text: Back Alcohol Use Among Teens Is Epidemic The leading substance-abuse threat to children may be as close as your refrigerator. Millions of adolescents drink alcohol. Many binge drink, having five or more drinks at a time. Flavored alcoholic beverages are popular among underage drinkers, says the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Surveys show boys usually take their first drink at age 11 and girls at age 13. Alcohol affects a teen's brain differently than it does an adult's. Teens' brains are still growing and developing in ways that shape their perceptions of emotions, excitement, danger, and some memories. Heavy alcohol use during this time of brain development could lead to permanent changes. Alcohol offers a fast way to lose inhibitions, fit in and feel good. But alcohol impairs judgment, a big problem for youths who already lack experience, and alcohol intoxication can be fatal. The toll includes: Alcoholism. People who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to become alcohol-dependent than those who wait until 21. Fatal accidents. Experts blame alcohol for many drownings and traffic deaths involving teens. Violence. Underage drinkers are more likely to commit or be victims of violent crime. Sexual activity. Adolescents who use alcohol are more likely to be sexually active at an earlier age and have unprotected sex. Suicide. Teen drinking has been linked with contemplating or committing suicide. School performance. High school students who drink are more likely to drop out of school and disdain good grades. Health damage. Anyone who drinks a lot faces heart and central nervous system damage, cirrhosis and cancer of the liver, stroke, and risk for overdose. Heavy drinking can hamper brain development, memory, and learning ability. Signs of trouble The following are signs that your teen may be involved with alcohol: Odor of alcohol Sudden change in mood or attitude Change in school attendance or performance Loss of interest in school, sports, or other activities Discipline problems Withdrawal from family and friends Secretive behavior Parents who suspect a problem should talk with their child and see a doctor or counselor. Making a difference The best way to influence your child to avoid drinking is to have a strong, trusting relationship with him or her, says the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Studies have found that children are less likely to begin drinking if they feel close to their parents. With a strong parental tie, they are less likely to go along with peer pressure to drink, and will strive to meet the parents' expectations not to drink. Here are several suggestions from the NIAAA on building a strong relationship: Encourage your teen to talk openly with you. Foster good communication. Show that you care. It's important that teens know their parents still care about them. Make time to share activities one-on-one with your child. Establish firm, realistic rules for acceptable behavior and follow through with them. Teens need to know there are consequences for their actions. Be accepting. Support your teen's efforts as well as accomplishments. Avoid teasing that's hurtful. Don't forget that your teen is growing up. You need to stay involved in your teen's life, but still respect his or her growing independence and need for privacy.


text:
Famed Beatles producer and founding member of the Horrible Mugshot Hall of Fame Phil Spector is beginning to serve his 19-year prison sentence for murder, and made a specific request to help him pass the time: An iPod.
Prisoners at Spector's new forced California residence are permitted certain objects, often musical instruments or personal mementos. Spector requested an iPod and a TV, though interestingly not any musical instruments; his wife says he's not likely to want to jam with the other prisoners. We'd love to get a look at Spector's iPod, as long as it's away from Spector himself. The dude is more than a little creepy. [NME, thanks Brian Ashcraft!]

subset: commoncrawl


text:
We pay particular attention to the security of your credit card payments:
Cards we accept
We accept Visa and Master Card. Preparing your order begins as soon as your payment is accepted by our bank. Debiting the account is made at the time of the shipment of the order (excluding exceptional reaching the incompressible time limit imposed by our bank: 10 days).
Your credit card number is precious ...
On some websites, when checking your order, they simply ask you, on the website itself, to provide your credit card number and expiration date. On some others, it's the same thing but it tells you that the payment is "secure". However you find that you are still on a page of the website itself, just in the address bar http:// ... turned into https:// ...
In both cases the problem is the same, your credit card number is transmitted directly to the merchant who will use it in his establishment, via a conventional payment terminal, to charge you by sending it to his bank with the sum involved .
So nothing prevents some employees of the trader to have access to this No., or that the database of that merchant is hacked (this has already been seen with blackmail). The security of your credit card number then depends on the management and securities that the merchant sets up, with respect to its staff and towards the outside (without questioning his honesty).
When payment is simply "secure" (SSL or other), it means that the transmission of your Card number is encrypted to the site. It's a little better than nothing, because it means that your number cannot be intercepted on line (case rather improbable, in fact). But the problems mentioned above are possible.
On a-et-a.com we adopted another solution
Upon payment you switch on a page counter to our bank CyberMut provider (a Credit Mutuel Service). So it is directly to the bank that you give your credit card information via a virtual payment terminal and secured with SSL (encrypted transmission). On our side we have sent to the bank the order number and the amount to charge you. We've no access to your credit card number via this system. If you absolutely want to call it us (some customers ask us) we will try to dissuade you for security reasons mentioned above.
So if you accept our payment method directly through our siteonly the bank accesses your card no to process the transaction, which it used to do for all your card payments, including your usual merchants near your home. It has safety systems that go far beyond what can ensure you an ordinary website.
If, despite these precautions, you do not want to use your credit card on the Internet, you can also pay by bank transfer or by check.
3D Secure
No doubt you'll be faced with the security system enhanced 3D Secure set up by banks for internet regulation. Upon payment, our bank will switch on an interface of your bank so you can identify you.
According to the bank issuing the card, the authentication methods vary:
- Crédit Mutuel: client must authenticate itself with its online banking login, then enter a code written on his "personal key card" (a grid of 64 4-digit codes in which you must draw the correct code depending on the line and column requested by the website).
- Banque Postale, Axa Banque and Caisse d'Epargne: the customer must indicate his date of birth.
- BNP Paribas: a code is sent by SMS.
- Société Générale: a code is sent by SMS.
- Crédit Agricole and LCL: the client must specify a personal password, created during the first use.
- BRED Banque Populaire: an authentication key Ip@b, credit card size CD.
- Groupama Banque: the customer must provide their name, postcode of residence and date of birth.
Payment is accepted by your bank if authentication has been successfully verified.
But it's needed that your bank has implemented the process with you in your contract.
If this is not the case please contact your bank who will explain the procedure.
However, it is always possible to pay by bank transfer or by check.
However, if you insist to pay directly by providing us your credit card number by phone: (+33(0)254205708), it will be used live to feed our (physical or virtual) payment terminal connected to our bank and will never be stored in our databases.


