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#Galveston Beach House Remodel
5 comments:
- Katie @ Team Skelley said...
This is exciting! After seeing your previous work (some of it in person) I can't wait to see what you do here.
BTW, I do reserve the right in the future when Marc balks at one of my projects to say, "Hey, Christy is redoing a whole HOUSE. All I want to do is redo the laundry room!" :D
- September 21, 2013 at 2:51 PM
- elizabeth said...
It's g oing to be freaking amazing!!!
Can't believe you think it won't be!
And I can't wait to see it in person!
- September 21, 2013 at 9:44 PM
- My House, My Garden said...
I just finished gutting our beach house this year. We are in Jamaica Beach on the bay side. We have had the home 10 years and finally did it! I have some pictures on my blog if you're interested. Good luck!! Vikki
- September 22, 2013 at 9:08 AM
- Erin said...
exciting!! can't wait to see what you do!!
whatever happened with the house you were building? I miss seeing your posts! :o)
- September 24, 2013 at 12:15 PM
- sbasmiles said...
My mother just closed on her beach house in Omega Bay on 45... We figured we have 60 days (on the weekends) to get it ready for the Summer.. So we started interior paint on Sunday for 8 + hours
- September 25, 2013 at 5:44 PM


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O's sweep Rays for first non-losing season since '97
BALTIMORE -- The Baltimore Orioles have too much else going on to be overly excited about ending their miserable run of 14 consecutive losing seasons.
Manny Machado blooped an RBI single that eluded left fielder Matt Joyce's desperate dive with two outs in the 14th inning, and Baltimore beat Tampa Bay 3-2 Thursday to complete a three-game sweep and remain atop the AL East.
With their 81st victory -- and 13th in a row in extra innings -- the Orioles are assured no worse than a .500 record for the first time since 1997.
"There's a bigger goal in mind," manager Buck Showalter said. "That wasn't the goal from Day One this spring. Really, Day One of the offseason. It's watching other teams for years and saying, 'We want to do what they're doing.' We'd like to get a chair at the dance, you know?"
It's been an incredible season for the Orioles, who finished in the cellar in each of the previous four years. Baltimore (81-62) remained in a first-place tie with the New York Yankees, who beat Boston on Thursday night, 2-0.
After briefly celebrating a victory that capped a 5-2 homestand against the Yankees and Rays, the Orioles packed in the clubhouse for a trip to Oakland.
"It makes that West Coast trip a little easier when you win," said closer Jim Johnson, part of a bullpen that kept Tampa Bay scoreless on four hits over the final 6 2/3 innings. "You can enjoy it for a little bit, the five hours you're on the flight, but that's about it."
The Rays fell four games back in the division by virtue of yet another one-run defeat punctuated by a lack of offensive punch. Tampa has lost 13 of its last 16 one-run games, including a 3-2 decision Wednesday night.
"It's just the same old story: We can't score enough runs," manager Joe Maddon said. "We pitched extremely well, we played well in the field overall, loved the effort."
But the Rays stranded 10 and went 1 for 7 with runners with scoring position. Tampa Bay left Camden Yards for Yankee Stadium to play a three-game series that begins Friday night.
Sixteen pitchers took part in the game, which lasted 5 hours, 14 minutes. Tampa Bay used a club-record 26 players, including nine pitchers.
After the Orioles squandered a bases-loaded, no-out threat in the 13th, Chris Archer (0-3) got the first two outs in the 14th before Adam Jones walked and Endy Chavez singled. Machado followed with a soft liner toward the line that Joyce trapped.
"I know it hit my glove on the bottom," Joyce said. "It was hard to tell what exactly happened. Only thing I can tell you is I didn't come up with it."
Machado, a 20-year-old rookie, scored the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth Wednesday night.
"I'm having a blast," Machado said. "This team is great to be around. It's a great group of guys. We're all excited. We're all having one goal, which is make the playoffs."
The Orioles' success in extras this season matches the longest in the majors since Cleveland won 13 straight extra-inning games in 1995.
Randy Wolf (2-0) earned the win by striking out Joyce with two on in the top of the 14th. Baltimore has won 14 of 19 overall and is 26-11 since Aug. 3.
Although the Orioles blew a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning, they improved to 64-0 when leading after the seventh.
Baltimore loaded the bases with no outs in the 13th but could not score after the Rays employed five infielders in hopes of cutting off the potential winning run at the plate. Robert Andino hit into a force at home, pinch-hitter Matt Wieters struck out and Nate McLouth struck out.
"We came up short that inning," Machado said, "but we won it in the next."
Orioles rookie Wei-Yin Chen gave up two runs and eight hits in 7 1/3 innings. Working with a 2-1 lead in the eighth, Chen walked leadoff hitter Desmond Jennings, who advanced on a passed ball and a stolen base before scoring on a slow roller to third by Ben Zobrist for a hit.
In the bottom half, the Orioles got runners on the corners with one out before Joel Peralta struck out Machado and Mark Reynolds.
Limited to four hits through the first six innings, Baltimore went ahead with a two-run seventh. After Rays reliever Wade Davis mishandled a bunt by Machado, Andino walked and seldom-used backup catcher Taylor Teagarden hit a two-run double into the gap in right-center.
Tampa Bay starter Jeremy Hellickson allowed four hits and three walks in five-plus innings. He was pulled after J.J. Hardy led off the sixth with a single.
Jake McGee, who struck out all four batters he faced on Wednesday night, came in and struck out pinch-hitter Lew Ford, Jones and Chris Davis. It was McGee's 18th consecutive scoreless appearance since July 18.
To that point, the game's only run came in the fourth inning. Singles by Zobrist and Evan Longoria put runners at the corners before Jeff Keppinger hit a sinking liner to center. Jones made a fine diving catch, and Zobrist tagged up from third and scored.
Game notes
An MRI on Baltimore RHP Jason Hammel showed no new damage to his right knee, and he hopes to return soon. "It's probably the best situation we could have," he said. ... Jennings returned to the Tampa Bay lineup after missing four games with back tightness. ... Tampa Bay 2B Ryan Roberts fouled a ball off his left ankle in the 11th and left the game. X-rays were negative. ... David Price (17-5, 2.54 ERA) will start Friday night for Tampa Bay against CC Sabathia (13-5, 3.56) . ... Baltimore has held the Rays to 10 runs in the last seven games between the teams. ... Right-hander batters are 9 for 93 (.097) against McGee. ... TB's B.J. Upton went 0 for 6 and was 1 for 14 in the series.
BAL Wins 3-0
Game Information
- Umpires:
- Home Plate Umpire - Fieldin Culbreth
- First Base Umpire - Tim Timmons
- Second Base Umpire - Marty Foster
- Third Base Umpire - Marvin Hudson

subset: commoncrawl


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GateHouse Media Inc. files prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy
GateHouse Media Inc., owner of The Patriot Ledger, The Enterprise and more than 150 weekly newspapers and Wicked Local websites in Massachusetts, has filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Delaware.
GateHouse announced on Sept. 11 that it had entered into an agreement with some secured lenders, including GateHouse affiliates, to restructure $1.2 billion of debt scheduled to come due in August 2014.
According to Michael Reed, director and chief executive officer, the bankruptcy filing for prepackaged reorganization was a strategic decision.
"We have complied with and are current with all of our obligations," Reed said. "But with the challenges facing our industry and the impending maturity of our secured debt next year, we needed to be proactive in exploring options to restructure our debt, recapitalize and position ourselves for future growth."
The prepackaged plan proposes a "balance-sheet restructuring" that will allow GateHouse to emerge from bankruptcy with less debt on its balance sheet, but with its business operations intact, Reed said.
"Once GateHouse has emerged from bankruptcy, we will be under common ownership with Local Media Group, a company with a strong community media presence and performance that operates eight daily community newspapers and 13 weeklies," Reed said. "Joining with Local Media Group will be an important step in growing our business and will contribute to our future success."
Local Media Group includes the Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, and The Standard Times, New Bedford.
Pension, trade and all other unsecured creditors of GateHouse would not be affected under the plan. GateHouse's common stock would be canceled under the plan, and holders of secured debt would have the option of receiving a cash distribution of 40 percent of their claims or stock in New Media Investment Group Inc., a new holding company that will own GateHouse and Local Media Group.
GateHouse, which operates in 330 markets across 21 states, is one of the largest publishers of locally based print and online media in the United States as measured by number of daily publications.
The company said it intends to continue day-to-day operations under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court. According to Reed, GateHouse has sufficient cash to operate during the Chapter 11 process and does not need debtor-in-possession financing.
"We don't believe our customers, vendors or employees will notice any change in our day-to-day operations as a result of the bankruptcy," he said. "From an operational standpoint, it's business as usual."


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Diane from www.expatriatetaxreturns.com joined us to answer the most common questions about American expat tax obligations. Watch the full session on YouTube.
UK Yankee is a resource and community for expatriate Americans living in or planning to move to the UK, established in 1999. Please join the discussions in our friendly expat community.


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Ah, friends. What a time. I wish I could write about all the wonderful knitting inspiration I've been experiencing, or the fantastic book I can't put down. How about … nope. The thing is, I'm preoccupied with another chapter in the saga of the frail mother whose health keeps taking a turn.
Last week my mom was getting ready for her afternoon Bingo game (her favorite part of the day) and she fell and broke her femur (thigh bone). The only reason she didn't break her hip was that it still had the pin in it from two years ago. So now she's recovering from surgery (more metal holding her together) and will be moving to a nursing facility for rehab. Again. Each event takes a little more out of her. She's stoic, so I will be too, but it's hard.
When I emailed my friend Judy to tell her the news, she wrote back, "They shouldn't let old people play Bingo." I'll second that.
Our family has gotten past the "rush to be at her side" sort of thinking. Within hours of something like this, we are mobilizing and planning who will come when, and for what part of the recovery, and for how long. We coordinate our schedules, make our reservations for plane or hotel, and act. We're pros.
But I'm left feeling like a puddle of daughter-ness. Exhausted at work, distracted, a little weepy at odd moments. Thank goodness for the dysfunctional family that is my staff! They've been wonderful. Until I can go to my mother — until it's my turn — I have things to do here. I'm hoping that today, in this new week, I'll get to work and face it and get on with it.
I'll be driving to Maryland on the 19th. Between now and then I do have some nice knitting to keep me company. This is a scarf pattern I'm working up for Spirit Trail Fiberworks. The yarn is a cashgora-merino blend. It is so soft and so warm and so nice to knit with that the experience is like one of those Calgon Moments. I'm also knitting another pair of KR Hedgerow socks for one of the Remarkable R's. The model will get to have the originals, but the stylist needs her own pair too. They're of the same beautiful blue yarn as my Delicato Mitts.
Everything will be all right, I know it will. Everything will be different — for my mother, for me, for our family — and I know that, too. The tricky part is the navigating between now and then.


