text:
Marc Andreessen wrote his famous Wall Street Journal essay "Why Software Is Eating the World" in 2011. Today, his prediction—that software companies would take over large parts of the economy as various industries are disrupted by software—has largely come to pass.
Software has indeed changed the game, with software and online-based services making it possible to build companies with very little infrastructure. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the tech stack—a new term that refers to the suite of software tools that a company uses.
How important is the tech stack? Important enough that it's already gone mainstream. The New York Times Magazine featured the rise of the tech stack in a recent issue. Writer John Herrman says:
"Stack," in technological terms, can mean a few different things, but the most relevant usage grew from the start-up world: A stack is a collection of different pieces of software that are being used together to accomplish a task. A smartphone's software stack, for instance, could be described as a layered structure: There's the low-level code that controls the device's hardware, and then, higher up, its basic operating system, and then, even higher, the software you use to message a friend or play a game. An individual application's stack might include the programming languages used to build it, the services used to connect it to other apps or the service that hosts it online; a "full stack" developer would be someone proficient at working with each layer of that system, from bottom to top.
Understanding your company's tech stack
Every company has a tech stack. Even a one-person freelancer writing operation has a stack. Her stack might look like this: Google Docs for drafting and saving articles; Slack for chatting with editors; Wordpress for her portfolio and blog; MailChimp for her weekly newsletter; Skype to conduct interviews with clients.
The combination of these tools is her tech stack, and by sharing it, she can not only get feedback from other freelance writers and gain insights into new ways to use the tools she's already chosen, but she can also learn about new tools that she hasn't tried yet.
"The larger the business, the larger the tech stack," writes Herrman. "The stack isn't just a handy concept for visualising how technology works. For many companies, the organising logic of the software stack becomes inseparable from the logic of the business itself."
So what's in your stack?
A social network for tech stacks
Your tech stack is ever evolving, and it's helpful to see what tools other companies are using. Many people do this in forums, blogs, or even in private emails between colleagues. But in Silicon Valley, where stack are premium, it is especially important to compare and share tech stacks at scale.
StackShare is a startup where 100,000+ developers, engineers, VPEs, and CTOs from Silicon Valley's top companies, including Airbnb, Instacart, and Spotify, share and discuss their tech stacks. Any engineer, entrepreneur, or CTO can go to StackShare to see exactly what software combinations are powering growth at the fastest-growing companies in the U.S.
Sharing tech stacks means companies can learn what tools their peers and competitors are using, while job-seekers can discover which tools are most in demand and used at their dream companies. It's a social network for tech stacks, and has even been dubbed the LinkedIn for developers—a place where companies share, show off, and discuss the tools that make up their tech stacks.
What you can learn from one company's stellar stack
Companies can save countless hours by learning what tech stacks their peers and competitors are using—instead of wasting resources on solutions that don't work, and reinventing the wheel.
For example, HotelTonight, the startup that connects users to same-day hotel deals, has shared its entire tech stack on the platform, and even went further when Jatinder Singh, its director of platform engineering went on the StackShare podcast. We discussed a few of the tools that helped HotelTonight to go from minimum viable product to full app launch in two months—and to planning an IPO in only 7 years.
HotelTonight shows users a personalised selection of 15 hotels each time they open the app. By switching from Ruby and MySQL to Elasticsearch, HotelTonight cut down query time from 1 second to 15 milliseconds. When it was building its tech stack, HotelTonight discovered that the cache tool of the hour was Varnish. But many of its peers worked at Fastly, so HotelTonight adopted it—and cut down its servers by 4x. Most people use Datadog as a simple dashboard, but HotelTonight uses it for unified alerts—from load balances to databases and caches. If anything is out of whack, Datadog alerts HotelTonight's designated person on call.
Stacks for recruiting (and job searching)
StackShare's data also lets you know what tools are the most popular. Founders and CTOs can use this data to choose the most popular tools that will make hiring a breeze, while job seekers can use the data to explore which tools are most in-demand so they can study up and learn the software that is most prevalent in the market.
Job seekers can use Stack Match, StackShare's job search tool, to choose what tools they would like to work with, what tools they don't want to work with, specific roles they're looking for, and their preferred location. They can also simply browse the stacks of companies they are interested in to get an idea of what kind of tools those companies are using.
The future of the tech stack
Software is the present and future, and tech stacks are constantly evolving. New tools launch all the time, and as companies adopt new technologies, their stacks will reflect the changing industry. As software gets smarter, more tools will be developed to replace tasks that you do manually, making your tech stack more important with each day.
The rise of the tech stack raises several interesting questions. In a software-driven world, what is the role of the technology office in leading business change? What does a company's—or a person's—tech stack say about them? How will the stack redefine the way people seek jobs and the way companies recruit?
The most important thing that founders and business owners can do now is get a sense of their current stack, study up on their competitors' tech stacks, and keep abreast of developments in software and tools. Because software is eating the world, and it's best to make sure you don't get eaten, too.
Yonas Beshawred, founder and CEO, StackShare (opens in new tab)
Image source: Shutterstock/violetkaipa


text:
|Acrylics on canvas panel, 12x12 inches
Anyhoo, this is a painting a really like, done for 8 Great Paintings lesson 5, 12 x 12 inches on canvas panel. I really like working on hard flat surfaces, like panels. Although the better-quality canvases (Blick Premier), which I'm buying these days, are a big improvement over the cheaper stretched canvases (some of which I still have left over from my art quilting days that I'm slowly using up).
Of the several movies watched recently, my two favorite were Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks, which I thought was surprisingly great, and Welcome, a French movie about a Kurdish refugee trying to swim the English Channel. Netflix recently got The Bridge Season 2, which I'll soon be watching. This is the Danish-Swedish crime drama that I saw the first season of recently.
Other than that, it's pretty quiet on the western front. Gray cloudy mornings, warm sunny afternoons, and not much change in sight. It's all good. xx

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Did you know that obesity can affect not only a woman's ability to carry an infant to term but also could result in developmental problems for the baby? This is particularly concerning because obesity is on the rise in the United States.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) nearly half of women who become pregnant are overweight or obese before becoming pregnant. The CDC defines obesity as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30.0 or higher; overweight is defined as BMI 25 - 30. For example, a 5'5" woman who weighs 185 pounds has a BMI of 30.8.
Dr. Terry Groff, an obstetrician/gynecologist with Banner Health Clinic in Brush, Colorado, notes that he and his colleagues are concerned about the obesity trend because of the health problems it can cause the mom and for the baby.
How being overweight affects pregnancy
A woman who is obese while pregnant faces the following:
- A higher risk of miscarriage or stillbirth.
- A greater risk of gestational diabetes, which increases the chance of preterm labor, excessive birth weight for the baby, low blood sugar and type 2 diabetes for the mom later in life.
- An increased risk of having to have a Cesarean section rather than a vaginal delivery.
And after delivery, the problems continue for both mom and baby. Retaining extra weight after delivery is common, which in turn could set the stage for morbid obesity. This can lead to metabolic syndrome, a constellation of conditions that put one at greater risk for heart problems and type 2 diabetes. The new mom could encounter other chronic health problems associated with being overweight as well. It has been noted that women who are overweight during pregnancy are less likely to breastfeed new babies for the recommended times.
Risks to the baby
Babies born to overweight mothers are possibly at risk for future health issues such as:
- Metabolic syndrome
- Asthma
- Autism spectrum disorders
- Developmental delays
Dr. Groff says that the best time to address healthy weight during pregnancy is before a woman becomes pregnant.
Women who plan to have a baby should consult with their provider about healthy weight, nutrition and exercise. Many women face limited access to a variety of affordable healthy foods. Others may not have access to places for daily physical exercise. A health care provider can help women to become more aware of the importance of healthy weight during pregnancy and recommend programs to access the right foods, including fruits and vegetables and exercise programs.


text:
Total count: 2
Click the images below for a more detailed view :
Dr. Vincent Perrotta's Patient[ more ... ]
This 15 year old boy was very self conscious about bulging nipples. He had a case of gynecomastia. Dr. Perrotta removed the breast buds, which were causing the problem. This patient no longer is em[ more ... ]


text:
A "Sneak Peek" Inside Randy Fernandez aka BallinTwn's Sneaker Collection, Pt. 2
In the last video feature of our Sneak Peek Season 6, Editor-In-Chief George Kiel once again catches up with Los Angeles native Randy Fernandez. After showing us an amazing stash of Nike LeBrons in Part 1, Fernandez brings out a number of never-before-seen Air Jordan samples, rare Nike Sportswear product and a number of other prized possessions.
Click HERE incase you missed part 1


text:
Leave a Comment:
(6) comments
This is definitely something I need to change in the future. I was slow to join the mailing list bandwagon and my list–relatively speaking–is quite small. More people subscribe to my blog than my mailing list–but I post at least once a week to my blog, so I'm hearing what you're saying.
I also know I get over 200 emails a day. And I delete 98% of them without opening them. I've been reluctant to send out newsletters and emails to my list for that reason alone. But I think the real reason is I don't believe I have any additional content above and beyond the blog and the rare bit of actual news I have. So content is definitely something I'm going to have to work on.Reply
Good article. You talk about the fundamentals of e-mail marketing but there's a lack of focus on how many times you should be e-mailing and what you should be e-mailing. My big issue are both and there's not much on that however I get your point of how e-mail should be a prime focus.Reply
Hi Justin,
Conor does go into detail about what you should be emailing – perhaps reading the post again will help you. As for how many times to email, that's really up to you. Look at the analytics and open rates, and see how responsive people are to what you're sending them.
Remember, it's not about you, it's about what value you're offering readers. Hope that helps.Reply
Definitely something to keep in mind as I build my list.Reply
I'm actually really excited about email at the moment but want to build on the momentumReply


