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Lipitor (value)
Prescription Lipitor (value) Drug InformationYou should not take Lipitor if you are allergic to atorvastatin, if you are pregnant or breast-feeding, or if you have liver disease. Stop taking Lipitor and tell your doctor right away if you become pregnant. Before taking Lipitor, tell your doctor if you have a thyroid disorder, muscle pain or weakness, a history of liver or kidney disease, or if you drink more than 2 alcoholic beverages daily. In rare cases, Lipitor can cause a condition that results in the breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue, leading to kidney failure. Call your doctor right away if you have unexplained muscle pain, tenderness, or weakness especially if you also have fever, unusual tiredness, and dark colored urine. Avoid eating foods that are high in fat or cholesterol. Lipitor will not be as effective in lowering your cholesterol if you do not follow a cholesterol-lowering diet plan. Avoid drinking alcohol. It can raise triglyceride levels and may increase your risk of liver damage. Lipitor is only part of a complete program of treatment that also includes diet, exercise, and weight control. Follow your diet, medication, and exercise routines very closely. To make sure you can safely take Lipitor, tell your doctor if you have any of these other conditions: history of liver disease; history of kidney disease; muscle pain or weakness; a thyroid disorder; or if you drink more than 2 alcoholic beverages daily. In rare cases, Lipitor can cause a condition that results in the breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue, leading to kidney failure. This condition may be more likely to occur in older adults and in people who have kidney disease or poorly controlled hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) diltiazem (Cardizem, Cartia, Dilacor, Diltia, Diltzac, Taztia, Tiazac); gemfibrozil (Lopid), fenofibric acid (Fibricor, Trilipix), or fenofibrate (Antara, Fenoglide, Lipofen, Lofibra, Tricor, Triglide); telaprevir (Incivek); antibiotics such as clarithromycin (Biaxin) or erythromycin (E.E.S., EryPed, Ery-Tab, Erythrocin, Pediazole); antifungal medicines such as fluconazole (Diflucan), itraconazole (Sporanox), ketoconazole (Nizoral), or voriconazole (Vfend); HIV medications such as darunavir (Prexista), fosamprenavir (Lexiva), ritonavir (Norvir), lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra), nelfinavir (Viracept), saquinavir (Invirase), or tipranavir (Aptivus); medicines that contain niacin (Advicor, Niaspan, Niacor, Simcor, Slo-Niacin, and others); or drugs that weaken your immune system, such as steroids, cancer medicine, or medicines used to prevent organ transplant rejection, such as cyclosporine (Gengraf, Neoral, Sandimmune), sirolimus (Rapamune), or tacrolimus (Prograf). FDA pregnancy category X. Lipitor can harm an unborn baby or cause birth defects. Do not take Lipitor if you are pregnant. Stop taking this medication and tell your doctor right away if you become pregnant. Use effective birth control to avoid pregnancy while you are taking Lipitor. Atorvastatin may pass into breast milk and could harm a nursing baby. Do not breast-feed while you are taking Lipitor.