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In the five decades since Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead by an assassin at age 39, his children have worked tirelessly to preserve his legacy, sometimes with sharply different views on how best to do that. But they are unanimous on one key point: James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King.
For the King family and others in the civil rights movement, the FBI's obsession with King in the years leading up to his slaying in Memphis on April 4, 1968 — pervasive surveillance, a malicious disinformation campaign and open denunciations by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover — laid the groundwork for their belief that he was the target of a plot.
"It pains my heart," said Bernice King, 55, the youngest of Martin Luther King's four children and the executive director of the King Center in Atlanta, "that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison paying for things he didn't do."
Until her own death in 2006, Coretta Scott King, who endured the FBI's campaign to discredit her husband, was open in her belief that a conspiracy led to the assassination. Her family filed a civil suit in 1999 to force more information into the public eye, and a Memphis jury ruled that the local, state and federal governments were liable for King's death. The full transcript of the trial remains posted on the King Center's website.
"There is abundant evidence," Coretta King said after the verdict, "of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband." The jury found the mafia and various government agencies "were deeply involved in the assassination. … Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame."
But nothing changed afterward. No vast sums of money were awarded (the Kings sought only $100), and Ray was not exonerated.
King's two other surviving children, Dexter, 57, and Martin III, 60, fully agree that Ray was innocent. And their view of the case is shared by other respected black leaders.
"I think there was a major conspiracy to remove Doctor King from the American scene," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a 78-year-old civil rights icon. "I don't know what happened, but the truth of what happened to Dr. King should be made available for history's sake."
Andrew Young, the former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor who was at the Lorraine Motel with King when he was shot there, agrees. "I would not accept the fact that James Earl Ray pulled the trigger, and that's all that matters," said Young, who noted that King's death came after the killings of John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X and just months before the slaying of Robert F. Kennedy.
"We were living in the period of assassinations," Young said.
Conspiracies have long gripped the American imagination, from JFK's assassination in 1963 to Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster's suicide in 1993 to Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich's slaying in 2016.
Dave Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of King, said that "the King children are part of a larger population of American people who need to believe that the assassination of a King or a Kennedy must be the work of mightier forces" rather than victims "of small-fry, lifetime losers."
"People need to see something of a balance between effect and cause," Garrow said. "That if something has a huge evil effect, it should be the result of a huge evil cause."
'Entitled to know the truth'
Even those who believe that Ray, who died in prison in 1998, killed King tend to think that he received assistance from someone, whether it was his two brothers or the FBI or the mafia.
Because Ray suddenly pleaded guilty in 1969, less than a year after the shooting, there was no trial. The largest government investigation, led by the House Select Committee on Assassinations under chief counsel Robert Blakey, theorized in 1979 that Ray committed the killing in the hope of collecting a $50,000 bounty offered by supporters of then-presidential candidate George Wallace in St. Louis, where Ray's brothers lived.
But there was no definitive evidence to prove the theory, and the Wallace supporters were dead by 1979. Blakey said recently he had tried to prove a conspiracy but could not. If the FBI or CIA was involved, they had destroyed the documentation of it by 1979, he said.
"I have no stake in our outcome," Blakey said. "You come up with a better outcome, with evidence to support it, I'll support your theory." He remains adamant that Ray was the gunman but likely had help that should have been investigated in 1968 and was not.
John Campbell, who investigated the case for years in the Shelby County, Tenn., district attorney's office, said that Ray's version of events "kept changing." His office issued a report in 1998 saying Ray was responsible.
"I'm not saying he didn't have help," Campbell said. "But he didn't have the FBI, the CIA, the Memphis police or the mafia."
After Coretta King and her family pleaded with President Bill Clinton in 1998 to reinvestigate the case, Attorney General Janet Reno assigned civil rights special counsel Barry Kowalski, who previously prosecuted the Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney King beating, to review the newest conspiracy allegations. In 2000, even after reviewing the results of the 1999 civil trial in Memphis, Kowalski concluded that Ray was guilty and that there was no government conspiracy.
Astride all this controversy for the last 40 years has been William Pepper, a New York lawyer and civil rights activist who knew and worked with King. Pepper first visited Ray in prison in 1978 along with Ralph Abernathy, one of King's closest associates. Pepper became convinced of Ray's innocence and continued to investigate the case even after Ray died.
Pepper wrote three books outlining the conspiracy, most recently "The Plot to Kill King" in 2016, which were largely ignored by the media.
He defended Ray in a mock trial on HBO in 1993 (Ray was found not guilty), and filed and tried the Memphis civil suit that found the government liable for King's death.
He has spoken around the world to anyone who will listen, including recently at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where King was killed. Pepper was sued once for defamation, by an Army soldier he accused of participating in the conspiracy, and a South Carolina judge entered an $11 million default judgment against him in 2000.
In recent years, Pepper has tracked down witnesses in Memphis who support his theory of the case: that J. Edgar Hoover used his longtime assistant, Clyde Tolson, to deliver cash to members of the Memphis underworld, that those shadowy figures then hired a sharpshooting Memphis police officer, and that officer — not Ray — fired the fatal shot.
The King family has lauded Pepper repeatedly, and he was honored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for his "unceasing commitment in the pursuit of justice."
"I think the people of this country are entitled to know the truth," Pepper said. "I say that in the hope of creating an awareness of how this happened, and that the involvement of government in these events may cease with respect to other leaders who will emerge."
And so after 50 years, the King assassination seems destined to remain mired in controversy, the subject of infinite debate over whether Ray was a lone gunman inspired by racism, a hired assassin aided by secret government forces, or simply a patsy manipulated to kill a civil rights hero.
'Did you kill my father?'
Ray was born in 1928 and grew up outside St. Louis. His chosen profession was theft and armed robbery, and after his third felony conviction in 1959, he was sentenced to 20 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary. He escaped from the prison in April 1967, and some believe he had help from prison authorities, as part of the opening stanza of the conspiracy.
Ray moved around while on the lam, staying in Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico and Canada over the next year. He has claimed that while in Montreal he met a man named Raul, of varying physical descriptions over the years, who enlisted him in several small gunrunning schemes, and instructed him to buy a rifle in Birmingham, Ala.
On the afternoon of April 4, Ray checked into a boardinghouse in Memphis, with a bar called Jim's Grill on the first floor. He paid $8.50 for a week's stay. The rear of the boardinghouse faced the Lorraine Motel across Mulberry Street.
King was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine outside room 306 when a single rifle bullet was fired into his lower jaw at 6:01 p.m. He died an hour later at St. Joseph's Hospital. The rifle Ray had purchased in Birmingham was found near the front of the boardinghouse with Ray's fingerprints on it. Those are about the only facts that aren't in dispute.
According to the criminal justice system of the state of Tennessee, James Earl Ray fired the shot from the second-floor bathroom of the boardinghouse. He then grabbed some belongings in a blanket, stashed the rifle in it, left the building and dropped the bundle in the doorway of a nearby building.
He drove away in a white Ford Mustang before the area was barricaded, went to Atlanta and then to Canada and England before being arrested in July 1968.
Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of King on March 10, 1969. He signed a detailed stipulation of facts to the shooting, having had weeks to review it, asking only that a reference to his activities for Wallace be deleted.
In court, Ray answered the standard series of questions about whether he was knowingly and voluntarily admitting he committed murder. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty and Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Officially: Case closed.
Within days, Ray filed a motion to withdraw his plea, claiming he had been coerced by his attorney and the FBI. Three decades of legal machinations never succeeded in reopening the case, but they revealed new details and led to new theories of how King might have been killed.
At the same time, the misconduct of Hoover and the FBI was coming to light. Hoover had ordered surveillance, wiretaps and listening devices placed in King's rooms starting in 1963, apparently infuriated by King's criticism of the FBI for not having black agents or investigating civil rights cases.
Recordings and photos of King having sex with women other than his wife were offered to reporters and government officials, often by Hoover himself, and sent to King associates. Hoover once told a group of reporters, on the record, that King was "the most notorious liar in the country."
Coretta King and Abernathy, aware of the FBI campaign, immediately suspected FBI involvement after King's death. But Ray's sudden guilty plea stopped all official investigations.
Asked about the King family's suspicions, an FBI spokesman responded in a statement that the government has revisited the assassination four times: "Findings from these reviews support the FBI's conclusion that James Earl Ray, acting alone, fired a rifle once, fatally wounding Dr. King on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel."
James Lawson, a Memphis pastor and civil rights institution who helped mentor King, said he began visiting Ray in the Memphis jail in 1969 when Ray complained about being held in solitary confinement. He continued to visit Ray until his death and presided over his funeral.
"There were things in Memphis that were suspicious and raised questions in my mind," Lawson said. "I never saw those questions answered."
Lawson assisted Pepper and the King family over the years in their investigation, during which Dexter King and Andrew Young participated in interviews with witnesses.
"I'm satisfied beyond a shadow of a doubt," Lawson said, "that James Earl Ray neither pulled the trigger nor plotted to kill Martin Luther King."
Ray began to claim that the man he knew only as Raul was present in Memphis on April 4, and that Ray himself was at a nearby gas station when the shot was fired. No one saw the actual shot fired. The screen from the bathroom window was found on the ground below.
Some witnesses, including then-New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell, said they saw a man moving in the thick bushes behind Jim's Grill, below the bathroom. For reasons unknown, Memphis public works employees cut down the bushes and destroyed a possible crime scene the next morning.
Ballistics tests could not prove that the rifle dropped outside the boardinghouse, a Remington .30-06 Gamemaster, either did or didn't fire the fatal shot, because the gun did not create distinctive grooves on the bullet, as most guns do.
"That weapon was not the weapon," Martin Luther King III said. "You're going to kill somebody and then drop the gun right there?" Ray claimed that he had given the gun to Raul, but only Ray's fingerprints were on the gun.
Pepper and his investigators worked for years to locate Raul and eventually they identified an autoworker from Yonkers, N.Y., as the man they believe manipulated Ray. The man denied any involvement and cooperated with Justice Department investigators in 1999, who found work records showing he could not have traveled widely to meet Ray in 1967 and '68. Pepper said the CIA could have fabricated the records.
Then Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim's Grill, began claiming publicly that he was involved in a conspiracy to kill King. He had consistently denied any knowledge of the case for a quarter-century, but now he alleged the gunman was a Memphis police officer who fired from the bushes behind the grill, then handed Jowers the murder weapon. Jowers stashed the rifle behind the bar and said it was later picked up by Raul and tossed in the Mississippi River.
More Memphis witnesses came forward, including a former girlfriend of Jowers, who said she saw him with the rifle shortly after the gunshot rang out, and saw him break it down and place it in the bar.
In 1997, Dexter King went with Pepper to meet Ray in prison, and was photographed shaking Ray's hand. Pepper said Dexter King asked Ray, "Did you kill my father?" and that Ray answered, "No, I didn't." He said Dexter King told Ray, "We will do everything in our power to see that justice prevails."
Dexter King called his family together, his brother Martin said in an interview, and urged them to file a civil suit against Jowers as a means of seeking the truth. A Shelby County jury heard more than 70 witnesses over 30 days, ruled that Jowers and unknown government entities were liable, and awarded the Kings $100.
The family wasn't seeking money, just information. "For both our family and the nation," Coretta King said after the verdict, "we had to get involved, because the system did not work."
The verdict came as the Justice Department was reinvestigating the case because of Jowers's claims and those of a former FBI agent who said he had found evidence in Ray's car in 1968 linking him to Raul but had withheld it until 1997.
In 2000, the report authored by assistant attorney general Barry Kowalski found that Jowers had changed his story repeatedly and that neither he nor the ex-FBI agent were credible. Campbell said Jowers had been recorded saying that he would tailor his story for financial gain.
"Our thorough investigation," Kowalski said recently, "just like four official investigations before it, found no credible or reliable evidence that Doctor King was killed by conspirators who framed James Earl Ray. Twenty years later, I remain absolutely convinced this well-supported finding is correct."
The King family disagrees, with Martin King III adopting Pepper's theory of Hoover directing the assassination. "I believe that's exactly what happened," said Martin King III. "Hoover was so angry, he had hate in his heart. Certainly he hated Dad. He had a vehement hatred of folks of color."
Not everyone in the Kings' circle agrees with the full extent of Pepper's investigation, but they agree that Ray was framed.
"It's still a mystery to me," Bernice King said. "I don't believe James Earl Ray killed my father. It's hard to know exactly who. I'm certainly clear that there has been a conspiracy, from the government down to the mafia … there had to be more than one person involved in all of this. I think it was all planned."
On April 4, Bernice King will lead commemorative events in Atlanta, including a wreath laying at her father's grave, a ceremony awarding Martin Luther King Peace Prizes, a reception for children and a March for Humanity through the city. Then, at 6:01 p.m., she will lead a bell-ringing at the exact moment of the shooting, 39 times for every year of her father's life, certain that the person who killed him has never been caught.
Read more Retropolis:


