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Privacy and Cookie Policy
Smarter Shows is a global B2B events organiser based in Brighton, UK.
This privacy policy governs the collection and use of personal information by Smarter Shows. For more information about Smarter Shows please see: www.smartershows.com. This website is owned and run by Smarter Shows (Tarsus) Limited.
We are committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy explains the types of personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, how we protect that information, and your legal rights in relation to your personal information. We are committed to abiding by this privacy policy, as well as the requirements of applicable data protection laws. By accessing, browsing or otherwise using our website, you confirm that you have read and understood this privacy policy.
Smarter Shows (Tarsus) Limited
For the purposes of applicable data protection laws, Smarter Shows, " us", "we" or "our" is the data controller. Smarter Shows/We means Smarter Shows (Tarsus) Limited. Our registered office is at Second Floor, 79/83 North Street, Brighton, BN1 1ZA. Should you need to contact us, please contact us at [email protected] or please write to us at:
The Data Protection Officer, Smarter Shows (Tarsus) Limited, Second Floor, 79/83 North Street, Brighton, BN1 1ZA
What is covered in this policy?
This policy covers all personal information collected and used by Smarter Shows. "Personal information" means any information that (either in isolation or in combination with other information held by us) enables you to be identified as an individual or recognised directly or indirectly.
This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
Gathering of your personal data
We may collect information about you from different sources detailed below.
Information / data that you provide to us:
When you access and browse our website (including when you register for an event (live or virtual), subscribe to our newsletters or fill in forms on our website), download our Event App, access a third party virtual platform and when you correspond with us by phone or email or other electronic means including social networking websites, you may give us information about yourself. The information you give us may include:
- your name and title;
- payment processing information;
- postal address;
- personal/work email address;
- landline and/or mobile telephone number;
- delivery details;
- dietary and access requirements;
- your photo;
- your social media account details;
- information about your employment (including your job title, responsibilities and employer's details); and
- your product / service information
- your procurement interests, priorities and preferences
Information / data that we collect about you:
With regard to your visits to our website, we may also use cookies and other technologies such as our website tracking partner, Lead Forensics, to automatically collect the following information:
- Technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, operating systems and platform; and
- Information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstreams to, on and from our website, products you viewed or searched for, page response times, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call us.
Information / data that we receive and collect from other sources:
We may receive information about you from other websites operated by Smarter Shows or from the other services that we provide including our events,virtual events ,webinars and newsletters.
We may also collect personal information provided to us by other companies who have obtained your permission to share this information with us, or who need to share information with us in relation to our goods and/or services you have purchased or events and webinars you have registered for, such as: Salesforce, N200, SagePay, Income Systems, Echosign, Financial Force, Dotmailer, ON24, LinkedIn, Jublia, Form Assembly, Gleanin, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Google Cloud, Facebook, Twitter, Bing and Xing and may receive information about you from them. If you link your Google, Facebook or Twitter accounts or any accounts from other third party services (i.e. public forums such as blogging sites) to Smarter Shows then we also receive information from those accounts to the extent you've agreed to this as part of your settings and that third party's privacy policy.
Cookies and our cookie policy
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website.
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your computer's hard drive or on your browser. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive. Cookies help analyse web traffic or remember when you visit a particular website. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use first party cookies (these are placed there and used solely by Smarter Shows) and third-party cookies (these are placed there by third parties we work with).
We use the following cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies: These are cookies that are required for the operation and functionality of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to make use of e-billing services.
- Analytical/performance cookies: They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
- Functionality cookies: These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
- Targeting cookies: These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.
You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:
More information
PHP Session Id
Functionality cookie
Basic server side session tracking for basic website usage and to keep a users preferences between pages
Functionality cookie
CDN: Stores users sessions
Facebook pixel
Targeting cookie
Used to monitor advertising campaigns with 3rd party submitted data
Google Analytics
Performance cookie
Google Adwords
Targeting cookie
Used to monitor advertising campaigns with 3rd party submitted data
Google DoubleClick
Targeting cookie
Used to monitor advertising campaigns with 3rd party submitted data
YouTube cookies
Targeting cookie
3rd party tracking of video usage
Twitter cookies
Targeting cookie
Used to monitor advertising campaigns with 3rd party submitted data
LinkedIn cookies
Targeting cookie
Used to monitor advertising campaigns with 3rd party submitted data
Performance cookie
Internal System to track anonymous website usage
Targeting Cookie
Completed registration tracking against 3rd party submitted data
Smart Digital:
Smart Digital
Performance Cookie
3rd party tracking of video usage
Lead Forensics:
Lead Forensics
Targeting cookies
Website usage against 3rd party submitted data
Google Tag Manager
Functionality cookie
Container for all tracking cookies.
Please note that selected third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of third parties and we advise that you check these yourself.
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can activate the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout .
Our use of your personal information
We will only process your personal data where we have a legal basis to do so. The legal basis will depend on the purposes for which we have collected and use your personal data. Please note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. You should know that no matter what legal basis applies, you always have the right to request access to, rectification of and deletion of your data under data protection laws.
We may process your personal information for the following purposes:
How we may use your personal data:
Purpose of using your personal data:
The lawful basis for us processing your information:
To provide you with products and services
We may use your personal information to allow us to meet our contractual obligations, or to offer you products or services relevant to your business and professional interests
We require your personal information as a necessity to performing our contractual obligations
To provide a product or service that matches your requirements
We may use your personal data to enable us to understand your requirements and enable an experience relevant to your business or professional interests
We have a legitimate interest in providing you with a service that meets your requirements
To continually improve our events and service to you
We use information such as your email or telephone number to contact you to collect feedback from you to improve our services
We have a legitimate interest in enhancing and improving our service to our event participants
To update our website to display exhibitors and speakers contact details to prospective visitors and attendees of our events
We may share your name, organisation and job title to inform visitors about the details of our events
We have a legitimate interest in keeping you up to date with our service offerings and details of our events
When you apply for a position with us either directly or via an agency
We use your information that you provide to us, including your CV, references and other recruitment information
We have a legitimate interest in processing this information for our business and to keep you informed about your application
To notify you of any changes to our services
We have a legitimate interest to ensure that you are kept up to date with any changes including in relation to our events, products and services
Sales, customer service and administration
To respond to product and service enquiries either online or by telephone
We will use personal information such as your email and telephone number to provide you with information relevant to your enquiry, transaction or registration
If your query relates to a product or service you have purchased, we have a contractual obligation to use your personal information to respond. If your enquiry is about a product or service, we have a legitimate interest in using your information to respond to allow us to provide a tailored offering
To ensure our database is maintained
We may use your information to maintain our database and ensure our records are kept up to date and to keep you informed of products and services that may interest you
We have a legitimate interest in ensuring we are offering you products and services relevant to your current requirements
Marketing and research
To tell you about special offers for products
We may use your personal information to offer you products or services relevant to your business and professional interests
We have a legitimate interest in providing you with products and services are relevant to your requirements
To promote further participation in our events, products and services
We may use your personal information to qualify your relevance for further participation in our events
We have a legitimate interest in using your information to determine these opportunities
To send you segmented marketing emails with event news and content
We may use personal information like your email address, company, job function and product/service preferences to create profiles and send you targeted communications relevant to your business or professional interests and ensure you receive messaging that is relevant to your requirements
We have a legitimate interest in using your data to ensure you receive messaging that is relevant to your requirements
To contact you for research purposes to improve our events
We may use your personal information such as your email and telephone number to collect feedback, enhance our offering, pilot and launch new products
We have a legitimate interest in continually improving our products and services to our event stakeholders
Web and technical
To troubleshoot and diagnose any technical problems with our systems to improve our service to you and for system administration purposes in relation to our website and for internal operations, including data analysis, testing and research
We may use personal information such as your IP address to resolve any technical problems
We have a legitimate interest to resolve any technical problems, for the provision of our administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and maintain our network and data security
To analyse how you use our website
We may use personal information such as cookies and tracking technologies
We have a legitimate interest in continually improving our website to meet your requirements and to enable us to improve the user experience and to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device
Event, exhibition and conference
If you have agreed to participate in our events, we may take photographs and videos of attendees, exhibitors, speakers and sponsors to use for promotional purposes
We take photographs and video at our events for educational, news or promotional material, in print, electronic or other media, including on our website and on social media
We have a legitimate interest to use such information to promote and grow our business
We will collect data regarding your attendance at our events
We will scan your badge to allow you to gain entry to our events and determine that you have attended one of our events.
We have a legitimate interest in collecting and analysing this information to help improve your experience and network effectively with our exhibitors
Where you have consented to receive communications or marketing from third parties e.g. where you provide information directly to an exhibitor or third party at our events or if you allow an exhibitor to scan you badge
Where you provide your information or allow an exhibitor to scan your badge, you are consenting to allow them to contact you in relation to receiving their marketing and other third party communications
You have provided your consent to be contacted by other third parties and their use of your information is their responsibility and subject to their privacy policy
To analyse attendee movement around our events
Through the use of an app or other location data we may use this information
We have a legitimate interest in using this information to continually improve our events and service offerings
Where you are an exhibitor at one of our events, we may share your information with our third parties to help deliver our services during the events
We may need to share your name, email, telephone number, organisation and job title with third parties such as subcontractors to set up the event space to the requirements you specify e.g. in terms of stand construction and furniture
We have a legitimate interest in using your data to improve your experience and deliver appropriate and relevant services
Legal and contractual
To allow us to fulfil our contractual obligations to you when you have purchased any goods or services from us
We may use your personal information such as email, telephone or postal information
We are required to use your personal information to allow us to fulfil our contractual obligation to you
To comply with applicable legal requirements or to defend legal claims we may be subject to
We may be required to use your personal information to comply with legal requirements, e.g. insurance, financial, health and safety etc.
We have a legal obligation to process your personal information in this way
To comply with health and safety regulations
Exhibitor details may be provided to the venue management when there is food provided on the stand
We are required to use your personal information as it is necessary for us to comply with our legal obligations. It is also in our legitimate interest to ensure the health and safety of all visitors and attendees at our events and in relation to the provision of our services
Special category data
Certain categories of personal information have additional protection under the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR). These categories include information about your health, religious or philosophical beliefs and racial or ethnic origin.
We may process special category data where this is provided by you to inform us of any dietary or other health requirements such as assistance requirements. We will process this information to provide you with the assistance you require or have requested. We will only process your special category data where we have your explicit consent.
Transfers of personal data
Personal data may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area (the EEA), including countries, which have less strict, or no data protection laws, when compared to those in Europe. Whenever we transfer your information as described above, we will take steps which are reasonably necessary to ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data and to make sure it is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy and applicable data protection laws. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to only those employees, contractors and other third parties who are required to assist in carrying out our services.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
We also work with suppliers and partners who may make use of cloud and/or hosted technologies. We undertake data security due diligence on our partners and ensure that these partners conform to appropriate accreditations.
Retention of personal data
Smarter Shows will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collect it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.
Disclosure of personal data
We may share your personal information with our Smarter Shows controlled affiliates and within our group of companies (i.e. our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006) in order to enable you to access the services, provide you with customer support and conduct the other activities described in this privacy policy here.
We use a variety of third party Service Providers on our behalf or to assist us with the provision of services to you including marketing, operational and IT/technology services such as:
- IT companies who support our website and other business systems;
- Direct marketing companies who help us manage our electronic communications with you;
- Our event registration, engagement and ticketing platform company, N200 Limited. A copy of N200 Limited's privacy policy can be accessed here.
In the course of providing such services, these Service Providers may have access to your personal information. We require such service providers to adopt adequate technical and organisational security measures to ensure the processing of personal data only in accordance with our instructions set out in our contract with them.
We may share your data with third parties for their own purposes. We will only do this in very specific circumstances, for example:
- With your consent, given at the time you supply your personal data, we may pass that data to a third party for their direct marketing purposes.
- If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal information in order to comply with any legal or regulatory obligation or request.
- In the event that we sell or buy or transfer any divisions or the whole business to new owners. If this happens, your personal data will, where relevant, be transferred to the new owner or controlling party, under the terms of this privacy policy.
Third party websites
Our website may contain links to and from third party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data.
Your rights
You have certain rights in relation to your personal information. These include:
- The right to be informed about what we do with your information: this privacy policy and any details provided when we capture your personal information will keep you informed about how we will use this information.
- The right to access your information: you can request access to the personal information we hold about you and information about how we process it.
- The right to correct your information: to have your information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete information completed.
- The right to object to, or restrict, us using your information: in certain circumstances you can ask us to restrict processing of your personal information.
- The right to delete your personal information: you can request to have your personal information erased.
- The right to stop direct marketing messages: you can do this easily by clicking on the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of any marketing email we send you or by contacting [email protected] .
- The right to portability of your information: you can ask us to move, transfer or copy your information so that you can use this information in a different service.
To exercise these rights or to prevent such processing please either use the "unsubscribe" link found in all our marketing correspondence, or email us at [email protected] .
Direct marketing
If you have given us your contact details, we may use these (in accordance with any preferences you have expressed) to send you marketing messages by email, post, phone and social media to keep you aware of what we're up to and to help you see and find our products and services. This includes sending details of special offers, services and promotions from Smarter Shows.
As part of running our business, Smarter Shows has a legitimate interest to promote our products using marketing messages to existing customers of Smarter Shows and/or those in a negotiation with us for a sale or service, unless you have asked us not to.
When we collect your personal data, we give you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving those marketing messages by simply clicking on the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of any marketing email we send you or by contacting us at [email protected] .
Your right to complain
You have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authorities if you believe that we have not complied with applicable data protection laws. If you have such concerns we request that you initially contact us (using the contact details below) so that we can investigate, and hopefully resolve, your concerns.
Changes to our privacy policy
We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at our discretion, without prior notice to you. We will notify you if changes are made. Please check back regularly to keep abreast of any updates. Your continued use of our services or our website following the posting of changes to these terms means that you consent to those changes.
Contacting us
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, you can email us at [email protected].
If you wish to exercise your rights under applicable data protection law and this privacy policy, please contact us by emailing [email protected] or in writing at:
The Data Protection Officer, Smarter Shows (Tarsus) Limited, Second Floor, 79/83 North Street, Brighton, BN1 1ZA