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Should ground troops hunt pirates in Somalia?
A Bush administration proposal to allow foreign forces to go ashore in Somalia to hunt the country's notorious pirates is getting a cool reception from US military leaders, regional analysts, and some Somali officials.
| NAIROBI, Kenya
A Bush administration proposal to allow foreign forces to go ashore in Somalia to hunt the country's notorious pirates is getting a cool reception from US military leaders, regional analysts, and some Somali officials.
The proposal – which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to put forward Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council – is the boldest yet aimed at stopping the pirates, who've hijacked 55 ships this year, secured tens of millions of dollars in ransoms, and kneecapped maritime trade between Europe and Asia.
Somalia's long East African coastline is a lawless stretch of empty beaches and mountain hollows, and experts think that foreign forces lack the military intelligence to carry out well-targeted land attacks. They warn that civilian casualties would stoke anti-Western sentiment in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation, where powerful Islamist militias are threatening to topple an internationally backed – but desperately weak – interim government.
It's unlikely that American forces would be involved, given the lingering memories of 1993, when a US Black Hawk helicopter was shot down over the Somali capital of Mogadishu, resulting in the deaths of 18 servicemen. The current struggles of a small African Union peacekeeping mission also raise doubts that any country would be willing to send ground forces into Somalia.
"Our intelligence is pretty shaky inside Somalia on a whole bunch of things," said Roger Middleton, a Somalia researcher at Chatham House, a British-based research center. "There's a real danger of arresting fishermen."
One of the Bush administration's last foreign-policy initiatives immediately drew skepticism from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said over the weekend that the United States lacked the military intelligence to carry out a land-based operation. Officials in other countries have suggested that land pursuits could violate international law.
The proposal authorizes countries to take "all necessary measures ashore in Somalia, including in its airspace, to interdict those who are using Somali territory" to plan or conduct piracy, according to a draft resolution circulated at the UN last week.
"Piracy is a problem that does start ashore, and that's where the ultimate solution is going to lie," said Lt. Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, which has deployed ships to patrol the region. "But we're concerned about minimizing the impact to innocent civilians."
The difference of opinion within the administration reflects the sometimes impossible puzzle that is Somalia, one of the world's failed states, which has lacked a functioning government since 1991. The interim government is near collapse after two strange days that saw the president try to fire the prime minister for pursuing a peace agreement that would dilute the president's power, only to have the parliament back the prime minister Monday with a staunch vote of confidence.
Authorities have lost control of the country, including the waters off its coast, where pirates in simple fiberglass speedboats have attempted to hijack more than 124 ships this year and secured more than $30 million in ransom payments, according to regional maritime officials. They're holding at least 16 foreign ships and at least 330 crew members hostage, dramatically raising insurance costs for shipping companies, which already are reeling from the global economic crisis.
An official in the Somali Foreign Ministry, Osman Mohamed Adan, said that land incursions would deter the pirates only temporarily. "We need international forces to assist us to build up our own security forces," Mr. Adan said.
Once ashore, foreign forces might struggle to identify pirates. Pirate groups are thought to have paid off local authorities, including government officials, and while some flaunt their wealth with new SUVs and other toys, many are disguised as fishermen and indistinguishable from other villagers.
"It's not like in 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' where you turn up in one cavern and they're all there and you can arrest them," Mr. Middleton said.
And like virtually everything else in Somalia, the groups are divided along clan lines, a potential land mine for foreign forces.
"Militias could play a tit-for-tat game against each other, feeding false intelligence to get rid of the competition," said Peter Lehr, a piracy expert at the University of St. Andrew's in Scotland. "We could be lured into their own tribal war."
Pirates along African coast send shipping costs soaring

subset: commoncrawl


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Here isn the Texas Hill Country you can find a few wonderful vineyards. One of the best is located in Spicewood, Texas called Spicewood Wineries. I stopped by one afternoon and they allowed me to photograph their wine cellar. Thanks Annie! =) Unfortunately, I am not a wine fan, but can understand the lure of a nice glass during the evening after a hard day work. If you are near Spciewood, they have a bar located inside and a lovely patio outdoors to sit, relax and unwind. Tasting room hours are Weds thru Sat 10-5 and Sunday 12-5, Monday and Tues by appointment only.
Wine cellars are great location for HDR's. The HDR can create magic with those barrels as you see above! For this shot I added a golden tone to give the barrel room a nice warm effect. I'll post more shots from here one day soon. Until then, hope you can enjoy a glass of wine tonite with dinner! Cheers!!
Some info from the web: Edward and Madeleine Manigold began Spicewood Vineyards in 1992 with a goal of making the finest wines possible from their vineyard in Spicewood. Their first Chardonnay won a silver medal in a national competition. After the Manigold's promising start, the Yates family now continues the tradition of making fine wines that have won State, Regional, National and International competitions.
Spicewood Vineyards became a bonded Texas Hill Country winery in 1995. The original handcrafted winery building resembles a Texas hill country home of the 19th century, with board and batten walls and a front porch. The original building now provides space for storage of cased goods and a home for harvest workers. A new winery facility adjacent to the original building was completed in 1999. The winery building is approximately 5,000 square feet on two levels. The upper level has a large tasting and special events room, suitable for catered dinners, weddings, receptions, and other activities. There is a covered pavilion, with an adjoining water fountain and shaded area for sipping wine, picnicking, and viewing the vineyard and the Texas Hill Country.
The vineyard makes the wine on the lower level of the winery building. There are five large jacketed stainless steel tanks with a fermenting and storage capacity of more than 10,000 gallons of wine. The underground barrel room has space for more than 400 barrels. The winery has the capacity to produce more than 5,000 cases.
Talke Photography Settings:


