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Blind Melon
Whereas most up-and-coming alternative bands of the early '90s borrowed from the leaders of the pack (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, etc.), Blind Melon were an exception to the rule -- their roots lay in classic rock (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin). And while a promising career lay ahead of them, tragedy would ultimately end the band abruptly. The group came together in 1989 in Los Angeles, although all their respective members had migrated there from other U.S. locales (singer Shannon Hoon from Indiana; guitarist Christopher Thorn from Pennsylvania; and guitarist Rogers Stevens, bassist Brad Smith, and drummer Glenn Graham all hailed from Mississippi). The complete opposite of all the glossed-up glam metal that was permeating the Sunset Strip at the time, the quintet used a refreshing back-to-basics approach, both musically and visually (giving off a heavy retro vibe early on). The band considered several names -- Brown Cow, Mud Bird, Naked Pilgrims, and Head Train -- before agreeing on Blind Melon, a phrase that Smith's father would use to describe a couple of hippie neighbors from back home in Mississippi.
With the band's lineup and name solidified, Capitol Records became interested solely on the strength of a four-song demo, titled The Goodfoot Workshop. Although Blind Melon only had a limited repertoire of songs at the time, they managed to convince Capitol that they had a healthy backlog of compositions, and were signed in 1991. The band set out shortly thereafter to work on an EP, produced by longtime Neil Young producer David Briggs and titled The Sippin' Time Sessions. But when the end results came out surprisingly slick and doctored, the project was shelved. Hoon, in the meantime, became reacquainted with an old friend of his sister's from back home in Indiana, Guns N' Roses' frontman Axl Rose, who invited Hoon to sing backup on several tracks for Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I set. Hoon lent his vocal talents to several tracks, the best-known being the ballad "Don't Cry," even appearing along with GNR in the song's epic video. Doubled with a high-profile appearance on MTV's 120 Minutes Tour in the spring of 1992 (along with Live, Big Audio Dynamite, and Public Image Ltd.), a buzz began to emerge regarding Blind Melon. The only problem was, they still didn't have an album in the racks.
The band had gone back into the studio earlier in the year with Temple of the Dog/Pearl Jam producer Rick Parashar, and although the sessions were completed by springtime, their self-titled debut didn't see the light of day until September 1992, by which time their springtime industry buzz had long since dissipated. For the remainder of the year and the early part of 1993, the quintet toured U.S. clubs nonstop (as well as landing arena opening slots for their pals Guns N' Roses). Although several videos/singles came and went without much MTV/radio fanfare, the Samuel Bayer-directed clip for their upbeat ditty "No Rain" (in which Blind Melon's album cover -- which included an old picture of Graham's sister dressed in a bumblebee-like outfit -- came to life) became a smash and catapulted the single and the album to the top of the charts (Blind Melon would eventually go platinum four times over).
Blind Melon spent the remainder of 1993 on the road opening for Neil Young and Lenny Kravitz, before embarking on their own headlining tour of theaters in 1994 (during which time they were nominated for a pair of Grammys, for Best New Artist and Best Rock Performance). But it was during this time that drug use spiraled out of control for Hoon, and the band was forced to pull the plug on the remainder of the tour as Hoon sought treatment. Blind Melon managed to play a few more shows later in the year -- handing in a memorable appearance at Woodstock '94 and opening up for the Rolling Stones on select dates in September. Recording sessions began in the fall of 1994 for their sophomore effort in New Orleans, with renowned producer Andy Wallace behind the boards.
The sessions were productive but not without some turbulence -- Hoon was still indulging in substances, leading to an arrest for drunkenly fighting with an off-duty policeman (Hoon would later admit that he had no memory of most of the recording sessions). Once the album was completed in the spring of 1995, Hoon checked himself into another rehab facility at the insistence of his bandmates, which pushed the release date of the album, titled Soup, to late summer. A month before the album appeared in August, Hoon's girlfriend gave birth to the couple's first child, which Hoon said in interviews had given him a new lease on life and a reason to straighten out once and for all. The dark and challenging Soup was a true diamond in the rough, but when it was finally released, the album was savagely bashed by fickle critics everywhere, which in turn led to a cool reception by the record-buying public (peaking at number 28 on the Billboard album charts).
Concerned but eager to get back on tour, the band hit the road once again. Drug counselors at the facility that Hoon had been admitted to warned the band's management that Hoon wasn't ready for the temptations of the road just yet. But Hoon convinced everyone that he was and a drug counselor/caretaker was hired to accompany him. After a month and a half of dates, the counselor was sent packing and Hoon returned to his dangerous ways. Just a few days later, on October 21, Hoon was found dead on Blind Melon's tour bus from an apparent drug overdose, at the age of 28.
Blind Melon took an extended break to try and pick up the pieces and decide what they would do next. During the interim, the bandmembers finished off some rough tracks Hoon had completed his vocal parts for, resulting in the release of Nico in November of 1996 (the album was named after Hoon's infant daughter, with a portion of the proceeds being donated to Musicians Assistants Program [MAP], an organization that helps artists recover from drug and alcohol addiction). In conjunction with the album's release came the home video Letters from a Porcupine, which chronicled Blind Melon's history via interviews and live performances (the video was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1998 for Best Long Form Music Video).
Blind Melon decided to carry on under a different name and with a new singer -- placing ads in music papers and auditioning several prospective frontmen. But it didn't click, and after an attempt at having Smith double as the lead signer in addition to his bass playing duties, the bandmembers ultimately decided to go their separate ways. Stevens formed the New York-based band Extra Virgin with singer Rene Lopez (one of the vocalists who had recently tried out for Blind Melon), who issued the album Twelve Stories High in 1999, while Smith and Thorn formed Unified Theory with singer Chris Shinn -- signing with Universal and issuing a self-titled release in 2000. In addition, Thorn has produced other artists (Amy Correia, Zen Mafia, Gus, Jonny Kaplan) and played guitar on Live's 1999 release The Distance to Here. Smith's solo debut (under the alias Abandon Jalopy), titled Mercy, an album he began writing and recording shortly after Hoon's death (several tracks are about his late bandmate), was released in 2001.
Later the same year, Blind Melon were featured on an episode of VH1's popular Behind the Music series, and Letters from a Porcupine was reissued as a DVD. The Classic Masters retrospective appeared in 2002, but 2005's Best of Blind Melon was more in-depth, offering previously unreleased live material, songs culled from soundtracks, and a bonus DVD of music videos and more live material. In 2006, Blind Melon surprised fans by announcing that they were reuniting, with new singer Travis Warren in tow. The group's first new studio effort in nearly 13 years, For My Friends, followed in April 2008. Several months later, a book that chronicled the band's entire history, A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other: The Story of Shannon Hoon and Blind Melon, appeared.
Greg Prato
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Cold, my favourite subject. With so many ways to talk about it.
Every year I note changes in my adaptation and responses. The fun in this, is that I can treat myself like a long-term experiment and see what happens, it makes the cold swimming even more interesting, adds more personal value to it. My main criteria is that for the last five years I've never been out of the sea longer than two weeks. The hypothesis therefore (and import of that) is that I never lose my hardening, the ability to swim in cold water. (It wouldn't even be that long if I lived a bit closer to the sea). Last year I noticed a huge change in initial cold response to very cold water, where my cold shock largely disappeared with reduction in gasping and heart rate increase and pre-cold tension.
So this year, as we are within weeks of the normal coldest sea temperatures of the year, what I've observed is how one of the best recognised symptoms of cold for cold waters swimmers, the Claw, is now longer appearing during the times I am currently swimming. I have extended my cold swimming times from last year and at forty plus minutes in six degrees Celsius, my fingers are still closed and my hand is under control.
Above, we see again peripheral vaso-constriction in the hands, where there is no blood flow in the fingers. As often mentioned before, peripheral vaso-constriction is the body's response to cold, where blood flow is concentrated in the core to retain essential body heat for survival. In more cold-adapted swimmers (and others) peripheral vaso-constriction seems to occur even more quickly.
Therefore I have to admit, I don't really understand why my hand isn't Clawing recently. I've certainly been getting cold. So for now I just put it down to another adaptation and if anyone has any thoughts on this I'd love to hear them. It does help to understand also that there no muscles in the fingers. Yes, no muscles, your fingers are operated by muscles running through the Carpal Canal or Tunnel, which connect via tendons to the bones. It's the flexion of the muscles in your wrist and forearm pulling on the tendons that moves the fingers, but there are no actual muscles in your fingers so the fingers get cold easily, as there is therefore less blood flow.
I am NOT saying my Claw is gone altogether, just for these shorter, colder times. I have no doubt that longer swims in warmer waters, doing two hours in ten or eleven degrees will see the return of the Claw, as deep winter is not the problem for us, but spring, when temperatures are slightly elevated but swim times must be much longer.
Edit: I should explain: As muscles get colder they contract. This is what pulls the tendons in the fingers apart. The swimmer's ability to pull is compromised. It affects also the arms and legs so the whole stroke becomes shorter and less effective.
I should also add, the extent of the Claw is determined by your ability to close or touch fingers. A mini Claw will leave you unable to close your small and ring fingers, a full Claw will mean you are unable to touch your thumb and small finger. Unless you have a lot of cold water experience and safety cover, you should not be swimming with full Claw.
Related articles
- The Claw. (loneswimmer.com)
- Extreme Cold Adaptation in Humans (Part 1 of 5)( loneswimmer.com)
- Winter. It's almost here. I hate it, I like it, I hate it, I like it. (loneswimmer.com)
- Come with me on this cold water swim (loneswimmer.com)
- Is the water too cold to swim? (loneswimmer.com)

