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Microsoft has gone aggressive -- far too aggressive, say some -- in its push to get users onto Windows 10, including setting the upgrade to automatically download through Windows Update, and on some PCs, blocking all other updates from installing and offering only the choice of upgrading to the new OS or delaying the deal for 48 hours.
Perhaps coincidentally, the latest stratagems coincided with a noticeable increase in Windows 10's usage share, a measure of an operating system's online activity, as tracked by Irish analytics vendor StatCounter.
Microsoft has acknowledged one of the ways it's been plugging Windows 10, but said it was a mistake and backed off the ploy.
"As part of our effort to bring Windows 10 to existing genuine Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers, the Windows 10 upgrade may appear as an optional update in the Windows Update (WU) control panel," a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email Thursday when replying to Computerworld's questions. "This is an intuitive and trusted place people go to find Recommended and Optional updates to Windows. In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this was a mistake and we are removing Windows 10 from Windows Update for users that have not reserved a copy of Windows 10."
Microsoft was referring to a behavior noted by Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users since at least mid-September, when some started seeing "Upgrade to Windows 10 Home" or "Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro" in Windows Update, the consumer- and small business-grade update service.
That item appeared in the "Optional" section of Windows Update's listing of available patches and fixes on Windows 7 and 8.1 devices. Normally, updates pegged as Optional will not download to a PC -- whether automatically or in a manual check -- until the user has ticked a box.
However, recently -- earlier this week according to users' reports -- Windows Update itself checked the "Upgrade to Windows 10" optional update as eligible for download and installation. Users with Windows Update set to automatically retrieve and install updates -- the norm, and the setting recommended by Microsoft -- or who did not examine the optional update list, were then served with the Windows 10 upgrade, whether they wanted it or not.
The actual upgrade process required -- as it always had -- some additional user interaction to complete, however.
Microsoft backs away from latest move
The checked-by-default "Upgrade to Windows 10" item was what Microsoft said was in error. Microsoft then removed not only the check from the box, but the upgrade item itself, from Windows Update. Computerworld confirmed with multiple users that the once-visible listing had disappeared from their Windows Update catalog by late Thursday.
Microsoft's maneuver with the Windows 10 upgrade and Windows Update was reminiscent of a similar gimmick it used last month, when it began surreptitiously downloading up to 6GB of data comprising the Windows 10 upgrade to Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs. That data had been pushed to users, including those who had never authorized the move by "reserving" a copy of the free upgrade using the applet that Microsoft seeded to all Windows 7 and 8.1 devices starting in March.
But by pre-selecting "Upgrade to Windows 10," Microsoft went a step further, not only downloading the upgrade bits to machines, but also triggering its installation, and thus the Windows 10 upgrade process. Users could cancel the upgrade once it began, the last line of defense for those who wanted to continue running an older edition, but many might have simply continued, trained to trust Microsoft's update practices and assuming this was what they were supposed to do.
Even more alarming were reports from several IT managers that PCs that were joined to a domain -- but set to receive bug fixes via Windows Update rather than through an enterprise patch management platform like Microsoft's own WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) -- were seeing this behavior, contradicting Microsoft's previous statement that those devices would not be served the Windows 10 upgrade.
While the "Upgrade to Windows 10" listing appears to have been pre-checked only this week -- the first reports reached Computerworld on Wednesday, Oct. 14, the day after this month's Patch Tuesday, making it a prime suspect for Microsoft's goof -- the item had been showing up on at least some PCs as far back as mid-September.
Suddenly, Windows 10 gains ground
It may be a coincidence, but that timeline roughly corresponded to a significant uptick in Windows 10's usage share. Prior to Sept. 21, the OS's usage share growth had been in decline, with week-over-week increases falling slowly but steadily, probably because the pool of early adopters eager to get their hands on Windows 10 had been exhausted.
But beginning Sept. 21, Windows 10's week-over-week usage share growth experienced a noticeable jump, with the gains peaking on Sept. 26, then falling off over the next seven days. When the OS's usage share increases were graphed, they created a visible "wave" that first rose, then fell.
Yet serving the Windows 10 upgrade by pre-checking the optional download was not the only issue troubling users.
Some have reported that they have faced a more pernicious problem on their Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 machines. Those people have been presented with screens that state the Windows 10 upgrade will begin, and offered two alternatives: Start the upgrade process or delay it. Choosing the latter postpones the upgrade for two days, at which point the same screen returns.
Others have provided screenshots that showed Windows Update notifying them that the Windows 10 upgrade is ready to install. On those PCs, however, there was no link that, when clicked, let them view all available updates; the link was provided to users who had been given the upgrade bits through the checked-by-default optional "Upgrade to Windows 10" item.
The difference was crucial, in that sans a way to view all updates, users could only proceed with the Windows 10 upgrade. Refusing to do so meant that no other updates, including recent security patches, could be installed. That left those users on the horns of a dilemma: Either start the Windows 10 upgrade process -- perhaps without the knowledge that it could be canceled -- or leave the machine vulnerable to attack.
An unpleasant surprise
Josh Mayfield, the software engineer who created GWX Control Panel -- a tool originally designed to make the "Get Windows 10" (hence GWX) applet go away after Microsoft forced it on all Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs -- has been tracking the Redmond, Wash. company's efforts to put the OS on machines, including the September introduction of the upgrade on Windows Update, this week's change to pre-select that item for download, and the no-way-out screens some have seen recently.
And he's not happy.
"Microsoft keeps surprising its users every step of the way," Mayfield said in a Thursday interview, referring to the various methods the company has been applying to convince users to upgrade. "They all defy user expectations."
By that, Mayfield meant the off-kilter behavior, whether seeding systems with the Get-Windows-10 applet -- a move Mayfield said shared traits with malware -- or offering users no choice but to upgrade or run a vulnerable OS, runs counter to what users have come to expect from Windows. As an example, he pointed out that the Get Windows 10 applet's system tray icon can't be right-clicked to disable notifications or prevent the tool from loading when the PC boots, both of which Microsoft recommends to third-party developers in its application guidelines.
The explanation for users seeing the more draconian Windows Update messages -- that they have a choice only between upgrading or not being able to access the rest of the fixes posted to the service -- may be along the same lines, said Mayfield.
He has confirmed, for instance, that if one "reserves" an upgrade with the Get Windows 10 applet, then cancels the reservation, Microsoft will at some point revert the machine to its original reserve-a-copy state. "Even though it's possible to cancel your Windows 10 upgrade reservation in the Get Windows 10 app, doing so appears to put your computer in a state where it can actually download Windows 10 as a Windows Update," Mayfield wrote in a long blog post.
Mayfield theorized that those who are seeing the most aggressive messages in Windows Update or in separate dialogs were people who had at one time reserved a copy, then canceled that reservation. "The moment you click [to reserve an ungrade], you put the PC on a path to upgrading to Windows 10," he said in the interview, even if the reservation was subsequently canceled.
The most likely reason for that odd behavior, said Mayfield, was Microsoft's redistribution of some updates. "Microsoft has started to reissue some specific update patches, even if you already installed them before," Mayfield observed. Among them: the original Get Windows 10 applet update (identified by Microsoft as KB3035583), or perhaps this one from last week.
Mayfield's best guess was that follow-up updates to KB3035583 -- which was, in fact, revised as recently as Sept. 24 -- "flipped the bit" on the PC's status vis-a-vis Windows 10 upgrade eligibility. "I think they may be doing doing this to get [the update] onto PCs that have just been reformatted, or on new PCs," Mayfield said.
One of the eight Windows 7 or 8.1 machines Mayfield uses as his test bed reverted to a good-to-go-on-Windows-10 state in this fashion.
"[This] is our first evidence that Microsoft can change some of these settings via Windows Update," said Mayfield.
A surge in interest for GWX Control
While Mayfield didn't have answers to every Computerworld question about the Windows 10 upgrade behavior he's seen, he knew one thing, if only because of a major increase in traffic to his website and a big bump in downloads of GWX Control Panel. "Something happened this week," Mayfield. "Downloads and traffic at my site have exploded in the past couple of days, even though my program's been around and sort of known for over a month."
The number of GWX Control Panel downloads jumped eight-fold Wednesday, said Mayfield, and the site traffic increase was even larger. The most likely reason: Microsoft pre-checking the Upgrade to Windows 10 optional item in Windows Update.
While GWX Control Panel can handle many of the moves Microsoft's made in pushing Windows 10 to existing PCs, it cannot yet solve the upgrade-now-or-delay conundrum some users reported. "I'm just using eight computers," Mayfield said of his test bed, and he must wait until one of those PCs exhibits a specific behavior before he can try to figure out a work-around. None of his systems has displayed the two most blatant attempts to force an upgrade, the first the message that only lets the user postpone an upgrade, the second the Windows Update screen that doesn't allow the user to view other ready-to-install patches.
He was confident that he would be able to modify GWX Control Panel to stymie the Get Windows 10 campaign once one of the eight PCs is put in either of those states.
Mayfield didn't object to Windows 10 on its face, but like many others, wanted the upgrade timing to be his decision, not Microsoft's. "I have legitimate reasons for wanting to stick with Windows 7 for the moment since several tools I rely on simply aren't Windows 10-compatible yet. But Microsoft is literally trying to annoy me into upgrading to a new operating system that I'm just not ready for," he said.
Nag, nag, nag
That's been the attitude of many about Microsoft's nag campaign. "I don't mind the upgrade offers -- what I object to is being forced into it," said Jim Feltner in an email to Computerworld after finding Upgrade to Windows 10 in Windows Update. Like others, Feltner had never requested a Windows 10 upgrade, but still found his PC suddenly trying to download the bits. And even though the optional item vanished from his PC yesterday -- probably when Microsoft withdrew it from Windows Update -- any later attempt to install any other update, including those for his copy of Office 2010, triggered the start of the upgrade process.
"I don't want Windows 10 [and I'm] tired of being on the bleeding edge of Microsoft's testing," added Feltner. "But it doesn't look like there is a choice any more."
The one consolation in all of this, said Mayfield, is that his source within Microsoft -- who he said he trusted to give him the straight dope -- has assured him that the company would "not upgrade your Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer to Windows 10 without your consent [emphasis in original]."
Thus far, Mayfield's source has been spot on: No matter how much nagging Microsoft does, the Windows 10 upgrade has continued to require user interaction to complete. But some -- perhaps the most cynical -- have wondered for months, since Microsoft first put the Get Windows 10 applet on customers' PCs, really, if Microsoft might dare to take that really drastic step.
The blow-back would be enormous.
One disturbing part of the latest measures Microsoft's taken to amplify the Windows 10 upgrade, however, is its use of the Optional list in Windows Update: The company has a history -- more prominent in the last year -- of sticking an item there initially, then after some time digesting telemetry from customers to see if there are any showstoppers, switching the same item to "Important" status. That label means that every PC that has Windows Update set to automatically download and install updates -- in other words, the vast majority -- gets the update without lifting a finger to click on the screen.
GWX Control Panel can be downloaded from Mayfield's website free of charge, although he has recently begun taking donations from appreciative users.