text:
Avalanche Advisory for Monday, April 16, 2018
Huntington Ravine has MODERATE and LOW avalanche danger. Central, Pinnacle, Odell, South and Escape Hatch have Moderate avalanche danger. Evaluate snow and terrain carefully to identify features of concern. All other forecast areas have Low avalanche danger. Watch for unstable snow on isolated terrain features.
Tuckerman Ravine has MODERATE avalanche danger. All forecast areas in Tuckerman Ravine have Moderate avalanche danger. Evaluate snow and terrain carefully to identify features of concern. The Little Headwall is once again an open stream and is not receiving an avalanche danger rating
AVALANCHE PROBLEM: Rain, which could be heavy today, will make wet slabs today's primary avalanche problem. Today's precipitation type will be the primary driver of instability in the snowpack. If we receive more plain rain, wetting and warming will decrease stability through the day. A greater proportion of frozen mixed precipitation will have a lesser impact on the stability of our currently refrozen and stable snowpack. Today's Moderate rating is distinctly different than Moderate ratings issued a week ago. Last week, new snow and wind made small avalanches possible in a number of areas. Avalanches were much more likely and much smaller than the large avalanches which are possible but less likely today. It's a low probability and high consequence kind of day. If the weather doesn't keep you out of the mountains, be mindful that though natural avalanches are unlikely today, they could be large and run a great distance.
WEATHER: We're rolling into day three of mixed precipitation on the mountain, and today should bring the greatest amount with approximately 2" of water. Temperatures should hover near freezing on the summit today. Freezing rain is currently falling on the mountain, though it's forecast to shift towards plain rain soon. Precipitation should be heaviest this afternoon and evening and continue to flirt with the line between rain and freezing rain. A changeover to snow is forecast to occur early tomorrow morning and result in 2-4" of snow during the day. It will also be a quite windy day today, with current ENE summit wind at 50 mph slated to increase with peak gusts over 100 mph occurring this evening.
SNOWPACK: New snow last week was followed by a significant melt and refreeze over the weekend, with small amounts of mixed wintry precipitation not resulting in new stability concerns. The upper snowpack is currently stable as a result. Instability should increase as the day progresses due to a significant rain event. While this rain is falling on refrozen surface snow, a number of robust melt/freeze crusts and dry snow exist deeper in the snowpack. This structure presents the possibility for rain water percolating down through the snow to weaken bonds or provide lubrication between layers. It's unlikely, but a large natural wet slab avalanche could certainly occur today. Large wet slab avalanches are particularly tricky to forecast, and today's forecast of either rain or freezing rain further complicates this puzzle. Pay close attention to the precipitation type and degree of wetting the snowpack receives as you assess conditions and make terrain decisions today.
Be sure to check out our Instagram posts (@mwacenter) for up to date photos and videos. You don't need an account to view them on your computer!
Please Remember:
• Safe travel in avalanche terrain requires training and experience. This advisory is just one tool to help you make your own decisions in avalanche terrain. You control your own risk by choosing where, when, and how you travel.
• Anticipate a changing avalanche danger when actual weather differs from the higher summits forecast. For more information contact the Forest Service Snow Rangers, the AMC at the Pinkham Notch Visitor Center, or the caretakers at Hermit Lake Shelters.
• Posted 7:35 a.m., Monday, April 16, 2018. A new advisory will be issued tomorrow.
Ryan Matz, Snow Ranger
USDA Forest Service
White Mountain National Forest


text:
With a LawnBott® robotic mower, homeowners can enjoy their summers without having to waste time cutting the grass. Isn't that what it's all about?
Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) March 28, 2013
Detroit, MI. Detroit Rock City! The Motor City! Well, gas motors traditionally. But this weekend, the Motor City gets to see a battery powered vehicle run for up to eight hours as LawnBott® of Greater Detroit will be exhibiting the LawnBott® robotic mowers at the Novi Home and Garden Show, April 5-7, 2013 at the Suburban Collection Showplace. For more information and pit passes, click here http://www.novihomeshow.com/.
Just as Americans take pride in their cars and trucks, we also take pride in our lawns. LawnBott® robotic mowers take the pain out of mowing the grass and help homeowners have a healthier lawn. LawnBott® is a line of completely automatic robotic mowers. From the LB3510 for larger yards to the new for 2013 LawnBott® LB75 robotic mower for smaller yards, there is a LawnBott® for almost every yard and home. The LawnBott® LB75 robotic mower is brand new for 2013 and brings robotic mowing to a larger audience offering fully automatic performance at a lower price. With key features such as fully programmable, LCD display, rain sensor, auto-recharging and capable of handling up to 3 zones for the ultimate in yard control, the LB75 sets the standard in affordable automatic mowers. See the video, here: http://youtu.be/6ZKZDkVihJA.
Owing to the importance of the Novi Home and Garden Show and for attendees from the Greater Detroit area, Hideki Tsuji, Sales Manager at Kyodo America, will be at the event to help answer homeowners questions in the LawnBott® of Greater Detroit booth. Since seeing is believing, LawnBott® of Greater Detroit will be offering live demos of the LawnBott® during the entire show. Ahead of the event, Mr. Tsuji stated, "With a LawnBott® robotic mower, homeowners can enjoy their summers without having to waste time cutting the grass. Isn't that what it's all about?"
Kyodo America Industries, Co., LTD, is an Atlanta, GA based manufacturer of lawn & garden products and the LawnBott robotic mowers. LawnBott's were originally developed in Italy and are making their way across the US and Canada. Since 2000, our robotic mowers have been helping homeowners maintain their yards without the sweat and aggravation of conventional mowers. To find out more information and the dealer who services your zip code, please visit our website at http://www.LawnBott.com.


text:
Office work is generally regarded as one of the most sedentary jobs there is. Cue the revolutionary but beautifully simple concept of the standing desk – a way for office workers to work productively and healthily. What do you need to know about these desks before installing them in your office?
A UK Business Insider article goes as far as to suggest that sitting down in your office job all day could be taking years off your life. Heart disease, musculoskeletal disorders and diabetes are just a few of the serious health conditions associated with a career spent sitting down.
Gauge interest
Standing desks generally don't come cheap, so do some research into how many of your employees are willing, able and likely to use them before you go all out and re-furnish the whole office. Perhaps you could make space for a small area designated solely to these desks and see how well they are used. There is also an option for sit/stand desks that enable employees to alternate between the two postures without moving desks. This could be a worthwhile consideration that encourages employees to stand up for intervals without interrupting their working day by moving.
Image Credit
Anti-fatigue mats
A sudden change from sitting to standing, or standing for long periods of time, can take its toll on your employees' feet and ankles. Anti-fatigue mats are usually recommended for use alongside these units, as they provide support and comfort to the lower body. If your employees are not comfortable, they won't use their desks; therefore, these small accessories are likely to be a worthwhile investment.
Monitor positioning
The position of a monitor is important for comfort and posture in both sitting and standing desks. In the case of standing desks, it is advised that the monitor is at arms' length from the employee and that the top of the monitor is at eye level. Using office fit out companies such as https://mobiusatwork.co.uk/ can be useful in determining the relevant health and safety obligations in such a change.
Standing desks are a big change, with big changes in workplaces often met with trepidation. When introduced properly, standing or sit/stand desks could be a positive change that will benefit the health, morale and productivity of your staff.


text:
Posted on May 26, 2011
Bit Shifter's full Blip Fest 2011 set
Bit Shifter's entire Blip Festival set is online now, with visuals by Visualicious. I've been listening to it all day at work. Thanks to Emily Feder for posting this and other great chip music acts from the festival!


text:
Report: Raising age limit an NBA priority
John Calipari, they're listening.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver, after meeting with NCAA president Mark Emmert on Friday, said he's responding to both the NBA owners' wishes and college athletics to examine raising his league's age limit from 19 to 20, according to ESPN.
"If we're going to be successful in raising the age from 19 to 20, part and parcel in those negotiations goes to the treatment of players on those college campuses and closing the gap between what their scholarships cover and their expenses," Silver said, according to ESPN. "We haven't looked specifically at creating a financial incentive for them to stay in college. That's been an option that has been raised over the years, but that's not something that is on the table right now."
The University of Kentucky coach John Calipari has pushed for the age change despite his success with so-called one-and-done players who declare for the draft after one year at UK. Just this week, James Young announced he'd become the 11th player in Calipari's five seasons coaching the Wildcats to do so with decisions from Julius Randle and the Harrison twins still to come.
The NBA's agreement with its players' union says the one-and-done portion of a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2011 can change at any time, according to ESPN's Brian Windhorst. If age limit changes are discussed, Silver said, the NCAA will get input.
Any adjustments are expected to help both sides by bringing more consistency to the college game and better-prepared players to the NBA ranks. To help in prospects' transitions, according to ESPN, Emmert and Silver discussed shortening the NCAA's shot clock and adjusting officiating.
The other side of the one-and-done argument involves players going to Europe to grow their game or playing in the NBA Development league rather than attending college.
"I think those are all things we have to look at," Silver told ESPN.
Jonathan Lintner can be reached at (502) 582-4199; follow him on Twitter @JonathanLintner.