subset: commoncrawl


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Today, Facebook revealed the latest update for its News Feed feature, something that CEO Mark Zuckeberg says that helps make you see and feel things that users will care about. He believes that it should be more like a personalized newspaper that allows you to not only give you the top stories in the news and also socially relevant and local content from friends and family around you.
The new design sets out to be focused on visual design. Zuckerber says it's focusing on three things:
– Rich stories that are visually engaging
– Choice of different feeds and dig into any topic you want
– Mobile consistency that shares the same experience across different platforms.
Originally launched in 2006, the News Feed has become the central place where users find information about their friends.
Guessing about the future of News Feed
This news follows previous speculation regarding the future of Facebook's News Feed — TechCrunch said that the social network would launch content-specific News Feeds, while also giving out bigger photos and ads. A clue to this stemmed from something Facebook CEO said during the company's Q4 earnings call, as noted both by TechCrunch and Business Insider:
As our news feed design evolves to show richer kinds of stories, that opens up new opportunities to offer different kinds of ads as well…One of the product design principles that we've always had is we want the organic content to be of the same basic types of formats as paid content, right? So, historically, advertisers want really rich things like big pictures or videos and we haven't provided those things historically. But, one of the things that we've done in the last year is you've seen the organic news feed product that consumers use moving towards bigger pictures, richer media and I think you'll continue to see it go in that direction. And, I think that a lot of the success of products like Instagram is because of that. It's a very immersive – even on a small screen, just – it's a wonderful photo product.
Seeking to change
Last November, during one of Facebook's periodic "whiteboarding" sessions, the company revealed some insights into why there are already two separate feeds for us to consume: the News Feed and the Pages Feed. The former is the place where users will go to find the most engaging content while the latter contains content that they may want to read from Pages that are liked or subscribed to. Expanding this line of thinking and revealing different News Feeds seems to be the natural progression for Facebook and its information.
Earlier this year, Facebook also tweaked the News Feed more by showing larger images and longer previews of links in an attempt to increase engagement.
Privacy concerns abound
It can probably go without saying that today's announcement could rile up privacy advocates and there will be Facebook Groups and Pages popping up to rally users to quit Facebook over this privacy intrusion. Back in 2011 when the most recent News Feed changes were made, there were concerns that News Feed would give others access to the private posts of people users were not friends with, giving them the ability to Like a post or add comments to it.
Of course, Facebook has denied this claim, saying "Commenting or Liking a post doesn't change its privacy setting. If you can't see a post because of its privacy setting, it won't show up to you anywhere on Facebook including in your News Feed or in your ticker."


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But it really doesn't count for much if you don't go back to the office and edit, and then do some color corrections, and then put up a web gallery for your client. And even more importantly, when you get a list of images from your client you really do have to sit back down and do all the post processing you crowed about being an ace at on the shoot day. The retouching, getting the color exactly the way you want it (as opposed to settling for the "correct" way) and then burning the disk you promised your subject.
But, once you get into the habit of following thru you start finding yourself getting things done almost unconsciously.
I promised Selena I would take photos of her for her nascent but quickly blossoming career as a singer/performer if she would give me some time as a model for my just finished LED book. She did her part and now I've done mine.
I hear from a lot of models who get burned by photographers. The photographers promise something in exchange for a model's time and energy and then toss a few unprocessed files into an e-mail and walk away. No wonder models don't take photographers as seriously as we'd like to be taken. So, I'm encouraging everyone out there with an uncompleted project to jump to it and get it done. Once you've cleared the decks you've let the universe know that you are ready and able to jump onto the next fun project. And generally the universe delivers. (No 30 minute guarantee. That's just for pizza.)


