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A number of private organizations have been founded with the objective of helping to conserve Thai elephants. Some of these organizations are operated in the form of registered charities, others are not. In any case, each NGO has its own capabilities and expertise, and its own specific goals. Unfortunately, these organizations rarely exchange ideas, share successful strategies and solutions to common problems, or engage in joint actions. If collaboration among the NGOs were to be strengthened it is highly likely that elephant welfare would be significantly improved.
Problems of Thai elephants
The problems of Thai elephants (and their mahouts) can be understood in terms of the elephants' work situations. We an identify four groups of elephants:
1) Working elephants
2) Elephants in tourism
3) Roaming elephants
4) Zoo and domesticated elephants.
Specific problems associated with each group are identified below.
Working elephants
Approximately 1 500 elephants are classified in this group. Although the government banned logging in 1989, some mahouts are still employed illegally and use their elephants to haul logs in the forest. Some elephants are abused by overwork. Some are fed addictive drugs to make them work harder and to speed up their work. Some are injured while working. Some are taken to work in neighbouring countries because of the decrease of forest land in Thailand. If the animals become sick, no proper treatment and care are provided. The services of professional veterinarians are never used.
In October 1994, in Lampang's Hang Chat district, Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE) founded its first elephant hospital, which provides shelter for sick elephants. The hospital staff practice veterinary medicine and surgery not only in the surrounding regions, but also in the upper northern villages.
Some private organizations such as Friends of the Asian Elephant face certain restrictions in dealing with the elephant situation such as a lack of budget and personnel. Difficulty in commuting from one place to another is another limitation, especially in short time frames.
1) A careful selection of working elephants for retraining in tourism is required. However, some working elephants cannot be trained to entertain tourists.
2) Some working elephants should be trained for boundary patrol duty in national parks and other wildlife conservation reserves. At present, there are 100 national parks in the country. If four elephants are assigned to patrol in each park, 400 will be utilized.
Elephants in the tourism business
There are approximately 700 elephants in this group. Most are working in the tourism industry transporting tourists to view forests and wilderness areas, or employed in elephant shows.
Some elephant camps provide low-standard services such as inadequate nutrition, unclean conditions, and insufficient water. Some mahouts' wages are too low or are even withheld and contracts are not respected.
1) Standardize the commercial relationships between the business owners and the elephant mahouts. The operation should bring fair benefits to all parties involved.
2) Conduct a general training programme for elephant caretakers and mahouts and formulate some procedures for elephant selection.
Roaming elephants
This group comprises 300 elephants that mostly come from the Northeast of Thailand. FAE has discerned some special problems of rural areas and thus has put efforts into alleviating both short and long-term problems since 1994.
For the short term: The four corners of the city are equipped with clean water and forested surroundings in order to enhance the well-being of the elephants and their mahouts. Interested, sympathetic tourists and people from the general public are able to visit elephants at the centre nearest them.
For the long term: FAE has been supporting legal reform pertaining to elephants. It encourages other non-profit organizations to participate in programmes offering mahouts alternative careers. This would help them avoid leaving their hometown for long periods of time and their elephants can have a better quality of life.
Some other specific proposals launched through the media since 1993 and presented at the seminar Surin Elephants: Crisis and Survival (1996) can be listed as follows:
1) Establish a permanent elephant centre at Baan Taklang, Tumbon Krapoe, Amphur Thatoom district, Surin province. Interested groups can view elephants' habitat and their way of life throughout the year, instead of only during the two days of the annual Surin Elephant Festival (the third week of November), the traditional practice up to now.
2) Designate land surrounding elephant villages as public common areas for raising elephants.
3) Reserve unpolluted water sources passing through villages for villagers and their elephants.
4) Maintain, with the support of the government, good roads to the villages.
5) Seek funds for medicine and food to help the mahouts.
6) Assist in vocational training to supplement the mahouts' incomes such as through cropping or fabric weaving.
7) Promote the elephant villages as historical villages of the Gui people in order to preserve their culture and traditions. Gui people introduced Thais to their training methods for wild elephants, so they could be employed in war, logging, transportation, and so forth. The Tourism Authority of Thailand is urged to assist in the public relations aspects.
Finally, the problem of roaming elephants coming into Bangkok streets is the result of various complex, multilateral difficulties that have not yet been overcome. Broad collaboration from diverse organizations is therefore essential.
Zoo elephants and domesticated elephants
Approximately 100 elephants are categorized in this group. Some have been kept chained for long periods of time, years in some cases. They struggle against their confinement, and suffer constant high levels of stress. However, some are fortunate to be well taken care of.
Conclusions and recommendations
From the above, it can be seen that the elephants in each of the categories need different kinds of help, though any assistance is difficult to provide. For instance, the ultimate solution to alleviating the problems of working elephants is the creation of more jobs in logging; this is likely an impossible task though, given the Thai logging ban and the continuing deforestation of Thailand's neighbouring countries.
Because private organizations have contributed a great deal to the welfare of the country's elephants, the concerned government agencies should give them greater recognition. The government should neither devalue nor underestimate the contributions of private groups working to protect elephants. Private organizations have been responsible for the discovery of a number of facts critical to the elephants' welfare. Consequently, full support from the government is requested in the effort to enhance the elephants' conservation.
The following actions to enhance the ability of private conservation organizations are proposed:
1) All private organizations working for elephants should be exempted from taxes.
2) Field staff for private organizations should be allowed to carry tranquillizer guns in order to control elephants in musth.
3) Some regulations should be modified, such as: all baby elephants should be registered when they reach a certain age. The head of the village must be informed of the birth in order to avoid elephant smuggling.
4) In order to reduce the slaughter of elephants, especially for ivory sales, elephants should be reclassified as an endangered animal.
5) The export of elephants in the form of national gifts should be stopped.
6) The government should allocate funds to the private organizations to carry out their elephant conservation mission.
7) Law enforcement against people who destroy elephant habitat should be pursued aggressively.
8) More regular and frequent collaboration among public and private organizations should be conducted.
Friends of the Asian Elephant continues to work closely with the elephants at all times and hopes that all organizations who work for elephants can work jointly without bias or friction. If this happens, the elephants' welfare will be more assured.
Question and answer session
Q1: Are you working towards controlling reproduction of captive elephants?
A1: No.
One participant remarked that the priority should be on habitat conservation.
Q2: Mr Bambang from Indonesia said that his institution was interested in sending someone to observe the mobile clinics that treat elephants, he asked if this would this be possible?
A2: You should ask Dr Parnthep directly as he is responsible for this.


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Matthew 19:16 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" 17 And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." 18 He said to him, "Which ones?" And Jesus said, "You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, 19 Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 20 The young man said to him, "All these I have kept. What do I still lack?" 21 Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." 22 When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Here's a good take on a well known account out of Jesus' life. How it should make us examine ourselves regarding our attitude toward and use of our money. How it should make us wonder what idols we may have that we just are not willing to get rid of for the sake of following Jesus Christ.
The lyrics are given below the song.
A rich young man came to ask of Christ:
'Good teacher, will you tell me,
What must I do for eternal life?
I've kept your laws completely.'
'Sell all you have, give to the poor,
Then heaven's treasure shall be yours.'
How hard for those who are rich on earth
To gain the wealth of heaven.
Now Jesus stood by the offering gate
As people brought their money:
The rich they filled the collection plate;
The widow gave a penny.
'Now she's outgiven all the rest,
Her gift was all that she possessd.'
Not what you give but what you keep
Is what the King is counting.
O teach me Lord to walk this road,
The road of simple living;
To be content with what I own
And generous in giving.
And when I cling to what I have,
Please wrest it quickly from my grasp;
I'd rather lose all the things on earth
To gain the things of heaven.
Stuart Townend, Keith & Kristyn Getty
Copyright © 2011 Thankyou Music & Getty Music