text:
Supports PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, XLS, WPD, HTM, HTML files up to 5 MB
Overview n nWhat you will be doing n nThe Maintenance Coordinator oversees all incoming work order requests distribution of requests to maintenance technicians and follows up on completion of all..
Delivery Driver II Lead - 22000LK0 Description Why Sherwin-Williams Here we believe there s not one path to success we believe in careers that grow with you Whoever you are..
n n nSunrise Senior Living was again named as one of the Best Workplaces in Aging Services by Fortune and certified as a Great Place to Work by Activated Insights..
**Federal Senior Field Service Engineer** **DC Metro / Maryland area** At Dell Technologies, we take pride in providing our customers with a quality of service that more than matches the..
Description Doorways is an Arlington-based non-profit agency helping individuals and families create pathways out of homelessness, domestic violence and sexual assault leading to safe, stable and empowered lives. We envision..
OverviewnCUSTOMER SERVICE ASSOCIATE - TEMPORARYn nA Customer Service Associate (CSA) is responsible for providing a friendly, fun, solutions-focused, differentiated experience to every customer in our stores during the holiday season.n..
About this role: Wells Fargo is seeking a Teller in Consumer and Small Business Banking, as part of Branch Banking. Learn more about our career areas and lines of business..
Type of Requisition: Regular Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: None Job Family: Business Process Analysis General Dynamics Information Technology is seeking a detail oriented, intelligent and motivated Customer..
WalgreensnJob DescriptionModels and delivers a distinctive and delightful customer experience.Registers sales on assigned cash register, provides customers with courteous, fair, friendly, and efficient checkout service.In accordance with state and federal..
OverviewnThis position is responsible for traveling with the Field Activity Support Team (FAST) to stores within an assigned district to own and execute u201cstart to finishu201d variable tasks such as..
At JPMorgan Chase, we have an obsession for taking care of our customers and employees and making them feel welcomed and valued by building lasting relationships, doing the right thing,..
Front Desk Supervisor Job Locations US-MD-Annapolis Requisition ID 2022-32068 Category Front Desk / Guest Services Position Type Regular Full-Time FLSA Status Non-Exempt Location Name The Westin Annapolis About Us Recently..
Bilingual Teller Retail Banker ','054778','!*!Take the next step toward your new career today! Become a part of the diverse and inclusive team within our nationally recognized award-winning Bank that is..
**Description** **Responsibilities** **The Billing & Enrollment Representative will assist members in a fast-paced inbound call center environment.** **You will be responsible for:** Processing enrollments, payments, address changes or other enrollment..
Seasonal Operations Associate - Wheaton Plaza Location:Wheaton, MD, United States (https://jobs.jcp.com/jobs/location/191405/wheaton-md-united-states) -Wheaton Plaza 11160 Veirs Mill Rd Job ID:1111111 Store Hourly Positions Job Type:Part-Time Date Updated:Sep 29, 2022 General Description..
About this job Find your commute As a Store Manager Trainee, you'll train on all aspects of successfully running a store in preparation for running for your own store. You'll..


text:
Consulting & sales
Would you like to find out more about the BIM solutions provided by ALLPLAN and current offers?
Thanks to their many years of experience and industry competence, our direct sales experts and our sales partners are the perfect partner for your personal consultation and professional support.
Find the right contact person
*In a survey to 1,006 Allplan customers and prospects, we asked "Would you recommend Allplan to others?" and 96% answered "Yes". Survey carried out in October and November 2016.
More from ALLPLAN
Allplan References
Find out how Allplan makes BIM work for renowned companies.
Allplan Solutions
Allplan's comprehensive solution portfolio provides powerful tools for all stages in the life cycle of a building.
Learn about Allplan
Familiarize yourself with Allplan's BIM solutions via free webinars, training sessions, tutorials and documentation.


text:
Bookeeping Hiring Assistance
If you are looking to add a bookkeeper to your staff or replace an existing or former bookkeeper on a full or part-time basis, then who better to assist you in your search than your trusted accounting professionals at SS+G?
There are many candidates for these types of positions that advertise themselves as an expert in a particular software product that do not have adequate bookkeeping knowledge or training to serve your needs efficiently. Schuman Simon & Grodecki Ltd can help you find the right person to fulfill your company's needs at a greater value than traditional recruiting firms.
Bookeeping Support
Many small business owners are tasked with bookkeeping duties in addition to the effort required to run a successful company, but do not have the requisite knowledge to setup a proper chart of accounts and efficiently perform this essential record-keeping function. The professionals at Schuman Simon & Grodecki Ltd understand this and offer a variety of services to assist you in this area including:
Initial company chart of accounts/bookkeeping setup.
Bookkeeping training for business owners and/or their employees regardless of background or level of experience.
Ongoing support for any of your questions


text:
Porfirio Rubirosa, "The world's most interesting man," was a Dominican diplomat, race car driver, international womanizer and Polo player among countless other titles that appear when you Google his name. Legend even has it that the James Bond 007 character was inspired by him.
Polo being a rich man's sport, the Peralta Project was inspired to make the sport a bit more down to earth by coming up with a fictional country club called "The Peralta Project Campo Club" with a team named after the international Jetsetter and Playboy, the Rubirosa Polo Club.
Sorry, there are no products in this collection


text:
Another feature to assist you with your job hunt is having your resume sponsored by BigLeep's platform. It simply means that BigLeep's platform will be sponsoring the reach and boost of your resume making it possible for the recruiters to consider it before other resumes and applications.
Resume sponsor service assists you in making yourself more visible in the eyes of organisations that are keen to hire applicants. BigLeep uses resume sponsor service to boosts the visibility of your resume thereby making you an easy pick.
This way it helps you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the competition and also solves the challenges to be picked up by the recruiting firms. Since, BigLeep has the largest database for job seekers and recruiters alike, it gets kind of hard to be spotted.
However, with this service, you can throw all your problems into the bin as resume sponsor service allows to create a bridge between you and interested parties. Once you activate our resume sponsor service on your profile, you can be rest assured that suitable and the best recruiters will not hesitate to pick you up.
This service will also allow you to create a better reputation which portrays you as one of the best candidates in the vast crowd of applicants. The recruiter will get an impression that you hold all the right kind of skills that they have been looking for. And voila, you land in the job you had always wanted.
© 2021 BigLeep All rights reserved. Powered by Mify Solutions Pvt. Ltd.


