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Anderson Finishes 2nd and Maintains Lead in 450 Championship
ST. LOUIS, MO – March 18, 2018 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – The Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing Team made its way to the Show Me State for the 11th round of AMA Supercross, held at The Dome At America's Center in St. Louis, MO on Saturday. Both Zach Osborne and Jason Anderson maintained their points lead in their respective classes with a victory for Osborne and a second-place finish for Anderson, while teammates Dean Wilson and Michael Mosiman both nailed down top-10 finishes in their classes to make for a successful night.
Osborne was top-10 at the start of his 250SX East heat and quickly moved his way into the fifth-place spot. He navigated into fourth soon after and was on the move. He made his way into a podium position the following lap and stayed aggressive. He went after the top-two with 40 seconds to go, made the pass for second, then launched into the lead in the whoops in the final lap to transfer to the 250SX East Main Event. He pulled the holeshot in the Main and immediately went to battle. He went back to second, but took his time during the long race and focused on regaining the lead. He waited for his opportunity to strike and took over the lead with seven minutes and a lap to go after race leader Austin Forkner succumbed to Osborne's pressure and went down. He stayed consistent and rode to another impressive victory to maintain his lead in the 250SX East Championship.
"Big win tonight in St. Louis," said Osborne. "I feel good about the way I rode. I came out with some good speed in practice and found my feet today. I was able to get a gap in the end and managed the race from the front. It's an incredible feeling when you can do that. I'm happy to leave St. Louis with a little gap in the points. I'm just going to keep working."
Jason Anderson was top-five at the start of his heat and easily navigated his way into second shortly after the start. He took over the the lead before the end of the first lap and dropped the hammer to take the win and transfer to the 450 Main Event. He was second at the start of the Main and focused on a consistent race. He rode his own race and kept it steady to finish second and extend his points lead in the class.
"I'm good with second," said Anderson. "My heat race was a little rocky, but I made it up in the Main Event. I'm glad I was able to extend my points lead and I'm looking forward to next week."
Dean Wilson was top-five at the start of his heat and moved into second soon after. He made the pass for first after Tyler Bowers went down in a corner, but went back to second with 15 seconds to go and stayed steady to finish second and transfer to the 450 Main Event. He was ninth at the start of the Main, but moved back to 11th in the second lap. He refocused and made the pass for 10th shortly after before putting in a charge to finish eighth. He is currently 10th in 450 rider point standings.
"This was another positive good day," said Wilson. "I was close to winning my heat race so that was good. I've been working hard on my starts. I was 11th in the main and got up to 8th. I'm going to get back to work on Monday and will try to improve."
Mosiman was top-five at the start of his heat but got caught behind a downed rider and moved back to 14th. He put his head down and charged his way up to ninth to transfer to the 250SX East Main Event. He was top-10 at the start of the Main and came out of the first lap in seventh. He stayed consistent, moved up to sixth in lap 10 and focused on a top-10 finish. He rode steady to an eighth-place finish—his first top-10 Supercross finish.
"St. Louis was good," sad Mosiman. "I had a good day in practice. My starts were good all day. I had a little trouble in the heat race but was able to get back into qualifying position by the end. I had another good start in the main and I'm so happy to get my first top-10 in Supercross. I'm excited to head to Indianapolis and race with all the West Coast guys in the Shootout."
St. Louis SX Results
250SX East Main Event
- Zach Osborne – Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing
- Jeremy Martin
- Jordon Smith
- Kyle Peters
- Austin Forkner
- Brandon Hartranft
- Luke Renzland
- Michael Mosiman – Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing
- Sean Cantrell
- Thomas Ramette
250SX East Rider Point Standings
- Zach Osborne – Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing – 115 points
- Austin Forkner – 107 points
- Jordon Smith – 102 points
- Jeremy Martin – 93 points
- Luke Renzland – 71 points
- Kyle Peters – 70 points
- RJ Hampshire – 57 points
- Sean Cantrell – 56 points
- Colt Nichols – 54 points
- Martin Davalos – 53 points
19. Michael Mosiman – Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing – 26 points
450 Main Event
- Eli Tomac
- Jason Anderson – Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing
- Marvin Musquin
- Justin Brayton
- Weston Peick
- Blake Baggett
- Broc Tickle
- Dean Wilson – Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing
- Christian Craig
- Malcolm Stewart
450 Rider Point Standings
- Jason Anderson – Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing – 246 points
- Marvin Musquin – 204 points
- Justin Brayton – 189 points
- Eli Tomac – 186 points
- Blake Baggett – 181 points
- Weston Peick – 171 points
- Broc Tickle – 147 points
- Cooper Webb – 146 points
- Cole Seely – 124 points
- Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing – 115 points
Husqvarna Motorcycles North America, Inc.
Husqvarna has continued to expand its professional race team to compete in AMA Supercross, AMA Pro Motocross, AMA National Enduro, GNCC, AMA EnduroCross, and AMA National Hare & Hound championships. Husqvarna team riders are competing aboard Husqvarna FC 450, FC 350, FC 250, FE 350, TC 250 and TE 300 models.
Rockstar Energy Drink
Rockstar Energy Drink is designed for those who lead active lifestyles – from Athletes to Rockstars. Available in over 20 flavors at convenience and grocery outlets in over 30 countries, Rockstar supports the Rockstar lifestyle across the globe through Action Sports, Motor Sports, and Live Music. For more information visit: www.RockstarEnergy.com
Source: Husqvarna Motorcycles GmbH


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You know how I love my crockpot? Well I am on fire lately, that baby isn't getting a rest in this house. I've already made Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup this past week and now Crockpot Lasagna! You are gonna love this lasagna recipe! Actually I have 2 of them and they're both for the slow cooker. I always use my friend Stephanie's Make it Fast, Cook it Slow Slow cooker cookbook. I seem to add my own flair to most recipes, but not because Stephanie's aren't good……..no no no….I am just that kind of cook. A little of this, a little of that. I improvise if I'm out of something or there's something my family (me) doesn't like.
Try my Single Serve Healthy Lasagna.
Crockpot Lasagna Recipe
Making lasagna in the crockpot is perfect. And you don't have to boil the noodles ahead of time……….like I do that anyway. Never! I make this when I know our evenings are going to be time crunched. Or when we may all need to eat at different times, like tonight. Since my son's soccer practice runs til 8pm, we'll eat before, and the real beauty is my husband will have his dinner ready for him when he gets home. THAT rarely happens. We're all happy.
Both mine and Stephanie's recipes below. Keep in mind……. she has a published cookbook and I have not.
Crockpot Lasagna
- 1/2 pound ground turkey
- 1/2 pound Italian sausage
- 1 tsp oregano
- 2 garlic cloves chopped or crushed
- 1 jar (25 oz) pasta sauce
- 10 lasagna pasta noodles (that's what Stephanie says, I don't count. I just place a full layer covering each time)
- 1 (15 oz) cottage cheese
- 1 pound sliced porcini mushrooms
- 3 cups shredded Mozzerella
- 2 cups Italian blend shredded cheese ( I use the Quattro Formaggio blend from Trader Joes)
- 1/4 cup water
- Use a 6- quart slow cooker. Brown the ground turkey and sausage in a skillet, adding the garlic and oregano. When the meat is browned, add pasta sauce. Save the jar, you're going to need it later.
- Spoon some of the meat mixture into the bottom of your slow cooker. cover with a layer of uncooked lasagna noodles. Smear some of the cottage cheese on the noodles, and add some mushrooms, a handful of cheese. Starting with the meat sauce, repeat the layers until your slow cooker is full.
- Put the water into the empty pasta sauce jar and shake. Pour the contents over your assembled ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours, or on high for 3 to 4 hours. Check about an hour before serving, and push down the top noodles into the liquid. When the cheeses are completely melted on the top and begun to brown on the edges, your meal is ready!
And here's Stephanie's version below. Much more nutritious than mine. Stephanie has 2 Slow Cooker Cookbooks out……..and they are both VERY good! With her permission, she said to go ahead and post her recipe! Lucky us!
Crockpot Lasagna by Stephanie
- 1 pound ground beef or turkey browned and drained
- 1 (25 -ounce) jar pasta sauce
- 10 dry lasagna noodles (traditional, no the no-cook kind; I use brown rice noodles)
- 1 (15- ounce) container ricotta cheese
- 1 pound sliced mushrooms
- 2 handfuls baby spinach leaves (optional)
- 3 hard boiled eggs, sliced (optional)
- 8 slices mozzarella cheese
- 2 cups shredded Italian style cheese
- 1/4 cup water
- Use a 6 quart slow cooker. Brown the ground meat on the stove top, and drain well. Add the jar of pasta sauce to the meat. Save the jar, you'll need it later .
- Spoon some of the meat and sauce mixture into the bottom of your slow cooker. Cover with a layer of uncooked lasagna noodles,. Smear some ricotta cheese on the noodles, and add some mushrooms, a handful of spinach, and some egg slices, if using. Put a few slices of mozzarella on top, and 1/2 cup or so of the shredded cheese. Add another spoonful of the meat and sauce mixture, and repeat the layers until you run out of ingredients, or the crock is full.
- Put the water into the empty pasta jar and shake. Pour the contents over the assembled ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours, or on high for 3 to 4 hours. Check about an hour before serving, and push down the top noodles into the liquid, if they are getting too brown and crispy. The lasagna is done with the pasta has reached the desired tenderness and the cheese has melted completely and has begun to brown on the edges.
Meal planning just got easier for the week!
Did you enter my giveaway for the Silhouette Portrait Bundle? Or grab your discount code to purchase either the bundle or just the double adhesive starter kit.