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After a lifetime worth of rumors hit the Internet in just one week, Matthew Weiner is thrilled to report that all is well in Mad Men land.
Earlier this week it was reported that AMC's hit drama wouldn't return until 2012, and may or may not do so without Weiner, its creator. The points of contention ranged from shortening the length of the show to cutting main cast members to increasing the amount of product placement throughout its 47 minute running time—the combination of which made Weiner "walk away from it 4-5 times in the last few days," he says.
More From ELLE
Instead, he signed a two year, three season contract and AMC matched most of his demands. The show will continue to run 47 minutes on DVD and VOD, but only 45 on the network.
Weiner said, "I'm incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support and overwhelmed that I get to finish telling the stories I want to tell." The only bad news? We still have to wait until March 2012.


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Table of Contents
UNC-Chapel Hill Surrenders to 'Heckler's Veto,' Revokes Emeritus Professor's Network Access
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) has surrendered to the "heckler's veto" by revoking Professor Emeritus Elliot Cramer's network access following outside complaints about a link on his website to an organization that advocates for animal welfare. Despite telling the complaining individual that the dispute was "not a University matter" and that the university did not monitor the content of websites maintained by professors, UNC nevertheless demanded that Cramer remove the link from his website and later canceled his network access entirely.
Cramer, a psychology professor at UNC since 1966 and an emeritus faculty member since 1994, is an active scholar as well as President of the Board of Directors of the Piedmont Animal Welfare Society (PAWS). He is also affiliated with an awareness group called the Friends of Orange County Animal Shelter (FOCAS), over whose activities Cramer first got into his months-long dispute with Joseph Villarosa. While unaffiliated with UNC, Villarosa has been determined to have the university step in and shut Cramer's speech down.
According to records posted by Cramer, Villarosa contacted FOCAS in November 2010, raising questions about FOCAS' tax status in conjunction with the organization's efforts raising funds to support a lawsuit against an animal shelter in Robeson County. Villarosa also questioned the presence of a FOCAS email address with a 'unc.edu' domain, and whether this implied some kind of endorsement from UNC. On this latter point, Villarosa complained to the UNC administration multiple times demanding it take action against Cramer. Regarding the possibility of untoward activities by FOCAS, UNC General Counsel Leslie C. Strohm received authorization to search through Cramer's university email files. In January 2011, Strohm notified Cramer that she had done so, and asked him to clarify her understanding of FOCAS' activities. Cramer's response was evidently satisfactory, because after he corrected Strohm's account and replaced the FOCAS email account with an address unaffiliated with UNC, no action was taken against Cramer. Though Cramer would later pursue grievances both at the campus and UNC system level regarding the inspection of his email, the matter was otherwise resolved.
Villarosa, however, was unmollified, and continued to draw UNC into his dispute with Cramer—next by complaining that Cramer's website on the university network contained a link to the PAWS website, which in turn contained a link to a page about the dispute. On April 17, for example, Villarosa wrote to UNC to complain that "It is now been [sic] SIX MONTHS since I first reported this matter to UNC[.] During this time, there's been NO effective action taken by the University[.]" On April 20, 2011, Strohm, apparently tired of dealing with Villarosa's complaints, emailed Cramer ordering that he immediately remove "any links to material referencing Mr. Villarosa, either directly or indirectly." Later on the same day, however, Strohm informed Villarosa via email that she had visited Cramer's website and had seen "no reference to you [Villarosa] whatsoever." She further told Villarosa that his recourse lay "directly with Dr. Cramer," and that this issue was "not a University matter."
Cramer promptly removed the link, but it was too late. UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp notified Cramer on April 27 that he had ordered UNC's IT Security office to permanently disable Cramer's UNC network privileges, which also cut off Cramer's access to electronic library resources. Thorp accused Cramer of violating UNC's Personal Use Policy by "embroil[ing] the university in your personal issues and divert[ing] resources ... to a degree that is simply unacceptable."
FIRE wrote to Chancellor Thorp on June 1, pointing out that it was not Cramer who "embroiled" UNC in the dispute or caused the "diversion" of university resources, and that free expression on campus is in jeopardy when an outside party must merely prove sufficiently persistent and annoying in order to cause UNC to cut off network access for a member of the university community. Further, FIRE decimated UNC's argument that Cramer had violated UNC policy. In our letter we wrote that
There can be no doubt that the content of Cramer's speech—a mere link on his webpage to an external webpage—is protected by the First Amendment against retaliation from UNC. Moreover, it is entirely unreasonable to ask the impossible, namely, that a faculty member police every page of every website to which his own website links, so as to prevent "indirectly" referencing Villarosa.
Furthermore, Cramer's website and necessary communications about it with UNC due to Villarosa's complaints do not violate UNC's Personal Use Policy in any way. Strohm admitted in her April 20 email to Villarosa that UNC has "no responsibility for [Cramer's] actions," that "[t]his is not a University matter," that UNC "does not monitor the content of the ... webpages maintained by retired faculty," and that Strohm saw "no reference to [Villarosa] whatsoever" on Cramer's personal webpage. Even if the Personal Use Policy does apply to Cramer (who, as Strohm noted, is not a UNC employee), it is not permissible to punish Cramer due to Villarosa's persistent complaints. Although you stated that Cramer had "embroiled the university in [his] personal issues and diverted university resources," the evidence shows that Villarosa is the one who did so. Cramer has made numerous efforts to isolate UNC from the private dispute, and he even removed the link about which Villarosa complained. Further, Cramer has been within his rights to seek redress from UNC about UNC's investigation, censorship, and punishment of his protected expression stemming from Villarosa's complaints.
UNC General Counsel Strohm replied to FIRE on June 15, stating that UNC would not restore Cramer's network access and characterizing Cramer's reasonable, good-faith efforts to defend himself as part of the problem. Strohm also claimed that UNC had not acted due to the content of Cramer's expression, despite the fact that Strohm herself had ordered Cramer to remove content from his website.
As FIRE President Greg Lukianoff says in today's press release, "Apparently, UNC is willing to punish its own professors on the basis of their speech at the request of an outside party, if that person is simply persistent enough. Instead of protecting members of its community from outside threats to free speech, UNC has let this 'heckler's veto trump free expression on campus."
Indeed, it's hard to disagree with the impression that UNC's priorities have been exactly backwards here. While UNC's frustration with having to deal with Villarosa's barrage of complaints is understandable, Cramer had to deal with them, too, and he did what he could to keep UNC out of what was and always had been a private dispute. Instead of capitulating to pressure from Villarosa, a classic example of an unreasonable, determined heckler, UNC should have stood with Cramer instead of punishing and silencing him.
Not only is this no way to treat someone with decades of service to UNC, but this sets a terrible precedent for future cases. Emeritus professors at many universities, including UNC, often continue their research and writing, have labs and offices, and participate in faculty governance. There is no reason that such scholars should have any less in the way of free speech or academic freedom than those actively being paid by the university. Should a university be comfortable with punishing or silencing any or all of these individuals simply because their research, writing, or other activities might lead a person with no relationship with the university to repeatedly pester the institution? If so, I suspect there is a large number of emeritus professors across the nation who would be surprised and dismayed to hear it. Hopefully UNC will realize its mistake and restore Cramer's rights, and soon.
TAKE ACTION: Write to Chancellor Thorp and urge him to restore Professor Cramer's rights today!
Recent Articles
FIRE's award-winning Newsdesk covers the free speech news you need to stay informed.


