line-of-credit paperwork appeared to be an attempt to get the ducks in a row after the fact. The loan left Tether with $150 million in its reserves and the NYAG suspected that this could be dissipated at any time. Bitfinex/Tether adamantly maintained it was a proper, arms-length transaction.
This resulted in the April 24, 2019, court ordered document production and injunction, forbidding Bitfinex from accessing the Tether reserves for any reason whatsoever.
It appears that the court has received a lot of the documents it was requesting from Bitfinex/Tether, which was a primary purpose of placing the injunction. So, on May 16, 2019, the court modified the injunction. The court noted that its injunction powers through New York Business Law and The Martin Act are limited beyond the scope of forcing document production: "[the applicable law] does not provide a roving mandate to regulate commercial activity by subjects or targets of a Martin Act investigation."
The court found that the NYAG made a sufficient showing to meet the very high standards required for a preliminary injunction that would prevent Bitfinex/Tether from continuing to let dollars flow out of Tether's reserves while the investigation continues. The court revised the preliminary injunction to strike a balance between protecting the public and protecting Bitfinex/Tether from undue business restrictions. The initial temporary injunction was found to be vague, overbroad and not preliminary because it had no end point. It prevented Bitfinex/Tether from "further violations of the law or committing fraud."
The May 16 Order
The court reworded the preliminary injunction so as not to restrain Bitfinex/Tether from ordinary business activities. Now Bitfinex/Tether and their agents are prohibited from
- Any use of Tether's reserves by Bitfinex
- Making any distributions or dividends to any of the high-level associates of Bitfinex/Tether using funds that were already borrowed from Tether's reserves ( this does not include payments in the ordinary course of business, such as payroll, payments to vendors, consultants, contractors, etc.)
- Directly or indirectly tampering with or destroying any evidence (including a long list of documents/communications) or other information requested by the NYAG's November 27, 2018, or February 26, 2018, (this may be a typo, I think the court meant 2019) document requests.
This preliminary injunction will last 90 days beginning from May 16, 2019.
Meanwhile, Bitfinex appears to have raised $1 billion privately over 10 days, according to its CTO, Paolo Ardoino, on Twitter.
This is an op ed by Sasha Hodder. Opinions expressed are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bitcoin Magazine or BTC Inc.


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I am a light phone talker. If you look at my call history, you'll see maybe one or two calls a day, if that. My bread and butter is email and texting, so I thought I might try out the Peek Pronto, a device that claims to do those two things and those two things only. And with no monthly service fee (with a higher purchase price), it sounded like a killer deal to me. I even ended up using credit card reward points to purchase the device, so I was out of pocket nothing. So how did I like the Peek Pronto? Did it change my non-verbal telecommunications world? Keep reading...
Setup Process
For a device that is supposed to highlight simplicity, even the setup process failed. Sure, it would have been nice and simple if it worked, but my setup wasn't. I think the device is supposed to instantly work as soon as you power it on, but I was told to go to the website to register it. But when I tried to register it, it told me to call customer service. Once I got on the phone with the customer service rep, she said the 1-year prepaid plan I ordered with the device didn't attach itself for some reason, and that she would have to send an email to the billing department. I asked if I could just be transferred, and she told me she was in Arizona and the billing department was in New York and "didn't have phones" because they're an email company, "like the Peek." I'm sorry, what?? Even when I asked if I could be transferred, there was instantly an attitude in her voice. From her voice, it sounded like she was from Atlanta.
Anyway, she told me she'd call by Friday, two days later, a length of time that seemed unreasonable for activating a simple email device.
Having struck out here, I decided to try tweeting @peekinc. An hour later, my device was working and a couple hours later, I received a follow-up call by someone else making sure my device was working. I think she was from the billing department. I though they didn't have phones.
A couple hours after that, I got an @reply on Twitter from @peekinc, confirming that I was up and running. To their credit, they probably looked up my Peek account from my name that displays on Twitter, which I was mildly impressed with, given that most customer service reps would probably ask for a name rather than fact checking for themselves.
SummaryLike I said at the beginning, I really had high hopes for the Peek Pronto. I wanted to love it so much that I could use it for all my email and sms, and maybe even switch my current phone plan to a prepaid plan. But unfortunately, it's implementation is less than perfect. I don't even think this is a good device for small businesses that want an affordable way to load up their employees with email-only devices. I will definitely be returning the thing. I will keep my eyes open for a new Peek device - maybe something more expensive with an implementation that can really blow it's featureset out of the park. I would definitely pay a lot of money for something that could do what this device does well (with little or no monthly fee), but at this point, the Peek Pronto is not a good contender in the marketplace. I kind of expected more from Peek, since this isn't their first offering. I watched some videos of the CEO presenting the device and talking about it on national news, and he seems like a smart guy. I just really hope that he guides the company in a direction that will product FUNCTIONAL devices, rather than low cost crap devices like the Peek Pronto and the TwitterPeek, which, I don't think I have to tell you, is a device that will go nowhere. Despite all of this, I'm rooting for you, Peek!

subset: commoncrawl


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In Alabama, not a whole lot of love for Obamacare
- Market dynamics mean pain for consumers in states like Ala.%2C Ark. N.C. and N.H.
- In Alabama%2C BlueCross%2C the dominant insurer%2C blames the Affordable Care Act
- Many who see rates climbing won%27t qualify for a subsidy%2C either
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The letters landed in early October, canceling health plans for thousands of BlueCross BlueShield of Alabama members and offering to enroll them in new coverage often at substantially higher cost.
"I thought my plan might go up like $30. I didn't know it was going to (nearly) double" to $478 a month, said Merry Hardy, who is self-employed and lives in Alexander City, in the middle of the state.
BlueCross, like Hardy, blames the Affordable Care Act, which it says disallows current, less expensive insurance for about 80,000 of its Alabama customers starting next year.
But others see insurance market dynamics as a big part of the problem. Because it covers about 90% of the Alabama individual market, BlueCross faces little competition and few reasons to lower prices, critics say.
In the Huntsville area, where only BlueCross and Humana offer plans through the federal government's online exchange, the least expensive, medium-level "silver" policy for a 50-year-old costs $352 a month. A hundred miles north in Nashville, where four insurers compete, the least expensive silver policy costs $253, or 28% less. These prices don't take into account the federal tax credit subsidy many buyers will receive.
People in other states face similar situations. Single companies dominate individual insurance in New Hampshire, Arkansas, North Carolina and elsewhere, leaving limited options in the online marketplaces.
An analysis of the three dozen states relying on the federal marketplace shows that, on average, the least expensive silver plan costs 34% more in regions with one or two insurers selling through the marketplace than in regions with at least eight insurers.
Aside from ads urging people to enroll in new plans, BlueCross, an independent non-profit, is saying little except that existing plans won't comply with the law in 2014 and that new requirements such as accepting consumers with medical problems are affecting premiums. CEO Terry Kellogg declined to grant an interview.
An online calculator showed Robin Cotton, a Democrat and real estate agent who lives outside Huntsville, that her family's premium for a medium-level silver policy, with a subsidy, would slightly decline next year to $282, she said.
Consumers with incomes of up to about $46,000 for individuals and $94,000 for a family of four get tax credits to help cover the premiums.
Insurers may offer several types of plans under the health law ranging from a bronze policy, which pays 60% of an average patient's costs for essential benefits, to platinum, which covers 90% of average costs.
With an income of about $76,000 for a household of two, Beth Biggs, 49, a non-profit executive in Montgomery who describes herself as a political independent, said she won't qualify for subsidies.
Under the replacement silver plan offered by BlueCross, her monthly premium would rise 38% to $345 and her deductible would increase from $750 to $2,000. She's not especially mollified by the health law requirement that plans cover essential benefits, eliminate caps on claims and limit annual out-of-pocket costs.
"Those of us who were hoping this was going to be a good thing are now realizing we're … going to be hurting so many middle-class families," she said.
Hardy, 56, a single Republican who runs a storm-shelter installation business, said she won't qualify for subsidies, either. Her monthly cost would rise 77% to $478, and her deductible would increase by a third, to $2,000. She plans to look for a non-BlueCross plan.
That may be difficult. BlueCross is the only carrier selling coverage statewide through the exchange. Other carriers hold tiny pieces of the individual coverage market and often offer smaller networks of doctors and hospitals.
"Nothing changed in Alabama" after health law provisions kicked in, said Chad Gay, an insurance broker based near Birmingham. "In 2013, you've got Blue Cross, United and Humana. In 2014, you've got Humana, Blue Cross — and outside the exchange — United. Same players, higher rates. Great."
KHN reporter Jordan Rau contributed.
Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.