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Geologist & environmental scientist
Katharine Hayhoe, PhD, who wrote the December AITSE piece "Climate Change: Anthropogenic or Not?", is an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She is senior author of the book "A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions".
I am a senior research geologist who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on palaeo-environmental and palaeo-climatic topics and also author of the book, "Climate: the Counter Consensus".
Quite clearly, Dr. Hayhoe and I are both credible professional scientists. Given our training and research specializations, we are therefore competent to assess the evidence regarding the dangerous global warming that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) alleges is being caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet at the end of her article Dr. Hayhoe recommends for further reading the websites RealClimate.org and SkepticalScience.com, whereas here at the outset of writing my own article I recommend the websites wattsupwiththat.com and www.thegwpf.org (Global Warming Policy Foundation). To knowledgeable readers, this immediately signals that Dr. Hayhoe and I have diametrically opposing views on the global warming issue.
The general public finds it very hard to understand how such strong disagreement can exist between two equally qualified persons on a scientific topic, a disagreement that is manifest also on the wider scene by the existence of equivalent groups of scientists who either support or oppose the views of the IPCC about dangerous anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (DAGW).
In this article I shall try to summarize what the essential disagreement is between these two groups of scientists, and show how it has come to be misrepresented in the public domain.
Common ground amongst DAGW protagonists
Though you wouldn't know it from the antagonistic nature of public discussions about global warming, a large measure of scientific agreement and shared interpretation exists amongst nearly all scientists who consider the issue. The common ground, much of which was traversed by Dr. Hayhoe in her article, includes:
· that climate has always changed and always will,
· that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere,
· that human emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere,
· that a global warming of around 0.5OC occurred in the 20th century, but
· that global warming has ceased over the last 15 years.
The scientific argument over DAGW is therefore about none of these things. Rather, it is almost entirely about three other, albeit related, issues. They are:
· the amount of net warming that is, or will be, produced by human-related emissions,
· whether any actual evidence exists for dangerous warming of human causation over the last 50 years, and
· whether the IPCC's computer models can provide accurate climate predictions 100 years into the future.
Dr. Hayhoe's answers to those questions would probably be along the line of: substantial, lots and yes. My answers would be: insignificant, none and no.
What can possibly explain such disparate responses to a largely agreed set of factual climate data?
How does science work?
Arguments about global warming, or more generally about climate change, are concerned with a scientific matter. Science deals with facts, experiments and numerical representations of the natural world around us. Science does not deal with emotions, beliefs or politics, but rather strives to analyse matters dispassionately and in an objective way, such that in consideration of a given set of facts two different practitioners might come to the same interpretation; and, yes, I am aware of the irony of that statement in the present context.
Which brings us to the matter of Occam's Razor and the null hypothesis. William of Occam (1285-1347) was an English Franciscan monk and philosopher to whom is attributed the saying 'Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate', which translates as 'Plurality should not be posited without necessity.' This is a succinct statement of the principle of simplicity, or parsimony, that was first developed by Aristotle and which has today come to underlie all scientific endeavour.
The phrase 'Occam's Razor' is now generally used as shorthand to represent the fundamental scientific assumption of simplicity. To explain any given set of observations of the natural world, scientific method proceeds by erecting, first, the simplest possible explanation (hypothesis) that can explain the known facts. This simple explanation, termed the null hypothesis, then becomes the assumed interpretation until additional facts emerge that require modification of the initial hypothesis, or perhaps even invalidate it altogether.
Given the great natural variability exhibited by climate records, and the failure to date to compartmentalize or identify a human signal within them, the proper null hypothesis – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that global climate changes are presumed to be natural, unless and until specific evidence is forthcoming for human causation.
It is one of the more extraordinary facts about the IPCC that the research studies it favours mostly proceed using an (unjustified) inversion of the null hypothesis – namely that global climate changes are presumed to be due to human-related carbon dioxide emissions, unless and until specific evidence indicates otherwise.
What hypothesis do we wish to test?
Though climate science overall is complex, the greenhouse hypothesis itself is straightforward and it is relatively simple to test it, or its implications, against the available data. First, though, we need to be crystal clear about precisely what we mean by the term.
In general communication, and in the media, the terms greenhouse and greenhouse hypothesis have come to carry a particular vernacular meaning – almost independently of their scientific derivation. When an opinion poll or a reporter solicits information on what members of the public think about the issue they ask questions such as "do you believe in global warming", "do you believe in climate change" or "do you believe in the greenhouse effect".
Leaving aside the issue that science is never about belief, all such questions are actually coded ones, being understood by the public to mean "is dangerous global warming being caused by human-related emissions of carbon dioxide". Needless to say, this is a different, albeit related, question. These and other sloppy ambiguities ("carbon" for "carbon dioxide", for example) are in daily use in the media, and they lead to great confusion in the public discussion about climate change; they also undermine the value of nearly all opinion poll results.
The DAGW hypothesis that I want to test here is precisely and only "that dangerous global warming is being caused, or will be, by human-related carbon dioxide emissions". To be "dangerous", at a minimum the change must exceed the magnitude or rate of warmings that are known to be associated with normal weather and climatic variability.
What evidence can we use to test the DAGW hypothesis?
Many different lines of evidence can be used to test the DAGW hypothesis. Here I have space to present just five, all of which are based upon real world empirical data. For more information, please read both Dr. Hayhoe's and my book.
Consider the following tests:
(i) Over the last 16 years, global average temperature, as measured by both thermometers and satellite sensors, has displayed no statistically significant warming; over the same period, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 10%.
Large increases in carbon dioxide have therefore not only failed to produce dangerous warming, but failed to produce any warming at all. Hypothesis fails.
(ii) During the 20th century, a global warming of between 0.4O C and 0.7O C occurred, at a maximum rate, in the early decades of the century, of about 1.7O C/century. In comparison, our best regional climate records show that over the last 10,000 years natural climate cycling has resulted in temperature highs up to at least 1O C warmer than today, at rates of warming up to 2.5O C/century.
In other words, both the rate and magnitude of 20th century warming falls well within the envelope of natural climate change. Hypothesis fails, twice.
(iii) If global temperature is controlled primarily by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, then changes in carbon dioxide should precede parallel changes in temperature.
In fact, the opposite relationship applies at all time scales. Temperature change precedes carbon dioxide change by about 5 months during the annual seasonal cycle, and by about 700-1000 years during ice age climatic cycling. Hypothesis fails.
(iv) The IPCC's computer general circulation models, which factor in the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, project that global warming should be occurring at a rate of +2.0O C/century.
In fact, no warming at all has occurred in either the atmosphere or the ocean for more than the last decade. The models are clearly faulty, and allocate too great a warming effect for the extra carbon dioxide (technically, they are said to overestimate the climate sensitivity). Hypothesis fails.
(v) The same computer models predict that a fingerprint of greenhouse-gas-induced warming will be the creation of an atmospheric hot spot at heights of 8-10 km in equatorial regions, and enhanced warming also near both poles.
Given that we already know that the models are faulty, it shouldn't surprise us to discover that direct measurements by both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite sensors show the absence of surface warming in Antarctica, and a complete absence of the predicted low latitude atmospheric hot spot. Hypothesis fails, twice.
One of the 20th century's greatest physicists, Richard Feynman, observed about science that:
In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works.
It's that simple statement that is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.
None of the five tests above supports or agrees with the predictions implicit in the greenhouse hypothesis as stated above. Richard Feynman is correct to advise us that therefore the hypothesis is invalid, and that many times over.
The current scientific reality is that the IPCC's hypothesis of dangerous global warming has been repeatedly tested, and fails. Despite the expenditure of large sums of money over the last 25 years (more than $100 billion), and great research effort by IPCC-related and other (independent) scientists, to date no scientific study has established a certain link between changes in any significant environmental parameter and human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.
In contrast, the null hypothesis that the global climatic changes that we have observed over the last 150 years (and continue to observe today) are natural in origin has yet to be disproven. As summarised by an seo consultant in the reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), literally thousands of papers published in refereed journals contain facts or writings consistent with the null hypothesis, and plausible natural explanations exist for all the post-1850 global climatic changes that have been described so far.
Why is this conclusion not generally understood?
I commented earlier that science is not about emotion or politics, despite which it is uncomfortably true also that public discussion of the global warming issue is conducted far more in accordance with those criteria than it is about science. As discussed at more length in my book, there are three prime reasons for this.
First, as a branch of the United Nations, the IPCC is itself an intensely political and not a scientific body. To boot, the IPCC charter requires that it investigate not climate change in the round, but solely global warming caused by human greenhouse emissions.
Second, from local green activist groups up to behemoth NGOs like Greenpeace and WWF, over the last 20 years the environmental movement has espoused saving the planet from global warming as its leit motif. This has had two devastating results. One is that radical environmentalists have worked relentlessly to sow misinformation about global warming in both the public domain and the education system. And the other is that, faced with this widespread propagandization of public opinion and young persons, and by also by strong lobbying from powerful self-interested groups like government research scientists, alternative energy providers and financial marketeers, politicians have had no choice but to fall into line. Whatever their primary political philosophy, all active politicians are daily mindful of the need to assuage the green intimidation and bullying to which they and their constituents are incessantly subjected.
Third, and probably most influential of all, with very few exceptions major media outlets have provided unceasing support for measures to "stop global warming". This behaviour appears to be driven by a combination of the liberal and green personal beliefs of most reporters, and the commercial nouse of experienced editors who understand that alarmist environmental reporting sells both product and advertising space.
But given that the science remains uncertain, shouldn't we give earth the benefit of the doubt?
This famous slogan (and note its deliberately emotive phrasing) is attributed to News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch; it bears all the hallmarks of having been produced by a green focus group or advertising agency. The catchy phrase also reveals a profound misunderstanding of the real climatic risks faced by our societies, because it assumes that global warming is more dangerous, or more to be feared, than is global cooling; in reality, the converse is likely to be true.
It must be recognized that the theoretical hazard of dangerous human-caused global warming is but one small part of a much wider climate hazard that all scientists agree upon, which is the dangerous natural weather and climatic events that Nature intermittently presents us with – and always will. It is absolutely clear from, for example, the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and 2012 Hurricane Sandy disasters in the US, the 2007 floods in the United Kingdom and the tragic bushfires in Australia in 2003 (Canberra), 2009 (Victoria) and in January this year (widespread), that the governments of even advanced, wealthy countries are often inadequately prepared for climate-related disasters of natural origin.
We need to do better, and squandering money to give earth the benefit of the doubt based upon an unjustifiable assumption that dangerous warming will shortly resume is exactly the wrong type of "picking winners" approach.
Because many scientists, including leading solar physicists, currently argue that the position that the Earth currently occupies in the solar cycle implies that the most likely climatic trend over the next several decades is one of significant cooling rather than warming. Meanwhile, the IPCC's computer modellers assure us with all the authority at their command that global warming will shortly resume – just you wait and see.
The reality is, then, that no scientist on the planet can tell you with credible probability whether the climate in 2030 will be cooler or warmer than today. In such circumstances the only rational conclusion to draw is that we need to be prepared to react to either warming or cooling over the next several decades, depending upon what Nature chooses to serve up to us.
What is the best way forward?
Given that we cannot predict what future climate will be, do we still need national climate policies at all?
Indeed we do, for a primary government duty of care is to protect the citizenry and the environment from the ravages of natural climatic events. What is needed is not unnecessary and penal measures against carbon dioxide emissions, but instead a prudent and cost-effective policy of preparation for, and response to, all climatic events and hazards as and when they develop.
As Ronald Brunner and Amanda Lynch have argued in their recent book, Adaptive Governance and Climate Change, and many other scientists have supported too:
We need to use adaptive governance to produce response programs that cope with hazardous climate events as they happen, and that encourage diversity and innovation in the search for solutions. In such a fashion, the highly contentious 'global warming' problem can be recast into an issue in which every culture and community around the world has an inherent interest.
Climate hazard is both a geological and meteorological issue. Geological hazards are mostly dealt with by providing civil defense authorities and the public with accurate, evidence-based information regarding events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms and floods (which represent climatic as well as weather events), and by mitigating and adapting to the effects when an event occurs.
New Zealand's GeoNet natural hazard network is a world-best-practice example of how to proceed. GeoNet is New Zealand's national natural hazard monitoring agency. GeoNet operates networks of geophysical instruments to detect, analyse and respond to earthquakes, volcanic activity, landslides and tsunami. The additional risk of longer-term climate change, which GeoNet currently doesn't cover, differs from most other natural hazards only in that it occurs over periods of decades to hundreds or thousands of years. This difference is not one of kind, and neither should be our response planning.
The appropriate response to climate hazard, then, is national policies based on preparing for and adapting to all climate events as and when they happen, and irrespective of their presumed cause. Every country needs to develop its own understanding of, and plans to cope with, the unique combination of climate hazards that apply within its boundaries. The planned responses should be based upon adaptation, with mitigation where appropriate to cushion citizens who are affected in an undesirable way.
The idea that there can be a one-size-fits-all global solution to deal with just one possible aspect of future climate change, as recommended by the IPCC and favoured by green activists and most media commentators, fails entirely to deal with the real climate and climate-related hazards to which we are all exposed every day.
Robert (Bob) Carter is a marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than 40 years professional experience who has held academic positions at the University of Otago (Dunedin) and James Cook University (Townsville), where he was Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. His career has included periods as a Commonwealth Scholar (Cambridge University), a Nuffield Fellow (Oxford University) and an Australian Research Council Special Investigator. Bob has acted as an expert witness on climate change before the U.S. Senate Committee of Environment & Public Works, the Australian and N.Z. parliamentary Select Committees into emissions trading, and was a primary science witness in the U.K. High Court case of Dimmock v. H.M.'s Secretary of State for Education, the 2007 judgement from which identified nine major scientific errors in Mr Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth". Carter is author of the book, Climate: the Counter Consensus (2010, Stacey International Ltd., London).