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Welcome to our Exquisite Hotel and Suites
Posted on 15 Jul 2017
by Albert
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Accommodation, Laundry, general hotel services, onsite parking and security are available. The premises are fumigated regularly under the supervision of Enugu state ministry of health and environment.
Delizon and Elvee Guest House – Hotel and Suites, is situated at Plot 145 Ihe Street, Oneday Layout, Off Agbani Road, Enugu. The hotel has elegant rooms and offers internet and business center services to all guests.
Each room is fully air-conditioned, designed with an en-suite bathroom, and fitted with a wardrobe, fridge and a flat screen TV with satellite service. The onsite restaurant and bar offer a variety of delicacies and cocktails. Breakfast is served free for executive guests.


text: Today's fervor for environmental preservation has also hit the medical industry as researchers, scientists and doctors are discovering the importance of the newest emerging field called environmental endocrinology. Doctors are now learning how environmental endocrinology, or the effect of daily stressors like light, food and crowding on multiple endocrine systems, controls the rate of aging and the quality of life. This also covers reproductive endocrinology, converging to become what we call menopause medicine.


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Price: $419.99
MBRP 4" Cat-back Exhaust System for 2004-2007 Dodge Ram 2500/3500 Cummins 5.9L
- Brand: MBRP Exhaust
- Color: Silver
- Condition: New
- Manufacturer: MBRP Exhaust
- Material: Aluminized Steel
- Manufacturer Warranty: 1 Year
- Fitment Type: Direct Replacement
- Exhaust Type: Single
- Tubing Diameter: 4.000 in.
- Exit Position: Side
- CA Prop65 Ind: No
- Merchandising Name: P Series Cat Back Exhaust System
- Country of Origin: CA
Exhaust System Kit
P Series Cat Back Exhaust System
P Series Cat Back Exhaust System; 4 in.; Incl. 4 in. Turbo Down Pipe/Ext. Pipe/Muffler/Over Axle Pipe/Tailpipe/Hardware; No Tip; Single Side Exit; Aluminized;
- Exhaust Type: Single
- Exit Position: Side
- Exit Style: Turn Down
- Inlet Inside Diameter: 4.000 in.
- Material: Aluminized Steel
- Muffler Count: 1
- Muffler Type: Straight-Through
- System Type: Cat Back
- Tail Pipe Diameter: 4.000 in.
- Tip Diameter: N/A
- Tubing Diameter: 4.000 in.
- WARNING CA Proposition 65: No
- Delivers A Rich mellow Exhaust Note
- Installs With Common Hand Tools
- Can Improve Fuel Economy By 1-2 MPG
- Boosts Torque And Horsepower
- Built To Perform
- Minimize Back Pressure
- Improved Throttle Response
- 2 Year Warranty
Our high flow performance exhaust systems maximize exhaust flow so your engine keeps its cool with lower exhaust temperatures. Your reward will be greater fuel efficiency; more torque; more horsepower; and last but not least a sound that is pure MBRP.
Behind these walls are people as obsessed as you with the quest for the ultimate in performance exhaust. For over fifteen years MBRP inc. has been delivering performance enthusiasts the most in power, the most in product quality and the most in customer responsiveness. It all began with the now famous B&B Eliminator, which soon achieved the status as the best selling performance snowmobile silencer of all time. Starting from little more than a vision and an absolute passion for all things performance MBRP inc. is now at the forefront of performance exhaust technology. Marshalling over ten decades of manufacturing and marketing expertise between them, the MBRP design team developed a line of performance diesel exhaust products that has made the rest of the industry take notice, and rush to catch up. Most recently MBRP Inc. has achieved something special for the sports truck enthusiast. The new sport line brings to the gasoline-powered vehicle the same perfect blend of style and toughness that diesel light truck owners have come to expect from MBRP. The line features a unique flow through muffler originally developed to increase the performance of thousand horsepower off shore marine engines. The result is a muffler that generates a deeper, mellow sound, improved performance numbers and cooler operating temperatures. For the future, MBRP inc. is determined to provide the highest fill rates in the industry, offer the most complete line of exhaust for diesel and sports truck enthusiasts and to be always pushing upward the definition of performance.