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Ghana's Vice President, John Mahama, has secured the release of Daniel Baidoo, a Ghanaian evangelist based in Libya, who was serving a 25-year jail term for circulating Christian tracts in Arabic in that country, reports Daniel Abugah, special to ASSIST News Service.
The release followed Mr. Mahama's three-day visit to Libya after he had presented the clemency request for the release of Baidoo to the Libyan Leader, Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi, through Dr. Al-Sayeed, a Libyan Envoy who called on him at his office at the Castle, Osu in Accra.
Vice President Mahama had held discussions with the special envoy where he presented a formal letter appealing for clemency through the Libyan Embassy in Accra to the Libyan Leader before he traveled to that country.
Baidoo was serving his term at Jedidah Maximum Security Prison after he was arrested in 2001. He was arrested at the Garyan Post Office in Libya when he collected a parcel said to contain Bible documents in Arabic, which he had ordered from a Christian organization in the US.
Under Libyan Law, it is an offence to witness or try to convert a Libyan into another religion other than Islam.
Report from the Christian Telegraph


text:
Pretoria: Oscar Pistorius vomited in the dock and retched repeatedly and loudly at his murder trial on Monday as he heard graphic details of the injuries sustained by the girlfriend he shot, including a head wound that was probably instantly fatal according to the pathologist who performed her autopsy.
Reeva Steenkamp was shot with bullets designed to expand on impact and cause maximum damage, Prof. Gert Saayman testified after he identified the type of bullet from fragments in Steenkamp's skull.
Saayman's testimony was not broadcast or reported live on Twitter by journalists because of its explicit content under an order from Judge Thokozile Masipa. However, journalists were allowed to report the testimony without directly quoting the witness's words.
The double-amputee runner, hunched over on a bench, vomited when he heard the description of Steenkamp's wounds, prompting Masipa to briefly halt the testimony to ask chief defense lawyer Barry Roux to attend to his client. The judge also asked whether Pistorius was able to understand the proceedings. Roux said Pistorius' reaction was not going to change. A bucket was placed at his feet.
After court adjourned for the day, Pistorius sat for a few minutes with his hands over his ears and his body heaving and bent forward as his brother held a hand on his back.
Saayman stood for much of his testimony, referring to photographs that were not shown to the gallery as he described bullet wounds on Steenkamp's body, one to the right side of the head, one to the right arm and one to the right hip area. He also described exit wounds caused by the bullets and other abrasions and discoloration of the skin, consistent with the impact of a bullet fired through a wooden object such as a door.
Saayman said that each of the three main gunshot wounds Steenkamp suffered could have been fatal in isolation. Steenkamp's right arm was also broken and she had multiple skull fractures, both because of the effect of bullets, Saayman said.
There was another wound on one of Steenkamp's hands, Saayman said. Steenkamp, a model and personality on a television reality show, was wearing a pair of sports shorts with a Nike logo, a former sponsor of Pistorius, and a black undershirt when she was shot, he said.
Saayman also gave his expert opinion on how long before she died Steenkamp last ate by the food contents in her stomach. He estimated that it wouldn't have been more than two hours before she died. That appeared to contradict Pistorius' version that suggests the couple had eaten and were in bed by 10 p.m. Steenkamp was shot after 3 a.m.
Pistorius, the first amputee to run in the Olympics, is charged with premeditated murder for 29-year-old Steenkamp's shooting death before dawn on Feb. 14, 2013. Pistorius, 27, says the killing was accidental because he thought his girlfriend was a dangerous intruder when he shot her through the door of a toilet cubicle in his home.
Earlier, prosecutor Gerrie Nel, supported by chief defense lawyer Barry Roux, said Saayman's testimony would have an "explicitly graphic nature" and should not be shown around the world. Masipa then announced a ban on live audio and video broadcasting, and extended the order to live reporting on social media.
"Twitter is not allowed. Blogging is not allowed," Masipa said.
Proceedings can be partly televised and the audio can be broadcast in its entirety under a judge's pre-trial order that sought to balance the right to a fair trial with the intense public interest in the Pistorius case and the principle of open justice. Under the order, witnesses can choose not to be shown on television.
Earlier Monday, Masipa extended that order, saying "private witnesses are more vulnerable than public figures" and that still photographs of witnesses who requested privacy cannot be published or disseminated for the duration of the trial, even if they were obtained from sources outside the courtroom.
Earlier Monday, a security guard who said he spoke with Pistorius soon after the shooting of Steenkamp was challenged by the defense about his recollection of the sequences of the events that night.
The sequence is important for the defense because, if it can prove that Pistorius called security first, it could support the contention that he was seeking help as quickly as possible.
The guard, Pieter Baba, had testified Friday that he called Pistorius and was told "everything is fine" on the telephone. Baba said Pistorius then called him back moments later, didn't speak, was crying and the second call then ended.
Baba said he was responding to neighbors' reports of gunshots coming from Pistorius' home after 3 a.m. on Valentine's Day last year. He drove with a fellow guard to Pistorius' villa and made the call from outside the house.
Baba's statement that he called Pistorius first could back the prosecution's case that the killing was premeditated, and that Pistorius was trying, at least initially, to conceal what he had done.
On Monday, however, Roux said call records showed Pistorius called security first, but couldn't speak because he was "indeed crying."
The 27-year-old Pistorius says the killing was accidental because he thought his girlfriend was a dangerous intruder in a toilet cubicle in his home.


text: Warjacks are the core of your Warmachine army's weapons. They are steam-powered mechanical constructs, guided by a pseudo-magical super-computer cortex. They are an all-in-one tank and heavy artillery combo. In short, huge, lumbering, chunky mothers with big guns and armour. To get the most out of your Warjack, you need a Warcaster who can Focus their power on the right target.


text:
The One and I wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, so we got up early to make a video. Why we didn't think to do this last week, when we weren't rushed, I'll never know. But at least you can see the snowfall through the windows on this white Christmas.
And if you're curious as to the recipes we're making for our Christmas dinner, here they are:
Beef Wellington
Braised Carrots with Orange and Rosemary
Old-Fashioned Potato Gratin
Hershey Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting (The frosting is from Epicurious, and we have adapted a million ways from Sunday. So I can't give you an exact recipe.)
Now, we're very curious as to what you making today. So comment below and send any pictures here. We'll post them with your comments.


text:
Everywhere you look these days, sale signs are wallpapering store windows, and e-mail accounts and mailboxes are being deluged with special-discount coupons. "Chalk it all up to retailers' anxiety. They're nervously tossing out promotions to lure reluctant consumers back to the checkout counter," explains Erin Armendinger, managing director of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. But if you feel overwhelmed and want to know the most important bargain-shopping rules for this turbulent economy, here's help. Try these five tactics for getting rock-bottom prices in the sea of sales:
1. Stack Discounts and Store Sales
If you're not combining retailer sales with a print coupon, Web code, or other discount, you're probably not getting the most for your money. "I've never seen so many deals on in-season clothing," says Kim McGowan, founder of the sale-tracking site markdownalert.com. Make sure you're maximizing discount potential by searching the Internet for your favorite retailers and "coupon" before hitting the mall or shopping online, she says. For fast hunting, bookmark retailmenot.com, couponcabin.com, and — of course — Good Housekeeping's Good Deals Blog as your go-to sites for the best of currently available coupons. One example of this strategy put into practice: Kohl's was recently having a sale on bath rugs, with a $30 striped mat marked down to $15; by using an additional 30-percent-off coupon, it could be nabbed for just $10.50.
Save bigger: It also helps if you're on the store's frequent-shopper mailing and e-mail lists, says Jackie Pobiega. The Charlotte, NC, resident saved 50 percent on new outfits for her kids earlier this year after receiving advance notice of a sale at her local outlet mall. "You can always unsubscribe if the e-mails don't suit your needs or become annoying," she says. Just be careful that they don't lure you into buying more than you really need.
2. Shop in High-Income Zip Codes
Avid thrift store customers know to head to shops in the fancier parts of town. There, you're more likely to find well-known brands and good-quality clothing, furniture, and other items at a discount, says Cindy Chapman, a spokeswoman for the social-networking site momslikeme.com. (The deal hunter, based in Minneapolis, confesses to having a closetful of designer cashmere sweaters plucked from the $1.49 bargain bin.) In New York City, designers — such as Marc Jacobs — and retailers donate some of their inventory from seasons past to nonprofit Housing Works, which uses the proceeds from its chain of thrift shops to fight AIDS and homelessness. And practically every city has thrift stores that sell kids' clothes and gear; the ones in tony areas can yield great buys and high quality.
More From Good Housekeeping
3. Learn the Sales Cycle
Retailers have specific days when they put out new stock and mark down merchandise, so ask the next time you're in the store and then sync up your shopping with its schedule. For instance, Chapman notes that her local Gap Outlet store seems to mark down merchandise like clockwork on Wednesday evenings — yielding racks and racks of freshly discounted apparel for Thursday's shoppers. Many retailers move merchandise to the sale rack within six weeks of the time it first shows up on shelves. And at liquidation sales, the key date to ask about is closing. "Liquidation sales do offer good deals, but only right before the store shuts down for good," says Monica Pedersen, a designer for HGTV's Designed to Sell. At that point, you can reap savings of 75 percent off or better. Tip for thrift store shoppers: Most people don't have time to clean out their closets and drop off unwanted goods at thrift stores until the weekend, reasons Jennifer Sheran of Snellville, GA. That's why she visits on Tuesdays, when new merchandise fills the racks and the store is less crowded.
4. Weigh How You Pay
Know when to pony up the cash and when to rely on plastic; it usually depends on where you're shopping. At thrift shops, cash is typically the best option, says Pedersen. Stores may be willing to offer a discount in exchange for your helping them avoid the pricey merchant fees on credit card transactions — but you probably won't know that unless you ask. To negotiate, ask: "If I pay with cash, might I be able to get a discount?"
But definitely stick with a credit card for liquidators and other places where sales are final, cautions Edgar Dworsky, founder of consumerworld.org, a consumer resource guide. "Sometimes you can't tell anything is wrong with the item in the store," he says. Many stores don't allow you to open product boxes or test items before taking them home; there have been horror stories stemming from going-out-of-business sales, including that of a couple who were stuck with a smashed flat-screen TV after Circuit City's closeout. When you pay with a credit card, the Fair Credit Billing Act gives you the right to dispute a charge for items that are not delivered as agreed. Many cards also offer helpful perks, says Dworsky. Most gold credit cards double the manufacturer's warranty, adding up to another year of free protection. (And did you know that if you buy a product with the Good Housekeeping Seal and it proves defective, it's Good Housekeeping, not the manufacturer, who replaces the item or refunds your money?)
5. Do Some Post-Purchase Research
Once you're home after making a major purchase, sign up for price-drop alerts through sites like priceprotectr.com. They can help you grab the onetime price adjustment many stores offer should the price you pay drop in the store or at a competitor shortly after purchase — so if you buy a TV for $349 and then the price goes down to $319 a week later, the store could reimburse you for the difference if it has such a policy. In this economy, that's a move more and more retailers are willing to make.