subset: commoncrawl


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From Parity to Preference-based Notions of Fairness in Classification
author: Muhammad Bilal Zafar, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, Max Planck Institute
published: Dec. 1, 2017, recorded: August 2017, views: 897
published: Dec. 1, 2017, recorded: August 2017, views: 897
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Many notions of fairness in data-driven decision making are inspired by the concept of discrimination in social sciences and law, and focus on ensuring parity (equality) in treatment or outcomes for different social groups. In this paper, we propose preference-based notions of fairness with the goals of avoiding potential 'reverse-discrimination' and enabling high decision accuracy. We introduce tractable proxies to design convex boundary-based classifiers that satisfy these new notions of fairness and show on the ProPublica COMPAS dataset that these notions allow for greater decision accuracy than parity-based fairness.
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text: Hanna Instruments Standard pH Buffer Solutions have been dyed for easy buffer identification. Hanna calibration buffers have the lot number and expiration date clearly marked on the label and are air-tight with a tamper-proof seal to ensure the quality of the solution. Hanna's line of calibration buffers have been specially formulated to have an expiration of 5 years from the date of manufacture for an unopened bottle.


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June 23, 2013
Hello out there! I need to know what to do with my Anemone St. Brigid flower bulbs that I bought weeks ago and never got them planted. Can I store them somehow for next year? I live in central Oklahoma, in Moore, and it is already hot outside, and will only get hotter in July, then August. The package said to plant them by the end of May. Can I put these in my refrigerator or freezer for planting next spring? If yes, should I put them in a Ziploc bag or something as well? The bulbs are still in their orig. packaging; plastic pouch that is aerated with holes.
Thanks very much in advance for any helpful advice,
reduce, reuse, and recycle (O:


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Alexis Sachez joined Manchester United from Arsenal during the January transfer window and since then he hasn't been able to replicate the kind of form he has during his days at Arsenal.
Though Alexis has got some goals for the club, many will still think he is not the best buy for the club.
'We still have areas where we can continue to improve, I think that every game I've in up to now I've maybe found it hard to adapt to the style of play and I've been getting to know my team-mates,' he said
'I believe we need to improve in all aspects. We need to be focused and concentrated in the big games and the same in the so-called lesser games too.'
'I believe that United really is a very big club on a very club on a worldwide scale and even more so in England where it's the biggest. They always want to win and to be fighting on all fronts and that's the reason I wanted to come here.'
'I also had some great players alongside me at Barcelona. I think that United are not too dissimilar as a club to them in their size and stature.'
Sanchez will be looking to be fit for next week season and will hope he can be of good help to the United side.


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Thank you Fr. Liam!
Sunday 23rd July 2017 saw a wonderful celebration of Fr Liam Hennessy's 35 years of Priesthood and service to the Archdiocese.
Fr Hennessy has served in a variety of parishes throughout the Diocese including Treforest, Penarth, Abersychan and Blaenavon, Sacred Heart Cardiff and we are proud that he is now our priest at St Mary's Brynmawr.
The people of the parish of St Mary's Brynmawr celebrated the event with a Mass of thanksgiving at the end of which Fr Hennessy was presented with a number of gifts from the parish. This was followed by a buffet in the church hall.
The parish would like to take this opportunity to further thank Fr Hennessy for his dedication and commitment to us and his many friends throughout the Diocese. We wish him many more years of faithful service.
Ad multos annos!
[content_timeline id="2″]


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Planking in 2019
One of the stranger things about being a pastor is in the books you read. While we are used to hearing our pastor's interpretation of scripture through the weekly sermon, for those of us studying deeper, we tend to be confronted with multiple commentaries, break-downs, and opinions around the same idea or verse. This is a great thing for a person trying to increase knowledge and understanding around biblical principles.
Every so often though…you read that statement or thought that resonates – that makes scripture come alive – and you are profoundly impacted. And for me, it is usually incredibly unpleasant, because it points out my folly in a way that I cannot argue circles around.
Let's take a look at the latest 2x4 to the head that has altered my perception – which, if you ask me, is far too poignant a point for so early in the year.
We live in an interesting political climate. Watch any entertainment award show – they are a great example of what we are being told to champion by the Hollywood elite. Look at the heavy-handedness around tolerance being dealt by the incredibly intolerant. In this age more than most, we have so many things to point out as immoral, intolerant, backwards, and just plain hateful.
Matthew 7 wraps up Jesus' sermon on the Mount. He begins this segment talking about judging others – much like I just did in the paragraph above. You know the story – don't worry about the speck in someone else's eye when you have a plank in your own. I have heard this countless times, heard it many different ways (pot calling the kettle black, for instance,) and have always taken it to mean to watch for hypocrisy in myself.
I missed the point.
Just a few verses prior to this passage, Jesus talks about our eyes in way that I have always had a tendency to gloss over. He calls the eye the "lamp of the body" and explains that clear eyes allow the body to be filled with light. But if the eyes are unhealthy, then the light within is darkness – and vast. Is there a more unhealthy condition for the eye than a log stuck in it?
I come to my point: I have been reading a novel by a Christian author – historical fiction, wherein his own interpretation of scripture passages are voiced through the characters of his story. And when one of the characters is there, in Capernaum, to hear this very sermon, this is her response:
"The problem with my life, then, is my own eyes, I thought. My perspective of the world determined whether I saw light or darkness, offense or mercy. I was blinded by a plank of grievance and saw only darkness."
A plank of grievance. I know that plank, and it is a big one. It seems to me that this plank of grievance is an epidemic – and one that can cause damage beyond what our country – even our world – can handle.
The fact of the matter is this – I cannot be a light to the world if there is no light in me. And there is no light in me as long as I hold on to the notion that I am entitled to anger, entitled to pity, and entitled to reparation for what I perceive the world has done to me.
We are meant to be in this world and not of it. My anger toward social injustices (real or imagined,) moral flexibility, and ignorance are damaging me – because I allow it to. God has called me to be a light; to be Jesus to this world – and Jesus didn't sit around with His coworkers and talk about how the world is circling the drain. He responded to these exact same circumstances with love – even to the point where they thanked Him for it with crucifixion.
Here is a resolution for all Christians in 2019 – remove the plank of grievance from your eyes. Don't be caught unaware, but recognize that hiding behind our own self-righteousness does nothing to help the broken, lost, and hurting. Remember that God loves the person spouting hate speech and turning morality on its head the same as He does you, and that person doesn't owe us anything. Quite the opposite – we owe them love, acceptance, understanding, and truth. This is how we be the light we were called to be.
More in Blog
February 16, 2022Seventy-Seven Times Seven
January 13, 2022The Vine and the Branches
July 8, 2021Your Life Matters


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Multi-State Medium and Heavy-Duty Zero Emission Vehicle
Memorandum of Understanding
Frequently requested green services from recycling to rodents.
<< Back to Watershed Protection Planning and Restoration Branch main page
Non-point Source Pollution Grant (319 Grant) Annual Report
Certification applications are available for businesses and individual contractors who wish to provide UST services to DC.
We work daily to protect the environment in which its people live, work and play.
You can pay In-Lieu Fee (ILF) to DOEE to satisfy your Off-Site Retention Volume (Offv). However, DOEE recommends that projects use Stormwater Retention Credits (SRCs) instead of paying ILF.
Get information on how to obtain a Pesticide License in Washington DC.
DDOE's pesticide program aims to protect human health and the environment from risks resulting from pesticide production, registration, distribution, use and disposal.
Review the regulations for use of pesticides and the requirements for communicating with District citizens.
Learn about DOEE's plans and commitments for environmental improvements throughout the Distric.
Information for property managers on the proper management of spent compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), fluorescent light bulbs, and batteries.
DC PACE provides an attractive financing solution that will help District property owners implement energy efficiency improvements.


text:
Construction Management incorporates planning, coordinating and building skills to take a project from conception to completion.
Construction Managers coordinate activities and work with a wide variety of professionals including architects, engineers, financial experts, suppliers and public stakeholders. The Bachelor of Science in Construction Management (B.S.C.M.) emphasizes public and private, commercial and residential construction with a focus on sustainable construction methods. This program employs a team-based interdisciplinary learning philosophy. This approach provides students with knowledge for leadership in sustaining our world and with the critical thinking skills required for effective and innovative practice with particular emphasis on technologies needed to solve problems and deliver successful construction projects.
$95,2602019 Median Income
476,700Number of Jobs in 2019
40,400Employment change 2019-2029
8%Job Outlook 2019 - 2029
Construction Industry Advisory Board (CIAB)
Learn more about CIAB including the members, by-laws, and contact information.