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Monday Morning Mirth
— more fun from the Washington Post Style Invitational (archive)…
ACCORDIONATED (ah kor' de on ay tid)
adj. Being able to drive and refold a road map at the same time.
AQUADEXTROUS (ak wa deks' trus)
adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.
AQUALIBRIUM (ak wa lib' re um)
n. The point where the stream of drinking fountain water is at its perfect height, thus relieving the drinker from (a) having to suck the nozzle, or (b) squirting himself in the eye (or, ear).
BURGACIDE (burg' uh side)
n. When a hamburger can't take any more torture and hurls itself through the grill into the coals.
BUZZACKS (buz' aks)
n. People in phone marts who walk around picking up display phones and listening for dial tones even when they know the phones are not connected.
CARPERPETUATION (kar' pur pet u a shun)
n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
DIMP (dimp)
n. A person who insults you in a cheap department store by asking, "Do you work here?"
DISCONFECT (dis kon fekt')
v. To sterilize the piece of candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, somehow assuming this will `remove' all the germs.
ECNALUBMA (ek na lub' ma)
n. A rescue vehicle which can only be seen in the rearview mirror.
EIFFELITES (eye' ful eyetz)
n. Gangly people sitting in front of you at the movies who, no matter what direction you lean in, follow suit.
ELBONICS (el bon' iks)
n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater.
ELECELLERATION (el a cel er ay' shun)
n. The mistaken notion that the more you press an elevator button the faster it will arrive.
FRUST (frust)
n. The small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keeps backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug.
LACTOMANGULATION (lak' to man gyu lay' shun)
n. Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the `illegal' side.
NEONPHANCY (ne on' fan see)
n. A fluorescent light bulb struggling to come to life.
PEPPIER (pehp ee ay')
n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper.
PETROPHOBIC (pet ro fob' ik)
adj. One who is embarrassed to undress in front of a household pet.
PHONESIA (fo nee' zhuh) n.
The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer.
PUPKUS (pup' kus)
n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it.
TELECRASTINATION (tel e kras tin ay' shun)
n. The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you're only six inches away.
THERMOSTATRICS (ther mo stat' rix)
n. Similar to 'elecelleration' above, the mistaken notion that if you set the thermostat to 95 degrees the room will warm up to a comfortable 70 degrees faster.


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Belvedere is Marin's smallest incorporated community, consisting of Belvedere and the Corinthian Islands circled by narrow, winding roads with hedges and lush foliage and spectacular views. With the feel of the Rivi era, Belvedere is home to some of the most exclusive Marin homes in styles ranging from Queen Anne and Mission Revival homes of the late 1800's to more modern Japanese -style and
Mediterranean villas.
Included areas: Belvedere
For Sale Listings
/ 11 Properties
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General Information
- View all current and past reports:
Facuty & Staff Resources
- Faculty Information (Appointment, Promotion & Tenure, Leave, etc)
- Annual Reports
- Southeastern Ontario Academic Medical Organization (SEAMO)
- Clinical Teachers' Association of Queen's University (CTAQ)
- Getting Started in MEdTech Central
- Faculty of Health Sciences & School of Medicine Dean's Office Support Staff & Deanship Recruitment (Including Dean and Associate Deans) Impact Analysis Template (Dean's Office use only)
Writing MCQs
- NBME: Constructing Written Test Questions (PDF)
- MCQ Guidelines, MCC (PDF)
- Writing MCQs (Power Point)
Writing Multiple Choice Questions: An Introductory Tutorial. www.nbme.org/IWTutorial This self-paced, interactive tutorial provides a foundation for writing quality multiple-choice questions. The tutorial introduces some of the main principles of item writing. It is organized into sections so that you can complete part of it and easily return later. The entire tutorial takes about 45 minutes to complete. Featured topics include:
- the anatomy of an item
- basic rules for writing good stems and options
- characteristics of a quality "best-answer" item
- writing items to assess clinical reasoning
- common item flaws
- strategies for evaluating test items
- MCQ checklist (DOC)
- Writing Multiple-Choice Questions for Continuing Medical Education Activities and Self Assessment Modules, Collins
- MCQs 1 - Construction
- MCQs 2 - Technical Flaws to Avoid
- MCQs 3 - Aligning with Course Objectives
- Glossary of Assessment Terms
- Twelve tips for blueprinting, Coderre et al. (PDF)
- Michelle Gibson's Approach to Blueprinting (Word)
Formative assessment
Interpretation and Follow-up of Assessment Results
A podcast of a workshop delivered to Course Directors by Dr. Don Klinger, Queen's Faculty of Education
- Interpretation and Follow Up of Assessment Results (Power Point)
The workshop's objectives were to:
- understand the concepts of reliability and validity in interpreting examination results
- know the difference between criterion-referenced and norm-referenced grading
- be familiar with the new examination process
- understand that test and item analysis is an expected part of the examination process
Narrative Assessment
- Narrative Feedback (ppt) Narrative Feedback (narrated Powerpoint)
- Narrative Feedback Professionalism (pdf)
Key Features and the MCC Exam Part I
Medical Council of Canada Guidelines for the Development of Key Feature Problems and Test Cases (pdf)
A practical guide to assessing clinical decision-making skills using the key features approach (Farmer and Page 2005) (pdf)
Assessment guidelines and processes
Please see the following pages for the relevant polices:


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This WHEELBARROW DELIVERIES printable set features the following:
2 different wheelbarrows (with a few separate cutting - templates to paper piece the wheelbarrow - these pieces come in the following formats: PDF, SVG, MTC and WPC)
10 different fillers for the wheelbarrow
20 Sentiments
This card also uses the following sets: EVERYDAY MINI WORDS SET 2 PRINTABLES
Here is a color sample of the wheelbarrows (the set is NOT colored, this just shows a sample of them colored up)
WHEELBARROW 1- approx. 4 by 2.5 inches.
WHEELBARROW 2 - approx. 3.25 by 2.25 inches
Price: $4.99 - This file is an instant download after payment is made.
CLICK HERE for a wheelbarrow treat box.


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- NEW Heterogeneous Workload Support on various different Windows and Linux editions with replication to and recovery in Azure
- NEW Automated Discovery of VMware vCenter Server managed virtual machines for replication to and recovery in Azure
- NEW Continuous Data Protection with software-based replication to provide near-zero Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
- NEW On the Fly Conversion of source VMware Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) files to bootable target Azure Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files, ensuring low Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)
- NEW Multi-VM Consistency using ASR Protection Groups to ensure that all tiers in an n-tier application replicate consistently and failover at the same time
- NEW Failback to VMware Infrastructure from Azure when on-premises data center comes back up post disaster
- ENHANCED Active-Passive Replication that does not require running target Azure virtual machines at the time of replication, unlike other competitive disaster recovery products, thereby reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
- ENHANCED Single-Click Failovers with ASR Recovery Plans to provide end-to-end workload-aware disaster recovery and orchestration at low Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)
- ENHANCED Rich Health Monitoring for replication, failover and failback with events and e-mail notifications
Announcing the Preview of Disaster Recovery for VMware Virtual Machines and Physical Servers to Azure using ASR
Today's Preview announcement delivers on another widely requested scenario from Azure Site Recovery (ASR) users – the ability to enable protection and disaster recovery for VMware virtual machines and physical servers to Azure. This is among the top four requested asks on the ASR User Voice and today we are introducing this capability. ASR, with its ability to protect Hyper-V or VMware virtual machines and physical servers, is a unified solution for workload-aware disaster recovery for your heterogeneous IT environments. The new features build on top of the technology that came with the acquisition of InMage Systems to deliver the following key functionality:


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Three years ago January 4, I buried two of my three beautiful daughters. The day before the funeral my sister-in-law, Sandy, took me shopping for widows weeds. What an appropriate name for the clothes you never wanted to grace your closet! And David and I prepared to leave our sole surviving child in a hospital three plus hours from home to celebrate the lives of our oldest and youngest daughters. Not our oldest child, no, he'd been buried twenty some years by that time.
And one remained.
Just one.
We arrived at the motel late that night after having driven in the dark for many hours. We were tired . . . worried . . . and broken. The motel sat less than a mile from our home, but I couldn't stomach spending the night there without any of my children. And family was staying at our home already and I just wanted to be alone with my husband. We hadn't spent many nights together since the accident.
That night, as we lay together in that unfamiliar room we talked about our girls, our fears for tomorrow, the difficulty of leaving Gracen behind, and the concern over her missing the memorial service.
I was nervous about the service the next day. The news coverage left me fearful that cameras and strangers might greet me in my worst moments. What lay before me was a small-talk nightmare. And so David and I agreed to spilt a pill prescribed for each of us at the ER. I can't even tell you what it was. A sedative—an anti-anxiety medication? I don't know. We just knew it was supposed to help. I didn't want to miss the memorial service because I was too tired to pay attention, but I didn't want to be filled with anxiety either.
So on the day we buried our daughters, we split a pill and swallowed it down before we left the motel. And then we stepped outside, took the elevator down to the lobby, and found family gathered there. We had no idea they were staying in the same place we were. After hugs and stilted conversation David and I left for the church . . . left to do what no parent ever dreams of doing.
And later that day we would turn our backs and leave the bodies of our children in that cold cemetery. We would drive away – abandoning them there in order to do the next thing. Had it not been for Gracen I think I would have curled up on that cold mounded dirt and cried out my misery until spent. There I'd sleep until I joined my children on the other side of the veil. Instead, I did the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and that's all I've been doing ever since.
Maybe that's all life was meant to be. One long line of doing the next thing . . .
until you are no more.
Yes, three years have passed and all I do is the next thing.
Believe me, that's a victory.