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COVID-19 RATs are an example of these types of tests but we are interested in the many others on the market.
The University of Wollongong is conducting a small study about them and we'd like to hear from you if you have used one or considered using one.
Simply complete a short survey at:
From here, we may invite you to take part in a paid interview.
For more information, contact Dr Patti Shih: email@example.com
When you have a pathology test it's usually either because your GP or specialist doctor has requested it, or you are in hospital and tests are needed as part of your diagnosis, treatment or care.
Today, laboratory testing is performed in many different settings, from the large, highly automated central laboratory that performs thousands of tests a day to your own home, where you might do a pregnancy test or monitor your blood glucose levels.
Samples can be blood, urine, a throat or nose swab or a piece of tissue - even a biopsy taken while you are under anaesthetic on the operating table. Once collected, they must be delivered to the lab. Depending on the type of tests you are having your samples could go to any one or more of a number of different types of labs.
All laboratories are not the same for the simple reason that not all tests are the same. Just as tests vary in complexity, and the technology needed to perform them, so too laboratories vary in their complexity, the numbers and types of tests they can perform, the professionals who staff them and the technology they have available.
In Australia a large proportion of laboratory testing is done outside the public hospital system in private pathology laboratories. Most testing requested by family doctors, specialists in private practice and by doctors working in private hospitals, is referred to private pathology laboratories. In the state capitals and larger cities there are big private diagnostic laboratories that are actually not a single lab but a cluster of many specialist labs or departments. They employ hundreds of people – pathologists, scientists, technicians and many support staff. There are also smaller private diagnostic laboratories, especially in regional towns, which are generalists handling the common tests and sometimes a few special tests. These are often one or two person pathology practices with support staff.
Hospital labs run 24-hours, seven days a week and are geared to emergency work as well as the often life-threatening illnesses they see on a regular basis. Tests that are performed include those that are needed in emergency situations (such as markers for heart attacks and tests needed for checking the suitability of blood for transfusion) and those done in large numbers which require automated testing analysers. Hospital laboratories are generally used by inpatients and outpatients for the particular hospital. However, as a patient you may never visit the laboratory unless your doctor asks you to go there to have a sample taken.
Hospital laboratories are usually organised into sections depending on the type of testing to be performed. For example, there are usually sections for microbiology (the study of bacteria and viruses), haematology (the study of blood cells), clinical biochemistry (the study of the chemical composition of the blood), blood transfusion and anatomical pathology (testing of tissue samples).
Smaller laboratories are attached to regional hospitals, spread thoughout most states in Australia.
Laboratory tests may also be performed at the actual point of care - in other words, where the patient is (at the bedside or in the GP surgery or clinic) rather than in a distant laboratory. Laboratory tests in these places are usually limited to uncomplicated tests. Tests done at the point of care tend to be time-consuming for the personnel involved and relatively expensive compared to laboratory tests, but they are more convenient for patients and provide rapid results.
Point of care testing is increasing as technological advances bring about portable devices that are easy to use and produce immediate results. Examples include blood glucose tests, blood gas monitoring systems and analysers for tests for blood clotting and to detect heart attacks.
Tests performed at the point of care must comply with standards just like those performed in central laboratories (see Laboratory Accreditation article), and proper systems of quality control should be operated. It is expected that point of care testing will continue to develop as new devices become available, in part because they may reduce delays and provide immediate information to doctors, allowing more timely medical treatment.
Some tests are being adapted for use at home as patients take on responsibility for their health care. Common home tests include pregnancy tests and ovulation predictors for women, blood glucose monitors for diabetics and prothrombin-time tests to monitor the doses of drugs that prevent clotting of the blood.
Home tests are usually bought over the counter at pharmacies. Some may require a doctor's prescription in order to obtain reimbursement. The advantages of home tests include convenience and rapid results.
However, while the devices appear simple it is possible to obtain the wrong results if the instructions that accompany the device or test are not carefully followed. Such instructions include information on the correct storage of strips or other reagents and using the right type of sample whether blood or urine.
It may also be necessary to seek professional advice to understand the significance of a particular result and you should obtain this from your doctor or pharmacist.
Other home tests are available over the internet but users should be cautious about their use since at the moment there is no way to be sure that these devices conform to specific quality requirements. Again, you should discuss the suitability of these tests with your doctor.
Tests that are less-commonly performed or that require special equipment or expertise may be referred to a specialist laboratory elsewhere. They are staffed by pathologists and scientists with high-levels of expertise in performing complicated and unusual tests – esoteric tests. Many of these tests require sophisticated and expensive technology.


text:
Red Sox lose to Blue Jays
Pinch-hitter Danny Valencia had a go-ahead, three-run homer in the seventh inning, leading the Toronto Blue Jays over the Boston Red Sox 5-2 Wednesday night.
Jose Bautista homered for the second straight night, a two-run drive in the first that helped the Blue Jays improve to 7-16 in August.
With Boston leading 2-1, Edwin Encarnacion doubled off Joe Kelly starting the seventh, and left-hander Tommy Layne (0-1) relieved.
Dioner Navarro's at-bat was prolonged when catcher David Ross dropped his foul popup for an error. and Navarro singled.
Right-hander Junichi Tazawa came in, and Valencia turned on a 2-0 pitch for his first home run since Toronto acquired him from Kansas City on July 28. Eight of 20 home runs off Tazawa in his big league career have been hit by Blue Jays batters.
Kevin Pillar followed with a double, was sacrificed to third and made it 5-1 when he scored ahead of shortstop Brock Holt on Jose Reyes' fielder's-choice grounder.
Marcus Stroman (8-5) allowed two runs - one earned - and five hits in 7 2-3 innings. He had been 0-3 in four starts since winning at Boston on July 29.
Brett Cecil relieved after Dustin Pedroia's two-out single in the eighth and retired David Ortiz on a groundout and finished fifth save in seven chances.
Ortiz, who returned to the lineup after sitting out the previous two games with a sore right foot, gave the Red Sox their first hit with a one-out single in the fourth.
Ross reached on a fielding error by third baseman Juan Francisco in the sixth, and back-to-back singles by Holt and Pedroia loaded the bases for Ortiz, who lined an RBI single to right. One pitch later, Holt scored on a wild pitch, but Stroman retired Mike Napoli on a groundout and struck out Daniel Nava.
Red Sox: SS Xander Bogaerts has passed baseball's mandatory concussion tests and been cleared to rejoin the team in Tampa Bay on Saturday. Bogaerts sustained a concussion when he was hit on the helmet by a pitch from Seattle's Felix Hernandez last Friday.
Blue Jays: OF Colby Rasmus (illness) missed his second straight game. RHP Brandon Morrow (right index finger) struck out one in one scoreless inning for Class-A Dunedin, his first injury rehabilitation game.
Red Sox: Boston is off Thursday before a four-game series at Tampa Bay starting Friday. The Red Sox have not announced a starter to face Rays RHP Chris Archer (8-6), who is 0-1 with a 4.32 ERA in three starts against Boston this season.
Blue Jays: Toronto is off Thursday before a three-game series against the New York Yankees. In the opener, LHP Chris Capuano (1-3) faces Blue Jays LHP Mark Buehrle (11-8), who is 1-7 with a 4.74 ERA in 14 starts since June 1.