text:
Blue Jeans Energy Drink
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Blue Jeans is a fairly standard energy drink that is made in The Netherlands and exported all over the world.
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Ingredients in Blue Jeans Energy Drink
Sugar content: Unknown.Compare Sugar Content
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Caffeine Concentration
Blue Jeans Energy Drink contains 9.52 mgs of caffeine per fluid ounce (32.20mg/100 ml).
Caffeine (mg) per Ounce
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Blue Jeans Energy Drink 5 Hour Energy Coffee (Espresso) Coca-Cola Classic Spike Energy Drink


text:
As industry leaders and cybersecurity experts call on people everywhere to take steps to improve their online security, newer, more user-friendly account verification techniques, such as phone verification and two-factor authentication (2FA), are increasing in adoption. These features enable websites and mobile apps to verify a unique identity for each legitimate end-user through their valid phone number. Through this phone number, provided by the end-user, businesses can prevent fraud and protect account access through 2FA – where the device tied to that number serves as the "second factor." Phone numbers are now often considered the "trust anchor" for end-user accounts. In some cases, a user's valid phone number is their user name. But what happens when the very phone numbers that are used to verify and keep end-users secure are given up, recycled and assigned to a new person?
Phone number deactivation is an industry term that refers to the event when a user disconnects their phone number completely. This could be because they moved to a new city, want to prevent specific people from reaching them, or just feel like changing things up. Whatever the reason may be, they are no longer reachable at this phone number.
Phone number recycling is the industry term that refers to the event when that deactivated/disconnected number gets reassigned to someone else. Typically, it takes at least 90 days for this reassignment to take place but it can be faster in high-demand area codes (212, 310, etc.).
Recent news has risen that shows what can happen when phone–based 2FA and recycled phone numbers collide. Even though this a rare occurrence (a study by the FCC found that in the US only 4.93% of users recycle their phone number each year), if users are not diligent in updating their account information and companies are not aware of numbers being recycled, it can lead to increased risks for the integrity of the account. In the most basic scenario, the new owner of a phone number is now tied to the account that the former owner linked to that same number—providing access to someone else's account. Alternatively, this can also lead to the true user being locked out and account notifications, security codes, password resets and other messages and alerts are not reaching the end-user.
The good news is there are ways for companies to stay on top of this dilemma and help protect their users.The tricky nature of keeping up with recycled numbers is the sheer amount of data, which can prove overwhelming for most companies. This is where Telesign comes in. As a registered mobile operator, and thanks to our numerous telco partnerships, Telesign is able to provide our customers with valuable data attributes across the number lifecycle for virtually any number in the world, to help deliver assurance and prevent fraudulent activity.One of our products, Telesign PhoneID, provides a variety of phone-based risk indicators that companies can integrate into their systems to better asses the risk of a user based on their phone number. One such indicator is Number Deactivation, which helps customers determine when a phone number has been truly deactivated-- based on carriers' phone number data and our proprietary analysis. This empowers companies to update account details and avoid accidentally leaking user data before a number is moved over to a new user.With experts estimating we won't reach "number exhaustion" for 10-digit phone numbers until roughly 2040, the dilemma around recycled phone numbers will continue to persist. It is up to end-users to stay vigilant with their own data and online security and companies to take steps to help protect their users however they can. Telesign is here to help, so reach out to our sales team today to see how we can best protect you and your users."


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Microbursts by Elizabeth Reeder and Amanda Thomson
An honourable mention goes to Microbursts, a narrative non-fiction that wades into the grey void that is mortal illness, the shadow land between life and death. This is a celebration of familial love, coming to terms with the death of those closest to us and surviving. New experimental/hybrid publisher Prototype has an eye for original writing from the margins that deserves a wider audience. As this book deals with issues of family relationships and mortality Microbursts is relevant to each of us, this potent reflection on grief will resonate.
The book opens with an image, top of the page, a pencil sketch of a ridge, far off hills, set against an otherwise blank page. It's an image that hints at the fragmentary nature of the text. These are Microbursts, a memoir unfolding in short passages of prose that express a single thought or examine a moment, gradually the book builds into a meditation on the passage of time, the relationship with our parents and the twilight world between life and death – caring, loss and grief. Similar to Subirana's poetry these are intensely personal passages reflective of the universal experience. We all feel that grief is unique to us and we get wrapped up in it as if we are the first to experience it and yet we read someone else's experience of pain and grief we can empathize as we realise we all go through the same emotional darkness to some degree. The first piece Between Places sets the scene, its a musing on the author's time with her parents as they die. She has uprooted from Scotland to return to Chicago to care for them. The past comes back to inhabit the text and illustrations in the way it does when people have the cause to reflect on life.
"Genesis is a key pressed into butter, wax, something impressionable. It is clear like the bright call of waxwings was they trill from berry to branch in a clutch of days that can never be predicted. The beginning and the remembered. Remove it, cast it, palm it. Wait for the opportunity to put the key to use, and then pay attention as one surface communicates with another."
The human is recognised in the landscape, the effects of time on the body, the alternative meaning of everything. A musing on the temporary nature of life, questioning the past; decline, care, decisions, emotions and objects, a battered wallet (her father's), absence, stages of grief, anger, time spent with the wrong people, illness as a failing, death.
Microbursts draws on other writers for inspiration; reinterpreting, personalising, Rebecca Solnit:
"This is to say I don't know. And I do. I am lost. I know how to be right here, as a daughter. I know this. And again and again I don't know what to do in the minute, to move us out of that minute and successfully into the next one."
Elizabeth Reeder, originally from Chicago, now lives in Scotland and is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Glasgow. She has written two novels exploring the themes that echo so strongly in Microbursts.
Amanda Thomson is a visual artist and writer, also a lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Her work on themes of home, landscape, migration, and the natural world have featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her book, A Scots Dictionary of Nature,
Prototype, 8/2/21
paperback, 9781913513061
This is a reprint of the review featured on NB Magazine 29/1/21


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Four British citizens released from Guantanamo Bay filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the United States seeking $10 million each in damages for abuse they allegedly suffered at the U.S. military outpost in Cuba, attorneys said Wednesday.
The suit on behalf of Shafiq Rasul, 26, Asif Iqbal, 22, Rhuhel Ahmed, 22, and Jamal Al-Harith, 37, was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and a Washington-based law firm.
The four were released to British authorities in March after nearly three years at Guantanamo Bay. They were captured in northern Afghanistan on Nov. 28, 2001, by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.
The lawsuit alleges the four were chained to the floor while strobe lights and loud music were played in a room chilled by air conditioning set at maximum levels. The men say they were subjected to the conditions for up to 14 hours at a time.
They say they were stripped naked and forced to watch videotapes of other prisoners who had allegedly been ordered to sodomize each other. The men also allege that some of the guards threw the prisoners' Qurans into the toilets.
Some of the men allege they were forcibly injected with drugs as part of the interrogation process and told they would get help only if they cooperated. Medical officials at Guantanamo have said medication is voluntary.
Pentagon denies allegations
The Pentagon denied the abuse allegations, saying the men were properly held in Guantanamo after being captured in Afghanistan and having fought for al-Qaida.
"There is no basis in U.S. law to pay claims to those captured and detained as a result of combat activities," said Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman. "The U.S. policy is to treat all prisoners and to conduct interrogations, wherever they may occur, is in a manner consistent with all U.S. legal obligations."
Defendants named in the suit include Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of Guantanamo and now heads Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where pictures surfaced this year of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi prisoners.
In January, another Guantanamo prisoner — Salim Gherebi, who remains in custody — filed a $1.1. billion damage suit in Los Angeles against President Bush and other government officials for violations of his constitutional rights. The suit said the plaintiff is being held with no legal basis.
Earlier this month, lawyers for a still-imprisoned Briton, Moazzam Begg, said in London they would file suit Oct. 4 demanding that the United States halt what they called his "inhumane treatment," although it is unclear if that suit was ever filed.
8 confirmed cases
Although the abuse allegations out of Guantanamo Bay are not as widespread as those at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, there have been at least eight substantiated cases of abuse at the Cuba camp, according to a report by James R. Schlesinger, who headed a U.S. congressional committee to investigate abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
One case involved a guard hitting a prisoner with a radio. Another sprayed a prisoner with a hose. A third was acquitted in a court-martial of using pepper spray on a man. A fourth, a female interrogator, was reprimanded for taking off her uniform to expose her T-shirt — an action deemed demeaning for many Muslim men.
Details of the four other abuse cases in the report have not been released by the U.S. government, despite requests for more than a month by The Associated Press.
Action borne of hopelessness?
Iqbal, one of the men in the lawsuit, said he gave his Guantanamo interrogator a false confession because he felt hopeless. He said after being asked repeatedly if he was a man seen on a videotape with Osama bin Laden, he finally relented and said yes.
He said the interrogator told him prisoners who had been put into isolation for a year eventually caved in and that he should make it easier on himself by talking.
There are some 550 prisoners from 40 different countries being held at the camp.
Only four have been charged with war crimes. The first — Osama bin Laden's driver — is scheduled to begin his military trial Dec. 7. All face life in prison if convicted.