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Trouble Shooting
March 30, 2021
at Shoot Smart Alliance
7:00pm - 9:30pmBook Now
Firearm malfunctions are intimidating, and troubleshooting them is a skill every firearm owner should know. Learn what causes failures and how to fix them in this step-by-step class. Leave class feeling self-reliant, and able to fix malfunctions on your own.
- Fundamentals of shooting a larger caliber firearm
- How to clear malfunctions
Class Length:2.5 hours
Prerequisite:On Target, private lesson, or equivalent experience
Required Equipment:
- Eye & Ear Protection. Don't own any yet? No problem. Affordable eye & ear protection is available for purchase prior to the start of class.
- A 9mm handgun will be provided for use in this class.
- 50 rounds of 9mm ammunition. Ammunition will be available for purchase at check-in.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Amir Michael works for Facebook, so it's no surprise he's a hacker. But he doesn't hack software. He hacks hardware -- and the occasional shipping and receiving room.
By the end of 2010, the shipping and receiving dock at Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters was no longer a shipping and receiving dock. Michael and a few other Facebook engineers moved in when they needed more space for the server lab they'd already built in the storage room next door.
You could tell it used to be a shipping dock because there was a huge scale built into the floor. At one point, the scale was used to weigh packages before they were shipped out, but after Michael and his crew moved in, they used it to weigh the server they'd built from scratch. Twelve months after they first sat down to design a machine for Facebook's new data center in Prineville, Oregon, one of them picked up the finished product and stood on the scale. Then he put it down and picked up one of those mass-produced servers the rest of the world uses.
Michael's built-from-scratch machine weighed 10 pounds less.
Like the other giants of the internet world, Facebook supports its online empire with a massive network of data centers and servers. And that costs money. Very large amounts of money. If you feed webpages to hundreds of millions of people, you're spending mountains of cash not only on the machines themselves, but on the power feeding those machines. At a certain point, you realize you're spending too much. You need something different from the stuff the rest of the world uses.
Facebook hired Amir Michael in the spring of 2009 to help make itself more efficient. "My manager said: 'Hey, come in, we have lots of infrastructure we're building, and we need to make it more innovative, more economical, more energy efficient,'" Michael remembers. "I asked if there was anything specific he was looking for, and he said: 'No. Why don't you just come in and figure it out for yourself?'" And that's what Michael did.
In keeping with Facebook's now world-famous "hacking" culture, he started with a blank slate and worked at the engineering equivalent of breakneck speed, making the most of whatever he could get his hands on, including Facebook's IT storage room and the shipping and receiving dock next door. The result was a brand new server that was not only energy-efficient and cost-efficient, but, well, physically efficient.
"Trying to optimize costs, we took out a lot of components you find in a standard server," Michael says. "That made it easier to service. It made the thermals more efficient because you had less obstructions blocking cool air. And it made it ten pounds lighter. That's ten pounds less material you're buying, ten pounds less you have to lift every time you put it into the rack or pull it out, and ten pounds less you have to recycle when you're done with it."
Facebook isn't alone in designing its own servers. Google has done it for years. The difference is that Facebook will invite you into its makeshift server lab and show you how it's done. It will even give you the goods, including not only the designs for Michael's servers, but the blueprints for the data center in Prineville, which was built to work in tandem with those servers.
Web giants aren't the only ones running the sort of massive operations that require more efficient hardware. Financial houses and biomedical outfits and countless other businesses face the same conundrum. Facebook wants to help itself, but it wants to help them too. According to Amir Michael and the rest of Facebook's hardware braintrust, the two go hand-in-hand.
The Best Experience Is Inexperience
Before joining Facebook, Amir Michael spent more than five and a half years as a hardware engineer at Google. He had debugged motherboards and power supplies, but he had never designed his own server. And that's why he was suited for building one for Facebook. "My vision wasn't cluttered," he says. "I had worked on individual components, but I never sat back and looked at the whole system."
He started by tinkering with some servers and other equipment in Facebook's existing data centers -- facilities where the company was merely leasing space from other outfits. He and a few other engineers made some improvements, but they soon realized they couldn't make a big difference unless they redesigned both the servers and the data center from scratch. "We couldn't just change the data center a little bit and then change the server a little bit," Michael says. "We did that and we got some gains, but we wanted to go much further."
So an engineer named Jay Park went to work on the data center, and Michael started on the server. But they also worked together. The idea was to design the two so they fit hand-in-glove.
The average data center wastes an awful lot of energy switching back and forth between AC and DC power and transforming from one voltage to another. But one night, Jay Park says, he dreamed of a new data center that didn't. When he woke up, there was no paper handy. So he sketched the design on a napkin. Pop song writers aren't the ones to live the old I-dreamt-it cliche.
Rather than shift power down to the traditional 208 volts using the usual array of massive power distribution units, the design ran 277 volts straight into the server room. "We did this for the same reason the power companies have these big high voltage transmission wires," Michael says. "The higher the voltages, the less loses you have, the more efficient you are." What's more, it did away with the enormous uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, that typically backs up a data center in the event of a power grid outage. Instead, Park and crew put DC batteries right next to each server rack and plugged them straight into the servers. This meant not only back-up power moved over shorter distances, but that it wasn't switched from DC to AC and back DC again on the trip to the server.
But Park's dream data center doesn't work unless you have a server that can accommodate these changes. Michael's contribution to this experiment in data center symbiosis was a server that included not one but two power connectors. There was one for 277 volt AC power, and there was another that accepted 48 volt DC power straight from the battery beside the rack. "The power supply is smart enough to know when the AC disappears, and it automatically switches over to the battery," Michael says. "The server doesn't even know that power was lost."
But he didn't stop there. He also redesigned everything from the server chassis to the fans to the motherboard. Michael and his team didn't just piece together existing parts. They built an entirely new machine.
Where in the World Is Amir Michael?
How do you build your own server if you've never built one before? You read some large manuals describing things like power supplies. Then you find the people who actually build things like power supplies.
When he set out to design his server, Michael cold-called Synnex, an outfit that has spent the last thirty years buying and selling computer hardware across the globe. Synnex is headquartered in Fremont, California, but it has deep ties to original device manufacturers, or ODMs, in Taiwan and China and other parts of the world. Michael asked the company to put him in touch with various power supply and motherboard manufacturers, and the company obliged.
"We were happy too," says Steve Ichinaga, a Synnex senior vice president and general manager who worked closely with Michael. After all, this was a Facebook. And in the end, Facebook became a Synnex customer. Today, Synnex tests the company's servers before they're shipped to the data center in Prineville.
Through Synnex -- and via other routes -- Michael made contact several device manufacturers, and at least three agreed to help build his new server: Quanta, a motherboard and computer manufacturer based in Taiwan; Delta, another Taiwanese manufacturer that specializing in power supplies; and Power-One, a second power specialist headquartered here in the US. Power-One declined to participate in this story, and Delta and Quanta did not respond to requests for interviews. But according to Michael, all three worked not only with Facebook on the project, but with each other.
"We chose the companies that were the most open, who communicated the best, who would shared their knowledge with us so we could optimize even more," says Michael. "We shared our power supply design with the motherboard vendor, and we asked them to work together. As a result, things integrated well together. Everyone saw the bigger picture, and it made their engineers more efficient. It made them think the same way we were thinking."
This is not the way other server designers work, he adds, apparently alluding to Google. "Other companies segregate those things, and that requires a lot more overhead as far as explaining and understanding. It takes the engineer's focus away from building a very good server. A lot of the smaller details, people just have to figure them out themselves."
Facebook also worked with Intel and AMD, whose CPUs would be used in the servers. Jason Waxman -- the general manager of high-density computing in Intel's data center group -- declines to describe Intel's role in detail, but he says the chip giant worked "very collaboratively" with Facebook on design of the server.
In working with these partners, Michael's aim was to build a "vanity-free" server -- one that didn't include all the stuff Facebook wouldn't need. "We didn't pay attention to how the servers looked," he says. "There's no paint. There's no buttons on the front. There's no fancy logos or emblems." But this no-frills approach was also part of the effort to significantly reduce the cost of cooling the machine.
They eventually settled on a chassis that was significant taller than the average server, so it could accommodate larger fans and larger heat sinks. The larger fans are more efficient at moving air, and with the larger heat sinks in place, they needn't move as much air. The heat sinks have more surface area, so they're more efficient at cooling the processor.
At the same, Michael's team actually rearranged the chips on the motherboard to improve the flow of air. "The idea was to spread things out," he says, "so that cold air comes in and goes directly to the hot components. There aren't any components 'shadowing' others. More or less, you get really cold air coming straight to the components that need it. By modifying the electrical design, we improved the thermal design."
Michael sat down to design the new system in January 2010, and the first prototype arrived at his makeshift lab that summer.
Pizza, Beer, Chips, and Motherboards
The pizza and beer came several weeks later. At a data center in Santa Clara, Michael held a "build party." He served pizza and beer for an army of server technicians from across Facebook and beyond, and in between slices, they worked on the prototypes as Michael and his team watched. The technicians would put them together, and then take them apart. "It was fun, and it was exciting, but it was also a learning experience," says Steve Ichinaga, who was part of the crowd that day. "It was a great way for people to understand how everything worked."
That includes Amir Michael and his engineers. This was just one way they kicked the proverbial tires on their prototypes. They installed a thermal chamber in that former shipping and receiving dock, so they could heat the servers up and cool them down -- in the extreme. At one point, they heated and cooled a server too quickly and -- due to some serious condensation -- it came out as a block of ice. In a third room, just off the shipping and receiving dock, they set up wind tunnel for testing how air flowed across the machines. And on the desk next to tunnel, there was an oscilloscope, for actually tracing signals across the motherboard.
After a good five months of tire kicking and three rounds of prototypes, they settled on a final design. That December, seven racks of machines were shipped to the new data center in Prineville, Oregon. Michael flew up with several other engineers, but they didn't do much. "We powered on the seven racks, and everything worked. No bugs. And the infant mortality rate -- the percent of the severs that died during shipping -- was very low, lower than with the traditional servers we used before," he says. "That was actually a very boring day. The servers arrived. We turned them on. And we clapped. There wasn't anything for us to do." It was a testament, he says, to those five months of testing.
He stayed an extra day to make sure nothing went wrong. But nothing did. So he flew home.
Take My Server. Please
One of the reasons engineers like working for Facebook, Michael says, is that they get to actually talk about it with people who don't work for Facebook. With its data center and server work, the company takes this ethos to extremes. In April of last year, three months after Michael turned on those servers in Prineville, the company released its designs as part of what it calls the Open Compute Project. Anyone that wants them, can have them.
And anyone can have the new ones too. A year after releasing version 1.0 of their Open Compute server designs, Michael and crew are on the verge of releasing version 2.0. And according to Synnex -- which has created a new division, Hyve, to offer Open Compute servers and other custom-built machines to the rest of the world -- several outfits have already placed orders for the systems, including one or two big internet names.
In sharing the designs, Facebook hopes to drive down the price of its machines, but it also wants to encourage others to help improve the designs. The company knows all too well that building a server is a collaborative process.
In building Facebook's machines, Amir Michael worked with Power-One engineers in Italy and Delta engineers in Germany as well as any number of engineers in Taiwan and China. For version 2.0, he teamed up with a second Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer known as Wistron. As we stand and talk in his server lab just before the Christmas Holiday, a Facebook lab technician, Peter Ha, and two unnamed men from outside the company walks in to scrutinize the new designs -- even as Michael is working to move the lab to Facebook's new headquarters at the old Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.
They don't appear to be speaking English. As it happens, we've just finished asking Michael if he and his engineers had to overcome a language in working with other engineers from across the globe. "A lot of our engineers are actually fluent in Mandarin," he says. "If there was ever any difficulty on the conference call, the conversation would switch to Mandarin."
Like any self professed Facebook hacker, Amir Michael and his team use whatever's handy to accomplish the task at hand. And that includes the rest of the world.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com