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- Official Site of Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen
- History Learning Site - Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Holocaust Encyclopedia - Bertolt Brecht
- Yad Vashem - Bergen-Belsen, Germany
- The Holocaust - Bergen-Belsen
- Jewish Virtual Library - Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp: History and Overview
- Imperial War Museum - The Liberation Of Bergen-Belsen
- Date:
- 1943 - 1945
- Key People:
- Anne Frank Josef Kramer
- Related Topics:
- Nazi Party SS Jew
Bergen-Belsen, also called Belsen, Nazi German concentration camp near the villages of Bergen and Belsen, about 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Celle, Germany. It was established in 1943 on part of the site of a prisoner-of-war camp and was originally intended as a detention camp for Jews who were to be exchanged for Germans in Allied territory.
There were actually five satellite camps: a prison camp, a special camp for Jews holding papers from South American countries, a "star camp"—so called because prisoners had to wear yellow stars of David but not uniforms—for prisoners to be exchanged with the West, a camp for Jews holding citizenship papers from a neutral country, and a camp that housed 1,684 Jews deported from Hungary on a special train promised to Hungarian Jewish leader Rezső Rudolf (Israel) Kasztner. This last group was eventually destined for Switzerland.
After the death marches of the winter of 1945—forced evacuations of prisoners from concentration and extermination camps in the east—conditions at Bergen-Belsen deteriorated rapidly, and its death toll climbed. Originally it was designed for 10,000 prisoners but, by war's end, with the arrival of Jewish prisoners forcibly evacuated from Auschwitz and other eastern camps, it held about 60,000 people, most of whom lacked any food or shelter. Although Bergen-Belsen contained no gas chambers, more than 35,000 people died between January and mid-April 1945 from starvation, overwork, disease, and, toward the war's end, a typhus epidemic brought about by some of the most squalid, fetid living conditions of any of Germany's camps. Anne Frank, whose wartime diary later became world-famous, died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945.
Some 28,000 prisoners died of disease and other causes in the weeks after the British army liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. The British were forced to bury thousands of corpses in mass graves hastily excavated on the site. Bergen-Belsen was the first major Nazi concentration camp to be liberated by the Western Allies, and its horrors gained instant notoriety. Forty-eight members of the camp staff were tried and 11 of them, including SS commandant Josef Kramer, the "Beast of Belsen," were sentenced to death by a British military court and hanged. After the war, Bergen-Belsen became the largest displaced-person camp in Germany. Most of its residents later immigrated to Israel.

subset: commoncrawl


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Awards Party at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Jon Foy accepts the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Shot this from the stage.
Actress Rebekah Brandes and Simpsons creator Matt Groening at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony. Groening was a judge for Resurrect Dead, the movie that brought me to Sundance that year. He helped it take home the award in the photo above this one.
Candid event photo.
World Refugee Day in South Philadelphia.
Jen and Chase Utley with their dog, Jack.
Fred Armisen watches The Roots keyboardist James Poysner and the rest of the Tonight Show band rehearse at the bands' studio at 30 Rockefeller Center.
Confetti flies at at the dedication of We The Youth, Keith Haring's freshly restored mural in South Philadelphia.
The Roots, Mayor Michael Nutter and the artists behind The Roots mural: Legendary as the mural is dedicated in Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Police and Fire Department unfurl a flag at a memorial ceremony in the Kensington neighborhood.
Speakers at a criminal justice symposium at the Community College of Philadelphia.
Hard hat tour of Waldorf School Construction in Philadelphia.
Girl at mural paint day in South Philadelphia.
Director Jon Foy speaks at TEDxPhiladelphia in 2012.
Lucy + Jorge Orta's: The Meal act XXXIV in Philadelphia.
Lucy + Jorge Orta's: The Meal act XXXIV in Philadelphia. Whenever possible, I get all views of an event.
Parade of Boats holiday display at the Independence Seaport Museum.
When photographing an event, I'm sure to include detail photos of the environment. This is an internal photo of a submarine at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia.
Another context photo of the submarine at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia.
Boat repair workshop.
When the opportunity presents itself, it's never a bad idea to get a pet photo.
Sometimes a little fun makes for a great shot.
A formal event at the Athaneum in Washington Square.
Filipino dancers in Northeast Philadelphia.
A dramatically lit mural dedication in North Philadelphia.
I can be quiet, unobtrusive and still get the job done at any type of event.
A simple, but often overlooked rule for making compelling photos is eye contact.
A fringe benefit can sometimes be an impromptu portrait session.
Deep focus at a mural paint day.
A moment of curiosity.
Wide shot of a large event.


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A waistband casing consists of a tunnel sewn to accommodate a drawstring or elastic at the top of a skirt or pants and at the waistline of a dress. A casing can also be used at the hems of sleeves and pants. You will need to fold the fabric towards the wrong side and press about 0.75 cm (quarter-inch), then fold down again the width of the elastic or drawstring, plus about 1 cm (half an inch). Sew the casing closed, all along the garment, leaving a 4 cm (2″) opening. Optional: You can also edgestitch all the way around the top of the casing. This flattens out the gathers at the hemmed edge and neatens the look.
Using either a bodkin or a safety-pin attached to one end of the elastic or drawstring, thread the item through, being careful not to pull the opposite end into the casing. For an elastic, overlap the two ends about 1 cm (half-inch), sew together and insert back into casing. Adjust gathers and sew the casing closed. For a drawstring, you will need to insert two buttonholes, approximately 2 cm (1″) apart at the front of the garment, within the casing, in order for both ends of the drawstring to exit and be tied. The buttonholes can be placed so that the drawstring exits at either the inside or the outside of the garment.
You can also add a casing of different fabric, instead of folding down the fabric of the existing garment. For this, you would do as above, but instead of adding the amount you calculated for the casing onto your original fabric, you would measure this amount onto the new fabric and cut it out. You will also have to add another 0.5 cm (5/8″) or whatever is your seam allowance, as you will be attaching the casing to your garment.


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Isaac Asimov
Language: English
Gold is the final and crowning achievement of the fifty-year career of science fiction's transcendent genius, the world-famous author who defined the field of science fiction for its practitioners, its millions of readers, and the world at large.
The first section contains stories that range from the humorous to the profound, at the heart of which is the title story, "Gold," a moving and revealing drama about a writer who gambles everything on a chance at immortality: a gamble Asimov himself made -- and won. The second section contains the grand master's ruminations on the SF genre itself. And the final section is comprised of Asimov's thoughts on the craft and writing of science fiction.


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I have never been a huge fan of full-coverage foundations as I really enjoy letting my skin breathe and I love to let my freckles peek through and to have a natural and yet luminous glow to my face. I usually opt for minerals to achieve this look but recently started using the RMS Beauty "Un" Cover-Up which doubles as a concealer and light foundation and gives me the perfect amount of light coverage without ever looking cakey or causing dryness due to the healthy oils in this product like organic Coconut, Castor and Jojoba oils.
You can see in these photo that the "Un" Cover-Up really lets my skin shine through. It doesn't completely cover my freckles but it does even out any redness, especially around my nose area and it helps to decently cover my dark circles. I find that it doesn't settle into the lines under my eyes or crease throughout the day, especially if I set it with powder. I also use the lightest color offered which is "11" and it has a yellow tone to it which can sometimes be a little extra work to blend in at first but after a few minuets the color seems to adjust to my skin tone! Another great thing about this product is that it is build-able so if you are looking for a more than sheer coverage you can add more product and it never looks like you are wearing too much as it blends perfectly!
What It Is:
RMS Beauty "Un" Cover-Up is unlike typical concealers that can be heavy and drying to the skin. "Un" Cover-Up is formulated to enhance and nourish the skin where it needs it most. Use as a concealer or light foundation to give subtle, flawless, even coverage, banishing ruddiness, sallowness, redness, blemishes and darkness. Because this concealer contains such beneficial and clean ingredients it actually helps heal the skin while giving you a flawless, youthful coverage.
organic cocos nucifera (coconut) oil*, organic ricinus communis (castor) seed oil*, organic cera alba (beeswax)*, organic theobroma cacao (cocoa) seed butter*, organic simmondsia chinensis (jojoba) seed oil*, tocopherol (non-gmo), organic rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) extract*, may contain + / – : titanium dioxide ci 77891, iron oxides ci 77492, ci 77491, ci 77499.
How I use it:
This product is best when applied with fingers as the heat from your fingers will allow this cream product to melt seamlessly into the skin. I love to apply this with fingers and then use a damp Beauty Blender to smooth out everything after applying it with my fingers. I find this gives me the most natural and flawless coverage. I like to apply an oil or moisturizer before using this product because I have dry skin but because this product contains such moisturizing oils you do not have to moisturize before using this, especially if you have normal or oily skin.
Have you ever tried the "Un" Cover-Up or any other products from RMS Beauty? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Find Me On…
*All of my reviews are based on my own personal experiences with the brand/products. I am never paid to give my honest opinions and will only recommend products that I love and use myself! All Photographs are (C) Britanie Faith unless stated otherwise.*


