text:
In July 2016, our colleagues from DB Schenker in Mexico decided to take one step to serve the environment and act against the climate change. Due to the construction of houses and buildings, many trees have been removed from the local forest, affecting CO2 emissions. So it was decided to join a reforesting initiative to reducing somewhat the negative impact that the Earth is having.
In one day, approximately 10 volunteers from different departments at DB Schenker Guadalajara joined, and some also brought their families and kids to help. In the end, 150 Trees were planted on the "Bosque de la Primavera" in Guadalajara City. With this project, we could support to improve the situation for all the species that live in the forest as well as the citizens of Guadalajara City that benefit from this rebuilt green space.
What is most important, our team was excited of being part of this initiative, many great memories will remain with everyone as well as the awareness of the need to save the environment. Everyone is motivated to continue such initiatives.
Testimonials speak for themselves:
"…my kids still ask me how the trees are that we planted, and this is the interesting part that we will keep, the number of trees we planted is not the most important, but what really counts is to make it possible that those trees which we planted will be able to grow."
"It was great to learn the right way how to plant a tree, and also my family recognized that our support serves to save the environment…"
"…To involve my kids is very important to me, it helped to create awareness in a fun way. I hope we can follow up on the caretaking of the little trees."
"I personally liked the activity to plant trees because this is a way to contribute to our environment. I brought my nephews with me who learned to care for the planet and be aware already from young age on to do so. I also believe that this type of activity helps to get connected among colleagues, so it is a very good approach from DB Schenker.


text:
It's 6:30 on a Monday evening, and a small team of architects at M Moser Associates has stayed late at their Park Avenue offices to study a 3-D model of a home they've designed for a client. The model on the screen shows several pods, each about 2-feet wide by 2-feet tall, held above the ground by rods. "Having sloped roofs obviously will be very beneficial, especially in snow," Charlton Hutton, 29, a senior designer at the firm, explains. "And we're building in a cutout for the caretaker to put in food."
All this engineering ingenuity is in service of unusual clients: feral cats. Three years ago, the Mayor's Alliance for New York City's Animals started the Architects for Animals program, tasking local designers to come together annually to build eye-catching outdoor shelters for the city's estimated 2 million street cats.
This year, after Hurricane Sandy, many of the city kitties that live on their own are especially in need of shelter. "Just about every feral colony in all effected areas floated away or were destroyed," says Mike Phillips, co-founder of the Urban Cat League, an organization that works to care for and protect the city's street cats. (Many in the animal community believe that not all feral cats are suitable for adoption and that many of them, especially those born on the street, are best served by being allowed to remain outdoors and untamed, with some human care.)
Ten teams from architectural firms across the city, including M Moser Associates, unveiled their structures at a cocktail event on Thursday. On Friday, they were delivered to feral-cat colonies in the five boroughs. The structures will stay in place for at least one year, and a feral-cat caretaker will feed and monitor the cat colony that inhabits it.
While there are thousands of rudimentary cat shelters installed by concerned cat lovers around the city, the high-design kitty habitats aim to do more.
By being "creative and flashy," they "fulfill our mission of drawing attention to and compassion for cats living on the street by their wits," says Phillips.
"We raise awareness through design," enthuses Aleksey Shafiro, 33, a technical designer at M Moser and one of the three teammates behind the firm's shelter. "If someone sees our cathouse and it looks good and it's well designed, they're gonna ask about it."
The hope is that when people see these shelters, they'll be inspired to become part of the solution many advocate: Trapping and neutering the cats and then returning them to their colonies.
But, the shelters don't just need to look flashy, they need to be functional. Shafiro, Hutton and senior designer Jessie Bukewicz, 30, did extensive research on feral-cat colonies to determine what makes an ideal shelter. "When we work with our clients in our office, we don't just build them a space and say, 'This is what you have to live in,' we try to understand who our clients are," Hutton says.
Hutton and Bukewicz, both cat owners, know felines love to climb, so they decided to go vertical with their shelter by designing two pods, one slightly higher than the other. Each pod has an entryway, an overhang, and a slot for a food bowl. For insulation during the winter, Bukewicz obtained waterproof polypropylene foam panels donated by the Robin Reigi material company, who sponsored the team. Inside, each pod is lined with carpet donated by InterfaceFLOR.
Perhaps the most innovative part of M Moser's design is that it allows for digital monitoring. By mounting a camera on or around the shelter, the M Moser team can watch the cats from a distance. "It's one thing to build it and say that they use it, but it'd be nice to find out if they actually do use it," says Shafiro.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Noemi Conditi
Duration of stay: October to December 2019
Noemi Conditi is an Italian law student from the University of Bologna – ALMA MATER STUDIORUM, currently attending the last year.
From September 2017 to February 2018 she has been in Erasmus at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, where she had the opportunity to further develop her knowledge in the field of human rights and medical law. In particular, she studied the possible application of a Restorative Justice approach in the field of medical responsibility.
She is currently doing research at the Institute of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, Goettingen University for her master thesis "Gene-editing of in vitro created embryos and the Crispr/Cas-9 technique: questions of ethics and constitutionality in a comparative perspective".
Research projects
Gene-editing of in vitro created embryos and the Crispr/Cas-9 technique: questions of ethics and constitutionality in a comparative perspective
New scientific discoveries in the field of genetics, and in particular the rapid development of the Crispr/Cas-9 technique, with which it is possible to delete and replace the part of the human genome responsible of a certain genetic disease, engender old and new issues. In particular, when the scientific research will reach a safety and efficacy level, as for concrete results and possible avoidance of side effects and sufficient to begin with the clinical application of these techniques in humans, the discussion will focus more on its use on in vitro created embryos then on adults, because of the constitutional and ethical issues raised thereby. Indeed, in the former scenario, germ cells would be edited and the genetic modification would be inherited by subsequent generations. It is precisely this possibility that raises concern worldwide, because of its potential to create designed babies and enable so-called enhancement.
As a consequence, at the European level, a general ban on the genetic manipulation of embryos has been issued and in almost every Western country there is an ongoing internal tension between the wish not to be left out the scientific developments and debate on the matter on the one hand, and the desire to protect some old moral axioms on the other.
The aim of the research is thus to analyse in a comparative perspective the constitutional implications in Italy, Germany (both considered conservative on the matter) and United Kingdom (mainly liberal) of the use of the CRISPR/Cas-9 technique on in vitro embryos, within the process of in vitro fertilisation. In order to carry out an efficient analysis, it is necessary to understand the differences, if any, between other medical practices which are usually allowed, such as prenatal genetic diagnosis used in order to discard embryos with a detectable genetic illness, therapeutic abortion, and genetic manipulation. In particular what I would like to understand is if there are substantial reasons, other than a conservative consideration of the status of the embryos itself, grounded in historical and religious backgrounds, at the basis of the general ban and fear in this sphere.
In particular, it will be analysed what role some constitutional basic rights, such as mainly the right to life, health and self-determination, as well as the protection of human dignity, may have in the discourse. However, problems related to the lack of consent by the future child and his/her descendants and to the possibility of discrimination against disabled persons should be taken into consideration.