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Suikoden III (PlayStation 2)
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DescriptionAs the conflict between the mighty nation of Harmonia and the tribal inhabitants of the Grasslands evolved, a man who possessed the True Fire Rune stepped in. Called the Flame Champion, he led the Grasslands against Harmonian invasion, and eventually unleashed the power of his rune in a decisive battle, causing the death of many people on both sides. Harmonia retreated, and the Flame Champion disappeared. An uneasy truce was achieved, but the relationship between the Grasslands and the neighbor merchant nation of Zexen grew steadily worse.
Chris Lightfellow, known as the "Silver Maiden", is the captain of the Zexen Knights, commanding its forces after a truce agreement between Zexen and the Grasslands has been broken. She is increasingly dissatisfied with the Zexen leadership, and is determined to find her missing father. Hugo is the son of Lucia, the chief of the Karaya clan of the Grasslands. When he finds his village in flames, he swears revenge against the nation of Zexen and its knights. Meanwhile, Harmonia's authorities send an enigmatic mercenary leader named Geddoe to investigate rumors concerning the return of the Flame Champion.
The events of Suikoden III take place sixteen years after those described in its predecessor. The game retains many distinguishing gameplay features from the series' previous installments, including equipment of magic runes with limited spell uses instead of the more common magic points system; the possibility to recruit 108 characters (Stars of Destiny), many of which can participate in battles; customization of a castle serving as army headquarters, etc. Tactical army battle mechanics are similar to those employed in the second installment.
The game's most significant new feature is its so-called "Trinity Sight System". Instead of controlling a single main protagonist, the player takes the roles of Chris, Hugo, and Geddoe during the course of nine chapters (three per character). These chapters focus on the conflict between the Grasslands and Zexen, and represent three different points of view on the events. Afterwards the player must select the character he or she considers the principal protagonist of the game. The game also includes two optional chapters told from the point of view of another character.
In addition to leveling up and raising the effectiveness of their weapons and armor, characters can also learn skills - passive abilities that improve the their combat performance, such as parrying, dealing higher damage, acting quicker, etc. Magic spells typically take longer time to cast, which can be remedied by improving a correspondent skill. Some magic spells also have area effects, dealing damage to enemies and allies alike. The player controls six characters in battle, divided into three pairs: the leaders of the pairs are actively controlled, while their companions act according to AI routines.
Promo Images
Alternate Titles
- "幻想水滸伝III" -- Japanese spelling
- "幻想水浒传3 (Huanxiang Shuihuzhuan 3)" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
- "Gensou Suikoden III" -- Japanese title
Part of the Following Groups
- Console Generation Exclusives: PlayStation 2
- Gameplay feature: Multiple endings
- Games made into comics
- Inspiration: Book - Shuihuzhuan / Water Margin
- Inspiration: Literature
- Middleware: RenderWare
- Suikoden series
- Suikoden universe
User Reviews
|Trinity Sighs
|Unicorn Lynx (181413)
|Blows "Final Fantasy" out of the water, if you ask me.
|Lucas Schippers (59)
Critic Reviews
|Oct 22, 2002
|98 out of 100
|Digital Entertainment News (den)
|Aug 03, 2003
|9.6 out of 10
|Dec 27, 2002
|9.6 out of 10
|Into Liquid Sky
|9 out of 10
|Feb 03, 2002
|8.51 out of 10
|Nov 17, 2002
|84 out of 100
|8 out of 10
|Nov 05, 2002
|7.8 out of 10
|# Posts
|Last Post
|Series' creative peak
|anna zhang
Jul 17, 2013
|What a horrible soundtrack
|Donatello (463)
Jul 28, 2009
|I'm wondering...
|Unicorn Lynx (181413)
Jul 03, 2007
1001 Video GamesSuikoden III appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Cancelled European releaseThe PAL release of Suikoden III was cancelled.
Game IntroAnimated intro of Suikoden III was produced by GONZO.
HorseAlthough Salome has no trouble riding his horse during cutscenes, it always seems to be absent during an actual monster battle. The other mounted Knights of Zexen don't seem to have this problem and ride bravely into battle...
- GameSpy
- 2002 – Best Use of Waterfowl of the Year (PS2)
Related Web Sites
- Konami: Suikoden III (Official website.)
- Suikosource (A fansite that contains a complete list of all the characters in all the games, including their background stories. It also contains information about the game world's time-line and geography as well as fan art and gameplay guides.)
etempest (1083) added Suikoden III (PlayStation 2) on Apr 28, 2003
Other platforms contributed by Sciere (801732)
Credits (33 people)
25 developers, 8 thanks
Developed By:
Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo Inc."AJO KOETE" written by:
Konami of America Inc.VP Marketing:
Department XLocalization Producer:
Lani Minella, Audio GodzQA Manager:


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Exercises For Good Posture For Seniors And The Elderly
Chin Tuck and Jut
Exercise for good posture for seniors and the elderly is vital to maintain when performing exercises when standing or sitting in a chair. While sitting in a chair, try to maintain a neutral spine in order to support your muscles in proper alignment.
Our vertebrae should be nicely stacked one on the other with a small lumbar curve.Think of lifting your ribs, then bringing your shoulders back and down to achieve good form. This will allow plenty of space for your lungs to expand and your respiratory muscles to do their job well.
Try this simple exercise below to begin your journey to good posture. Breathe normally while relaxing in a chair to perform the chin tuck and jut.
Purpose of this exercise
Provides good feedback on correcting faulty posture habits. Strengthens the cervical retraction muscles for better support of good posture.
Step 1
Begin by sitting comfortably in a chair. Relax your spine and lift your ribs.
Step 2
Slowly tuck your chin in, then down to your chest. Then continue the exercise by jutting your chin forward.Relax and return to a neutral position.
Breathe normally in through the nose and out through the mouth
Make sure you sit with your ribs lifted and shoulders back and down. Try looking down when bringing chin to chest, then straight ahead for chin forward position unless this makes you dizzy. Don't hold your breath, breathe normally. Remember in step one to bring your chin back first, then down to your chest.
Take it up a notch
Take your finger and use it to push your chin back when beginning the exercise. This will bring your spine in the correct position before you move your chin to chest.
How to do Chin Tuck and Jut
More Posture exercises
FIRST: Make sure to sign up for my Eldergym® Senior Fitness Newsletter to make the most of these exercises and receive my free 4 week exercise program!
1. Arm Ups
- Improve the flexibility of your ribs to assist in breathing.
- Increase your ability to lift the ribs and bring the shoulders back into proper position.
- Helps correct faulty posture by bringing the spine into neutral, shoulders and chin back.
- Assists in the flexibility of the chest, improving respiration and lung functioning.
- Provides good feedback on correcting faulty posture habits.
- Strengthens the cervical retracting muscles for better support of good posture.
- Improve the flexibility of your shoulders and rib cage.
- Helps bring your spine into a better erect posture.
- This is a great exercise to do to "set" your spine and shoulders during the day.
- Helps position your spine in a comfortable neutral position.
- Corrects faulty posture by positioning your shoulders below your ears.
6. Wall Tilts
- Helps bring your lower back into correct posture.
- Strengthens your pelvis and buttock muscles.
Resources Check For Safety