text:
Need Help?
If you have any questions or need help, you may contact us to assist you.
Customer Service
Monday – Friday
9:00 am – 5:00 pm EST
Tel: (704) 899-5250
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Repair Services
Monday – Friday
8:30 am – 5:30 pm EST
Tel: (401) 946-0920
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Website: https://www.saltzmans-watches.com/c4/Watch-Repairs.htm
Q: What does the Limited Lifetime Warranty mean?
A: When purchased from an authorized dealer, Obaku guarantees that the components of this watch are original, free of defects in material and workmanship and meet accurate timekeeping as specified in the instruction manual. The following components are exempt and will not be covered under the warranty: crystal, stem, crown, case, caseback, bracelet/strap (including clasp, links, pins, screws) or any accessories. Solar cells in solar movement watches are not covered under this guarantee.
a) Damage caused while in the possession of a customer, accident or otherwise, such as: misuse, tampering with, failure to follow the care and handling instructions.
b) Damage while in the possession of a consumer not caused by a defect in material or workmanship.
c) Damage caused by wear and tear, or accident and/or scratches to the finishing of the case, crystal, bracelet, strap or other components.
d) Moisture and/or water damage inside or outside the watch (including components) related to not following care instruction or poor customer handling. All Obaku watches are 'water resistant' to a certain degree, NOT 'Waterproof'. e) Damage caused by an unauthorized repair or Service Center.
Instructions on care and handling can be found in your instruction manual or on the Obaku website. You may also request this information by emailing email@example.com. For more information on repairs, contact Saltzman's Repairs at email@example.com or at (401)946-0920.
Q: Do I need to sign up for the warranty to be activated?
A: No, you will not need to sign up for the warranty to take effect. When you receive your watch, you will receive a little Obaku warranty booklet with either a stamp or signature on the last couple pages of the booklet. This verifies the warranty. Even if you register online, we recommend keeping the signed booklet or a copy of your sales receipt to verify purchase from an authorized Obaku dealer.
Q: What should I do if my watch has been damaged or if there is a problem with the watch?
A: If a problem occurs with your watch, please contact our customer service line at (401) 946-0920 or email at firstname.lastname@example.com. Visit their website for more information on how to properly ship watches for repair https://www.saltzmans-watches.com/c4/Watch-Repairs.htm. You will need a copy of your receipt and/or dealer stamp or signature found on the inside of the warranty booklet that was sent with your watch.
Q: I bought an Obaku watch in the USA, but I do not live in the USA anymore and I need to contact someone to report that my watch is damaged. What do I do?
A: Please visit our link to find a distributor in your area: www.obaku.com/distributors. If you have a distributor in your country, please contact them for help. If you do not have a distributor in your country, please contact email@example.com and you will be directed to the proper distributor or department that can help you.
Q: Is my watch waterproof or Water Resistant? Can I go swimming or diving with my watch?
A: All Obaku watches are either 3ATM (30 meter) or 5 ATM (50 meters) water resistant, not to be confused as being "waterproof".
Obaku watches are classified as fashion watches which are resistant to contact with water and can be used when washing hands or wearing in the rain, but cannot be used for swimming, diving, or other activities that require regular repeated water submersion.
ATM water resistant rating is a measurement of the amount of atmospheric pressure a watchcase is resistant too during a static test, or series of static tests, and does not measure the effects of repeated submersion of the watch at various depths. It is not correct to say 3ATM means that a watch can be taken down to a depth of 30 meters below the surface of the water. It is also important to note that you should never take your Obaku watch into a hot tub or sauna as hot water and steam can also affect water resistance.
Check the case backing of your Obaku watch to see the water resistance rating. Please avoid going into pools and the ocean with your watch as they have high levels of chemical compounds such as chlorine and salt that can speed up the oxidization process of ion-plated (IP) color watches, most notably rose gold IP watches.
Regarding leather strap watches, we recommend that you keep the leather clean and dry. Our leather straps are genuine calf leather. Leather has several tiny pores like human skin and is not waterproof. Continual submersion of leather in water over time will cause the fibers to break down and the leather to become week and break apart. Please follow care instructions for your watch.
Q: I ordered a watch online and haven't received it yet. How do I find out the status on the delivery of my watch?
A: Orders usually take as much as 4 business days to ship out after they have been placed, unless you request the order to be expedited. We will provide you with a USPS or UPS tracking number to track the delivery of the package depending on the shipping carrier you requested in the order. You can track your package on www.usps.com or www.ups.com depending on the carrier used for shipping. If you have questions regarding your order (including shipping details), you can contact us at (704) 899-5250 or email us at [email protected].
Q: When will my items be shipped?
A: We will ship you package once the payment has been accepted. Please note that we only ship orders during regular business hours, Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5:30 pm Eastern Standard time (EST). All orders placed over the weekend will be shipped the following Monday.
Q: What payment types do you accept when I place an order online? What payment types do you accept if I call the USA office to place an order?
A: We accept the following payment options online: VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Discover Card. All payments are done through PayPal to ensure that all sensitive information that you give us is private and safe guarded.
If you call in and place an order, we accept all major card payment types mentioned above. We also can accept U.S.A. bank check or money order (we do not accept foreign checks). If you pay with a U.S.A. bank check or money order, your order will ship the next business day after your payment is deposited and posts to our bank account.
Q: What is the inspiration behind OBAKU watches?
A: The inspiration comes from a philosophy of blending the two different traditions of simplicity found in the European and Asian cultures.
Q: Will my watch give me an allergic reaction if I have a nickel allergy?
A: No, all of the metallic components in our watches, including the ones that are plated are hypoallergenic and nickel safe.
Q: What are the watch specifications of Obaku watches?
A: We use high quality quartz (battery operated) movements made in Japan. The movements we use are Miyota (Citizen), Seiko, and Ronda. Most of the movements in our collection are Miyota. The majority of our watch cases and bands are made of 316 surgical stainless steel and 100% hypoallergenic and nickel safe. We also offer titanium watches that are strong, lightweight, and 100% hypoallergenic and nickel safe. Our leather bands are genuine Italian leather. Select ladies' styles have genuine mother-of-pearl dials. All crystals on the dial and bezel are Swarovski elements. Select styles for men have carbon fiber or sunray effects on the dials. The crystal lens is a hardened minimal crystal that undergoes a special hardening process to help resist against being scratches of cracked. This does not mean that the crystal lens cannot be scratched or cracked.
Q: How should I care for my watch?
A: When you first take the watch out of the box, please remove and discard the small clear plastic tab that is under the crown. The tab is easy to pull off and must be removed before you can set the correct time and functions on the watch.
Maintenance and cleaning: Avoid contact with chemical compounds that might damage your watch. Chemicals, solvents, or greases may discolor or damage the casing and wristband. Use pure water and or cleaning solutions that we recommend to clean your watch. Use only cleaning cloths that do not contain chemical treatments unless we advise otherwise (no silver cleaning cloth or the like). Do not immerse your watch in water or any other liquid. Avoid any violent impacts and avoid wearing a metal bracelet on the same wrist as your watch to prevent scratching or damaging your watch. Avoid exposing your watch to extreme environmental conditions such as strong direct sunlight, extremely high temperatures, or extremely low temperatures. Extreme temperatures will shorten the life of the battery in the watch.
Bracelet watches: Direct contact with sprays such as hairsprays, perfumes or certain detergents may cause damage to your watch.
Leather straps: Leather straps deteriorate at different rates depending on the wear and tear they are put through; climate conditions such as heat and humidity; acidic and oily skin conditions, and as a result to constant exposure to water. To ensure your leather strap lasts as long as possible, take the following precautions:
Batteries: If your quartz watch stops working, have the battery checked as soon as possible. A dead battery may cause damage to the movement if left inside the watch too long.
Q: How do I clean my watch?
A: You can use one of the following solution options to clean the watch metal and crystal surfaces:
You can use the following supplies to clean your watch with the solutions mentioned above: cotton swab, microfiber or similar soft non-abrasive cloth, "fine" nylon pad/sponge, soft bristle toothbrush, or soft bristle nailbrush.
Whatever cleaning supplies you choose to use, either dip or moisten them with the solution you have created. Gently wipe or scrub the case, crystal lens, metal mesh strap, bracelet, and clasp clean. Be careful not to put too much stress on the crystal lens as you clean. Avoid immersing the watchcase, crystal lens or crown in the solution, regardless of the water resistance rating. Wipe dry.
We suggest that you use a soft bristle toothbrush or nailbrush to clean crevices where dirt, grime, and oxidization build up in areas of the watch like the metal mesh strap, bracelet and clasp. It is often hard to clean these areas thoroughly using cloth or cotton swabs alone.
To clean leather straps, we suggest that you dampen a soft cloth with water and wipe the leather strap clean on both sides (avoid pouring water directly onto the leather strap). You may want to use leather cleaner or leather conditioner to keep the leather clean, soft and supple over time. Top grain leather may develop a milky 'haze' if left alone for extended periods. This can simply be wiped away or removed with leather conditioner. A product called "nubuck eraser" can be used to remove light stains and debris from the inside of the strap. As with any other leather goods you may own, it is good to keep leather from constantly getting wet. Proper care along with regular cleaning and/or conditioning will extend the life and look of the leather strap.
Q: What type of color plating is on my Obaku watches and how do I clean it?
A: The color is applied to your Obaku watch using an Ion-Plating (IP) process. All watches in gold or black are coated with a titanium coating that is the newest and most advanced technique for long lasting coating. The gold coating is a mixture of titanium and gold that is bonded with the stainless-steel base metal through a fusion process in a vacuum chamber.
A regular question we get about ion-plated (IP) watches is how to properly clean them and take care of issues that arise like oxidation of the metal. Oxidization is common in yellow and rose-colored IP watches. This occurs when a patina forms on the surface of the watch discoloring the watch, usually turning lighter colors like yellow and rose gold brown or black. Rose gold color IP watches have the highest tendency to oxidize similar to how silver metal tarnishes; this occurs due to the copper elements used to create the unique rose tone color of the watch. You will also find this in many other fashion watch brands that use rose gold color IP plating. Oxidizing happens at different rates depending on how high the levels of humidity are in the area were the watch is being worn; regular wear and tear on the watch; constant contact with water (especially water with high levels of salt such as ocean water); exposure to different chemicals such as chlorine, household cleaning chemicals or other acidic, oily and abrasive substances. It is important to regularly clean your gold IP Obaku watch as oxidation is normal and will reoccur over time. Please refer to our cleaning instructions to learn how to clean your IP Obaku watches.
Q: How do I close the clasp on of my mesh strap watch?
A: To close the clasp, first you will open the security hinge. The security hinge is the metal piece that does not have the Obaku logo on it. The opposite mesh band on the other side of the watchcase has a metal hinge on it with an Obaku logo and inside the hinge is a metal hook. Place the hook onto the bar of the opposing clasp and add tension, pushing the hinge down and locking it into place. You will hear a click when it locks into place. Now close the security hinge on the opposite side over that hinge you just locked down. You will hear a second click when the security hinge is locked in place. The primary function of the security hinge is to act as a back up to lock the clasp in place on the wrist if for any reason the main hinge unlocks. When you hear two clicks, one with the first hinge and a second with the security hinge, you have the clasp locked in place.
Q: How do I adjust my mesh band?
A: Obaku mesh bands are easily adjustable. Simply insert a small flathead screwdriver or similar tool into the clasp. On the top of the clasp, you will see a pivoting arm (pivoting level) on the clasp that is locked down in place against the mesh strap. In the middle of the pivoting arm is a rectangular notch. Insert the head of the screwdriver into the notch in the arm, making sure not to bend the metal pin that holds the pivot arm in place. Simply lift up at a 45-degree angle the pivot arm of the clasp. Once the pivot arm is unlocked, the clasp can be moved up and down the mesh strap to the desired position. Make sure the clasp is set in one of the indentations on the back of the mesh strap. This will require you to turn the watch over to see the indentations where the clasp guide (metal bump) fits into as you adjust the clasp up and down the mesh strap. Snap the pivot arm of the clasp securely into place by pressing down, applying pressure. You will know when it is in place because the guide will fit easily into the indentation as you press the pivot arm down and it will be easier to lock it down when it is lined up. You will hear a click or snap when it is locked in place.
Q: What type of battery do you use in the watch? What is the average life of an Obaku watch battery? What are indications that my battery is running out of life?
A: The battery we use in Obaku watches has an average life of three years. We use an environmentally friendly battery called a "SPRON" battery, which is silver oxide and free of mercury and lead. Your Obaku watch comes with a SPRON battery, but the watch can also use ordinary batteries bought over the counter at many retailers.
It is important to note that the battery life will be reduced if the watch was already operating in the store where you purchased it. Our watches come with a plastic tab around the stem that prevents the crown from being pushed down to activate the operation of the watch. If the plastic tab is still in place when you purchase the watch, chances are the retailer has not activated the battery. The plastic tab acts as a protection to ensure that battery life is maintained prior to you purchasing the watch.
If you expose the watch repeatedly to high temperatures such as leaving it in a car on a hot day, over time this will reduce the life the of battery in the watch. Constantly starting and stopping the operation of the movement by pulling out and pushing in the crown can also cause loss of battery life.
The first indication that the life of your battery is running low will be when you notice loss of time. Functions such as the chronograph also function slower. If you see the second hand skip several seconds, this is a battery end-of-life indicator (EOL). Many people accidentally take this as a sign that the movement in the watch is bad and not working properly when in fact it is only indicating to the wearer that the watch battery is dying. Watches with the EOL feature have electronic circuits that detect when the battery voltage is getting low. Their circuitry makes the second hand move forward erratically to alert the wearer that it is time to replace the battery. Installing a new battery should cause the second hand to advance normally.
Q: What do I do if the battery in my watch has died?
A: If the battery in your watch has died, please take it into your local jeweler or watch repair store to have the battery replaced. You can also contact our authorized repair center, Saltzman's Watches, at (401) 946-0920 or by email at firstname.lastname@example.com. We charge $15 USD plus $10 USD shipping for a battery replacement service. Should you choose to use our service, please note you will also be responsible for shipping to our repair center.
Q: Where is my nearest OBAKU retailer?
A: Obaku is represented in more than 67 countries around the world and several states and territories in the U.S.A. To locate you nearest retail store please use the following link: www.obaku.com/storelocator
Q: Where can I get a user manual?
A: You can find a user/instruction manual on our website using the following link: www.obaku.com/usermanual