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Woods, McIlroy have starring roles in Masters
Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy passed each other on Sunday at Augusta National last year, two players from different generations who appeared to be headed in opposite directions.
Now, headed into Masters 2012, they're on a collision course — each taking a path over the last 12 months that would have been difficult for anyone to chart.
It all started last April 10.
Woods, with four green jackets among his 14 majors, made up a seven-shot deficit in nine holes and was poised for his first comeback win in a major. But instead of the Masters not starting until the back nine Sunday, that's where it ended for Woods. He didn't pick up another shot the rest of the day, and then a week later mentioned a "minor injury" to his left leg that turned out to be much more than that.
It would be nearly four months until Woods completed another tournament, and he fell out of the top 50 in the world.
McIlroy, meanwhile, was on his way to the greatest collapse by a 54-hole leader at the Masters in more than a half-century. The tee shot behind a cabin left of the 10th fairway. A three-putt from 7 feet on the 11th, and a four-putt from 12 feet on the 12th. The lasting image was Boy Wonder burying his head in the crook of his arm after a wayward tee shot on the 13th. He shot 80 that day.
The devastation gave way to a coronation two months later, however, when the 22-year-old from Northern Ireland shattered the U.S. Open scoring record and won by eight shots at Congressional.
McIlroy has won twice and finished no worse than third in nine of his last 12 tournaments, and his win at the Honda Classic a month ago made him the second-youngest player (behind Woods) to be No. 1 in the world, even if the top ranking lasted only two weeks.
That made him the favorite among bookies — until Woods ended a 30-month drought on the PGA Tour by winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational three weeks later.
Here they come again.
A chance for redemption for McIlroy at the Masters. A chance for Woods to resume his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus' record 18 majors.
"It was definitely a defining moment," McIlroy said of blowing a four-shot lead last year. "It could have been the crossroads of my career. I could have did what I did on Sunday at Augusta and let it affect me, maybe go into a slump or feel down or feel sorry for myself. I had enough good people around me not to let that happen.
"I was able to go down the right path, and do the right things, and to put everything right and win the next major."
Woods has been stuck on 14 majors since he won the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in 2008 on a badly damaged left leg. His last win at the Masters was in 2005, his longest drought in any of the majors.
He has withdrawn from two tournaments since last year, the most recent at Doral because of soreness and swelling in his left Achilles tendon. One week changed everything. He made a hard course at Bay Hill look easy and won by five shots, just like he used to do.
"I've gone into Augusta with wins and without wins," Woods said. "You're looking for one week, that's all. Hopefully, everything comes together for that one week. I understand how to play Augusta National. And it's just a matter of executing the game plan."
It is easy to get wrapped up in the "Tiger and Rory" show at the Masters when it starts April 5.
But the 76th edition could be so much more.
From the season opener at Kapalua, where Steve Stricker won the Tournament of Champions, all the right players are winning going into the first major championship of the year.
Phil Mickelson appears to have discovered his putting touch and shot 64 to win at Pebble Beach for his 40th career PGA Tour win. Bill Haas backed up his FedEx Cup title with a playoff win at Riviera. McIlroy went to No. 1 in the world until Luke Donald won a four-man playoff at Innisbrook and regained his No. 1 ranking.
Eight players from the top 20 in the world already have won this year.
"Augusta is always the most exciting event, just because it's the first major, a lot of exciting things are happening in golf, a lot of the big names are doing well," Donald said. "Tiger is making a mini-comeback. All of the pieces are falling into place."
Topping last year will be a tall order.
In one of the most exciting final rounds in Masters history, eight players had at least a share of the lead on the final day. Charl Schwartzel delivered a finish that matched the quality of the final round. He became the first Masters champion to close with four straight birdies for a two-shot win over Jason Day and Adam Scott.
There hasn't been this much anticipation about the Masters, and the leading characters, since 2005 when seven of the top 10 in the world had won tournaments going into the Augusta, including multiple wins for Woods, Mickelson and Ernie Els.
Woods ended up winning his fourth Masters. Not many could have imagined he would go six years without another. This year, however, might be as good of a chance as any.
He hardly practiced in 2010 after missing four months as his personal life caved in around him, yet Woods tied for fourth. He had not finished closer than seven shots all year in 2011, showed up at Augusta and nearly won again.
What happens when he is swinging well (which he is) and has more confidence (he does) than he has in three years?
His win at Bay Hill gave him 72 for his PGA Tour career, and someone mentioned to Woods that if he were to win the Masters, it would tie him with Nicklaus for second on the career list with 73 wins. Woods smiled when he heard the question. It's not the statistic most people associate with Nicklaus, least of all Woods.
"Yeah, well, that's nice," Woods said. "But I'm looking forward to more of the green jacket part of it."
The closest McIlroy ever got to the green jacket was on a private plane to Malaysia after the Masters, with Schwartzel on board. They posed for a picture, the South African in a green jacket.
It revealed a comfortable side of McIlroy, evidence that this would not crush his spirits, much less his career.
Then again, he showed that in the immediate aftermath of his meltdown. Woods shot 67 and could not get away from a TV interview quickly enough. McIlroy faced reporters in the locker room after his 80, looking everyone in the eye, making no excuses.
He returns as a U.S. Open champion. That four-shot lead he took into the last round a year ago now is looked upon as an example of what he can do, not what he didn't. What's new is the attention, the heir apparent to Woods.
"It will be very different," McIlroy said. "I wasn't necessarily under the radar last year, but I'll be going in there with a lot more attention, a lot of scrutiny, because of what happened last year. The spotlight will be on me, and it's something that I'll just have to deal with. But I'll try to ... approach it like I did last year — at least for three days, anyway."
The Masters will add a minor wrinkle for the opening round when Gary Player joins Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer as the honorary starters. Otherwise, the course has not changed significantly since last year, except for some new hole locations now available on the 16th green.
What has changed is the outlook.
Even as Woods was out for three straight months, and two majors, golf was being handed over to youth like McIlroy, Schwartzel, PGA champion Keegan Bradley, major champions Martin Kaymer and Louis Oosthuizen. It was in good hands.
And now, Woods is back to join them.