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April 2014
The Pathways are being redeveloped. Resulting from the Global CIARD Consultation in 2013, the Pathways structure and content are undergoing substantial change. Watch this space for ongoing developments
The CIARD Pathways provide an introduction to the ways in which research outputs can be made more available, accessible and applicable (the 3As) for the stakeholders who will derive benefit from this information and knowledge. The CIARD Manifesto and the CIARD Checklist of Good Practices are statements of what needs to be done in order to achieve the enhancement of the 3As. The CIARD Pathways are practical guides, showing how the different elements of the Manifesto and the Checklist can be achieved by institutions around the world.
Each Pathway presents an introduction to a specific area of activity, and then explains what an individual or institution needs to do to achieve progress in this area. Each Pathway is linked to other Web resources which offer more detail, explanation and guidance for a fuller understanding. Examples of best practice experience from around the world are also included.
The Pathways are presented in three groups:
Group 1: Enabling the institutional environment for openness and sharing of research information and knowledge
Introducing the ways in which institutional culture and capacity can be developed in order to achieve the 3As.
Sub-Group 1.1. Organizational strategy, policy and development
Pathway 1.1.1. Advocate for the openness of information and knowledge in the organization
Pathway 1.1.2. Develop organizational strategy, policies and culture for information and knowledge openness
Pathway 1.1.3. Organize and strengthen the information infrastructure – invest in careers, skills and appropriate technologies
Pathway 1.1.4. Manage IPR (intellectual property rights) for an open information/knowledge environment
Pathway 1.1.5.Open Access: Repositories and Publishers
Pathway 1.1.6. Form partnerships for information and knowledge management
Group 2: Making research information and data more available and accessible
Covering Open Access, institutional repositories, and the growing importance of 'linked data
Sub-Group 2.1. Use of Standards and Formats
Pathway 2.1.1. Understanding International standards and data formats for open digital content. Proposed Sub-pathways:
2.1.1.a. Metadata - general guidance
2.1.1.b. Knowledge Organization Systems – general guidance
2.1.1.c. Authority data
2.1.1.d. Linked Open Data technologies and protocols - general guidance
Sub-Group 2.2. Collect and Organize Information and Data
Pathway 2.2.1. Plan and implement a digital repository ensuring interoperability. Proposed Sub-pathways:
2.2.1.a. Special guidance for documents (and bibliographic data)
2.2.1.b. Special guidance for educational resources
2.2.1.c. Special guidance for statistics
2.2.1.d. Special guidance for spatial data and maps
2.2.1.e. Special guidance for germplasm data
2.2.1.f. Special guidance for soil data
2.2.1.g. Special guidance for directories
2.2.1.h. Special guidance for market information/data
Sub-Group 2.3. Use and Re-use Digital Data
Pathway 2.3.1. Plan and implement a distributed network of information and data providers
Pathway 2.3.2. Plan and implement an aggregator / harvester
Pathway 2.3.3. Plan and implement a mash-up from heterogeneous sources of data
Pathway 2.3.4. Use and process datasets
Group 3: Fostering knowledge exchange amongst different stakeholders
Sharing information and knowledge with peers and other stakeholder groups, and using different media to stimulate innovation
Sub-Group 3.1. Development of knowledge resources to meet user needs
Pathway 3.1.1. Develop, repackage, and repurpose knowledge resources for different stakeholders and audiences
3.1.1.a. Develop learning resources for knowledge sharing
Pathway 3.1.2. Document good practices in agriculture for capitalization of experiences
Sub-Group 3.2. Communicate using mainstream and social media
Pathway 3.2.1. Use digital social media to foster knowledge sharing
Pathway 3.2.2. Use traditional mainstream media to broadcast knowledge
Sub-Group 3.3. Promote and maintain dialogue and learning through knowledge exchange and participatory approaches
Pathway 3.3.1. Use participatory methods for development and research, including participatory teams
Pathway 3.3.2. Create and sustain partnerships and teams for innovation
Pathway 3.3.3. Foster knowledge exchange through multi-stakeholder innovation platforms
Each institution will achieve the Checklist and Manifesto agenda in its own way, because every institution will be developing from a different starting point. The Pathways are provided to allow every institution to find its own most effective route toward achieving the CIARD Checklist and Manifesto.