text:
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is seeking to invalidate a pair of Apple patents so the underlying technologies can be used as part of a royalty-free HTML5 stack.
The W3C's call for prior art is necessary, the organization argues, because it maintains a strict policy of validating Web standards that can be used without paying for royalties. By finding examples of the technology in use before Apple filed the patents, the W3C can render those patents invalid.
The patented technologies are core components to the W3C's Widget Access Request Policy, which specifies how mobile applications can request sensitive material. It is one of a number of specifications that are closely tied to the W3C's next generation standard for Web pages and applications, HTML5.
Apple has submitted application requests to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office describing technologies that the W3C working group has folded into this specification: pending patent 20070101146, which covers access control procedures, and approved patent 7,743,336, which covers widget security.
As a member of the W3C, Apple should provide a royalty free license for technologies essential to the standards being developed, observers have noted. Thus far, the company has not done so, however.
"It's an unpleasant situation for the W3C to have to confront one of its members, especially such a large and powerful one, but sometimes this can't be avoided," said intellectual property advocate Florian Mueller, in a blog post on the subject.
Apple did not respond immediately to inquiries for this story.


text:
Top Moments: Paul Rudd Is the Lip-Sync King, The Americans' Compromising Position
TV Guide
Our top moments of the week:
12. Worst Flameout: After weeks of training at the academy, the time finally comes for Dawson to take the final firefighters test on Chicago Fire. Although she starts out strong, helping to untangle another trainee's hose, she trips and injures her ankle. She recovers to finish the test, but a...
Other Links From TVGuide.com
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
- Ice-T
- Jimmy Fallon
- Mae Whitman
- Paul Rudd
- Tonya Harding
- Grey's Anatomy
- The Bachelor
- Nancy Kerrigan
- Glee
- Parenthood
- Suburgatory
- Chicago Fire
- Vikings
- The Americans
- Late Night With Seth Meyers
- Survivor: Cagayan
- The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
- The Amazing Race: All-Stars
- Olympics 2014


text:
Hail in Los Angles is highly unusual. Hail that lasts longer than a minute or two basically never happens.
But that's what we got on the first day of Spring, a.k.a. Persian New Year! A hailstorm that lasted twenty minutes and was followed with brilliant sunshine!
Surely this means we're off to an interesting season — or year — ahead! As you'll hear my husband talking on the video, even our doggie shivered with anticipation…
How often does it hail where you live?


text:
For more information on our recent data notice, please click here
Platelet reduction apheresis, also known as therapeutic thrombocytapheresis or plateletpheresis, is a nonsurgical therapy that reduces the quantity of platelets in a patient's blood.
Platelets (thrombocytes) are a component of the blood that are important for blood clotting. A person with too few platelets risks uncontrolled bleeding. A person with too many platelets may experience life-threatening blood clot formation.
Platelet reduction apheresis involves removing blood through a needle or catheter and circulating it through a machine where the blood is separated into red cells, white cells, platelets and plasma. The platelets are discarded and the remainder of the blood components are circulated back to the patient through a return needle.
At UC San Diego Health, platelet reduction apheresis is used to treat patients with essential thrombocytosis. Essential thrombocytosis, or essential thrombocythemia, is a disease characterized by the body's overproduction of platelets.
Platelet reduction apheresis is a safe procedure with a few possible side effects. You may have discomfort at the needle site and occasional light-headedness during treatment. A nurse will check on you regularly during treatment and a physician will be onsite.
All UC San Diego Health hospitals provide inpatient apheresis.


text:
Mike Mullet
"Live and Give!!"
To view Xclusive pictures, posts, and videos, you must subscribe.
If Celebrity misses your call, they'll call back! Watch for an email to connect Live!
iPhone users must use Safari for better experience.
Cost per TEXT : 1 coins
Cost per minute for VIDEO call : 1 coins
Fan Testimonials
Jake K.
"I would have never thought I could interact with my favorite celebrity until Fan Connexion. It let's you choose how to connect and you really do get a real, personal response back!"
Sarah H.
"I got an awesome video message from my favorite celebrity wishing ME a happy birthday! I couldn't believe it."
Kelsey B.
"I had a celebrity give me a shout out on twitter and now everyone is following me! I have always wanted a celebrity to tweet at me and now they do."