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Two weeks ago, I set foot in Europe for the very first time. Seven countries, five tournaments, three months, and a once in a lifetime trip.
I had a vague idea of what I was getting into, and it didn't really occur to me that I would be roughly four thousand miles away from home until I woke up in my small hotel room in Munich and thought "well, what am I going to do today?"
Fast forward to the present, and after becoming familiar with the European metro and guarding myself with some very basic German phrases, I've started to get into the groove of being a full-time tourist. Thus far, I've visited Munich, Lienz, and Vienna, with most of my time thus far spent in Lienz for the Dolomiten Bank Open.
Just a city of roughly 12,000 people, Lienz is surrounded by the Alps and is not too far off from the Italian border. Known for its nearby ski resorts, the quaint Austrian city finds itself open to tourists year-round from Europe and across the world.
Of course, I wasn't here to ski, but rather to compete in the Dolomiten Bank Open, one of the premier chess tournaments in Austria. While relatively unknown in the US, the tournament brought players from across the globe: Singapore, Australia, India, Norway, and (with my participation) the United States, to name a few. Even Russian Grandmaster Evgeny Romanov and Magnus Carlsen's former coach Simen Agdestein tried their hand in what proved to be a tough open section!
Aside from all the packing and planning my accommodations, much of my preparation for this trip was on the chessboard. As you may recall, my last tournament in Philadelphia didn't exactly inspire confidence, and I was a little worried about how I would fare against European competition. Before I left, I made some decisions about how I would approach tournament play.
1) Don't get too carried away with prep. Unlike tournaments in the US, most major European events are one game a day, meaning that every game is just one database search away from a comfortable opening position.
While getting a good feel for your opponent's repertoire is a good idea, trying to put together targeted preparation for an opponent you don't know isn't impractical (for players rated 2000-2200). In my tournament, three of my nine opponents played a completely new opening or move order, rendering some of my preparation useless. In short, spend an hour reviewing some lines, but then spend the rest of the day exploring the city!
2) Don't worry about ratings – at all! After the Liberty Bell Open, I decided to not apply to get my European tournaments USCF rated. I was a little worried with how shaky my play was in Philadelphia, and I thought if I had a bad tournament in Europe, the stress to perform could ruin my trip. My FIDE rating started at 1882, so international titles are really out of question. As I've said a few times here on Chess^Summit, when in doubt, just play chess!
… of course, in deciding to not make this "tour" USCF rated, I passed on a roughly 35-40 point gain (after the FIDE to USCF rating conversion), which would have been my greatest gain in a single tournament since August of 2015. We'll see how this pans out by the end of my trip, but at the end of the day, there's no deadline to make master!
3) Don't be afraid to try new things! With ratings out of the way, tournaments here also give me a chance to play new openings, as well as practice some old ones. I had five whites this tournament, but I chose not to play my favorite opening, the English, at all! Barring a single game against fellow Chess^Summit co-author Beilin Li, I had played the English with every game as White dating back to 2014. In what proved to me to be my biggest surprise of the tournament, I scored an unbeaten 4/5 against stronger opponents from the White side of the board.
So how did I do?
In my first European tournament, I put together a solid 4.5/9 in a strong open section. My FIDE rating looks to gain upwards of 50 points, and I'm a lot more confident in my play with less than a week to go before the Liberec Open. I still think there are areas of my game that need to improve, but when comparing this tournament to past outings like the Liberty Bell Open or the World Open, I'm very pleased with my progress. Here are some of my over the board highlights!
It wasn't clear I would get an even score until the end of the tournament. Thanks to some jet lag and poor calculation early in the tournament, I started 2/6 and was in need of some points. Luckily, I was able to finish the last three rounds 2.5/3, thanks in part to a quick win in round 7. Black just played 10…Ba6, what's the easiest way for me to attack Black?
I would say I thought the most on this move, and then the rest of the game finished relatively quickly. This was a great win, especially since I tend to win more positional games than tactical ones. I think winning this game the way I did gave me a lot of confidence in the last two games.
After putting together a weird draw in the eighth round, I sat at 3.5/8 with one chance with White to get an even score. While it's a known cliché to draw the last round, I really wanted to win, and I pushed myself.
Luckily for me, I was rewarded and after dominating the whole game with White, I managed to put away my opponent with a nice move here. Can you find it?
King safety once again proves to be the key theme! With this nice zugzwang idea, I clinched my third win of the tournament and finished 4.5/9!
With a few days to rest before my next tournament, I'm visiting Vienna and Prague on my way to Liberec, Czech Republic.
Though I have yet to see Prague, I have to say Vienna is a must-see city. While the city has grown to meet 21st century demands, its maintained its historical foundation and culture. Though I'll only have two full days here, there's so many things to do – visit the Schönbrunn Palace, go to the Museums Quartier, or simply just walk the streets near Stephensplatz. Hopefully when I spend a day here in March on my way to Budapest, the gardens across the city will be greener!
My next post will be on March 7th, where I will be writing from Dresden after having finished the Liberec Open alongside Pitt teammate John Ahlborg! Until next time!