text:
RAM Family of Companies
Call us Today! 320-485-2844
RAM Family of Companies
Let our knowledgeable staff help you with your next steel or wood construction project. We will design and construct you the best building to suit your needs and budget.
Customized Steel Buildings & Wood Frame Buildings in Marshall, MN
RAM Buildings Inc provides customized steel buildings and wood frame buildings to customers in the Marshall, MN region. Since 1998, we have offered superior design and construction services to our customers. Steel frame buildings are a great way to cover a large area with greater clear span opportunities. Wood frame buildings can be built as a pole building (more currently called a post frame building) or built as stick frame. Our team is always up-to-date with the latest construction techniques. Let our team help with your next commercial, industrial, storage, residential, or agricultural project.
Our team is focused on providing the best customer service experience possible. We will always take your ideas and requests into account.
Benefits of steel buildings and wood frame buildings:
- Safe
- Faster – saves time which saves money
- Clear span large areas
- Resistant to Midwest weather
- Strong
Our steel buildings allow for a wide range of materials to be used on the building exterior. Materials such as brick, block, glass, wood, and concrete all allow your structure to be completely customized for your needs.
Call us today at 320-485-2844 for more information on steel buildings or our wood frame buildings.
Quality Pole Buildings Marshall, MN
RAM Buildings Inc in Marshall, MN builds quality pole buildings for customers throughout the region. Our pole buildings are completely customized to suit your every need. We can build either pole buildings or stick frame buildings. Our customers are very important to us. We ensure that you will always be listened to and kept informed throughout your project.
Quality is more important than anything. We only use quality materials, and only offer quality service to our customers. We are trained in both types of pole building and stick frame building. Our sales staff would be happy to help you make the right choice for your building project.
- Pole barn houses and Pole barn cabins
- Wood buildings – Pole Barns or Stick Frame
- Pole buildings which are also called Post frame buildings
- Building designs and Barn designs
- Steel buildings – Steel Frame
Construction For:
- Storage facilities
- Cabins
- Hangars
- Commercial
- Horse barns
- Agricultural buildings
- Offices
- Poultry housing
- Riding arenas
- Farm shops
- Beef Confinement
- Stall Barn
- Residential homes
- Heifer Facilities
- Industrial
- Equestrian buildings
- Dairy barns
- Mini storage
- Turkey barns
- And more
Pole buildings can be built year-round. They use less labor to build which lowers construction costs.
We offer emergency services to new and existing customers. We also repair and restore existing structures as well.
Call us today at 320-485-2844 for more information on our pole building services.
Individualized Building and Barn Designs in Marshall, MN
RAM Buildings Inc is fully certified in the latest barn design techniques in the Marshall, MN region. Barns are an important building in our area. They are businesses and homes. We are well versed in pole barn construction and guarantee we can build a barn to suit your exact needs. The safety of the animals is of the utmost importance especially for a horse barn. Our structures will keep your animals safe and your machinery protected. From the beginning of your barn design to the end of the construction – we will always keep you informed of the progress and pitfalls along the way.
Our barn designs can be constructed using any or all of the following construction types:
Our team specializes in the latest equestrian barn designs. We are always up-to-date on industry trends and the latest techniques.
Call us today at 320-485-2844 for more information on building and barn design services.
Pole Barn Homes and Cabins Marshall, MN
RAM Buildings Inc has been constructing pole barn homes and cabins throughout the Marshall, MN area since 1998. This style of construction ensures the open-air interior and customized exterior you desire. We create warm, durable structures that will last for years to come. Pole barn houses are an excellent option for a homeowner as they are more energy efficient in their design than a regular home. With cost savings from decreased construction time, they are the perfect home option.
Pole barns can also be used for commercial spaces like offices and restaurants and industrial structures like manufacturing facilities and warehouse buildings. This type of construction is extremely versatile and can last for years to come.
Call us today at 320-485-2844 for more information on our pole barn services.
Durable, Long Lasting Post Frame Buildings Marshall, MN
RAM Buildings Inc how important durable, long lasting post frame buildings are to the Marshall, MN region. They can be used for commercial, industrial, residential and agricultural structures making them the perfect type of building. Since they are built to last, they withstand the heavy snow and high winds we experience each year.
Our post frame and steel frame buildings include:
- Restaurants
- Fire stations
- Churches
- Horse barns
- Garages
- Residential housing
- Hangars
- Offices
- And more
Since we design the post frame structures and also build them, you can ensure we will keep you informed throughout the entire process and take less time than it would if you needed several different companies to complete one job.
Call us today at 320-485-2844 for more information on post frame building services.
"Our building is great and everyone at RAM was great to work with. The salesman was very down to earth and easy to get along with. The owners were very appreciative and they were willing to do what I wanted to do. Good quality of building, I am very satisfied. Thank you RAM!"
"The construction process went very smooth. The building is great and I am pleased with it!"
"The Territory Manager was especially helpful. RAM used excellent materials and the carpenters displayed excellent workmanship. We would recommend them to anyone."
"I want to congratulate RAM General Contracting for winning this prestigious award! Moonstone Farm won First Place in the nation for equine facility with the National Frame Builders Association!! Thank you TEAM RAM for all of your dedication, hard work, and a deep commitment to making Moonstone Farm a dream come true!! So many great folks at RAM were part of this project. You are like family and it's been a blast to work with you all!! Rollie, John, April, Kris, Beau, just to name a few…they were the main team, love you guys!! Congratulations again, RAM GC!"
"We are very, very happy with how our building turned out! We couldn't have worked with a nicer, more helpful Territory Manager. It was nice to work with professionals. They did a great job!"
"The building crew was professional. They were open to making changes as the job progressed. The building is structurally sound and looks very nice. Everyone at RAM was easy to work with."


text:
First it was the Tyler Perry debate. Then it was the Kanye West debate. I vowed that I was going to stay away from this debate, yet, here I am . . . again . . . going against the grain in the SCANDAL debate. No shock here: I HATE that show with a passion! The first thing that will enter a lot of women's minds who love the show is that I hate it because the lead character, Olivia Pope (played by Kerry Washington) is having an affair with the president of the United States, a Caucasian man. I can't speak for any other Black man, but, I could not care less about with whom this woman is having an affair.
My hatred for the show is strictly because, in my opinion, the writing sucks. To high heaven. The first and most important thing that grates my nerves is that Olivia Pope is supposed to be this crackerjack who has such a discerning mind, who leads a team of similarly crackerjack minds, but we don't see that. The problem is that she completely blows their very first case in the pilot. The argument that I have encountered is that her losing the case just shows her human side, that she, too, is capable of human error. I would be alright with that supposition had that same "humanity" not been brought out in the very first episode. It would have served the show better had she went on to crack cases, back to back, establishing the idea that she and her team were so fantastic. After a few episodes or so, then they could have shown her vulnerable side.
The second thing that irked me, to no end, was the incessant babbling of each and every character on the team. Every time a member of the team would speak, it would be an entire diatribe about whatever it was that they were trying to push. It turned out to be one long, drawn out paragraph, devoid of commas, and sending me to my knees, begging for someone to drop a period in there. Somewhere. Anywhere. Perhaps it would have come off better if that diatribe had been made by just one character. It could have been presented as a simple character trait. But, everyone on the team? Nah. Not working this way.
I looked forward to this show before it hit the airwaves, with bated breath. Forget the plot – Kerry Washington is a treat for the eyes, before even mentioning her acting abilities. On the night of the pilot, I sat, with my family, snacks in hand, prepared to be dazzled. Instead, I – we were so taken aback at the poor writing that was given to us to swallow – swallow like a huge, disgusting pill. In my small circle of friends and family, I have seen mixed reactions to the show, My sister, a Black woman, HATES the show. My daughter, a black woman (who initially did not like the show, and is married to a Caucasian), hit me up on Facebook and said that she had watched it again and found that it's not as bad as she had first thought. Many other friends on FB have said that they have been successful in converting a few of their friends to become fans. For me, I have to be convinced that a show is good by the pilot. If I can't be swooned by the very first episode, there is no going back for me. Just my own little quirk . . . but mine to flaunt.
I am also a firm believer in the motto "To each their own", when voicing my opinions. For whatever reasons that I have for hating the show, can I please just be a hater without being verbally attacked for doing so, particularly if you've misinterpreted my reasons for disliking the show? I realize that there are two tons of people who watch the show faithfully and love it to the max. To that, I say, "Enjoy!" I'm not one of them. Having heard my true reasons for not liking the show, can I please just exercise my prerogative, be a hater, and still live in peace? V.
copyright 2013 blackstarr


text:
Fulqrum Publishing Home | Register | Today Posts | Members | UserCP | Calendar | | FAQ
|IL-2 Sturmovik The famous combat flight simulator.
|Thread Tools
|Display Modes
Offline challenges.
Lately out of boredom I have been setting up missions in the QMB that are tough just to see if I can beat them. For instance a Stuka vs. two or four fighters, things like that.
The mission can not be so ridiculous that it is meaningless, but it is interesting to see what you can dream up to challenge yourself.
Of course I am flying Realistic settings, but sometimes I will use icons just to learn at what distance enemy aircraft will open fire etc..
A tough mission is to get into four Ace late Stukas and fight four Ace late I-16s or four Ace Spit MkV Earlys. Or maybe one E4b vs. four I-16s or one I-16 vs four Ace E4bs.....
Lets see if we can come up with a reasonable mission that is especially tough to crack so we can all give it a try.
Ace AI La-7 vs anything in the game except jets. VERY hard to beat.
A/c of the same period, or different? Otherwise the toughest would be Hurrie vs 1945 fighters or alike.
Q: Mr. Rall, what was the best tactic against the P-47?
A: Against the P-47? Shoot him down!
(Gunther Rall's lecture. June 2003, Finland)
It does not matter if the aircraft are of the same period, but if you pit yourself in a biplane against a jet then you will end up with a draw every time because you will always be able to move out of the way of the jets fire, eventually one of you will just run out of fuel.
Ace La-7s or anything are not tough unless the odds are three-to-one against you or more, and I can usually even beat four of them fairly easily if I can get down to the ground, AI has never been able to handle flying close to terrain at all, especially if there is any sort of a hill or ridge you can get to.
The late Stuka vs. I-16 is one of the toughest ones I have found especially if you have four vs. four because although the Stuka has good firepower, it is no better than the I-16 and the I-16 is more maneuverable and faster, so you can not run. The only way to beat them is to shoot them down while they are concentrating on another Stuka.
The Ace AI is still not that good, it can never beat a good human pilot 1 vs.1, I wish it could but if they have not done it in the last 17 years they probably never will.
My squad used to fly every week on a map after it split into two teams, both sides would have Ace AI helping them out, fighters and bombers and AAA etc... My side always had to go up against a group of four Ace La-7s but I usually took care of them all by myself because I knew about where they would spawn and I tried to wait above them in a late P-47. I could zoom down on them two or three times before they got up to my altitude, then I would dive and have the remaining two or three of them chase me to the deck where I would just fly around hilly terrain and shoot them to pieces more often than not.
Ok, then try this: Start at 1000m, non hilly terrain, P-47 vs 2x Ace AI La-7
Or even better, same, but with Fw-190A8 instead of P-47
Gaunt thanks for the mission. It was challenging but not too so, vs. Four La-7 is a better challenge. I did it on the Smolensk map which is pretty featureless and starting at 1000m alt as you suggested. Of course I get the 190A8's radiator wide open, put on the combat flaps and get right down on the deck as quickly as possible because it makes it easier to keep track of them and the AI as always are not as good on the deck as a good human pilot even if the ground is flat and featureless.
The mission I have been having fun with is picking any 1942 axis aircraft vs. four Ace 1942 Lagg 35 and four Ace 1942 P39N1 on the Smolensk map starting at 2000m alt.. Even if you take an AI wing-man with you they are pretty brutal.
I beat them using the 109f4 and the 190a4, but often I had to climb up over 7000m alt where they could not climb well, or get down on the deck to finish them off. If I take a few Ace wing-men they will often wipe them all out very quickly for some reason.
which 190A4 did you use? The standard one is quite good, but the other is not so, I imagine it must be significantly harder to fly that in such a mission
Most of my online adventures are in twin engine a/c. So when I have time for some QMB training I choose combinations of Pe-3/Pe-3bis vs Bf 110 E2, F2, G2 or alike.
P-38 as human player choice is out of question, she is just too good. Wish we could have flyable Ki-46 (without 37mm cannon) - decent match to any version of Lightning.
Q: Mr. Rall, what was the best tactic against the P-47?
A: Against the P-47? Shoot him down!
(Gunther Rall's lecture. June 2003, Finland)
I remember that Spits_vs_109s eliminated all 190s from one of their late-war maps except for the heavy F-8.....
I will give it a try with the low-power A4 but I do not think it will make much difference because I am either zooming and booming or am down on the deck using less than full power in slow maneuvers anyway. As long as you have those four-20mm cannons you are doing well.... Would be interesting to try it with outboard cannons removed too. Supposed to save some weight but I don't think it is worth the sacrifice of firepower.
Set yourself up an early North Africa scenario. Hurricane Mk I against the Italian G.50 for beginners. For a harder challenge, the Mk I Hurricane or Tomahawk IIb against the 109E7.
|Thread Tools
|Display Modes
Linear Mode