text:
Karen Nussbaum
Template:TOCnestleft Karen Beth Nussbaum is a veteran Washington DC activist. She has been the partner of Ira Arlook.
Karen Nussbaum was born in Chicago April 25, 1950, the daughter of Annette Brenner Nussbaum, who "did public relations for educational institutions and organizations for the public good for many years," and Mike (Myron) Nussbaum, an exterminator (1946–70) and actor and director (1967–present). At the age of 5, Karen Nussbaum and her family moved to the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
Mike Nussbaum was an "amateur actor at the time and had always wanted to be a stage actor and he is, now. Soon after we all got to be 20, he quit his business and he became a full-time actor and director, so that was part of the home life and they and their friends held play reading groups where, you know, twenty of their friends would come over once a month and they would read a play like JB [by Archibald MacLeish] or something. Something light [laughs]. And then my father later became part of the Theater of the Absurd scene in Chicago. He worked at Hull House."
- My mother was interested in books, in theater, and so on, but was also a political activist in the Democratic Party in a largely Republican county, and so she would take me walking precincts as a little girl and she would be a poll watcher during the local elections and I would see her at my local school when she was being a poll watcher, that kind of thing...
- By the time of the war in Vietnam, my parents were very active so, for example, there was a weekly vigil in front of the public library on Saturdays and so the whole family would go to the weekly vigil in front of the public library on Saturdays...
- My mother was very active in trying to bring speakers to the community about the war, to talk about what was wrong with the war. And there was a big to-do when she invited Staughton Lynd, who had been indicted for traveling to Vietnam because it was against the law so his passport had been revoked and so on, and he was living in Chicago at the time and she invited him to speak and she got some hall — I can't remember where she had originally arranged to have it but then they refused to let her have it and so she marshaled her forces and there were letters to the community newspaper and mobilizing people to fight back and finally, we ended up in the recreation center and the place was packed with people, standing room only, and so she was a real activist along those lines.
- And during that time, we were getting hate mail from the Minutemen, which was the local John Birch Society and, you know, postcards with cross hairs on them addressed to my mother. So, it wasn't without some sense that it wasn't risk free for her to do that. My mother died just this last year and she had been sick for many, many years and you forget the young woman, you remember just those awful years when she was so sick. But we went through some of her papers when we were helping to write the obituary and we saw that she had been quoted in the newspaper when she was working for Gene McCarthy. She was the coordinator for Gene McCarthy for Democrats of South Lake County and she'd been quoted as saying, "You know, it's time that women cared as much about peace as they do the PTA." I thought, "Whoa, that's something I would've said."[1]
Teenage activism
Karen Nussbaum's older brother was a draft resister. "He went to college (Antioch) and immediately got totally involved in politics."
- In high school, helped establish the Social Action Committee. There was like ten or twelve of us who were radicals and we would invite speakers [to] the school, and it was amazing but you could get a lot of kids to come to these things; you could, because it was the 60s and there were enough — kids were interested in what was going on. We had a speaker who was a black anarchist (Jeffrey Stewart) who was active in Chicago and a poet. And we brought him to the school. And it was a big deal, you know, could you have an anarchist in the school anyway. But we finally got him and there were like a hundred kids at the thing and we had the two sponsors of the Social Action Committee — the teachers were Lou Silverstein, who was the first Jewish teacher in the high school of 1700 kids, and then Miss Price, who was older, a bit conservative. A nice woman, I didn't know her very well, but — so, the black anarchist poet read some of his poems. And one of them was about [President] Johnson shitting bombs on Vietnam and then — that was bad — but then, when he took the dictionary and ripped pages out of the dictionary because our government was lying to us and words didn't have meaning — Ms. Price just lost it, and she ended the meeting and the Social Action Committee was disbanded and the black anarchist poet was shooed out of the building. And so there were all of these [?], and we had to go to the principal and were we going to be expelled and, there was all this tumult about free speech and politics and what was crossing the line and what was acceptable and so on.[2]
College activism
In 1968, Karen Nussbaum attended the University Chicago for a year and a half and became involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and the demonstrations against the 1968 Democratic Party convention.
- At the Democratic [National] Convention — I actually had a job inside the convention as a gofer and so there I was in the convention, seeing what was going on outside. So I left the convention and I went out to the demonstrations late that night in front of the Pitt Congress Hotel and the air was filled with tear gas and they had stink bombs at the Pitt Congress and people were dispersed by the time I got there but they were still hanging around in clusters and just the power of the moment, you know, with the students chanting, "the whole world is watching," and in fact, the whole world was watching, and the enormity of what was going on inside the convention, that it was responding to what was going on outside the convention.
Nussbaum became involved in the was a Rehire Marlene campaign. Marlene Dixon, was a radical teacher, fired from the University.
- I can't think of why anymore, but that became the reason that we demonstrated. So, within a couple of months, we had taken over the Administration Building and stayed — occupied the Administration Building for weeks. And the administration just waited us out. They weren't going to repeat bringing in police and clubbing us and so on [as Columbia University had].
Karen Nussbaum was in a class that was the "prototypical liberal education class at the University of Chicago called Liberal Arts I. It represented half of your course load and it was a very tiny class of just 12 students where with a very highly regarded teacher — his name was James Redfield."
Black Panther supporter
At Chicago, Nussbaum was was part of the Black Panther Support Committee.[3]
- Black Panthers were being jailed, killed, wiped out all over the country and in fact, Fred Hampton was killed in his sleep in Chicago near where I was, I think probably the next fall — I think it was the fall of '69. And I remember — actually I'm in a picture in Time magazine in a demonstration in front of the Federal Building in Chicago demonstrating against this — you know, the impunity with which they attacked Black Panthers.[4]
Second Venceremos Brigade
In 1970 Karen Nussbaum from Highland Park, Illinois, was a member of the second Venceremos Brigade to Cuba.[5]
- So I was active on those, active in the antiwar movement, active in student politics in my own university. And then, it was probably the next fall that the opportunity came up to join the Venceremos Brigade and go to Cuba, and it was actually something that was tied into the Black Panthers who were helping to lead these educational sessions for people who were going. So I signed up. I quit school and decided to go to Cuba in the winter of '70.
- I had what money it cost. It cost like a couple of hundred of dollars or something. You just had to pay your fare on what was a converted cattle hauler that took us from Nova Scotia down to Cuba. We took a bus up to Nova Scotia and then we took a ship down to Cuba...were in Cuba for a couple of months...
- Now, our brigade was the second brigade and I think it was the largest, I think, that ever went. It was about 700 people and it was riddled with agents. But it was also filled with people just like myself. In fact, one of my best friends today, turns out, was on the brigade when I was. We didn't know each other then. She was living in Philadelphia at the time but, it's funny to see those ties back in your life. (this is probably Karen Ackerman, KeyWiki)It's like a skipping stone. And so that's what we did. We both harvested, worked in the sugar cane fields and then there was a two-week period at the end where we got to travel around the country and see other parts of the country and meet with different local leaders and understand the country better...
- There were a lot of Weathermen who were in the Brigade, who were the left split off from the SDS and a huge array of young leftists who were there and so we talked politics all the time. And politics got played out there. There were racial problems in the brigade. There were huge problems between men and women. There was this just beginning to grow women's movement, and if you can believe it, there was this huge debate about whether women should wear bras while we were cutting cane. But that was the insanity of the time, too...
- So when we returned, it was right when there was a gigantic demonstration in New Haven, to free Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, who were in jail in New Haven, as Black Panthers. We had taken the boat back up to Nova Scotia and we were taking a bus back down — I was supposed to go to Chicago but I guess a couple of us just got off the bus in Maine and hitchhiked down to New Haven to be part of the demonstrations there.[6]
Impressions of Cuba
- It was thrilling, you know. It was a society that was combating racism, that had provided free health and educational care to every person in society, that had reduced income inequality more dramatically than any place else on earth, that had created literacy in an illiterate country by having middle schoolers going out and teaching adults. It was very, very exciting. So, that was terrific — and to understand what struggle was like. You know, what it meant to fight against the government in a totally different context. You couldn't take the experience in Cuba and apply it to our circumstances. I never thought that was the point.[7]
Nussbaum moved to Boston, working for the antiwar movement there while supporting herself as a clerical worker at Harvard University.
In Boston, Nussbaum met up with people who had also been in Cuba.
- But, so there were four women who all lived together. And that's when we also started doing work as women. Political work as women. And there's this huge culture of young people getting jobs to support their political work. And that's what we all did. One of our roommates worked in a warehouse and I worked in a food co-op and sometimes I worked passing out leaflets, commercial leaflets in downtown areas, promoting one thing or another. I can't remember what. After I was there for about a year, I got a job as a clerical worker at Harvard University, as a clerk typist. But what we were really doing there was having a — how can I even say these things? We had something called "female revolutionary education" where we provided courses for other women who wanted to learn stuff. And we taught auto mechanics and we taught political theory, and we taught emergency medicine and people would come to these classes.
The group was called Female Revolution Education.
For a time Nussbaum was on the staff of a local organization called the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice.
Nussbaum earned a B.A. from Goddard College in 1975.
Nussbaum's local peace organization joined up with the Indochina Peace Campaign which was headed up by Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. She was on the steering committee for that organization and got to go to North Vietnam with a 7 member delegation in 1973.
- And again, it was one of these tremendous experiences. I was 23, and you know, I was an arrogant know-nothing. But good hearted, for sure, and it was a real learning experience. The Vietnamese, the North was not being bombed at that point, so there wasn't any danger to us. I recently have been talking with Jane Fonda again, and when she went, just a year or two before that, she was being bombed. She had to go in the air-raid shelters on the roadside. But that wasn't our experience. It was really safe, though illegal. But it meant that we could come back and talk about our experience.[8]
Nussbaum was a participant in Workshop Group 17 at Hayden's IPC [{Germantown]] Ohio weekend conference which planned the anti-aid campaign aimed at the embattled So. Vietnamese armed forces and government. Hayden and Fonda had just returned from a mid-October trip to meet with the communists of No. Vietnam and the so-called PRG Provisional Revolutionary Government, their political front arm for the old National Liberation Front (NLF), and its military arm, the Viet Cong. The conference was held just a week or so later and Hayden told those in attendance that he had received instructions from the communists on what they "wanted him to do" in the U.S. re setting up a "cut the aid" campaign aimed at Congress. This was to prevent any effective military equipment one-for-one replacement as allowed under the fraudulent Paris Peace Agreement of 1973. Everyone at this IPC conference knew that if the plan worked, Hanoi would conquer South Vietnam, Laos, and potentially Cambodia (where the Maoist Khmer Rouge movement was growing in opposition to the Hanoi Cambodian faction and troops already in-country).
In 1973 Nussbaum and some around 9 friends including Ellen Cassedy, Marilyn Albert and Penny Kurland, founded 9to5, an organization for women clerical workers, initially in Boston.
- We put out the newsletter 9to5. Again, for about a year, and it was during this time that we were talking with each other, but it was a very popularly based newsletter. And in fact, the very first issue, the headline in the first article in the first issue is "Every Day" and then it goes into kind of what do we confront every day on the job and then we started getting letters in from women who felt the same way we did.[9]
Midwest connection
One of the 9to5ers, Ellen Cassedy, went to Heather Booth's Midwest Academy, "I think the first summer that they ran a class, and our group all pitched in the money to send her, to pay her expenses and the fee for her to go for however long the session was, and so she learned some techniques and tactics for community organizing and then we applied that to the workplace situation."
CLUW connection
Nussbaum's friend Jackie Ruff, who then later became one of the founders of our union, District 925, did go to the founding Coalition of Labor union Women convention because she was working in a paste-up shop and was a member of the graphic artists' union. "And, actually, they were on strike for months and months and months, but it was while she was, I think, on strike with the graphic artists that she went to the CLUW convention."[10]
"9to5" movie, hitting the "Bigtime"
Nussbaum knew Jane Fonda from her work in the peace movement.
- We were both part of the same organization, the Indochina Peace Campaign, and when the war really did end in 1975, Jane was looking more toward working on issues in our country, you know, some domestic issues. 9to5 had already been active for a couple of years by then and Jane was intrigued by it and so she came to me and she said she wanted to make a contribution to our work in the best way she knew how, and that was to make a major motion picture. So, that sounded great to us!
- And it just was an extraordinary experience. Jane wanted to know more about what office workers thought about their jobs, and so early on, we invited her to come to Cleveland where I was living by then and our Cleveland chapter set up a meeting with about forty office workers, women office workers, with Jane and, I think, one of the script writers, and we spent a long night talking about what were the problems that they faced on the job and have they ever dreamed about getting even with the boss, and then, after that, there were some other sessions with some of our members in other places. And then, ultimately, every detail in the movie, with the exception of hanging the boss up by a garage opener system, actually came from these women. And, it was just great.
- We looked at the script, we were able to comment on things and then, when the movie came out — actually, before the movie came out, Jane went and did a tour, she went to about eight or ten of our cities and we had thousands of women in these nighttime events with Jane where she was talking about what she's learned by working on 9to5, and this was before the movie came out, and then the movie came out and we did benefits with Jane and, and then I went on a tour called the Movement Behind the Movie and went on a 20-city tour and I did press. I'd go in the morning and I'd get on those early morning television shows. At that time, just about every city had its own local morning television show where they did recipes and what was happening at the zoo, and outsider guests coming in. We would show a clip of the movie and then I'd talk about what was really going on and how office workers all around the country were standing up for themselves and do press, and then hold a meeting with office workers in the evening in that city. And this was 1980.
- The movie became the Number 1 box office hit of the year and soon after, we were an organization with 25 chapters around the country. It was the best example I've ever seen of popular culture helping to lift organization and movement. This combination of an existing movement that needed popular culture to take the lid off and move it to a new stage.[11]
Government help
During the Carter administration 9to5 "got government funds to do great work."
- It was wonderful. And that's when we were able to hire staff in a number of cities. We would do programs. We did an oral history project that was funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities where we did oral histories in ten cities and we were able to put on staff to do that work who could also, as they were working with these women, help them in their activism on issues as well.[12]
Government service
By 1975, Boston 9to5 had joined other similar groups across the country and they reached out to a mostly unreceptive labor movement. SEIU, however, welcomed them and Local 925 was born. In 1981 the union expanded to a national jurisdiction and became SEIU District 925. Nussbaum was president of the 925 union and executive director of 9to5 until 1993. In 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed her as director of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor. At that point Nussbaum severed ties with 9to5.
Nussbaum had been living in Cleveland for 15 years at that point. John Sweeney [then president of SEIU] proposed Nussbaum as a candidate for director of the Women's Bureau position. Robert Reich appointed her to the job.
Big labor
In 1996 Karen Nussbaum went to the AFL-CIO to head up the newly created Working Women's Department, which was phased out in 2001. Since then, Nussbaum has served as Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, and as director of Working America, community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
Institute for Policy Studies connections
Karen Nussbaum, Director Working Women, Cleveland, was listed[13]among those participating in the Institute for Policy Studies affiliated Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies (CASLP) Bryn Mawr August 3-5 1979.
Take Back the American Dream Conference 2011
Karen Nussbaum was one of the 158 speakers who addressed the Take Back the American Dream Conference 2011 . The Conference was hosted by the Institute for Policy Studies, and Democratic Socialists of America dominated Campaign for America's Future, [14]
NEXT AGENDA Conference
NEXT AGENDA was held at the National Press Club, Main Ballroom, Feb. 28,2001.
- At Feb. 28 Conference on NEXT AGENDA, progressive activists, Congressional leaders will unite to forge strategy for "working families" agenda -- the day after President Bush delivers his plans to joint session of Congress.
- -- Calling themselves the real "democratic majority," organizers and thinkers, led by the Campaign for America's Future, to release new book outlining an agenda for changes they insist most voters endorsed in 2000 elections.
- On Feb. 28, a national conference on the NEXT AGENDA, will bring together progressive activists, intellectuals and allies in the Congress for the first time since the disputed election and battles over President Bush's cabinet nominees. It will frame the next two year's debate.
- Sponsored by the progressive advocacy group, the Campaign for America's Future and its sister research organization, the Institute for America's Future, the Conference on the Next Progressive Agenda has been endorsed by a who's who of prominent leaders from the labor unions, women's organizations, civil rights groups, environmentalists and individual members of the House and Senate. Their goal: to forge a progressive movement to fight for the "working family" agenda they insist was endorsed by a majority of the voters in the 2000 election.
Organizers of the conference would release a new book, THE NEXT AGENDA: Blueprint for a New Progressive Movement, edited by Robert Borosage and Roger Hickey and published by Westview Press.
3:45 - 5:00 Bold Initiatives
Chair: Roger Hickey
- Cong. George Miller: Get Real on Education
- Bob Chase, President, NEA
- Cong. Luis Gutierrez: Living Wage/Minimum Wage
- Katie Fitzgerald, ACORN
- Cong. Rosa DeLauro: Pay Equity
- Karen Nussbaum, AFL-CIO Working Women's Department [15]
Empowerment '92
Empowerment '92: A Call to Action Conference, was held June 6 to 9, 1992. African American community activists, joined with trade unionists, politicians, peace activists, environmentalists and others to discuss how to change the nation's priorities as the economic crisis deepens.
Of the upcoming conference DC Statehood Senator Jesse Jackson said..."We issue this Call to Action to reaffirm and reassert our vision of a true world order, one based on peace, justice and human priorities. our message, translated into action can, and must srt a new direction for our nation".[16]
Speakers included;
- Rep. Maxine Waters, (D - Calif.)
- Dorothy Height, President of the National Council of Negro Women
- Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.)
- David Dinkins (NYC mayor)
- Richard Trumka (President, United Mine Workers
- Dennis Rivera, Local 1199
- Ron Brown, chair of Democratic Party
- Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.)
- Karen Nussbaum,executive director of 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women
- Toney Anaya, former Governor of New Mexico.
DSA "Globalization From Below" conference
Globalization From Below was a conference held May 29 - 31 , 1998 in Chicago Illinois, organized by Democratic Socialists of America.
Invited speakers were Profirio Munoz-Ledo, PRD-Mexico; Audrey MacLaughlin, New Democratic Party-Canada; Rev. Jesse Jackson; Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers; Clare Short, Secretary of State for Overseas Development, UK; Rep. Luis Gutierrez; Rep. Danny Davis; Jose LaLuz, AFSCME, Karen Nussbaum, AFL-CIO; Stanley Gacek, AFL-CIO; Stephen Yokich, United Auto Workers; Enrique Herandez, Han Young/ Hyundai plant organizer, Tijuana.[17]
DSA connection
In 2002, as the director of the AFL-CIO Working Women's Department, Nussbaum contributed an article to Democratic Socialists of America's Democratic Left, Spring edition, "Reflections on Nickel and Dimed:Earning Respect for Women Workers".[18].
Midwest Academy connection
The Gala Host Committee, for the December 10, 2014 Midwest Academy Awards Ceremony included Karen Nussbaum — Executive Director, Working America- Midwest Academy alumni .[19]
"Progressive Agenda"
Signers of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's May 12, 2015 launched The Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality included Karen Nussbaum, Working America.[20]
- ↑ [1] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [2] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [3] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [4] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN 1972 (Venceremos Brigade) PART 2, hearings before the Committee on Internal Security 92nd Congress oct 16-19, 1972 pages 8136-8138
- ↑ [5] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [6] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [7] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [8] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [9] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [10] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ [11] Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection 2004, KAREN NUSSBAUM interviewed by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, December 18–19, 2003
- ↑ Information Digest August 24 1979
- ↑ Our Future website: Take Back the American Dream 2011 Speakers (accessed on Sept. 22, 2011)
- ↑ Common Dreams, Morning After Bush's Speech, Progressive Activists to Unite Feb. 28 for Conference on 'Working Family' Agenda, WASHINGTON - February 26 - News Advisory
- ↑ Peoples Weekly World, May 25, 1991, page 8
- ↑ Issue #1 1998 • Democratic Left • page 10
- ↑ Democratic Left • Spring 2002
- ↑ MWA homepage 2014 GALA HOST COMMITTEE
- ↑ http://progressiveagenda.us/signers SIGNERS OF THE PROGRESSIVE AGENDA TO COMBAT INCOME INEQUALITY]