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(An excerpt from The Strangest Secret Library available on Amazon)
Chapter 5 Righting the Direction
In spite of the will to fail, in spite of the rewards of failure, success is the normal aim of man, his proper objective. Energy is correctly used, not by spending it to hold ourselves inactive, nor by spurring ourselves to unproductive sterile activity, but only when it is at the service of the maturest and most comprehensive idea of ourselves that we can arrive at.
What this highest idea is will vary from individual to individual, and will expand with growth. No outsider can dictate another's private definition of success. It may, it often does, include some recognition from one's fellows, and greater financial rewards; on the other hand, it may not. Many a researcher in the sciences would consider himself fully successful (and would be right), if he added one minute fact to the mass of accumulating details on which science must proceed, if he took one item out of the realm of hypothesis and speculation and placed it in its proper relation to the mass of known truths. His name might never be known by those outside his science; it might be quite obscure even within his own field. He would nevertheless have attained the goal for which he was working if he accomplished that which he himself set out to do.
The actress who reaches the top of her art is as successful as the mother who raises a large and healthy family – but not more so. A priest or minister immersed in the care of his parish lives as successful a life as the genius whose name is known by most of his contemporaries. Another's ideal of success may have so little in common with our own that we are quite blind as to what he can see in the career he has chosen, but unless we are totally unimaginative we know, when we see him living responsibly, effectively, usefully, happily, making the most of his advantages and gifts, that we are dealing with a successful man.
To offer too circumscribed a definition of success would defeat the purpose of this book. Much of our distrust of the word, as it is, comes from not realizing the infinitely extensive range of possible "successes." Each of us, usually by late adolescence, has a mass of knowledge about himself, which – if we took the counsel "Know thyself" seriously – could be examined and considered until the individual's ideal of the good life would emerge from it plainly. It ought to be part of education to see that each child should understand the necessity of finding this clue to his future, and be shown that it is sometimes thrown into confusion by hero-worship, or by the erroneous notion that what is an item in the success of one must be present in the success of each of us. Still, in spite of confusion, false starts, the taking over of the ambitions of a parent or teacher for ourselves instead of finding our own, most of us do arrive in the early twenties knowing what we are best fitted to do, or could do best if we had the training and opportunity.
It is worth noting carefully that unless you have allowed yourself to overestimate your character grossly, your own success-idea is within the region of those things which can be brought about. Usually, far from overrating our abilities, we do not understand how great they are. The reason for this under-estimation of ourselves will be considered later, but it is well to realize that few except the truly insane believe themselves suited for careers far beyond their full powers.
The next point to understand is that in these pages we are not talking about success of any secondary or metaphorical sort. Your idea of what is success for you is not here to be replaced by another high-sounding, "idealistic" compromise. You are not being exhorted, once more, to lower your hopes and then find that you can easily reach the simpler standard. Such programs are only temporizing with failure. On the contrary, the more vividly you can present to yourself the original picture of the goal you once hoped to be able to reach, the better your chances are of attaining it.
Now, having examined the currents in our nature which lead us to acquiesce in failure, understanding that, if we allow it to happen, we can be carried unprotestingly down in the deathward direction, let us see what is operating immediately to keep us from the healthy efforts we must make to succeed.
To do so we must turn to a subject which is in some disrepute today: hypnotism. For many reasons, some excellent but others suspiciously weak, hypnotism is a subject which is seldom studied nowadays. If you have never had occasion to read a sound book on the subject, it may seem to you that some of the feats claimed for hypnotized persons cannot possibly have been done. There is some likelihood, however, that you have read at least one book on auto-suggestion, the method of healing which was so popular about a decade ago, and auto-suggestion is one of the by-products of the nineteenth-century study of hypnotism.
But few readers today know of the work, for instance, of Esdaile in India in the middle 1800's: of the surgical operations he performed painlessly on hundreds of patients, of his comments on the rapid recovery of those who had felt no pain during the operation – an early contribution to the theory of the deleterious effects of "surgical shock." The work of Braid and Bernheim is almost unknown, and Mesmer, who combined a fantastic theory with a mass of arrestingly effective experiments, is now looked on mainly as a quack.
There is no doubt that hypnotism is in its present disrepute partly because its early practitioners could not refrain from premature and fantastic theorizing, and because it became connected in the minds of the public with such subjects as "spirit-rappings" and "slate-writing" mediums, many of whom were later exposed as tricksters.
Possible experimenters were alienated from the subject because it was offered to the world with such unnecessary accompaniments as the hypotheses about "odic fluid" and "animal magnetism" – explanations which explained nothing. In addition to these prejudicial theories, experiments in anesthesia by the use of chloroform and ether were proceeding in the same years. Insensitiveness to pain reached by hypnosis was uncertain and presented many difficulties: not everyone was hypnotizable, and, even more important, not every physician was able to hypnotize. Inevitably, the more certain form of attaining anesthetization through the use of chloroform and ether was the practice which became accepted.
The study of hypnotism, which many acute observers of the middle and late nineteenth century believed to be the first step towards the freeing of mankind from physical suffering, as well as the overcoming of many temperamental difficulties and the cure of many vices, fell into a decline. With the emergence of the psycho-analytic theory, the defeat of hypnotism – at least for our day – was cemented.
Now, although the formula that we are about to consider has in it no trace of auto-hypnotism, it is still possible to learn from the despised procedure what it is that defeats us in our efforts to be effective. Consider for a moment the successes of a good hypnotist with a good subject: they sound utterly beyond nature, and for that very reason we have not learned from them all we might garner. One man, ordinarily suffering from vertigo at even a slight eminence, when hypnotized can walk a very narrow plank at a great height. Another, looking light and delicate, can lift a dead weight. A stammerer can be commanded to give a fervid oration, and will do so without showing a trace of the speech-defect which hampers him in his normal state.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable cases is one cited by F. W. H. Myers in his chapter on hypnotism in Human Personality: a young actress, an understudy, called upon suddenly to replace the star of her company, was sick with apprehension and stage-fright. Under light hypnosis she performed with competence and brilliance, and won great applause; but it was long before she was able to act her parts without the aid of the hypnotist, who stationed himself in her dressing room. (Later in this same case the phenomenon of "post-hypnotic suggestion" began to be observed, and the foundations of the Nancy school of auto-suggestion, of which Coué is the most famous contemporary associate, were laid.)
In the same chapter in which he quotes the remarkable case of the actress, Myers made a theorizing comment which is of immense value to everyone who hopes to free himself of his bondage to failure. He points out that the ordinary shyness and tentativeness with which we all approach novel action is entirely removed from the hypnotized subject, who consequently acts instead with precision and self-confidence.
Now the removal of shyness, or mauvaise honte (he wrote), which hypnotic suggestion can effect, is in fact a purgation of memory – inhibiting the recollection of previous failures, and setting free whatever group of aptitudes is for the moment required.
There is the clue. No sentence was ever more packed with rich implications for those who are in earnest about reorienting their lives towards success.
It has become a commonplace to say that we learn by "trial and error." We learn by discovering that one course of action does not bring about the end we had in view; we try again, and perhaps many times, until we find the procedure which accomplishes our intention. We then adopt the last term in this series of acts.
That is the mental picture we make of the "trial-and-error" method of learning.
Roughly it is right, but it omits to emphasize one element of the process which, although we may not dwell upon it intentionally, is never forgotten by the Unconscious: the element of pain. We believe, or speak and write as though we believed, that the one success remains as the total residue of the series of attempts, and that it cancels from our minds all the failures which went before it. We do not take into account the tremendous importance to our future conduct of those discarded trials which ended in failure. We succeeded at last, it is true; but meanwhile we experienced failure, sometimes ridicule, sometimes real pain, sometimes grave humiliation. We by no means retain in our memories only the item of the final success, nor does the success operate to make the failures and pain unimportant to our Unconscious.
The Unconscious dreads pain, humiliation, fatigue; it bends its efforts even more ceaselessly to the end of avoiding pain than it does to the procuring of positive pleasures. So we are faced with a fact which at once accounts for much of the inactivity, the inertia, to which we succumb at moments when positive action would be to our advantage: that rather than face the mere possibility of pain we will not act at all.
Rather than revive the memory of our early failures, let alone run the risk of hurting ourselves anew, we will unconsciously decide to remain inactive, or we will choose to do something easier than we should attempt, or we will start on a program and carry it near the spot where we were hurt before, and there find any excuse to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the work undone, the reward ungathered. The childish Unconscious wins: at least we were not bruised again in an already tender spot.
It is utterly illogical, of course; in order to avoid a trivial discomfort we roll up a great account of failure to wound us in the future, we miss opportunity after opportunity which may never come again, we expose ourselves to far greater pain than that we manage to avoid. But at least the memory of that early humiliation can sleep, or only turn restlessly, half-awakened.
Now, if that is true – and only a little self-analysis will prove that it is true – how convenient it would be if each of us could carry a hypnotist about, to cast his spell whenever we had to get to work! How marvelous if each of us could have his own private Svengali! Impossible, of course; and, more than that, undesirable. Fortunately, it is not at all necessary to be put under the sway of another's will in order to do our own work. The solution is far simpler. All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this:
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success.
Clear out, by an easy imaginative feat, all the distrusts and timidities, all the fears of looking ridiculous which you may hardly suspect of being treacherous trouble-makers in your life. You will find that if you can imaginatively capture the state of mind which would be yours if you knew you were going towards a pre-arranged and inevitable success, the first result will be a tremendous surge of vitality, of freshness.
Then – well, the only way to put it is that it will seem as though your mind gave a great sigh of relief, of gratitude for the liberation, and stretched itself to its fullest extent. This is the moment where one may be forgiven for feeling that there is something truly magical about the whole affair. There will appear an extension of capacity which seems more than normal.
Then the long-dammed-up flow sets in: directly, irresistibly, turned at last in the right direction, the current gathers strength from minute to minute. At first you may still harbor some fear that the spell which worked so instantaneously may break in the same way. It will not, simply because it is no spell; it is a reminder to yourself of the way in which work can always be successfully undertaken. If you remember that, far from your seeing the successful action stop, you will find that each hour of unhampered activity opens out into a promise of others in the future. There may actually be some embarrassment from seeing too many expanding possibilities until you have learned to organize your new life.
Those fears, anxieties and apprehensions, you see, were far more than mere negative things. By acting as if they were important, you endowed them with importance, you turned them into realities. They became parasitic growths, existing at the expense of everything that is healthy in you. While we allow them to sap us, we are allowing the nourishment which should go towards expanding growth to be used for feeding monsters, cherishing the freaks and by-blows of the mind instead of its extraordinary and creative elements. So that it is not that one is suddenly given wonderful new powers; by ceasing to let fear hold its frustrating sway we come into the use of already existing aptitudes which we formerly had no energy to explore. We discover that we already possess capacities we had not suspected, and the effect, of course, is as though we had just received them. And the rapidity with which these capacities make themselves known when once the aspects are favorable for them is truly somewhat startling. It is even more enjoyable.
Next, there is the further experience of seeming to become, in contrast with one's old self, practically tireless. Actual records of working periods introduced by using this formula would strain the credulity of those who have never yet had the experience. And these periods are not followed by any depressed reaction. There is always so much ahead, and it is so clearly seen, that there is no chance for depression to set in when the mind is turned back from its onward drive to consider all the tribulations of the past, all the possible mischances which might conceivably happen, it cannot, of course, at the same time explore the road into the future. But once absolve it of the thankless and unnecessary task, and it rewards you by seeming to fly where before it had stumbled and groped.
It takes some self-education to learn how to go from one item of successful work to the next, not to lose time and spend strength – much more happily, but just as surely – in gloating over either the ease with which the task as done or in contemplating too fondly the truly remarkable work one has just been so fortunate as to produce. But a few days' Harvest Home is quite excusable; and since, still resilient and unexhausted, one looks forward to further activity with enjoyment, there is no permanent danger that the first success under the new regime will be the last.
If you are tempted to look askance at this procedure, to feel that you arc being invited to deceive yourself into a feeling of success, you are quite wrong. We are all pragmatists and empiricists in our daily life; what "works" for us is our practical truth, and becomes the basis of our further activity. "Our thoughts become true in proportion as they successfully exert their go-between function," as William James says. And even more fully and convincingly, the late Hans Vaihinger worked out these conceptions in his book, The Philosophy of "As If." Not everyone will go with him to the furthest boundaries of his theory, but it is certainly plain that in most matters of life each of us must act as if this or that fact were a self evident truth. For one thing, if we insisted on proving the reality or efficacy or even probability of most of the conceptions on which we base our practical procedures, we should have no time left in which to act. So, in general, we accept the premises for action which are presented to us on good authority, and use them as proved unless or until our experience causes us to doubt the wisdom of so doing. Then we may reexamine them and perhaps reach different conclusions from our mentors, but for the most part we all act as if our norms of conduct, our standards of values, were eternally and everywhere valid, so long as they prove practicable for us.
In everyday life, then, if you are ineffectual in your daily encounters and unproductive in your work, you are to that extent acting as if you willed to fail. Turn that attitude inside out, consciously decide that your "As If" shall be healthy and vital, shall be aimed towards accomplishment, and you have made success a truth for yourself.
"The law of nature is: Do the thing and you shall have the power; but they who do not do the thing have not the power."
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The post Chapter 5 – Righting the Direction – Wake Up and Live – 03 appeared first on Living Sensical.
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Even if the country doesn't slide over the fiscal cliff, any deal to blunt the impact of the scheduled tax hikes and spending cuts is likely to create at least some drag on an economy that is still growing only modestly. The full package of changes set to take effect in January would suck more than $600 billion out of the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And while the outlines of any deal are still sketchy to say the least, Goldman Sachs economists are modeling a $233 billion economic hit as their "base case scenario."
Most of that impact, $218 billion, would hit you where it hurts: your wallet. "Given the range of items in our base case fiscal cliff forecast, consumers across the spectrum would be impacted," Goldman analyst Matthew Fassler wrote in a note published on Friday.
The biggest dent would come from the expiration of the payroll tax cut, with a total cost of $126 billion.
Goldman calculates that a $218 billion loss in consumer income would translate to a $110 billion bite to consumer spending. Based on past history, Fassler writes, "categories that could be most impacted include autos, consumer electronics, home furnishings, home improvement, lodging and gaming, specialty apparel, and sporting goods. Categories that could be least impacted include drug stores, food, and tobacco."
While consumers have been less concerned about the fiscal cliff than businesses, they may be starting to show signs of anxiety about the upcoming policy changes as a steady drumbeat of media coverage plays up the year-end deadline. A new holiday shopping survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, the trade group promoting tech gadget makers, found that the average American adult will spend $218 just from Thursday through Monday, up sharply from $159 last year.
At the same time, just over half (51 percent) of those surveyed said they would curtail their overall holiday spending this year because of risks they see in the fiscal cliff. Nearly one in five consumers said the cliff "was going to have a large impact on their overall spending this holiday," according to the electronics group.
Those lost sales are precisely why Matthew Shay, the president and CEO of the National Retail Federation, sent a letter to President Obama a week ago urging quick action – "preferably before Thanksgiving" – to avert the fiscal cliff. "Many retailers rely on the holiday season for a quarter of their annual sales, and any disruption to consumer confidence and spending during this season could prompt a crisis for retailers and the millions of U.S. jobs the industry supports," Shay wrote.
"Demonstrating the ability to work in a bipartisan manner will ease consumers' worries and avoid severe economic consequences during the single most crucial spending season of the entire year."
Before the cliff negotiations between Obama and congressional leaders began on a somewhat optimistic note last week, the retail trade group had forecast that holiday sales would increase 4.1 percent to $586.1 billion this year. But, similar to the Consumer Electronics Association's findings, a National Retail Federation survey of more than 3,300 adults conducted in early September found that about 57 percent knew what the fiscal cliff was and 64 percent said that "the current political and economic uncertainty" was weighing on their spending plans. In an early October conference call with the media, Shay had warned that Congress's inability to act could be "the Grinch that stole Christmas."
Analysts at Moody's Investor Service were more optimistic that consumers wouldn't let the policy Grinches in Washington completely spoil their holiday shopping plans. "Consumers typically want to celebrate the holidays by shopping, and in the past have shown their ability to ignore negative fiscal policy headlines during the end-of-year shopping season," Margaret Taylor, Margaret Taylor, a Moody's senior credit officer, said in a statement.
Still, the Moody's analysts said consumers are likely to "rein in" their spending compared with last year – Moody's is projecting holiday sales growth of about 4 percent, down from 6.5 percent in 2011 – "and are likely to pull back further in the first quarter of the new year."