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| Roast Turkey with Sage
October, 2004
Serves 8, with leftovers / This turkey is the perfect size to cook in four hours and should provide ample servings (plus leftovers). Fresh sage tucked under the skin and cheesecloth draped over the turkey keep the rich flavor and moisture inside the bird. The sage leaves also add a dramatic, decorative touch. Serve with organic cranberry sauce, if desired.
1 14-pound turkey, fresh or fully thawed
20 fresh, whole sage leaves
Salt and pepper
1 red apple, quartered (leave peel and core on)
1 onion, quartered (leave skin on)
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup turkey or chicken broth
Cheesecloth, large enough to cover the turkey, single thickness
1. Preheat oven to 450º. Remove liver, giblets, heart, and neck from inside turkey; discard or save to make stock.
2. Rinse turkey and pat dry. From the front of the breast, slide hands under turkey skin and loosen all the way to the back of the turkey. Place 10 sage leaves (5 on each side) under breast skin in a decorative pattern.
3. Salt and pepper turkey cavities (body and neck). Stuff with remaining sage leaves, apples, and onions. Skewer cavities shut. Rub outside of turkey with soft butter. Fold and tuck wings under turkey.
4. In a small saucepan, mix olive oil and broth. Saturate cheesecloth with liquid, squeezing out extra. Blanket turkey with cheesecloth. Use remaining broth for basting.
5. Place turkey on a rack in a large, heavy roasting pan. Place pan on lowest oven rack and immediately reduce temperature to 325°F. Bake for about 3 hours (17 minutes per pound), basting with oil-stock mixture every 20–30 minutes. (During last hour of cooking, cover lightly with foil, if necessary, to prevent overbrowning.) Remove cheesecloth during last 30 minutes of cooking. Insert meat thermometer in breast and thigh meat to judge doneness. Final breast temperature should be 170º, thigh 180°F.
6. Remove turkey from oven and let juices run into roasting pan. Tightly cover whole turkey with foil until ready to carve. Reserve pan juices to drizzle over slices before serving.
PER SERVING: 217 cal, 33% fat cal, 8g fat, 3g sat fat, 89mg chol, 34g protein, 2g carb, 0g fiber, 103mg sodium


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200 words, bigger purpose, creativity, Diana Schwenk, Diana's Enormous Book of Quotes, hard work, helpful, inspiration, mission, teamwork
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
Maybe your mom used to tell you that idle hands were the devil's workshop. She may have felt that if you weren't working on something productive you would end up getting into some kind of trouble.
I'm sure we can all recall times when we longed for our muse to inspire us, hoped for that next great idea that would catapult us into fame, desperately tried to move past the latest round of writer's block…
So when I read the above quote it reminded me that inspiration doesn't just present itself to you on a silver platter. Inspiration typically hits after a long and arduous period of hard work and/or an I-wanna–poke-my-eye-out-with-a-screwdriver monotonous time period.
It's while we're living our lives, doing those mundane tasks with loved ones, co-workers and sharing our thoughts and hopes and dreams with each other. It's when we do something, anything that is productive while letting the inkling of ideas turn themselves over and ruminate and bloom in the back of our minds that inspiration begins to reveal herself.
Inspiration does exist but it must find you working.


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Here's another treat I wasn't going to blog about, but were too good to share.
I've been going through stacks and stacks of recipes from food magazines I've collected over the past year or so. Pretty much just creating more stacks for some sort of order. I found this recipe from the July 2008 issue of Bon Appetit. It comes from the R.S.V.P./Readers' Favorite Restaurant Recipes section and is not online.
The recipe comes from Icing on the Cake Bakery of Los Gatos, California and is a souped up version of a chocolate chip cookie with alcohol-soaked dried cherries and both semisweet and white chocolate chips. The cherries take this cookie over the edge. YUM.
Cherry and Chocolate Chip Cookies
From Bon Appetit July 2008 and Icing on the Cake
- 1 cup dried tart cherries (about 5 1/2 ounces)
- 1/3 cup cherry liquor (I used kirsch)
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
- 1/2 cup of sugar (thanks to Amanda of Amanda's Cookin for pointing out my omission. )
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (about 6 1/2 ounces)
- 1 cup white chocolate chips (about 6 1/2 ounces)
Preheat oven to 375° F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Bring cherries, cherry liquor, and 2 tablespoons water to boil in small sauce pan. Remove from heat and let cherries soak for 15 minutes. Drain and pat dry; set aside.
Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in a large bowl until creamy. Add eggs and extracts, beat to blend. Add flour mixture and beat on low just to blend. Stir in cherries and all chocolate chips.
Scoop tablespoonfuls of dough onto prepared baking sheets spacing 1 inch apart. Bake cookies one sheet at a time until edges are light golden brown 11-13 minutes, turning baking sheets halfway through cooking time. Transfer to rack and cool.
Makes about 30 cookies.
Thank you to everyone that wished me luck and gave me support yesterday while running my half-marathon. I finished with a good time (for me) 2 hours, 18 minutes. I'm sore as all-heck today, but doing well.


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Lars Von Trier's reputation for torturing his female leads continues with Melancholia: How much does he want his leading lady Kirsten Dunst to suffer? Enough to smash her with an entire planet, killing everyone else on Earth in the process. Judging by the trailer, however, Dunst's character may actually welcome the destruction, as she seems filled with sadness long before this mysterious planet that's been "hiding behind the sun" (?) arrives to put an end to her misery, with not even the prospect of marrying True Blood's Alexander Skarsgard during a lavish ceremony at a tony, upper-crust mansion doing much to cheer her up.
Perhaps it's because, as Kiefer Sutherland notes, everyone in her family seems to be "stark raving mad," particularly her increasingly paranoid sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg), or maybe it's just that Dunst is filled with the sort of melodramatic, intangible emptiness that causes her to flop about in various states of sort-of-NSFW undress, wishing on a star to come and end it all. While she suffers, Von Trier conjures plenty of striking images—a shot of Dunst suddenly shooting electricity from her fingers could well be Melacholia's "Chaos reigns"—but best of all is that looming rogue planet, growing closer by the moment and threatening to bring all our misery to an end in the world's prettiest apocalypse. Happy Friday, everyone.