text:
Canada-based BlackBerry Ltd plans to invest $75 million (Rs 508 crores) in setting up a new self-driving vehicle testing hub, the company said in an official blog on Tuesday.
The once smartphone giant is now looking at new investments to attract growth. As per the blog, BlackBerry QNX plans to hire local software engineers to work on connected and autonomous car projects. One of the first projects would support Ontario's autonomous driving pilot as well as BlackBerry QNX's work with the University of Waterloo, PolySync, and Renesas Electronics to build an autonomous concept vehicle.
BlackBerry's chief executive John Chen made the announcement while speaking with reporters at the Ottawa headquarters of its BlackBerry QNX subsidiary, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by his side, said the blog.
"This center will create great middle-class jobs for Canadians, new opportunities for recent university graduates, and further position Canada as a global hub for innovation," the blog quoted Trudeau as saying.
BlackBerry has been pushing to increase its software sales and with the new investment in the autonomous driving segment, it hopes to regain its lost market value. QNX is currently believed to be the most dependable asset for BlackBerry, according to several media reports.
QNX was acquired by BlackBerry in 2010 and Ford chose it to replace Microsoft for its Sync infotainment platform. The QNX platform has a reputation for being secure, and it is already in more than 60 million vehicles from 20 different automakers, including the Sync 3 system in Ford vehicles.
The company's QNX unit, renamed BlackBerry QNX, currently employs around 400 engineers, some three-quarters of them at its facility in Kanata on the outskirts of Ottawa.
In October, BlackBerry expanded its relationship with Ford Motor Company to include a dedicated team working with Ford on expanding the use of BlackBerry's QNX Neutrino Operating System, Certicom security technology, QNX hypervisor, and QNX audio processing software.