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Letingen etter informasjon om landene som skal besøkes fortsetter 🙂 Colombia er ett av landene man har hørt om å som ofte relateres til vold, men det er også ett land med masse flotte mc veier. Jeg har lest mange reiseskildringer om folk som har vært her i ukesvis å kjørt mc som forteller at dette landet bare må besøkes på 2 hjul.
Kriminaliteten ser ut til å ha blitt redusert betraktelig fra år 2000 og frem til nå, men de kommer fortsett med visse advarsler. Som f.eks.:
Colombia can be extremely dangerous due to the presence of terrorists and criminal elements, including armed gangs (referred to as «BACRIM» in Spanish), that are active throughout much of the country. These groups are heavily involved in the drug trade, extortion, kidnapping, and robbery.
Men bør altså vise litt forsiktighet, men generelt er som sagt kriminaliteten mye lavere enn man husker den for noen år siden. Her er hele advarselen fra Travel State Gov.
The Department of State has issued this Travel Warning to inform U.S. citizens about the security situation in Colombia. Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens safely visit Colombia each year for tourism, business, university studies, and volunteer work. Security in Colombia has improved significantly in recent years, including in tourist and business travel destinations such as Bogota, Cartagena, Barranquilla, Medellin, and Cali. However, violence linked to narco-trafficking continues to affect some rural and urban areas. This Travel Warning replaces the previous travel warning released on April 14, 2014, with minor changes to the travel restrictions for U.S. government officials and their families in Colombia.
There have been no reports of U.S. citizens targeted specifically for their nationality. While the U.S. Embassy has no information regarding specific and credible threats against U.S. citizens in Colombia, both the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) terrorist groups continue to condemn any U.S. influence in Colombia. The Department of State strongly encourages U.S. citizens to exercise caution and remain vigilant as terrorist and criminal activities remain a threat throughout the country. Explosions occur throughout Colombia on a regular basis, including in Bogota. Small towns and rural areas of Colombia can be extremely dangerous due to the presence of terrorists and criminal elements, including armed gangs (referred to as «BACRIM» in Spanish), that are active throughout much of the country. Violence associated with the BACRIM has spilled over into many of Colombia's major cities. These groups are heavily involved in the drug trade, extortion, kidnapping, and robbery.
The incidence of kidnapping in Colombia has diminished significantly from its peak in 2000. However, kidnapping remains a threat. Terrorist groups and other criminal organizations continue to kidnap and hold civilians, including foreigners, for ransom. No one is immune from kidnapping on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors. The U.S. government places the highest priority on the safe recovery of kidnapped U.S. citizens, but it is U.S. policy not to make concessions to kidnappers.
U.S. government officials in Colombia regularly travel to the major cities of Colombia such as Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, and Cartagena without incident. U.S. government officials and their families in Colombia normally are permitted to travel to major cities only by air. They may not use inter- or intra-city bus transportation, or travel by road outside urban areas at night. U.S. government officials in Colombia and their families are restricted to traveling within certain areas. This includes using the main highways to travel between Bogota and Bucaramanga, and between Bogota and Ibague. Personnel are also allowed to drive between Manizales, Pereira, and Armenia and within the "coffee country" departments of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindío. On the Caribbean coast, personnel are restricted to driving along Highway 90 from Cartagena, through Barranquilla to Santa Marta. Travel to all other areas of Colombia is off limits unless specific authorization is granted. All U.S. citizens in Colombia are urged to follow these precautions and exercise extra caution outside of the aforementioned areas.
For more detailed information on staying safe in Colombia, please see the State Department's Country Specific Information for Colombia. For the latest security information, U.S. citizens traveling abroad should regularly monitor the Bureau of Consular Affairs' internet web site, where the current Worldwide Caution, Travel Warnings, and Travel Alerts can be found. Follow us on Twitter and the Bureau of Consular Affairs page on Facebook as well.
Up-to-date information on security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll free in the United States and Canada or, for callers outside the United States and Canada, a regular toll line at 001-202-501-4444. These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays). U.S. citizens living or traveling in Colombia are encouraged to enroll with the State Department's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program to obtain updated information on travel and security within Colombia. For any emergencies involving U.S. citizens in Colombia, please contact the U.S. Embassy or the closest U.S. Consulate as listed below.
The U.S. Embassy is located at Calle 24 Bis No. 48-50 Bogota, D.C., Colombia. Mailing address: Carrera 45 No. 24B-27 Bogota, D.C., Colombia. In case of a serious emergency that jeopardizes the health or safety of a U.S. citizen in Colombia, please call the Embassy at (+57-1) 275-2000; Embassy fax: (+57-1) 275-4501; Consular Section phone: (+57-1) 275-4900. The Embassy's American Citizens Services office provides routine information at http://bogota.usembassy.gov. For questions not answered there, inquiries may be sent by email to email@example.com.
The U.S. Consular Agency in Barranquilla, which accepts passport applications and performs notarial services, is located at Calle 77B, No. 57-141, Piso 5, Centro Empresarial Las Americas, Barranquilla, Atlantico, Colombia; telephone (+57-5) 353-2001/353-2182/369-0149. In case of an emergency in the Barranquilla/North Coast area, please contact the Embassy in Bogota at (+57-1) 275-2000 which will forward the call to our Consular Agent.


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Time for another flash fiction piece with the Friday Fictioneers, as hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. This week, I've hit the 100 word target on the nose.
Her dress, pink and foamy, would have looked well in a sundae glass. The shoes, though, were serious. Black and heeled, they lent her height that wasn't hers and a demeanour I knew she meant to keep.
'Leopards?' she said, as the shoes took her, arm-in-arm with him, down the veranda steps into the half-dark.
He shrugged. 'Lions too. And wild dog.'
Watching, I saw how she let him push her up against a tree. And, as they kissed, I smelt what she smelt: Pears soap, leather, sun-saturated clothes and a strong, clean animal scent that wasn't me at all.
For other 100-word stories following the same photo prompt, look here.


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Falcons teams advance to fifth-place contests
Thursday was a good night for Flanagan-Cornell basketball programs. The boys and the girls came with victories and will play for fifth place in their respective McLean County/Heart of Illinois Conference tournaments.
It was also not a good night for the No. 3 seeds as both suffered losses and were eliminated tourney play in contests played against the Falcons at Ridgeview.
Flanagan-Cornell 63, EPG 48
The Falcons outscored El Paso-Gridley in each quarter to advance in the late boys game. Flanagan-Cornell jumped out to a 19-12 lead in the first quarter and managed to maintain the advantage the rest of the way.
The Falcons pushed the margin to 32-21 by halftime and 44-32 by the start of the fourth quarter.
It appeared the inside game was key for both clubs. Matt Harrison led Flanagan-Cornell with 27 points while Bodee Schlipf tallied 27 markers to pace the Titans.
Tanner Bertsche added 17 points to the Falcons' cause and Chad Gundy chipped in 9 points. Jonathan Barth threw in 6 points.
Taylor Augsburger added 12 points for El Paso-Gridley.
FCW 52, Fieldcrest 50
It took Flanagan-Cornell-Woodland overtime to advance while sending the Knights home. The Falcons outscored Fieldcrest 7-5 in the extra period for a 52-50 victory.
Flanagan-Cornell-Woodland was 5 of 6 from the free throw line in OT. That came after FCW outscored the Knights by two points in the fourth quarter to send the game into overtime.
Emily Farris was instrumental in the Falcons' fourth quarter by scoring six points.
Fieldcrest raced out to a 12-2 lead in the first period. But just as quickly as the Knights built their lead, they lost it. FCW cut the deficit to two points, 21-19, by halftime after outscoring FHS 17-9 in the second quarter.
Each team netted 12 markers in the third to make it 33-31.
Josie Walker led FCW (15-10) with 20 points and Sara Barton had 10. Farris chipped in 9 points and Sara Spaniol had 7.
Haley Ruestman led Fieldcrest with 20 points. Tessa Holland added 11 points and Julia Jochums had 6.
Heyworth defeated Ridgeview 39-33 in the other girls' contest.
Lexington 65, Heyworth 46
The Minutemen found the RHS gym more to their liking after knocking out Heyworth 65-46. Lexington won there Saturday before losing at the Shirk Center Monday.
LHS raced to an 18-8 lead in the first quarter and proceeded to outscore the Hornets in each of the following three periods.
Jonny Meints hit for 24 points and Donavan Laible threw in 20 for Lexington. Evan Golliday had 8 points.


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People don't have a problem telling you your dream is impossible to achieve or you're ludicrous to be thinking that way. At the same time, people have no problem coming to celebrate with you saying 'I knew you would make it!' It's almost like they start by saying this dream is impossible, however, I'd like to see you make it.
This may not mean support or outright dismissal. This is the push that pregnant women need to birth their kids. You don't pamper a pregnant woman at the point of delivery 'pretty please, push' No. Nurses scream in most cases or use a firm voice that shouts 'PUSH!' So the woman would put in all she's got to get the kid out.
I know that's not a safe example as I haven't been in that situation. But I'm sure you get the drift. You are pregnant with dreams and possibilities but don't expect those around you to caress you into birthing the dream. Situations wouldn't be perfect. You would go through hurdles, rejection, pain, mockery, etc. But you've gotta keep pushing. You must have the last laugh!
After all the yelling from nurses and midwives, the mother is still the one who gets to keep the child, along with a huge smile on her face which says 'it was worth it!' You get to see your dream birthed and you still get to receive the congratulations from those who felt you were insane.
So what are you waiting for? Pray Until Something Happens (PUSH). PUSH that dream to reality! PUSH even when they ask daunting questions. PUSH even when everyone thinks you're going bunkers! PUSH!!! Because the only way they would stop laughing is when they see the manifestation of your dreams.
The difference between an unhealthy woman with big tummy and a pregnant woman is that after 9months, the pregnant woman brings forth a child! You have to deliver that dream to reality! That's the only difference! So what are you waiting for? Go push that dream into reality!
It's always my desire that you live victorious lives!
©Mfon Etuk, 2017.