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After a flurry of activity I expect my blogging to be light until the end of the year. For example, I find myself with only 45 minutes to spare today. But I did want to comment on a few things that were in the news this week.
Microsoft released a lot of data this week and Jon Box has a great summary. This was carefully chosen data designed to tell the story Microsoft wants to tell while giving little additional insight. I was particularly interested in some of the telemetry that was released. Now here is thought, why doesn't Microsoft sanitize the telemetry and make it available in raw form so we all can analyze it to death? Now that would be huge (but probably not wise)!
Let's take a quick glance at the 40 Million Licenses sold number. How many were upgrades? How many were new PC sales? How many were tablets? Convertibles? How many had touch screens? How many of the 40 million are actually deployed? How many purchased Win8 but then used downgrade rights to install Win7? I don't want to throw water on Microsoft's Win8 parade, but the 40 Million number is almost meaningless without at least a few more details. Ok, one more detail. How many systems are actively running Windows 8?
Getting away from any negative thoughts, I was looking at some of the web browsing data from Statcounter and others. Ed Bott pointed out via twitter that those 40 million Windows 8 licensed represented half of the entire Mac installed base. Yes, in just a few weeks Windows 8 will be in use by more people than use OS X. Assuming deployment is anywhere near license numbers. Of course Statcounter shows that Vista is as common as OS X, so the bar is pretty low. For all the Mac hype of the last few years it is almost an irrelevant platform.
IOS and Android are of course very relevant platforms, but not apparently when it comes to web browsing. The October Statcounter data doesn't include Windows 8 (either filtered out or included in Other along with Android). I expect the November data will show Windows 8 has equaled or surpassed both Android and possibly IOS for actual web usage. Of course there is one problem with Statcounter and its ilk, they are mostly used by smaller websites. So the data might suggest that IOS and Android users avoid the long tail of the web rather than avoiding the web altogether. Note that even if you factor apps in, using data that app and web usage are roughly split 50/50, IOS and Android combined would still only about equal Windows Vista and OS X. So Windows 8 will have little trouble in surpassing them in importance to online services (web sites or services) within a few months.
I don't know if this is related, but I've started to complain to websites that use Flash but aren't on the Microsoft white list. First one to respond was "Good news, we are moving to HTML5 in January". This makes the web better for everyone, but particularly for Windows RT. I've noted other sites that tried to serve up Flash to my Surface a month go but now serve up HTML5 video. They already used HTML5 for the iPad so this was a pretty simple change and it is nice to see they responded so quickly. Seems to me like Windows 8, despite its support for Flash, is turning into the nail in the coffin that IOS built for Flash.
Of course Steven Sinofsky's departure continues in the news. Two comments here. First, why all the angst over his departure? Microsoft Office has shipped two top-notch releases since he moved to run Windows. Whatever your opinion of Sinofsky he creates very stable teams and processes that live on long after he moves on. As with the loss of Jobs at Apple, Steven will most be missed the next time some kind of major change is required. And that should be years from now when, hopefully, new leadership will be ready to handle it.
The second comment is on collaboration. Collaboration is not when you use big sticks to get people to line up behind you. It isn't when the message is "you're either with us or against us". It isn't when your mutual boss shows up every week and says "what are you doing to support Windows 8?" and makes it clear you'd better get in line. True collaboration is reciprocal. It includes when you show up and say "I need X, Y, and Z" you get told "we can do that for you". Or "we can do X and Y, could you live with Z' instead of Z?" It includes you doing things to help me further MY business. H0wever people lined up behind Windows 8 I don't think most teams felt it was collaborative. They did it either because they recognized the opportunity or because SteveB twisted their arm.
Enough for today. I hope everyone is already enjoying the holiday season!


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ISIS gunmen executed 19 women for refusing to have sex with them, a Kurdish official is quoted as telling Iraqi press.
The official said that the women were taken captive as sex slaves after ISIS fighters overran the Iraqi town of Mosul last year.
Earlier thtis year, Islamic State goons in Syria held a grotesque "Koran memorization contest" in which the winners were awarded female child sex slaves to honor the month of Ramadan.
The news of the contest, which was held in various ISIS-run mosques in Syria, spread across social media.
The situation for Syrian women has worsened since ISIS forces captured swaths of the country last year.
According to Valerie Amos, the UN's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, women and female children as young as 12 are enslaved and sexually abused.
"Women captured as slaves by [Islamic State] have been sold in markets in Raqqa. Some are sold to individual men. Others are kept by [Islamic State] in rest houses and face multiple rapes by fighters returning from the battlefield," Amos reported during a UN Security Council session.
"Kurdish refugees from Kobani reported the capture of young girls by [Islamic State] for sexual purposes, girls as young as 12."
Amos said there has also been a rise in the incidence of forced marriage. "This is in part due to a depletion of family resources and more recently because parents are terrified of their daughters being forced to marry [Islamic State] fighters in areas under their control."
She called these and other horrible acts war crimes. "[Islamic State] has carried out mass victimization of civilians including murder, enslavement, rape, forcible displacement and torture, and has violated its obligation toward civilians."
Amos spoke harshly about the lack of progress since the Security Council passed Resolution 2139 in February, which laid out a number of basic human rights demands that the Syrian government and opposition fighters must follow.


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Guest post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Yesterday I had the pleasure of chairing a packed meeting in the Palace of Westminster (don't tell the Clerk of the Parliaments), at which Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT spoke even more brilliantly than usual on "global warming", and engagingly answered many questions from Parliamentarians and the public.
Afterwards, Dick went to brief a Cabinet Minister (who shall be nameless, but he is a good egg, and privately regards catastrophic manmade "global warming" as nonsense). The Minister indicated – in effect, and with scarcely-concealed regret – that the party line set by David Cameron in response to various opinion polls, focus groups and other such artifices for identifying and following a consensus rather than setting a lead, and not the objective scientific and economic truth, was likely to remain the basis of UK climate policy.
In reality, orders issued to our elected nominal "government" by the hated, unelected Kommissars of the EU, our true government, who have exclusive competence to decide and dictate the UK's environment and climate policies, are and will remain the basis of UK climate policy, regardless of what (or whether) Cameron and his vapid focus groups think (if "think" is the right word). Government of the people, by the people, for the people has perished from this once-free, formerly-democratic corner of the Earth. We have all the trappings of democracy and none of the reality.
Over tea and scones at the National Liberal Club while Dick was with the Minister, several of us discussed what we call Fakegate – the frauds recently perpetrated to the detriment of the blameless Heartland Institute. Among some there was a feeling, often expressed by the nicer but more woolly-headed and ineffectual sort of skeptic, that somehow scientists who commit frauds ought not to be prosecuted for them, for otherwise academic research would become impossible.
I hear this unsoundly-founded point so often that it is hard to keep an even temper. A fraud is a fraud is a fraud, whether perpetrated by a scientist or by anyone else. The mistreatment to which the Heartland Institute has been subjected by a fraudster and counterfeiter constitutes several serious, imprisonable offenses, known in US law as felonies. The perps, whoever they be, should be investigated, brought for trial, prosecuted, and fined or – better still – imprisoned. Punishment for specific, manifest scientific frauds in no way prejudices, compromises, or trammels the freedom and purity of academic research. It protects and enhances them.
Three frauds are evident in Fakegate. First, wire fraud by whoever used electronic means to obtain internal documents that were the property of the Heartland Institute by what the ineffable Richard Black of the unspeakable BBC calls "subterfuge" and what the criminal law bluntly calls "deception". Secondly, circulation of a counterfeit document purporting to be a true Heartland document. Thirdly, reporting of the affair with reckless disregard for whether the counterfeit document was genuine on the part of the loony-left BBC, the Pooterish Scotsman, Britain's Marxist daily The Guardian, and various blogs, notably the relentlessly malevolent and consequently uninfluential Desmogblog.
Title 18 (Crimes and Criminal Procedure), Part I (Crimes), Chapter 63 (Mail Fraud and other Fraud Offenses) of the US Codex Iuris deals with "Mail Fraud and other Fraud Offenses". Paragraph 1341 defines "fraud" simpliciter:
"Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property" [or, by Paragraph 1346, "the intangible right of honest services"] "by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, or to … procure for unlawful use any … article, or anything represented to be or intimated or held out to be such counterfeit or spurious article, for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do, … or deposits or causes to be deposited any matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by any private or commercial interstate carrier, or takes or receives therefrom, any such matter or thing, or knowingly causes to be delivered by … such carrier according to the direction thereon, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. …"
In general, whoever knowingly perpetrates across state boundaries or recklessly perpetuates a deception calculated to cause financial or pecuniary advantage in goods or services to some or suchlike loss to others commits the Federal criminal offense of fraud.
If the deception be furthered by electronic means, it is wire fraud. If it be furthered by the use of counterfeit documents, it is a distinct count of fraud. If it be furthered by reckless and detrimental publication and repetition of the contents of counterfeit documents as though they were the real thing, when no steps before publication had been taken to verify that the documents relied upon were true, it is also fraud.
Let us begin with the wire fraud. The relevant US statutory offense seems to me to be 18 USC 1343 (Wire Fraud) of the US Codex Iuris, which opens with these words:
"Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property" [or, by Paragraph 1346, "the intangible right of honest services"] "by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both."
I am unfamiliar with US law, and cannot confirm that these provisions still stand part of the US code, or that they have not been amended, or that there is no case law or rule of interpretation preventing their application in the present case. On the face of it, though, the obtaining of documents that were the property of the Heartland Institute by a scheme or artifice whereby the fraudster misrepresented himself as a Board member of the Heartland Institute was achieved by electronic means across state boundaries between the Pacific and the Great Lakes.
The term "interstate commerce" is interpreted latae sententiae in US law, since it is widely defined in the US Constitution itself. Therefore, the fraudster would not be able to escape a wire-fraud charge by asserting that his deception of the Institute was not "in interstate commerce". Even if the court were to find that the deception was not "in interstate commerce", the deception would still constitute fraud simpliciter under paragraph 1341 of the Code, though not wire fraud under paragraph 1343.
Next, the fraud arising from the creation and circulation of the counterfeit document. Whether or not the fraudster who deceived the Institute also uttered the bogus document, he certainly circulated it. Consequently, even if he thought but did not know it was genuine, his reckless circulation of it without having verified that it was genuine, and in the company of other documents obtained by fraud, would constitute a distinct but connected fraud charge – and, given the malicious content of the counterfeit document and the very grave harm that it was calculated to do to the Institute, a very serious charge at that. The court would also take account of the fact that the perp had obtained all documents but the counterfeit document from the Institute and was, in the circumstances, under a particular duty to verify the genuineness of the document before circulating it with the others.
Finally, there is the fraud perpetrated by the various news and in
ternet media, especially in the UK (where Marxism is many journalists' creed) in perpetuating the Fakegate fraud by rushing to publication or broadcast without having verified the genuineness of the document that turned out to be counterfeit. Here, the well-established legal doctrine of mens rea applies. To commit a crime, one must know that one is committing a crime, or one must act in a manner calculated to cause harm to another while being reckless as to whether the harm that one's actions are calculated to cause constitutes a criminal offense.
Fraud charges against the guilty news media and blogs would not be likely unless and until the Fakegate fraudster had first been brought to justice before a Federal court.
The dripping malevolence of the commentaries by the various news media and blogs on what the counterfeit document purported to reveal about the Heartland Institute's supposed attitude to the teaching of science in schools would count very much against them in court. The intent to cause harm to the Heartland, and to cause collateral damage to Anthony Watts and others, is very clear. On the other hand, those who at least acted promptly by publishing Heartland's announcement that the document was counterfeit will have mitigated their crime to some extent. Those blogs that continue to publish the counterfeit document rather than removing it, and one blog that pretended to "confirm" the document as genuine, will face long prison sentences.
Or will they? Much of the scientific criminality surrounding the "global warming" scam only happens because the fraudsters in white lab-coats reckon that they are untouchable. They have the protection of governments, who are themselves profiting mightily by the scam; they are fawned upon by the news media, much as Al Capone was in Chicago; they are lionized by their academic institutions for the massive government grants they attract to investigate what, day by day, becomes more visibly a teacup tempest rebranded as Apocalypse; and, worst of all, the skeptics who ought to report the frauds – and without whose reports the authorities are unlikely to act ex proprio motu – are a bunch of wee, cowering, timorous beasties.
Since fraud across state boundaries is a Federal offense, any citizen of the United States, whether or not he is in any way connected with any of the parties to the frauds, has the right – and the duty – to go to his nearest police station and make a complaint that frauds have been committed to the detriment of the Heartland Institute. The complainant does not need to have any connection with the Institute, nor any permission from it. He just has to be as outraged as I am.
All he has to do is to go in and ask the police to investigate the frauds that have occurred. The facts are plain enough, and so is the law. The police will be bound to investigate and to pass a report of their investigation to the District Attorney, who, in matters of interstate fraud, would be likely to consult the State's Attorney General. On the facts as I now have them, prosecution would certainly result, and conviction would be very likely.
But will anyone act? Around the fragrant tea-table overlooking the silent Thames, there was a marked reluctance to do anything other than talk about it. One said, "I couldn't possibly make a complaint. Just think of all the unwelcome publicity." In fact, there would be no publicity, since any complainant not connected with the Heartland Institute will play no further role in the case once he has undertaken the simple duty of reporting the fraud to his friendly, local police station.
Another said, "We really mustn't interfere with academic freedom in this way." Yet the action of the fraudster was not an exercise of academic freedom, still less a triumph for it. It was an abuse of it. It was a fraud. It was an offense. It was a serious offense. Read the Code.
The law, said Cicero in a beautiful passage in his De Legibus, is founded upon and rooted in love. And what is a sin? In Christian theology it is a failure of love. A sin is a sin because its fake-etrator is knowingly or recklessly doing harm and, to the extent of the harm done, is failing to love the victims of his wrongdoing. It is precisely because of the harm done to the Heartland Institute and to Anthony Watts and others that the sin – in law the offense – is grave. And it is precisely to prevent such harm from being done that the law provides punishment for fraudsters – as long as someone, anyone, has the guts to go into a police station and start the ball rolling by making a complaint.
If just one or two of the numerous scientific frauds that are being reported to me were instead reported to the police, and if prosecutions and convictions were to ensue in just one or two cases, the "global warming" scam would come sharply to an end. Those scientists working in climate and related fields who have acted or published fraudulently (there are just a few of them, and they know who they are) would once again be reminded that they are not an untouchable, priestly caste at liberty to ignore the laws that the rest of us must follow. As the late Lord Denning used to say, in that gentle Hampshire accent of his, "Be you never so high, the law is above you."