subset: commoncrawl


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When Americans think of Italian food, they tend to think of pepperoni pizza, garlic bread, and chicken Parmesan. But all of those dishes are actually Italian-American hybrid foods created by Italian immigrants who were cooking with U.S. ingredients.
In other words, what we think of as "classic Italian" is not actually from Italy at all.
We rounded up some ways to go more authentic, whether it's in your own kitchen or on your next trip to Italy.
Instead of "Italian dressing," top your salads with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.Italian dressing — the vinaigrette-style salad dressing with vinegar, vegetable oil, chopped bell peppers, and corn syrup — would never be consumed by most Italians.
Instead, people in Italy eat their salads with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and maybe pepper. That's it. Diners mix the ingredients at the table themselves, even at most restaurants where customers are provided with an oil and vinegar set and expected to dress their own salad.
Instead of marinara sauce, order pasta al pomodoro or spaghetti alla puttanesca.Marinara sauce as we know is usually made with tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and onions, but it's an invention of Italian-American immigrants working with ingredients that were available in America. Italians are more likely to order pasta al pomodoro, with a sauce made from fresh tomatoes, olive oil, and basil.
Another menu item closely related to pasta with marinara sauce is spaghetti alla puttanesca. Though this dish is much more modern — only dating back to the mid 20th century — the ingredients for the sauce are quite close to marinara and include tomatoes, olive oil, capers, and garlic for a salty, tangy taste.
Instead of garlic bread, order bruschetta.Garlic bread is an Americanized interpretation of Mediterranean bruschetta (broo-SKET-ah not broo-SHET-ah). Italian Americans substituted expensive olive oil for butter, and added chopped garlic and salt for taste.
Bruschetta, on the other hand, is a heavily toasted thick slice of bread rubbed with garlic and then moistened with a generous helping of oil. Recently, restaurants in both America and Italy may also add onions and tomatoes for an even tastier appetizer.
Instead of shrimp scampi, try langoustines sautéed with olive oil, garlic, onion, and white wine.Shrimp scampi is one of those dishes that's quintessentially Italian-American. Scampi is the Italian word for langoustine (small, lobster-like crustaceans), but Italian immigrant cooks used shrimp instead, substituted olive oil for butter, and added pasta to make the helpings bigger. When they named the dish, the "scampi" moniker stuck.
A more common Italian dish to order is langoustines sautéed with olive oil, garlic, onion, and white wine — no pasta necessary.
Instead of pepperoni pizza, try pizza topped with prosciutto.Pepperoni may be the most popular pizza topping in the U.S., but if you order a "pepperoni pizza" in Italy, the chef will most likely bring you a delicious pizza topped with bell peppers, or peperoni. Pepperoni pizza as we know it is almost never served in Italy, except in touristy areas. Other popular toppings to try in lieu of pepperoni include broccoli rabe, mozzarella, corn, anchovies, and even potato slices.
It should also be noted that pizzas in Italy have less cheese and thinner crusts, and vary by region (in Rome, for instance, they have flatbread pizza and not the typical Neopolitan pizzas we usually see).
Instead of Fettuccine Alfredo, ask for fettuccine al burro.Fettuccine Alfredo lovers will be happy to know that Italy has its own version of the creamy dish, which also happens to be much tastier. It's called fettuccine al burro.
The recipe was invented at a Roman restaurant opened by a man named Alfredo di Lelio at the turn of the 20th century. He added together large amounts of cheese, butter, and pasta water to the fettuccine and gently tossed the piping hot pasta at the table for customers, creating a silky sauce of butter and cheese in the process.
Word of the dish spread to America after people started singing di Lelio's praises. American cooks rushed to achieve the same dish — the only problem was that mixing the butter and parmesan perfectly is time-consuming and difficult. Instead, American cooks added cream as a shortcut, which makes the sauce thick, bland, and calorie-filled.
Try the lighter and more flavorful fettuccine al burro once and you'll never go back.
Instead of "Sunday Gravy," order Neapolitan ragù or bolognese sauce."Sunday Gravy" was something many Italian-American children grew up with. Families would throw all kinds of meat into a pot and and let it simmer with tomato sauce, onions, garlic, and bit of olive oil.
The resulting meat sauce is very similar to both Neapolitan ragù and bolognese sauce. Both styles of sauce are made with soffrito (roughly chopped celery, onions, and carrots), meat, and tomato sauce. Neapolitan typically uses more tomato sauce and whole chunks of meat unlike Bolognese, which uses finely chopped meat and less tomato sauce. Neapolitan ingredients can also vary more widely with additions like red wine, butter, raisins, olive oil, and/or basil leaves.
Instead of those rainbow cookies, order any other Italian dessert cookie.Rainbow cookies (also known as Napoleon cookies, seven layer cookies, Venetian cookies, Italian flag cookies, and tricolor cookies) are three layers of brightly colored almond sponge cake with apricot and/or raspberry jam with a chocolate coating. Italian immigrants likely made these cookies to pay homage to Italy's flag.
But these are purely American-made deserts that you will not find anywhere in Italy. Instead, take advantage of the delicious biscotti dunked in Tuscan wine, Cavallucci (pastries made with anise, almonds and candied fruits), and pignoli (a type of macaroon) that Italy does better than almost anywhere else in the world.