text:
As the first year since Barack Obama's election as president passes into history, it is worthwhile to read (or reread) and reflect on his "Dreams from My Father," which was first published in 1995, when he was 33 years old. In his preface to the 2004 edition—only a scant five years ago, when the book was republished—he does not disavow or even soften his often-harsh sentiments at all. However, he does mention that his mother died of cancer right after the book was first published; and in retrospect, he might not have written the same book about an "absent parent," his father, but instead might have celebrated her life.[2] He loved her, and writes: "[S]he was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and . . . what is best in me I owe to her."[3]
The book is still relevant and instructive today because it provides a window into his core beliefs—unfiltered by aides or the pandering to voters that so often takes place when a politician is running for public office. These core beliefs came into being many years before we heard his name or knew how to pronounce it; and they are being reflected in his actions and policies that affect each of us. Also, the book warrants a careful reexamination at this juncture in his presidency, when a growing number of Americans are having second thoughts or "buyers' remorse" about the man in the White House.
Barack Obama is not his Kenyan father, nor his mother. Perhaps he comes closest to being his maternal grandparents, "Toot" and "Gramps." They loved him dearly and nourished him when he was growing up as a "half-breed"—his term, not mine[4]—caught between two cultures, one white and the other non-white. He writes lovingly about his grandparents: "They had sacrificed again and again for me. They had poured all their lingering hopes into my success. Never had they given me reason to doubt their love; I doubted if they ever would."[5] Later, he would write: "I looked out the window, thinking about my mother, Toot, and Gramps, and how grateful I was to them—for who they were. . . ."[6]
Because of his looks and not his parentage or lineage, he made a conscious decision to be black. Once he made it, he seemed to put the white world behind him and to identify with the "victimization" of blacks. For example, he writes: "[T]o admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred—for there seemed no reason to expect that whites would look at our private struggles as a mirror into their own souls, rather than yet more evidence of black pathology."[7] In these and other similar statements, he evidenced how far he had traveled from the white world of his mother and her parents who raised him.
The transformation seems to have started when young "Barry" Obama returned to Hawaii from Indonesia, where he had been living with his mother and her second husband, to live with her parents and enroll at Honolulu's elite, ethnically and culturally diverse Punahou School—where his sense that he "didn't belong continued to grow."[8] He began hanging around and identifying with the few black Punahou students and other black teenagers "whose confusion and anger would help shape [his] own."[9] He writes about loneliness that made him want to run "back into the sort of pain a boy could understand,"[10] and he speaks about "the sense of abandonment [he'd] felt as a boy."[11] Also, he writes that he was "trying to raise [himself] to be a black man in America,"[12] and "living out a caricature of black male adolescence, itself a caricature of swaggering American manhood."[13]
It was during this time that he developed a "ledger of slights."[14] He adds: "I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere."[15] Still at Punahou, he would recall: "[T]he only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."[16]
One wonders whether on some level Obama thought in those terms about the whites who made his future successes possible? If not, why was he choosing to identify so much with the "victimization" of blacks and with anti-white feelings? Is that the anger he "inherited" from his Kenyan father with multiple wives, who was a stern disciplinarian and loved him so much that the father spent only one month of his life with young Barry when he was 10 years old[17], and effectively abandoned him the rest of the time? In his own words, he reflects on his feelings as that 10-year-old when his father visited Hawaii: "I began to count the days until my father would leave and things would return to normal."[18] Also, he acknowledges his anger.[19]
Later, in Kenya, he realizes what his life might have been like when he views a photo album of his father's third wife and their family. "They were happy scenes, all of them, and all strangely familiar, as if I were glimpsing some alternative universe that had played itself out behind my back. . . . Here it was, I thought, what might have been. And the recognition of how wrong it had all turned out . . . made me so sad that after only a few minutes I had to look away."[20] However, he expresses great love for his father too, and places him on a pedestal at times[21]—and there is mention of the fact that his father was highly educated, generous and never held a grudge.[22] There is no claim or insinuation that his father was a racist; and his mother certainly was not a racist.[23]
At Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama hung out with blacks too[24], but seemed to mellow somewhat. He writes: "I had stumbled upon one of the well-kept secrets about black people: that most of us weren't interested in revolt; that most of us were tired of thinking about race all the time. . . ."[25] In writing about a young multiracial student named Joyce, he quotes her as saying: "It's not white people who are making me choose. Maybe it used to be that way, but now they're willing to treat me like a person. No—it's black people who always have to make everything racial. They're the ones making me choose."[26] Yet, Obama rejects her beliefs, and allies himself with others who are "alienated."[27] He seems to mellow somewhat again by admitting: "My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't, end there."[28]
When he arrived in New York City to attend Columbia University, he became "Barack" as opposed to "Barry,"[29] and he asked rhetorically: "Where do I belong?"[30] Also, he asked: "Did any of us [know where we belonged]? Where were the fathers, the uncles and grandfathers, who could help explain this gash in our hearts?"[31] Leaving a theater in New York with his mother and half-sister Maya, he observed: "The emotions between the races could never be pure. . . . Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart."[32] Later, in writing about his times in Chicago and the stories he had heard from the black leadership, Obama says: "They had arisen out of a very particular experience with hate. That hate hadn't gone away; it formed a counternarrative buried deep within each person and at the center of which stood white people—some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives."[33]
Yet, as he was about to embark on his life in Chicago (before attending law school), he reflected: "[T]his community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself—I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life."[34] And it has, as our first non-white American president. While commenting on his work in Chicago, however, he concludes: "If [black] nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence."[35] In discussing the difficulties facing black businesses, he mentions "the leg up that your [white] competitors possessed after having kept you out of the game for over three hundred years"[36]—again, the issue of black victimization.
What is perhaps most striking is that he never expounds on any religious beliefs or spirituality, much less a belief in God. However, the book spans so much of his life—and his formative years—and deals with almost every other subject imaginable that one could think or write about. Perhaps the closest he comes to dealing with the subject may be reflected in the following comments: "I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won."[37] Also, when he and his Kenyan half-sister Auma are on a safari, he listens to their Kikuyu driver sing a hymn at night while Obama is walking back to his tent, and he writes: "I felt I understood Francis's plaintive song, imagining it transmitting upward, through the clear black night, directly to God."[38] One is left to wonder about his beliefs, and whether his attendance at churches in subsequent years may be for political reasons, and calculated, which is true of many politicians.
Other issues raised in the book include:
- What would have become of Obama's life if he had gotten hooked on the illegal drugs he was taking? For example, he writes: "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man."[39]
- To what extent has he has been successful at anything other than writing, speaking, campaigning, politics and getting elected—being a professional politician? For example, the book evidences few significant accomplishments as a "community organizer." Indeed, he writes: "When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt."[40] Also, he accomplished nothing memorable in the U.S. Senate during the short time he was actually there.
- How his socialist and anti-capitalist views are reshaping America, and the damage that may result? His biases are reflected in the book. For example, in New York City before he moved to Chicago for the first time, he went to work as a research assistant at a consulting house to multinational corporations, where he recalled feeling like "a spy behind enemy lines."[41] That spy effectively "owns" General Motors, Chrysler and major American banks and other business entities; and he has not hesitated to dictate to them—including that GM's CEO be removed and what cars the company is to make in the future. History is replete with the names of other world leaders who have tried to run areas of economic and societal activity, without having any knowledge[42], and they have failed.
- How to address the sense of black victimization that is reflected in so much of his book? For example, by way of contrasting the attitudes of various American minority groups including Asians, he cites a black man who says: "I guess we worked so long for nothing, we feel like we shouldn't have to break our backs just to survive. That's what we tell our children anyway."[43]
- Whom will Obama blame if his popularity fades (e.g., because of perceived narcissistic arrogance and incompetence) and his presidency fails? Since he and his party control the White House and Congress, the buck stops with him; and sooner or later, he may come to be viewed by a majority of Americans as the problem, not the solution. Will he handle his descent from "Mount Olympus" gracefully, or will his fall from grace be a tumultuous one?
- What scandals will unfold involving his life and administration, such as the federal funding of organizations like ACORN that have engaged in massive voter fraud or other criminal activities? Ultimately, will Obama be ensnared in a web, politically and legally—a victim of the very need for change that he has preached for so many years? He writes: "Real change [is] . . . an extension of my personal will and my mother's faith. . . ."[44]
- Former Senator Edward W. Brooke, the first black U.S. Senator since Reconstruction, was a trailblazer too; however, he did not try to change America because of any deep-seated hatred of whites or our capitalist system. After reading "Dreams from My Father," most Americans will have few if any doubts why Obama associated with and befriended Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Their radical views seem consistent with his.
- The messianic adoration of Obama is reminiscent of John F. Kennedy, his presidency and sycophants. What will we learn about Barack Obama in the future? If he has feet of clay too[45], how will that factor alone manifest itself and affect America and its role in the world, and the fates and fortunes of individual Americans? Also, will our adversaries (e.g., North Korea, Al Qaeda, Iran, Russia, China) determine he is weak and naïve, and hurt our great nation deeply, capitalizing on that naïveté?
Because Obama does not appear to be religious, one wonders whether he has the courage, depth and capacity to provide the moral authority and spiritual vision and leadership to guide America and its culturally rich and diverse people through truly perilous times? Jimmy Carter was a man of God, yet he failed. Carter did not have feet of clay though. If Obama's goal is to grow government, his naïveté knows no bounds. Having worked in and with the federal government for 21 years nonstop, I believe the only agency of government that is remotely efficient and effective is the Pentagon and our military, which have been performing magnificently.
In writing about a young black organizer named Rafiq aka Wally Thompson, Obama says: "[H]e was less interested in changing the rules of power than in the color of those who had it and who therefore enjoyed its spoils."[46] Is that what Obama is all about too? Before he left Chicago for Kenya, he observed: "[N]otions of purity—of race or of culture—could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American's self-esteem than it could for mine."[47] That seems to have been an awakening for him. Also, he came face to face with the realities of his father as a man: "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself. . . . Now, . . . that image had suddenly vanished. Replaced by . . . what? A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost! . . . Whatever I do, it seems, I won't do much worse than he did."[48]
En route to Kenya, he referred to himself as "a Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers."[49] He grew up in Hawaii, Indonesia and then Hawaii again, which are hardly the "heartland" of America, so his experiences were different than those of most Americans. It is arguable that he had not assimilated fully into the American "culture," and that his father's absence from his life—as well as his mother's absences—contributed to his sense of abandonment and anger. In trying to find his "identity," he had immersed himself in the writings of people who were "alienated" as well, and he embraced those lessons. He adds: "Stripped of . . . the racial obsessions to which I'd become so accustomed and which I had taken (perversely) as a sign of my own maturation[,] I had been forced to look inside myself and had found only a great emptiness there. . . . What if . . . [my father's] leaving me behind meant nothing, and the only tie that bound me to him, or to Africa, was a name, a blood type, or white people's scorn?"[50]
In Kenya, his alienation is reflected once again when he characterizes other tourists as expressing "a confidence reserved for those born into imperial cultures."[51] Also, throughout the book, he expresses his intense dislike for "colonialism," which is perhaps summarized by his thoughts as he rides a train and imagines how a British officer might have felt on its maiden voyage: "Would he have felt a sense of triumph, a confidence that the guiding light of Western civilization had finally penetrated the African darkness? Or did he feel a sense of foreboding, a sudden realization that the entire enterprise was an act of folly, that this land and its people would outlast imperial dreams?"[52] Yet, he tells his Kenyan aunts: "We're all part of one tribe. The black tribe. The human tribe."[53]
In terms of his presidency, his comments about the late black Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's last campaign are interesting and instructive: "The business community sent him their checks, resigned to his presence. So secure was his power that rumblings of discontent had finally surfaced within his own base, among black nationalists upset with his willingness to cut whites and Hispanics into the action, among activists disappointed with his failure to tackle poverty head-on, and among people who preferred the dream to the reality, impotence to compromise."[54] Will Obama's presidency and legacy follow a similar pattern: doing enough to mollify his base, while reaching out to others in an effort to broaden that base and seek his reelection and the election of a Democrat majority in Congress during the years ahead?
Early in the book, he is careful to point out: "I wouldn't do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves."[55] Perhaps those words encapsulate his political life, his campaign for the presidency, and how he is governing and hopes to survive the global economic meltdown, national security challenges and growing constituent anger, while trying to change the essence of America.
In the final analysis, will he be viewed as a fad and a feckless naïf, and a tragic Shakespearean figure who is forgotten and consigned to the dustheap of history? Will his naïveté have been matched by his overarching narcissism, and will he be considered more starry-eyed and "dangerous" than Jimmy Carter? Will his presidency be considered a sad watershed in history? Or will he succeed and prove his detractors wrong, and be viewed as the "anointed one" and a true political "messiah"? Even Abraham Lincoln was never accorded such accolades, much less during his lifetime. And Barack Obama's core beliefs are light years away from those of Ronald Reagan.
© 2009, Timothy D. Naegele
[1] Mr. Naegele was counsel to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee; and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass), the first black senator since Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War. He practices law in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates (www.naegele.com). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA, as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He is a member of the District of Columbia and California bars. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal. Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Law, and Who's Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years. See, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles
[2] Obama, "Dreams from My Father" (paperback "Revised Edition," published by Three Rivers Press, 2004), pp. xi-xii.
[3] Id. at xii.
[4] Id. at 100.
[5] Id. at 89.
[6] Id. at 343.
[7] Id. at 193.
[8] Id. at 59-60.
[9] Id. at 80.
[10] Id. at 341.
[11] Id. at 430.
[12] Id. at 76.
[13] Id. at 79.
[14] Id. at 80.
[15] Id. at 82.
[16] Id. at 85.
[17] Id. at 125, 342.
[18] Id. at 68.
[19] Id. at 115, 270.
[20] Id. at 342-343.
[21] Id. at 129, 220.
[22] Id. at 220, 336-337.
[23] Id. at 127.
[24] Id. at 98.
[25] Id. at 98.
[26] Id. at 99 (emphasis in original).
[27] Id. at 101.
[28] Id. at 111.
[29] Id. at 118.
[30] Id. at 115; see also p. 199.
[31] Id. at 118.
[32] Id. at 124.
[33] Id. at 195.
[34] Id. at 135.
[35] Id. at 200.
[36] Id. at 201.
[37] Id. at 286-287; see also p. 295.
[38] Id. at 358.
[39] Id. at 93; see also pp. 120, 270.
[40] Id. at 133.
[41] Id. at 135.
[42] For example, Adolf Hitler tried to run his country's military and other activities; and ultimately, he destroyed everything within his control—including Germany, at least a generation of Germans, and millions of innocent people.
[43] Id. at 182.
[44] Id. at 229.
[45] See, e.g., Thomas C. Reeves' "A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy," and Seymour M. Hersh's "The Dark Side of Camelot."
[46] Id. at 202.
[47] Id. at 204.
[48] Id. at 220-221.
[49] Id. at 301.
[50] Id. at 301-302.
[51] Id. at 312.
[52] Id. at 368.
[53] Id. at 348.
[54] Id. at 287.
[55] Id. at 94.