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Exclusive: Justified's Michael Rapaport Moves to Raising Hope
Justified's newest villain is headed to Natesville.
Michael Rapaport, who is currently recurring on the FX drama, is set to guest-star in an episode of Raising Hope, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively.
Rapaport will play Michael, who enters the scene when Burt (Garret Dillahunt) and Virginia (Martha Plimpton) are looking to adopt a puppy. In order to make sure the Chances will be good puppy parents, Michael comes to live with them and hilarity ensues.
Rapaport is also playing an animal lover on Justified, which just kicked off its fifth season on Tuesday. His character, Dale Crowe Jr., is the sexy and charismatic patriarch of a Florida crime family who also owns a gator farm.
Rapaport's other credits include Friends, Boston Public and The Mob Doctor.
Raising Hope airs Fridays at 9/8c on Fox.
View original Exclusive: Justified's Michael Rapaport Moves to Raising Hope at TVGuide.com
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August 13, 2013
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The Road to Resilience
How can relief and development programs promote resilience in regions that experience recurrent crises? The six case studies in this document describe some of the ways that CRS...More
January 12, 2005
Water Supply and Sanitation Strategy
This document links the design and implementation of water and sanitation programming to the basic principles and concerns that motivate CRS as a relief and development...More


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Whistler RCMP are urging outdoor enthusiasts to stay off icy lakes, or else risk falling in.
A group of at least seven people was spotted walking on the frozen surface of Joffre Lake near Whistler on Friday, Mounties said in a tweet.
"Please don't do this. It hasn't been cold enough and the ice hasn't got thick enough, it's not ready yet," the tweet reads.
Ice must be at least 10 centimetres thick to walk on or used for ice fishing, according to AdventureSmart, a Canadian organization that works to educate people on outdoor safety.
Five people drowned in B.C. while doing winter activities from 2007 to 2016, according to the latest statistics from the B.C. Coroners Service. The data did not specify details surrounding these deaths.
If you fall through the ice, here's what to do:
- Do not panic. Your clothing will trap air and keep you buoyant.
- Turn towards the direction you came from and place your hands and arms flat on the unbroken surface.
- Kick your feet and try to push yourself up on top of the unbroken ice on your stomach, like a seal.
- Once you are lying on top of the ice, don't stand up. Roll away from the break until you are on solid ice.
The recommended min depth for activities on new, clear, hard ice:
7 cm (3 in) or less STAY OFF
10cm (4 in)ice 🎣, walking, x-country skiing
12cm (5 in)one snowmobile/ATV
20-30cm (8-12 in) 1 🚗 /Sm truck
30-38cm (12-15 in)1 med truck (pickup or van)https://t.co/1M8Z8EMaa4 pic.twitter.com/U3V9nQtj89
— BC AdventureSmart (@BCAdvSmart) November 11, 2019
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1 x Pret Half Italian Prosciutto Baguette
I would prefer for you to collect tonight so I can ensure safe storage of food. Please bring your own bag as I have none to give anymore. Also from a recent collection I had rescued from Pret. I had a overwhelming amount of people who requested food but did not collect so to tackle that issue I will ask you when you will be collecting your items, if you have been told the item is still available of course and it will have to be within the collection times that I have stipulated in the listing that follow later on.
When you request items please note that I do stipulate collection times as any items that I rescue as a Olio food waste hero from Pret must be eaten by 2pm the next day.
.:::: Disclaimer ::::.
It is your responsibility check the food allergen labels incase items contain anything you are allergic to. Also it is your responsibility once food has been collected from me to store correctly. It is advised that all food be eaten by 2pm the next day and if you wish to keep food longer than this and eat it then that is your own decision and choice to do so.
Donation Description


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Towlines are again secured to a
drill ship that was adrift in the Gulf of Alaska.
Shell spokesman Curtis Smith says weather conditions improved and the first tow line was attached to the ship at 12:45 a.m. Monday. The second line was attached sometime later.
The drill ship broke free of its lines attached to two towing vessels on Sunday during a fierce storm. The vessel has no propulsion system of its own and was being towed.
Smith says the drill ship on Monday morning was about 20 miles south of Kodiak Island. He says officials are evaluating the next step in getting the drill rig to a safe harbor. Smith says the weather remains stormy.
-- The Associated Press