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It is time again to make a list!
What are your top ten perfumes without which you wouldn't want to live?
Which ones are your top priority?
Which ones would you immediately replace if used up?
Which ten perfumes would you take with you if you went on that famed deserted island (full of other Pefumistas willing to swap of course)?
After much waffling, debating and rooting around in my perfume closet, I came up with the following list, in no particular order of importance:
I'd be happy with those for quite some time, but there are many I'd sorely miss (my contemporary Guerlains, my Amouages, my Chanels, Feminité du Bois and Ambre Sultan, some Kilians, Juliette Has A Gun Lady Vengeance, SoOud Ouris, a lot of MDCI's, Mona di Orio's, Parfumerie Générale's and… the list could go on and on… so glad you all are on that deserted island too, willing to swap. 😉 )
Can't wait to read your lists!


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The continued spread of the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Asia has spurred the chief veterinary officer from the United Nations Food Agricultural Organization to ask for increased global surveillance for the devastating disease.
The Pork Checkoff encourages producers to heighten their level of awareness and to continue adherence to proper biosecurity measures.
"Early detection through surveillance is critical in providing the best opportunity to limit the negative effects of a foreign animal disease outbreak on the pork industry," says veterinarian Patrick Webb, director of swine health programs for the Pork Checkoff.
"With exports of U.S. pork and pork products around 20% of production, it is in the best interest of all producers to remain vigilant," Webb says. "Pork producers and swine veterinarians play an important role in knowing what to look for in a suspected case. The key is to be on the alert in order to help keep the U.S. swine herd safe."
A poster on FMD symptoms is available through the Pork Store at www.pork.org.
For more information, contact Webb at [email protected] or call (515) 223-3441.


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First it was Apple, then Google, and now Microsoft. The three companies providing productivity apps that work on at least a few mainstream platforms -- Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android -- have each cut out or severely crippled in their mobile apps the ability to work with documents stored anywhere but in their own cloud environments.
If Microsoft Office, Google Docs, and Apple iWork restrict mobile users to OneDrive and SharePoint, Google Drive, and iCloud, respectively, why bother with cloud storage services like Dropbox, Box, or Citrix ShareFile on the desktop? Although they may still be accessible from Windows and OS X versions of Office, Docs, and iWork, the fact that they're not accessible from mobile devices like the iPad mean their desktop compatibility has less and less value as more and more workers go mobile at least part of the time.
[ Put to the test: Microsoft's Office 365 on the iPad and Mac. | The best office productivity apps for the iPad. | The best productivity apps for Android. | Subscribe to InfoWorld's Consumerization of IT newsletter today. ]
You'd think that Microsoft, Google, and Apple were trying to kill Box, Dropbox, ShareFile, and other such cloud storage services by eliminating their universality. I don't think Microsoft, Google, and Apple are targeting cloud storage vendors as much as trying to force users to stay in their own ecoystems by restricting their compatibility with third-party services. But the effect could be the same.
The limits of sharing in Apple iWork, Google Drive, and Microsoft Office
Here's what the three giants are doing:
Apple's iWork suite -- Pages, Keynote, and Numbers -- saves and opens files from its iCloud service by default in iOS. Files are automatically copied locally for offline use, then resynced to iCloud when you have a connection. Even before iCloud, when you had to use iTunes sync to transfer files, iWork discouraged the use of third-party storage services: You can open and save files to Box, Dropbox, and any WebDAV-compatible storage server, but you have to import from and export to those servers using the services' WebDAV URLs -- not a straightforward process. (Dropbox charges $5 per month for the privilege, but Box offers the capability for free.) You can also export files to other apps, such as to storage services' native apps or other document editors using iOS's Open In facility.
In OS X, you can directly open and save files from and to virtual drives from any cloud server, as well as import and export files in Office formats. In Windows, you must go through a browser to use iWork; you can import and export files between Windows and iCloud.
Google's Quickoffice opens from or saves locally or to Google Drive, but if you open files from Google Drive, you're forced to use the Google Drive editor instead of the one from Quickoffice, and Google Drive can barely edit text in iOS or Android. There's no syncing for offline use. Forget about any real formatting. What's sad is that Quickoffice used to let you open and save files directly from and to a variety of cloud storage services -- until Google bought it. You can also export files to other apps, such as to storage services' native apps or other document editors using iOS's Open In facility.
In Windows and OS X, Google Drive can handle more formatting via a browser, as well as import and export files locally in Office formats.