text:
Pull the trigger-cord, and away the panoramic photos snap, with the camera spinning on its axis. It's one of the coolest (and cheapest) ways to shoot 360-degree photos, and as it's from Lomography the saturated colors and effects are guaranteed.
They're calling it the first truly-affordable infinite shot 35mm panoramic camera, and while it's a little pricier than most of their cameras—like my favorite, the Diana+—at £115 / $145, it's still a lot cheaper than the digital equivalents.
There is the small matter of having to buy film and getting it processed, but as it shoots 35mm that at least keeps the costs down somewhat. Plus, there's no feeling quite like picking up a few developed rolls at the photo shop, and seeing the results—film shooters will know what I'm talking about.
Eight panoramas can be shot per 35mm roll, with the photos filling the whole width of the film, exposing the sprockets for that extra-retro look. Two aperture settings for indoors and outdoors shooting, and Lomography says there are up to ten possible styles of shooting—from the Timescan to the Footloose, to the Hipshot. [Spinner 360 Camera]


text:
BlackBerry has been in the limelight for many reasons, with people talking about everything from the unmatched reputation of our security to the latest device rumors to our vision for the Internet of Things. We expect this; we know we're one of the most watched brands out there and our transformation is on public display.
As we've been working through this transition, there have been many vocal voices from competitors trying to incite fear, uncertainty and doubt about BlackBerry. In doing so, sensationalized reports surrounding our viability and misperceptions about our product portfolio have crowded the airwaves.
Given this environment, we must fight back. And BlackBerry's best offense is to present the facts.
Today we are launching the BlackBerry Fact Check Portal on the Inside BlackBerry Blog, a place for us to hold our competitors accountable for what they say, when what they say is wrong. We'll provide evidence that BlackBerry continues to be a leader in mobile, and we'll expose "smoke and mirrors" marketing tactics by competitors.
This Portal will be your one-stop reference for all things #BBFactCheck. We'll also bring you content that you can't find anywhere else and highlight the news, insights and stats that you can't miss. From mobility management to messaging, devices to security, we will make sure that you get the real story.
The BlackBerry Fact Check Portal is a two-way platform – so if you see a work of fiction from one of our competitors, we want to hear about it. Tell us about it here and make sure you frequent the Portal for the latest in our fight for the facts.


text:
Kenny Rogers, Bobby Bare and 'Cowboy' Jack Clement inducted into Country Music Hall of Fame
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Kenny Rogers, Bobby Bare and the late "Cowboy" Jack Clement — three men whose influence still ripples across the surface of modern music — are now members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The three were saluted by stars Garth Brooks, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Barry Gibb, John Prine and others during a ceremony Sunday at the newly expanded Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Each of the three inductees had a profound effect on music in his own way, and one could argue each deserved a place among the genre's greatest names long ago.
"I'm flattered, I'm honored and I'm nervous," Rogers said before the ceremony. "I mean I didn't know that I would be. Very few things make me nervous. But I've never done this before, so it's pretty exciting. What I've realized is that success is not a happening, it's a journey. So as I run back through my history and look at all the things that happened to me and how I got to where I am, this is like the culmination of my career because I've done pretty much everything else. And I think without this it would have been incomplete."
Rogers helped push country music farther into pop music territory than it had ever been. He could go deep country with songs like "The Gambler," ''Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" and "Lucille," but he also had crossover pop hits like "Islands in the Stream" and "Lady," foreshadowing today's more pop-friendly country sounds.
Rogers remains a popular figure in the country music world. Alison Krauss said of his induction, "Justice has been done," and Garth Brooks gives him credit for taking him on the road on his first major tour as an opening act: "If there was an entertainer university, when it comes to Entertainer 101, I can vouch firsthand that Kenny Rogers would be the professor of that class."
Darius Rucker recalled a lifetime of being a fan of the 75-year-old Rogers before singing "Lucille."
"The thing I've always thought was crazy as a kid was he was about the only guy where you flip through the channels and you'd hear a Kenny Rogers song and a Buck Owens song," Rucker said before the ceremony. "And then you'd flip to another channel and you'd hear a Kenny Rogers song and a Cheap Trick song would come after it. He was that guy who was everywhere."
Bare scored dozens of hits like "Dee-troit City" and "How I Got to Memphis," mining the work of left-of-center Nashville songwriters like Tom T. Hall, Kris Kristofferson and Shel Silverstein. Though he was never really part of the so-called outlaw movement in country music, he was close friends with many artists who were and his insistence on controlling his own musical choices was an inspiration for others like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
"He has been responsible for a lot of things that have happened in the country music business," singer John Anderson said. "I remember one day I was talking to my old friend Waylon, and I asked Waylon, 'Man, what caused you to pack up and move to Nashville?' He said, 'Hoss, Bobby Bare had a whole lot to do with it.'"
Known also for his sense of humor, the 78-year-old Bare answered characteristically when asked what being inducted means: "It means that I will forever be referred to as a hall of famer. It sounds real good."
Clement's resume as producer, songwriter, performer, inspiration, raconteur and bon vivant is too lengthy to list, but he veered all across popular music over the last half century. He was Sam Phillips' first producer-engineer at Sun Records in Memphis. He wrote some of Johnny Cash's early hits, putting those unforgettable mariachi horns on "Ring of Fire," and was a repeated touchstone for The Man in Black.
He helped Jerry Lee Lewis shape his proto-rock approach and was at the soundboard for the recording of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." Also among his many career highlights was the discovery of Charley Pride and their 13-album association.
Clement found out in February that he would be inducted into the hall of fame, about five months before he passed away in August from liver cancer at 82.
"We do have a message from Cowboy," hall of fame director and CEO Kyle Young said. "He says, 'By all means, relax.'"
Two trumpeters then walked on stage and played the horn intro to "Ring of Fire."
Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.


text:
Painful soreness of eyeballs; coryza; aching in every bone; prostration in epidemic of influenza (La Grippe).
Deep hard achings as if in the BONES, with sore, bruised feeling all over, back, arms, wrists, legs.
Vomiting of bile between chill and heat. Chill 7 to 9 A. M.
Hoarseness in the morning, with soreness in chest when coughing; holds it with his hands.
When writing upon ARNICA, I there compared several remedies which have a sensation as if bruised. This remedy might also have been mentioned there, as it has "BRUISED FEELING AS IF BROKEN, ALL OVER THE BODY." (ARNICA, BELLIS, PYROGEN.) The bruised feeling of EUPATORIUM is accompanied with a DEEP HARD ACHING, as if in the BONES.
Let us quote some of the symptoms illustrating: "INTENSE ACHING IN THE LIMBS AND BACK AS IF THE BONES WERE BROKEN." "ACHING IN THE BONES OF THE EXTREMITIES, WITH SORENESS OF THE FLESH; SORENESS OF THE BONES." "SORENESS AND ACHING OF THE ARMS AND FOREARMS; PAINFUL SORENESS IN BOTH WRISTS AS IF BROKEN OR DISLOCATED." "SORENESS AND ACHING OF LOWER LIMBS; STIFFNESS AND GENERAL SORENESS WHEN RISING TO WALK." "CALVES OF THE LEGS FEEL AS IF THEY HAD BEEN BEATEN." "ACHING PAINS AS IF IN THE BONES, WITH MOANING." These symptoms are all characteristic and may be found in influenza, bilious or intermittent fever, bronchitis, especially of the aged, and many other diseases. This is what gave the popular name "bone-set" to EUPATORIUM, because on account of the severe aching, as if the bones were broken, that occurred in an epidemic of intermittent fever this was the remedy that cured, or "set the bones." The epidemic was called BREAK-BONE FEVER. Of course this curative property of the drug was then discovered by accident, but abundant proving and verification have demonstrated the homeopathicity of such cures. So with APIS in dropsies. If this remedy has no curative properties other than it has for intermittent it would still remain a priceless boon to Homeopathy. It cures a kind of intermittent for which the great anti-periodic (Quinine) of the old school can do little or nothing. Three characteristics stand out prominently, to indicate the cases in which it is appropriate:
1st. As to time of chill—7 to 9 A. M.
2d. The intense aching in the bones before the chill.
3d. Vomiting of bile between chill and heat.
There are, of course, other symptoms which may appear in a EUPATORIUM case, but these three are a sure guide, and many authentic cures corroborate the genuineness. This remedy is also very useful in diseases of the respiratory organs. In the so-called la grippe of recent years it has proven in my hands very valuable; the "aching all over as if in the bones" being the leading symptom.
It also has HOARSENESS IN THE MORNING, like CAUSTICUM, but while CAUSTICUM has more BURNING and rawness EUPATORIUM has more SORENESS in the CHEST; RANUNCULUS BULB. has pain in the chest when walking, turning, from touch, or weather changing; when coughing has to support the chest with the hands, it hurts so (BRYONIA, DROSERA, KREOSOT., NATRUM SUL., SEPIA). Both remedies have aching in the bones especially in influenza or la grippe, but EUPATORIUM the most. If either of these remedies fails to cure the hoarseness, SULPHUR will often complement them. Altogether, EUPATORIUM is to be remembered in MANY DISEASES having these characteristic symptoms. EUPATORIUM is especially adapted to WORN out constitutions of old people or inebriates. BRYONIA is a near analogue, having FREE SWEAT, but pains keep patient quiet, while EUPATORIUM has scanty sweat, but pains make the patient restless.