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How Stephen King Teaches Writing
Looking back on his days in front of a high school classroom, the acclaimed writer shares his views on grammar and explains why discovering great literature is like losing one's virginity.
Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft has been a fixture in my English classroom for years, but it wasn't until this summer, when I began teaching in a residential drug and alcohol rehab, that I discovered the full measure of its worth. For weeks, I struggled to engage my detoxing, frustrated, and reluctant teenage students. I trotted out all my best lessons and performed all my best tricks, but save for one rousing read-aloud of Poe's "A Tell-Tale Heart," I failed to engage their attention or imagination.
Until the day I handed out copies of On Writing. Stephen King's memoir of the craft is more than an inventory of the writer's toolbox or a voyeuristic peek into his prolific and successful writing life. King recounts his years as a high school English teacher, his own recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and his love for his students ("even the Beavis and Butt-Head types"). Most importantly, he captivates the reader with his honest account of the challenges he's faced, and promises redemption to anyone willing to come to the blank page with a sense of purpose.
I asked King to expound on the parts of On Writing I love most: the nuts and bolts of teaching, the geekiest details of grammar, and his ideas about how to encourage a love of language in all of our students.
Jessica Lahey: You write that you taught grammar "successfully." How did you define "success" when you were teaching?
Stephen King: Success is keeping the students' attention to start with, and then getting them to see that most of the rules are fairly simple. I always started by telling them not to be too concerned with stuff like weird verbs (swim, swum, swam) and just remember to make subject and verb agree. It's like we say in AA—KISS. Keep it simple, stupid.
Lahey: When people ask me to name my favorite books, I have to ask them to narrow their request: to read or to teach? You provide a fantastic list of books to read at the end of On Writing, but what were your favorite books to teach, and why?
King: When it comes to literature, the best luck I ever had with high school students was teaching James Dickey's long poem "Falling." It's about a stewardess who's sucked out of a plane. They see at once that it's an extended metaphor for life itself, from the cradle to the grave, and they like the rich language. I had good success with The Lord of the Flies and short stories like "Big Blonde" and "The Lottery." (They argued the shit out of that one—I'm smiling just thinking about it.) No one puts a grammar book on their list of riveting reads, but The Elements of Style is still a good handbook. The kids accept it.
Lahey: You write, "One either absorbs the grammatical principles of one's native language in conversation and in reading or one does not." If this is true, why teach grammar in school at all? Why bother to name the parts?
King: When we name the parts, we take away the mystery and turn writing into a problem that can be solved. I used to tell them that if you could put together a model car or assemble a piece of furniture from directions, you could write a sentence. Reading is the key, though. A kid who grows up hearing "It don't matter to me" can only learn doesn't if he/she reads it over and over again.
Lahey: While I love teaching grammar, I am conflicted on the utility of sentence diagramming. Did you teach diagramming, and if so, why?
King: I did teach it, always beginning by saying, "This is for fun, like solving a crossword puzzle or a Rubik's Cube." I told them to approach it as a game. I gave them sentences to diagram as homework but promised I would not test on it, and I never did. Do you really teach diagramming? Good for you! I didn't think anyone did anymore.
Lahey: In the introduction to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, E.B. White recounts William Strunk's instruction to "omit needless words." While your books are voluminous, your writing remains concise. How do you decide which words are unnecessary and which words are required for the telling?
King: It's what you hear in your head, but it's never right the first time. So you have to rewrite it and revise it. My rule of thumb is that a short story of 3,000 words should be rewritten down to 2,500. It's not always true, but mostly it is. You need to take out the stuff that's just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!
Lahey: By extension, how can writing teachers help students recognize which words are required in their own writing?
King: Always ask the student writer, "What do you want to say?" Every sentence that answers that question is part of the essay or story. Every sentence that does not needs to go. I don't think it's the words per se, it's the sentences. I used to give them a choice, sometimes: either write 400 words on "My Mother is Horrible" or "My Mother is Wonderful." Make every sentence about your choice. That means leaving your dad and your snotty little brother out of it.
Jessica Lahey: In On Writing, you identified some phrases that should be excised from every writer's toolbox: "At this point in time" and "at the end of the day." Any new irksome phrases you'd be willing to share? (Mine's "on accident.")
King: "Some people say," or "Many believe," or "The consensus is." That kind of lazy attribution makes me want to kick something. Also, IMHO, YOLO, and LOL.
Lahey: You write that "it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer." If so, how should writing teachers proceed when it comes to our least talented students?
King: Ask yourself what they need to get on in life, the bare minimum (like filling in a job application), and concentrate on that. Sometimes it can be as simple as writing—as a class exercise—instructions on how to get from Point A in town to Point B. They tie themselves in knots, at least to start with. It can be pretty hilarious. My kids used to end up shouting at each other, "No, no, you go left at the water tower!" Stuff like that.
Lahey: Great writing often resides in the sweet spot between grammatical mastery and the careful bending of rules. How do you know when students are ready to start bending? When should a teacher put away his red pen and let those modifiers dangle?
King: I think you have to make sure they know what they're doing with those danglers, those fragmentary and run-on sentences, those sudden digressions. If you can get a satisfactory answer to "Why did you write it this way?" they're fine. And—come on, Teach—you know when it's on purpose, don't you? Fess up to your Uncle Stevie!
Lahey: Oxford comma: yea or nay?
King: It can go either way. For instance, I like "Jane bought eggs, milk, bread, and a candy bar for her brother." But I also like "Jane raced home and slammed the door," because I want to feel that whole thing as a single breath.
Lahey: You extol the benefits of writing first drafts with the door closed, but students are often so focused on giving teachers what they want and afraid of making mistakes that they become paralyzed. How can teachers encourage kids to close the door and write without fear?
King: In a class situation, this is very, very hard. That fearlessness always comes when a kid is writing for himself, and almost never when doing directed writing for the grade (unless you get one of those rare fearless kids who's totally confident). The best thing—maybe the only thing—is to tell the student that telling the truth is the most important thing, much more important than the grammar. I would say, "The truth is always eloquent." To which they would respond, "Mr. King, what does eloquent mean?"
Lahey: Of course, once they have something down on paper, they are going to have to open the door and invite the world to read what they have written. How did you cope with the editing process early in your writing career, and how did you teach your students to handle feedback?
King: A lot of them didn't care; they were just hacking out assignments. For those that are sensitive and insecure, you have to combine gentleness with firmness. It's a tightrope, particularly with teenagers. Did I have students actually bust out crying? I did. I'd say, "This is just a step to get you to the next step."
Lahey: You warn writers not to "come lightly to the blank page." How can teachers encourage kids to come the blank page with both gravity and enthusiasm?
King: It went best for me when I could communicate my own enthusiasm. I can remember teaching Dracula to sophomores and practically screaming, "Look at all the different voices in this book! Stoker's a ventriloquist! I love that!" I don't have much use for teachers who "perform," like they're onstage, but kids respond to enthusiasm. You can't command a kid to have fun, but you can make the classroom a place that feels safe, where interesting things happen. I wanted every 50-minute class to feel like half an hour.
Lahey: You have called informal essays "silly and unsubstantial things," not at all useful for teaching good writing. What kinds of essay assignments are useful?
King: I tried to give assignments that would teach kids to be specific. I used to repeat "See, then say" half a dozen times a day. So I would often ask them to describe operations that they take for granted. Ask a girl to write a paragraph on how she braids her sister's hair. Ask a boy to explain a sports rule. These are just basic starting points, where students learn to write on paper what they might tell a friend. It keeps it concrete. If you ask a kid to write on "My Favorite Movie," you're opening the door to subjectivity, and hence to a flood of clichés.
Lahey: I do a lot of reading out loud in my classroom because I think it's the best way to ease students into challenging language and rhetoric. Do you have any favorite read-alouds, either from your classroom, or from reading to your own kids?
King: I used to read my lit kids "August Heat," by W.F. Harvey. By the time I reached the last line—"The heat is enough to drive a man mad"—you could hear a pin drop. Wilfred Owen was also a hit: "Dulce Et Decorum Est." My kids wanted comic books when they were small. Later it was The Hobbit, and from The Hobbit to Lord of the Rings. On long trips, we all listened to audio books. A good reader digging into a good book is wonderful. Musical.
Lahey: English teachers tend to fall into one of two camps when it comes to literacy: Those who believe we should let students read anything they want so they will be more likely to engage with books, and those who believe teachers should push kids to read more challenging texts in order to expose them to new vocabulary, genres, and ideas. Where would you pitch your tent?
King: You don't want to leave them in despair, which is why it's such a horrible idea to try teaching Moby-Dick or Dubliners to high school juniors. Even the bright ones lose heart. But it's good to make them reach a little. They've got to see there are brighter literary worlds than Twilight. Reading good fiction is like making the jump from masturbation to sex.
Lahey: You paint a pretty bleak picture of teachers as professional writers. Teaching is, after all, a "consumptive profession," as a friend of mine puts it, and it can be a real challenge to find the juice for our own creative endeavors after a day at school. Do you still feel that teaching full time while pursuing the writing life is a doomed proposition?
King: Many writers have to teach in order to put bread on the table. But I have no doubt teaching sucks away the creative juices and slows production. "Doomed proposition" is too strong, but it's hard, Jessica. Even when you have the time, it's hard to find the old N-R-G.
Lahey: If your writing had not panned out, do you think you would have continued teaching?
King: Yes, but I would have gotten a degree in elementary ed. I was discussing that with my wife just before I broke through with Carrie. Here's the flat, sad truth: By the time they get to high school, a lot of these kids have already closed their minds to what we love. I wanted to get to them while they were still wide open. Teenagers are wonderful, beautiful freethinkers at the best of times. At the worst, it's like beating your fists on a brick wall. Also, they're so preoccupied with their hormones it's often hard to get their attention.
Lahey: Do you think great teachers are born or do you think they can be trained?
King: Good teachers can be trained, if they really want to learn (some are pretty lazy). Great teachers, like Socrates, are born.
Lahey: You refer to writing as a craft rather than an art. What about teaching? Craft, or art?
King: It's both. The best teachers are artists.