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I'm thinking of eggplant parmesan for dinner. Crickets, cicadas...sounds of deep summer. A dove song…
The Ramblings of the Girl and The Truck Driver. American Made!
The girl:
I read an interview the other day with a very famous chef. He talked about the absurdity of the label "farm to table†because all food comes from a farm…right? He also talked about how ridiculous the label "local†is because there are no rules about what makes something local and what does not.
The headline for the article was Thomas Keller: "The Absurdity of Farm to Tableâ€.
I've been thinking about this and then watched as some other high profile chefs piled on to say how they agreed with this. I thought about debating it with them but I wanted to really think about what the article said and how I really felt about what they were all saying. "good ingredients are more important than local ingredients†and "not everything grows or is available locallyâ€.
Even as I write this morning, I am wondering what my response will be. Carefully I feel myself wade out into the water of this very complicated conversation.
What do you believe in? what do you stand for? What are the issues that you call attention to and change with your voice?  That's the biggest one for me and for people that have the opportunity to speak publicly and influence others on a large scale.
Would I know what you believe by the way you run your business because that is our loudest, most authentic voice?
What is really important? The plate of food you've made and the notoriety you get when you make it….or is it making a difference in the world in which you inhabit? Do you inspire others to pay more attention, to take better care of things, to care about something larger than themselves? Do you know how much energy is used to bring your food to you? do you know the farming practices of the people that grow your food? Do you have relationships with the people that provide you with the single most important thing you will put into your body in order to be healthy and strong and happy?
Actions speak louder than words.
These are my questions. Is it just about being a good cook?
Well. I've never thought so. I am a good cook….maybe not the best cook but I am good. I don't surround myself with the latest techniques, gadgets and expensive equipment. I know technique, patience, time and ingredients are what makes a good cook. I also believe that at the end of my life, I want to be known for more than being able to open restaurants and cook food.
What do I believe in?
When I speak out in public, what am I calling attention to?
I've been using "localâ€, "seasonal†food at my restaurant for 23 years. I believe it is the right thing to do and I believe that if we can do it, maybe it will inspire people to make better choices about food and where they get it. Here are some other things I believe: it is how we keep our money in our own communities. We support farmers that are taking care of the land and planting in ways that enrich the soil and the life in it. We eat what is grown here, when it is in season because our bodies are actually designed to function at their very best this way. Allergies become less of a problem when you eat what is grown in your community. Our food is ripened on the vine, tree, bush, plant and retains the nutrients that are only developed when the food is fully ripened in the sunshine. I know the people that provide us our food. There are less hands handling and processing and packaging our food so there is less opportunity for contamination. I have connections and relationships with people that grow food, we are friends and we take care of each other. We are taking care of their families and sending their kids to school. That is what we are doing with our support. We provide work for people in our communities by keeping farmers in business. We are taking care of the planet by supporting diversity in farming practices right here.
If we can't do it in our own communities and with our own families….what are we doing?
So. Yes, all food is grown on farms. The label "farm to table†was actually born out of the desire to capitalize on the publicity restaurants were getting if they used these words to describe themselves. Restaurants were quick to use this label without actually doing the work. They have been one of the biggest reasons the label "farm to table†is now being referred to as absurd.
No. there are no rules about how local something is. Is that 5 or 100 miles. Again, it was a term born out of the desire for publicity.
In my experience, as these 2 labels took hold and became the buzz words for all things food it was all about money and publicity and had very little to do with real commitment or belief.
See…that's how our culture ruins things. We see something we admire but we aren't really willing to do all the work it takes so we take a shortcut and a piece that will do us the most benefit financially.
Then, there is no point or recognition for the ones that are walking the walk.
It's maddening. It's disappointing, disheartening. It seems to always be about the money, about the attention and the fame….which brings more money and attention. It's sick what we do here. Its upsetting, the decisions made and the sacrifices and compromises they demand in the name of success.
Doing business the way I have done business is really hard. There is virtually no money to be made in it this way. Our food costs are high. Our food is expensive. The time I have to spend talking to farmers and going to markets so that I know what is being grown when and where and why is time consuming. I don't have time for events, I'm working my ass off. Then, honestly, most people don't care where their food comes from. A stroll around every grocery store will tell you this. If I'm not careful, I can stand in the middle of the produce isle at my local "Sprouts Farmers Market†and feel discouraged. I can read another article about another "farm to table†restaurant that isn't and feel hopeless. What is the point? It's so much work and now that the people with the voices are speaking at the absurdity of it. What is the point?
And there goes another "trendâ€. For them, it's on to the next one, the next big idea so that they get the attention, the business and the money.
I crave a restaurant with a soul. I crave a business with a soul. I crave a place that takes care of their people, that cares about who they support and where they spend their money. I crave a business that does the right thing because it is the right thing to do.
Its been said that we vote with our money. Where do you spend your money? How do you take care of your community and the beliefs that you have? How do you use your voice when you have a chance to call attention to something?
What is important to you and how do you show it? What does your business stand for? Is it always about the money or the attention and blowing on the winds of those things? Can we stay relevant and change without compromising our soul? Does our society even allow for this and success?
The Truck Driver:
Made in America.
I pull up for parts of parts, aluminum lengths of extruded metal bones. Bones for what will compete aftermarket automotive and truck accessories, agricultural equipment accessories, the frames or skeletons of tonneau covers and crop hauling tarping systems, other stuff… Made in America
I always ask about stuff.
The man answering my questions is of Hispanic descent.  He's an American as much as I am. He's been with this company for over 20 years, raised kids, home, wife, stock portfolio, health insurance, taxes, even has a grandchild, the whole dream.
I ask, where do you get the aluminum.
"Most of it comes from Dubai or South Africa, Less from smelters here in California. "
I had seen a daycab hauling a trailer like mine onto the property loaded with many ingots bundled untarped. Local?
I guessed they came off a ship from nearby.
The man told me some of the company's story.
The much beloved founder, recently passed away, he said , " God rest his soul. " while gesturing a sign of the cross over his heart.
We have always been paid well, provided with 100% company paid health insurance, stock ownership and other benefits and most importantly respect.
Our company has been bought this past year by a Canadian company.  We have been told to expect some changes. Health benefits to change in the next year or two. All the company stock was immediately bought back by the new ownership, the employees paid out, everyone got a check. Changes, not unusual.
As usual, I'm pretty chatty this particular morning and I'm telling this guy some of my "Fascinating " experiences as a trucker, telling him how much I learn from workers all over the country like him.
Who actually makes what. Learning so much of how we utilize the land, all over the
country.  How dirty it all is on the other side of the tracks. Yes, that place does still exist, the other side. I care about all the people I encounter out here, yes, sometimes, some more than others. Yes, some days I'm better than others.
It's not black and white. I'm just here for a short visit. I get a glimpse.
Big lesson, I depend on these people. I realize this truth on my better days. I have a deep respect for the complexity and interdependence that exists in our global economy, our relationships. I do business all over the world, so do you.
I'm delivering the aluminum parts way up north in North Dakota.  I did a little research, or perhaps a lot.  This is Republican country.
The website for the company states, "Our American Made products…" What does that actually mean? Do you really know?
Sometimes when I haul American Made steel from the steelmill, owned by the Brazilian company I see a small note stating that the steel has been origiginated from melted recycled scrap, origin unknown.
Focus Adam, bring it home…
The machines in the picture is made in Italy, installed by Italians. Recently when the machines where installed and turned on, the Italian installers got on airplanes and returned to Italy. My new friend told me, "The machines replaced 20 to 30 workers." We both laughed and I said goodbye.
This Post Has One Comment
I enjoyed reading this – both actually.
Teri, I spent summers on my grandparents farm. Your food at Potager reflects the work you've put into those relationships with local farmers. Partly because I know your story 😉 when I eat there, it feels nostalgic- my grandfather skinned the rabbit, grandmother soaked the rabbit and broasted. I had the pleasure of seeing start to finish. Same with all of our veggies. Everything fresh, straight from the garden. Tomatoes still warm from the sun. I appreciate the thought and work you've put into the restaurant, it shows up every time I eat there. It's truly special


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Ultra running is like a staring contest. The successful contestant is capable of tuning out the noise and distraction. It is this kind of mental focus keeps a runner keeping on. If no other experience before the Seaton Soaker 2014 proved this to me, then the Soaker makes the assertion undeniable.
After a year in hiatus, the Seaton Soaker 2014 was a new course that had us track across the Seaton hiking trail. It is an out and back. You start at 73 m elevation and gradually make your way to 153 m over 12.5 km. There are 2 noteworthy climbs and three steep pitches. The return is a little faster since the back is a net elevation loss. The final 3 km of the back have the runner tracking down an alternate trail to the start and brings the runners through a river; hence Seaton Soaker.
The morning was perfect. With such a beautiful morning you'd have thought that nothing could go wrong. And… your thoughts would have deceived you. It all started right at the beginning of the race. I finished my first kilometre and my calf muscles (especially my right calf) were so tight that running was laboured and forced; not fun at all. As if that wasn't enough, my right foot decides that it's tired and falls asleep. I tried to regain feeling in my foot by kicking my foot out and shake'n it about. I must have looked like I was doing some kind of strange chicken dance or… the Hokey-Pokey. After dancing around for far too long, I thought maybe loosening my shoe lace may help. The situation did not get any better. I was frustrated and close to the aid station at KM 7. I stopped, removed my right shoe and sock and walked barefoot for a minute. My foot was back in business so I put the shoe back on. Though that was short lived. With no other option, I ran with my shoes in my hands instead of on my feet.
By the time I got to the turn around (12.5 km), I had my shoes back on my feet since my city feet don't have much in the way of calluses. At any rate, I don't think I really anticipated running the whole race without shoes. That said, I was still able to keep an average running pace of around 6:00 minutes per kilometre. Thankfully that was it for my foot trouble and I was able to maintain my pace much more comfortably.
On my way back to the start (to mark 25 km) there was a point when I was running with a group of 50k'rs. As I noted earlier, there is a river crossing and at this point all crossings have been over bridges. Since it was an out and back and I had not seen the course map I was disappointed that it appeared there was no "Soaker". The running banter of the group made it apparent that they knew the course. So I asked "Where is this epic river crossing?" I was assured that we would cross the river twice.
I got to the race track, timed in for my 25 km split time and continued back to the trail. It seemed like there was a little mix up as someone had picked up the flags that marked the trail that would originally ran on the way out. Some runners headed back to the river. One of the volunteers politely let me know the correct direction and so I was off.
I didn't notice at first, my heart rate monitor (HRM) battery must of hit its end of life. 2 minutes before the split my HRM was reading two dashes, not helpful. Panic started to set in. How am I supposed to moderate on hill climbs? How will I know if I have an even higher heart rate that previously thought (see Pick Your Poison 2014). A flurry of doubt set in. This is where the mental game is important. It is just a piece of equipment that quantifies your body's feedback. Since I had run the race with the HRM I started to have confidence that I could moderate based on feel and experience instead of pure numerical data.
As I was tracking towards the turnaround point, I really started to notice that I was loosing my spunk. I was following my nutrition routine and taking salt to make sure my muscles were in tip top shape. Still I felt like I was fading. From that point I was think about what they had to offer at the aid stations. I needed a plan B and I needed it fast. They had Heed, candy, chips, pretzels, and Coke! I remember reading in the book, Lore of Running, that Coke serves as a great pick me up. At the aid station at the turnaround, I pounded two cups of Coke. And we are back. From that point I stopped my Perpetuem diet and pounded a swig of good old Coca Cola Classic at each of the aid stations.
Not far from the turnaround point I peaked at my watch, 5:25 m/km, good. Further along I looked down at my watch and I was impressed. It seemed that for the last 2 km I was holding a 5:25 m/km pace. I thought that was unbelievable. Of course, it was unbelievable. My watch froze, probably where I was on a flat or a slight decent. My first thoughts were not kind. I had some practice with equipment failure twice already so before panic set in, with colourful language I took the watch off and tossed it into my pack. Now I was running au naturel.
As I turned to the river crossing I noticed I caught up to the first place female. I was so happy to get to the river that I got down on all fours so that I could cool down my legs. After my impromtu bath we ran together for the last 2 km. Since it was a race, I figured that one of us should make an effort to pull in front of the other, so I managed to get 26 seconds in front of her.
I crossed the finish line 5th and I was the 1st place under male under 40. I don't think I could have done it if I let the obstacles get in my way. Each time some trouble cropped up, I felt slight anxiety about it. I never let that be the final thought or an easy out. It really doesn't matter where you place, so long as you keep keeping on. Like a staring contest, focus on the objective and don't let anything distract you.