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The tiny Montana town I grew up in had one main intersection where two highways came together at a T-shaped junction. One stop sign told vehicles traveling east to give way to the north and south traffic passing straight through town. On the corner stood Dad's pharmacy: a two-story, baby blue, eyesore of a building. Dad chose to paint it blue when he got a great deal on paint: price always trumped appearance in Dad's world.
After Dad's stroke, the bank threatened to foreclose unless I moved back to help him get things back on track. My first priority was painting the store. As I painted at the top of a thirty-five-foot ladder, I saw Louie, a local teenager, driving by in his late model Mazda pick-up, shirtless after a hard day of swinging a hammer.
At the intersection, a van from a university out east pulled in front of him. Louie, no time to react, center punched his truck into the much larger vehicle.
I scurried down the ladder and ran over to the wreck. Louie was huffing away and grimacing in pain from taking the steering wheel to the chest. The mostly young female passengers in the van had exited, seemed unhurt, and I'll admit I got a little excited because a vanload of young women about my age had just showed up, and I could speak college.
"Is everybody all right?" I said in an official tone.
Nobody answered.
Then a mumbling snippet of a statement floated in the air: "…what a shitty truck."
Louie huffed a little bit, and I told him to ignore the comment. He rubbed his bare chest while the rest of us waited for the police and fire department to show. Nobody asked if Louie was okay.
The van driver, a college kid with Carhartt shorts and a pompadour haircut, stood, arms crossed, scowling at Louie and me while the others gave us occasional glances. Someone muttered a statement that ended with "…trailer park."
Louie grumbled and I told him to toughen up.
When the police arrived, the driver finally opened his mouth. Every word he spoke was like a dead pine tree above an uphill fire. "It's not my fault," he kept repeating. "He should have stopped when he saw me."
The officer, writing in his notebook, answered, "You had the stop sign and he didn't."
Someone in the college kid huddle said, "…his paint-covered jeans are filthy."
I turned to calm Louie, then realized they were talking about me.
Louie smiled. It was his turn to tell me to ignore the comments.
I was confused. I wanted to tell them all that I had a college degree, that I worked in hospitals, that Dad was sick and his pharmacy was failing, that I was a good person, a smart person. But I said nothing.
The driver shot a look at Louie and argued to the officer, "He didn't swerve to miss me because he wanted me to buy him a new truck."
As if you're so rich and Louie's so poor, I thought.
What I wanted to say was that Louie would never trick someone into buying him a new truck. I wanted to say that Louie was a good kid, that nothing came easy for him in his life, that he earned everything he had, that he too was going off to college.
But I didn't say a thing.
Emry McAlear grew up in Montana and now lives with his family in Sussex, England, where he makes the locals uncomfortable because he smiles too often and talks too much to strangers. He won the Montana Prize for Nonfiction in 2015 and has been a finalist for the New Letters prize in Nonfiction, the Lamar York Prize, and the Thomas A. Wilhelmus Nonfiction Award.
Photo by Dinty W. Moore


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University of Adelaide mathematicians have devised a method for identifying how cell clusters have formed by analysing an image of the cluster.
Published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, their mathematical modelling tool will be useful in helping biologists and tissue engineers to move towards growing human tissue such as liver in the laboratory.
"When any tissue or organ develops, the cells have to organise themselves into the correct structure," says Dr Edward Green, researcher in the University's School of Mathematical Sciences. "This self-organisation process is important in regenerative medicine where scientists are trying to grow tissues in the laboratory. Getting the right structure is key to ensuring the tissue is viable and functional.
"We know that the control of the organisation process is very complex, and it's still not well understood, which is why we're using modelling to explore simple examples like cluster formation. We looked at two main ways of producing cell clusters – by attraction through chemical and other signals and by proliferation (cells dividing).
"The idea behind our research is that, for any particular cell type, if you are trying to get cells to organise in certain ways, you need to know how they are behaving. We show how you might be able to analyse this using a combination of models and image analysis."
The paper introduces a quantitative measure of the pattern of clustering from an image, producing a statistic called the 'pair correlation function' which shows the relationship between cells.
"The two clustering mechanisms produce different patterns. In some cases you can spot the differences simply by looking, but the pair correlation function allows you to distinguish them, even when you can't see any obvious differences between the pictures by eye," says Dr Green.
They validated their mathematical model experimentally using cells with known clustering mechanisms in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology.
"Our tool gives a basic understanding of the process in clustering," says co-author Dr Ben Binder, Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematical Sciences. "It will be useful in assessing what factors may be used to enhance the process of growing cells.
"Next steps will be feeding experimental data back into the model to simulate biological processes. Instead of running lengthy and expensive experiments, we can look at the potential effects of different factors through the computer."


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Was crew doomed or was a rescue mission possible?
First off, mission controllers didn't consider damage severe
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - If liftoff damage to Columbia's thermal tiles caused the disaster, was the crew doomed from the very start?
Or could NASA have saved all or some of the seven astronauts by trying some Hollywood-style heroics – a potentially suicidal spacewalk, perhaps, or a rescue mission by another shuttle?
Some of the ideas that have been suggested would have been highly impractical, dangerous and perhaps futile.
The shuttle does not carry spare tiles, and NASA insists there was nothing on board that the crew could have used to repair or replace missing or broken ones. In any case, the space agency believed at the time that the tile damage was nothing to worry about and thus nothing worth risking a life over.
Still, as James Oberg, a former shuttle flight controller and author who has been bombarded by Armageddon-type rescue ideas via e-mail, said Sunday: "They may be implausible, but not by much." He added: "There's always the question of miracles."
NASA knew from Day Two of Columbia's 16-day research mission that a piece of the insulating foam on the external fuel tank peeled off just after liftoff and struck the left wing, possibly ripping off some of the tiles that keep the ship from burning up when it re-enters Earth's atmosphere.
A frame-by-frame analysis of launch video and film clearly showed a clump of something streaking away from Columbia 80 seconds into the flight.
Engineers spent days analyzing the situation and concluded that there was no reason for concern. The flight director in charge of Columbia's Jan. 16 launch and Saturday's descent from orbit, Leroy Cain, assured reporters as much on Friday.
But hours after the disaster, shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore acknowledged that NASA might have been wrong and that wing damage on launch day might have contributed to or even caused Columbia to disintegrate on re-entry.
"It's one of the areas we're looking at first, early, to make sure that the investigative team is concentrating on that theory or that set of facts as we are starting to unfold," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Sunday.
Mr. Dittemore himself said: "My thoughts are on what we missed, what I missed, to allow this to happen."
Some facts remain:
nNASA did not attempt to examine Columbia's left wing with high-powered telescopes on the ground, 180 miles below, or with spy satellites. The last time NASA tried that, to check Discovery's drag-chute compartment during John Glenn's shuttle flight in 1998, the pictures were of little use, Mr. Dittemore said. Besides, he said, "there was zero we could have done about it."
nSimilarly, NASA did not ask the crew of the international space station to use its cameras to examine the wing when the two ships passed within a few hundred miles of each other several times.
nNASA did not consider a spacewalk by the crew to inspect the left wing. The astronauts are not trained or equipped to repair tile damage on the shuttle, least of all on a relatively inaccessible area like the underside of a wing, Mr. Dittemore said.
Could NASA have sent another shuttle to rescue Columbia's five men and two women?
In theory, yes.
Normally, it takes four months to prepare a shuttle for launch. But in a crisis, shuttle managers say they might be able to put together a launch in less than a week if all testing were thrown out the window and a shuttle were already on the pad.
Columbia had enough fuel and supplies to remain in orbit until Wednesday, and the astronauts could have scrimped to stay up another few days beyond that. With shuttle Atlantis ready to be moved to its pad, it theoretically could have been rushed into service, and Columbia's astronauts could have climbed aboard in a series of spacewalks. If Atlantis flew with the minimum crew of two, it could have accommodated seven more astronauts.
Could Columbia's astronauts have abandoned ship and climbed aboard the international space station?
Because Columbia was in an entirely different orbit than the space station, it did not have enough fuel to fly to the orbiting outpost. Even if the shuttle could have limped there, it could not have docked. Columbia was not equipped with a docking ring since it was never meant to go there. So the shuttle astronauts would have had to float over in spacesuits to get there.
Could Columbia's astronauts have gone out on a spacewalk to inspect and perhaps repair their own ship?
That assumes that the astronauts could have rigged up something, "Apollo 13"-style, to replace the missing tiles. But there was nothing on board, according to Mr. Dittemore and others. Back in the early shuttle days, NASA considered a tile-patching kit that was essentially a caulking gun, but the gunk undermined the performance of the tiles and never flew.
Two of Columbia's astronauts, Michael Anderson and David Brown, were trained to do a spacewalk, and they had the suits to do it. But neither was trained to do anything more than a relatively simple emergency repair, like freeing a stuck radio antenna or fixing a jammed latch that could cause the ship to burn up during re-entry.
Moreover, a spacewalk to reach the underside of the wings could have been suicidal, because there is nothing to hold on to, and the astronauts did not have mini-jetpacks to propel themselves. The astronauts could have floated off.
Mr. Anderson theorized just last summer on how he would go about reaching a trapdoor on the belly of the shuttle that was stuck open, in order to close it. He would have had to rig a 60-foot tether, lasso it over one of the wings, then crawl along the line hand over hand to reach the jammed trapdoor. The chance of all this working, within the eight-to-nine-hour limit of a spacewalk, is practically zilch.
In theory, NASA could have had the shuttle descend through the atmosphere at a much shallower angle of entry in hopes of relieving the heat on the ship. But that could have life-threatening dangers, too. That kind of a flight profile almost certainly would have had the shuttle coming in too fast for a safe landing.
If it was determined that there was no way Columbia and crew could survive re-entry, and another spacecraft could not reach them in time, they would have been stuck in orbit for a couple of months before being dragged down through the atmosphere in a fireball. "That would be pretty creepy," Mr. Oberg said.