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On April 6th, 2012 the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) rolled out their brand new Source Code Policy, setting the direction for their agency to consume and contribute to open source software.
As a brand new agency, CFBP is in the enviable position of creating their technology road map on a while sheet of paper. No legacy systems, no legacy contracts, no legacy skill sets; not your frequent scenario in the federal government. Unburdened by existing IT operations and entrenched processes based on outdated policies they were free to envision a fresh approach that reflects and supports their public trust mission.
We use open-source software, and we do so because it helps us fulfill our mission.
When we build our own software or contract with a third party to build it for us, we will share the code with the public at no charge.
They may have had the new guy advantage, but they've done some great work that makes it easier for other agencies to model. CFPB has crafted a clear, concise policy for its use and then shared it broadly. They follow in the footsteps of the Department of Defense, which began producing and refining policy for their agency personnel in this area a number of years ago. CFPB hopes other agencies will find the policy useful as a reference model and to that end have also shared it on GitHub Gist.
I've been privileged to have collaborated with the agency's chief architect of the policy Matthew Burton over the past five years or so. I met Matthew about the time he authored a great essay entitled Why I Help the Man (and why you should too) and worked on a project ("Open Intel") for the U.S. Department of Energy. Congratulations to Matthew and the team at CFPB for their thoughtful work and leadership in this policy area, and for their creativity in making it a public asset. And I have to add….thanks for making it one of the easiest reads ever for a federal IT policy.
You can read Matthew's full official post on the publication of the policy on the agency web site.


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Growing and propagating roses
Planting and propagating roses is an easy task that anyone can do. You will just need to follow a few easy steps and in no time you will have a beautiful rose garden.
Planting the roses
Before planting the roses, you will need to choose a good spot for the roses to grow.
Next you will need to dig a hole large enough to accommodate the roots of the roses. Add compost and some manure to fertilize the soil. Before planting the roses, they should be kept in a bucket of water overnight.
For fertilizing the soil you can use organic fertilizers, like fish intestines. There are certain periods of the year when you should enrich the soil. Stop all fertilizing activities at least one month before the first frost.
Insect problems
Aphids can be found in any garden, and they are one of the most common problems for roses. These insect are very small in size, green in color and they can become a serious problem for your rose garden.
You can also find Japanese beetles in your garden. These insect perforate the leaves. You can keep insects away by using insecticides regularly.
Using mulch
As mulch you can use grass clippings, pine needles and wood chips. Mulch protects roses from diseases and it also retains moisture.
Pruning tips
You should always prune the roses in the spring. Pruning stimulates growth, and spring is the best time for it. You should cut damaged and dead branches. Only use sharp shears because otherwise you may damage the bushes.
It's enough to water the roses once a week, but will lots of water. Try to only water the bushes at the base. If water gets on the flowers or roses, they may get infected by fungus.
Preparing for the winter
In order to protect the roses during the winter, you should add some wood chips and organic mulch at the base of the rose bushes.
Propagating roses
- you will need to choose a stem for the cut. Cut it at a 45 degrees angle. You can leave a bud above the cut.
- Remove the leaves and the bud.
- Take a container and put some water or moist vermiculite in it, to reach half of the length of the stem.
- you can speed up the root forming process by adding some root compound.
- it will need to stay in once play for 4-6 weeks, at a constant 21 degrees Celsius, and in a lit space.
- never place the stem in direct sunlight.
- after the 4-6 weeks period, you can transplant the plant in a pot. Make a mixture of sand and compost.
- After leaves start forming, you can transplant the roses directly in your garden.


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This article or section needs more/new/more-detailed sources to conform to a higher standard and to provide proof for claims made.
Sub-creation was a term used by J.R.R. Tolkien for a philosophical concept both inside and outside his legendarium.
In Arda[edit]
'Sub-creation' was used to describe the creative efforts of the Ainur, Elves, Dwarves, and the race of Men (including Hobbits), all of whom are themselves creations by Eru Ilúvatar or in the case of the Dwarves, by the Vala Aulë and given life by Eru. It is called 'sub-creation' because original creation is the province of Eru alone, and that which is made by those created by Eru is derivative from the works of the One.
A notable example of sub-creation and its limitations is Morgoth's efforts to produce the races of Orcs and Trolls. Unable to duplicate true creation, Morgoth instead corrupted or emulated beings already in existence. Orcs were produced from corrupted Elves, while Trolls were said to have been made in mockery of the Ents using the element of stone. Morgoth was not able to simply bring new beings into existence but had to use resources that already existed in Arda.
In reality[edit]
'Sub-creation' was also used by J.R.R. Tolkien to refer the to process of world-building and creating myths. In this context, a human author is a 'little maker' creating his own world as a sub-set within God's primary creation. Like the beings of Middle-earth, Tolkien saw his works as mere emulation of the true creation performed by God.


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The warmest months (with the highest average high temperature) are April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November (30°C).
The months with the lowest average high temperature are January, February, March and December (29°C).
The months with the highest average low temperature are May, June, July, August, September and October (23°C).
The coldest months (with the lowest average low temperature) are January, February, March and December (21°C).
The wettest month (with the highest rainfall) is October (207mm).
The driest month (with the least rainfall) is February (57mm).
The months with the highest number of rainy days are July and September (21 days).
The month with the least rainy days is April (10 days).
The best months for swimming (with the highest average sea temperature) are September and October (29°C).
The coldest months (with the lowest average sea temperature) are January, February, March, April and December (27°C).
The month with the longest days is June (Average daylight: 12h and 53min).
The month with the shortest days is December (Average daylight: 11h and 23min).
The months with the most sunshine are January, February, March, April, May and August (Average sunshine: 8h).
The months with the least sunshine are June, July, September, October, November and December (Average sunshine: 7h).
The months with the highest UV index are February, March, April, May, June, July, August and September (UV index 12).
The month with the lowest UV index is December (UV index 9).


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Following reported revelations of the US spying on allies, some European officials say it's now more difficult to trust the US.
The US continues to be browbeaten by European leaders upset over the latest leaks about NSA snooping.
The French paper Le Monde reported Monday that the National Security Agency had made more than 70 million recordings of the phone calls of French citizens in a one-month period. Based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Le Monde said it believed the NSA recorded people who simply worked in business or politics and not just those associated with terrorism.
Another story out Wednesday from German publication Der Spiegel said that the US had targeted the private cell phone records of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, prompting her to call President Obama for an explanation.
Merkel, for one, has publicly expressed her unhappiness, saying that the trust she had in Washington has broken down.
"It's become clear that in the future, something needs to change -- and I mean seriously change," the chancellor said in a news conference, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Some European officials said they believe the revelations could jeopardize joint antiterrorism efforts and other issues that depend on cooperation between the US and Europe. A few have even called for tighter privacy rules across the continent, the Journal added. And at least one person is putting the blame squarely on the NSA.
"I have the feeling that the NSA has gotten completely out of control," European Parliament member Axel Voss said. "One cannot assume that Ms. Merkel is a top terrorist whose cell phone absolutely needs to be tapped."
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso went so far as to draw an analogy between the US actions and those of the former East German secret police.
"You speak about Chancellor Merkel in Germany, there was a part of Germany where there was a political police that were spying on people's lives every day," Barroso said, according to the Journal. "We know very well what happens when the state uses powers that intrude in people's lives."
Spying on one's allies does seem to be a not-so-secret secret among nations. Christian Whiton, a former senior adviser at the US State Department, told CNN that Merkel's outrage may be for show.
"I think especially with Germany and France, of course, they are very familiar with US signals intelligence, which is the technical term for eavesdropping," Whiton said. "We use a lot of signals intelligence, we share it with our allies. And they spy on us too. France is one of the most aggressive collectors of intelligence. So what you are seeing is a bit of kabuki theater that will probably blow over before too long."
Still, the US has been forced into damage control, carefully weighing its words in response to the accusations. White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the "president assured [Merkel] that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications" of the chancellor. But the specific tenses used in that statement have led some to speculate that such monitoring may have gone on in the past.