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A FEATURE, part of our series celebrating a lifetime's achievement by Seamus Heaney,
By Rebecca Pelan
Seamus Heaney's death on 30 August 2013 evoked a level of public reaction that had not been seen in Ireland for a long time. His funeral, which took place on Monday, 2 September 2013 at the Sacred Heart Church, Donnybrook in south Dublin, was attended by dozens of mourners, including prominent representatives from politics and the arts, and was broadcast live on television and radio via RTÉ, the nation's public service broadcaster. The day before the funeral, in a rare connection between the worlds of sport and literature, some 80,000 Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) fans, at an All-Ireland semi-final match between Dublin and Kerry, followed the observation of one minute's silence with three minutes of applause. Heaney's death took up headlines and column inches for days, while tributes from everyday people through to political leaders, of all colours, continued for some time. The passing of Seamus Heaney was, to all intents and purposes, an event of national significance in the Republic of Ireland. Yet Heaney was from Northern Ireland and, like most people from that part of the world, always remained connected to it, despite having lived in the Republic since 1972: 'I am always in it [the north], in a way. I was just dwelling elsewhere' (McCartney 2007). Heaney's substantial creative output, from his earliest poetry to his interpretations of classical texts, reveals a writer who remained engaged with Northern Ireland and its politics throughout his entire literary career, but whose perspective expanded, over time, to take account of what he called 'the disorders of the world' (O'Driscoll 409).
Throughout his career Heaney traversed a difficult path between the realities of his life – what he came to call his 'co-ordinates of consciousness' (Heaney, 2004: 415) – and his belief in the imaginative potential of poetry to provide alternative solutions to political problems. At the heart of these 'co-ordinates' is Heaney's idyllic childhood in rural south Derry and his acute awareness of growing up as a member of the minority nationalist (Catholic) community within the unionist – (Protestant) dominated six-county British Province of Northern Ireland at a time when the iniquitous political situation, which culminated in the conflict known as 'the Troubles', was relatively uncontested, but fermenting:[i]
When I began to write in 1962, one of my first attempts was a poem about Loyalist emblems cut into the stone pier beside Carrickfergus Castle… but what's interesting to me now is that I'd gone delving straight away into the sectarian seam of Northern life. At that stage I was a graduate with a job, a self-respecting adult of sorts, but I was still subject to the usual old Northern Ireland reminders that I'd better mind my Fenian manners…. the whole gerrymandered life of the place seemed set to continue. (O'Driscoll 65)
Given the entirely reductive and unavoidable polarisations that occurred as a result of 'the Troubles', it is perhaps not surprising that Heaney's journey from an unremarkable rural childhood in one of Northern Ireland's most contentious border counties to that of the greatest Irish poet since W B Yeats has generated strong and often opposing views of his work, often based less on literary achievement than on grounds of political motivation. For hard-line Republicans, Heaney has always been far too reluctant to take sides; for moderate nationalists, his efforts to locate the violence in the North within historically-based atrocities was seen as a compromise of his creative principles; whilst for many hard-line unionists, Heaney is, without qualification, a Catholic/nationalist and, thus, political writer, whose loyalties are already fixed to one side of the conflict. John Wilson Forster, for example, viewing Heaney in a political, rather than a poetic context, stated in 1991 that:
Heaney has largely ignored the Protestant making of the north-east Ulster into its once-distinctive industriousness. … Heaney admires those who 'beat real iron out' but in Ireland it was most commonly the Ulster Scot who beat real iron out and who took fierce pride in workmanship. I sometimes fear that in future Heaney and Ulster will become synonymous, the way that Yeats and Ireland became synonymous for American scholars who took their Irish history from the poet.' (177)
However, criticism of Heaney has by no means been limited to those from the 'other' community. Ciarán Carson, himself a Northern poet, nationalist and current Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, accused Heaney in 1975 of having an ambivalent attitude towards the violence that was occurring in the North: Heaney, Carson said, 'seems to have moved […] from being a writer with the gift of precision, to become the laureate of violence – a myth maker, an anthropologist of ritual killing, an apologist for the situation, in the last resort, a mystifier' (Carson 183). Similarly, Northern Irish novelist, Robert McLiam Wilson, mercilessly satirised Heaney as a fence-sitting opportunist in his 1996 novel, Eureka Street:
Shague Ghintoss, the poet, had been awarded a knighthood and the Just Us party's very first Hero of the Revolution Award. This unfortunate conjunction had caused him some unease until a fresh-faced young hack had asked him whether he was going to accept both awards as some kind of pan-ecumenical gesture, an attempt to build bridges between the divided traditions. Ghintoss's eyes had gleamed suddenly. 'Yes', he had said. 'Funny you should mention it.' (190)
As evidenced in his work as well as in his theories on the role of poetry in society, Heaney stands a good distance from the kind of cynical engagement with the political world that McLiam Wilson suggests and is equally distant from any aesthetic notion of creativity inevitably being damaged by engagement with politics. Instead, poetry represented for Heaney a suitable mediator between the political and aesthetic realms. The challenge, he believed, was to maintain a balance between keeping the creative work from playing to any one political agenda while, at the same time, maintaining the poet's responsibility to carry out the work that needs to be done according to her or his own conscience (Vellino 49).
In (1995), Heaney outlines his belief that:
In the activity of poetry . . . there is a tendency to place a counter-reality in the scales – a reality which may be only imagined but which nonetheless has weight because it is imagined within the gravitational pull of the actual and can therefore balance out against the historical situation. This redressing effect of poetry comes from it being a glimpsed alternative, a revelation of potential that is denied or constantly threatened by circumstances. (Heaney, 1995: 192. My emphasis)
So much of Heaney's oeuvre can be seen as a search to strike just such a balance, and this alone reveals him to be a much more complex and politically astute writer than many of his early critics would have had us believe. When imbalance entered the picture, which it often did, Heaney took steps to correct it. His poem 'Requiem for the Croppies' (1966), for example, was written to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Easter uprising and commemorated the Irish rebels of 1798. It was, in Heaney's terms, never meant to say 'up the IRA or anything like that'. Rather, for Heaney, it was 'silence-breaking rather than rabble-rousing' (Rahim). Yet, despite having read the poem to Protestant and Catholic audiences alike, following the out-break of violent conflict in the early 1970s, Heaney ceased public readings of the poem in case the words should be misinterpreted as showing sympathy for IRA activity of the day:
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…
We moved quick and sudden in our own country. (Heaney, 2006: 27)
Heaney's relationship with Northern Ireland, in all its complexities, both personal and political, is evident throughout his extensive body of poetry (approximately 13 main collections), the earliest of which focus on childhood relationships and pastoral themes, though within the rural, northern context of his own childhood. It is not really until his collections Wintering Out in 1972 – the year of the highest death toll in 'the Troubles', and the same year that Heaney and his family left Northern Ireland permanently to live in the Republic following threats against him and his family – and North in 1975, that Heaney's explicit efforts to find a way to talk about the conflict in Northern Ireland within a broader humanistic context becomes evident. In both of these collections, Heaney reveals a new found interest in myth as a means of bypassing the crisis confronting both northern communities, and of finding a way to reconnect in a world beyond the raging sectarianism that existed: his attempt was to 'make a connection … between things that came to the surface in bogs, in particular in Danish bogs, and the violence that was coming to the surface in the north of Ireland' (Broadbridge, 1977). The attempt¸ however, brought mixed responses with many contemporary critics interpreting Heaney's reach into the past as a refusal to engage with the realities of the present.
A 1980 meeting on a train from Belfast to Dublin between Heaney and Danny Morrison, then Sinn Féin's publicity director, led Heaney to believe that he was the subject of renewed pressure from Sinn Féin to take sides in the Northern conflict.[ii] The meeting became the source of his poem The Flight Path:
For fuck's sake, are you
Going to write something for us?
If I do write something,
Whatever it is, I'll be
Writing for myself. (Heaney, 1996: 26)
Always cautious about being mistaken as a spokesman for republicanism and its associated violence, Heaney's commitment to Irish nationalism never wavered, but neither did his belief in the importance of allowing poetry to do what he believed it did best, even in the face of severe criticism:
In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil – no lyric ever stopped a tank. In another sense, it is unlimited. It is like the writing in the sand in the face of which accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed. (Heaney, 1998: 107)
In 1990, Heaney created a verse adaptation of Sophocles' Philoctetes, which he titled The Cure at Troy, commissioned as a touring production by the Field Day Theatre Company in Derry, and which leaves no doubt about its connection to the politics and violence that had been occurring in the north for some twenty years at that stage.[iii] The Cure at Troy allowed Heaney to speak, not only about the politics of the north at a time when questions were being raised about the efficacy of any peace talks that did not include all political players, but also allowed him to widen his perspective to reference the politics of South Africa at a time when the apartheid regime was coming to an end, marked by the release of Nelson Mandela and his inclusion as a political protagonist rather than an antagonist. Sophocles' original drama, Philoctetes, is set towards the end of the Greek-Trojan war and is centrally concerned with moral conflict. In adopting Sophocles' theme of moral righteousness, Heaney suggests that political deception can never be justified, and that common ground outside of politics simply must be found if conflicts are to be resolved, themes that were very relevant to both the conflict in the north and to the situation in South Africa, where experience had shown that progress could not be made without all parties being given the opportunity to participate in a democratic solution to the sociopolitical problems that were haunting both places.
In the choral prologue of The Cure at Troy, Heaney stresses the role of poetry as being 'the voice of reality and justice' in expressing 'terrible events' (Heaney 1991:2). However, it was the addition of an entirely new choral ode to his version of the drama – or, rather, one verse of the ode, which was recited rather than sung – that has had the greatest long-term impact:
History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
Though not the final lines of the lengthy choral verse, the words 'where hope and history rhyme' have achieved a fame all of their own. The premier of The Cure at Troy at the Guildhall in Derry in 1990 coincided with the election of Mary Robinson who quoted this section of the verse in her inaugural speech as the first woman President of Ireland; the core of the phrase also formed the title of Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams' memoir, Hope and History, in 1995, the year after the first IRA ceasefire since the start of 'the Troubles'; American President Bill Clinton quoted the verse during a visit to Ireland during the peace initiative which led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998; it became the title of anti-Apartheid campaigner and author, Nadine Gordimer's essay collection, Living in Hope and History in 2000; and, most recently, it was quoted by Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States, during a memorial service for a policeman killed during the Boston marathon bombing of 2013. A copy of the ode, signed by Heaney, was also Martin McGuinness' personal gift to Ian Paisley on the latter's retirement as First Minister in the Power-sharing Assembly of Northern Ireland. Heaney's response to the extensive use of the ode was characteristically modest: 'I was grateful to see the lines enter the language of the peace process, but very aware that they belonged in the realm of pious aspiration' (O'Driscoll 421).
Some fourteen years after The Cure at Troy, and with a substantial amount of poetry written in-between, Heaney wrote The Burial at Thebes (2004), his version of the classical tragedy Antigone, also by Sophocles, and commissioned by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin to mark its centenary celebrations. While both plays stay true to the originals in terms of themes and structure, the most significant difference in the way Heaney approached this play is in his representation of the politics of Northern Ireland and the wider world between 1990 and 2004 when the two plays were performed, respectively. This shift, I would suggest, is a useful gauge of Heaney's own political perspectives over different periods. Heaney openly acknowledged that he should have done things differently in The Cure at Troy:
Once the performances started I came to realize that the topical references were a mistake. Spelling things out like that is almost like patronizing the audience…. So, when I came to do the Antigone [The Burial at Thebes] I kept much more strictly to the original (O'Driscoll 421).
The Burial at Thebes (2004) avoids any of the direct references to the situation in Northern Ireland that were so evident in The Cure at Troy, which is not to say that Heaney felt it was no longer relevant. Rather:
Inner division of some kind is what delivers a lot of it. It didn't have to be sought in Northern Ireland. You were handed that situation. To go back to Creon and Antigone, nationalists – the minority within the state – were handling that question: to what extent your family or household gods were not recognised by the polis (the Greek body of artisans) and yet you were in the polis, getting your scholarships from them and reading their literature. I don't think I would claim any great hurt from that: it was a common situation. (McCartney)
Heaney did, however, weave into the play quite direct references to the Gulf wars and the invasion of Iraq by the United States, which had taken place in 2003, and included a sufficiently strong connection between Creon's treatment of Polyneices in Sophocles' original and that meted out in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay to avoid any misunderstanding that this was, in part, a commentary on current political crises. His response, when questioned about this, gives a very clear indication of the poet's own shift in perspective that had occurred after living in America for a number of years:
Northern Ireland did have its coherent miseries, but what we have to deal with now are the disorders of the world… we are all citizens of the Republic of Conscience…. During fourteen years in Harvard, I learned about being in America, how different it felt and they felt; and two occurrences particularly registered as a result: firstly, the attack on the Twin Towers and, secondly, the Afghanistan and Iraq crackdowns. You cannot distinguish between your condition as a creature of the times and your action as a scribbler. (O'Driscoll 409)
Seamus Heaney will probably always be something of an enigma to those who want to pigeonhole him as simply one thing or another. He truly loved the English language and its literature, and retained the utmost respect for the Queen and the royal family, but he openly confessed that his refusal of the Poet Laureateship in 1999, following the death of Ted Hughes, was largely a political decision, and he left no doubts about his objection to being included in The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry in 1982:
Don't be surprised if I demur, for,
Be advised
My passport's green,
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast the Queen.
("An Open Letter". Heaney, 1985: 25)[iv]
And what some might see as his contradictory behaviour continued to the end. In late 2012, the nationalist-dominated Belfast City Council introduced its new flag policy, allowing the Union flag to be flown only on designated days, such as royal birthdays, rather than as a permanent feature of buildings such as the Belfast City Hall. The decision was met with months of serious protest by unionists and loyalists. Heaney, who was always very clear about which side he came from in the north's political divide – 'it would be untrue to say that I was without a Catholic self-awareness' (O'Driscoll 66) – entered the flag debate in January 2013, by stating that: 'they [loyalists] have an entitlement factor …the flag is part of it. There's never going to be a united Ireland, so why don't you let them fly the flag' (McAleese).
Heaney was a writer with very clear nationalist sentiments, an abhorrence of violence of any kind, and a tolerance for his Protestant compatriots in Northern Ireland. Above all else, however, he was a firm believer in the potential of the poetic imagination to heal wounds and offer alternative solutions to intransigent political problems.
[i] Throughout this essay, I am using the terms 'Catholic'/'Protestant' and 'unionist'/'nationalist' loosely, to represent origins in relation to the two communities of Northern Ireland, rather than to suggest any strictly religious or political affiliation.
[ii] Heaney's interpretation of this meeting is quite different from that of Morrison's. See, Henry McDonald, 'Strangers on a Train: Heaney and Sinn Féin'. The Guardian/Observer 15 Feb. 2009. www.theguardian.com. Accessed 2 Feb. 2014.
[iii] For a full and detailed analysis of Heaney's versions of Sophocles' plays, see Brenda Carr Vellino, 'Seamus Heaney's Poetic Redress for Post-Conflict Societies'. Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 20. 1 (2008): 49-57.
[iv] Though, in fact, Heaney's first passport was not green: "Applying to Dublin wasn't even thought about… it was a sufficiently testing bureaucratic achievement for us to get the forms to Belfast. Convenience and unease were there in equal measure with the lion and the crown." (O'Driscoll 86)