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Russell Banks' stories offer a view from the end of the lane
When we think of Russell Banks, what comes to mind are the novels: "Continental Drift," "The Sweet Hereafter," "Cloudsplitter," "Rule of the Bone." These are ambitious books, dealing with politics and history, the aftermath of tragedy, the specter of drugs and sexual abuse.
For me, though, Banks is equally noteworthy as a writer of short fiction, and not just because in the early years of his career, he matched collections to full-length efforts, nearly one-to-one. No, it's that in his stories, Banks focuses on smaller moments between parents and children, wives and husbands, the domestic dramas out of which we build our inner lives.
"I will not go back to the house in Tobyhanna," he writes in "The Visit," from his 2000 collection "The Angel on the Roof," in which a man returns to the small Pennsylvania town where, as a boy, his family imploded, "or to the bar in town, just as — after having been there once — I have not returned to any of the other houses we lived in when I was growing up, or to the apartments and barrooms in Florida and Boston and New Hampshire, where I first learned the need to protect other people from myself, people who loved me, male and female. I go back to each, one time only, and I stand silently outside a window or a door, and I deliberately play back the horrible events that took place there. Then I move on."
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The 12 stories in Banks' new collection, "A Permanent Member of the Family" — his first since "The Angel on the Roof" — are about moving on also, except that the characters here aren't looking backward to their childhoods but forward to the narrowing of life.
There's Howard, the protagonist of "Transplant," who agrees to meet the young woman whose husband's heart now beats in his chest, or Connie, the 73-year-old father of three law-enforcement officers who in "Former Marine" decides to make ends meet by robbing a number of local banks. These are classic Banks characters: taciturn, proud of being self-sufficient and yet at the very point when self-sufficiency may no longer be enough.
"No news is good news, Dad," Connie's son Jack tells him, making conversation over breakfast. But for the older man, this is just one more symbol of his disconnection. "I wouldn't mind any kind of news, actually," he replies.
Lest such a response come off as self-pitying, it isn't — that's not really part of Banks' lexicon. Even Harold Bilodeau, who spends "Christmas Party" navigating a holiday gathering hosted by his ex-wife and her new husband, doesn't feel sorry for himself exactly, although he is a little lost.
It is this lostness that Banks means to explore: what it's like to be a person for whom the future is a set of loose ends. "He felt his chest tighten and his arms grow heavy," he tells us of Harold. "She was still beautiful to him, and she was growing older, and he wasn't going to be able to watch it happen, except from a distance."
This is the emotional center of the collection, which is about how time gets away from us, leaving us in situations we never could have anticipated or known. The narrator of the title story, a father of four girls looking back "some thirty-five years" to the first days of his divorce, zeros in on the death of the family dog as the key moment in the dissolution of his marriage.
"That's a lot of weight to put on a family dog, I know," he admits, but the death is a catharsis, one he can't stop worrying over, even now. "All four daughters began to wail," Banks writes. "… Their voices rose in pitch and volume and became almost operatic, as if for years they had been waiting for this moment to arrive, when they could at last give voice together to a lifetime's accumulated pain and suffering."
Not every story in "A Permanent Member of the Family" is so effective; "Big Dog," about an artist whose MacArthur "genius" grant changes his relationship with his friends, seems a bit on the nose, and "Blue," in which a woman is trapped after hours in a used-car lot, feels serendipitous, not quite fully formed.
When Banks is on, however, the writing rings with the weight of decisions made in constrained circumstances, decisions that become more moving because of how common they are. In "The Outer Banks," a couple in their 70s, forced to accept that "the simple things had gotten very difficult very quickly — standing up, sitting down, getting out of bed, driving for longer than four or five hours," must bury another dead dog, in the sands of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the weight of the experience threatens to render them bereft.
In these stories, Banks traces not so much the road not taken as the view from the end of the lane. There's a reflective quality, a sense of choices made, of consequence, in which redemption and resignation may be two sides of the same coin.
Or, as Banks observes of the narrator of "Lost and Found," a plumbing supply manager brought face-to-face with the memory of a near-indiscretion and all that it stirs up: "These were feelings about himself that he had lost bit by bit over the years of his marriage and middle age, small increments of loss, so that he wasn't even aware of the loss."
A Permanent Member of the Family
Russell Banks
Ecco: 228 pp., $25.99
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Wolf Blitzer delivers the most important breaking news and political, international, and national security stories of the day. Tune to The Situation Room weekdays 5-7pm ET on CNN.
Gov. Chris Christie began his second term facing both a winter storm and a political storm over the bridge scandal and more. CNN's Jake Tapper reports.
Since you fail to post a story on Andrew Cuomo I feel this is n appropriate Place to state this. I know Chris agrees with his brother heck he supported Martin Bashir. So I am a conservative but I have a not so strict view on gay marriage even though I don`t support it and as far as Abortion I support it in extreme cases. However, I am pro gun. That being said I believe in order to be knowledgeable someone needs to see the views of both sides so I will watch Anderson, Jake, Candy and Wolfe. I am perfectly happy with changing my viewership to Brian, Dianne and Scott to see how the other side thinks and if you agree with Andrew which we already know that Chris does that is what I will do going forward. I know you think my viewership does not matter and maybe that is why your ratings are about half of Fox. You may contact me if you acre about conservatives like myself..
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Obama's State of the Union Hits the Eighth Grade Reading Level
Barack Obama's State of the Union speech scored at an eight-grade readability level, according to the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics blog. His three SOTUs all rank among the six lowest scoring ones ever, and are on average "more than two grades lower than the 10.7 grade average for the other 67 addresses written by his 12 predecessors." [via Politico]


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Alas, 'Ghost Town' isn't the theme, but rather the nickname for the partially completed second half of the Pop Century Resort. As has been rumored for months, including this story I wrote in January (includes video of abandoned construction), plans are to turn this into another value hotel with a new style of room – the family suite. The family suite became a popular trend after Nickelodeon Suites proved the business model.
The 'Disney's Art of Animation' hotel will have 2000 rooms, more than half of which are suites, which means it's capacity will match that of Pop Century. As you can guess, huge icons that represent Disney animation will be featured at the hotel and guests will be made to feel like they're in the movies.
Plans, including mockups of the family suites, for this new resort have been on the boards for a while. Disney has just been awaiting enough signs that the economy was truly on the rebound before giving it the greenlight. The hotel will open in phases beginning in 2012, which must mean they're planning to use the partially completed sections.
Since 2005 when work stopped on the 'Legendary Years' section of Pop Century, the area has been used as training for stunt drivers, bus drivers, and cast member parking for WWOS events. Adding all these family rooms right across the street from ESPN WWOS also makes a great opportunity to sell that property as part of a Compete and Play vacation for the whole family.
This will be Disney World's return to Value hotels and the first non-Disney Vacation Club hotel they've built in a long time (since 9/11 changed the travel market basically). It think it's clear that Disney had begun to price themselves out of the family market, putting too many of its eggs in the retiring baby boomer trend and outside developers. The Art of Animation hotel will help start bring that back into balance.
(via the Orlando Sentinel)


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The Charlie who "Threw Me Back"
Ten years ago, when I didn't know narrative from Narrative Magazine, I sat at a dining table with Dimitri Kasaan, and another writer whose repute and influence was beyond my small understanding at the time. It was early and in my memory we were the only ones there. He was talking about writing, good and bad, Bread Loaf, and the experiences had, over a long career of teaching, with how best to help students along. Listening to this, I was seized by a sense of horror. What if I was guilty of producing bad (creative) writing? I knew my non-fiction/journalism had a purpose, and that the writing was good, but that did not necessarily translate into an ability to write good fiction after all. Hair stylists aren't all versed in hair coloring, and a conductor may not always be brilliant at playing an instrument. But here before me was a man who sounded like he could tell the difference. A thoughtful man, who hadn't made it his business to condemn the aspiring, willy-nilly, but was in full possession of the skills of discernment.
I don't even know if we'd been properly introduced, and perhaps it is a testament to the absolute innocence with which I had set foot in that exalted place, but the words burst forth from me: Please, would you read a few pages of my work and tell me if I should just give up? I remember that he looked a little startled, but I pressed on. I would take your words to heart. I don't mind if you said it was terrible, it would save me a great deal of time. I'd like to know. Perhaps it was the absolute earnestness of the request, perhaps he could tell I really did mean all that, but he agreed.
I ran away to the computer center and printed out the beginning to the first novel I ever wrote, and got the pages to him. We bumped into each other later that day at lunch, and he told me it was powerful work. Those words – they could have meant powerfully bad work, I suppose, but I took it to mean the opposite. Or if not the opposite, then at least work that was worth doing, or that there was something there that was important enough to be written down. It wasn't a waste of paper or a waste of me.
I think so often about that moment. I can see it in detail. I can hear the noise of the writers around me, gathering after workshop for lunch, the constant clatter of food service, the voices pitched toward and away from each other, and the hum of excitement and energy that pervades the campus hovering above it all. Most of all I see him, this gracious human being who had no obligation at all to have read the work of someone he had only just met, someone so clearly out of her league in the conversations about creative writing. I see that moment in movement and sound, but also as a still photograph that is both the before and the after. If I had not felt that grace, would I have continued to write? Even after that "powerful" work went on to languish in the house, unpublished save for the shortest excerpt imaginable from a 487 page tome? Or would I have petered out, a memorable summer fading in time?
I can't say. There were other people at Bread Loaf who nurtured me and held me up. Others who believed in me, and encouraged me, including Lynn Freed, my teacher – now mentor, and dear friend – who introduced me to Jill Bialosky (who later sent the entire 487 page tome back with the kindest of notes).
I only know that I can trace the thin red line at the feet of that particular writer, beyond which waited all the writing that I have done since. Someone who knew nothing about me, and had no reason to pay me the slightest heed, did. And it made all the difference. I kept on writing, and reading, and eventually publishing, and teaching, and doing a few good things in the world, all of which were invariably touched by that one conversation, those few pages, that one large-hearted human being. Over the years we've seen each other under other circumstances, in other cities, among other people: repeatedly at Bread Loaf, dancing in his white shirt in the old barn and in a tuxedo at the Cipriani Wall Street (#108 in that first batch of images) in quiet, over dinners and drinks and good conversations. I have had the deep privilege of having him in the audience when I read from my second novel both where it all began, at bread Loaf, and in his hometown of Minneapolis. Somewhere at the center of every meeting however is that snapshot from the past which made all those other gatherings possible, and which I can never forget.
Thank you and Happy Birthday to you, Charlie – from your very own starfish.