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Things to do
Just alongside Singapore's central business district there is an oasis filled with flowering trees, green ferns and wafting palms with prodigious leaves. This is the Cloud Forest glasshouse, one of three recently opened public gardens that overlook the glistening Marina Bay. Home to some 130,000 plants found in cooler regions all around the world, its cool, moist conditions are a welcome respite from the arid air – replicating a climate typically 1,000 to 3,500 feet above sea level.
Singaporean streets are increasingly lined with greenery to shelter residents and grateful tourists from the sweltering tropics. If you've spotted the verdant bushes and plump boughs draping over office blocks and street corners, it's all thanks to the efforts of landscaping policies from the local government. Little wonder that the orchid is the national emblem for this garden city of Asia.
Each of the spectacular botanical houses is a showpiece in modern architecture and design. Taking horticulture to dizzying new heights are the garden's 'supertrees': a grove of giant, vertical gardens encircled with exotic ferns, vines and bromeliads that are truly breath-taking when lit up at night. And if you want to understand the multicultural heritage of Singapore, stroll through the colonial-themed heritage gardens, with homages to Indian, Malay and Chinese culture.
(A visit to the Gardens by the Bay will cost $20 for adults and $12 for children, outdoor gardens open 5am – 2am, conservatories 9am – 9pm)
[Link: http://www.gardensbythebay.com.sg/en/plan-your-visit/visitor-information.html#!/hour-admission]
Things to do
Tiong Bahru is Singapore's oldest hipster suburb, with heritage dating right back to the 30's art deco buildings that line its streets. True to its name (Tiong is Hokkien for tombs and bahru is Malay for new) the area has recently been reborn to cater for its trendy residents with artisanal coffee shops, slick design studios and concept eateries.
Key to the re-imagination of the area is serial entrepreneur Cynthia Chua, brainchild of grooming chains The Strip and Browhaus. Her newly opened 40 Hands café is an Australian style coffee joint, selling Fairtrade beans, freshly made sandwiches and squeezed juices.
If you don't fancy a latte, the Tiong Bahru food market on Seng Poh Road is regarded as one of the finest in Singapore. In a city where hawker centres are held in high esteem that's no small boast. Nibble on char siew pau pork buns at Tiong Bahru Pau and shark meat fritters with sticky sauce at 178 Lor Mee. The respected local food guide Makansutra bestowed its "divine" rating on the Hokkein Prawn Noodles stall, as well as Chwee Kueh and Jian Bo Shui Kueh stalls, both of which serve excellent rice cakes.
Things to do
Resorts World Sentosa is a family resort of epic proportions, encompassing Southeast Asia's first and only Universal Studios theme park, the biggest spa in Asia, 2,000 hotel rooms, and an endless parade of dining, shopping, and entertainment options.
Try to budget a full day for Universal Studios Singapore, and be sure to visit S.E.A. Aquarium, the world's second-largest aquarium and home to more than 800 species of marine animals. Other popular attractions include Adventure Cove Waterpark, which has a hydro-magnetic coaster; and a wave pool known as Bluewater Bay. For those looking to rest and relax, ESPA, a luxe wellness sanctuary built on 10,000 square metres of lush greenery, is just minutes away.
As for accommodation, options run the gamut from standard hotel rooms, to specialty lodgings such as glass-paneled underwater suites, and treetop lofts perched atop a canopy of native trees.


text: Recipes Baba Ghanouj on Pita 5.0 (4,960) Add your rating & review The creamy Middle Eastern eggplant dip called baba ghanouj is traditionally served with warm pita and an assortment of salads. Here, we top the pita with the dip and a mixture of romaine, tomato, and cucumber for an extraordinarily tasty meal. Slideshow: Middle Eastern Recipes By Food & Wine Updated on November 6, 2018 Print Rate It Share Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: © Helene Dujardin Yield: 4 Ingredients 2 large eggplants (about 2 pounds each), peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes 3 tablespoons olive oil 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper 8 pitas 1/4 cup lemon juice (from about 1 lemon) 1/3 cup tahini 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin 2 cloves garlic, peeled 1 small head romaine lettuce (about 3/4 pound), cut crosswise into 1-inch strips (about 5 cups) 1 plum tomato, halved lengthwise and cut crosswise into thin strips 1 cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and sliced thin 1/2 teaspoon wine vinegar Directions Heat the oven to 450°. Put the eggplant cubes on a large baking sheet and toss with 2 tablespoons of the oil and 1/4 teaspoon each of the salt and pepper. Arrange the cubes in a single layer and roast, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool. Reduce the heat to 350°. Wrap the pitas in aluminum foil, making two packets of four, and warm in the oven for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, put the roasted eggplant, the lemon juice, tahini, cumin, garlic, and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt in a blender or food processor puree until smooth. In a medium glass or stainless-steel bowl, combine the lettuce, tomato, and cucumber. Add the vinegar and the remaining tablespoon of oil and 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Toss to combine. Spread some of the baba ghanouj on each pita and then top with the salad. Suggested Pairing Food-friendly Shiraz is the daily wine of Australia, though many quite serious versions made for aging can be found as well. Steer clear of those blockbusters, however, to enjoy Shiraz's lush blackberry fruit and supple texture with this recipe. Rate it Print


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A Flash of Light from Titan
December 18, 2009: NASA's Cassini spacecraft has photographed a flash of sunlight reflecting from a lake on Saturn's moon Titan, confirming the presence of liquid hydrocarbons on a part of the moon dotted with many lake-shaped basins.
Cassini scientists had been looking for the glint, also known as a specular reflection, since the spacecraft began orbiting Saturn in 2004. But until recently Titan's northern hemisphere, where most of the lakes are located, had been veiled in winter darkness. Now, however, the seasons are changing and sunlight has returned to the north, allowing Cassini to capture this serendipitous image:
Above: This image, obtained using Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), shows the first observed flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR. [more]
The picture, which shows sunlight reflecting from the smooth surface of a liquid on July 8, 2009, was presented today at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
"This one image communicates so much about Titan -- a thick atmosphere, surface lakes and an otherworldliness," says Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's an unsettling combination of strangeness yet similarity to Earth. This picture is one of Cassini's iconic images."
In 2008, Cassini scientists using infrared data confirmed the presence of liquid in Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in Titan's southern hemisphere. But they were still looking for the smoking gun to confirm liquid in the northern hemisphere, where the basins are larger and more numerous.
Katrin Stephan, of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin, an associate member of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team, was processing the initial image and was the first to see the glint on July 10, 2009.
Right: A false-color radar map of putative methane lakes in Titan's northern hemisphere. Credit: Cassini Radar Mapper, JPL, ESA, NASA [more]
Team members at the University of Arizona in Tucson processed the image further. They were able to pinpoint the reflection at the southern shoreline of a lake called Kraken Mare. The sprawling Kraken Mare covers about 400,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), an area larger than the Caspian Sea, the largest lake on Earth.
By comparing this new image to radar and near-infrared images acquired since 2006, scientists were able to show that the shoreline of Kraken Mare has been stable over the last three years and that Titan has an ongoing hydrological cycle that brings liquids to the surface. Of course, in this case, the liquid in the hydrological cycle is methane rather than water, as it is on Earth.
"These results remind us how unique Titan is in the solar system," says Ralf Jaumann, who leads the scientists at the DLR who work on Cassini. "They also show us that liquid has a universal power to shape geological surfaces in the same way, no matter what the liquid is."
For more discoveries from Titan and the rest of the Saturn system, visit the Cassini home page.
Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
|more information
Rainbows on Titan -- (Science@NASA) Saturn's moon Titan is wet, according to the ESA's Huygens probe, but Titan's "water" is not like Earth's.
Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer -- learn more about the instrument that detected the flash
Credits: The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.