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Kinks- One for the Road- Ray Davies
"When we're on stage is the only time when it's not serious," muses Kinks kingpin Ray Davies, the seminal band's lead singer and masterful songwriter. "There's so much recording nowadays that's got to be so high tech and so intense. (Recording live ) took some of the pressure off of it, because the guys in our band, they're pretty good. I'm probably the worst musician in the band. They're very good players, and this record One for the Road shows them off as players as well.""The Kinks have always been a very good live band," continues Sir Ray, now officially a "Well Respected Man" after being knighted by Prince Charles. "We're not fond of studio recording, we never have been, because we started off as a dance band, really, getting gigs at colleges and things. We find it boring recording tracks."
One of the best features of the Kinks 1980 double live album One for the Road was the balance of material across the distinct eras and multiple record labels by then of the veteran London British Invasion band that became harbingers of heavy metal with "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night", progenitors of punk rock with "Lola" and "David Watts", and purveyors of perfect pop with "Waterloo Sunset" and "Celluloid Heroes".
"Recording companies are worse than ex-wives. I think they hang onto things longer, and they get more cruel and more trivial the more that you deal with them. Especially when you leave them. They like to hang onto everything." " I think there's an energy in The Kinks' shows that goes kind of a step further," continues Ray in this classic rock interview. "The audience is very much a part of what we do. It's a subliminal thing that goes on. The audience is a very important factor in what we're doing. It's not just us going out, (you) seeing bands, you like their hits and (hearing them ) duplicate their hits, 'Thank you and good night', and go home. There's more to it than that. There's something else that goes on in a Kinks show. Sometimes it's nice, and sometimes it's hell out there! But you never know until we're on stage. It's similar I think to going to a football game," the Poet Laureate of Rock points out. " You know who might win, but you never can tell until the final whistle. It's a bit like a Kinks concert."
When I good-naturedly poke Sir Ray about the Kinks' reputation as being, shall we say, mercurial on tour from night to night, he didn't protest." Well, even when we're inconsistent we're the best band in the world," Davies chuckles." I remember doing Madison Square Garden ( in New York City ) for two sold out nights. I walked on stage, tripped over a microphone lead (cord), and fell into the orchestra pit! 'Rock star' isn't something that you can associate with The Kinks because it's everything that we're anti-. We've always been that way, and the more various managers and record companies have tried to make us posture and make us rock gods, there's something that turns us off of that. Even among our peers ( Beatles, Rolling Stones, Small Faces) we're regarded as outsiders, which is fine by me.That's why I think a lot of newer bands that come along they kind of identify with The Kinks. I suppose if they are the 'children of a family', then we are a lot like older relatives. The Kinks are sort of vagrant uncles that come back to the house on Sunday for the free meal!" – Redbeard


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A country that lies at the terminus of the central mountain structure of southern Europe. Greece is mentioned only in two later OT books (Dan 8:21; Dan 10:20; Dan 11:2; Zech 9:13). It figures prominently in the NT, however. During that period, the area now known as Greece was divided into two Roman provinces, Achaia (in the south) and Macedonia (in the north). Corinth and Athens were in Achaia; Philippi and Thessalonica were in Macedonia. Thus, Paul wrote letters to three churches in Greece (Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica), and he visited other cities there as well (Acts 16:9-18:18; 2Cor 2:12).
Dan 8:21
21The male goat is the king of Greece, and the great horn between its eyes is the first king.
Dan 10:20
20Then he said, "Do you know why I have come to you? Now I must return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I am through with him, the prince of Gree ... View more
Dan 11:2
2"Now I will announce the truth to you. Three more kings shall arise in Persia. The fourth shall be far richer than all of them, and when he has become strong t ... View more
Zech 9:13
13For I have bent Judah as my bow;I have made Ephraim its arrow.I will arouse your sons, O Zion,against your sons, O Greece,and wield you like a warrior's s ... View more
Acts 16:9-18:18
9During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us."10When he had seen the vi ... View more
2Cor 2:12
Paul's Anxiety in Troas12When I came to Troas to proclaim the good news of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord;
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02/01/2013 by Peter Tetrault 0 Comments
Our Unequal United States: Where you Live Matters
The healthcare marketplace in the U.S. is undergoing rapid, wholesale change with no end in sight. The population continues to grow and, more importantly, age. At the same time the total amount of knowledge and capabilities that exist in the medical field is growing at an exponential rate as scientifically generated results from the laboratory are translated into new treatment protocols at an ever faster pace. The knowledge required to function as a Primary Care Physician today dwarfs that required of the previous generation of physicians.
Additionally, and regardless of the final details, the role of government will continue to grow. The scope of the government's role will expand as implementation of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) is phased in over the next decade. Even if the ACA is repealed or significantly modified, the government's percentage of involvement will grow as the population ages and end-of-life costs continue to be the majority of an individual's medical lifetime cost.
Lastly, we are already facing staffing issues in the U.S. with vast discrepancies of accessibility to physicians based on where you live. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, there were 744,224 licensed and active physicians in the U.S. in 2011. Of those, 208,802 were aged 60 or older. At the same time there were 80,279 enrolled in the 137 accredited U.S. medical schools. Assuming no attrition, medical school graduates transitioning into their clinical residency (3 to 7 years) will average 20,070 per year, fewer than those retiring. Thus, a diminishing pool of physicians will be serving a dramatically growing population as the uninsured population of the U.S. (40+ Million) is absorbed into the covered population under the ACA.
Change in this marketplace is unavoidable unless we find a way to suspend the economic theory (law?) of supply and demand. As my IT friends like to joke about their projects: pick any two – (high) quality, (low) cost, or timeliness. Which of us would accept poor quality, delayed access or increased costs regarding our personal access to healthcare?
To me, the plain but not simple answer involves seriously addressing the supply side of the equation. But creating more MDs more rapidly is viable only in the longer term and probably only after medical schools have drastically revamped their existing educational model.
Demand can be somewhat mitigated by the transfer of tasks from MDs to non MD clinicians, by increasing MD efficiency through the careful application of new technologies and by executing against the universally discussed focus on creating and maintaining health as opposed to focusing on the treatment of illness.
Each potential solution, or combination of solutions, presents its own challenges. And it may be that we must do them all to prevent either an access crisis or a fiscal crisis.