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Republican rise puts Obamacare under more pressure
The outlook for the Obamacare health reforms are once again in doubt following last week's mid-term elections in which the Republicans won control of the Senate.
The rise of the Republicans, which also saw them extend their majority of the House of Representatives, means they will set the agenda in Washington for the next two years and make it much harder for President Obama to push through new legislation.
The power shift comes as enrolment into the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance plans set up under Obamacare is well below target, with the latest predictions that around 9 million people will have signed up by the end of next year, short of the 13 million projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The US Health and Human Services (HHS) department also says it will take "quite a lot longer" to meet the 2017 objective of 25 million enrolees.
The ACA was designed to allow currently uninsured Americans – estimated at around 50 million people – to purchase affordable health policies.
Obamacare is of course already in play, having been passed in 2010, but has been under siege ever since and there are already calls for Senate Republicans under new Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to repeal the new healthcare law in 2015 using a complex procedure known as reconciliation that can be deployed to take down or amend legislation that affects the federal budget.
While the President would be able to veto any repeal, conservatives in Washington are desperate to undermine Obamacare in order to prevent measures such as a requirement for employers to provide health insurance for their workers, which has been delayed until 2015.
Others in the party argue that without a Republican President, pushing for repeal would be a wasted effort, and the part should concentrate on minor tweaks to Obamacare, as well as other pressing issues such as reforming the US tax system.
Opponents of Obamacare have just won a skirmish after the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a legal challenge to the law that will determine whether health insurance subsidies should come out of federal or state budgets.
At the moment, 36 states rely on central government to make the payments, with just 14 states and the District of Columbia setting up health insurance marketplaces called exchanges that provide subsidies. Moreover, two states – Oregon and Nevada – are planning to wind up their exchanges in 2015.
Conservatives have argued that federal exchanges set up to serve residents of states that have not established their own are not authorised under the wording of the ACA. The lawsuit specifically aims to overturn a May 2012 ruling by the Internal Revenue Service which said it would grant tax credits to enrolees regardless of whether they got their insurance from state or federal exchanges.
If the Supreme Court agrees with that position, enrolment rates in the plans could start to lag targets even more and weaken Obamacare ahead of the next Presidential campaign in 2016.
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Shouldn't I have done this in January? Probably, but that would make me the efficient, on-the-ball sort of writer who gets chided by all of the other writers for setting the bar too high (or, more accurately, picking it up off the floor).
I don't intentionally align my novel timelines with the calendar year, but they tend to work out that way. I started writing The Winter Riddle in January 2016 and finished it that year. 2017 was Peril in the Old Country, and 2018 was Soul Remains (on shelves in April, preorder now, pardon the shameless plug — or don't, I have no shame).
I finished Soul Remains in November 2018, and spent December and January putting my thoughts together for the yet-untitled, third-and-final book of Terribly Serious Darkness. I'll start writing that right after I finish a short story for an anthology to be released later this year. The details are still under wraps, which is nice, as I have so few opportunities to be mysterious.
I don't like working on more than one project at a time (see notes above re: writers' aversion to efficiency), but I'm eager to write more about Sloot. It's put me in the weird position of wanting to hurry through this short story, though I'd never dream of doing that. Writers might be lazy, but we're also perfectionists when it comes to our work. I may, on occasion, skip insignificant practices like showering, cooking my hot dogs, or paying my taxes, but I've never affronted my editor with a manuscript I haven't polished half a dozen times. And my tax guy always manages to drag me, kicking and screaming, down a torturous path paved with numbered forms just before I end up in jail every year, so I'm not entirely lazy. I just envy the dead their excuses.
Will There Be More Books About the Old Country?
I've been asked this several times, and I can say that it's certainly a possibility. I'm curating a collection of bottled feelings, all of which surround the thought of finishing Terribly Serious Darkness 3 and having no more Sloot to write. I've got other projects on the horizon featuring new anti-heroes, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where they'll lead.
If I had to guess at the future, I'd say that I'll probably write about the Old Country again. Sloot may not be the protagonist, but he'll at least make an appearance.
What's Next?
I've got a few irons in the proverbial fire, all of which are farcical nonsense. We'll see which one comes together first. For the sake of my readers, I really hope it's not my memoir. So far, that one is mostly ruminations on disastrous hairstyles.
Can You Autograph My Copy?
I'm surprised and flattered by how often I'm asked this. I'm always more than happy to scribble in the fronts of books in person. It doesn't even have to be one of mine. I'm not the sort of snob who would say, "that's Carrie. You should have Stephen King do that one."
Beyond in-person meetings, unfortunately, it's not really feasible for me to handle the logistics involved in posting books. Luckily, I haunt Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego fairly often and scribble in the fronts of the copies on hand. If you'd like to buy one that I've defaced, they can ship you one.


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Reported by Lavanya Chawla
National Law School of India University, Bangalore would be organizing the 8th edition of the National Law School International Arbitration Moot (NLSIAM) from 1st to 3rd May, 2015 and the National Law School International Arbitration Conference (NLSIAC) on 3rd May, 2015.
NLSIAM is one of the foremost moots in India, and gives participants the unique opportunity to gain invaluable exposure to international arbitration. As the only arbitration moot in India, participants have the unique opportunity to argue before a simulated arbitral tribunal populated by expert arbitrators, academicians and practitioners.
The moot problem this year would based on Investment Arbitration. As always, the moot would be judged by the some of the most renowned names in the arbitration fraternity. As a part of our continuing endeavor to increase the standards of the moot, we will strive to improve the hospitality and comfort extended to participants.
This year, the moot will see the introduction of staggered memorial submissions. We believe that such a system, a first for an Indian Moot, will raise the bar of the moot by providing participants an experience that is closer to real arbitration proceedings. Claimant memorials have to be submitted on 15th March. Every team would then receive the Claimant memorandum prepared by the team against which it is paired. The Respondent memorandum would be drafted in response to the Claimant memorandum, and would be due on 15th April.
Last date for provisional registration is January 30, 2015. You may provisionally register for the moot by mailing us at firstname.lastname@example.com. Final registration will close on March 1, 2015. Registration will open soon on our website. Please do send us an email expressing your interest in the event, so we can add you to our mailing list. For any other information regarding the moot, you may visit our official website- www.nlsiam.org. If you have any queries, please let us know, and we'll be happy to assist you. You can email us at email@example.com.