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|Article number:
|In stock (1)
This #7/#56 Fishtail Gouge has a 7 sweep, with a curved cutting edge of 1-5/8" from tip to tip, is made from high carbon steel and tempered to a range approximately .59 to .62 on the Rockwell Black Diamond hardness testing device. The handle is attached securely to the blade and is octagonal in shape so the tool will not twist or turn while carving. Approximate length with blade: 14".
This tool need to be sharpened and honed before use.


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Blake of Bitchin' Film Reviews fame hosted a most righteous Q&A with Reel Whore, Mistress Movie Moxie, Filmgeek and me. The question revives ye olde Desert Island Dilemma: Pick the three films you'd gladly spend the rest of your life watching on a desert island (as luck would have it, the faulty plane you were on was full of movies). Among us four, there are shoutouts to "Gidget" and "Practical Magic" and that real chucklefest "Magnolia." Read the post to find out who picked what, or click on the photo above.
Filed under: Blog Events | Tagged: Bitchin' Film Reviews, Final Cut, Gidget, Magnolia, Movie Moxie, Practical Magic, Reel Whore |


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George Zimmer resigns from Men's Wearhouse board
Men's Wearhouse Inc. founder George Zimmer is resigning from the board of directors that last week abruptly stripped him of his role as executive chairman.
Although the Fremont retailer never explained the rationale for the sudden removal, Zimmer on Monday reiterated his belief that his disagreements with board members led to his ejection.
"It is clear from the board's decision to terminate me … that the directors have determined to avoid addressing my growing concerns with recent board decisions and the strategic direction of the company I founded and successfully led for the past 40 years," Zimmer wrote in a resignation.
Zimmer wrote in the letter that he would leave immediately. With 3.5% of Men's Wearhouse shares as of May, he remains a "major shareholder," he wrote.
For years, Zimmer appeared in television commercials in which he told consumers, "You're going to like the way you look. I guarantee it."
"I still care deeply about the company and its future," he wrote Monday, adding that he was departing with "a deep sense of pride for what the company has done."
PHOTOS: Major retail controversies
He attributed the success of Men's Wearhouse to a "guiding principle of servant leadership" that valued employee and customer satisfaction over investor returns.
"I strongly encourage you to continue this culture into the future for the best interests of all the company's stakeholders," he wrote to board members.
The chain has 1,143 stores. Analysts said Zimmer, 64, may have had trouble connecting with younger customers, despite the company's attempts to market to that demographic.
Data from consumer perception tracking firm YouGov BrandIndex shows that Men's Wearhouse outperforms among consumers older than 35 but struggles with the 18- to 34-year-old crowd.
Attitudes among the younger set have been deteriorating since December, according to YouGov.
Joan Jett sues Hot Topic over Blackheart trademark
Lululemon cracks jokes, plans men's stores amid controversy
Men's Wearhouse fires founder George Zimmer; no reason given


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ABC's hit show Shark Tank puts entrepreneurs' business ideas to the test, giving them the chance to turn their startup dreams into reality. The show invites contestants to pitch their concepts to five "sharks" — wealthy angel investors — who then evaluate the companies and determine whether they're worth investing in.
Now in its third season, Shark Tank has provided a number of young entrepreneurs with the capital they need to launch or expand their businesses. But what happens after the episodes aired? Snagging investors was only the beginning. For a story for Entrepreneur.com, I spoke with three young treps who dished on their experience with the show and how their businesses are faring in the real world. Click here to read the piece.


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Living the Wookiee Life with Neon Werewolf
Mako Miyamoto doesn't have a weird Star Wars fixation. Really. Some nostalgia lingers, he says, but only the normal amount for a 33-year-old.
Instead, the local artist's Neon Werewolf project, an ever-growing collection of photographs of people wearing Chewbacca masks, showcases a different obsession: the importance of faces.
"Faces are the essential part of the human experience," he says. "There's so much character in a face." Even a wookiee face. By day, Miyamoto is an art director at creative agency Roundhouse. In 2010, he bought a wookiee mask from an after-Halloween sale and starting using it to hone his photography skills. Friends and family enthusiastically volunteered as models, and the one-off creative impulse took on a life of its own. Today, Miyamoto's Chewies drive, swim, and bowl around Portland—mundane activities made richly mesmerizing and occasionally beautiful by their juxtaposition with that familiar but strange visage.
"When the mask goes on," Miyamoto says, "it lets the monster out." As the project evolves, shoots become more elaborate. A recent session, for instance, involved a staged heist, complete with storyboards, three masks, and a borrowed Cadillac. Since Miyamoto often creates his surreal images in public places around Portland, what might be awkward elsewhere usually just ends up with onlookers asking to partake.
"No," Miyamoto tells them with a laugh. "Strangers can't wear the mask."


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The office of Career Development will host a daylong workshop on interviewing skills and techniques, Friday, February 15, from 9 AM to 4 PM. Brandon Holley '89, editor-in-chief of Lucky magazine will give the keynote speech, and Raleigh Mayer of Raleigh Mayer Consulting will provide a guide to everything you need to know before going into the interview room.
The day will also include workshops by alumnae who are leaders in their fields, as well as the opportunity to do mock interviews.
There are still a limited number of spaces left. For the full schedule and to register visit the Project Interview page.
Brandon Holley '89 is the editor-in-chief of Lucky, the magazine about shopping and style. Before joining Lucky in 2010, Ms. Holley was editor-in-chief and business lead of Yahoo! Shine; prior to that she was editor of Jane. She also launched and edited ELLEgirl.
A Leadership Lab instructor for Barnard's Athena Center for Leadership Studies, Raleigh Mayer is a nationally recognized expert in developing public-speaking and precise communication skills.