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Just about a month after scooping up mobile photo-sharing app Instagram for approximately $1 billion, Facebook has further fattened its mobile portfolio by acquiring Glancee, a location-based, "social discovery" app designed to connect you with friends in the real world.
A notice on Glancee's Web site today reads:
We started Glancee in 2010 with the goal of bringing together the best of your physical and digital worlds. We wanted to make it easy to discover the hidden connections around you, and to meet interesting people. Since then Glancee has connected thousands of people, empowering serendipity and pioneering social discovery.
We are therefore very excited to announce that Facebook has acquired Glancee and that we have joined the team in Menlo Park to build great products for over 900 million Facebook users. We've had such a blast connecting people through Glancee, and we truly thank our users for being a part of the Glancee community.
Facebook said in a statement, "We can't wait for co-founders Andrea, Alberto, and Gabriel to join the Facebook team to work on products that help people discover new places and share them with friends."
The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Facebook said in its S-2 filing in advance of its upcoming IPO that its users "could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices," and it seems clear the company wants to be sure it has access to cutting-edge features in that realm.
Social-discovery app and Glancee competitor Highlight generated huge buzz among members of the tech press prior to this year's South by Southwest Interactive conference.


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G & S Towing Service
Professional towing services in dallas and fort worth
G & S Towing Service, a Towing Service in Irving, Texas, has been serving Irving and the surrounding area for many years. We offer Auto Towing Service as well as Residential Towing, Commercial Towing and Roadside Assistance. Here at G & S Towing Service, our mission is to always provide quality service at an affordable price. Our customers are the reason we have achieved success. Customer satisfaction is our number one priority, no matter what the job. Don't hesitate to give us a call
Business Name:
G & S Towing Service
irving, tx 75062irving texas 75062United States
About irving
Irving is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Located in Dallas County, it is also an inner ring suburb of Dallas. The city of Irving is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. According to a 2019 estimate from the United States Census Bureau, the city population was 239,798 making it the thirteenth-most populous city in Texas, and 93rd most populous city in the U.S. Irving is noted for its racial and ethnic diversity, and has been ranked as one of the most diverse cities in the United States. Irving includes the Las Colinas mixed-use master-planned community and part of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
Neighborhoods in irving, texas
A.W. Perry, Arts District, Asian Trade District, Barton Estates, Bear Creek, Broadmoor Hills, Cambridge Estates, Cardinal Family Village, Carrollton Heights, Carrollton Highlands, Cumberland Park, Del Paseo, El Tivoli Place, Espanita, Estates at Wellington Run
Things to do in irving, texas
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Tag Archives: mental and social impairments
Late Bloomer – A Life in Slow Motion
Posted on June 14, 2015 by fgeefay
I am the epitome of a late bloomer. I've already written about some of my mental and social impairments. My unusually poor memory and such disabilities as dyslexia have hampered my normal development as a child making me a late talker and very slow and poor learner. I was always at the bottom of my class throughout elementary and high school where I repeated two grades, and did poorly in college. Learning has always been slow, tedious, and often seemingly torturous. Continue reading →
Posted in Autism, Life's Lessons, Personal Perspective | Tagged adolescence, adulthood, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, cognitive abilities, determined and persistent, difficulty understanding people, dyslexia, loner, mental and social impairments, never felt grownup, organized, poor memory | Leave a comment


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My Last Bite: Rockford's Thai Hut Restaurant serves up authentic cuisine
Name: Thai Hut Restaurant
Address: The business has two locations: 701 Highgrove Place and 1441 Sandy Hollow Road, both in Rockford. We ate at the Highgrove Place location.
Opened: 2007 at the Highgrove Place location.
Owner: Visit Pipatpinyopong at the Highgrove Place location.
Hours: At the Highgrove Place location: Lunch is from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. Dinner is from 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 5 to 10 p.m. on Friday. On Saturday, the business is open from noon to 10 p.m. On Sunday, it's open from noon to 9 p.m.
Wheelchair accessible: Yes
Phone: 815-395-8330 for the Highgrove Place location.
Website: thaihut-rockford.com Individuals can find more information about the Sandy Hollow Road location there, too.
Entree price range: Entrees typically cost $9.95 unless there is fish or an expensive protein in the dish. A few of the most expensive items: the Fire Jumbo Shrimp (giant shrimps served with sauteed vegetables in a special house sauce and topped with cilantro for $18.95), Robin Hood Ribs (barbecued baby back ribs, served with special fried rice for $15.95) and Seafood Curry (combination of seafood with curry paste, eggplants, peppers, green peas, bamboo shoots, sweet basil leaves in coconut milk for $15.95).
We ate: Rockford Register Star multimedia artist Jessica Sabbah and I were feeling adventurous Nov. 4 and decided to try a cuisine we typically don't eat: Thai food. Thai Hut Restaurant's family recipes fit the bill.
We started our meal with the Thai Hut Roll, which came with deep fried ground shrimp and pork wrapped in a rice wrapper. It's served with sweet and sour sauce — all for $5.95. The ingredients were lightly fried, making the dish exceptionally crispy without having the "fried oil" taste.
I ordered the Basil Pork lunch special ($7.95), which comes with stir-fried green beans, eggplant, onions, peppers and basil leaves. It is accompanied with a salad with the house dressing or soup filled with chicken, mushrooms, cilantro, lemon grass, lime juice and other herbs.
I asked for my meal to be a smidgen spicy, so I could taste how the cooks use spices to kick a dish up a notch. The cooks created different layers of flavor in my meal, so each bite would be as exciting as the last. One bite would have a hint of basil while the next would taste like slightly spicy veggies. The dressing that came on my salad was equally flavorful, similar to Thousand Island with a handful of spices thrown in. I wish there had been more ingredients than lettuce and dressing, though together they were delicious.
Jessica ordered the Chicken Pad Thai lunch special ($7.95). It came with stir-fried thin rice noodles, fried egg, cabbage, bean sprouts, green onions and ground peanuts. She chose the soup as her side. She said this is the dish she orders most at Thai restaurants but felt this version stood out because it had the right amount of sauce. She said sometimes restaurants shortchange on that, making the whole dish dry. She said the soup would be perfect to eat on cold days. There were large chunks of mushroom and chicken in a flavorful broth.
"Ahh" factor: Diners have complete control of the amount of heat in their dish, which is perfect for people like me who walk a fine line between a meal having a kick and being too spicy. People choose how spicy their dish is by using a one through five heat-rating scale when they order. Servers then bring out four sauces — dry chili, stir fry with garlic, red chili sauce in vinegar and jalapenos in vinegar — so patrons can add another layer of heat if their meals aren't fiery enough.
"Hmm" moment: There weren't any knives at our place setting. The food is sliced into bite-size pieces but I still like the option of cutting items myself, if needed.
Next time, I'll: Try the pineapple fried rice — a diner favorite, according to Pipatpinyopong. Fried rice, shrimp, chicken, eggs, onions, corn, carrots, green peas, raisins, cashew nuts and pineapple are served in a fresh pineapple bowl.
Jennifer Wheeler: 815-987-1354; firstname.lastname@example.com; @jenmwheeler


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Fast Remote Support for Your Employees & Customers
Resolve IT help requests remotely, as though you were troubleshooting in person.
Provide Remote IT Support, the Moment It's Needed
Tech mishaps happen. Computer glitches, system crashes, and device failures can bring business to a standstill. Instead of making onsite service calls that take time and increase costs, IT pros choose TeamViewer™ to provide instant remote support for their clients anywhere, at anytime. Securely connect to remote computers, access files and applications, and troubleshoot problems — right when your employees and customers need help the most.
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Get started by having your customers or employees click the TeamViewer QuickSupport link to run on the application on their computers. That's it, all set to receive remote support, instantly.
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With TeamViewer, you can start a remote support session in four steps:
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Once you're connected, you can see their remote desktop screens, take control of their mouse and keyboard, and fix computer issues on the spot.
Support All Your Customers, Tech-Savvy to Tech-Shy. Everyone.
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Not much buzz for Bruins entering NHL Draft
If there's a drawback to being a fan of a contending team, it's that the draft can be a little dull. Unless they've acquired high choices in trades, contenders pick late in the first and subsequent rounds, and often not in all rounds, because they've traded draft picks to acquire players they think will help them contend.
Barring any swaps, that's the scenario – again – for the Bruins at this weekend's NHL Draft in Philadelphia, where Round 1 will be held tonight (7; NBC Sports Network) and Rounds 2-7 on Saturday (10 a.m., NHL Network). The B's don't pick until No. 25 in the first round and two of their seven choices (third, sixth rounds) were sacrificed in trades.
The draft isn't completely without interest, though. The Bruins at least have a first-round pick (last year, it had been traded to Dallas for Jaromir Jagr) and there's a new man running the show: After four years under Wayne Smith, who was dismissed after last year's draft, Keith Gretzky is now in charge.
"I think we've had some real productive meetings with Keith at the helm," Chiarelli said of Wayne Gretzky's younger brother, a member of the Bruins' organization for three years. "He's got a different perspective on things, but he also knows what the Bruins' ideals are and the kind of ingredients we want in players.
"I have complete confidence in Keith running this draft."
Gretzky has been in the business at the NHL level since 2001 when Phoenix (Wayne was part-owner at the time) hired him as an amateur scout. By 2006, he'd risen to amateur scouting director, a position he held through the 2011 draft. Noteworthy selections during his tenure were current Coyotes defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson (No. 6 overall, 2009) and forward Mikkel Boedker (No. 8, 2008), plus current Senators forward Kyle Turris (No. 3, 2007).
Unfortunately for Gretzky, the 2014 draft class isn't seen as particularly strong. Whether he actually gets to use that pick at No. 25 overall is somewhat out of his hands, too: Chiarelli said during a conference call this week that he'd like to move up and that he'd be willing to trade the pick.
"Everything's always available (in trade discussions), and I would include that first-round pick," the GM said. "We're probably going to look at moving up a little, or moving down a little, depending on who's available at that time.
"I'm not going to say that (the first-rounder) is in play, but I'm not going to rule anything out."
As much as Draft Weekend is supposed to be about the long-term future, most of the intrigue involves the potential for trades and players who may become free agents on July 1. A combination of factors – mediocre draft class, shortage of quality free agents, seven new general managers spread throughout the league – leads Chiarelli to think there may be a little more activity at this draft than at others.
"I think there's a general shortage of (free-agent) players," he said. "The other factor you have to look at … is that it's generally considered a thinner draft, so there's not as much value, relatively speaking, placed on these picks. Teams will probably be more apt to move those picks around.
"So you've got newer faces in GM seats. You've got the decreased value in the draft picks. For those reasons, there might be more movement in and around the draft."
If the Bruins "only" draft players while in Philadelphia, Chiarelli said the staff has crafted "a tight list" of players they'd like to select. If they end up with an immediate need – say, if potential unrestricted free agent Jarome Iginla isn't re-signed – this draft won't fill that hole.
But with several newcomers (Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Kevan Miller), joining the lineup on defense in the last two seasons, a group of young forwards knocking on the door at AHL Providence (Ryan Spooner, Matt Fraser, Craig Cunningham, Alexander Khoklachev, Seth Griffith) and 2012 first-round pick Malcolm Subban working towards joining No. 1 goalie Tuukka Rask in a year or so, the scouting staff is in Philadelphia this weekend to look long-term.
"I feel good about our amateur group," Chiarelli said. "I'm looking forward to this draft."
Mike Loftus may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. On Twitter.com: @MLoftus_Ledger.