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Mayors' gun group: 400K have joined
A powerful anti-illegal-guns group has attracted more than 400,000 new members since the Dec. 14 shooting in Newtown, Conn., a spokeswoman told POLITICO Thursday, swinging back several hours after the National Rifle Association also claimed big membership gains.
"Since Newtown we've had more than 400k people join Mayors Against Illegal Guns," said Erika Soto Lamb, the communications director for the organization, in an email. "Our Demand A Plan petition now has more than 900,000 petition signers."
( PHOTOS: Stars call for gun control)
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, closely tied to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is a coalition that includes more than 800 mayors opposed to illegal gun use: "what binds us together is a determination to fight crime, and a belief that we can do more to stop criminals from getting guns while also protecting the rights of citizens to freely own them," the organization says.
Earlier Thursday, the NRA told POLITICO that the organization gained 100,000 new members over the last 18 days, bringing its total number of paid members from 4.1 million to 4.2 million.
( PHOTOS: Politicians speak out on gun control)
Mayors Against Illegal Guns launched its "Demand A Plan" initiative in the wake of last summer's shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. The campaign, which involves a petition as well as several ad buys, calls on President Barack Obama and on Congress to "step forward with a plan to end gun violence."


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No single treatment for addiction works for everyone. The treatment that's best for you can depend on many factors. For many people, treatment may be a combination of medicine, behavior change, therapy, lifestyle changes, and support.
Medicines can help with withdrawal symptoms. They can also reduce cravings for the addictive substance. They can blunt its feel-good effects. For example:
Methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone are used for heroin and other opioid addiction.
Acamprosate, disulfiram, and naltrexone are used for treating alcohol addiction.
Bupropion, varenicline, or nicotine replacement therapy can help with nicotine addiction.
These medicines have proved to be quite helpful for people trying to overcome an addiction.
Motivational Interviewing. This is a type of counseling that encourages you to change your behavior. The goal is to explore and resolve any mixed feelings you have about quitting drug or alcohol use. The therapist helps you figure out and focus on your personal reasons for wanting to change.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In this therapy, you figure out your problem behaviors. And you learn ways to change those behaviors. For example, if anger or stress makes you want to drink, a therapist can help you learn healthy ways to manage those feelings.
Community reinforcement approach (CRA). This therapy uses vouchers help you follow a drug- or alcohol-free lifestyle. With each clean urine sample, you get a voucher to use for a reward. This helps you stay drug- or alcohol-free while you learn new life skills.
Community reinforcement and family training (CRAFT). This therapy counsels and trains your family. The therapist teaches them how to motivate you to seek or continue treatment. This therapy also helps your family recognize family situations that may encourage you to drink or use drugs.
Mutual support groups. These groups are run voluntarily by non-health care professional people. Their purpose is to support each other emotionally and socially by sharing their experiences with substance abuse and mentoring others through the recovery process. Many of these groups are based on the 12-step recovery model, and have sessions available for every type of addiction (for example, AA or Alcoholics Anonymous; NA or Narcotics Anonymous).
Individualized drug counseling (IDC). This commonly practiced form of therapy typically incorporate the disease model of addiction and the spiritual dimension of recovery while also focusing on behavioral change through participation in 12-step programs.


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We continued our journey to Banff today, following or crossing seven rivers. The landscape has changed, it looks more lush and we've seen some rapids as well.
It was nice to be able to stand outside from time to time on the viewing platform to take in all the sights and sounds.
The scenery was everything we thought it would be, and more, and we had a very happy day just relaxing and taking it all in. What a great experience!


text: Filmed in more than twenty states, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN captures heart-wrenching stories from individuals at all levels of America's War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, it offers a penetrating look inside America's longest war, laying bare its ominous inner workings and profound human rights implications. While recognizing the seriousness of drug abuse, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that turned a matter of public health into a criminal justice opportunity, earning the United States the dubious distinction of being the world's leading jailer and giving rise to a vast industry of mass incarceration that feeds upon the lives of poor and minority Americans. Digging deeper, the film examines how political and economic corruption over forty years have perpetuated the War on Drugs despite persistent and recurring evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures.


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Jonathots Daily Blog
Sitting Five
Iz and Pal huddled and cried for a solid hour, shivering, sobbing, trying to speak, but diminishing to painful sighs and groans.
No father ever knows how deeply the rejection goes into the soul of a son who wishes to disagree but is cast into the role of the delinquent prodigal.
Night was falling—a desert night, black and chilly, clear and cold—the human blood still boiling from the day's heat, but the skin releasing its warmth, beginning to freeze body and then, soul.
There had been no time to build a fire, so the two boys entwined inside the tent for heat and comfort. They whimpered and shuddered.
At length, Iz spoke. "Pada isn't always that bad."
Pal was speechless, unwilling to agree, yet not wanting to begin a useless discussion. Iz continued. "No, I mean it. He is a good man. He just has never understood my ways."
Pal inserted, "Our ways."
The boys soon discovered that having no fire allowed the creeping, squeaking, squawking and wiggling living organisms all around them to remain unseen, but certainly lively. The desert at night was terrifying. Some conversation was needed to keep them from thinking about the legendary, man-eating sand worm.
"Why do our people hate each other?" Iz asked.
"I don't know," said Pal, because he didn't.
Iz objected. "'I don't know' will not keep the conversation going and keep our minds off the bugs and slime."
Pal growled, "I think your father thinks I'm bugs and slime."
Iz attempted to soften his tone. "And what would your father think of me?" he asked.
Pal did not hesitate. "Probably just slime. Jew-boy slime." Pal peered at his friend in the darkness. "Our skin is not different."
Iz moved closer, agreeing. "No. In color, we could be brothers."
Pal continued. "We eat, drink and live in the same places."
"That's right," said Iz. "You don't get pork, either, do you?"
"Nope," said Pal matter-of-factly.
In the brief moment of silence between them, there were more buzzes and cackles in the surrounding bleakness. Iz inched even closer to Pal.
"I could never hate you," he said.
"Why would you want to?" asked Pal.
"They want me to," replied Iz, aggravated. "Because your God has a funny name."
Without missing a beat, Pal replied, "And your God has a common name."
Iz found this funny. "Maybe we could solve the whole thing by coming up with a new name for God that would please both of us," he suggested.
Pal laughed. "One day in the desert and you're ready to rename God."
"How about Frank?" offered Iz.
Pal nodded. "The Americans would love it—and it sounds honest."
Two friends giggling. The best sound ever.
Iz paused. "I need to tell you," he said, "we're almost out of water."
Pal slowly shook his head. "Not a good thing in the desert."
"What are we going to do?" inquired Iz with a slight creak in his voice.
Pal sat up on an elbow and said, "I think we should take this tiny tent down, and wrap ourselves in it for warmth, to keep all bugs and snakes far, far away."
Iz eagerly agreed and the two friends turned themselves into a living, human cocoon. They tried to continue their conversation, but words began to fade into dreams. Dreams were displaced by moments of recollection—only to be interrupted by the sounds of the night creatures.
Iz dozed off, thinking about water.
Pal fell asleep, wondering where his family was.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation for this inspirational opportunity