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May 29, 2012
May 29, 2012
Over the past month, the FBI has initiated a spate of entrapment operations designed to frame anarchists as "terrorists." Significantly, they have not targeted longtime organizers, but rather people who are relatively peripheral to anarchist communities.
In response, we've prepared a pamphlet suitable for a wide readership explaining how this entrapment strategy works, and an analysis exploring why the FBI has adopted it. Please circulate these widely.
The Latest Trend in Repression
Not so long ago, it seemed that the FBI focused on pursuing accomplished anarchists: Marie Mason and Daniel McGowan were both arrested after lengthy careers involving everything from supporting survivors of domestic violence to ecologically-minded arson. It isn't surprising that the security apparatus of the state targeted these activists: they were courageously threatening the inequalities and injustices the state is founded upon.
However, starting with the entrapment case of Eric McDavid—framed for a single conspiracy charge by an infiltrator who used his attraction to her to manipulate him into discussing illegal actions—the FBI seem to have switched strategies, focusing on younger targets who haven't actually carried out any actions.
They stepped up this new strategy during the 2008 Republican National Convention, at which FBI informants Brandon Darby and Andrew Darst set up David McKay, Bradley Crowder, and Matthew DePalma on charges of possessing Molotov cocktails in two separate incidents. It's important to note that the only Molotov cocktails that figured in the RNC protests at any point were the ones used to entrap these young men: the FBI were not responding to a threat, but inventing one.
Over the past month, the FBI have shifted into high gear with this approach. Immediately before May Day, five young men were set up on terrorism charges in Cleveland after an FBI infiltrator apparently guided them into planning to bomb a bridge, in what would have been the only such bombing carried out by anarchists in living memory. During the protests against the NATO summit in Chicago, three young men were arrested and charged with terrorist conspiracy once again involving the only Molotov cocktails within hundreds of miles, set up by at least two FBI informants.
None of the targets of these entrapment cases seem to be longtime anarchist organizers. None of the crimes they're being charged with are representative of the tactics that anarchists have actually used over the past decade. All of the cases rest on the efforts of FBI informants to manufacture conspiracies. All of the arrests have taken place immediately before mass mobilizations, enabling the authorities to frame a narrative justifying their crackdowns on protest as thwarting terrorism. And in all of these cases, the defendants have been described as anarchists in the legal paperwork filed against them, setting precedents for criminalizing anarchism.
Why Entrapment? Why Now?
Why is the FBI focusing on entrapping inexperienced young people rather than going after seasoned anarchists? Isn't that just plain bad sportsmanship? And why are they intensifying this now?
For one thing, experienced activists are harder to catch. Unlike anarchists, FBI agents work for money, not necessarily out of passion or conviction. Their reports often read like second-rate homework assignments even as they wreck people's lives. Agents get funding and promotions based on successful cases, so they have an incentive to set people up; but why go after challenging targets? Why not pick the most marginal, the most vulnerable, the most isolated? If the goal is simply to frame somebody, it doesn't really matter who the target is.
Likewise, the tactics anarchists have actually been using are likely to be more popular with the general public than the tactics infiltrators push them towards. Smashing bank windows, for example, may be illegal, but it is increasingly understood as a meaningful political statement; it would be difficult to build a convincing terrorism case around broken glass.
Well-known activists also have much broader support networks. The FBI threatened Daniel McGowan with a mandatory life sentence plus 335 years in prison; widespread support enabled him to obtain a good lawyer, and the prosecution had to settle for a plea bargain for a seven-year sentence or else admit to engaging in illegal wiretapping. Going after disconnected young people dramatically decreases the resources that will be mobilized to support them. If the point is to set precedents that criminalize anarchism while producing the minimum blowback, then it is easier to manufacture "terror" cases by means of agents provocateurs than to investigate actual anarchist activity.
Above all, this kind of proactive threat-creation enables FBI agents to prepare make-to-order media events. If a protest is coming up at which the authorities anticipate using brutal force, it helps to be able to spin the story in advance as a necessary, measured response to violent criminals. This also sows the seeds of distrust among activists, and intimidates newcomers and fence-sitters out of having anything to do with anarchists. The long-range project here, presumably choreographed by FBI leadership rather than rank-and-file agents, is not just to frame a few unfortunate arrestees, but thus to hamstring the entire anti-capitalist movement.
How to Destroy a Movement
As we saw in the Green Scare, FBI repression often does not begin in earnest until a movement has begun to fracture and subside, diminishing the targets' support base. The life cycle of movements passes ever faster in our hyper-mediatized era; the Occupy phenomenon peaked in November 2011 and has already slowed down, emboldening the authorities to consolidate control and take revenge.
As anarchist values and practices become increasingly central to protest movements, the authorities are anxious to incapacitate and delegitimize anarchists. Yet in this context, it's still inconvenient to admit to targeting people for anarchism alone—that could spread the wrong narrative, rallying outrage against transparently political persecution. Likewise, they dare not initiate repression without a narrative portraying the targets as alien to the rest of the movement, even if that repression is calculated to destroy the movement itself.
Fortunately for the FBI, a few advocates of "nonviolence" within the Occupy movement were happy to provide this narrative, disavowing everyone who didn't affirm their narrow tactical framework. Journalists like Chris Hedges took this further by framing the "black bloc" as a kind of people rather than a tactic—despite even the Chicago Sun-Times comprehending the distinction. Hedges led the charge to consign those who actively defended themselves against state repression to this fabricated political category—in effect, designating them legitimate targets. It is no coincidence that entrapment cases followed soon after.
"The individuals we charged are not peaceful protesters, they are domestic terrorists," [state attorney Anita] Alvarez said. "The charges we bring today are not indicative of a protest movement that has been targeted."
The authorities swiftly took up this narrative. In a recent Fox News article advancing the FBI agenda, we see the authorities parroting Chris Hedges' talking points—"they use the Occupy Movement as a front, but have their own violent agenda"—in order to frame the black bloc as a "home-grown terror group." The article also describes the Cleveland arrestees as "Black Bloc anarchists," without evidence that any of them have ever participated in a black bloc.
The goal here is clearly to associate a form of activity—acting anonymously, defending oneself against police attacks—with a kind of people: terrorists, evildoers, monsters. This is a high priority for the authorities: they were able to crush the Occupy movement much more quickly, at least relative to its numbers, in cities where people did not act anonymously and defend themselves—hence Occupy Oakland's longevity compared to other Occupy groups. The aim of the FBI and corporate media, with the collusion of Chris Hedges and others, is to ensure that when people see a masked crowd that refuses to kowtow to coercive authority, they don't think, "Good for them for standing up for themselves," but rather, "Oh no—a bunch of terrorist bombers."
To recapitulate the FBI strategy:
-divide and conquer the movement by isolating the most combative participants
-stage-manage entrapments of vulnerable targets at the periphery
-use these arrests to delegitimize all but the most docile, and to justify ever-increasing police violence.
What Comes Next
The authorities are explicitly announcing that there will be more of these "sting operations" at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Tampa. We can expect more and more "unsportsmanlike" entrapments in the years to come.
For decades now, movements have defended themselves against police surveillance and infiltration by practicing security culture. This has minimized the effectiveness of police operations against experienced activists. However, it can't always protect those who are new to anarchism or activism, who haven't had time to internalize complex habits and practices, and these are exactly the people that the FBI entrapment strategy targets.
Three years ago, we called for a collective security culture that could protect even newcomers against infiltrators. In a time of widespread social ferment, however, even this is not sufficient to thwart the FBI: we can't hope to reach and protect every single desperate, angry,vulnerable person in our society. Infiltrators need only find one impressionable young person, however peripheral, to advance their strategy. These are inhuman bounty hunters: they don't balk at taking advantage of any weakness, any need, any mental health issue.
If we are to protect the next generation of young people from these predators, our only hope is to mobilize a popular reaction against entrapment tactics. Only a blowback against the FBI themselves can halt this strategy. This will not be easy, but there is no better alternative.
Don't stop speaking out, organizing, and fighting—that won't stop them from repressing us or entrapping people. Retreating will only embolden them: we can only protect ourselves by increasing our power to fight back, not by withdrawing, not by hiding, not by behaving.
The best defense is a good offense. So long as capitalism is unstable—that is to say, until it collapses—there will be repression. Let's meet it head on.
Further Reading


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Three of our funkiest tracks for Audiojungle. They are very positive and energetic, perfect background for any video projects with a lot of fun and young people in action.
Crazy Fruits (1:36) – http://audiojungle.net/item/crazy-fruits/148876
Messin' Around (3:00) – http://audiojungle.net/item/messin-around/151968
Blue Note Special (2:16) – http://audiojungle.net/item/blue-note-special/148865
If you like this music pack, be sure to check out the rest of Fragile Audioroom bundles
http://audiojungle.net/item/motivational-music-pack/460105 It's always nice to know how your music is beeing used.
For more info, questions, suggestions or anything else visit our website
For more tracks from us, please check out our non-exclusive profile


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Strawberry Ghosts
Need a berry good idea for a classroom snack? These little ghosts are quick, easy, and cute! Ingredients: strawberries white melting chocolate. mini chocolate chips wax paper Directions: Melt the … Continue reading
Hot Dog Mummies
Here's a tasty treat for your little ghoul's lunchbox. Ingredients: one tube of biscuit dough, such as Pillsbury Crescent Rolls 4 hot dogs ketchup, mustard, relish (optional) Directions: Place a … Continue reading
Cheesecloth Ghost
Kids can help make this easy Halloween decoration. They are so quick that you can make several at the same time and set them around the house. Materials: Cheesecloth – … Continue reading
Toothy Grins
Looking for a healthy-ish Halloween snack? This might work for a topical classroom treat. We cut an apple in sixths, then cut the core off the back of each piece. … Continue reading
Paper Pumpkin Patch
If your kids is like mine, she is ready to decorate for Halloween in September. Here's an easy craft for the kids to make to kick off the season. You … Continue reading
We saw images of green Frankenstein desserts on Pinterest and decided to try our own. Since each pudding cup has the equivalent of three crushed Oreos on top, we decided … Continue reading
Bat Mobile
Looking for a different kind of Halloween decoration? We spied this on MarthaStewart.com and tried it out. It was very easy and had many steps they kids could do themselves. … Continue reading
Shrunken Apple Heads
Looking for unique Halloween decorations? All you'll need is a few apples, salt, lemon juice and some pumpkin carving tools. With Halloween just around the corner, the kids might be … Continue reading
Halloween Countdown
Are the kids excited for Halloween? Have them make a countdown tree to mark the days until they go trick-or-treating. We keep track starting October 1st but you can make … Continue reading
More Healthy Halloween Snack ideas
Looking for more healthy Halloween treats? Try these witch's brooms. Ingredients: Pretzel sticks Sliced cheese, such as Swiss or Provolone Chives or green onions Directions: Unwrap a slice of cheese. … Continue reading
Post Halloween Sugar Shock Remedies
Now that Halloween's over and you're left staring at a bowlful of candy, what do you do with it? Have your children choose a few favorite pieces, then invite them … Continue reading
Ghost Necklaces
Your child can create a cute ghost necklace using yarn and glue. Make an extra one a teacher and bring it to school on Halloween! Materials: White glue Wax paper … Continue reading
Pumpkin Shaped Gratitude Rolls
Every year, between Halloween and Thanksgiving, we write down what we are thankful for. We usually post our notes on a Thankful tree. This year we will try something different—we … Continue reading
Simple, Kid-Friendly Halloween Crafts
Grab your toilet paper tubes and get ready to make some festive decorations with the kids. Are your kids asking to decorate the house for Halloween already? Mine are. We made … Continue reading
Pumpkin Beer Tasting Party
We throw more parties for adults than kids! When my MOMS Club group heard about a pumpkin beer tasting at a new gastropub that was to be held right before … Continue reading
Double Chocolate Muffins as a Healthy Halloween Treat
Since the kids are sure to get a hearty dose of sugar this Halloween, how about whipping up a healthy sweet the kids will go crazy for? My family loves … Continue reading
Lucky Leprechaun Gardens
With a quick stop at Home Depot and the craft store, you can make your own leprechaun garden. Add a chairs for the lucky fellow to sit in, and you … Continue reading
Shamrock Pancakes
Surprise your little ones this St. Patrick's Day with Shamrocks for breakfast. If they ask why they are green, tell them the leprechauns must have messed with the ingredients. … Continue reading
A Healthy Shamrock Shake
We pass a McDonald's on the way to and from school. Each March the kids notice the Shamrock Shake sign up and ask if we can stop. I say, "Let's … Continue reading