text:
What's New in Delphi XE6 Regular Expressions
There's not much new in the regular expression support in Delphi XE6. The big change that should be made, upgrading to PCRE 8.30 or later and switching to the pcre16 functions that use UTF-16, still hasn't been made. XE6 still uses PCRE 7.9 and thus continues to require conversion from the UTF-16 strings that Delphi uses natively to the UTF-8 strings that older versions of PCRE require.
Delphi XE6 does fix one important issue that has plagued TRegEx since it was introduced in Delphi XE. Previously, TRegEx could not find zero-length matches. So a regex like (?m)^ that should find a zero-length match at the start of each line would not find any matches at all with TRegEx.
The reason for this is that TRegEx uses TPerlRegEx to do the heavy lifting. TPerlRegEx sets its State property to [preNotEmpty] in its constructor, which tells it to skip zero-length matches. This is not a problem with TPerlRegEx because users of this class can change the State property. But TRegEx does not provide a way to change this property. So in Delphi XE5 and prior, TRegEx cannot find zero-length matches.
In Delphi XE6 TPerlRegEx's constructor was changed to initialize State to the empty set. This means TRegEx is now able to find zero-length matches. TRegex.Replace() using the regex (?m)^ now inserts the replacement at the start of each line, as you would expect. If you use TPerlRegEx directly, you'll need to set State to [preNotEmpty] in your own code if you relied on its behavior to skip zero-length matches.
You will need to check existing applications that use TRegEx for regular expressions that incorrectly allow zero-length matches. In XE5 and prior, TRegEx using \d* would match all numbers in a string. In XE6, the same regex still matches all numbers, but also finds a zero-length match at each position in the string.
RegexBuddy 4 warns about zero-length matches on the Create panel if you set it to Detailed mode. At the bottom of the regex tree there will be a node saying either "your regular expression may find zero-length matches" or "zero-length matches will be skipped" depending on whether your application allows zero-length matches (XE6 TRegEx) or not (XE–XE5 TRegEx).


text:
Orioles 5, Royals 3
The Baltimore Orioles boldly ran the bases without fear of being caught, and Kansas City couldn't do a thing about it.
A comedy of errors ensued, and the Orioles escaped with a 5-3 victory Wednesday night despite allowing two home runs and getting only five hits.
J.J. Hardy homered and Manny Machado scored a run and hit an RBI single for the Orioles, whose season-high fourth consecutive win moved them eight games over .500 (21-13) for the first time this year.
''We're playing good baseball right now,'' said Hardy, whose two-run drive in the second inning put Baltimore ahead for good.
But the game was decided in the fifth, when the Orioles went up 5-1 with a three-run uprising fueled by three Kansas City errors and a wild pitch.
After Chris Dickerson hit a leadoff double, shortstop Alcides Escobar grabbed Nate McLouth's sharp grounder and tried to get Dickerson at third, but the throw hit Dickerson to put runners at the corners.
McLouth promptly stole second, and Machado followed with a single to bring home Dickerson. Machado then stole second, and McLouth came home after Escobar couldn't handle the poor throw from catcher George Kottaras. Escobar's throw home was also off target, allowing Machado to take third, and he scored when starter Luis Mendoza uncorked a wild pitch.
''When we can pick up on errors like that, it's huge,'' Machado said. ''That brings up the momentum for us and brings it down for them. That's baseball.''
The way Royals manager Ned Yost saw it, the first bad throw laid the groundwork for the miscues that followed.
''The key to that inning was if Escy just takes the out at first, they only get one run,'' Yost said. ''He tried to make a play, tried to keep it close to him by going to third. He just threw low and hit him in the back of the spike and that got a rally going. Now you got (runners at) first and third instead of just a runner at third. Then they start taking off and everything falls apart.''
Escobar lamented both his poor throws, saying, ''I can't believe that I made stupid errors like that.''
Baltimore has been outhit in each of its past three games, including 7-5 in this one. The Orioles are 3-6 when outhit by their opponent.
''You know, at the end of the day, it's whoever scores the most runs, so we made key hits today,'' Machado said. ''We had key hits from J.J. on that home run. Myself driving in that run. . Our goal is to get on base and get deep into counts and bring in those runs when they get on.''
Chris Tillman (3-1) allowed three runs and five hits in six innings to win his third straight start. The right-hander came in 0-2 with a 10.93 ERA in three career starts against the Royals.
Troy Patton pitched the seventh, Darren O'Day and Brian Matusz worked the eighth and Jim Johnson got three outs for his 13th save.
Johnson has converted 34 straight save opportunities, tying the club record set by Randy Myers in 1997.
''It's good, obviously, but that's a secondary goal of mine,'' Johnson said. ''Obviously winning the game is always the first objective.''
Alex Gordon hit his second home run in two games and Mike Moustakas went 3 for 4 with a homer for Kansas City.
Mendoza (0-2) gave up five runs, three earned, and five hits in six innings.
Baltimore took a 2-0 lead in the second when Matt Wieters led off with a single and Hardy followed with a drive just inside the left-field foul pole. It was his sixth home run of the season, the third in four games.
Mendoza didn't allow another base runner until Hardy drew a two-out walk in the fourth.
Tillman blanked the Royals on two hits through four innings, then retired the first two batters in the fifth before Gordon homered to right. That ended Tillman's run of consecutive scoreless innings at 15, a streak that began on April 27 in Oakland.
NOTES: Orioles 2B Brian Roberts will have surgery on his right hamstring Thursday, a procedure that will keep him sidelined at least an additional six weeks. He's been on the disabled list since April 5. ... Royals RHP Jeremy Guthrie (4-0) will face his former team for the first time Thursday night in the series finale. Guthrie, who's undefeated in his past 17 starts, was traded from Baltimore to Colorado in February 2012. Freddy Garcia will start for the Orioles. He replaces Miguel Gonzalez, who has been pushed back until at least Saturday because of a blister on his right thumb. ... Baltimore has won 108 games in a row when leading after seven innings.


text:
Enough room for love
Of all of the misused and overused words in the world, one of the biggest culprits is the word that is on everyone's mind this time of the year. Love.
Think of how many times a day we use it, and what we use it for. I know how many times I day I tell my children or my husband that I love them, but I also say things like, "I love Chinese food!" and "I love it when I do a few loads of laundry and don't have any mismatched socks!" I talk to my mom nearly every day on the phone and end it with "love you." I end every email with my husband "love, Karrie." I sometimes tell my children that I love them so much, I could squeeze them until their heads pop off.
We love songs and television shows. We love movie stars and seasons of the year, restaurants, cars, and fashion. Toby Keith sang about how much he loves a bar, and Ray Charles sang that he can't stop loving you, and the Beatles are well known for preaching that, above all else, all you need is love.
It all seems like a lot of love. Almost too much for one word to handle, and if Love knew what it had to go through every day, it'd probably be fairly stressed out. How can one simple four-letter word (that doesn't follow simple grammatical rules, by the way) have to cover everything from socks to pop music to the Indian restaurant about an hour away?
The answer, I think, came to me during my first job in the real world. My boss was a very wise man, as down to earth as they come and his knowledge continues to resonate in my head. The father of many children, one dark early morning before they had even turned on the overhead florescent lights, we sat drinking coffee by lamplight and discussing our work for the day and like we did so often, we got off topic. There in that office, he shared something so special with me that I carry it with me and see the truth in it in so many facets of life.
"When I got married, I thought I loved my wife more than all the world. And then when we were about to have our first child, I got really scared. I thought to myself, I love my wife so much, how can I ever have enough love for a child, too?"
A newly married woman, I sat in awe and listened.
"And when the child was born, I realized that I had enough. I loved that child like I loved my wife. The three of us were in so much love with each other, it was beautiful. I thought I had maxed out on love, so when a few years later we found out we were expecting another child, I got scared once again. How could I possibly have enough love to share with my wife, my daughter, and now another kid?"
Knowing this bearded boss of mine had a mind and heart of infinite wisdom, I waited for his answer.
"And you know what? I did. I had enough for that child, too. And the next, and the next, and the next, and the next. And enough for my wife, and God and all things that are good in the world."
So whenever I feel like the word "love" is overused, I go back to that sunrise conversation because I learned that love is not something that can be measured, defined, calculated, or even described. We can love everything, with enough room to go around, and that's what makes this world such a special place. Maybe John, Paul, George, and Ringo were right, and it's really all we need. (I just love the Beatles.)