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The latest viral ad for Prometheus has actress Noomi Rapace begging for help from Weyland Industries. But if you look closely, you can see that the entire video phone call is being monitored by none other than the Yutani Company.
Deadly Mississippi Tornado Kills More Than 2 Dozen | Extreme Earth
Alien super-fans know that eventually Weyland and Yutani will become Weyland-Yutani, whose motto is "Building Better Worlds!" But this brief glimpse at Rapace's pitch reveals how Yutani gets its start. Did Yutani intercept this from Weyland Industries? Or were they hired out to analyze the footage? We don't know — the only thing we know for sure is that Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce) is aboard Prometheus. And I'm pretty sure we spotted him here.
Prometheus will hit theaters on June 8th.


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Or, how to make your hobby (or business) less of a financial drain...
Olympus OMD EM-5 with 17mm 1.8 lens, and hand grip.
Can we talk? You and I love to buy cameras and lots of other photographic stuff. I actually write about new gear on my blog all the time so you'd think I'd be racing to the poor house with my incessant gear purchases, right? Well, maybe not so much. You see, I like to wait for everyone else to buy the gear first and work out the bugs, then use it for a while and figure out the best workflows. Then I kinda hang around until they get a whiff of the newest stuff and get the urge to upgrade. At that point I get interested in the gear and buy it used. Never for more than fifty cents on the dollar. If I don't like it I can almost always sell it a bit further down the road for more or less what I paid.
Now, I don't always work like this. I ran out and bought the new Panasonic GH4 when it came out because I had specific video projects that I knew I wanted to use that camera for (and make money with) and, being the first real user 4K camera on the market it's not like I had older, cheaper options to consider.
But more often than not I try to love old cameras more than the latest cameras. Especially the ones that earn universal kudos before they are put out to pasture. One of my favorites was the Sony a850. It was an almost identical copy of the a900 full frame, 24 megapixel camera but in came out about a year later, cost $1999 instead of $2799 and was the absolute cheapest way to get into a full frame and 24 megapixel cameras at the time. I probably had a sales associate pull one off the shelf twelve times so I could play with it and even though I wanted it I knew I didn't "need" it. Not at the full price.
Early last year I found one in great shape for around $850. Now this was before the launch of the Sony A7 cameras and, for a Sony user, the full frame choice of the moment was the a99 at $2799. I bought the a99 and paid the new toll but I couldn't see paying that again for a back up camera. If you aren't a professional user you might not need a back up. I do. It's total paranoia on my part but I can't go out on a shooting assignment without one. My brain just won't let me. Too much liability...
So I finally plunked down money for the a850. It was a great camera. The used one I bought was half the price of a new, APS-C, Sony a77 at the time. It was an amazing bargain for a studio photographer. When I bailed out of the Sony stuff this year the a850, used for another year, brought me exactly the same amount of money back when I sold it. Even Steven. I basically got to use, play with and leverage a fun, full frame and very professional camera for a year----for free.
I don't always make such good bargains but then again I generally only lose money if I need the new technology (thought I needed the a99 for video---I was wrong) or if a camera is so lasciviously captivating that I can't extinguish the flames of desire and have the money in the bank. I lost as much money when divesting of the a99 as I initially spent on the a850. That's the price of having the camera of the moment.
If you look back two years in the VSL archives you can read my high praise of the Olympus EM-5. I think it's the camera that really made mirror less cameras legitimate in the eyes of the center of the Bell curve consumers. But I was over equipped at the time it was launched with various Sony cameras and couldn't justify paying the "opening season" premium for the camera and the requisite lenses. Since that time I've watched legions of photographers gush about the quality of the files, the colors and the incredible in body IS. I envied them but I bought practical stuff like the Panasonic GH3's that I've used for a dozen video projects and nearly a hundred still shoots. I also knew I needed the video capabilities of the GH4 before I needed the particular attributes of the EM-5 for my style of business shooting but I never lost my admiration for the product and the engineering.
A friend recently upgraded to a brace of EM-1 cameras, and a GH4 to keep his GH3 company. Feeling a bit overstocked he was ready, after two years of EM-5 ownership, to lighten his inventory and sold me the two cameras at an amazing price. Less than half of the new price and paired with some great accessories which further sweetened the deal for me. Wow. These are great, low mileage cameras and I'm enjoying them as though they were brand new to me.
Essentially what I'm getting at is that we've pretty much reached the consensus that cameras have hit a point of quickly diminishing returns. The stuff that was on the market two years ago isn't just half as good as today's products it's something like 98% as good as today's products and in some cases (many cases?) you'd have to be practicing pretty damn precise and careful techniques to see the difference. So----why pay for incremental improvements you are hardly likely to perceive?
I was motivated to write this after a trip yesterday to purchase a cheap lens at Precision Camera. There I saw several fervent photographers getting ready to trade in Nikon D800's and D800e's in order to purchase the new Nikon D810. Now, I know that the new camera sports the same number of pixels and most of the same features as the cameras it is replacing but I also know from reading what smart, experienced shooters have posted about how small and incremental the actual, visible quality differences are. Most will be obscured by lenses that aren't of high enough resolution to resolve those differences.
How old is the oldest D800? Is it two years old? Has anything in the 35mm format come out that trumps the performance by a discernible amount (and I mean discernible to mentally healthy people...)? Not that I know of. So I marveled at the folks who would willingly lose about $800 to $1,000 on the trade. What is it that they are seeing that I don't get? Doesn't matter. If they can perceive the difference, and value it, that's all that matters.
But going forward here's my suggestion for truly enjoying the gear end of the practice of photography: Buy stuff used! There are tons of used lenses and used bodies that are wonderful to work with but have been replaced by newer models, most of which don't add much to the spec list.
I was combing the web and looking at bargains last week. Here are some I found:
The Fuji EX1 with the 18-55mm zoom lens (the fast one), in almost new condition for $600.
The difference between the EX-1 and a new EX-2? The finder is a bit better in the 2 and the screen on the back is two tenths of an inch wider. The sensor and the imaging pipeline, as well as the lens, are identical. And both of those camera have the identical sensor and imaging pipeline you'll find in the Pro-1.
You need a faster, more traditional body with class leading performance? Smart guy, Thom Hogan tells me that there's only 22% difference in resolution between a Nikon D7000 at 16 megapixels and the newer D7100 at 24 megapixels. His take? Not enough discernible difference for most people to care about at the final file sizes 99% will use. A new D7100? About $1100. A lightly used D7000? About $500. The difference in operation? Minimal.
If you are mostly a mirror less shooter or APS-C shooter but you've always wanted to play around with the full framers (not for the resolution but because you know that perspective and depth of field is different) you could ante up for a D610 or a 6D from Nikon and Canon respectively or you could pick up a lightly used original Canon 5D for a whopping $600. My friend Paul and I were fondling one yesterday at the camera shop and it looked as though it had just been taken out of the box for the first time. The tariff? $600. All the depth of field magic with the nasty depreciation already sucked out of the camera.
The 17mm Olympus 1.8 lens above retails for around $500. The one I bought is in great condition and cost me less than $350. It works just as well as the new ones.
We could go on and on but it's not like the old days where the jump from three to six megapixels was amazing and career changing. It's not like the days when Nikon and Canon jumped from six to twelve and then to 22-24 megapixels. The changes are a lot more subtle and they are happening at a slower pace. For all intents and purposes we're at the point where skipping generations of our favorite products doesn't make us feel like we're falling behind.
Just a few thoughts on keeping the passion affordable. Now, who's got a lightly used Leica S they'd like to sell me at half the going new price? I might want to take a look at that...