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Introduction, Specifications and External Features
Cooler Master ATC-600 Desktop Case
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective's website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.The Cooler Master ATC-600 Desktop Aluminum Case is the second in our series of reviews showing you all some of the worlds most innovative and interesting computer enclosures.
The desktop case was a mainstay in the earlier days of computing and gradually gave way to tower cases as our CPU's became hotter and hotter and required more and more cooling. Oh, there were a few desktop cases on the market, but none like the ATC-600!!
Cooler Master a company accustomed to industry firsts recently released the first all aluminum desktop case built to meet the challenges of today's computing environment. This sleek beauty, sports three 60 mm case fans (two intakes, one exhaust), two USB and one Firewire front mounted ports and a quick release acrylic front panel.
Before we continue on, let's cover the ATC-600's specifications; the three 60 mm case fans are YS Tech NFD1260153-1N units that each produce 16 CFM's at a noise level of 24 dBA's, so the combined noise level is a quiet 30 dBA's.
The overall dimensions are 426 (W) x 476 (D) x 145 (H) mm or 16.5″ (W) x 18.75″ (D) x 5.75″ (H) and weights in at only 5 Kg or 11 lbs. 4 oz. without power supply.
The ATC-600 has been designed to house the Micro-ATX Motherboard that has four expansion slots as can be seen here.
Please note the CPU socket location, Cooler Master has allowed enough height in the ATC-600 so that even the largest of heatsinks with 80 mm fans mounted on them have plenty of clearance and can be used just fine.
I'd like to thank our own, "Motherboard Master" and the founder of AMDMB.com Ryan Shrout for getting the Asus Micro- ATX motherboard to me, in a timely fashion. It's not as easy as I thought it would be to locate a Socket A motherboard of this type.
The ATC-600 has two external 5.25" drive bays and two internal 3.5" hard drive bays. To use a floppy drive you would have to use a 5.25" bay adapter, which would in turn limit you to one 5.25" drive bay.
The Cooler Master ATC-600 accepts a standard size ATX power supply, the only limitation I can see is using a dual fan unit as the power supply sits on a platform thus blocking any gain you might have otherwise achieved from a bottom fan.
The back of the case (photo below) offers no surprises; in that it contains everything you would expect to see, just maybe in a different location. The cover is held in place by four thumbscrews, as are the four expansion slot covers, a standard Cooler Master trademark.
The last item to show you on the exterior of the case is a side-view of one of two fan grills (one on each side of the case) that serve as the air intake outlets.
Please note that the fan is not directly attached to the cover of the case, much like the ATC-201's top exhaust outlet, but rather attached to the inner frame of the case, otherwise it would be a real problem removing the case cover with a fan on each side protruding inward from the cover.


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Richard Shepard's The Matador, from his own screenplay, casts Pierce Brosnan in his first role since he was dropped from the James Bond series. This is to say that if the 52-year-old Mr. Brosnan were still on board as 007, he wouldn't have been allowed to branch out in The Matador as a privately hired contract killer for fear of tarnishing his kill-only-evildoers image. Actually, hit man is such a common career choice in movies these days—especially in our own hard-to-find-a-good-job-and-keep-it times—that there is little shock value to be had in merely disposing of other human beings for a profit. The comic twist in The Matador is that Mr. Brosnan's globe-trotting assassin, Julian Noble, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown when he bumps into Greg Kinnear's struggling Denver businessman, Danny Wright, at a hotel bar in Mexico City, which both men are visiting on business.
Their first meeting ends abruptly when Julian responds with an emotionally inappropriate (and very funny) dirty joke to Danny's heartfelt account of the death of his only child in a school-bus accident and the devastation it has wrought on his marriage to his high-school sweetheart, Bean (Hope Davis). It's not clear from Julian's drunkenly glazed expression whether or not he realizes the faux pas that he has committed, but Danny quickly walks off in anger anyway.
Danny spends the rest of the night, however, trying to fight off the sleep-depriving effects of the depression caused by his failing marriage and seemingly dismal job prospects—which leads him to seek out Julian the next morning for company. Julian has two tickets for the local bullfight; Danny reluctantly agrees to accompany him to the corrida, where Julian stages a fake assassination in which Danny is seemingly recruited as a lookout. The bullfight scenes are enacted in sufficient detail to indicate that writer-director Mr. Shepard has seized the matador metaphor for Julian and will run with it for the rest of the picture.
Yet who has ever heard of a matador needing a buddy out there in the ring to help restore his lost confidence? This is the switch that Mr. Shepard pulls on his genre. There are several levels of trickery involved in his management of the narrative. First, we have to be rooting for the hit man to succeed in his mission in the first place; second, his targets have to be anonymous or unlikable, and unconnected to any identifiable politics—even when the locale happens to be Moscow, as it is on one occasion in The Matador. The penalty for failure on Julian's part is almost certainly death, but at whose hands? Mr. Shepard gives us only a sliver of specificity in a mysterious intermediary known almost facetiously as Mr. Randy, played with casual portentousness by that charismatic character actor, Philip Baker Hall.
The crux of the relationship in Mexico City between Julian and Danny involves an action that we never see onscreen and an intervention in Danny's floundering career— of which Danny himself is blissfully unaware until a desperate Julian comes banging on his door six months later, during a snowy Christmastime in Denver. Danny's own career is now booming and his marriage thriving, perhaps from his wife's own association of her husband's business success with his renewed virility (and is this not also the American Way?).
The final harmless joke of this essentially harmless entertainment is the unexpected reaction of Danny's wife to the visit of a professional killer: She finds it pleasantly intriguing, titillating and just a bit sexy to be sleeping under the same roof as a hired assassin. The wife's fascination with criminality remains safely vicarious; The Matador would have been a more dangerously complex film if it didn't. As it is, the three major characters remain frozen in their psychological and sociological types.
Still, on one level The Matador illustrates Charlie Chaplin's insight in Monsieur Verdoux (1947): that if war, as Clausewitz's dictum has it, is the logical extension of diplomacy by other means, then murder (in Chaplin's view) was simply the logical extension of business. But there is also a touch of amateur psychological therapy in Danny's accompanying Julian on his next mission so as to lend him "moral" support. And why not? Whether wittingly or unwittingly, Danny himself became the beneficiary of the murder business six months before in Mexico City.
In the end, Julian saves himself by assassinating his own would-be assassin, with Danny's supportive presence on the scene. He then leaves Danny and Bean to their home and hearth, albeit a little regretfully in view of his own unbridled existence of forbidden pleasures and soul-destroying hedonism. The Matador is admittedly a trifle in the long view of cinema, but it's an amusingly adroit piece of work nonetheless. My only regret is that the always-remarkable Ms. Davis didn't have more to do. Mr. Brosnan and Mr. Kinnear are otherwise almost perfectly cast, written and directed as polar and temperamental opposites.
Reese's Treats
James Mangold's Walk the Line, from a screenplay by Gill Dennis and Mr. Mangold, based on the books Man in Black and Cash: The Autobiography by Johnny Cash, raises the ante on musical impersonation not only with Joaquin Phoenix playing and singing the role of Johnny Cash, and Reese Witherspoon delivering similar duties in the role of June Carter, but also such lesser-known actor-musicians as Tyler Hilton and Waylon Malloy Payne presuming to represent such iconic luminaries of popular music as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. On the whole, the impersonations are zestful enough and energetic enough to remain thoroughly entertaining in the midst of the darkening clouds of amphetamine addiction that threatened to destroy Cash's life and career.
Indeed, before I saw Walk the Line, I was predisposed to disapprove of the genre itself, especially when its real-life subjects have become overly recognizable through previous nonfiction films, concert films and even a television series. I know I picked Ray as my third-best picture of 2004 and Jamie Foxx's incarnation of Ray Charles as the best male performance for that year. But Ray is the exception that proves the rule—or was it that I was more familiar beforehand with the Johnny Cash persona than with Ray Charles? Was it also the obstacles of race and blindness that made Charles automatically more sympathetic as a screen protagonist than Cash, despite the vices they had in common?
But what I hadn't counted on in Walk the Line was the spine-tingling feistiness of Ms. Witherspoon's performance as June Carter. This feat has belatedly placed it (in my mind, at least) among a mere handful of more-than-Oscar-worthy performances this year, such as Gwyneth Paltrow in Proof, Maria Bello in A History of Violence, Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice, Claire Danes in Shopgirl and Laura Linney in The Squid and the Whale. Mr. Phoenix isn't bad either, but the clinical details of Cash's addiction (in which he is enmeshed for much of the film's running time), along with his emotional neediness, deprive his performance of Ms. Witherspoon's comic buoyancy, which has always been her strong suit. Some Cash admirers have deplored the predominantly gloomy tone and warts-and-all frankness of a film about a performer they always found cheerfully exhilarating. Of course, all great entertainers double as con artists in concealing from the audience their deepest hurts when they're onstage or onscreen.
Cash's problems seem to have started in early childhood with the death of his beloved brother, whom their father pointedly preferred to little Johnny. The father, Ray Cash (Robert Patrick), is presented as emotionally cold and vocally abusive. Cash's first wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), seems to pop up from nowhere just before Cash's first big break. She has ample cause for complaint over his frequent womanizing with groupies, an omnipresent tribe of underage temptresses that seem to have infested the tour buses of every pop sensation of modern times.
Indeed, the earlier rock-music side of Cash's career is emphasized over the later, more remorseful folk music that he also recorded, as exemplified by the film's title song. Unfortunately for the movie, our most vivid memories of Cash seem frozen in the period of his comparative maturity, whereas Mr. Phoenix's portrayal seems fixated on his youthful escapades and congenital wildness. By contrast, Ms. Witherspoon's June Carter remains, even in the midst of her own antic high spirits, a calming and stabilizing force in Cash's life. A colleague who knows more about these things than I do assures me that Vivian Cash has been somewhat slandered in the film by the ingrained tendency of biopics to treat the hero's first wife as a disaster from which he has to be rescued by his second wife. In actuality, my colleague insisted, Vivian remained friendly and hospitable to both Johnny and June even after they were married.
Even so, the movie overcomes whatever lapses of fact and nuance it has incurred by the sheer verve of the folk-music ethos, which ever since Robert Altman's triumph with Nashville in 1975 has seemed singularly unique in its ability to establish an immediate and seemingly effortless rapport with audiences. Hence, even if you're not the folk-music type (and I assure you that I am not), I advise you catch up with Walk the Line, if only for Ms. Witherspoon's transcendent joyousness as a still-growing legend within a legend.
Not Funny
Thomas Bezucha's The Family Stone, from his own screenplay, seems to have been designed as a Christmas-season entertainment, inasmuch as not one but two Christmas family reunions take place within the film, with all the shifting realignments of elective affinities between the first and the second. In the process, Mr. Bezucha has put many usually pleasant performers into unbelievably unpleasant situations through a strange mixture of somewhat mystifying and distinctly unseasonable rudeness, obtuseness and obliviousness. The opening-credit sequence makes the film's ultimate intentions crystal clear with idyllically rendered winter shots of a New England country house, set to the overly familiar and overly seasonal tune of "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow." Later, there's a pointedly prolonged excerpt from Vincente Minnelli's exquisite Currier and Ives postcard to the Middle American family, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), with Judy Garland's misleading rendition to Margaret O'Brien of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." (I say "misleading" because Minnelli's masterwork is only marginally about Christmas, ranging as it does over the four seasons in a family's adventures at the time of the St. Louis Exposition at the turn of the century.) Nostalgia was big in Hollywood in the middle of World War II, and the censors made sure that family life of whatever period was behaviorally circumspect. But as Norma Desmond might have said, "Ah, we had families back then"—blissfully happy despite their enforced conformity and conventionality.
This is not the case in The Family Stone, in which jealousy, resentment and a deadly secret run rampant in our early introductions to the family and its possible additions. The most troublesome among the latter is Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker), who is presented as a nonstop chatterbox of a New York career woman. With her domineering manner, Meredith embarrasses even her flustered fiancé, the family success story Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney), while he's trying to buy a Christmas present. Earlier, we've heard Everett's sister Amy Stone (Rachel McAdams) bad-mouthing Meredith to their mother, Sybil (Diane Keaton).
For her part, Meredith dreads spending the Christmas holiday with Everett's family. He keeps assuring her that everything will be O.K., but sure enough, Meredith's worst fears are realized with the deep chill she gets at the outset, particularly from Amy and Sybil. Not that Meredith doesn't do her share to contribute to the ill will, but I still never quite figured out what all the hostility was about.
Is it because Meredith is a career woman from New York City? But the head of the Stone family, Kelly Stone (Craig T. Nelson), is a presumably enlightened college professor—and, anyway, New England isn't all that far from New York, either geographically or spiritually. The family chill toward an outsider was far more plausible in Junebug, in which a Chicago intellectual visits her husband's religious family in North Carolina; there at least you had massive regional and cultural divides to overcome.
The other members of the strangely prickly Stone family are Ben Stone (Luke Wilson), Everett's comparatively underachieving and more bohemian brother from California, who is vaguely connected with making documentaries (or growing marijuana, for all we know), and—almost lost in the shuffle— Susannah Stone Trousdale (Elizabeth Reaser), a pregnant housewife with one daughter already and a husband who hasn't yet arrived for the festivities. Most startling of all the family members is gay, deaf Thad (Ty Giordano) and his African-American boyfriend, Patrick Thomas (Brian White). Believe me, you've never met two nicer guys in your life, but while the other "tolerant" Stone family members are befuddling Meredith with their seemingly excessive displays of sign-language fluency, I was counting on my own fingers the numbers of ways that a newcomer like Meredith could earn the enmity of the group. She started promisingly enough by shouting her thoughts to Thad as if he were simply hard of hearing, but then went further than I expected any supposedly sophisticated New Yorker could go when she asked him (at the top of her lungs) whether he was concerned that the child he and Patrick were planning to adopt would turn out to be gay.
At that point, I abandoned all the characters to the writer-director's devices and waited, with some trepidation, for the inevitably gushy turnarounds. Ms. Parker had drifted a long way from the warm collegiality of Sex and the City, and Ms. McAdams was quickly using up some of the points she had earned with me as the resourceful heroine in Red Eye. Even the divine Diane Keaton was sadly misused.
The most curious (though oddly satisfying) twist in the film occurs when Meredith, in desperation, summons her sister to come to her rescue—and who should show up but Claire Danes as the beautiful, intelligent and tactful Julie Morton, who wins over the same family that rejected Meredith? What happens next has to be seen to be disbelieved, except that it makes a kind of romantic sense eventually. Still, it's much too late to save the film. I have always stressed the importance of endings in film narratives, but this is the first time that I recognized the importance of beginnings, too—especially when farcical shenanigans are involved, as they are here. Still, I can't deny the incidental pleasures of watching these talented players giving it their all, even in such a misguided project.