text:
Samsung Launches iPhone-Killer In Europe and Now Facebook Wants To Make One
Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook!
The global smartphone business has become a two-horse race between Apple and Samsung.
Apple (AAPL), obviously, makes the beloved iPhone, but Samsung recently surpassed it to become the largest smartphone maker in the world.
This week, Samsung is launching its latest, greatest phone, the Galaxy S3, in Europe. This phone has a huge screen, much bigger than the iPhone's, and many early reviewers love it. The S3 will presumably be an even stronger competitor to the iPhone, and it will put more pressure on Apple to release a blockbuster new product when the iPhone 5 arrives later this year.
Meanwhile, Facebook (FB) is poaching ex-Apple engineers to build a smartphone, Nick Bilton of the New York Times reports.
This is the third iteration of Facebook's smartphone plans--from hardware to software and back to hardware again.
If Facebook is serious about jumping into making smartphones with both feet this time, Facebook investors should be very afraid.
Several reasons:
The move would clearly be defensive, not offensive. According to a Facebook employee quoted by Bilton, "Mark [Zuckerberg] is worried that if he doesn't create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms." Translation: Facebook is doing this because it thinks it has to, not because it wants to.
Hardware is an extraordinarily difficult, low-margin, commodity business. The only two companies that are doing well right now in hardware are Apple and Samsung. Both have been making and selling hardware for decades. Lots of other companies that have been making and selling hardware for decades are cratering, such as Research In Motion and Nokia. Palm already cratered.
The smartphone "platform" business is already dominated by Apple and Google (Android), and there are already a whole lot of also-rans. Amazon has entered the platform game. Samsung may "fork" Android and enter the platform game. Microsoft is desperate to make its new Windows mobile product matter. RIM still has a piece. And so on. If Facebook really wants to build a brand new mobile platform, it will be starting from miles behind the leaders.
Hardware distribution is critically important, and Facebook also faces vast, entrenched competition there. How is Facebook going to get shelf space at the carriers? By offering super-cheap phones? That won't do wonders for its margins. Is Facebook going to build a network of stores? Is it going to try to circumvent carriers? Google already tried that. Didn't work.
Although Facebook might want to be a mobile platform, there's no obvious need for a Facebook phone. There are already a gazillion phones and Facebook is available on all of them as an app or via a browser. Why would anyone want a dedicated Facebook phone, especially if it didn't run all the apps that run on Apple and Android phones?
A full-fledged hardware business would likely radically reduce Facebook's profit margins. One of the advantages of Facebook's current business is that it is extraordinarily profitable. The hardware business would likely make it a lot less profitable (per dollar of revenue).
Facebook knows absolutely nothing about making, selling, or supporting hardware. Really--nothing. Yes, Facebook could use its billions to buy RIM or Nokia, and then it would know something about hardware. But RIM and Nokia are deeply troubled companies that are already cratering. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to buy, integrate, and FIX RIM or Nokia? (Google's about to give us a case study in how difficult it is with Motorola).
That's just a start.
Perhaps Facebook doesn't really have any intention of building a full-fledged phone--perhaps it just wants to partner with someone like HTC or Samsung. But even then, all the same challenges apply.
Facebook already has an "operating system" for mobile--it's called the social graph.
So instead of building a phone, which seems like a desperate move, Facebook should partner with every operating system and carrier and hardware maker it can to try to embed this social platform within every mobile platform. And it should build great apps to float on top of these systems. (And if Apple keeps giving it the brush-off, it should probably start by cozying up to Samsung, which is the only company giving Apple a run for its money).
Yes, everyone wants to be Apple.
But there's only one Apple right now.
And Facebook's chance of becoming the next Apple seems even smaller than Apple's chance to become Apple was.
The fact that Facebook is even thinking of going into the hardware business is a bad sign. If Facebook actually does go into the hardware business, it will be a really bad sign.
SEE ALSO: The Global Smartphone Business Is Now A Two-Horse Race--Between Apple And Samsung.


text:
We are pleased to have a guest veterinarian provide an answer today. At SmartPak, we realize the importance of staying on top of the latest research, nutritional products and horse health issues, while helping to promote increased involvement of veterinarians in the nutritional management of horses. Dr. Jay Merriam was kind enough to respond to this question for us.
My horse is 3, TB and grew quickly. She has clicking in her joints. She clicks every time she steps in both her back fetlocks. Can you suggest a good supplement for her joints? Is EquinylCM a good one? Any others that you can think of that might be helpful or HARMFUL to a young horse? I don't want to do any damage either! – AV, Connecticut
Dear AV:
"Clicking of the joints" is one of the more common questions we get and is a frequent cause for horses to visit our clinic. In most cases it is related to immaturity, lack of conditioning and sometimes size. It is also (rarely) associated with OCD, but not usually. The mechanism of the sounds is the subject of a lot of speculation and some research. Think of the people you know who can crack their knuckles! It's the same thing. If you cause a closed hydraulic system to suddenly expand by stretching the membrane, there isn't enough fluid to fill the space, so oxygen will actually form bubbles and come out of solution and form an air interface with the joint. This is the sound you hear in most cases. It is harmless. One of the other sounds you hear is the cartilages slipping over each other and then falling back into place.
So what to do? Usually, after we've ascertained that there is no cartilage damage, lameness or inflammation, we recommend lots of turn out, conditioning and steady regular work. Any lameness should be explored, but the sounds themselves almost never correlate with injury.
Most horses grow out of it, but many continue to click their entire lives.
Jay Merriam DVM
Massachusetts Equine Clinic


text:
If your city council can't answer these questions, it's time to start working on them. Companies worldwide are competing with city networks to offer Web access much faster than the fastest average connections offered today.
Specifically, we're talking about access of one gigabit per second (1 Gbit/s). That's a market-changing rate, considering how it dramatically improves the speed at which users can download video, TV, games, medical applications and research files. So far, even the world's fastest Internet city -- Seoul -- offers a mean throughput rate of just 41.4 Mbit/s.
Across North America, where broadband rollout has been relatively slow, gigabit networks are popping up in a range of cities, thanks to public-private partnerships. Examples include Gigabit Chicago and Gigabit Seattle, projects undertaken by these cities and an Ohio company called Gigabit Squared, as well as Google Fiber, offered on both the Missouri and Kansas sides of Kansas City, and services in Vancouver supplied by OneGigabit.
There is also a gigabit service in Chattanooga, Tenn., offered by the local utility EPB. Ars Technica recently compiled a longer list of gigabit cities.
These services are the pride of cities lucky enough to get them. Among the benefits are residential access that's roughly an order of magnitude better than competing services. In Kansas City, Google's service has been credited with attracting a startup cluster. Ditto for Chattanooga and Seattle.
The challenge for cities, of course, is to get gigabit connectivity established. It's not easy. Fiber networking, the fundamental building block, is prohibitively costly for most cities, so government assistance, private donations, commercial backing and a lot of creativity are typically required to get a network in place. Even with these elements, success is far from guaranteed.


text:
The Sony Xperia SL comes with a GPS receiver, which took about a minute to get satellite lock upon a cold start. You can use the A-GPS functionality to get near instantaneous locks. Alternatively, network positioning will do if you only need a rough idea of your location.
Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package and we've covered it many times before. It offers voice-guided navigation in certain countries and falls back to a list of instructions elsewhere.
3D buildings are shown for some of the bigger cities and you can use two-finger camera tilt and rotate to get a better view of the area.
Google Maps uses vector maps, which are very data efficient. The latest version has an easy to use interface for caching maps - you just choose "Make available offline" from the menu and pan/zoom around until the desired area is in view (there's an indicator showing how much storage caching that area will take). You can later view cached areas and delete ones you no longer need.
Note that there's a limit to the size of the area you can cache - you can't just make all of Europe available offline, not even a whole country. We managed to cache a big city and some surrounding regions before Maps told us the area is too big. Also, there's no address search in the cached maps and you can only cache map data in supported regions of the world.
Making an area of the map available for offline usage is very easy
You can plan routes, search for nearby POI and go into the always cool Street View. The app will reroute you if you get off course, even without a data connection.
Wisepilot is also part of the Sony Xperia SL package, with a 30 days trial of the full navigation license and downloadable maps for offline navigation.
Running on Android ICS, the Xperia SL has access to the latest apps and the ample built-in memory will guarantee you won't have trouble with space.
The Store is organized in a few scrollable tabs - categories, featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending. The in-app section is untouched though and it's very informative - a description, latest changes, number of downloads and comments with rating. There is usually a demo video and several screenshots for most apps too.
There are all kinds of apps in the Google Play Store and the most important ones are covered (file managers, navigation apps, document readers etc.).