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'Current Employers of People Who Like Racism' ... and More Actual Facebook Graph Searches
The spouses of people who like Prostitutes. The mothers of Jews who like Bacon. Single women who live nearby and like getting Getting Drunk. These people are all on Facebook, and Tom Scott has found them through the service's new Graph Search. And he has compiled them all on, appropriately, a Tumblr: actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com.
Here's one of his findings:
And here's another:
And here's another:
And here's another:
So on the one hand: another day, another cheeky single-serve Tumblr. Another day, another warning about the concessions we make to Facebook when it comes to our privacy. "If it'd be awkward if it was put on a screen in Times Square," Scott puts it by way of project summary, "don't put it on Facebook. Oh, and check your privacy settings again."
The Tumblr highlights the danger that, if you are indeed the employer of employees who like racism, you will be called out for this. If you are indeed an employee who likes racism, you will be called out for this. (More urgently, if you are living in a repressive regime and have identified yourself as a "man who likes men," you will be called out for this.)
But ActualFacebookSearches highlights another danger, too -- less immediate, but there nonetheless as a harbinger of the way we will relate to and understand each other in a data-driven world: Facebook categorizes us. Or, rather, we categorize ourselves through the mechanism of Facebook. And Graph Search means that people outside of Facebook can re-categorize us according to agendas that have much less to do with "connecting the world" and much more to do with stratifying it.
So if I'm married to a guy who likes prostitutes, that is no longer just a circumstance. That is a category, with all the freight of implication that comes with it. Categories extrapolate. Categories separate. My marital status, and the context of it, and the happiness or sadness of it, may still be an intimate, nuanced, messy thing, a thing so intimate and nuanced and messy that it can be called a fact only in the strictest sense. Under Facebook's auspices, however, that feature of my life is stripped down and cross-referenced and otherwise transformed into a unit of actionable information -- for Facebook, and, as Scott makes clear, for anyone else who makes it their business to benefit from the systematic categorization of society.
It is both funny and ridiculous that we can now find, on Facebook, the population of people who currently work at Tesco and like horses. But it's also a reminder that Facebook is changing how we think of "populations" in the first place: not just as people who share circumstances, but as data points that share statistics.


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Whoever said that gamers are always looking to the future might as well be guest-editing Kotaku this week, because we are ignoring the final two weeks of 2009 to begin our look at... 2010.
It's not that we don't like 2009. It was a fine year of gaming, one that we'll get around to reviewing and ranking soon enough (probably when we're done impatiently looking ahead to next year).
But at the halfway point of December, 2009 just doesn't have the magic anymore. It's an old man of a year and we can't help but be distracted by the enthusiasm of that young cherub of 2010. We know some wonderful things to be true already about the coming year:
-2010 will include a lot of games we thought we'd play in 2009 (Blur! Bayonetta! Singularity! Gran Turismo 5?)
-2010 will include a January-March choked with promising games (Mass Effect 2! BioShock 2! Splinter Cell Conviction!)
-2010 is already being experienced favorably by people in Japan (See again Bayonetta and this week's — for them — Final Fantasy XIII)
-2010 will include more Halo, more Metroid, more Mario, more God of War, more Madden (educated guess), more Star Wars The Force Unleashed and even more Shantae
-2010 will be the most motion-controlled year of gaming yet
With information like that, you can surely understand why we at Kotaku believe that 2010 has a shot at being better than 2009.
But we could be wrong.
To test our theories and to provide you a look at the possible future, we will be publishing posts all week that detail the concrete plans for games coming to each of the major platforms. In addition we'll be previewing a handful of upcoming games that demonstrate the diversity of the 2010 line-up. And we'll be opening things up to you in a series of posts that explore the imaginative possibilities of gaming in 2010.
For all our 2010-week posts, look for the tag 2010preview. We're expecting a fantastic gaming year to come, and we're ready to start talking about it... now.
*Technically, Kotaku's look at 2010 started yesterday with our preview of Heavy Rain and R.U.S.E., but really, 2010 is such a futuristic year that a bit of out-of-order time manipulation seems ok by us.


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Welcome to Stephen Waldron Architects
Serviced Design from Stephen Waldron Architects
Passionate about our clients' dreams, first-class service and beautiful design, Stephen Waldron Architects exists to turn your ideas into reality.
We are architects based in south Wales and work with clients reaching from the valleys of south Wales, across to the south east of England.
Finding the right architect is a once in a lifetime experience for most. It can often feel like a lottery, but our aim is to make you, our client, centre stage and remove any element of chance.
Headed by Stephen Waldron with over 35 years' of experience, we know that whether personal or commercial, the process of developing a suite of offices, building a house, a home extension, a barn restoration, barn conversion or loft conversion can be an emotional journey.


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Respect at school in decline, survey shows
- Americans say respect in schools has dropped%2C sometimes precipitously
- Poll%3A Perceived parent respect for teachers drops from 91%25 to 49%25
- Speech therapist%3A Teachers are %22sadly the first to be blamed%22
Compared with when they were students, Americans today believe that there's a lot less respect in the hallways of the nation's schools.
A new Harris Poll out Thursday finds that fewer adults believe teachers respect parents or students — and that fewer believe parents and students respect teachers. In other words, just about every relationship in a school has soured a bit.
In a first-of-its-kind survey, Harris asked 2,250 adults last fall to compare their memory of "school dynamics" when they were students with today. The percentage of respondents who agreed with the statement "students respect teachers" dropped from 79% to 31%. The findings on student respect for teachers are nearly identical for adults who are parents of school-age children and those who aren't.
"We have gone from a time when parents believed what the teacher said in regards to their child's behavior and reacted accordingly to the present, where parents stare in disbelief and think of a million excuses as to why their child misbehaves," says Marybeth Harrison, a public school speech therapist in Hunterdon County, N.J. She said teachers are "sadly the first to be blamed," as parents cite poor classroom management or a lack of patience. "It's time for parents to start 'parenting' and teach manners, respect, etc. ... at home. Let teachers teach."
Linda Schulz, Harris' senior vice president for research, says the survey was "a way to be able to have at least some kind of benchmark" on how people feel about schools. Harris plans to conduct the survey annually.
Among the biggest drops: respondents' impressions of the percentage of parents who respect teachers, which has plummeted, in their minds, from 91% to 49%. Students' respect for teachers also dropped, from 79% to 31%.
The findings don't surprise Arnold Fege, president of Public Advocacy for Kids, a Washington, D.C.-based group focused on education and child advocacy policy. A veteran of many political battles surrounding schools, he has noticed "a lack of respect for public education over the years," whether the issue is testing, teacher evaluations or school choice.
"I think the community really feels that they've lost control of large parts of the institutions that are important to their life," Fege says.
He says education isn't the only arena under the gun — Fege points to recent polls showing that Americans are losing faith in government's ability to solve big problems. "I think that's huge," he says. "I think that's really scary that we've come to a point where we have diminished the importance of everything from FEMA to the military to the NSA."
Los Angeles teacher Michael Ulmer says, "I shake students' hands when they enter the classroom. Seeing as no teacher I had ever did the same, I would say students have the same or more respect these days. It's all about expectations and modeling behavior."
Jen Childers, a parent in Evansville, Ind., says the level of respect in school hasn't necessarily gotten worse. "I was a sideshow attraction at our school because I was 6-foot-2-inches in middle school," she says. "I was constantly teased and ridiculed and teachers and counselors knew it. They did nothing." Most mornings, she recalls, "I was throwing up in the car but I made myself go."
Now a professional boxer and boxing promoter and the mother of an eighth-grader, she says her daughter has been bullied at school because of her size. When she notified the school, she says an official said the cases are difficult to prove "and did nothing. The school principal didn't care and has taken a very soft approach. It's sad. The saga continues."


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Gift Ideas For The Hip-Hop Fans In Your Life
With the holiday shopping season in full swing and Christmas right around the corner, you could go the traditional route when hunting for the the hip-hop head in your life — vinyl reissues of Public Enemy and DMX albums, the "Halftime" 12-inch, to name just a few examples. But here we'll suggest some less obvious ideas for everyone from the indie-label-budget baller all the way up to that I-woke-up-in-a-new-Bugatti paper spender.
Since1982's "1996 Dynasty" Hoodie ($42)
To say 1996 was a big year in hip-hop is equivalent to saying that Jay Z is a rich man. Both statements barely scratch the surface of reality. 1996 was the year that Jay debuted and The Fugees broke through with The Score. Nas and OutKast dropped their sophomore albums, and the late Tupac Shakur put out two, one of which was released posthumously after being recorded in seven days. To commemorate all that lush history, you can cop Since1982's "1996" Dynasty Hoodie. What better gift for someone who likes to wear his knowledge on his chest?
Stussy x Yo! MTV Rap T-Shirts And Sweatshirts (Prices Vary)
One of these would make the perfect gift for anybody who, 25 years ago, was rushing home from school every day to catch Ed and Dre on MTV — and especially those die-hard fans who not only watched the show but also collected the trading cards from which this anniversary collection's artwork is derived.
Dipset Harlem World Killa Jersey ($450)
2013 was a comeback year for Cam: He dropped a mixtape and a movie, and reunited with Dame Dash — even if it was only for a commercial. Killa managed all of this while reintroducing the world to his new-look Dipset clothing line — the line that includes socks with his face on them, Cousin Bang Du-Rags and just 42 of these limited edition jerseys. If you've got the loot, that's something for everybody on your list.
Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession ($49.95)
There's no debate — there would be no hip-hop without a beat. And while sampled drum patterns and break beats ran the game for a couple decades, the sound has evolved over the years, as have the drum machines that have been integral to hip-hop from Day 1. For people who think 808s were invented by Kanye West, this book is an education.
Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out ($19.35)
Marc Ecko's book is not your conventional autobiography but rather a tool to empower those inspired by the creativity that hip-hop embodies. Unlabel pushes its reader to think outside the box and develop the entrepreneurial spirit that turned his brand into a hip-hop mainstay. For those with big dreams.
Ed Piskor's Hip-Hop Family Tree ($24.99)
This year hip-hop and comics collided all over the place. We got Bun B's Rap Coloring and Activity Book, Deez Nuts, a series of paintings by Mark Drew that put rap quotables in the mouths of Peanuts characters, and DMC's newest project, Darryl Makes Comics. But Ed Piskor's Hip-Hop Family Tree is a real fusion of both art forms. Piskor tells the gripping origin story of hip-hop in storyboard form with original artwork. Illuminating for kids and grown-ups alike.
Def Rugs ($89)
From the genius mind of Erick Sermon, the perfect gift for those who like to entertain at home, be they Zulu or a Naughty By Nature fan. There's even one for the Lo-Life on your list.
Wu Bird Pillow in Yellow/Black ($55)
Remember the Isaac Hayes/Wu-Tang collab, "I Can't Go To Sleep"? If you don't, the video features an insomnia-riddled crew, all decked out in Wu PJs spitting terrible truths when they're not getting some shut-eye on top of cozy Wu-Tang embroidered bedspreads. The only thing missing? Wu Pillows. Whether you're shopping for Ghostface himself or whoever takes the most naps in your family, this works.
Ego Trip Back Issues ($10)
If you were a hip-hop fan in the '90s, there's no doubt you read The Source. But if you were heavy into the culture and you were around the Tri-State area, you also read two NYC-based magazines — Ego Trip and Mass Appeal. In 2013, we were lucky enough to see the print relaunch of Mass Appeal, and we can dream of a triumphant return for the always on-point Ego Trip. For the people in your life who insist on print, grab a few back issues of that arrogant voice of musical truth.
The Drum Broker MPC-2000XL 16GB Flash Drive ($29.99)
The closest most of us will ever get to owning an MPC. Conveniently sized to fit on your key ring, it's not only useful, but within a realistic price range. For your work wife?
Gucci Mane Bobblehead Doll ($19.95)
Even if you don't love Guwop's music, you can't deny dude's charisma. And even if you're a Gucci denier, you'd have to work real hard to find a better desk ornament than an ice cream-tatted, chain rocking bobblehead — unless the person you're shopping for is really more of a Trick Daddy fan.
Earl Stevens Selections (Prices Vary)
Isn't there a rule that once you hit your 30s you can no longer refer to yourself as a Ciroc Boy? If there isn't there should be. E-40's new line of fine libations is the perfect solution for the sophisticated drinker; it's also a sly way to establish street cred at any office's holiday party.
DJ Paul's Smoked Out BBQ Sauce ($8.99)
DJ Paul, of Three Six Mafia, is an Oscar winner, a multiplatinum recording artist and the creator of a line of BBQ products. His hickory-smoked sauce is one, and the other is a dry rub that he says is "truly the best rub you'll ever rub on your meat." Perusing his site is really a gift to yourself, especially since, in true Memphis fashion, he's put up 10 (downloadable) free recipes, too.
Evan Auerbach runs UpNorthTrips. For more dope gift ideas, check out the full UpNorthTrips Holiday Buyer's Guide.