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We've been helping a reader get his G1 working with B-Mobile, which was more difficult than expected, though B-Mobile's customer support was very helpful to our reader. (See here or the only post we made about this.) The G1 finally worked with the B-Mobile SIM after flashing an Android 2.1 ROM but would not connect with both Android 1.5 and 1.6. However, a commenter says that his HTC Hero is working with 1.5.
Based on chatter around Japan, it seems that there is indeed some issue with HTC's radio and Android 1.6 that is preventing it from working.
The reader with the G1 only tried one 1.5 ROM, which was dumped from the Japanese version of the Google Developer Day (GDD) phone, aka the ION (same hardware as the ht-03a). We figured, since B-Mobile officially supports the ION, and since they had been selling SIMs for the ION prior to announcing the USIM 300, that this ROM would work on the G1.
Here are two three things to watch out for:
- Not being able to access the application Market - may need market enabler.
- No 3G icon indicating that you are indeed connected
- An error message saying "Your SIM card does not allow a connection to this network"
As for the 3G icon, I am guessing this is also due to not being registered on Docomo's network. Further guessing leads me to believe that this is due to the presumed IMEI filtering done by Docomo that prevents non-branded handsets from being used for data. As far as I can tell, the only handsets that B-Mobile officially supports are ones that were originally sold by Docomo or Wilcom, an MVNO like B-Mobile that uses Docomo's network. Aside from the ION of course.
Due to the lack of the 3G icon, our reader's G1 actually connected just fine with the B-Mobile SIM, but he didn't know it until customer support sent him an email:
Your b-bmobile SIM successfully connected on April 22. The last connection it made at 15:20 on April 24.This is the time when he had the 2.1 based ROM installed. After April 24, he decided to flash the 1.5 ROM since he thought the phone wasn't connecting due to the lack of the 3G icon.
Here are the details for the G1:
- Open Eclair v1.2.1