text:
Dec. 13, 2012— -- Cheryl Sexton Dillon's life was forever altered at the age of 36 when her doctor recommended a hysterectomy although she only needed minor bladder surgery.
While she was under the knife, he performed a nine-hour operation, relocating her vagina and removing her clitoral hood. Dillon said she had no idea he would do more than a standard hysterectomy.
Dillon, who in 1984 was a vocational teacher with three children, said afterward, "I thought I would die. The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced in places I couldn't understand."
She said even ordinary activities became impossible -- sitting down, wearing pants, riding a horse. Dillon could no longer have sex without excruciating pain, and despite an understanding husband, her happy marriage eventually fell apart.
The surgeon she trusted, Dr. James C. Burt, an eccentric but respected ob/gyn at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, was a proponent of procedures to redesign women's genitalia.
In his 1975 book, ''Surgery of Love,'' he wrote, ''Women are structurally inadequate for intercourse. This is a pathological condition amenable to surgery.''
From 1966 until the late-1980s when he surrendered his medical license, Burt had performed hundreds of these experimental surgeries on his patients, according to numerous national reports at the time, including one in The New York Times.
In 1988, the Ohio Medical Board cited Burt for alleged "experimental and medical unnecessary surgical procedures, in some incidents without proper patient consent."
And now, Sarah B. Rodriguez, a lecturer in medical humanities at Northwestern University, takes a fresh look at the bizarre case in an article in the November Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Patients who underwent these procedures have said they thought they were getting surgery for common ailments like incontinence or post-pregnancy repairs. Many, like Dillon, said they did not sign adequate consents.
According to Rodriguez, St. Elizabeth's began requiring Burt to use a "a special consent form specific to love surgery" in 1979. By his own admission, he did not always get proper consent for some of his earliest surgeries.
"When I went to [Dr. Burt] and asked, 'What have you done,?' he said, 'What are you talking about?'" said Dillon. "I found out from other doctors that I had been mutilated."
One said her genitals looked like "a filetted fish."
Burt's son James C. Burt III, 68 of Los Angeles, defended his father's medical practices in an email to ABCNews.com:
"There are hundreds and hundreds of Dr. Burt's patients, alive today, whose marriages and lives were dramatically improved by [his] wholesome restoration to their fully functioning sexual responsiveness, which most of those patients had previously enjoyed earlier in their marriages.
"Until there are those in the media or the medical profession who are willing to look at the successful results, which fully benefited the lives of countless numbers of his patients, there should and will be no further comment on behalf of Dr. Burt or his family."
Dr. Burt, now 91, has not been available for comment directly.
Rodriguez had followed Burt since the late 1970s when he was promoting the idea of "altering a woman's body for male sexual pleasure." Later, in the 1980s, she examined whether or not women had given informed consent to his procedures.
Other doctors tried to alert the state medical board about Burt, but it did not take action until then Ohio Gov. Richard F. Celeste became aware of this medical procedure and reached out to the board demanding answers, according to a 1988 article in the Columbus Dispatch.
Doctors around the country were shocked. ''It's a disgrace to all of medicine,'' Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, told the New York Times in 1991.
''His procedures were several standard deviations from what is acceptable," said Wolfe, who at the time was director of the Public Citizens Health Research Group. "And only now are people who should have spoken up 20 years ago slowly, timidly coming out of the closet.''
Today, at 65, Dillon is writing a book about speaking out against Burt. She was one of the first to file a malpractice lawsuit in 1985 against both Burt and the hospital where the surgery took place.
"From what I remember, by default I won against Dr. Burt, and got nothing," she said.
Dillon said she settled with St. Elizabeth's Hospital out of court.
When she first went to Burt, whom her first husband, an anesthesiologist, knew personally, Dillon was already in a happy second marriage with three children.
"[Burt] said, 'You don't really need to have any more kids,' I went ahead and got a hysterectomy," she said. "You trust your doctor."
Her surgery was so long and complicated, Dillon was barely conscious for five days following the procedure and was out of work for six weeks. "I thought I was going to die," she said.
'Love Surgery' Strained a 12-Year Marriage
Dillon eventually sought help from the University of Cincinnati. "I asked for the best doctor, because I had to find out what was wrong with me," she said.
"He looked at me and called in one of the nurses and said, 'Have you ever seen anything like this?' He had respositioned my vagina and circumcised me," said Dillon.
"The doctor said he had never seen it anywhere except in African tribes," she said.
The surgery strained her 12-year marriage.
"For the first time in my life I was happily married to a wonderful man," said Dillon. "The way I was deformed, I couldn't have sex. I ended up going through three different corrective surgeries but by that time, my marriage was shot and I lost the best thing that had happened in my life."
Dillon went public with her story in 1988 on the television news magazine show "West 57th Street" and found others who had suffered similar surgeries.
"We said we have to stop this man," she said. "I don't want to die young and have my daughter go to the same doctor."
At the time, Burt called the television report, "a conspiracy of lies," according to the Columbus Dispatch.
That same year, Burt was formally charged by the Ohio Medical Board for "gross immorality" and "grossly unprofessional conduct." He surrendered his license in 1989 to avoid further review.
Several other women filed malpractice lawsuits against Burt, but according to the New York Times, many of the cases were dropped because doctors would not testify.
Sandy Nagrotsky, a malpractice attorney from Lake Success, N.Y., was one of the lawyers who sued Burt for malpractice.
"What he did was diabolical -- outrageous," said Nagrotsky. "Women trusted their doctor and he took advantage of them."
"I don't know if he was motivated by or disturbed in terms of his sexuality or if he hated women," he said. "Who knows if he was crazy? But he believed he could create a better woman."
"Honestly, I have never seen anything like this," said Nagrotsky. "Most [medical] mistakes are never intentional. This had to be unless he didn't understand human anatomy. He must have known it would result in complications."
Burt filed for bankruptcy in 1991. But in 1994, he announced plans to launch a foundation dedicated to making his "love" surgeries accepted medical practice. He said he had many satisfied patients and was being copied by "expert plastic surgeons."
Dillon said she still lives with the pain of the ordeal, "on a daily basis."
"I still can't do things I used to love to do," she said. "It's been debilitating."
After moving around, living in Mexico and Florida, Dillon eventually moved back to Ohio and now is retired and living with her elderly parents as their caretaker.
"My life has taken a lot of different turns and ups and downs," she said. "So much of it happened because of that part of my life."
Dillon said she finds solace in those she loves -- her parents who both have Alzheimer's disease, three children and seven grandchildren.
"Looking back, you deal with the cards you are dealt with," she said. "But I am so blessed to have a family."


text:
Using Library Thing for Reader's Advisory!
October 13, 2006 at 2:20 pm Janie Hermann 1 comment
John Klima, the Teen/Systems Librarian at the Franklin Township Public Library in Somerset NJ, recently blogged about his podcast on SLJ.com that details how he is using Library Thing as an RA tool for teens. What a great idea — simple to set up, relatively easy to maintain, and (best of all) free. Thanks for sharing John. I am going to file this under great ideas to steal.
On a side note, last year at this time John was working for me as a library intern during his last semester at SCILS, Rutgers University . I could tell from his short stint with us at PPL that he was going to make things happen when he graduated. He taught several successful sesssions in our Tech Center on RSS while he was still a student and his tech skills were valued by both staff and library customers alike. In less than a year John has started to make his mark in the library world and I look forward to seeing where John will go next. Keep your eyes on Library Angst for future developments.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized.
1 Comment
Yesterday, my boyfriend gave me a lot of Asda Story gold and I buy Asda Story Gold as the gift to return him.
The Asda Story money is attractive and I have plenty of the cheap Asda Story gold.