text:
5 Embarrassing Search Engine Optimization Fails (and How to Avoid Them)
Managing a website in a way that optimizes your search results is hard. Mistakes that take seconds to make can have lasting effects for years. Tactics that used to work for maintaining a high search rank a few years ago can now have a damaging response.
We turned to the internet, asking SEO specialists to share the biggest blunders they've seen in their careers. Here are their responses.
1. Fool me once, shame on your rank.
"I received a new client who had worked with a different 3rd party SEO firm. They were getting a pretty steady flow of traffic from Google but I noticed it was mostly coming from Google Images. After some digging I learned they were getting this traffic from 'adult-related search terms', which their previous agency had changed their image alt-text to. This of course triggered Google algorithms for quality issues, which plummeted their rank."
How to avoid:
Being dishonest may draw some people to your site, but they leave as soon as they realize it's not what they were searching for. When they quickly click off, it tells search engines your site didn't satisfy their query, which lowers your site's rank. Google algorithms also look for consistency throughout a page. If your written content is about new features on the Subaru Outback, but your image description is well… something else, Google will mark your page as spam.
2. Who needs content? We've got a need for speed.
"The client's site was professional services, which if anything made this suggestion even more shocking as the content was essentially their service list. For content, the site had around 7-8 service pages each with unique, high-quality content on them of around 800-1000 words.
The site didn't perform too badly in Google but there were some speed issues. The 'SEO agency' told them that removing the content on their service pages so it was just 50 words max would speed the site up.
Needless to say they completely vanished from the rankings, still had the site speed issues, and experienced a disastrous drop in traffic."
How to avoid:
In the world of SEO, content is king. Having high-quality relevant content is one of the top ranking factors for search engines. It's how search engines determine whether or not your page has the answer to search queries being made. Page speed is also an important rank factor to consider, but there are countless components that could be affecting it. If page speed is an issue on your website, have a professional run a full diagnostics test to determine your options.
3. Where links go to die.
"I had one client who was full of all kinds of wisdom.
In our initial consultation he dropped, "We don't disavow bad backlinks because that highlights to Google there may be bad links on that site", "Google is smart enough to know when a link is broken and it will fix itself", and "Just fill the page up with links, but change the font color to white so people can't see them!"
He also had his teenage nephew spam comments all over the internet with links to their website: YouTube comments, Blog Comments, Spam Sites, etc. And of course they blamed their bad rank on Google because they believed they were doing everything perfectly."
How to avoid:
Google can smell your bad links from a mile away. It won't hesitate to lower your rank because of them. Perform regular audits on your site to ensure links are working and relevant. Spamming low quality links to your site will only result in getting penalized. Instead, focus your efforts in getting high quality links. Some ways of getting these links are: getting covered by local news sources, getting listed in your OEM directory, or producing your own quality content that links to your site.
4. The simple change and costly mistake.
"This happened for an organization I worked for a few years back. When the .org extension of their domain name became available, they scooped it up. So far, so good.
They immediately set up a 301 redirect pointing the newly acquired .org to their main .com website. Their reasoning made sense — to capture wayward visitors who might type in the wrong extension.
But the next day, they called us, frantic. Their site traffic was nonexistent. They had no idea why.
A few quick checks revealed that their search rankings had disappeared from Google overnight. It didn't take too much Q&A to figure out what had happened.
They put the redirect in place without considering the risk. We did some digging and discovered that the .org had an unfavorable past.
The previous owner of the .org site had used it for spam. With the redirect, Google was assigning all of that poison to the company's main site!"
How to avoid:
Honest mistakes happen all the time in Search Engine Optimization. Always do your research before associating your website with another. And always consult with an SEO expert before making large changes to your website.
5. Just give Google a call.
"I had a potential client come to me saying that they're website already had been 'SEO optimized', and all I needed to do was to let Google know about their website – five to ten minutes worth of work in their eyes."
How to avoid:
Optimizing your search results is a never-ending task. Rank factors are constantly changing. If you want your site to consistently do well, you need to have someone on your team who knows how to navigate those changes and keep your site at the top.
Want to learn more about how to increase your dealership's search rank and keep it at the top?
Download our free eBook, Level Up! A Holistic Guide to SEO, to:
- Navigate the evolving world of Search Engine Optimization for dealerships in 2019.
- Recognize the role of Google's algorithms and use them to your site's advantage.
- Adapt your website functions to increase search rank.
- Build a holistic network of marketing channels to compliment your SEO strategy.
Get the freshest news about the automotive marketing industry.
Get the freshest news about the automotive marketing industry.


text:
Jon Gruden didn't waste much time making a splash after becoming the Oakland Raiders head coach this offseason. He quickly shipped Pro Bowl linebacker Khalil Mack to the Chicago Bears in exchange for first-round picks in 2019 and 2020, a third-round pick in 2020, and a sixth-rounder in 2019.
It doesn't look like Gruden is anywhere near finished, because he's also considering trades for former first-round picks wide receiver Amari Cooper and safety Karl Joseph.
Here's what's FOX's Jay Glazer has to say on the issue:
"They already traded Khalil Mack. Very controversial. Now they are looking to shop Karl Joseph, their first round pick from two years ago.
"[They] called all around the league on him. And another name they are calling around on, but not as much, but still, they are shopping him, is Amari Cooper, their first round wide receiver. So, fire sale in Oakland."
After already trading Khalil Mack, @JayGlazer reports that the Raiders have been in discussions to trade former first round picks Amari Cooper and Karl Joseph. pic.twitter.com/6QrogAHNAQ
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) October 14, 2018
The Raiders Appear Willing to Trade Anybody
Oakland is only two years removed from a 12-4 season, where they might have made some noise in the playoffs had starting quarterback Derek Carr not gotten hurt. But following a 6-10 campaign last year and the notable hiring of Gruden, the team is obviously headed in a new direction.
That said, Oakland isn't above trading anybody on their roster this point. They've already shipped off the best player on the team and are now in talks to move two more former first rounders.
This would leave cornerback Gareon Conley and offensive lineman Kolten Miller as the only remaining Raiders' first-round picks on the team. Oakland selected Conley and Miller as their top choices in 2016 and '17.
Of course, this was under different management. So don't be surprised to see the Raiders continue making trades throughout the season.
Is Oakland Tanking?
It took a 10-year, $100-million contract to pull Gruden out of the announcer's booth and onto the sidelines. Given the longevity of his deal, Jon 3:16 is in no hurry to win now.
This is especially the case when considering that Oakland has already secured at least one win, meaning they can tank and avoid joining Cleveland and Detroit as the only teams to go 0-16.
Gruden has time on his side and doesn't seem to be trying overly hard to win right now. This has brought on allegations that he's tanking in order to secure more high draft picks in the coming spring.
Reggie McKenzie may be the general manager, but NFL Media's Ian Rapoport reports that Gruden is actually the brains behind roster moves. This would make sense when considering that Mack was suddenly traded for less than his market value.
Gruden denies that his team is tanking, even going so far as to tell his players this in a team meeting. However, Rapoport suggests that the players aren't buying this and they expect "major roster upheaval in the next couple years."
Rapoport also reports that Gruden thinks it will take up to two years to get the players he wants on his team. Considering that Oakland will be moving to Las Vegas within a couple of years, the entire organization may be onboard with building a winner for the future, rather than now.


text:
Greetings Clarifai-ers! If you're thinking about using our software or have already had the pleasure of dabbling with it, you've probably encountered this "Workflows" term in some form or another. I'm here to clear the air for you so that all of it makes sense and that you get the most use out of them!
App Workflows vs. Base Workflows
The first thing that we need to clarify (no pun intended...ok fine it was) is the difference between these two workflows types, as they serve very different functions.
- An application workflow is essentially used when you want to call up to 5 models at once (including custom models) to retrieve all of the output in one, singular response, either via the User Interface or our API. Pretty nifty right? If you're using the API, this will require only one line of code versus X lines for the X models that you're using.
- A base workflow, on the other hand, is a base model that your application will use to optimize any of your custom models and visual search results via all of the base model's pre-existing knowledge. Thus, you will only need to worry about this if you are doing Custom Training or Visual Search.
Let's delve into these two items a little bit closer.
Application Workflows: Explained Further
An application workflow can be used to call up to 5 models at once (public + custom), and as the name suggests, it is always tied to a particular application in your account.
Setting it up
From your applications page here, you'll see something like the following:
Great! Now you can either create a new application (top right) or click on an existing one. Doing either will take you to that application's specific page:
...and to access your workflows, all you need to do is go to the App Workflows section in the above screenshot. By default you won't have any at first so you'll need to click on the "Create New Workflow" button, which will lead you here:
Here you can add up to 5 models to call at once, and you can have as many of these (workflows, that is) as you'd like. Note that if you're adding a custom model to any of them, you can only use a version of the model up until that point, and any future changes to the model will not be incorporated.
Here's an example of one with General, Food and my custom model:
Now that you've created a workflow you'll want to use it of course! You can do this via our User Interface or our API if you prefer to do it the programmatic way, either of which are pretty simple to master.
• In our User Interface, all you have to do is click on one of your images and the workflow results will be there!
• In the API, you can retrieve your workflow results with one of the following languages. Just make sure to replace "workflow-id" with your own:
app.workflow.predict('workflow-id', "https://samples.clarifai.com/metro-north.jpg").then(
// Do something with response
// There was an error
from clarifai.rest import ClarifaiApp
from clarifai.rest import Workflow
from clarifai.rest import Image as ClImage
app = ClarifaiApp(api_key='YOUR_API_KEY')
workflow = Workflow(app.api, workflow_id="your-workflow-id")
image = ClImage(url='https://samples.clarifai.com/metro-north.jpg')
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Clarifai.API;
using Clarifai.DTOs.Inputs;
namespace YourNamespace
public class YourClassName
public static async Task Main()
var client = new ClarifaiClient("YOUR_API_KEY");
await client.WorkflowPredict(
new List<IClarifaiInput>
new ClarifaiURLImage("https://samples.clarifai.com/puppy.jpeg")
curl -X POST \
-H 'authorization: Key YOUR_API_KEY' \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{
"inputs": [
"data": {
"image": {
"url": "https://samples.clarifai.com/metro-north.jpg"
And voila! That's about it for application workflows.
Base Workflows: Explained Further
Unlike Application Workflows, there isn't a whole lot that you need to know or do for your base workflow setup, but let's go through them briefly.
When you first create an application you will be presented with the following screen, with the Base Workflow menu at the bottom:
You'll notice that when you click the dropdown menu you'll only see General, Food, NSFW, Moderation, Wedding, Travel and Face as options, and these are indeed the only seven available for this functionality.
A few things about this:
- If you are not creating any custom models (i.e. you are only using our 17 public ones) or doing visual searches within your application then you won't need to worry about what you choose here
- If you are using a custom model or visual search, then you will want to pick one of the six options that most closely associates to your model and/or images. For example, if you're training a model on food, then you'll want to pick the food one. Interior rooms of a house - pick the travel one. And if you're ever unsure of what to choose, it's always a safe bet to pick the General option as it contains over 11,000 broad concepts (including food and rooms of a house!).
- Your base model will not alter the concepts that you create in your custom model. It only exists to make your model more optimal by combining the base model's knowledge with yours.
- Once you select a Base Model, it cannot be changed. Ever. So make sure you know which one you'll want!
And that's pretty much it!
Go out there and make some great workflows Clari-fam!