text: A few snapshots from GMG's Terry Weber's engagement party last night. Cocktail hour was held at Latitude 43 and then the party moved to Guiseppes where Terry's friend Michelle had festively decorated the private dining room. My iPhone photos aren't great, but at least you can get a sense of how much in love are Terry and Chris!


text:
SSL is a well known protocol, and along with TLS, ensures that we can make secure transactions on the web. Most people do not know the underlying principles behind these protocols, but they know to look for the lock icon on their URL bar, and figure out that the information that they send to their bank, email provider, online store and others will be secure. By using SSL, we know that all of that information is encrypted, and nobody who may be listening in will be able to get our login information or financial details. This is a very good thing, and the support that browsers have for these protocols is thus very important.
However, a web page does not come in from a single location. A typical page is composed of many elements, sometimes hundreds. You have the HTML file, but also images, stylesheets, scripts, fonts and so on. So what happens if you connect to a secure site, but some of these assets come from an unsecured connection? This is what we call mixed content. You end up with a page that is secure, and has the SSL icon, but may also content images, scripts or more that came from a non-encrypted connection. Browsers have various ways to deal with this situation. Some will show you a warning message; others will simply use a broken lock icon. But the result for the end user is that they may realize something is amiss, but there is no easy way for them to know what exactly is not secure.
Starting with version 23, the Mozilla team decided that Firefox will simply stop allowing such a situation to occur. There already is an option you can turn on to block unsecured content on encrypted web pages, but from version 23, which is due on May 17, this will be turned on by default. Instead of seeing the mixed content, the whole connection will be dropped, and you will not see the content that was not encrypted.
Better for security
Mixed content is a big problem. You may think that if your actual form submission is through an encrypted port, then the rest of the page does not matter, but in reality there are multiple attacks that can be carried out. Any time unsecured content can be added to a page that should otherwise be secure, then you have an issue. What you end up loading may not be an image, but a script, and this script may be doing things you did not expect. If you have someone in the middle of your connection, doing a typical man-in-middle attack, then you may end up seeing what should be a legitimate script being replaced by a malicious one.
Also, the broken padlock or error messages that used to be provided were bad from a user point of view. They were cryptic, and did not provide enough information for a typical user to take a decision whether to allow this content to be loaded or not. Even if you wanted this content, you had no real way to find out whether the content was genuine, since you had no encryption or authentication. So this change is a very good thing. It solves the user interface issue, and the potential security problems.
How to test this change
With that being said, there are some people pointing out that this will break things. While webmasters should know better than to use mixed content, there are still a lot of sites out there using such a setup, for various reasons. Of course there is laziness, but also there are cases when you may wish to include resources from other sites, and those resources simply are not available through a secure connection. So if you make an encrypted site, and you try to load a script from another site, which is only offered through port 80, then you end up with mixed content.
However, the change should not break too many big sites. This is because Firefox is hardly the first to do this. Chrome started doing the same thing last year, first giving a warning message and eventually blocking content just like Firefox will. Internet Explorer is not that drastic, but since IE10, it does provide a warning message and requires the user to explicitly allow the content through. So again, webmasters have had time to fix their sites, if they haven't already.
If you want to test this change now, you can use the about:config URL in your version of Firefox, and search for the key security.mixed_content.block_active_content, which is the setting that will be turned on by default. By changing it to true you are telling your browser that you want to block mixed content. (Firefox will display a warning when you go to auto config to make this change. Be careful when editing keys.) This is something any web developer or administrator should do to ensure that their own sites are not going to break. You only have a few weeks before this latest change occurs, so make sure you find the time to run a quick check on your own content.


text:
Just swinging by with a super quick post not only to share a project with y'all, but to express my thanks for all your sweet messages about my dad. Times are tough and I'm still living out of a suitcase, not knowing where I'm staying from one night to the next, but it's worth every bit of disruption if it means dad can get better.
So I'm posting on a Thursday (aka Friday Eve) so you know that it's time for:
So here's the gorgeous card by Barbara Anders up for our CASE study this week:
Both polka dots and stars - this card definitely hits my soft spots! And although it's not a card, this is my take on the challenge:
So how did I squeeze in any inky time for this week's CASE study? Well I had to cut some treat boxes for an art club at work and couldn't resist cutting one from some yummy kraft cardstock for myself to decorate *wink* It's been so long since I've gotten inky, but it's just the kinda therapy the doctor ordered for me to de-stress a little.
If I could make lots of these, I'd fill them with sweet treats and give them to you guys as a thank you for your positive vibes/prayers during this anxious time! You're all so sweet; thank you so much!
Fancy playing along with us? I hope so, and if my treat box isn't enough to get your mojo going, then check out the rest of the CASE study DT:
Iwona Palamountain (Chupa)
Andrea Ewen
Carole Kisch
Cindy Lee
Lenet Mos
Sue Kohler
Teneale Williams
Barbara Anders (October's Muse)
Catch ya later
Treat Box Deets
{Thank You}
Stamps: Star Prints (Papertrey Ink)
Ink: Black (Memento)/Antique Linen (Distress Ink)
Cardstock: Kraft, Raspberry Fizz (Papertrey Ink)
Patterned Paper: Dotty Biscotti (Papertrey Ink)
Accessories: Cuttlebug/Treat Box Die (Papertrey Ink)/Star Punch (SU!)/Raspberry Fizz Button (Papertrey Ink)/Fineline Pen


text:
It's generally a fool's errand to try putting human labels on animal behavior, but it can be possible to define how "good" animals are in terms of their capacity to act selflessly to help others. This is referred to as altruism, and it turns out plants are capable of it as well.
Of course, since this is planets we're talking about, we're not looking at behaviors as complex as of altruistic animals, who have been known to feed, protect, and even raise animals of entirely different species — think of all those stories of primates adopting kittens, for instance. Plant altruism is a little more calculated, and plants likely reserve their self-sacrifice exclusively for members of their own species.
That, at least, is the finding of University of Colorado professor Pamela Diggle, who examined the two "offspring" found inside fertilized seeds of corn. The first offspring is the embryo, while the second is tissue known as endosperm, which is meant to serve as a source of nutrients for the growing embryo, even at the cost of its own existence. Assuming the endosperm isn't fully absorbed by the embryo during the reproductive process, it often becomes the fruit or other parts of the plant that we humans end up consuming.
Most of the time, when a seed becomes fertilized after cross-pollination with another plant, the embryo and endosperm will have the same "mother" and "father." But on certain rare occasions, the embryo and the endosperm will share a mother but have different fathers. It was these cases that Professor Diggle and her research team focused on, to see whether endosperm would be less likely to sacrifice its own existence just to provide nutrients for a relatively unrelated embryo. In a statement, Professor Diggle explains what she found:
"The results indicated embryos with the same mother and father as the endosperm in their seed weighed significantly more than embryos with the same mother but a different father. We found that endosperm that does not share the same father as the embryo does not hand over as much food — it appears to be acting less cooperatively. Our study is the first to specifically test the idea of cooperation among siblings in plants."
While that might indicate endosperm can be selfish bastards, that isn't really news — evolution tends to favor organisms that are selfish bastards, since it increases the chances of surviving to reproduction age. What's more interesting is that, according to these results, endosperm don't simply give up their chance at life just as a matter of course; instead, they actively choose to die if it means their sibling can survive, and they won't do it for just any other plant. That's pretty much the definition of altruism, as co-author and Harvard professor William "Ned" Friedman explains:
"One of the most fundamental laws of nature is that if you are going to be an altruist, give it up to your closest relatives," said Friedman. "Altruism only evolves if the benefactor is a close relative of the beneficiary. When the endosperm gives all of its food to the embryo and then dies, it doesn't get more altruistic than that."
PNAS via University of Colorado. Image by anokarina on Flickr.