text:
AP, May 3, 2012 by Bill Draper
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — An anti-abortion group says it has the patient records of dozens of women and girls who sought treatment at a Kansas City, Kan., abortion clinic last month — a claim the clinic's attorney says is meant to scare off potential patients and would suggest a crime was committed.
Troy Newman, the president of Wichita-based Operation Rescue, said a confidential informant delivered boxes to the group about two weeks ago that contained the records of 86 female patients who sought treatment at Central Family Medicine, also known as Aid for Women.
Newman said the records contained patient names, addresses and other identifying details, as well as information about patients' pregnancies. He said he didn't know how the man obtained the records, but he said the man insisted he obtained them legally.
Newman said the records contain proof of violations, including failure to report child sexual abuse, and that Operation Rescue has asked state Attorney General Derek Schmidt to reopen an investigation by a former attorney general.
Cheryl Pilate, an attorney for the clinic, said she contacted the FBI after someone broke into a locked Dumpster on clinic property about 10 days ago. She said she doubts Operation Rescue's claims because the clinic would not have discarded April medical records, and that documents of that nature always get shredded first.
She said the only way someone could have gotten the clinic's patient records would be to steal them.
"It certainly appears to me that a crime was committed," Pilate said. "I hope those people understand the gravity of what they've done. This has nothing to do with the safety of women or the sanctity of records. This is about scaring women away."
Pilate said it's more likely Operation Rescue either received nonmedical records, such as sign-in sheets containing names and ages of patients, or was able to piece together patient information that had been shredded. She said the clinic will look at options such as incineration to make sure discarded records don't fall into the wrong hands.
Newman said the man who gave Operation Rescue the files found similar, unredacted abortion records last summer and turned them over to the governor's office, attorney general's office and the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, which licenses medical professionals. He said the state did nothing with those records, so the informant brought the latest batch to Operation Rescue.
"It's my position that nothing happens in the state without the public scrutinizing it," Newman said. "There are too many back-room deals without our knowledge, then things are swept out the door and ignored unless someone said something."
Clinic director Jeff Pederson said the clinic is regularly harassed by anti-abortion activists, who in the past included Scott Roeder, who fatally shot abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in a Wichita church in 2009. Pederson said Roeder, who is serving a life prison sentence, was caught on surveillance video putting glue on the clinic's locks 18 hours before he killed Tiller.
Board of Healing Arts general counsel Kelli Stevens confirmed that a complaint against the clinic had been filed, but she couldn't discuss specifics. She also declined to address how the investigation would be affected if it is determined the records were illegally obtained.
Sherriene Jones-Sontag, a spokeswoman for Gov. Sam Brownback, said her office could not comment on Newman's claims that similar abortion records were turned over to the state last year.
"Anyone who believes they have evidence of a violation of state law by a health care provider should contact their local law enforcement or the Kansas Board of Healing Arts," she said in an email to The Associated Press.
Abortion records have been the focus of court battles in Kansas since 2003, when Phill Kline, the state attorney general at the time and an outspoken opponent of abortion rights, began investigating clinics. Kline obtained access to information in patient records, and later became entangled in a professional ethics proceeding — partly over how the records were handled.
Last October, the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys recommended that Kline's law license be suspended indefinitely, an issue that will be decided by the Kansas Supreme Court. He has already allowed his Kansas law license to lapse.
Kline, who is now a visiting professor of law at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., denies breaking ethics rules during his investigations of clinics in Overland Park and Wichita while he was attorney general, and later as Johnson County district attorney.
Newman on Thursday asked Schmidt's office to reopen Kline's probe.
"This shows that Phill Kline was onto something," Newman said. "Another prosecutor in the state should reopen the investigation and see what's going on."
Newman said the records also contained empty cash envelopes that included the name of the patient and amount paid, and that he thinks that could indicate the clinic was committing fraud or tax evasion by not reporting the money.
Pilate called that assertion reprehensible.
"People can pay for services in whatever way they find appropriate," she said. "Cash is legal tender. My clinic serves a low-income, at-risk clientele, and these are women who may not have bank accounts."


text:
You can broadcast streaming Internet music throughout a house over Wi-Fi using products from Sonos or Grace Digital. But it gets expensive. Instead, why not make send the tunes to the basic FM radios you already own?
The simplest way of accomplishing a task is usually the best way to do it. Sound familiar? To loosely paraphrase William of Occam, the 13th-century Franciscan monk, this is a technique known as Occam's Radio.
Your house is the biggest gadget of all. A Gizmodo Home Mod shows you how to recharge it, clear its cache, and update its operating systems.
The products made by Sonos are great—they provide sophisticated control features and HiFi sound. But you need to buy new stuff for each room where you want the music to play. As an alternative, you can set up a small, local FM signal using nothing more than a computer or phone's headphone jack, a cheap FM transmitter, and basic FM radios—the more the better.
Required Stuff:
Streaming music subscription.
Dozens of sites provide legal, free, streaming music online: Spotify, Pandora, and Grooveshark are just a few of many. Other paid services, like MOG, Napster, and Rdio, allow specific, on-demand selections. Sign up for one and launch it on a computer, tablet, or phone.
FM transmitter.
Unlicensed FM transmitters, the kind that broadcast audio streams throughout a house, are restricted by the FCC to 250 microvolts. That ain't much, but in most cases, it's just enough. The C. Crane FM2 produces good results at about $60. The larger Ramsey FM100B does excellent work, but at $270, it kind of blows the budget.
FM radios.
Because the transmitters are so low-powered, this works best on quality radios with high receiver selectivity—that is, the ability to precisely receive and play the desired signal. A Tivoli One table radio absolutely kicks ass in this regard, and a Sangean PR-D7 picks up the signal even on different floors in the house.
Set up your home broadcasting network:
1. Connect the FM transmitter.
The FM Transmitter includes a cord that will connect to a headphone jack. Plug it into the computer, phone or tablet that controls the streaming music.
2. Find an unused frequency.
Finding a broadcast frequency not used by a local commercial radio station can be tricky. Start by visiting Radio Locator to find the vacant frequencies in your area. The site will list frequencies as "best," "next best," and "third best." Of those, look for the largest dead air space on your FM dial and set your transmitter to broadcast at the frequency closest to the middle of that.
3. Tune in.
Set your household radios to the designated broadcast frequency.
4. Finesse it.
Since 250 microwatts of broadcast power isn't much, tinker with the system for best results. Move the transmitter or radios to get the clearest signal. Elevate the transmitter, or place it on a large flat metal surface, like a filing cabinet. Move the radios closer to a line-of-sight path to the transmitter. And enjoy your own personal piece of the airwaves.
- - - - -
William Gurstelle is the author of Absinthe and Flamethrowers, The Practical Pyromaniac, and Backyard Ballistics. He is the Ballistics and Pyrotechnics Editor at Popular Mechanics Magazine and Contributing Editor at Make Magazine. Follow him at @wmgurst on Twitter.


text:
MAS tools have been designed to aid solid state sample preparation. Unbalanced rotors due to improperly positioned caps or a non-homogeneous packed sample can cause spinning instability resulting in a rotor crash and probe damage.
Cap Removal: removes cap without damage
Filling Tool: loads sample into rotor barrel
Packer: compresses sample inside rotor
Cap Set Tool: correctly positions rotor cap
Marker Pen: bespoke rotor marker to enable correct and precise spin rate detection.