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text:
List of Faculty Publications
Below is a list of Faculty publications imported from PubMed or manually added. By default, publications are sorted by year with titles displayed in ascending alphabetical order.
Shortcuts: Wühr, Martin | Wingreen, Ned | Wieschaus, Eric | Troyanskaya, Olga | Tilghman, Shirley | Storey, John | Singh, Mona | Shvartsman, Stanislav | Shaevitz, Joshua | Rabinowitz, Joshua | Murphy, Coleen | Levine, Michael {Levine, Michael S.} | Gregor, Thomas | Botstein, David | Bialek, William | Ayroles, Julien | Andolfatto, Peter | Akey, Joshua
Journal Article
"Active regulation of receptor ratios controls integration of quorum-sensing signals in Vibrio harveyi.", Mol Syst Biol, vol. 7, p. 491, 2011.,
"Deducing receptor signaling parameters from in vivo analysis: LuxN/AI-1 quorum sensing in Vibrio harveyi.", Cell, vol. 134, no. 3, pp. 461-73, 2008.,
"Information processing and signal integration in bacterial quorum sensing.", Mol Syst Biol, vol. 5, p. 325, 2009.,
"Measurement of the copy number of the master quorum-sensing regulator of a bacterial cell.", Biophys J, vol. 98, no. 9, pp. 2024-31, 2010.,
"Negative feedback loops involving small regulatory RNAs precisely control the Vibrio harveyi quorum-sensing response.", Mol Cell, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 567-79, 2010.,
"Probing bacterial transmembrane histidine kinase receptor-ligand interactions with natural and synthetic molecules.", Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, vol. 107, no. 12, pp. 5575-80, 2010.,
"Protein-level fluctuation correlation at the microcolony level and its application to the Vibrio harveyi quorum-sensing circuit.", Biophys J, vol. 100, no. 12, pp. 3045-53, 2011.,
"Quantifying the integration of quorum-sensing signals with single-cell resolution.", PLoS Biol, vol. 7, no. 3, p. e68, 2009.,
"Quorum sensing controls biofilm formation in Vibrio cholerae through modulation of cyclic di-GMP levels and repression of vpsT.", J Bacteriol, vol. 190, no. 7, pp. 2527-36, 2008.,
"The small RNA chaperone Hfq and multiple small RNAs control quorum sensing in Vibrio harveyi and Vibrio cholerae.", Cell, vol. 118, no. 1, pp. 69-82, 2004.,
"Solutions to the public goods dilemma in bacterial biofilms.", Curr Biol, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 50-5, 2014.,
"The Vibrio cholerae quorum-sensing autoinducer CAI-1: analysis of the biosynthetic enzyme CqsA.", Nat Chem Biol, vol. 5, no. 12, pp. 891-5, 2009.,
"The Vibrio harveyi master quorum-sensing regulator, LuxR, a TetR-type protein is both an activator and a repressor: DNA recognition and binding specificity at target promoters.", Mol Microbiol, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 76-88, 2008.,
"Vibrio harveyi quorum sensing: a coincidence detector for two autoinducers controls gene expression.", EMBO J, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 870-81, 2003.,
"Working together at the interface of physics and biology.", Phys Biol, vol. 11, no. 5, p. 053010, 2014.,


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Denmark Chiefs of State & Cabinet Members
Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments
Date of Information: 2/1/2012
|Prime Min.
|Helle THORNING-SCHMIDT
|Dep. Prime Min.
|Margrethe VESTAGER
|Min. of Agriculture, Food, & Fisheries
|Mette GJERSKOV
|Min. of Business Affairs & Growth
|Ole SOHN
|Min. of Children & Education
|Christine ANTORINI
|Min. of Climate, Energy, & Construction
|Martin LIDEGAARD
|Min. of Cultural Affairs
|Uffe ELBAEK
|Min. of Defense
|Nick HAEKKERUP
|Min. for Development Cooperation
|Christian Friis BACH
|Min. of Ecclesiastical Affairs
|Manu SAREEN
|Min. of Economic Affairs
|Margrethe VESTAGER
|Min. of Employment
|Mette FREDERIKSEN
|Min. of Environment
|Ida AUKEN
|Min. of Equality
|Manu SAREEN
|Min. of European Cooperation
|Nicolai WAMMEN
|Min. of Finance
|Bjarne CORYDON
|Min. of Foreign Affairs
|Villy SOVNDAL
|Min. of Health & Prevention
|Astrid KRAG
|Min. of Interior Affairs
|Margrethe VESTAGER
|Min. of Justice
|Morten BODSKOV
|Min. of Nordic Cooperation
|Manu SAREEN
|Min. of Research, Innovation, & Continuing Education
|Morten OSTERGAARD
|Min. of Social Affairs & Integration
|Karen HAEKKERUP
|Min. of Taxation
|Thor Moger PEDERSEN
|Min. of Towns, Housing, & Rural Affairs
|Carsten HANSEN
|Min. of Trade & Investment
|Pia Olsen DYHR
|Min. of Transport
|Henrik Dam KRISTENSEN
|Chmn., Board of Governors, Danish National Bank
|Nils BERNSTEIN
|Ambassador to the US
|Peter TAKSOE-JENSEN
|Permanent Representative to the UN, New York
|Carsten STAUR


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Foul weather threatens to snarl US holiday travel
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Holiday travelers in the Midwest and in parts East and South were keeping a leery eye Friday on a band of foul weather that stretched across the nation's midsection and that was threatening to mess up opening weekend of one of the year's busiest travel periods.
Forecasters were predicting a stew of foul weekend weather, from freezing rain then snow in the north to torrential rain in the Ohio Valley and Appalachia and possibly even tornadoes in parts of the South.
The worst of the storm wasn't expected to hit Midwest population centers until Saturday, and although few flights had been cancelled as of midday Friday, the weather was taking a toll on air travel: FlightStats.com reported more than 1,900 U.S. delays, with the most at Chicago's O'Hare, Denver International, and the three big New York-area airports.
The foul weather could cause headaches for the estimated 94.5 million Americans planning to travel by road or air during this holiday season, which runs from Saturday through New Year's Day. Concerns were similar to just a month ago, when a winter storm hit just as people were traveling for Thanksgiving.
Tom Griffith, a financial planner from suburban Little Rock, Ark., moved up his departure time for a two-day road trip to Cincinnati so he could get ahead of bad weather.
"The TV said severe weather would impact southeast Arkansas up to Memphis in the afternoon. My plan is to be past Memphis before noon," Griffith said Friday. "I guess my biggest concern would be the wind with the semis on the interstates."
Initial worries are mostly in the South and Midwest. Yet while much of the East awoke Friday to unusually warm weather for this time of year, the region was next in the storm front's crosshairs, creating pre-Christmas travel worries from Chicago and Detroit to Boston and New York.
Temperatures that hovered in the 60s in some parts of the Midwest on Thursday plummeted overnight, and freezing rain Friday morning snarled traffic and forced some school closures in Michigan and Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation said Interstate 90/94 was ice-covered from Tomah and Mauston. The state was bracing for significant snow, sleet and ice.
The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch from Arkansas northeastward through parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, with up to 4 inches of rain projected. With falling temperatures, some of that could be freezing rain by Saturday night in the St. Louis area, weather service meteorologist Jon Carney said.
Forecasters said thunderstorms would likely develop in the South. The area that was most in peril stretched from central and northeastern Texas through Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and southeast Missouri, where 80 mph wind gusts and flash flooding were possible.
By Sunday night, the storm systems will be hammering the East Coast. Some New England and mid-Atlantic states could see rare winter thunderstorms.
Tom Kines, an AccuWeather meteorologist, said the unsettled weather comes as a cold front in the northern U.S. clashes with unusually warm and humid air coming up from the South. He said that warm air will lead to record or near-record highs in many places over the next day or two. Nashville could reach into the 70s on Saturday. New York City could approach 70 degrees on Sunday.
The warm air, though, will bring plenty of trouble to some areas.
"I think there's a high likelihood there will be severe storms with hail and damaging wind" in parts of the South, Kines said. "Whether or not there's tornadoes, that's tough to say, but I will say the conditions are right."
Tornadoes are far more common in the spring and summer, but not unheard of in the winter. A tornado outbreak on Christmas Day 2012 reached from northeastern Texas through central Alabama — one twister hit Mobile, Ala. A tornado on Dec. 16, 2000, killed 11 people in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
In Vinita, Okla., on Friday, customers were lining for gas at Diamond Rio convenience store — a common practice when the weather forecast is bad for the region, which was expected to get ice and snow.
Oklahoma gets more than its share of nasty weather, and Vinita resident James Allen took the forecast in stride.
"Right now I don't think it's gonna be that bad," he said. "Might be a little bit of ice and snow but I think it'll melt off in a couple of days."
Farther north, more traditional winter weather was the biggest worry. Kansas City, Mo., was bracing for freezing rain, then 6 inches of snow. In New England, Nikki Becker of the National Weather Service said much of Maine and parts of New Hampshire could get up to a half-inch of ice Saturday night through Sunday morning.
The timing couldn't be worse. AAA is projecting record travel for this holiday period, and spokeswoman Heather Hunter said more than 90 percent of travelers will get there by car. She encouraged drivers to check the weather, not only at their destination but at points along the route, before heading out. Motorists should also make sure their vehicles are road trip-ready, especially the tread and air pressure on the tires. They should also make sure there is plenty of windshield washer fluid that won't freeze.
The good news is that Christmas is mid-week.
"When a holiday falls on a Wednesday it gives travelers more flexibility of either leaving the weekend before, or traveling right before the holiday and extending the trip through the following weekend," Hunter said.
AP Business Writer Joshua Freed in Minneapolis and AP writers Kelly P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark., and Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.