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Global warming is a scientific fact as much as the hole in the ozone layer or Earth's orbit around the sun. Global temperature records have been broken three years running. Arctic Sea ice is declining rapidly. Sea levels are rising. For some societies, such as small island nations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, environmental havoc is not a distant threat. It has arrived.
To reduce the risk of a global environmental catastrophe, and to avoid reversing the course of human progress, the world must urgently bend the curve of global emissions away from fossil fuels. Global warming must be kept below an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit); beyond that we will face major social and economic consequences.
The math to keep the increase below that critical level doesn't get much simpler. Emissions must peak no later than 2020, and we must reach a fossil-fuel-free world economy by 2050.
National pledges made for the Paris Climate Agreement fall short. Indeed, the political landscape is dominated by governments willing to make only incremental progress: two steps forward and one step back, or giant leaps back, in the case of the United States, where President Trump has threatened to retreat from international climate action and has proposed devastating cuts in funding for climate science and international collaboration.
The vast divide between what is necessary and what politicians are willing to do leaves many scientists nervous that we could blow our last chance to reduce the grave risk to our environment and world stability.
Still, there are good reasons for cautious optimism. Despite the halting progress made by politicians, history shows that the modern world has been shaped by major moments of disruption. Think about the recent United States election, Brexit, the global financial crisis of 2008 and the rapid advances made in the technology sector in recent decades.
To help rethink the climate challenge, my colleagues and I developed an environmental corollary to Moore's Law, which says that computing power doubles every 24 months. A "carbon law" states simply that the world must halve emissions every decade to stand a chance of reaching a stable climate system for the planet.
We emit about 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year. Assuming emissions start falling by 2020, and using the carbon law as our guide, we should halve carbon dioxide emissions to 20 gigatons by 2030. We then should reach 10 gigatons by 2040, and leave a small residual of five gigatons by 2050.
To make this happen, we must ramp up technology to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, protect the oceans and land that absorb half of our emissions already, and transform the world's food system from a major carbon emitter into a major carbon store.
A carbon law of halving emissions every decade can be adopted at all levels: for individuals, families, communities, companies, cities and nations. Those with the biggest carbon footprint need to do the most.
The global economy is on the right trajectory.
Global emissions growth from fossil fuels has plateaued for three years running, even with strong economic growth, thanks to efforts in China, but also progress in the United States, and some 20 other countries where net domestic emissions are declining. The renewable energy sector is expanding rapidly and employs more people in the United States than fossil fuels combined.
Installation of renewables in the energy sector is doubling every five to six years and has been on this course for a decade. If we keep doubling at this pace, renewables will reach 100 percent before 2050.
We can say good riddance to coal by around 2030, saving millions of lives as air quality improves. And bye-bye to oil by 2040. At this pace and scale, we can be close to carbon-free by 2050.
Johan Rockstrom is the director of Stockholm Resilience Center and professor of global sustainability at Stockholm University.


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The short life of lambs, an undercover investigation in Italy
Tell U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service To Protect Wolverines
Welcome to the all-creatures.org eNewsletter for April 4, 2013
Good News for Animals
Victory! 739 Miles of U.S. Coastline Protected for Loggerhead Sea Turtles
Beavers Save Wildlife Refuge from Oil Spill
Father Frank Mann's Awakening to Compassion for Animals
Justice Without Borders /
Justicia Sin Barreras
Action Alerts
Get Text Alerts from All-Creatures
Tell U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service To Protect Wolverines
Millennium Films Kills 22,000 Endangered Bats
Urge U.S. Attorney General to Investigate Cruel and Unlawful Pigeon Races
Sermon and Blog
Our Resurrection Promise
All-Creatures Blog
Stories and Poetry
Darren TurCatte: A Tribute
Happy Easter Blood Feast
A Cat's Map of the Bed
Articles and Items of Interest
The short life of lambs, an undercover investigation in Italy
Hard Boiled Nonsense
Why Our Most Environmentally Important Decisions Involve Food
Gluten-free Diets Are Harmful for the General Population (Except for one percent)
The Wisdom to Know the Difference
Over Half of American Rivers and Streams Are in Poor Condition
Recipes - Let No Animal Die That We May Live!
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In the Love of the Lord,
Frank and Mary
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The demise of the warchalkers
Is it a morally dubious illegal activity, or simply taking advantage of excess bandwidth? Warchalking, or making chalk marks on...
Is it a morally dubious illegal activity, or simply taking advantage of excess bandwidth? Warchalking, or making chalk marks on walls or pavements to indicate a wireless access point, has caused a media buzz over the past 12 months. Nick Langley asks whether warchalking has lived up to the hype
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There are parts of the world where trainspotters and planespotters are at risk of arrest because the locals cannot understand such quintessentially British preoccupations. Warchalking breaches a new frontier in such hobbies, in that even the British, by and large, do not understand it. Its practitioners are at risk not only from the police and private security organisations, but also from being attacked and having their possessions stolen while wandering alone at night.
Warchalking is the practice of making chalk marks on walls or pavements to indicate a wireless access point. The mark may be placed by the owner of the wireless network or the owner may know nothing about it. The wireless access point can be found using specialist software on a laptop or handheld device. If an open node is found, it can be used to access the internet or check e-mails.
The chalked symbols are supposedly based on those used by hobos during the depression in the US to indicate a household where food and shelter might be expected or one where the reception might be less generous.
Matt "Blackbelt" Jones, an information architect, created the warchalking symbols and posted them on the internet. But freelance writer Ben Hammersley had already come up with the idea of opening his network up to neighbours and passers-by, and it was Hammersley who chalked the first mark outside his house.
However, the buzz over warchalking, so loud last summer, died down before the end of the year. One website, www.warchalking.org, ran an obituary in January 2003 with the headline "How warchalking died". It was possibly a premature move, as the site was still receiving posts from new enthusiasts in June.
Warchalking might have provided an opportunity for some people to get out more, but few seem to have taken it. When did you last see a warchalking mark? Have you ever seen one?
The New York Times made warchalking one of its "ideas of the year" and www.wired.com, www.slashdot.org and several other serial bibles of the zeitgeist made much of it. Some commentators saw it as the next step in the freedom of the internet. One or two said it was being talked up by the media for the benefit of their advertisers, paving the way for paid-for public Wi-Fi services and adding an edge to the otherwise mundane business of using your laptop to stay in touch with the office.
Warchalkers are, or were, driven by a variety of motives, among which getting free wireless access seems strangely unimportant. Finding open nodes is a hit-and-miss business. Nodes marked as open may no longer be open, particularly if the owner of the network has seen the mark and decided to lock out gatecrashers. Even if a node is open, it is often impossible to do anything with it without getting involved in illegal activities; uninvited network sharing being something of a legal grey area.
On a walk along the London Wall recorded on culture and politics website www.metamute.com, Matt Jones, one of the authors, found 20 nodes. Only one node was open but Jones was unable to access the internet from it.
For Jones, one pleasure of searching for open nodes is walking the streets looking at architecture. He confessed that warchalking is like trainspotting, with the names of access points replacing lists of serial numbers.
Others get pleasure simply from chalking. "I got back in the car, a mild rush flowing through me at having completed my first warchalk," said Ron Chrisley, research fellow in artificial intelligence at the University of Birmingham, after a night on the streets with some chalk and an iPaq. "I did not know where to go next; all I knew is that I wanted more. And an open node wouldn't hurt either."
Chrisley found other thrills. "Every few seconds or so I would look down at the Mini-stumbler [the software used for locating nodes] display between my legs - wardriving is dangerous! Especially when an open node pops up unexpectedly, as it did at this point."
For some the attraction is intellectual. "Warchalking to me is more a philosophy of connectivity and communication and not something I would actually do," said one comment on www.warchalking.org.
Another respondent wrote, "Sure, there was a lot of buzz around the concept, but how many people really do it? I have never, ever seen chalk marks out in the wild."
The site ran an online questionnaire to discover how many people had actually warchalked. Twenty eight per cent of the respondents were only interested in the theory of warchalking and had not warchalked themselves.
For those warchalkers that do mark out access points, some chalk the marks on pavements, assuming that while walls tend to be owned by somebody, the ground is a free public arena. The police will usually take a lenient view of what could be classed as pavement art, but scribbling on pavements, like spraying tags on walls, is actually criminal damage. Even though the chalk marks may be washed away with the rain, the marks are still covered by the term "temporary functional derangement", which sounds as though it could be applied to the perpetrators as well as their perpetrations.
Ethical justifications for warchalking include the peace-and-love stance, with warchalkers saying that they do not mind sharing their networks, so why can't others share their networks with them? Another attitude is the rather more boneheaded comparison where if you leave your door open and you are robbed, it is your fault for giving the thieves the opportunity.
"If people are so stupid they set up their wireless access points to be open, then it serves them right. The world is full of bad system administrators who need to be taught a lesson," said one cyberguerrilla.
One contributor on www.warchalking.org made the point that a lot of people have fixed- rate wireless broadband contracts, so a bit of freeloading on bandwidth they are not using will not be missed. Uninvited guests checking e-mail or looking at a few web pages is hardly going to stop owners enjoying the full benefit of their bandwidth. But others point out that some subscribers pay by the hour or by the byte, so they will get billed for alien traffic.
The majority opinion on www. warchalking.org is that using other people's bandwidth is ethically dodgy, and you should not take advantage of those who do not have the expertise to make their own networks secure.
Warchalking falls foul of at least two laws. Section 4 of the Theft Act 1968 says things that may be stolen include "money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property".
The Computer Misuse Act 1990 makes it an offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system, punishable by six months in jail, a £2,000 fine or both, regardless of whether the motives are malicious or not.
Ironically, warchalkers themselves are at increased risk from street theft, as they wander around with laptops, often after dark. Chrisley has taken his iPaq onto the streets of Birmingham late at night, despite having been robbed three times and assaulted once in the previous nine months. Jones recalls warchalking in parts of New York where he felt uncomfortable carrying his laptop.
The fall in warchalking has been attributed to the rise in public wireless Lan services, either those that are paid for or laid on by coffee shop owners as an inducement to hang around and buy more muffins.
There is also a growing number of community wireless initiatives, providing free wireless broadband in towns and villages - particularly those the broadband providers have passed by.
But one comment on www.warchalking.com may give the real reason warchalking is dying. "I am afraid that warchalking is in danger of being washed away by the lack of active chalkers. Perhaps that is the ultimate test. Unless people are prepared to make a record of their netstumbling for the sake of others, warchalking will not last."
Community wireless sites:
Finding open nodes on the London Wall:
Warchalking symbols
There are three main warchalking symbols:
- A circle indicates a closed wireless network
- A wireless network that been generously or inadvertently left open is denoted by two half-moons back to back
- A circle with a "W" in the middle indicates a Wired Equivalent Privacy encrypted node.
- Aerosol - Wardriving utility for Windows.
- Netstumbler - A Windows utility for 802.11b-based wireless network auditing. Used by warchalkers and wardrivers to find wireless access points. Available for most laptops and wireless cards, it can be downloaded from www.netstumbler.com. Netstumbling Walking about with your eyes glued to the Netstumbler display instead of looking where you are going. Warchalking Marking the sites of wireless access points with a special symbol.
- Wardialling - An early form of hacking involving dialling random numbers in the hope of finding a modem attached to a computer. Derived from the 1983 film War Games, the ultimate origin of the war prefix.
- Wardriving - Searching for wireless access points by driving around with Netstumbler on your laptop. Internet services firm KPMG found most wardriving takes place while people are driving to and from work and very little takes place at weekends. Warstorming Searching for wireless access points from a plane. Because of the limited range of wireless Lans, the plane has to fly below 1,500m. First recorded in Perth, Australia.
- Wapchalking - Variant of warchalking set up by the Wireless Access Point Sharing Community, an informal group with a code of conduct that forbids the use of access points without permission. The group uses the warchalking marks as an invitation to network owners to join their community. In Wapchalking terms, the two half-moon open node mark means a wireless access device is currently indicating factory default settings. "In our community's code, that means it is classified as a 'clueless' device," the group said.
Wardriving - Searching for wireless access points by driving around with Netslumber on your laptop. Internet services firm KPMG found most wardriving takes place while people are driving to and from work and very little takes place at weekends.
Warstorming: Searching for wireless access points from a plane. Because of the limited range of wireless Lans, the plane has to fly below 1,500m. First recorded in Perth, Australia.
Wapchalking - Variant of warchalking set up by the Wireless Access Point Sharing Community, an informal group with a code of conduct that forbids the use of access points without permission. The group uses the warchalking marks as an invitation to network owners to join their community. In Wapchalking terms, the two half-moon open node mark means a wireless access device is currently indicating factory default settings. "In our community's code, that means it is classified as a 'clueless' device," the group said.
Warchalking survey
A survey conducted by www.warchalking.com shows how few warchalkers actually go out and warchalk and how, despite the ethic of sharing networks, few had made their home networks open to all.
Have you warchalked yet? l
- Sure, I warchalked my house (7%)
- Sure, I warchalked my office (3%)
- Sure, I warchalked the secret government agency down the road (10%)
- Nah, I'm just interested in theoretical warchalking (28%)
- No, I do not know what warchalking is yet (18%)
- No, but I will as soon as I find some chalk (32%).
War on warchalking
The FBI in Pittsburgh sent a memo to local businesses warning them that the appearance of warchalking symbols outside their offices meant the security of their networks had been jeopardised
KPMG in London set up a honeypot, a dummy wireless access point containing monitoring software, which it used to gather survey data about wireless hacking as a marketing tool for its security services
AT&T Broadband sent out wardrivers of its own to track down open wireless access points and check if they were being shared against the terms of its contracts.