text:
Modern HTML rendering engines and emerging standards make it possible to create a new class of rich experiences that could previously be achieved only with native development toolkits—but developers need better Web development frameworks and authoring tools in order to take advantage of the possibilities.
Three new open-source software projects developed at Motorola Mobility hope to address the problem. We—Tim Statler, Zachary Cohen, and Kris Kowal—have had the pleasure of working on a new content creation tool called Ninja, a JavaScript development framework called Montage, and a testing automation tool called Screening. In this article, we will describe all three pieces of software, and we've included code examples to illustrate some of the functionality. But first—a high-level overview.
The Ninja authoring tool is a Google Chrome app for designing keyframe-based animation with HTML5, including 3D scenes and vector graphics. These scenes can incorporate components built on the Montage framework (see below), and the editor itself is built using Montage. Ninja includes a familiar set of drawing and layout tools, such as the Pen and Brush tools for creating graphics, shape primitives, and the Tag tool for creating page structure (
<div> or
<img> tags, for instance). Graphics you create in Ninja can be rendered in the browser with either the Canvas 2D API or WebGL. Designers can add Montage components to their projects and use the visual data binding feature to easily synchronize property values between components. Finally, Ninja produces high-quality code output that can be easily be maintained, even outside of the Ninja tool.
Montage bridges the gap between developing native applications and Web sites. With Montage, developers can create rich mobile (or "stationary") applications using many of the foundations in existing native application frameworks. With Montage, developers can create reusable user interface components and modules, bind properties among components and controllers, and synchronize DOM queries and updates to ensure a smooth user experience, especially on resource-constrained devices.
Modularity is a key theme of the project. User interface components are modeled as individual Web pages and Montage uses the CommonJS module system, popularized by NodeJS. Even the HTML of a component (the "template") is loaded as a module.
Instead of using a template language like Mustache, developers can craft user interface components as stand-alone Web pages. An application is merely a component's template opened directly in a Web browser. The template contains a DOM skeleton and may require some CSS, but it comes to life with the inclusion of a component object model, distinct but connected to the document object model. This is a JSON formatted block or file that describes how to dress up the DOM with connections among components.
Montage also comes with a NodeJS application that translates a developer-optimized experience into a user-optimized experience. The Montage Optimizer, called "Mop," cleans up an application with its deeply intertwined dependencies into a single optimized script. All other modules are translated into scripts that can be lazily injected, and modules that are not needed to render the initial view of the application can be preloaded in bundles or distributed among multiple downloads. As a result, developers can release Montage applications with restrictive Content Security Policies. Alternately, "Mop" can automatically generate an AppCache Manifest and also supports a "shared resource" deployment mode, where multiple applications can share overlapping cached dependencies.
Screening completes the toolset, providing an interface for creating, editing, and manipulating application test scripts. Screening is built with Montage for the front end and NodeJS for the server, and it integrates with WebDriver implementations for Chrome, Opera, FireFox, and Internet Explorer to script the browser.
Without a great authoring tool, creating visually-compelling content for the Web has been limited to advanced developers familiar with technologies like HTML5, CSS3 animations, WebGL, and the Canvas 2D API. Ninja provides tools that visually expose these advanced features so that a larger audience of graphic designers can take advantage of them.
Ninja also creates high-quality markup and code that's easily maintained outside of the tool. For example, an animation you create with Ninja's keyframe-based Timeline panel is exported as easily understandable CSS rules, not as a mass of hard to read JavaScript.
Installed as a Chrome Extension, Ninja provides a native-quality experience for Web designers and developers. A stage area provides a surface for drawing shapes and laying out DOM structure. You can read and write files on your local disk via the Ninja Local Cloud, a small native application that runs on your system. A tabbed document interface lets you easily switch between files, and collapsible and dockable panels keep your workspace tidy. You can create and edit objects in 2D or 3D space, and use the Property inspector to change an object's properties.
Using Ninja's Tag tool, you can easily create and lay out DOM structure (such as
<div> or
<article> elements) on the stage area. You can snap align objects to the document grid or to other objects in 2D or 3D space. For example, in the following screenshot a layout guide is displayed as the
<div> on the right is being created, showing the middle point of the
<div> on the left.
You can control how, or if, objects snap to the drawing grid, to other objects, or to layout guides.
The Canvas 2D API is a JavaScript API for drawing shapes, creating fills and strokes within an HTML
<canvas> element. Ninja provides tooling on top of the
<canvas> element to let you visually create the desired graphics. When you publish your project, Ninja includes the required Canvas 2D API calls to recreate the artwork you created in the tool.
WebGL is an HTML5 technology for rendering hardware accelerated 3D and 2D graphics to a
<canvas> element. WebGL elements can be mixed and composited with other HTML content, and WebGL supports shaders (applications that run on the GPU), a realistic lighting model, and many more features.
Ninja includes a library of preset materials you can use in your projects. A material is a wrapper for a WebGL shader that exposes properties for modifying the shader's behavior. You can apply a material "fill" or "stroke" to any WebGL-enabled shape in Ninja.
You can also customize a material's properties on a per-element basis, or change the material's base definition to affect all elements that use that material.
Authoring content in a 3D context presents its own challenges, and Ninja provides several features that simplify the process. These include "dynamic working planes," snapping and alignment in 3D, and a 3D grid that orients you and displays the current working plane.
The CSS3 Transform specification includes support for perspectives, rotations, and transforms of DOM element in a 3D space. Ninja provides tools that let you visually apply these transformations to selected DOM elements. You can also rotate the stage in 3D dimensions to easily align objects in 3D.
You can rotate and translate objects using, respectively, the 3D Object Rotate and 3D Object Translate tools. In the screenshot below the blue rectangle is being operated on by the 3D Object Rotate tool.
The 3D Stage Rotate tool lets you rotate the 3D world in which objects on the stage exist. For example, in the screenshot below, the stage has been rotated about the stage's Y axis. From this perspective, it's clear that the blue rectangle intersects the X/Y plane, represented by the red grid. The grid also represents the current working plane. As you rotate the stage, the working plane changes to the plane whose surface is oriented the most toward the user. The drawing and layout tools always operate on the current working plane.
Timeline and animation
The Timeline panel in Ninja lets you visually create CSS3 animations, and it also helps organize elements on the stage. When you create a new object on the stage, such as a shape or
<div>, Ninja automatically adds it to a new layer in the Timeline. The order of the layers in the Timeline mirrors the order that the elements appear in the HTML document. You can re-order the layers to change the visual stacking order of elements on the stage.
To animate an element in the Timeline, you add keyframes to the element's Timeline layer. At each keyframe, you can assign unique values to any of the object's animatable CSS3 properties, such as
background, and so forth. You can also optionally specify an easing algorithm to apply to the animation between two keyframes.
The Components panel lets you add Montage components and other JavaScript widgets to your application.
You can edit a component's public properties in the Properties panel. The screenshot below displays the properties for the selected
InputNumber component.
When you publish an application from Ninja that uses a Montage component, Ninja adds the required Montage bootstrapping script and JSON component serialization to the exported files.
Visual data binding
Montage supports data binding between components, which lets you easily keep the value of a property in one object synchronized with the property of another object. The Binding tool in Ninja lets designers visually create data bindings between Montage components. For example, the screenshot below shows a data binding being established with the Binding tool between the
value property of an InputNumber component and the same property of an InputRange component.
Code editor
Ninja integrates the CodeMirror code editor, allowing you to create and edit HTML, JavaScript, CSS, JSON, and other common file types. It supports auto-completion, syntax highlighting, and other features common to native code editors.
Ninja includes a growing library of preset CSS styles, animations, and transitions that you can apply to objects on the stage.
High quality code output
@-webkit-keyframes myCanvas { 0% { top: 33px; left: 81px; width: 161px; height: 161px; } 100% { top: 37px; left: 939px; width: 223px; height: 269px; -webkit-animation: ease-out; } }
Ninja provides designers with a set of visual tools that expose all the capabilities of HTML5 and CSS3. What previously was left to expert coders to create, such as canvas-based CSS3 animations and WebGL shaders, is now possible with a visual tool and great automation.


text:
I know it may not be conventional to post "off topic" projects and such on this forum... but everyone seems like a nice group of people who appreciate each others creations. I have an independent web travel series called Explore22. We recently returned from Peru and I wanted to see what people here thought. :)
It's not paper, but its still... artistic?
Views: 224
Hah, Alexander, that's an amazing idea. I would love to have an Explore22 papertoy. I'd be up for having someone here create one, perhaps I could give them something for their efforts.
Glad you enjoyed the DOF and graphics. It gets progressively better as the show conitnues. :)
Well I'm always up for a papertoy commission, but if you make a post on the main blog section saying you want an official Explore 22 papertoy designed I bet people will jump at the opportunity.
I can't think what the papertoy would be of, other than yourself and/or other members of the team however.
Kind regards A.G
if you thought of somthing you wanted i would do a papertoy
or you could always have a go yourself, you have to start some where
Alex, Andy, thanks for the offers. In terms of making a paper toy of our crew, I find that a bit silly. (It would feel too egomaniac to make a paper toy of myself) However, maybe cool creature/monster designs with a theme would work.
For Example, each part of the Peru series could have a separate creature which represents the show.
Part 1 is mainly a quick introduction and run down in the airports etc. So a "luggage / Baggage monster" may do the trick. We could simply place the explore22 badge on the character somewhere.
How much does the commission of a well done papertoy monster usually go for? If we were using the quality mark of the "papertoy monsters" book?
A luggage / airport / plane monster could be neat.
Part2 (coming soon) contains moments where we are building a children's nusery, helping out with a nutritional center for kids in the mountains and enjoying the night life... So we would have to get creative on a monster theme for that one lol.
(Not sure if this sent to your e-mail, so here it is again just in case.)
I would like to offer you my services as a papertoy designer for the project.
(Now here's the boring bit where I talk about some of the projects I'm working on that make you thing "Yea he's a good designer".)
I am currently working on 2 papertoy books that will be coming out next year as well as a possible 2 more if the publishers think the first 2 where successful enough. Also next year I have a solo art exhibition called "running with scissors" at site gallery (UK). Along with these projects I am currently working on a new A.G.papertoys website that will have over 40 free downloadable papertoys with more free toys being regularly added.
To see some of my old work feel free to check out my old site agpapertoy.blogspot.com.
The offer I am going to make is that I would design the first papertoy, and then we would negotiate commission prices after the design is finished, based on the quality of the design, this way you're not paying out for something that might turn out not to the standard you where hoping for (win,win for you).
A.G.papertoys is committed to creating quality rather than quantity, I like to design something I can be proud of to represent me and my company.
I know that Andy Baker made an offer to design the toys, I recommend you check out his work as well as other papertoy artists and decide the designer that is best for you. Like I said on Nice Paper Toys, if you made a "help wanted" post on Nice Paper Toys you will be flooded with offers.
Kind regards A;exander Gwynne from A.G.papertoys.
Thanks Alexander, I did get it and sent you a reply tonight.
I would love to also work with other artists (Andy) etc. I'm sure we can figure out multiple things.
© 2023 Created by Castleforte. Powered by