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This article is courtesy of Cody B., Spanish master extraordinaire & learner of Japanese (full bio below).
Since I'm a nerd, I've sprinkled my own comments and observations into the article, too. – Niko
When it comes to learning a new language, there are three options:
(1) do nothing, and do not learn a new language,
(2) think that learning a certain language would be "really cool", but never do so, or
(3) actually follow through and learn the new language.
Today, I will discuss the topic of motivation in language acquisition, by exploring how a lack of it can be severely detrimental, while an abundance of it can be extremely rewarding. Lastly, if you are lacking motivation, I will share with you the art of securing it for yourself in order to guarantee success on your path.
Motivation Is Key
Motivation is the secret to achieving anything in life.
I have especially noticed this concept's tendency to perpetually reinforce itself throughout my experience learning languages. Between possession and lack thereof, I have found a night and day difference in my ability to retain information, which can feel like a rollercoaster on my track to fluency.
I realize that when riding this rollercoaster, I must position myself on the first hill, always looking forward on my climb to the top. If I start looking over the side, I will feel scared, discouraged, and hopeless. By reminding myself that I was the one who decided to get on this ride, I recall that I did so because I wanted to have a fun, thrilling experience, and when the ride is over, be able to share what a great adventure it was with others. This keeps me motivated, and reminds me that once I reach the top of the first hill, I will have a blast on the rest of the ride.
The first step toward regaining motivation is realization of where you are, and then accepting that fact. Otherwise, no progress can be made. I have wasted days, weeks, months, and years comparing myself to secondary speakers of my target language(s), wondering how on Earth they had achieved their level of proficiency, and all along, I wasn't realizing that the simple explanation was that they were studying while I was not. I was too busy examining the people in the first car, instead of exploring my own.
It wasn't until I examined the first car a little closer, that I began noticing the people there didn't just miraculously manifest at the pinnacle of the hill, with the ability to ascertain everything around them. I realized that they too, like myself, had once been in my position on the track to linguistic competency. Focused in, I saw that their actions were far different from mine, and in time understood this to be the reason for the respective success and failure.
Simultaneously accepting and arming myself with this knowledge, I became equipped with the tools and weapons needed to build and fight my way to the top of that hill. The famous School House Rock motto "Knowledge Is Power" is a strong message, albeit a little lacking. I discovered through this process that it is not that knowledge alone is powerful, but rather, it is only through the implementation of the knowledge that it becomes powerful. For too long I had the knowledge, but was not implementing it. I knew the steps to take. I had the examples right in front of me, but was not walking forward.
Since this time, I have woken up. I have accepted that there is no substitute for hard work, for time-in, for study and practice, for rinse and repeat until clean. Now, with tools and weapons in hand, I can confidently proceed, assured that as I continue with perseverance, I will inevitably reach the summit, victorious.
If while reading you see an image of yourself, and now feel ready to finally take your own steps to actualize your dream of being able to navigate your language of choice with ease, please continue, as I venture some suggestions:
First, make the decision: I'm all in.
Commit to this standard, and don't back away from it. Take emotions out of the equation. Emotions will come and go, but your target language is forever. No matter what happens along the way, the end goal is positive, and it is what you want for yourself. Keep your attention there, and you will never fail.
Once you have resolved to see the task through to the end, I recommend adopting the following practices: (if you haven't already)
1. Keep a language notebook
Maintaining a language notebook is the single best decision I have made on my path to acquiring a language.
It allows me to permanently store every piece of new information I discover about a language, creating a repository of material to draw from during my study time. There are a number of ways to use and organize a language notebook. This freedom is greatly rewarding to the imagination, and adds depth of meaning to what you write and how it is written.
Furthermore, a notebook is a physical, tangible thing. It makes learning the language more real. Instead of just thinking about your target language, and vaguely recalling abstract concepts in your mind, you can open your notebook, and see it on the page in front of you, in your own handwriting.
As daily connections with the notebook are made, consistency is built, progress is made, pride in accomplishment blooms, and ample motivation to move forward with your studies is secured.
2. Become friends with native speakers
This picture, by the way, is of Rei and I in Jeju… with all of my new Korean cousins! Meeting new family has been one of the biggest motivators for learning a language I've yet to experience… along with meeting new friends ^_^
Native speakers are literally your best friends when acquiring a language.
I myself have been guilty of subscribing to the idea that I must or should acquire a certain skill level in my target language before interacting with native speakers. However, I eventually realized that this was the very definition of counter-productivity. As a language learner (especially those who study independently) there is a tendency to separate the language itself from those who speak it. This causes harm to the student by artificially imposing a false reality onto the nature of language.
A language is not a dead, inanimate concoction that you must dully beat into your brain. Rather, it is a vibrant, interesting living entity, full with the ideas, emotions, and stories of those who use it. If a student spends too much time removed from other speakers, they can slip away into apathy, becoming disinterested in their passion for the language, and eventually stopping altogether, by persuading themselves they never wanted it at all.
To save yourself from this fate, actively seek out native (or secondary) speakers. There are tons of great people out there, who are friendly and helpful. Building a genuine connection with speakers of your target language will give you many solid reasons and (the motivation necessary) to advance your current level.
Additionally, time spent with other speakers will provide valuable listening and speaking practice, and the opportunity to receive feedback and ask questions.
If you're ready to take the plunge, you can find lessons on italki or Cafetalk, and you can find language exchange partners on sites like Lang-8, MyLanguageExchange, and HelloTalk. Also you can make friends with fellow students of Japanese in NihongoShark.com's (absolutely free and awesome) chat community.
3. Build your life around the language
In order to achieve measurable proficiency in a language, it must be truly present in your life.
To facilitate this, it will require somewhat of a lifestyle commitment. There is so much "hidden" time in the day, one can utilize to study a language: when getting ready in the morning, when commuting to work, when cleaning the house, and even when sleeping, if you are so bold. Be inventive. Every moment is an opportunity. By seeing time in this way and taking action, progress in your target language will be virtually unavoidable.
The next time you are talking with a native friend, you will be pleasantly surprised by how many new words and phrases you can pull out of thin air. This feeling is so rewarding, you will be motivated to keep the language with you all the time, thereby constantly progressing.
4. Be systematic in your studies
I have been guilty of purchasing book after book about (or in) my target language, and never looking at any of them.
I find that the idea of having a lot of books causes you to feel like you are making progress, but you end up jumping from book to book so often that you end up with a bunch of small pieces that cannot be made sense of or put together.
In my experience, to make quality progress, one's method of study must be systematic. I recommend going book by book, and extracting all the new information you can about your target language before moving on to the next one. Furthermore, supposing that the books are ordered by advancing difficulty, make sure you have a solid base in the content of one book before moving on to the next.
Also, studying by topic is extremely useful. Being able to discuss a certain subject fully will ensure that you do not get lost in a conversation, and as you link related topics together, you will be able to increasingly chart and navigate the map of your target language successfully.
Be sure to study areas of the language that are relevant to you in your life. (If you are not a scientist, learning scientific terms which you will never use is a waste of time.) By personalizing your studies, you will maintain interest and enthusiasm in your endeavor, by adding intrinsic value to yourself and the language.
If you are having trouble staying motivated, I hope this article has shed some light on the underlying reasons you may have been having difficulty.
Have you tried any of the suggestions given?
What was your experience?
How do you stay motivated?
Well, Cody, since you ask, here are some of my own tricks for staying motivated…
I usually turn to 4 places for added and continuous motivation:
1) Aspects of the language I love. If you're drawn to manga, then try to read manga. You don't have to read and understand a whole manga all at once. Just a page here, a page there. The same goes for anime, literature, YouTube videos, games–whatever it is about Japanese that you find enjoyable, just try to do a little bit of it, and don't be discouraged when it's too hard; be excited about it not being hard some day. Learning 1 new word is sufficient progress.
2) Study methods I love. I try very hard to create study patterns that I enjoy. Think about what parts of studying you find boring, a hassle, or intimidating. Something that's a "hassle" could be looking at your PC, or it could be putting your headphones in–little stuff like that can actually deter studying a lot. It's like paying more for cut fruit. It's more expensive, but it's so much easier to eat that it won't ever rot on my counter, because I don't have to cut it! The same goes for the place and time I study–I really want to enjoy these.
3) Discipline & Momentum. These will always be a struggle. But disciple is a skill. So if you work to study with discipline consistently, it will start to feel easier. Also, momentum will increase, which means that it actually does get easier. Building habits and removing barriers is also helpful for this. I talk about these a lot in The Hacking Japanese Supercourse.
4) Listening to inspirational speakers. I often pull the audio from motivational speech tracks on YouTube or from 8tracks.com, then I listen to it when I go for walks. I never expected myself to be into that kind of stuff, but I've learned that it's a great, refreshing way to take a break from work or studying.
By the way thanks for the article! ^_^
Let's all keep swimming, yo.
For more Japanese goodness, check out:


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Screening of the documentary, Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story, followed by a panel discussion of food waste experts.
Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farms, through retail, all the way to the back of their fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping cold turkey and survive only on foods that would otherwise be thrown away. In a nation where one in 10 people is food insecure, the images they capture of squandered groceries are both shocking and strangely compelling. But as Grant's addictive personality turns full tilt towards food rescue, the 'thrill of the find' has unexpected consequences.
Featuring interviews with TED lecturer, author, and activist Tristram Stuart and acclaimed author Jonathan Bloom, Just Eat It looks at our systemic obsession with expiry dates, perfect produce, and portion sizes, and reveals the core of this seemingly insignificant issue that is having devastating consequences around the globe. Just Eat It brings farmers, retailers, inspiring organizations, and consumers to the table in a cinematic story that is equal parts education and delicious entertainment.


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A Romantic Guy Tagged His Girlfriend's House As A Proposal
Every girl has once dreamed of her proposal and wedding, but what if your boyfriend tagged your house and makes it as a proposal? How would you feel? Ugh…I would probably be like, how the hell am I going to clean this? But still, this is so sweet and so romantic, I am sure this guy's girlfriend would say yes!
Be mine
I am nothing without you
February 28th
Will you marry me?
The whole picture
?????yes? or not?
Will you say yes to this? Share your ideas with us!
Source: imgur