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Overweight Woman Gets Probation in Boyfriend's 'Sitting' Death
An overweight Ohio woman who killed her boyfriend by sitting on him, told a judge she was sincerely sorry for squashing the father of her three children, Fox8.com reported.
Mia Landingham, who was believed to weigh around 300 pounds at the time of the August incident, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter Wednesday in Cleveland.
Her lawyer told the Judge Carolyn Friedland there was a history of domestic abuse between Landingham and her 120 pound boyfriend, Mikal Middleton-Bey.
"I just want to say that I am sincerely sorry about this situation," she said. "I wish I could take it back."
The judge sentenced Landingham to three years probation and 100 hours of community service — much to the dislike of the victim's family.
"So basically you can say that I can go sit on somebody and get probation?" one of the victim's sisters told Fox8.com. "I feel there wasn't no justice."
Click here to read more on this story from Fox8.com.


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Our Development Process
You're a developer eh? So what methodology do you guys use at Oomple? Said no one exactly like that ever. At least not to me. But it's a commonly discussed topic amongst developers. How do you do what you do? Do you use the waterfall method? Scrum? Agile? Extreme? What about Rapid Application Development or Pair Programming?
For us, the answer lies somewhere between Scrum, Agile and the Wild West. As a small dev team (two developers and a graphic designer), we are tasked with moving mountains with tools meant for mole hills. We need to be light on our feet, but with enough momentum to make sure we can achieve the goals we set.
We take some of the core concepts of Scrum/Agile and use them as they make sense to us. Daily standups? Check (just not every day). Retro's and Reviews? Check and check. Sprint planning and weekly cycles? You bet! But when it comes to the details, well that's where some of the wild west creeps in.
Were we to follow the methodologies to the letter, I feel like we'd end up doing nothing but having 100% meetings. If we didn't do any meetings at all, we'd have no way to know what kind of progress we are making. If we were making any at all.
Here at Oomple we try to take the best bits and make them make work for us. Generally, we following the following process: Monday Morning: Catch up about the weekend. Ok, it's not exactly a development process, but come on, we work in a small team. It's nice to care about people when they're not at the office.
Looks like somebody has a case of the Monday's
Pleasantries out of the way, we get our day on. Now's the time for production launch. Assuming there is one. We do weekly development cycles (plus a week of testing), and we try to ensure that we're "deploy ready" at the end of each week. However not every week will include an actual production deploy. Once that's done, then we move the previous weeks work onto our staging server.
Assuming that goes well, we can then get into Monday 'meeting-palooza'. There's a bunch of them scheduled, but we do our best to ensure that they are as long as they need to be; Not as long as they're scheduled for. We'll run through the retro and review first. Typically these run pretty quickly, but we still make sure that we address any issues that showed up in the previous weeks work & process and if we need to tweak the way we do things, that's the time.
Once those are out of the way, we can hop straight into planning. This one varies pretty heavily from week to week. Some weeks we're designing brand new features. Others we keep it to a short "Y'all know what you're doing" and be off. Like I said, we keep the meetings to as long as they need to be. Sometimes that's a little. Sometimes that's a lot. Got to keep it flexible.
Ready or not, after lunch we run a demonstration of last week's updates to the platform the entire office. Then after the presentation are asked to add their two cents (Feedback is good mmkay).
This lets us accomplish a few things:
- It helps keep everyone in the office aware of what's going on
- Ensures that people can see that where their feedback has actually been implemented
- Gives us an opportunity to catch any show stopping issues.
- Let's people know the areas they should be looking at on our staging server over the next week.
And that's Monday. The week is definitely loaded to be heavy on the front end. But that sets us up to be more productive (or at least not interrupted by meetings) during the rest of the week.
Get Up Stand Up
As for scheduled meetings the rest of the week. Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday all have daily standups.
We cover the following four things:
- Yesterday I:
- Today I:
- Blockers:
- Everyone needs to know:
Assuming we're all at the office, we can do it face to face. If not, then we handle it on slack. It's not meant to be a long discussion. We just want to ensure that nobody has hit any snags along the way during the week.
We also ask that the rest of the office test out our staging server to make sure that the platform works as expected during the week.
If at this point you're thinking: "Wait, why no standup on Thursday?" Congrats for paying close attention! We have our only other scheduled dev team meeting on Thursday morning. This is where the development team meets with the Product owner to see how the week is progressing. Since we're already talking as a group, no need to add another scheduled meeting, right?
The product owner was typically with us during the sprint planning meeting, so this is where we can close the loop on what's been done so far, and get an idea of where we are at for this weeks progress. This is also where we also get the ball rolling for what we plan to tackle next week. Got to make sure what we're working on lines up with our Roadmap right?
That's a Wrap
Wrap up development on Friday, and that's about it. We should now in a 'Deploy Ready' state. Of course every now and then it takes some extra time to get there, so we technically have 2 extra days to squeeze some more stuff in on the weekend. But burnout is real, and too many of those will have our well oiled machine falling apart in no time.
So that's our methodology. It's not 100% textbook, but it works for us. For now. That's the nice thing about what we've got going on. Meeting our ever-changing needs is baked right in.