text:
Something Old: It's all in a lover's eye
Unfaithful spouses have been around since the beginning of time, and they've always been a source of gossip. Today there are all sorts of electronic ways to spread gossip, but an earlier method that's very difficult for us to understand is 18th-century "lover's eye" jewelry.
Adultery back then could lead to losing your right to be king. Less-prominent lovers might be faced with a duel and death. So why advertise an affair? Perhaps it was a way to brag — or perhaps some of the stories about this jewelry are myths.
In 1785, future King George IV and an older Catholic widow with whom he was romantically involved were united in a secret mock marriage. They knew he could not become king with a Catholic wife. So the story goes that the "almost king" commissioned special jewelry — two gem-encrusted brooches, each with a portrait of the other's eyes. The lovers were sure no one else could identify their eyes. The brooches soon became stylish and many couples were wearing lover's eye jewelry.
Pins, rings, bracelets, pendants and necklaces were made. By the 1790s, special "mourning eye" jewelry was being made using portraits of the eyes of dead spouses or lovers. Eventually the pins were exchanged between mothers and daughters, sisters and close friends, but the fad was almost over by the 1830s.
Antique eye jewelry sells for high prices today. A 1 3/8-inch brooch with a portrait of two blue eyes set in an oval frame edged with a coiled gold serpent sold for $2,280 at a December 2012 Skinner auction in Boston. But beware. Many fakes have been made by removing the center of a brooch and inserting a new picture of an eye. Even old gems and original goldsmith-made mountings have been used to make fantasy pieces. Experts say you can detect a fake. Genuine antique lover's eyes were painted on ivory and covered with a piece of crystal. The eye or eyes should be the proper size for the space. Look for details like an eyebrow and shadows near the eye that suggest a portrait made from life, not a quick copy.
Q: I found an interesting object at a local yard sale. It's a miniature Empire State Building with a thermometer in the front. It's 6 3/4 inches tall and is made of plated metal with a golden patina. I paid $1 for it. Is it worth more than that?
A: Lots of souvenirs have been made of the Empire State Building since it was built in 1931. It was the world's tallest building for decades. Your souvenir thermometer was made in the mid-20th century. Souvenirs like yours usually sell online for $10 to $20, so you got a good deal.
Q: I have a ceramic vase that resembles some made by Canuck Pottery. It's kind of free-form and rough looking. Someone told me it might be Beachcomber Ware. It's marked "St. John, Canada." Can you help me identify the maker?
A: It's not possible to positively identify your vase without seeing it and the mark on the bottom. Canuck Pottery was located in St. John, New Brunswick, from 1938 until about 1964. The pottery moved to Labelle, Quebec, after a fire at the St. John site. Beachcomber Ware was made in about 1958. Canuck Pottery went out of business in the 1970s. Show it to a local antiques dealer.
Q: I have a pewter ice-cream mold in the shape of a ship. It's marked "E and Co. N.Y. 1222" on the side. Is this valuable? Can I use it?
A: The mark was used by Eppelsheimer & Co. of New York City. The company was in business from 1880 to 1947. It was one of the major U.S. producers of pewter molds for ice cream and chocolate. Eppelsheimer sold molds to confectioners, ice-cream companies and other retailers. The number marked on the mold is its catalog number. When the company closed, the dies for the molds were sold. Another American company has been making tin molds from the old dies since the 1980s. Old pewter molds may contain lead and should only be used for display, since they might contaminate food. The value of pewter molds ranges from $50 to $100.
Sign up for our weekly email, "Kovels Komments." It includes the latest news, tips and questions and is free if you register on our website. Kovels.com has lists of publications, clubs, appraisers, auction houses, people who sell parts or repair antiques and more. Kovels.com adds to the information in this column and helps you find useful sources needed by collectors.
Q: We have an "invalid rolling cart" made by Colson Corp. of Elyria, Ohio. Our school was going to put it in a dumpster. Can you tell us how old it is and what it's worth?
A: Colson started out as Fay Manufacturing, makers of the Fairy Tricycle, in 1885. There have been several changes in ownership and corporate name since then. By 1903, Fred Colson was one of the owners of the company, then called Worthington Manufacturing Co. The company made tricycles, wheelchairs, invalid chairs, carts and more. In 1917 it became Colson Co. and manufactured wheeled equipment for hospitals and industry. The company's name was changed to the name on your cart, Colson Corp., in 1933. Colson was bought by Sentinel Capital Partners in 2012 and is still in business. Your cart, made after 1933, is not old enough to be antique, but it's unusual. It would be hard to sell but might interest a historical society.
Tip: Wrapped wicker furniture should be repaired as soon as possible. Rewrap the wicker and glue the end with white glue.
Terry Kovel answers as many questions as possible through the column. By sending a letter with a question, you give full permission for use in the column or any other Kovel forum. Names, addresses or email addresses will not be published. We cannot guarantee the return of any photograph, but if a stamped envelope is included, we will try. The volume of mail makes personal answers or appraisals impossible. Write to Kovels, (Name of this newspaper), King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.
Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions.
Toothpick holder, Hawaiian lei, clear, $25.
Bed warmer, brass, engraved, turned wood handle, 48 inches, $94.
Imari umbrella stand, flowers, orange, blue, white, Japan, c. 1900, 24 inches, $153.
Toy bus, Safety Coach, cast iron, blue paint, Arcade, c. 1930, 12 inches, $165.
Baccarat paperweight, flowers, blue ground, white honeycomb, signed, 1986, 3 1/4 inches, $325.
Roseville Columbine vase, pink handles, 7 x 17 inches, $335.
Coin-operated peanut vending machine, Smilin' Sam, aluminum, red, 13 1/2 inches, $420.
Secretary, Empire style, mahogany, triangle crest, glass doors, roll top, fitted interior over glass doors, 79 x 46 inches, $1,375.
Popeye display, carved wood, by Keith Kaonis, 1960s, 64 inches, $1,650.
Sconce, bronze dore, neoclassical, figures, arms holding candle, 17 x 13 in., 4 pieces, $2,460.
Ralph and Terry Kovel, syndicated newspaper columnists, best-selling authors, avid collectors and national authorities on antiques, hosted the HGTV series "Flea Market Finds with the Kovels." Enjoy the shows all over again and explore some of the most exciting flea markets in the U.S. In each episode, Ralph and Terry share their secrets about when and where to shop, what to look for at shops and flea markets, and how to make a good buy.
These DVDs include the first season of the series. You'll see rare marbles, antique quilts, European chests and boxes, Satsuma pottery, ceramic tobacco jars, Bakelite jewelry, vintage plastic dime store toys, Czechoslovakian glass, Big Little Books, can labels and seed packets, old prints and more! Available online at Kovelsonlinestore.com; by phone at 800-303-1996; or send $29.95 plus $4.95 postage to Kovels, Box 22900, Beachwood, OH 44122.


text:
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Middle School Blues
The years I spent in middle school were terrific and terrible. I was trying to find my style and express myself—the slightly pudgy, tall geek posing as a rebel. (Yes, it carried over into high school, too. And adulthood, minus the rebel part.) And no, I didn't fool my friends or family.
I took gifted/advanced classes in a four-track-year-round school in a culturally diverse neighborhood in Southern San Diego County. I was the tallest girl in the school and blonde amid a sea of dark hair. (Translation: You could spot me across the campus with ease.) I went to all periods with the same group of people for two years. The exception was the elective classes—those in band went to the band room and the others (me included) cycled between art, cooking, computers, health, drafting, and wood shop each quarter. It was a solid, well-rounded experience.
My group was the popular clique amid the nerds and all the cultures at the school were represented. Only the truly weird kids were the odd ones out. The other three tracks in the school—one would be on break for a few weeks at any given time—had separate lunch schedules and we didn't mix socially. Thus, I was in the privileged top of the (geek) social class.
Switching middle schools in my final month of eighth grade did a number on my self-esteem. That last month of school (actually moving on my fourteenth birthday) my family moved to a predominantly white/upper-class area in North County San Diego and it shook my sense of self-worth to the core. Less than a thirty minute commute, but it was a radical culture shock.
I had to ride the bus, which I hadn't done since elementary school, and the trips were worse than the actual school day. (I tend to think this is when my fear of crowds kicked in.) It was packed full of jeering kids who made fun of those of us who got on/off the bus in my neighborhood—it was one of the older, original parts in the suburb. Most of the other kids on the bus route lived in new tract housing with a minimum of three car garages, five bedrooms and 3.5 baths. People would actually try to trip me when I walked down the aisle and projectiles were thrown in my direction.
The school days were disastrous. Wood shop, which I loved at my old school, was torture. Even the teacher looked at me funny and said "it's not like it was in your old school" when I walked in the first day. He offered to let me change my schedule to drop the course, but I naively stuck it out. There were only two other girls and they were in there because it was "where the boys are." I was branded a hoe for taking shop class because in that school it was for guys and skanks.
I've blocked from my memory which class it was that I had notes stuck on my back taunting "wide load" and such on several occasions. It was always from the under-sized boys who must have been intimidated to have a girl sitting in front of them that could physically beat them up—as if I'd ever. One student did defend me, but the damage was done.
In another class, I was trapped on the back row between the 90210 looking kids. They'd discuss their parties and drinking/drugs from the weekend before, where the next one would be held because so-and-so's parents were on a cruise, who spent the morning puking in the bathroom, who was in rehab, or who might be getting an abortion.
There I was, on the "better side" of San Diego, and I was being exposed to bullying for the first time. Plus the exploits of the privileged class piled around me—those outwardly perfect kids spiraling down the dark hole of addiction before reaching high school. It was frightening and sad, even then. I didn't envy them. They made me sick just listening to the stories they joked about. (I think that's where my distrust for seemingly perfect people stems from. Even in books, I never trust the pretty boys. No Team Edward here.)
Then, there's the fact that on the first day I dressed out for P.E. I was picked last when choosing baseball teams. (The first, but not the final, time I was left for a coach to assign me to a team.) I busted myself to prove I wasn't all that bad. I barely made it to first base and later sprained my ankle running home. I had to hobble around for a couple weeks on crutches.
I sat the whole boring 8th grade graduation (the only time I walked for a grad ceremony) surrounded by strangers. The next day, I attended my old school's graduation and watched my close friends get their diplomas as a bystander, sitting with their parents and siblings rather than with them on the stand.
It sucked to be me.
Over the summer, and then when high school began, I did settle into a small friendship circle of other outsiders and new comers. I was no longer bullied—but mostly ignored, which was fine by me.
Three months into my freshman year—just six months after the last move—I was once again relocated. This time the destination was eight hours north, to a strange place near Santa Cruz.
But that's another story.