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Acupuncture Treatment of Diabetic Neuropathy
Chief Complaint: weakness and numbness in the legs
Western Diagnosis: Diabetic Neuropathy
History: Patient is a 61 year old male weighing 235 lbs, diagnosed with type 2 diabetes eleven years ago. Since then he has neuropathies in his lower extremities. In addition, he has pitting edema in his lower extremities, drop-foot in both ankles resulting from a pinched nerve at L4-L5 vertebrae caused by two car accidents.
Last modified: September 8, 2009 · al · No Comments
Tags: Acupuncture, ankles, diabetic neuropathy, legs, numbness, weakness · Posted in: Metabolic, Neurological


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Trying Griffon and Loving It
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.Join For Free
- Like so many APIs in Java, Swing offers low-level API only. It's up to the developer to create or choose a higher-level framework.
- I'm not fond of the verbosity argument, but in Swing's case, writing (and reading) code is long and tiresome.
- Finally, Swing lacks binding between the UI component and its underlying value. At least one try I know of has been made in this direction but it's frozen solid since a couple of years, with sadly no hop of going further.
Griffon discovery
Thus, it's only natural that when I saw Andres Almiray's Griffon presentation at the Geneva JUG, I was awestruck. Griffon is a framework for the Groovy scripting language, which runs on top of the JVM. It's concise and provides:
- A conceptual MVC framework
- Additional features wrapped around common Java API (such as collections) through Groovy
- Really easy bidirectional binding
A typical Griffon's view code looks like that:
application(title: 'form', pack: true, locationByPlatform:true, iconImage: imageIcon('/griffon-icon-48x48.png').image, iconImages: [imageIcon('/griffon-icon-48x48.png').image, imageIcon('/griffon-icon-32x32.png').image, imageIcon('/griffon-icon-16x16.png').image]) { borderLayout() panel(constraints: CENTER, border: emptyBorder(6)) { gridLayout(rows:3, columns:2, hgap:6, vgap:6) label 'Name:' textField columns:20, text: bind(target: model, 'name', mutual: true) label 'Last Name:' textField columns:20, text: bind(target: model, 'lastName', mutual: true) label 'Address:' textField columns:20, text: bind(target: model, 'address', mutual: true) } panel(constraints: SOUTH) { gridLayout(rows:1, cols: 2, hgap:6, vgap:6) button('Reset', actionPerformed: controller.reset, enabled: bind{ model.resetEnabled }) button('Submit', actionPerformed: controller.submit, enabled: bind{ model.submitEnabled }) } }
The good points
Griffon offers many features that are aimed to improve productivity:
- Griffon is not only a framework but also a toolkit suite. For example, a command-line tool is made available for those that don't like point-and-click.
- At the other end of the spectrum, Griffon offers a tight Eclipse integration (if you've installed the Groovy plugin beforehand)
- Both Groovy's and Griffon's documentation are riddled with practical examples
- Groovy is backed by SpringSource, a token of long-term support
- The Griffon support in the mailing list seems to be very good
- Once created, your application can be shipped as an applet, a Java Web Start or a standalone application! This is too good to be true!
What could be better
I must confess that I dived right in into Griffon without taking time to read much documentation before, so some of these points could be a lack of knowledge on my part. Still, others are valid in all cases:
- An application developed with Griffon has a high startup time (a few seconds). It may not be a problem, and is probably because it uses Groovy, but it can be an argument against Griffon in some contexts.
- I have found no way to integrate with Maven: building with Maven uncovers some unavailable dependency error. For m2e, the newer version of m2eclipse, some lifecycle phases are not covered so that it's unusable as is. I understand the Groovy people have their own build tool (Gant), but some of us mortals still use Maven
- Griffon seems to be the work of Andres Almiray alone (kudos to him), but in the long term, it sheds some doubts on the longevity of the framework
My own try
Since nothing is better than the proven try-it-yourself approach, I developed an embryo of a JAR manifest file reader. The first results can be found on Github: Groovy and Griffon experts are welcomed to give me their feedback… and to fork the code to get further.
Published at DZone with permission of Nicolas Fränkel, DZone MVB. See the original article here.
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.


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As Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis prepares to play in Super Bowl XLVII Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers, questions continue to arise about his legacy and his connection to a double murder that took place 13 years ago in Atlanta.
One of Lewis' co-defendants in the double murder trial, Reginald Oakley, said in an interview with Examiner.com Thursday that Lewis didn't testify about everything he knew about the fatal fight, and tried to shift suspicion onto Oakley after the killings. Still, Oakley says his only problem with Lewis is that the future Hall of Famer blamed Oakley for instigating the fight.
Excerpts from the article are below:
And by granting Lewis a plea bargain, Howard, who at the beginning of the trial told the court Lewis was a liar, placed himself in the position of having to prove to the jury that Lewis was credible in testifying against Oakley and Sweeting.
For example, after blood was found on pillows in Lewis' hotel room after the killings, Howard questioned Lewis so he could provide an explanation. Lewis told the court:
"I had an injury from football that my head — usually when I play, my head gets cut open a lot of times. I have a certain type of skin on the of my head, falitivitis (sic) or something like that. I'm not sure what — exactly what it is, but it bleeds. It used to bleed a lot, and now it's just really getting, you know, controlled now."
Howard asked if Lewis took medication for that condition and Lewis replied, "Yes."
Virtually everyone who testified or talked about the case described varying versions of who started the fight, what exactly happened during the melee, and what occurred in its aftermath. It didn't help that the incident occurred shortly before 4 a.m., when many witnesses and those involved in the incident were at least partly intoxicated.
No one testified that Lewis ever possessed a knife, and Lewis never testified that he saw a knife in the hands of Oakley or Sweeting during the incident.
Oakley's version of the argument that led to the fight
Oakley told Examiner.com what he said when he walked up to Lewis, who was standing across from Gwen and his friend:
I asked Ray, "Is everything alright?" and he tapped me on the shoulder and was like, "Come on, let's go" and brings me back to the limousine. Gwen and his friend came up behind me, talking tough and I turned around and was like, "Is there a problem?" and then they started talking about what they were going to do.
I said, "You're not going to do nothing to me, and we got into a confrontation and Ray came back and grabbed me and put me in the limo and he got back out of the limo because his friends, (Joseph) Sweeting and (Kwame) King were out of the limo talking to the guys, asking what's going on or whatever.
Then one of the guys walked by and said something to Ray and then I saw some more guys coming up behind Ray, so I got out of the limousine to tell Ray, and that's when Baker hit me in the head with the Moet bottle. And that's when everybody started fighting.
Lewis' version of the fight
After Baker hit Oakley with the bottle, Lewis testified that a brawl ensued:
LEWIS: It was, from that point, it was chaos, whatever, when he hit him in the head, them two just, I mean, went in a dramatic fashion of fighting.
HOWARD: Would you describe what you mean by "fighting?"
LEWIS: Fighting, I mean, you hit me, I hit you back. We just fighting. We just fighting.
Lewis may just happen to be a flawed person who made major mistakes in his past but has learned from them and moved on to live a better life.
That won't be any consolation to the friends and families of the victims, though.
To read the entire article on Examiner.com, including different accounts of the argument that led to the fight, the brawl, and the aftermath, click here. See http://www.examiner.com/article/ray-lewis-former-co-defendant-speaks-on-argument-that-led-to-2-murders-2000.