text:
In politics, truth-telling can get you into trouble, even if you stumble upon it by accident. Just ask Rep. Allen West (R-FL).
West is feeling the heat for a pregnant pause he took during a town hall meeting after he was asked "What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists or International Socialists?"
"It's a good question," West responded, "I believe there's [sic] about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party. (Long pause) "They don't actually hide. It's called the Congressional Progressive Caucus." The left became unhinged.
Obviously West touched a nerve; before long, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) drafted their response: "Calling fellow Members of Congress 'Communists' is reminiscent of the days when Joe McCarthy divided Americans with name-calling and modern-day witch hunts that don't advance policies to benefit people's lives..."
The CPC's response is just another sign of the political times we live in. But something about their argument doesn't pass the "smell test."
While there may not be large numbers of card-carrying communists lining the halls of Congress, there is a clear tie between the Democratic Party's Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
It really boils down to marketing. In marketing, many times the same product is given a different name or label in order to increase its appeal to certain groups. Names are sometimes changed due to the product's connection to other products, or the public's association to a prior name.
Although Progressive share much in common with CPUSA and DSA, they are shrewd enough to understand the terms "communist" or "socialist" are unpalatable for most Americans. Hence, the word "Progressive" was injected into American political verbiage. While the words are not interchangeable, one thing is for sure: The CPC is doing its part to further the goals of modern Communists and Socialists who have found a voice in the Democratic Party.
In 2002, Communist Party USA PAC leader Joelle Fishman reported CPUSA uses the Congressional Progressive Caucus as "an important lever" to "move the debate to the left." A February 2, 2010 Communist Party USA article "Convention Discussion: A Time to Grow" explained they plan to meet their goals by running for office "within the auspices of the Democratic Party" because "conditions rarely if ever allow us to run open Communists for office."
The same article praised Obama's election asserting, "We have the opportunity to build something big, a large, influential and effective Communist Party USA. After the incredible movement to elect Barack Obama, more far-reaching solutions and socialism in particular are back at the dinner table for discussion."
It seems they are moving toward attaining their goals. Obama's election, in conjunction with Progressives cannibalizing the Democratic Party by ousting common sense Blue Dogs, aided in a severe shift to the left. Americans have witnessed the deterioration of this nation by way of the same type of race-baiting and class warfare Communism cannot exist without.
Unbecoming to an American president, Obama has led the charge in attacks against job-creators, extended the olive branch to "99 Percent" anarchists, and publicly castigated the third (and his equal) branch of government. Americans have had zero control over the appointments of unsavory anti-capitalist cabinet members like former "Green Czar" and avowed Communist Van Jones.
All things considered, "Washington's newest breath of fresh air," West, is dead-on in his assessment of Democratic Party Progressives. West once said Progressive's should take their message "and get the hell out of America." I think most of us would be happy if they would just "get the hell out of" the Democratic Party and run on their own ticket.


text:
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs traded wide receiver Jon Baldwin to the San Francisco 49ers for wide receiver A.J. Jenkins on Monday in a swap of disappointing first-round picks.
Baldwin was the 26th overall choice of the Chiefs in 2011, but he's had a tumultuous career right from the start. Baldwin broke his thumb his rookie season when he got into a fight with a teammate, and then struggled to adapt to three head coaches in his first three seasons.
He's also had trouble dropping passes throughout training camp under new Chiefs coach Andy Reid, including one when he was wide open in last Friday night's preseason loss to San Francisco.
That drop alone apparently was not enough to dissuade the 49ers from making the deal.
"We are pleased to add Jonathan to our team and look forward to incorporating him into our offense," 49ers general manager Trent Baalke said in a statement. "Both players have been presented a great opportunity for a new beginning with their respective teams."
Jenkins was the 30th overall pick of the 49ers last year, but may have had a more perplexing rookie season than Baldwin. He appeared in three games but did not make a catch, even though he was healthy throughout his team's NFC championship season.
It's the second significant deal between the Chiefs and 49ers this year. Kansas City acquired quarterback Alex Smith from San Francisco for a pair of draft picks during the offseason.
"We felt like this trade was beneficial for all parties involved," said Chiefs general manager John Dorsey, who was hired to replace the fired Scott Pioli in January.
Dorsey and Reid clearly weren't enamored of Baldwin after breaking down video shortly upon their arrival. One of their major acquisitions in free agency was Donnie Avery, a wide receiver who was expected to compete with Baldwin for the job opposite Dwayne Bowe.
Baldwin didn't do much to change the Chiefs' opinion of him this offseason, either.
Even though the Chiefs are desperate to give Smith some downfield options, Baldwin never seized upon the opportunity. He routinely dropped balls throughout training camp, and Reid and offensive coordinator Doug Pederson had seemingly grown accustomed to defending him.
"You don't know what you will get out of him," Pederson said Sunday. "If he's down from drops or mental errors or whatever it is, you just work yourself out of it. You continue to press on. We always talk about short term memory. You have to have it in this business and move on."
Otherwise, your team eventually will move on, as Kansas City did Monday.
The 49ers are hopeful that Baldwin can flourish without having to deal with the pressure he had on him in Kansas City. Even though Michael Crabtree is out with a torn Achilles tendon, they still have Anquan Boldin, Kyle Williams, Mario Manningham when healthy, and tight end Vernon Davis to carry most of the load in their passing game.
Still, that wasn't enough to help Jenkins reach his potential with San Francisco, and after another rough preseason showing against the Chiefs last Friday night, there were questions whether the former Illinois star would even make the team.
He was targeted twice in the game, but failed to catch either pass. He only had one reception in the 49ers' preseason opener against Denver, but also lost a fumble.
"A.J. is a talented individual with a skillset that we feel can add value to our football team," Dorsey said. "Jon Baldwin is a hardworking player and a professional. We wish him nothing but the best moving forward."


text:
Crowder College could see tuition increase
Tuition at Crowder College could jump by 4.6 percent next year, pending approval by the college's board of trustees.
On Thursday, the board considered a rate increase of $3 for in-district students, $4 for in-state and $5 for out-of-state students. Current tuition per credit hour is $65, $91 and $118, respectively. A final vote on the measure will be made next month.
Crowder President Alan Marble said utility costs were the driving force behind proposing the tuition hike. According to Marble, the college paid out $25,000 last month alone in just electricity costs and that the utility budget for this year is already depleted. He attributed rising rates and more buildings in use on Crowder's four campuses to the higher costs of operating.
Marble said mandatory hikes in retirement pensions and as high as 12 percent increases in health insurance premiums for Crowder employees were also forcing the college to look at raising tuition.
"Just (health insurance) is going to eat up almost everything we're asking for (in higher tuition)," Marble said. "In fact, we may find by next month that what we're asking for is not quite enough. I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see."
The college's much touted wind turbine could offset some of the utility costs when the machine is ultimately connected to the grid, Marble said, but won't make up for energy spent by the near 50,000 square foot Arnold Farber building after its completion this summer.
And while Crowder has made big strides in student enrollment of late, Marble said tuition generated by those extra students only makes for one third of the college's revenue, the other two thirds split between state funding and district property taxes, both of which have slowed down.
"We tried to calculate all those things into the mix, and we're still just going to have to pay more," Marble said.
He said other area colleges and universities, specifically Missouri Southern and Pitt State, are raising their rates next year as well. As for community college's, Marble said Crowder still ranks in the lower middle in tuition costs.
"We're a good value," he said.
Neosho Daily News


text:
Palliative Dementia Service
Sign up for free and continue reading
Med CPD offers the widest range of courses and content, all accessible in one place. Click on the Sign up button and start looking after the health of your career.
Dementia Training Australia
Giuliana Duffy
Claire Doyle
1 hour
Other courses
Clinical audit: Heart health checks and lipid lowering therapies for primary prevention of CVD
Identifying ID clinical audit: Screening and managing your patients with iron deficiency
Travel Medicine Webinar
TOO HOT TO TOUCH Burns management in rural regions
A welcome new opportunity for medical professionals to access diverse CPD content, put together creatively and painstakingly. An admirable initiative that can cater to doctors of all specialities
Dr Thinesh Rajasingam
Adult Psychiatrist
Med CPD offers a new, innovative approach to ongoing professional development, skills acquisition and knowledge expansion. It's effectively an easy-to-use gateway to a wealth of diverse courses, resources and events from a growing range of new and established education & training providers. I recommend checking out what's available now and keeping an eye on the site as it grows and evolves.
Dr Andrew Vanlint
Clinical Haematology and General Medicine Registrar
For me, there are 3 key factors that set Med CPD apart from other sources of medical professional development and education. First up, it's free! Secondly, it allows easier access to the latest career development courses using advanced browsing functionality. Thirdly, it is designed to support medical professionals at every career stage.
Medical Career Coach