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Mark Kermode says we should be relaxed about adult themes in videogames (Should we avoid violent games?, 11 December).
He confesses to knowing nothing about these games: "I don't play them and probably never will." But he then says, "I do know something about horror films, and the moral panic they provoke," and takes issue with the "ominous sense of ill-informed outrage" about the modern videogames market. He then advises readers looking for a sensible opinion on the subject to refer to "someone who knows, someone who plays them, someone who actually likes them". In short, the fans.
My organisation, Equality Now, has heard a lot from the fans of some of these games. We highlighted the game RapeLay, produced in Japan, as one example of many that promote violence against women. In RapeLay the player manipulates an onscreen penis to simulate rape of a woman and her young daughters over and over again.
Our international campaign called on the Japanese government to ban games that promote sexual violence against women and girls. Fans of these games were outraged. They asked us why we were targeting RapeLay when, they said, it was mild compared to similar available games. In Japan there is a whole genre of extreme pornography, known as hentai, which takes in cartoons and comic books as well as videogames. Imagery includes women and girls being molested, stalked and gang-raped.
We received hundreds of emails from around the world, many calling for our own rape and murder. "By the way, I played RapeLay (doing the 13-year-old was best)", said one, referring to the pre-pubescent girl whom players "rape" in the game.
Kermode recalls media coverage in the 1980s – when horror movies were seen as likely to "deprave and corrupt" – and suggests that we now have a more sophisticated attitude to that genre. "With almost any genuine art form, the most important works can rarely be taken at face value," he asserts.
But if games such as RapeLay can now be classified as art, maybe the popular media promotion of sexual violence against women is so normalised that we don't even pay attention any more. Does "killing" a prostituted woman in Grand Theft Auto just reconfirm to a gamer the "lesser value" of women in prostitution generally?
What we know is that violence against women and girls is all too real. The NSPCC for example reported in September that a third of teenage girls in a relationship suffer unwanted sexual acts (including rape) and a quarter physical violence such as being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends.
Certainly the UN's women's committee believes that gender stereotypes, including those of women as sex objects, and gender-based discriminatory attitudes, contribute to violence against women. Will the players of RapeLay act on their threats towards us? It's just a game, don't threaten our free speech, say the fans who tell us to shut up or else. Maybe Kermode was right after all when he said we should ask the fans. They certainly gave us their answer loud and clear.


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My email box and various blog feeds have been abuzz with the fact that as of November 15, 2011 an estimated 250,000 Illinois adoptees who were born on or after January 1, 1946, can begin requesting non-certified copies of their original birth certificates.
Sound the alarms! Pull out the noisemakers! Do a happy dance.
Uh, no. Sorry. I am not as thrilled as some of my Illinois adoption effected friends. There are a few things, okay, many things I don't like about this new change. Perhaps I am a purist, too black and white, perhaps I simply want ALL ADOPTEES AND MOTHERS to have access to the OBC with zero restrictions. Is that really too much to ask? I suppose so. For as it is, things like this are in effect: (excerpted from this website):
A new Illinois law allows adult adopted persons born in Illinois to request non-certified copies of their original birth certificates through the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Birth parents of adopted persons born after January 1, 1946, may request that their names be deleted from this non-certified copy. (Seriously? Deleted?)
All birth parents may indicate their preferences regarding contact with their adult birth child. (Why do we need the law to do this for us? Trust me, my daughter told me to go away, not contact her, and I have. She did not have to file a document with the States of CT, NY, NJ or IL. Adult birth child? Huh? My daughter is my daughter. Not an adult birth child. And hey, can adoptive parents indicate contact preferences on behalf of their non adult adopted child? What if an adoptive family wants to open contact now. Will this new law facilitate it?)
The options available under this new law are different for adopted persons, birth parents and their family members. The options available also change depending on the date of birth of the adult adopted person. (Exactly my point and problem. Why all the different flavors?)
I don't want to be a Debby Downer, really. What I do want is to see all mothers and children treated similarly. I want it to be EASY for an adoptee to request and receive their OBC with no barriers or questions asked. It is a certificate of birth — something the rest of the non adopted effected population can obtain with ease.
So, no, not happy. Not seeing this as an outright win for Sara Feigenholtz or her camp. Progress in the right direction? Maybe. Win? No.
Not until all can obtain with no restrictions, no deletions, no blocks.
For more info, visit the newillinoisadoptionlaw.com website.


text:
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This item can be shipped to United States.