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We've all had important events that have required a lot of our time and energy to put together. Events like weddings, graduation parties, and birthdays often need planning, thought, and can be incredibly time consuming.
Fortunately, there are some ways you can plan an event without tearing your hair out. In fact, putting together these events can be quite fun when you have the tools in order to help your event run smoothly.
Here are five ways you can make your event run smoothly and efficiently.
1. Plan far in advance
Oftentimes, the most stressful events are usually the ones that are planned at the last minute. If you know that you have an event coming up (such as a wedding or a birthday), and you plan for it ahead of time, you are less likely to find yourself running around at the last moment trying to get every detail perfect.
It might be worth it to sit down and have a planning session or two in order to relieve some of the stress of planning an entire party or event in a short period of time. The longer you have to plan, the more your event will eventually look like how you have imagined.
2. Know where to give yourself a break
While you might have a certain idea of what your event should look like (and more often than not, it looks like it should belong in a magazine), you might not have the budget or the connections to make it happen. Accepting the realities of planning an event, such as using fake flowers instead of real ones, or folding chairs instead of designer-brand chairs, can greatly ease your mind. Likely, you will still have a beautiful event even if it doesn't match your mental picture.
3. Don't invite too many people
One mistake many people make is that they often invite too many guests to their event. Not only does this sometimes create unnecessary chaos, but it also requires extra planning, time, and food for the guests.
Having hundreds of people at a wedding might seem like a good idea initially, but you might want to consider whether it is truly important to your day to have an extra hundred people attend. Not only does it run up the cost, but it can make your event all the more stressful—meaning you'll be worrying more if there are enough canapés than whether you are having a good time.
4. Ask for help
There are those who can put together an entire event on his or her own, and there are those who need a little help doing it. More likely than not, if you're not a professional event planner, then it might be worth it to ask for a little help. Hiring someone to help you, even if it is just for some basic decorations, can take your mind off the little things, and can help you focus on the overall effect of the party. Even asking for a friend's opinion can help you to feel like you have some control over the situation.
5. Take a deep breath
Remember, part of putting together a successful event is knowing that it won't go exactly as planned. Being able to take a step back, relax, and enjoy yourself will not only help you feel as though you've done a successful job, but it will also help you to enjoy the special day that you have put together.
Part of the fun of an event is accepting the mishaps and mistakes – it makes the day unique. After you've completed everything, remember to relax and enjoy the party. You deserve it!


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A few weeks ago, I lived by candlelight. No electricity, no internet, no running water, no refrigerator, no heat, and no oven. It was fun for a while; it was like living in the past. However, after continually trying to get things done and failing miserably for four days, life got very frustrating, very fast. So, I've put together a list of fun things to do to keep you busy during a power outage.
1) Collect candles. Gather every candle and lantern that you can find in the house. Also, for more light, gather some empty glass jars, put tea lights inside, and place them all on a big metal tray (not plastic) and carry it around from room to room for some extra light. Just be cautious and extra safe about where you put flames and never leave them unattended. Duh.
2) Play a board game. Gather your family and use candles or a flashlight to illuminate the room. Scrabble, Clue, and Life are some fun games to play!
3) Make music. You could sing or play an acoustic instrument. If it's too dark to read music, try playing by ear.
4) Play hide-and-seek (or sardines). Make special rules like: you can only hide on one level of the house, or only the seeker can have a flashlight. It can make the game so much more thrilling when the seeker has to go through a pitch-black house searching for everyone. But do not use any real flames when doing this! (p.s. no one is ever too old to play a game of hide-and-seek)
5) Do a coloring page. Get some colored pencils and a coloring book. A power outage is a great excuse to do something you wouldn't have time to do ordinarily, like coloring. I personally like this book!
6) Read these verses.
John 8:12 – "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
Psalms 119:105 – "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."
John 9:5 – "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
Psalms 139:12 – "Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
Ephesians 5:8 – "For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:"
7) Write in a journal. Document everything that happens and write down how life is different with and without electricity.
8) Play the story round game. Set a flashlight on the floor facing up and gather around it, (maybe with blankets and snacks, it can get cold without a working heater in the house). Have one person begin a story with one sentence. Then have the next person in line continue it, and so on until the story ends. Make it as wild or as mild as you wish!
9) Make shadow puppets. Use a flashlight to cast shadows on the wall. There are so many different animals to do, you could make up a whole show. Make it a game by casting a shadow and having the others guess what it is.
10) Read a book. It only takes one candle to illuminate a page. You could even read it aloud to someone, if you wanted.
11) Make a list of all the things you have to get caught up on once the power is back on, things like, reset all the clocks, dispose of thawed-out food in the refrigerator, and recharge all electric devices.
12) Remember the olden days. Electricity is one of the world's more modern discoveries. Up until the late 1800s, every family had to live without running water, electric lights, and heaters. They used candles or lanterns for light, wood or coal for warmth, and hand-drawn water every day. Thinking about it this way can even make us feel spoiled by all the many "luxuries" we've all been given, like flipping a switch to brighten a room, not to mention cell phones, computers, or toaster ovens!
Living in the past for a while has certainly made me more appreciative of what my ancestors once lived without, and I feel very thankful that I do not have to continue without power permanently. What are some other fun things that you could do during a power outage?
Which board game is better: Scrabble, Clue, or Life?
Have you had a power outage yet this winter?


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De La Soul:Talkin' Bout Hey Love
|"Talkin' Bout Hey Love"
|De La Soul
|De La Soul is Dead (1991)
(The radio is so clear in here.)
Hey Love
Talkin' bout Hey Love
Wanna be your push and shove
Pop, popcorn up above
Move me like Soul when I say
Go to a club around the way
And see my Hey DJ
And make him play Hey Love
Discover all the football teams
Mack and eat jelly beans
Run in the cold with no jeans
Get yourself sick till we're seen
Catch the flu and make tea
How Dan Stuckie life will be
It's all about you and me
'Cause you're my Hey Love
Move me like Soul when I say
Go to a club around the way
And see my Hey DJ
And make him play Hey Love
TESHA STILLS: Look Pos, we gotta talk.
POS: Talk about what?
TESHA: Don't play stupid with me, you know what we gotta talk about.
POS: What?
TESHA: About you becoming fully dedicated.
POS: So we're about to go through these line-runs again, huh?
TESHA: You're damn right. I wanna know whatever you do for me has
anything to do with love.
POS: Look, I come all the way from L.I. to the Bronx to see you, isn't
that showing you love?
TESHA: You see that's just it Pos, I don't wanna be just your Bronx
love, I wanna be your Hey Love.
POS: You wanna be my what?
TESHA: I said I wanna be your Hey Love. I mean it's just not the mood
being one of the many girls on your
list, and you wouldn't be dissing me like this if I was your Hey Love.
POS: Look, I do everything I can to treat you like a rose.
TESHA: Yeah but you even give better treatment to that girl named
Selina from uptown like a Daisy. You even
gave her some of your special donuts for free.
POS: So this is what this is all about, huh? Donuts.
TESHA: No, Pos, can't you hear the music, it's all about Hey Love
POS: I don't understand why you're dissing me, it's not like I'm Paul,
I don't have two kids in every state.
TESHA: But you probably got two girls in every state. If you're not
going to go about it the way I want you
to, then just leave, 'cause I can't be so bothered.
POS: Yeah. (mumbled) And wit your wrinkled pussy...
(I can't be your lover)
(Where's that voice coming from? From... from nowhere?)