text:
I am in D.C. with Alex to speak at a gathering of the National Economists Club. My father helped to found it decades ago and was the first President of it. Now the Club has started the Herbert Stein Memorial Lecture, to be an annual event. The main speaker at tonight's soiree is Dr. Edmund Phelps, a Nobelist in Economics at Columbia University. I am the warm up, and my topic is "My Father, Herbert Stein." This is what I said. The "Bob" I refer to is the kind Bob Graboyes, outgoing President.
Bob, Dr. Phelps, fellow economists, thank you very much for having this event and allowing me to speak. My father would have been extremely happy to have the first speech in this series given by a man of the eminence and brilliance of Professor Phelps.
Let me tell you about my father, Herbert Stein. My Pop was born August 27, 1916 in Detroit. His father, who had emigrated from Russia as a small child, then run away from home in New York to be a Cavalry soldier in the U.S. Army, who had fought in the jungles of the Philippines against the Aguinaldo insurrection, was an auto worker at Ford Motor. He was a skilled tool and die maker, not an easy job.
My grandfather then did similar work at GE in Schenectady but was unemployed through most of the Great Depression.
My father was an astonishing prodigy, At 15, he entered Williams College, the finest small college in America, without any money but a small stipend, alone, and extremely shy.
He worked his way through school in a variety of odd jobs. The longest lasting one was as a dishwasher in the basement kitchen of a fraternity that did not admit Jews or blacks. He worked next to a black man from the town with whom he became a close friend, rare in those days.
When I asked him many years later if he felt furious about working over a hot sink at a frat house where Jews were not admitted, he said, "Not at all. I was just happy to be able to attend such a fine college in the midst of the worst depression there has ever been. I was grateful for the job." My father loved Williams College dearly. But that isn't the point of the story. The point is that he realized at an early age what was important and productive and what was a waste of time and thought.
After Williams, where he greatly benefited from the friendship of a young economics prof named Taylor Ostrander, my father studied at the University of Chicago graduate school in economics. It was a school of stars. He had as teachers Frank Knight and Jacob Viner, and as classmates and/or friends, Milton Friedman, Rose Director Friedman, and Aaron Director — immense names in economics.
He also met my mother, a fine economist in her own right, Mildred Fishman, who had come to Chicago from Barnard. They were married in 1937.
After Chicago, he worked at the FDIC here in Washington, and then at the War Production Board, and then in the U.S. Navy. In the latter phase of the war, as victory appeared certain, there was concern that the U.S. might slip back into what had seemed from 1929 to 1941 to be a permanent Depression. The Pabst Brewing Company sponsored a contest among the nation's economists to write a short essay about how to avoid such a fate and instead go into lasting peacetime prosperity.
All of the biggest names in economics entered the contest. My father, at age 28, an unknown Ensign in the U.S. Navy, submitted a 1500-word essay and won the first prize, which was the then spectacular sum of $25,000 — most of which he paid in wartime income tax.
His ideas in the essay were basic but very well written: free markets, variable fiscal policy for stimulation of demand and subduing inflation when needed, care for the least well off, and an aggressive anti-trust policy — which seemed much more important then than it does now.
At the end of the war, a group of extremely high up businessmen started a group to work on policy proposals to keep the U.S. prosperous and not go back into Depression. They needed a research staff to collect their ideas, explain to them how economics worked, and then put the ideas into a coherent, easy to read form.
They chose my father for that job — first, vice Research Director for the Committee for Economic Development, then research director. The CED put forth a number of extremely well-regarded papers on health care, trade, defense, education, labor relations, many other subjects. They were almost all written by my father.
After a time, he wanted a change, although he was always extremely happy with the relationships he formed with business leaders at the CED.
In 1965-66, he went to Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, home also to Professor Phelps for a year. He and my mother had a wonderful year there. Then he went briefly to Brookings, for which he had an extremely high regard. Then, a miracle happened in his life:
The miracle was named Richard Nixon. Through the intervention of Milton Friedman, Mr. Nixon asked my father to prepare papers on economic policy for the 1968 campaign. He hesitated to do it but I begged him to and he did. After the election, Mr. Nixon – again through the intervention of Dr. Friedman, one of my father's closest friends — was asked to be on the Council of Economic Advisers, under the Chairman, a man for whom my father had the highest possible respect, Paul McCracken. In 1972, my father was asked to be Chairman, which he readily did.
Those were the happiest days of my father's life. He was not by nature a scholar or a reclusive student. Nor did he particularly like teaching, which he had done briefly in Iowa in 1936.
He liked the excitement, the thrill, yes, the fame, of government work on policy issues at a high level. He loved the late hours and the pressure and the comradeship. He loved Mr. Nixon and he made close friends there, especially with Peter Flanigan, a genius advisor on trade and international economic policy.
The story of my father's life at the White House can be summed up in an incident. In 1971, very much against my father's wishes, President Nixon instituted mandatory wage price controls because inflation was creeping up to the unheard of level of roughly three percent. Mr. Nixon asked my father to be in charge of administering the controls, known as phase one.
My father asked me what I thought he should do. "Ideologically," I said to him, "you should fall upon your sword. Existentially, it's paradise."
My father laughed, headed the administration of the hated wage price controls, but made very sure to do what he could so that the controls were phased out quickly and painlessly.
I should add here that by about that time I was a speechwriter at the Nixon White House, thanks very largely to my connection through my father.
That was a spectacularly good experience for me. I could eat lunch with my father once or twice a week, sometimes more often than that, go up to his office to visit with him, and form a far closer bond with him than I had ever had before.
Now, let me back up a moment and talk about my Pop's economics. He was not a mathematician. He liked what was intuitively obvious. One of his main strengths as an economist, I think, was his ability to quickly size up proportions. I first saw this long ago when I was reading a famous book called Conversations With Stalin. It described lavish feasts that the Soviet dictator had with his top henchmen in the Kremlin even as the Germans were at the Moscow city gates.
How could this be? I asked my father, that there could be feasts like that in a country in the grip of a vicious, seemingly unstoppable invasion.
Pop said, "In a largely agricultural nation of over 150 million, the state can squeeze out a feast for 12 men for a long time."
Likewise, when I, as a rotten kid, used to complain that we had a Chevrolet instead of a Cadillac, as my uncle did, my father would say, "You're in the top two or three percent of families for affluence. It's not appropriate to complain." I might add that the uncle went bankrupt. My father did not.
It was that same sense of proportion that led him, after he left the White House, to have his doubts about supply-side and its ability to generate more tax revenue by lowering taxes. There just seemed to him to be no way or mechanism by which the lost revenue could be replaced by any reasonably anticipated growth from lower taxes — especially because he could not see why lower taxes would automatically generate more growth.
And this leads to his other great strength: his ability to say he did not know the answers to many vital economic questions; He did not know how big the deficit should be. He did not know what the optimal rate of growth of the money supply should be. He did not know whether very low rates of tax on the rich would help or hurt the economy.
What did he know? He knew, above all, loyalty. I knew him from 55 years. I never saw him even look at another woman besides my mother. He never wavered in his loyalty to my sister and me. He and my mother brought us up to have absolutely zero competition between us. The result is that my sister and I have never had a serious argument. Rare, I would say.
After the White House, he taught at UVA and was a senior fellow at the AEI. For part of that time, I was writing a series of articles for Barron's and a book about the Milken/Drexel junk bond fraud. I saw it — and the people at Barron's magazine saw it — as a massive scam. However, Mr. Milken had his friends, especially at the AEI. On one occasion, an official of the AEI brought in Mr. Milken to talk to the most distinguished economists at the AEI — whom the younger people at the AEI jokingly referred to as "The Wild Bunch."
My father declined to even meet Milken and when Milken's friend at AEI asked him why he would not even listen to Milken, my father said, "Because I have read what my son wrote. I believe my son. It makes complete sense, and that's all I need to hear."
My father was loyal to Mr. Nixon until the end of Mr. Nixon's life. He saw Mr. Nixon's flaws, but loved him for his kindness to my family, for his devotion to peace, and for his salvation of Israel. If you go to YouTube and watch the RN farewell to the White House staff in August of 1974, you will see many staffers looking sad, including me. But the couple you see in genuine agony are my mother and father.
I vividly recall my father telling critics of RN who asked him to renounce Mr. Nixon, that "I will never turn my back on a peacemaker." To my father, that same sense of proportion applied: whatever wrongs Mr. Nixon had done — and there were plenty — they were small compared with the bringing of a generation of peace to a dangerous world.
My father was fiercely devoted to the United States of America. He and my sister used to tear off the tin foil from packs of Camels for the war effort in 1944 and 1945. He was proud to serve in the Navy. He would not hear any severe criticism of the U.S. Again, he believed that whatever wrongs had happened here — and there were plenty — they paled beside what the USA had done right.
At a Stein family reunion about 20 years ago, he spoke of the various accomplishments of the Steins. All of them, he said, were nothing compared with the decision of his grandparents to come to America.
A final few short notes, since I, as a tiny bit of an economist myself, know that when a speaker starts a speech, the main thing the audience wants is for him to finish. Time is money.
My father was a superb calculator of economics. On his deathbed in 1999, with tubes and wires running into him as if he were a switchboard, I asked about why it made sense for the Clinton treasury to buy back in high interest rate long term bonds. After all, I said, they will have to pay the net present value of all that interest anyway. My father had in a tracheal tube and could not speak. But he wrote down, "Perhaps Treasury has a different view of future interest rates from the sellers." I have that page and it has blood and genius on it.
But my father was above all a warm and loving man. Two very brief examples.
He told me shortly before his death that the happiest day of his life was when, old and unwell himself, he spent a day helping a blind woman who was new to D.C. to find her way to GW and back home on a bus. He had never met her before and never saw her again.
And perhaps this, that sums up everything I want to say about my Pop. In 1974, when I was writing some speech for Mr. Nixon and needed some statistics, I went into his office and said to him, "Could you help me find these if you don't have anything more important to do?"
He looked at me levelly and said, "What do you think I have to do that is more important than helping my son?" He is justly famous for his axiom that, "if a thing cannot go on forever, it will stop." But the essence of Herbert Stein was the next sentence, "And if we only do the things we can do forever, we won't do very much." He did plenty.
I miss him keenly every minute of every day and I thank you humbly for honoring him tonight.
It was raining and cold when Alex and I got back to the Watergate. Our apartment 603 there still smells of Pop's pipe tobacco and Mom's perfume. I guess I have figured out that I will not stop missing them until I am with them. I know I would not feel so scared if Pop were alive.