text:
014: Weapon X Origins
Version 3.00, last updated on January 8, 2008
Barry Windsor-Smith, Marvel Comics Presents #78.
Not surprisingly, Chris Claremont had developed his own plans for Wolverine's origin. Unfortunately in 1991, Barry Windsor-Smith's 'Weapon X' unwittingly stepped all over those plans. As Barry Windsor-Smith relates, "… he was upset that I had encroached on his territory. Chris had a specific person whom he was going to, in the far-flung future, have tell the story of how Logan became Wolverine, and this person did it to him." As a result, Barry Windsor-Smith notes, "We never quite see who the main mover is in this series. There is another force at work. He's never seen, you never hear him. I never explain who he is. There are clues as to who it might be."[1]
Who exactly that person originally was intended to be still remains a mystery…
Marvel Comics Presents #61 (1990) – "On the Road, Part 8: Instant Karma"
Writer: Michael Higgens; Penciler: Dave Ross; Inker Dan Day
Doctor Ronald Rankin, father of Calvin Rankin (the mutant Mimic), seems to imply that he was involved in Experiment X when he comments to Logan, "I see, Wolverine, that at least some of my efforts paid off."
Wolverine #50 (Jan 1991) – "Dreams of Gore: Phase 3"
Writer: Larry Hama
Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green with Hilary Barta and Tom Palmer
Logan states that files from the NSA revealed that the United States Department of Agriculture, Pest Control Section was set up "20 years ago" as a front for a dirty tricks project, known as Project X. The CIA ran it in Canada through a dummy group with funding from the Pest Control Section. Professor Xavier later learns from the reams of data supplied by the NSA that the purpose of the Weapon X Program was to create a pool of super-soldiers, involving Wolverine, Sabretooth, Mastodon, Silver Fox, plus three other agents.
X-Men Declassified (Oct 2000)
Writer: Karl Bollers; Penciler: Pascual Ferry; Inker: Andy Owens & Rick Ketcham
In a federal database, Kitty Pryde learns that master mutant manipulator Apocalypse was behind Experiment X. This information, however, is considered to be false, planted by the mutant-hater Bastion. It is, however, believed to be what Chris Claremont had originally intended, Apocalypse being the person responsible for Wolverine's adamantium skeleton.
Wolverine: Origins #1 (Jun 2006) – "Born in Blood, Part One"
Writer: Daniel Way; Artist: Steve Dillon
It is strongly suggested that the Secretary of State of the United States, a black woman very similar to Condoleezza Rice is part of the Weapon X conspiracy.
Wolverine (Vol. 2) #54 (Jul 2007) – "Wake the Dead"
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Pencils: Simone Bianchi; Inks & Washed Halftone: Simone Bianchi & Andrea Silvestri
The Professor managing the Weapon X experiment confirms that a mysterious figure, Romulus, is the sole reason the Weapon X program exists. As Romulus explains to the Professor and Sabretooth on site at the Experiment X labs while Logan floats in an isolation tank, "You… know how important Logan is to this project and to me personally. Years and years of evolution to get to this place. While fools like Essex (Mr. Sinister) and Xavier stumble around in the dark trying to understand genetics… what we accomplish together, Logan, will be truly revolutionary."
…There were, however, other factions at work who took a different view of Weapon X…
New X-Men #129 (Sep 2002) – "Fantomax"
Writer: Grant Morrison; Artist: Igor Kordey
The mutant criminal Fantomax explains to Charles Xavier and Jean Grey that Logan was involved in Experiment X and dubbed Weapon X, as in Weapon 10. The original program, a product of the military-industrial complex, dates back to World War II and involved a thousand experiments on animals and humans. The program continued as the Weapon Plus program and eventually created Weapon XIII.
New X-Men #130 (Oct 2002) – "Weapon Twelve"
Writer: Grant Morrison; Artist: Igor Kordey
Fantomax further explains Weapon 0 was classified. Weapon I was a volunteer. "Weapons II through III were animals… IV to VI used various ethnic minorities. Then they found the ideal subjects for the VII trials onward… kidnapped mutants, the scum of the earth. Like I said, Weapon X wasn't a letter, it was a roman numeral. X = ten. Your Mister Logan? The Wolverine? Only the tenth generation living weapon. They've gone far beyond that now." Fantomax is then revealed as Weapon XIII.
New X-Men #145 (Oct 2003) – "Assault on Weapon Plus, Part 4 of 4: The Devil"
Writer: Grant Morrison; Penciler: Chris Bachalo; Inker: Tim Townsend with Vey & Sowd
Fantomax takes Logan to the Weapon Plus facilities where Logan reads through the Weapon X database. "…Since the dawn of the mutants, humankind has searched for ways to match their uncanny powers. The Weapon Plus Super-Soldier initiative has led the field in human enhancement technologies. "Displaying a photo of Captain America, the file continues, "…Weapon I trials still remain the most successful application of the technology to date, but the quest for the perfect soldier equipped to win the evolutionary war, goes on…" Further research yields, "…Use of criminals, psychopaths and violent mutations in later super-soldier trials yielded some experimental advances, but no reliable or repeatable procedure… Attempts to control the aggressive response of subjects using medications proved unsuccessful and beginning with the Weapon Ten trials, a radical new behavior modification technique was devised using false memory implants…" Finally, Logan sees a photo of himself with the information, "…Mutant test subject/'James'/lethal variant genetic anomaly/subject designate: Weapon 'X'. First recipient of multiple memory implants…"
Weapon X #23 (Jul 2004) – "War of the Programs, Part 1: In the Beginning"
Writer: Frank Tieri; Artist Tom Mandrake
In the closing days of World War II, Nick Fury oversees the cleanup of a concentration camp liberated by the superhero group, the Invaders. A civilian by the name of Thornton, nicknamed the Professor by the troops, is in charge of categorizing the scientific laboratory. There he discovers the Journal of Nathan Essex, the master of genetic mutations later known as Mr. Sinister.
Marvel Comics #72 (1991) – "Weapon X: Prologue"
Writer/Artist: Barry Windsor-Smith
As Logan makes plans to go to the Yukon, a mysterious Professor hires Dr. Abraham Cornelius, an American doctor on the run from the FBI for illegal medical procedures, and Carol Hines, a NASA clerk, to help run the "Experiment X" program in Canada.
Barry Windsor-Smith, Marvel Comics Presents #73.
Marvel Comics #73 (1991) – "Weapon X: Chapter One"
Writer/Artist: Barry Windsor-Smith
On his way to the Yukon, Logan, driving his Lotus 7, stops at a rural bar for drinks. On his way out, Logan is ambushed by three agents from Experiment X.
Weapon X #23 (Jul 2004) – "War of the Programs, Part 1: In the Beginning"
Writer: Frank Tieri; Artist Tom Mandrake
As the fight continues, the Professor, Dr. Cornelius and Carol Hines observe from a distance. The Professor claims that Logan will be the perfect candidate because he is a mutant. It is clear that much research has been done on Logan as the Professor has a file with the name, James Howlett, Logan's true identity. It is further noted that the Professor toiled on previous Weapon Plus programs and that Weapon X is his chance to finally run his own program. As the Professor returns to the Experiment X facilities, there is a flare-up between the base guard (Private Malcolm Colcord later to become the head of the modern Weapon X program) and Dr. Cornelius' assistant John Sublime (later to become the head of the modern Weapons Plus program).
Wolverine: The End #4 (Aug 2004)
Writer: Paul Jenkins; Artist: Claudio Castellini
One hundred years in the future, John Howlett, the older brother of Logan, claims to have been the initial Weapon X. "They explained to me that there had been an injustice, that I had been betrayed. That they were the only ones I could trust. They referred to me simply as 'X." When I was well enough, they began the tests and questions: What did I see and feel? How had I come by these abilities? I accepted it all and I began to evolve. And then, one day, they asked me one question too many. And so I left the program." Since John's abilities include becoming insubstantial, it is easy to understand how he could leave so easily. But since this is a futuristic tale and there is no evidence that these events happened, we cannot rely upon this recollection. If these events did happen, it would help to explain why James Howlett (Logan) was selected for Experiment X.
Marvel Comics #73 (1991) – "Weapon X: Chapter One"
Writer/Artist: Barry Windsor-Smith
Logan puts up a good fight, but is finally brought down by several doses of thorazine from a stun gun and a dislocated jaw.
Weapon X: First Class #1 (Jan 2009) – "Don't Look Back in Anger"
Writer: Marc Sumerak; Artist: Mark Robinson
In a story that takes place in the 1981 timeframe, Professor Xavier helps Wolverine to uncover his memories. During this process, Wolverine confronts memories of being attacked and kidnapped by agents of Experiment X.
Wolverine #48 (Nov 1991) – "Dreams of Gore: Phase One"
Writer: Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green
When Logan comes across his Lotus 7 in the Alberta, Canada location of Experiment X, he remembers being attacked and knocked out by three agents from Experiment X.
Wolverine #76 (Dec 1993) – "Northern Dreams"
Scripter: Larry Hama; Penciler: Tomm Coker; Inker: Al Milgrom
Logan has a dream of being a secret agent with a Lotus Seven and a Colt 1911A1, and being shot by three agents of Experiment X.
Maverick #1 (Jan 1997) – "The Sword Sung on a Barren Heath"
Writer: Larry Hama; Artist: Wilfred Santiago
John Wraith confirms that the Lotus Seven was in fact Logan's car.
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[1] Will Murray, "Secrets of Weapon X," Comics Scene #18.
Personally I'm kind of tired of the Weapon X story line, especially after the Weapon Plus saga a few years ago. That is why I was happy when Origins came out and revealed there was another aspect to his mystery and past. I haven't really enjoyed a Weapon X story in a long time, even the video games are all about the Weapon X stuff.
Will the world ever know who Romulus is?
okay the professor was revealed to be logan's distant couisin but was he born after world war 2 confusing too masny stories contradict each other. in the original weapon x seriers the professor had no knowledfge logan was a mutant until he wass told by whoever he was talking to john sublime was supposed to be on the phone one time. come to find out it was romulus.
The whole idea of The Professor/Horton being a "Hudson" is ridiculous. The whole lineage of James MacDonald Hudson as presented in Wolverine: Origins is ridiculous. If James Hudson was born in the 1950's (as the illegitimate son of the MacDonald woman…as I though they were going to do), that would have been fine with me. But instead, they went on and added extra generations, including The Professor. It's as if the writers of Origins erased John Sublime and the entire Weapon X regular series from Wolverine's history….NEEDLESSLY I might add. The only way to legitimately explain away this lineage mess… Read more »