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ORCSD uses the SchoolMessenger system to notify parents and staff about school delays and closings. If you would like to sign up for this, please contact the school secretary of the school that your child attends.
Between 6:00 am and 7:15 am, the following radio and television stations will announce the school's closing or delay:
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Story highlights
Arrest came after authorities released a photo of suspect
Child said to be in video is safe, officials said.
Suspect had already been charged with producing, distributing child pornography
Authorities would not say where man was arrested or where he will appear in court
One day after authorities released photos of a man purportedly culled from sexually explicit videos, a suspect is under arrest and his alleged child victim has been identified and taken to safety, officials tell CNN.
Authorities declined to name the man pending his appearance in federal court on Thursday. Even before his arrest, he had been charged as a "John Doe" with producing and distributing child pornography.
The man was arrested Wednesday, a day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials issued a public appeal for help, releasing five photographs of the man clipped from the videos.
The case took on added urgency because officials believed the victim – a girl age 7 to 9 – was likely still being abused.
Investigators were aided by an unlikely clue – a pretzel bag visible in one video.
Danish National Police launched the investigation May 3 after discovering four videos on the internet the previous day. Three videos were date-stamped April 14, and the fourth was dated April 27.
Three factors led Danish investigators to believe the crime occurred in the United States: The background, some products visible in the video, and the man's appearance.
In the United States, investigators with Homeland Security Investigations, the law enforcement arm of ICE, saw a Frito-Lay Rold Gold bag for thin pretzels in the videos.
By studying Frito-Lay web sites, they learned that Rold Gold pretzels are packaged differently within the United States and Canada. ICE investigators believe the bag is exclusively distributed in the United States.
Wednesday, ICE investigators appealed for the public's help, saying they had hit a wall in the investigation.
"Without the public's help, we may not be able (to find the man) and more importantly stop the ongoing abuse of this victim," said Brian Korzak, a special agent with ICE's Cyber Crimes Center, Child Exploitation Unit.
ICE officials said they got that help when someone called the ICE tip line Wednesday evening.
Authorities would not reveal the locations of the arrest or the scheduled court appearance.
Police: Florida man linked to up to 1 million child porn videos


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Greely, Adolphus Washington
Greely, Adolphus Washington, 1844–1935, American army officer and arctic explorer, b. Newburyport, Mass. Entering the Union army at 17, he emerged a brevet major of volunteers at the end of the Civil War. In 1881, as a lieutenant in the regular army, Greely was given command of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition to establish one of a chain of international circumpolar meteorological stations. Although he was without previous arctic experience, he and his party performed notable feats of exploration; many hitherto unknown miles along the coast of NW Greenland were added to the map, Ellesmere Island was crossed from east to west, and Lt. James B. Lockwood achieved a new northern record of 83°24′. Relief ships failed to reach Greely's party encamped at Cape Sabine; when the third relief vessel arrived in 1884, all but Greely and six others had perished from starvation, drowning, or exposure. The survivors themselves were near death, and one died on the homeward journey. Greely's account of his tragic polar expedition is Three Years of Arctic Service (1886); another record is the diary of David L. Brainard, published as Six Came Back (ed. by B. R. James, 1940). The Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded him in 1935. His writings include Handbook of Alaska (rev. ed. 1925) and The Polar Regions in the Twentieth Century (1928).
See his autobiographical Reminiscences of Adventure and Service (1927); biography by W. Mitchell (1936).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Geography: Biographies


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If I am boring myself enough with all my health related thoughts that I can't stay awake to write them down, then there isn't much chance that anyone else will find them gripping. Or helpful. Thus my procrastination when it comes to ending this blog-neglect thing I have going on.
But I seriously have NOTHING much else happening in my life just now.
Except maybe for Facebook where I read this little story about a nurse who was bathing her patient when he asked her, "Are my testicles black?" So she checked them out for him and reassured him that everything looked just fine down there.
"Well, that's great," he said, "But what I asked you was ARE MY TEST RESULTS BACK?"
This is a perfect example of how I hear things, all mangled up and misconstrued and just not quite on the money. W requested the other day from another room that I put play dough on the grocery shopping list. That's what I heard. I think it could have been bagels or maybe Leggo. I don't know.
And when I went for more needle biopsies on my neck last week (follow-up from a year ago in case there are changes) the doctor told me when he was finished to keep the band-aid on for fifty hours. That sounded odd, so I wondered if maybe he meant fifteen hours, but that seemed a strange time frame too. A few hours?? Then he went on to talk about pain killers and results and another visit and I had to pay attention to all that so I forgot to ask for clarification on the band-aid issue. I took it off when it started to itch. I am still alive.
Whenever I ask W to repeat himself he gets annoyed and on my case about getting a hearing aid. But I don't want one yet. And here are some of the reasons why I'm being stubborn about it.
- I have inherited my dads intolerance for noise. He didn't like the television or the radio blaring away either. Or people who shouted when they talked. Or a lot of different types of racket going on at once. He liked peace and quiet. Me too.
- At night I can still hear clocks ticking and faucets dripping and dogs barking and husbands snoring. I'd like to get deaf enough to NOT hear those things. Then we'll talk. And I won't be able to even wildly guess what you're telling me, so won't that be fun?
- When I was an optician I found people in denial about their need for progressive lenses to be the most apt to dislike them and not adapt to wearing their new multi focal glasses. I've heard it's the same with hearing aids. I don't want to spend all that money on something until I'm sure I need it and really want it and will wear it and like it. The option of being able to turn it off at will is certainly appealing.
- Part of my hearing "problem" is no doubt my inability to pay attention. My mind wanders off on tangents. I zone out. Teachers often remarked about how much time I spent day dreaming. I'm still doing it. Sorry, did you say something?
- The things I hear are often way funnier than the things actually being said. Who would want to give that up?
So, how do you like my new lazy Christmas decorating method where you don't take anything ordinary away but simply add some holiday stuff to the junk you already have lying around? Whoa, Martha's got nothing on me. If you're disagreeing with that, I can't hear you.