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No more square pizza boxes? Pizza Hut testing one that's round
Many things evolve over time. The pizza box, though, hasn't been one of them.
Until now.
Pizza Hut is looking to innovate, replacing square pizza boxes with round ones.
Business Insider reports the chain conducted a one-day test recently using the new boxes at a location in Phoenix.
Zumo, a food startup, helped design the box, which could eventually be rolled out nationwide. The round boxes take up less space, are compostable and can be stacked and interlocked. They also reportedly keep pizzas hotter longer.
"This revolutionary round box — the result of a two-year journey — is the most innovative packaging we've rolled out to date," Nicolas Burquier, Pizza Hut's chief customer and operations officer, said in a written statement. "The round box was engineered to make our products taste even better — by delivering hotter, crispier pizzas."
The same Phoenix location that tested the round boxes also hosted a trial run for a new plant-based meat topping from Morningstar Farms called Incogmeato. No word yet on whether Incogmeato will be available at other locations.


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Rent Your Own Home
The housing mess is screaming out for a simple but effective solution. Ideally, such a solution would keep underwater homeowners in their homes even after they found themselves unwilling or unable to pay their mortgages; it would stop renters from being evicted from foreclosed homes when they're up-to-date on their rent; it would slash the number of foreclosure sales, which are driving house prices down nationwide; it would improve the quality of the national housing stock; it would give banks an easy-to-value income stream, instead of an impossible-to-value home, whenever they foreclosed on a property; and it would cost the government nothing. Amazingly, all of this can be done with just one policy: a decree that whenever a bank forecloses on a home, the current occupant has the right to remain in the property indefinitely, simply by paying the fair-market rent. Banks are killing each other by racing to sell their foreclosed houses as quickly as possible, before they fall further in value; this policy would force a cease-fire that would help all of them. It would also put an end to the equally destructive syndrome of soon-to-be-foreclosed-upon homeowners trashing their houses before they're kicked out. This plan might not single-handedly end the recession. But it would certainly help.


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Gordon, Shields lead Royals past Indians 6-2
CLEVELAND - The Kansas City Royals believe they are in the American League playoff chase to stay. They might start convincing others, too.
The Royals gained ground in the wild card race on Wednesday with a 6-2 win over the Cleveland Indians. Kansas City took two of three in the series between clubs that are in contention for the second wild card spot in the AL.
The Royals, who entered Wednesday trailing Tampa Bay by three games, moved a game closer to the Indians. Cleveland came in 1 1/2 games behind the Rays.
"To come in here and win a series against a tough Cleveland team was huge for us," Royals manager Ned Yost said. "Especially considering where we are at this point of the season. Losses hurt now. You've got to try to really keep them at a minimum if you can."
Alex Gordon homered on the game's first pitch, and James Shields dominated after a shaky first inning for the Royals, who have won 13 of 18.
"These guys have developed a lot of experience this year," Shields said. "We've gone through so many ups and downs this year that we've been through every situation you can think of almost. These guys know what it takes. They know how to win."
The Royals had a home run, a triple and a single within the game's first seven pitches to take a 2-0 lead. Kansas City added another run in the first inning.
Shields (11-9) gave up two runs, two hits, and hit a batter in the bottom half before he took control.
Michael Brantley had a two-run single in the first, but Shields didn't allow another hit until Jason Kipnis' leadoff single in the ninth. He retired 16 of 17 going into the ninth, but was removed after allowing singles to Kipnis and Carlos Santana.
Shields allowed four hits, struck out seven and walked one. Greg Holland retired the last three hitters for his 42nd save.
Gordon jumped on a 90 mph fastball from Scott Kazmir (8-8) and lined it into the seats in right field for his 13th career leadoff homer.
"It's not my first rodeo, so I've done it before," Gordon said. "Sometimes you've just got to mix it up, especially with Kazmir with his electric stuff."
"He said he was going to do it," Yost said. "He picks his spots."
Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain added RBI singles.
The Indians won the first game of the series and finished 5-4 on their homestand, but failed to gain ground in the playoff chase for the second straight day. Cleveland will begin a seven-game trip in Chicago on Thursday. The Indians and Royals meet again in Kansas City next week for a three-game series.
"They're a good team," Indians manager Terry Francona said. "They're right where we are. They're a real good team."
Kansas City went 26-18 in a stretch of 44 games in 44 days.
Emilio Bonifacio followed Gordon's homer with a triple, and Hosmer singled to center to make it 2-0. Kazmir retired the next two hitters, but Justin Maxwell singled, and Cain lined a single to center for the third run.
Shields also struggled in the first. Michael Bourn walked and Mike Aviles was hit by a pitch. The runners moved up on a groundout, and Brantley singled to center with two outs.
Shields got the start following his shortest outing of the season, a start against Detroit on Friday in which he matched career worsts by allowing 10 runs and 14 hits in 3 2-3 innings in a 16-2 loss.
He bounced back Wednesday and improved to 2-5 in 13 career starts against Cleveland. After the first, Shields pitched like the ace the Royals envisioned he would be when they acquired him from the Rays for outfielder Wil Myers, one of baseball's top prospects. The right-hander leads the AL with 207 2-3 innings pitched.
"James comes off his arguably worst start of the year and has arguably his best start of the year," Yost said. "He just put us on his back today and carried us."
Shields' biggest problem came with his own defense when he made two errors in the third. He dropped a throw from Hosmer at first base, allowing Kipnis to reach safely. He then threw wildly to first trying to pick off Kipnis, but retired Santana to end the inning.
Kazmir allowed four runs and nine hits in four innings. He struck out a season-high 12 over six scoreless innings in an 8-1 victory over the New York Mets in his last outing.
NOTES: The Royals will skip LHP Danny Duffy's next start, which was scheduled to be Friday in Detroit. LHP Bruce Chen will pitch that game instead. Right-handers Ervin Santana and Jeremy Guthrie will pitch Saturday and Sunday, respectively. ... Indians 1B Nick Swisher wasn't in the lineup. He is batting .167 (8 for 48) with 15 strikeouts against Shields, including three hits in his last 25 at-bats. ... SS Asdrubal Cabrera, in a 3-for-27 slump, was also out of the lineup. He pinch-hit in the ninth and struck out. ... Kansas City's off day on Thursday is its first since Aug. 19. ... Indians RHP Corey Kluber (8-5) faces LHP John Danks (4-12) in the series opener against the White Sox.


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Create Retainers
Let's say your customer pays you advance money for an estimate. In such a case, you can record the advance by creating a retainer invoice.
After you have created an estimate for a customer and it has been accepted by them, you can create a retainer invoice for the customer directly from the estimate. Here's how you can do it:
- Go to Sales > Estimates.
- Select the estimate (in the Accepted status) for which you want to create a retainer invoice.
- Click More > Create Retainer Invoice.
Next >
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Christians are not bothered in the least that they are risking Allah's hell by not being Muslims. We all risk the hell of other religions. All I do is risk one more hell than what others do. Once I risk one hell they all look like nothing but empty threats.
John Loftus, Debunking Christianity