text:
Playing on perception at the Boston Children's Museum
The oldest kid in the gallery, white-bearded Bernie Zubrowski watched as children poked, twirled and blew onto the inviting interactive sculptures he's exhibiting at the Boston Children's Museum.
"Yes,'' shouted bright-eyed Gwendolyn Ogonosky as she raced toward a shiny "Rosette'' of rotating circles connected at a hub like the gleaming outline of flower petals. "Yesssssss.''
The curly-haired 2-year-old might have been hollering for all the young visitors enchanted that afternoon by Zubrowski's "Arrangements of Motions."
An influential science educator and prolific author, the Littleton resident is showing six interactive sculptures that display different kinds of movements and perceptual effects.
"I'm mainly interested in things that move,'' said the self-described "tinkerer.''
Zubrowski stopped by a sculpture titled "Square Dance'' that resembled an angular mobile made from gleaming flatirons and hangers. On closer observation, visitors will discover when certain pieces are pushed or spun, the sculpture rearranges itself into new shapes like square dancers dosey-doeing.
"I want visitors of all ages to watch carefully and see what effects they introduce by moving it,'' he said. "I want visitors to think what a sculpture looks like when you look down on it and, then, think how it looks when it's changing into something different.''
Almost on cue, sisters Annabelle and Evelynn Argelis began playing with "Circle Dance,'' eight metallic loops joined at their rim so they could revolve into different configurations.
"When you move it, it spins around into different shapes,'' said 8-year-old Annabelle. "Like, like ….''
"When it goes around in circles, it looks something like a flower,'' interjected 6-year-old Evelynn who seemed very happy to be answering for her big sister.
Zubrowski designed exhibits for 23 years at the Boston Children's Museum, creating "Bubbles'' and "Raceways,'' still-popular exhibits which have been replicated in museums around the world.
Exhibit designer Benjamin Durrell said Zubrowski was a key member of a generation of staff members who built upon the vision of former Director Michael Spock, who during his tenure from 1962 to 1985, promoted the concept on "hands on learning'' and created the first interactive exhibit.
Spock, Zubrowski and others came to realize youngsters were more interested in exhibits that engaged their senses than merely looking at objects in a case or listening to a lecture.
From 1979 through 1999, Zubrowski wrote 17 children's science books with titles such as "Shadow Play: Making Pictures With Light and Lens" and "Messing Around With Baking Chemistry.'' His ideas have influenced science education around the world and earned him the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In a statement about his sculptures, he wrote, "When I first started playing around with materials more than 25 years ago … I found what was most interesting to me was the aesthetic of movement. … I came to realize one theme kept recurring besides the aesthetics of the movement: This was the juxtaposition of multiple parts that were of the same shape. The question for me had been: How do the different parts move in relationship to me.''
Zubrowski pointed at two pieces hanging from the ceiling, "Protozoa #1 and #2 which he made from wire window screens and twisted into indefinable shapes that cast shadows on the white wall.
When the pieces are pushed or prodded, their shapes change as do their shadows on the wall, sometimes creating a complex phenomenon known as a Moire pattern which occurs when two grids are overlaid at an angle or have different sized meshes.
Martin Delmore watched as his two sons and daughter, from ages 5 to 10 years old, played with different sculptures, seeming to have invented a game without clear rules. "I like, for once, they're not watching television or looking at a computer screen,'' said the visitor from Baltimore.
The most popular sculpture last Wednesday seemed to be "Fractured Bodies,'' a floor-to-ceiling-sized mirror made from more than 80 vertical stripes of glass.
While directions encourage youngsters to "blow gently or push the mirrors,'' 2-year-old Sydney Schafer stepped partially behind the mirrors as if hiding behind a shower curtain.
"Look,'' she called to family members visiting from Bradford, Pa. "Look at me.''
Zubrowski said he designed the sculptures in the show to create an "aesthetic effect'' rather then subconsciously teach a science lesson to children.
"This is more about art and experiencing different kinds of sculpture,'' he said, watching children flitter about the gallery. "It's about watching things over time and being inspired.''
Spoken like an inspired 2-year-old.
"Arrangements of Motions''
WHEN: Through June 23
WHERE: Boston Children's Museum, 308 Congress St., Boston
INFO: 617-426-6500, www.bostonchildrensmuseum.org


text:
HBO to film 'Game of Shadows'
Variety is reporting that HBO Films has purchased the rights to the book Game of Shadows, the exposé penned by SF Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams about the steroids lab BALCO and its relationship to star athletes Barry Bonds and others. (Courtesy Mediabistro.com.)
Ron Shelton ("Bull Durham," "White Men Can't Jump," "Tin Cup") will direct the film, to be shown on HBO.
How about Samuel L. Jackson to star?


text:
Accounts payable has been one of the last bastions of paper processing in many organizations, but now businesses are looking for efficiencies and money-saving opportunities anywhere they can be found.
When the bottom line needs to grow — even when the top line isn't growing — many businesses choose to use automation and analysis in procurement and finance to find and take advantage of these opportunities.
Additionally, improved data integration and the efficiencies of cloud computing are helping companies refine their finances through tighter collaboration with suppliers.
Listen to a conversation on how these trends are fostering improved processes in accounts payable automation and spend management, featuring Drew Hofler, senior solutions marketing manager of financial solutions at Ariba, an SAP company, and Vishal Patel, research director and vice president of client services at Ardent Partners. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner.
Download the podcast (22:23 minutes) or use the player:
Here are some excerpts:
Dana Gardner: Today's landscape for AP and collaborating across business is driving some new processes, new approaches, and you have some new research. Tell us why you did the research now, and what you found out.
Vishal Patel: We completed this E-Payables 2012 research study in June of this year. It was comprised of approximately 220 AP, finance, and procurement professionals. Our intent was to get a sense of the current state of AP operations, the usage of AP solutions, and to capture some of the key strategies, processes, and performances that these organizations are able to achieve. Also, to determine how best-in-class companies are leveraging AP automation.
Gardner: And what's changed? What's new now or different from say two or three years ago?
Patel: Traditionally, we saw AP as having a very tactical focus. We asked the survey participants, "What do you think AP can do for you?" The responses ranged from payroll and reviewing invoices to responding to supplier inquiries. But in 2012, we're beginning to see a little bit of a shift more toward strategic activities and the introduction of automation in the process.
If we compare procurement and AP, AP traditionally is lagging behind procurement in terms of transformation and improvement of performance in their groups. AP is currently at the point where it's trying to improve efficiency and trying to focus staff members on more strategic activities, instead of responding to supplier inquiries.
That's the general trend we've been seeing, and also just being able to connect the various processes within the procure-to-pay cycle.
New Efficiencies
Gardner: Drew Hofler, we've seen an emphasis over the past several years, particularly in a tough economy, on seeking out new efficiencies. We've seen that in procurement and supply chain. Is this now AP's day in the sun, so speak, to grow more efficient?
Drew Hofler: I would say that it is. It's probably the last bastion of paper processing in most organizations right now, typically seen, as Vishal mentioned, in the past as a back office tactical organization. They're seeing now that there are benefits that can be had by automating — and not just automating the process and getting rid of paper — but automating that on a network platform.
That allows visibility into key strategic data that drive decision-making throughout the organization and across their firewall to their suppliers as well. These are things like visibility into shipments, when they're coming in, visibility into line-item invoice data on the procurement side, so that they can do better analysis of their spend.
It's driving more strategic procurement on the supplier's visibility into invoice status and payment timing, so they can manage their working capital and even access opportunities for getting paid early in exchange for discounts.
All of this stuff flows out of automation, and I think companies are really seeing how AP can now drive some of these strategic activities. So, I think it is their time in the sun.
Gardner: When we actually have an automation across the spectrum of these different activities, it seems to me that we're not going to be just collecting data and be able to proactively seek out new efficiencies or processes. It allows us to have more of an ad hoc, real-time benefit of being adept and even proactive. How is that important now, when you look at this entire spectrum of economic activity?
Hofler: That's extremely important. Everybody needs to be nimble right now. The big deal is being able to adjust to the circumstances that are just crazy right now. It's having visibility into where you're spending specifically and when you're getting paid. Also, visibility into automating the invoice cycle and the AP process so that now you can do something with that with an early paid invoice that is approved maybe 45 days before it's due.
This opens up working-capital opportunities, where companies are offering early pay discounts to their suppliers. Suppliers who don't have the same access to cash flow that they had pre-2008 are accessing that, saying thank you, and are willingly giving up a discount so that they are lowering their days sales outstanding (DSO).
Buying organizations are getting something for their cash that they're certainly not getting with that cash sitting in bank accounts earning zero percent right now. Both sides are winning, and all of that's really made possible by automation.
Gardner: Vishal, this notion of being nimble, is that something that came up in your recent research and how important is that for companies to once again push the needle on efficiency?
Impact of AP
Patel: It's very important, especially when you start thinking about the impact that AP can have on other parts of the organization like procurement and finance. When you look at the P2P process, it's one transaction that all of these different stakeholders are connected to. But all the stakeholders are not connected to each other necessarily, and that's where automation comes in. That's when you get the added value of collaboration between the P2P cycle.
If you think about the manual environment where you're receiving paper invoices, paper purchase orders. It's a difficult, really tedious work to get the right level of information at the right time, and then make decisions about how to most appropriately utilize cash.
One of the interesting things we found the research was that when we asked the survey participants what some of the biggest drivers are for the AP groups, the top one was improving processing efficiency, which is as expected, and it's been the same way for the last several years.
But the following two were the ones that were surprising. Number two and number three on the list were improving cash and working capital and improving days payable outstanding. Previously, we wouldn't even have seen those on the list, but these are much higher on the list in 2012.
Gardner: Drew, we recognize that large companies that are moving lots of goods that have a lot of capital involved are deeply incentivized to do this, but what about smaller organizations? Is this now something that is attainable by them, and are they starting to see benefits there, too?
Hofler: Absolutely. Any organization that can have visibility into their opportunities, into their process, and control over that process benefits from this. Smaller organizations on the buyer side are most definitely seeing the value of this. Lots of smaller organizations on the invoice sending and payment receiving side, what we would traditionally call the supplier side, the seller side, are seeing huge benefits from this.
For example, one of the suppliers on the Ariba network company called Mediafly, invoices with a very large entertainment company. They're a small company, they're a startup, and they're in growth mode. They have a full visibility into when they're paid and their CFO has told us that it's just like gold being able to see that.
So Mediafly has visibility into not only when their invoice is going to get paid, so that they can forecast on that, but also the ability to accelerate that payment on demand. They can literally click a button and get paid when they want.
They have told us that that has allowed them to hire, to accelerate their production of their products by hiring new developers, so that they can actually get a product out the door. They told us an example where they were able to get a new product out the door before they had planned, and they were scheduled to get paid on that original invoice.