text:
Last Updated on September 10, 2022 by Ellen
Have you thought about becoming a Tastefully Simple consultant? Direct sales can be a wonderful way for you to earn a bit more money. Or, if you prefer, you can turn it into a full-time job. It really all depends on how motivated you are.
Posts may be sponsored. This post contains affiliate links, which means I will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Tastefully Simple Consultant
Tastefully Simple is a direct sales company that sells meal kits and other types of prepared foods. They're sold through a network of direct sales consultants who hold parties and sell directly to consumers.
You can shop in almost any category of food products you can imagine. They are very affordable and their spices are high quality.
How much commission does a Tastefully Simple consultant make?
As with most direct sales companies, consultants are paid based on commission for the products they sell. While earnings will vary, Tastefully Simple offers up to 30% or up to 40% commission on sales.
How much does it cost to join Tastefully Simple?
In order to become a consultant, you will need to pay $99. And, you can start your business with the purchase of the Business Blast Off Kit. (The Business Blast Off Kit includes their best-selling 10-meal Kit, the Cutting Carbs 10-Meal Kit)
This will allow you to create some of the recipes at the parties that you hold. Your guests will be more encouraged to buy things once they taste how delicious they are. You just need to add some type of protein.
Tastefully Simple Recipes
Unlike some other direct sales food companies, Tastefully Simple has a large range of different types of recipes to appeal to a broad customer base. Plus, they have recipes that appeal to those on specific diets or with food intolerances.
You can find products that are gluten-free, vegetarian, lightened up, kid-friendly, and freezer meals. There is literally something for everyone whether you want to take some of the work out of mealtime or you want to make planning a party a little bit easier.
Buy investing in one of the Tastefully Simple Consultant kits, you will be able to show your guests how good these recipes really are.
Tastefully Simple Party
Once you've signed up to become a Tastefully Simple consultant, you will want to throw your first party. You'll need to get your kit and decide which recipes to make. Tasting is a big part of these types of parties. You can also share a few tips and tricks for making the recipes. Their website and social media channels are great places to learn more.
And, you'll need to invite friends to your party. Be sure to stock up on catalogs to pass out. You can also share the online catalog if you prefer. The best part is that you earn free products when your friends purchase from you (along with your commission). So, be sure to use these products for future parties to keep your expenses down.
You will want to stock up on a variety of different types of products. Don't choose all desserts or all entrees. They have dips, cakes, sauces, herbs, soups, meal kits, and gift boxes.
Have an online party
Of course, you don't have to have a party in person if that's not your thing. You can have an online party instead. You will still need to purchase one of the kits. And, I would encourage you to make the recipes and take photos to get people hungry to try the products.
For every $100 in products you sell, you can earn $10 in free products! Sign up to be a consultant here.
And, check out these legit online jobs that pay weekly.
Discount code
Act today and save 15% off your purchase (3/1/20 – 3/31/20) at Tastefully Simple. Just use code ELLEN15.
If you'd like to try a few of these products, one of my readers will win the Get Together Kit. The kit includes several five-star items like the Honey Teriyaki Sauce, Bountiful Beer Bread Mix, and Creamy Carmel Sauce. Overall, they mix and match nicely to create various flavorful and fun menu items for upcoming gatherings.
Professional blogger and social media addict. Sharing what's worked for me in my fourteen years of blogging. Tips and tricks for the non-technical blogger. If you'd like to work together, email email@example.com to chat


text:
Contact us to learn more
Spend 3 unforgettable days amongst the dramatic scenery of the spectacular volcanic Mamanuca and Southern Yasawa Islands.
Despite this being our shortest discovery cruise, you'll still come face to face with some of the most beautiful sights that the islands have to offer. Relax and and take in the breathtaking scenery while enjoying our fully catered buffet's and 3-course meals, massage services, jacuzzi and cocktail bar, or get more active with some snorkelling, swimming in the pool, or try out our mini-gym.
On your first day, you'll be sailing through the Mamanuca Island group passed many well known island resorts to Nuku-I-Mana cay, a famously beautiful location renowned for its brilliant seaside views.
You might see familiar sights on the second day as we head to Monuriki, the sheltered island location where the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks was filmed. Don't worry if you're not much of a film buff, Monu Island boasts an excellent kayak path, snorkelling spots teeming with ocean life and spectacular coral, and a deserted island feel. This evening we attend a village church service and the harmonies in the church choir will move you to tears.
On day three, we head off to the Sacred Island. Steeped in Fijian history and folklore, this is where you'll partake in a Sevusevu gift giving ceremony before going off to explore the encompassed lagoons. Then, in the afternoon, you'll head over to Waya, where you'll visit the local village or climb the volcanic peak of the mountain.You can adapt our discovery cruises to suit your holiday. We can collect, or drop you off, at many of the destinations that we cruise to.
Saturday –NUKU-I-MANAWelcome Aboard! Set sail over lunch through the beautiful Mamanuca islands past many famous resorts collecting some additional passengers, before arriving for a snorkel from a sand cay and discover the vista of a South Pacific sunset. Tonight book your preferred time early for our a-la-carte Dinner.
Sunday – MONURIKI – MONU BAYReef Endeavour cruises to idyllic Monoriki where Tom Hanks' Castaway was filmed. Explore this natural film set on a guided kayak tour and explore idyllic Monu Island for snorkelling before a special village choral service. The beautiful harmonies of the village choir will simply delight you. This evening join the entertainment of our Sunday Show.
Monday – SACRED ISLANDS – WAYA ISLANDSThe Sacred Island is a place beautiful beyond belief. Legends tell of the great war canoe `Rogoboka' which landed here with the first Fijians. On arrival the ship's crew pay tribute to the forefathers of Fijian culture and perform the Sevusevu (gift giving) ceremony. Spend a magical morning swimming in the aquamarine lagoons, snorkelling in spectacular coral gardens, beach combing or coral viewing from the glass bottom boat. Over lunch cruise to the Southern Yasawa islands. Enclosed by towering volcanic peaks and palm fringed beaches, Waya Island is a tropical paradise. Visit a local school this afternoon and a village and shell market. The fit will also have a chance to climb to the peak of Waya for amazing views. Don your favourite island attire for Pacific Island night tonight!
Tuesday – WAYA ISLANDS – DENARAU MARINAAfter Breakfast, Reef Endeavour sets sail and returns to Denarau Marina at 07:30am for a 9:00am disembarkation.
"D" Porthole Cabin – AUD 1200.00 per person – twin share


text:
The Bergen Record reports on the first day of Mets single-game ticket sales and paints a gloomy picture:
There was no wait at all until 10:25, when a line of just eight people formed. No one camped out overnight like years past; no one spent hours waiting. And plenty of good tickets still are available, as the cliché goes. One father walked away with four tickets to the home opener. Several others bought Subway Series games.
This is outrageously shocking and, frankly, depressing. I mean, people still actually line up to buy tickets in the cold when you can purchase them from the comfort of your own home via the Internet? Who were those eight people on line? Are they aware that they didn't need to go down to Citi Field to buy tickets? I'm actually kind of worried about them.
Seriously, though, I know that Mets attendance isn't fabulous, but I'm not sure how a snapshot of the ticket gate on a cold and crappy weekday morning on the first day really brings that home in a meaningful way.
I don't think there's an organized conspiracy to paint the Mets in a bad light, but it does seem like, when there is a chance to paint the Mets in a bad light, people really want to take it.