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Update1: A few hours after this article was published, OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt emailed Ars and wrote: "It is way overblown. This will never happen in real code." The vulnerability
, cataloged as CVE-2014-2970, already has been patched, with modified code located at lib/libc/crypt : arc4random.c.
Update2 on August 1, 2014:Contrary to information de Raadt provided Ars, no CVE was assigned to the bug.
The first "preview" release of OpenSSL alternative LibreSSL is out, and already a researcher says he has found a "catastrophic failure" in the version for Linux.The problem resides in the pseudo random number generator (PRNG) that LibreSSL relies on to create keys that can't be guessed even when an attacker uses extremely fast computers. When done correctly, the pool of numbers supplied is so vast that the output will almost never be repeated in subsequent requests, and there should be no way for adversaries to accurately predict which numbers are more likely than others to be chosen. Generators that don't produce an extremely large pool of truly random numbers can undermine an otherwise robust encryption scheme. The Dual EC_DRBG influenced by the National Security Agency and used by default in RSA's BSAFE toolkit, for instance, is reportedly so predictable that it can undermine the security of applications that rely on it.
Edge cases
A security researcher has warned that there are cases where the LibreSSL PRNG will produce identical output two or more times when running on Linux systems, something he called a "catastrophic failure." The same data can be returned when an application process is cloned—or "forked," in computing parlance—something that can happen when an operating system repeats a similar task over and over, like each time a Web server opens a new connection, for example. In most cases, LibreSSL will detect that a process has been forked because its identifier, known as a PID, will differ. In those cases, LibreSSL will automatically reseed the random numbers to ensure they're unique to the new process.
The failure results in cases where the same 16-bit PID is used to designate two or more processes. Linux ensures that a process can never have the same ID as the child process it spawned, but it remains possible for a process to have the same PID as its grandparent process. The condition appears to be an edge case, but it's one that may be possible if the Linux fork_rand program forks enough times to produce identical PIDs. OpenSSL, the open-source program LibreSSL aims to replace, has ways to recover from such cases. LibreSSL does not, at least not on Linux.
"You may think that fork_rand is a contrived example or that it's unlikely in practice for a process to end up with the same PID as its grandparent," Linux developer Andrew Ayer wrote in a blog post published over the weekend. "You may be right, but for security-critical code, this is not a strong enough guarantee. Attackers often find extremely creative ways to manufacture scenarios favorable for attacks, even when those scenarios are unlikely to occur under normal circumstances.
A related weakness happens when the LibreSSL PRNG runs inside a highly restricted process known as a "chroot jail." Administrators set up such processes to make them harder to be hacked. In the event that LibreSSL is running in such a process, it usually will be unable to access the PRNG resources located in the /dev/urandom directory. In those cases, LibreSSL will look for random data in the now-retired sysctl call. Failing that, it falls back to getting random bits from sources, including the PID, the time of day, memory address, and other predictable properties of the running process. OpenSSL, by contrast, has the ability to detect and better respond to such cases.
Again, the conditions necessary for either of these catastrophic failures don't appear to be easily met in most practical situations, but they do remain possible. And as Ayer noted, hackers often succeed in figuring out ways to force a targeted system to carry out tasks in highly unlikely ways when they make exploitation possible. Still the threat stemming from hacks is serious. In the case of certain cryptographic algorithms, when a system signs two different messages with the same random bits, an attacker can drive the private key.
Reducing the OpenSSL bloatOne of the chief criticisms of OpenSSL is that its code base has grown so big that it's not possible for anyone to fully understand how it behaves. Its support of so many platforms, and so many options on each platform, offers convenience, but it also creates a complexity that can result in the kind of catastrophic hacks that followed the April disclosure of the Heartbleed vulnerability. A second OpenSSL fork known as BoringSSL has been spun off by Google developers.
LibreSSL developers aim to improve things by repurposing the most crucial functions of OpenSSL while eliminating some lesser used functions. The cases presented by Ayer underscore the double-edged blade of reducing the OpenSSL bloat. While it will almost certainly improve security, it may also remove security checks that guard against certain types of risks. Ars was unsuccessful in reaching LibreSSL developers for comment. In fairness to them, the program is available only in preview releases that by definition aren't fit for production environments. Ayer's post provides precisely the kind of feedback these developers are likely seeking as they work to secure their OpenSSL fork.
"The problem is that there's no 'right' or 'wrong' here," Matt Green, a Johns Hopkins professor specializing in cryptography, wrote in an e-mail to Ars. "It's like asking whether the crew of the Space Shuttle should have parachutes to protect them in the event that the shuttle explodes. OpenSSL says 'yes,' LibreSSL says a better idea would be to prevent the shuttle from exploding in the first place. Very frustrating to referee that one. All that said: these are real issues and will bite people."


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The cost of cleaning up the oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico now runs into billions of dollars, according to BP estimates.
The company has tried a number of methods to shut down the leak from the damaged oil well - often innovating as subsequent attempts fail.
Although some of the methods have been tried and tested at incidents elsewhere in the world, they have not been carried out at such great depth as the Deepwater Horizon leak - 5,000 feet (1.5km) below the surface.


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On January 24, 2003, without prior public notice or comment, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published " direct final rules" mandating the FAA to immediately suspend, revoke, or refuse to issue a pilot certificate to anyone the TSA determines poses a threat to transportation security.
According to both agencies, these rules were promulgated under the authority Congress provided in the Aviation Transportation Security Act of 2001(ATSA), which directed TSA and the FAA to "make modifications in the system for issuing airman certificates related to combating acts of terrorism." On January 23rd, the FAA issued its final rule, Ineligibility for an Airman Certificate Based on Security Grounds, and the TSA issued direct final rules, Threat Assessments Regarding Alien Holders of, and Applicants for, FAA Certificates and Threat Assessments Regarding Citizens of the United States Who Hold or Apply for FAA Certificates. These rules became effective on January 24, 2003.
While AOPA recognizes the importance of preventing terrorists from using aircraft to attack the U.S., these rules clearly undermine the due process rights of U.S. citizens and pilots. The rules also circumvent the regulatory process defined under the Administrative Procedure Act (APT). The following issues must be addressed:
Enforcement of Rules Be Suspended Immediately
In this combination of rulemakings, the TSA and the FAA interpret the ATSA to permit the revocation, suspension, and denial of an airman certificate (including pilot certificates, air traffic controllers, mechanics, and others) of an individual "suspected" by the Department of posing a security threat without the benefit of the "due process" rights traditionally and normally afforded to airmen.
AOPA Position: The enforcement of these rules should be suspended immediately and the opportunity for comments be provided. These comments can then be used by the FAA and the TSA to adequately address the legal rights of citizens and pilots and other issues related to the rules.
Beyond Scope of ATSA Legislation
The rules are beyond the scope of authority granted under the ATSA. ATSA directs TSA to assess threats, makes plans for dealing with threats and coordinate with agencies including the FAA. TSA is also required to establish procedures for notifying the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration of the identity of individuals known to pose, or suspected of posing, a risk of air piracy or terrorism or a threat to airline or passenger safety. However, it is a beyond the scope of authority granted in the ATSA to require the FAA to revoke based on such a notification. The intent of the Congress in the Security Act to enhance transportation security can be implemented by the Department in a lawful manner, and at the same time according to airmen all of the traditional due process historically provided in the Federal Transportation Code.
AOPA Position: AOPA recommends removal of the TSA mandate of certificate suspension or revocation, as that authority has already been granted to the FAA by previous legislation.
Disqualifiers Needed in Rule
The rules do not provide criteria (even vaguely) to be used by TSA in determining whether an individual is a security threat. Other TSA and FAA rules include established criteria for assessing threats. For example, the TSA rule for obtaining unescorted access to the Security Identification Display Area (SIDA) at an air carrier airport has a specific list of disqualifiers for the authority. All three rulemaking actions allude to disqualifiers that lead to an initial and ultimately a final determination by TSA that "an individual poses a security threat." However, there is no discussion of the standards, procedures, or criteria by which TSA makes the threat determination. If an individual refuted such charges, they would have to be aware of the evidence against them.
AOPA Position: At a minimum, a definition of the disqualifiers used to determine whether an individual "poses a threat" should be made part of the rule.
Due Process a Necessity
There is a lack of due process available to an individual accused of posing a security threat. Initially the determination is made by an Assistant Administrator of TSA based on materials that may not be disclosed to the individual if TSA says it is "classified" information. The determination is then reviewed by the Deputy Administrator, and in the case of a U.S. citizen, ultimately by the Under Secretary. The process provides no independent review. A pilot can only appeal the threat determination back to TSA (the original arbiter), and because of national security concerns, the information implicating the pilot need not be revealed. The FAA has always possessed the authority, under legislation prior to the ATSA, to issue an emergency suspension or revocation of an airman's certificate. However, the affected airman has specific procedural rights that include an appeals process to an impartial adjudicator. These direct final rulings do not allow for any meaningful appeal process to a third party or impartial adjudicator.
AOPA Position: It is imperative that accused airmen have the benefit of due process. There must be an appeals process that allows for an impartial, third party adjudicator to make a determination outside the TSA jurisdiction.
Rulemaking Circumvented
Promulgation of the rules circumvented the Regulatory process defined under the Administrative Procedure Act (APT) and denied the public the opportunity to adequately participate in this rulemaking initiative. Arguably, the FAA and the TSA have had nearly 16 months to react to the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and to further prevent a possible imminent hazard to aircraft, persons, and property.
AOPA Position: As written, these final rulings ignore the regulatory and due process that protect airmen rights. AOPA recommends that enforcement of the rules be suspended and the opportunity for comments be provided that can be used by the FAA and TSA to adequately address the legal rights of citizens and pilots and other issues related to the rules.
AOPA strongly encourages members to provide comments to these direct final rules. Comments can be submitted through the Docket Management System online until March 25, 2003. Pilots should reference the following Docket Numbers when submitting comments: Docket No. FAA-2003-14293, Docket No.TSA-2002-13732, and Docket No.TSA-2002-13733.