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I was in Cardiff last week to give a talk about the Year of Faith. I was meditating on the words of Pope Benedict in Porta Fidei, and in particular on the need for us to 'rediscover the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for communicating the faith'. These are the concluding thoughts I gave.
I work at Allen Hall, which is the seminary of the Archdiocese of Westminster in central London. Our chapel is over fifty years old, and it is in desperate need of refurbishment.
We have a huge sanctuary with a high ceiling and a beautiful sense of space, but it is sparsely furnished and what little furnishing there is looks very tired. As part of the refurbishment, we are thinking about commissioning a large Cimabue-style crucifix to hang above the altar. Last week, as an experiment, a very roughly produced crucifix was hung in the centre of the sanctuary, just to see how it 'sits', how it 'feels'.
It's about 7 feet high, made of crudely cut whitewashed wood, with just a charcoal sketch of the outline of Jesus's crucified body, and the heads of Mary and John placed symbolically at the end of each arm.
It has utterly transformed the sanctuary. You have an immediate sense of the presence of Christ, standing there powerfully in the centre of the church. Everything within the sanctuary is suddenly seen in a new perspective. Of course he was always there before – above all in the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle – but now we really realise that he is there, visually, spatially, emotionally; with the eyes and the heart as well as with the head.
When you are looking at the altar, the priest, the ambo or the tabernacle, you are constantly aware, at the edge of your vision, of the powerful presence of Jesus who died for us and rose from the dead for our salvation. It's as if he has crashed through the roof, and broken open our complacency and forgetfulness.
It reminds me of the gospel story about the paralysed man, only in reverse (Mk 2). You remember that his friends brought him to meet Jesus, but there were so many people gathered round that they could not get in the door. So instead of giving up, they went to the top of the house, broke through the roof, and lowered their friend down on a stretcher to where Jesus was standing.
For us, in the chapel at Allen Hall, it's the opposite. It's as if we are sitting in this sacred space, often distracted, sometimes lost in our own concerns or anxieties, forgetting what really matters. So Jesus breaks through the roof, lowers himself down into the centre of the sanctuary – just above the altar – and stands there before us in all his glory.
It's as if he is saying: 'Wake up! Remember! I'm here!' The fact that the two strands of white rope hang there so ostentatiously reinforces the perception that he has just descended from above.
This says something to us about the Year of Faith. We need to allow Jesus to break into our lives again, so that we can rediscover his face, hear his voice more clearly, and appreciate his life-giving presence.
Our faith is real. It really matters. He is here amongst us. If only we could see him more clearly, and deepen and intensify our faith. If only we could let our hearts be broken open by his love, our minds be transformed by his truth, and our vision expand to take in the vast horizon of the gospel.


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This feature was originally published at the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild, right here.
Recently, we caught up with Alabu Skin Care founder Maryclaire Mayes. Alabu, a soapmaking and natural products company based in Mechanicville, NY, has been an HSMG member since 2001. Says Maryclaire, "I wanted to be part of a professional group that supported handcrafted soapmakers".
Making soap fits so well into Maryclaire's lifestyle that it's hard to believe it took a homegrown chemistry lesson to spark her initial interest.
You can thank a ten year old's wish for a horse (fulfilled with two goats instead) for the initial supply of goat milk and goat buttermilk that make up every bar of Alabu soap. Now, a friend's five-goat crew supplies the necessary fresh milk for each and every batch of Alabu soap.
"My first batch size was 9 bars, " relates Maryclaire, "and I soon doubled that and then I went to 36 bars and then 85. I couldn't lift a larger batch and I thought that was it. Then my husband and my son figured out how to scale the batch size to 320 bars and they typically do 4 batches at a time." From those early days of 9-bar batches, Alabu now produces nearly 20,000 pounds of soap a year and can be found at hundreds of retail locations across the US.
On the scent end of spectrum, the business has taken the opposite tack. After ballooning to over 50 different scents based on requests, Alabu has decided fewer scents make for better business. "We have 20 now and are still paring down". Another surprise is just how little production space has been required as the business grows.
And that signature oval bar? It not only felt nice, but was functional, too. Oval bars lent themselves nicely to being made into logs, which, as Maryclaire explains, "helped keep the goat milk from over-heating and simplified cutting".
A recurring theme at Alabu is productivity and continuous improvement and indeed, says Maryclaire of her husband Dean, "I think he was an efficiency expert in another life." Dean has developed many time-saving gadgets for the company, including devices to extract soap from molds, cut full logs of soaps, press manufacturing "seconds" into bars, tip and hoist pots, and make molds mobile. You can see a few of these innovative tools in action here.
Thank you, Alabu, for sharing a behind the scenes look at your company with our readers. Here's to your continued success!


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Let's say you like music. And parties. In fact, let's say you like partying and music so much, you flit around from house to house, grooving away each night, mesmerising your friends with your iPhone's fabulous playlists. Sound like you? Then you'll probably go nuts over Monster's dock-equipped, super-portable, no-fuss Clarity HD Model One speakers.
Monster really zeroed in on designing this set as a portable party. Each cabinet has a top carrying handle, and the right speaker sports a recessed 30-pin iPod/iPhone dock with a power button and volume knob nestled nearby. If you forget your iDevice at home, there are three other input options to choose from.


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Two Québec Researchers Funded to Study the Societal Implications of Genomics Research
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Wednesday November 15, 2017
Congratulations to professors David M. Secko of Concordia University and Michel Dorval of Université Laval, who will be supported by a joint initiative of Genome Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in social sciences and humanities research and related activities pertaining to research in the field of genomics.
This allotment has been revealed this morning by the Minister of Science, the Honourable Kristy Duncan, as part of a major funding announcement by the SSHRC, that will support 3344 research projects throughout Canada and abroad.
Selected Quebec projects :
Communicating synthetic biology: deliberative strategies for addressing emergent biohype about living devices
Principal Researcher: David M. Secko, Concordia University
Préférences sociétales concernant la divulgation des découvertes fortuites issues de la génomique clinique : Perspectives de patients atteints de cancer et de la population générale
Principal Researcher : Michel Dorval, Université Laval
To read Genome Canada's press release, click here.
To read SSHRC's press release, click here.
To learn more about the program, click here.


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Stir It Up
IN A TOWN where debating the merits of arugula versus mâche seems to trump discussions about Sam Adams's chances of winning the mayoral election, we have a hunch there's a plethora of home cooks who dream of going pro. But if you're not quite ready to sign up for an associate's degree at Western Culinary Institute, try satisfying your culinary curiosity with a cooking class at one of the following "schools" of fine cuisine.
$450-$1,000 per series; 2818 SE Pine
At chef Robert Reynolds's sky-lighted kitchen studio, classes are grounded in French technique—which means that first you'll get a lesson in French history, then you'll get your hands in the flour, and at the end you'll dine on, say, leeks vinaigrette and quiche lorraine. Whether you sign up for an eight-week intensive or eight consecutive nights of cooking, you'll gain a lifelong mentor in the process.
$45-$125 per class; 231 NW 11th Ave
One of the first venues in town to offer professional cooking instruction to everyday culinaires, this wine-store-cum-kitchen-shop offers classes that cover everything from basic knife skills to preparing a multicourse Indian or Italian feast. A rotating cast of visiting instructors keeps the curriculum fresh. You can choose between sit-back-and-relax demonstrations and hands-on courses, but no matter what the theme, you'll enjoy a few glasses of merlot as it unfolds.
$55-$100; 1701 SW Jefferson
On weekdays, this professional culinary institute (founded in 2006) trains tuition-paying students to become chefs. On weekends, Portland foodies gather to learn serious technique—from how to butcher a chicken to the principles of sautéeing. There won't be quizzes at the end of the day, but you'll still learn how to properly cut an onion or simply how to taste food in a more nuanced way.
$35-$70 per class; multiple locations www.caprialandjohnskitchen.com
If you've seen Caprial and John Pence's OPB cooking shows, their demonstration classes will seem familiar. There's the same husband-and-wife banter ("Honey, does this need more salt?") and the same magic tricks ("Here's a pork shoulder that we roasted earlier"). You'll only use your hands for taking notes and picking up wineglasses—until the end, when you'll use them to dig into a professionally prepared meal.