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In order to keep our prices as low as possible, all CreateForLess order subtotals must be at least $10. This helps us save on labor costs when packing your order so we can extend the savings to you!
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FloraCraft Tools to use on floral and home decor, for that professional look. Styro Foam Set 3 pc- Includes a shaper for smoothing edges and cut marks, a cutter for cutting and shaping foam and a tuck and scribe tool. The tuck end of the tool has a point for tucking fabric, felt and ribbons, the scibe end is rounded so you can trace patterns right on the foam with out them rubbing off. Tools are made of a smooth plastic.


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It's Only Dinner—or Maybe It Isn't
Wherever you are in a relationship, there's a restaurant to suit the occasion.
Testing the Waters
Relax Grill, Lake Eola Park
Take your new potential sweetie for a bite under the stars at Orlando's landmark lake. Open until 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, the very casual Relax Grill features dishes like a Mediterranean platter of hummus, falafel and red pepper dip ($11) and shrimp kabobs ($16) in an al-fresco setting. Romance might be in the air after a stroll around the lake. 211 Eola Parkway, Orlando, 407-425-8440; relaxgrill.com
Got Game?
Jernigan's at Amway Center
You want to see a Magic game, but your object of affection isn't into sports. But who isn't up for dining out? Settle in at Jernigan's, the all-you-can-eat restaurant with balcony seating overlooking Amway Center's basketball court. For the price of game tickets, plus Jernigan's $39.95 per person charge, you may win your date over to watching the Magic with you. 400 W. Church St., Orlando, 407-440-7000; amwaycenter.com/restaurants-and-bars
Turn on the Charm
Mama Della's Ristorante at Portofino Bay Hotel
The "this may be the one" date calls for cozy and romantic. Mama Della's is a little slice of Genoa, and surprisingly intimate for a hotel restaurant. Dinner for two with wine will set you back around $100, and the branzino del Mediterraneo ($29)—bass with pappardelle pasta and fennel—is highly recommended. Embrace the illusion by strolling hand-in-hand around the reproduction Italian village of Portofino Bay. You'll think you've left Orlando, at least for the night. 5601 Universal Blvd., Orlando, 407-503-3463; loewshotels.com/restaurants/mama-della-s-ristorante
WHEN SHE is 'The One'
Victoria & Albert's Chefs Table
You can't get a much better opening act for an engagement proposal than the four-hour, 13-course spectacle that is a meal at V&A's chefs table. At $245 per person with wine pairings, it's an extravagant setup to popping the question, but truffles fresh from Italy, Japanese Kobe beef and Scottish pheasant, personally served by chef Scott Hunnel, doesn't come cheap. The extraordinary and ever-changing menu for this intimate evening (only 10 seats per night) could be the deciding factor when you're looking for a yes. 4401 Grand Floridian Way, Lake Buena Vista, 407-939-3862; victoria-alberts.com
Save the Last Date
Eola Wine Company
So, it didn't work out; these things happen. Splitting a duck, fig and brie flatbread ($14) and a bottle of "The Last Straw'' from Washington's Isenhower Cellars ($44) might be the last thing you'll ever have to share. Or perhaps savoring an artisan cheese plate (five samples for $20) and a flight of four two-ounce shots of California red for $18 by youself while he checks his text messages is the best way to say, "Let's still be friends." 136 Park Ave., Winter Park, 407-647-9103; 430 E. Central Blvd. (right), Orlando, 407-481-9100; eolawinecompany.com


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Dealing with Mold in Damaged Homes
The longer mold grows, the greater the potential hazard and the harder it is to control.
Hurricane Katrina caused unprecedented damage in the United States. Louisiana residents have recovered from many floods and hurricanes in the past, but never before have so many been hit so hard that they were unable to return to their homes for so long. Never before has such a large American population experienced such an extended flood period and power outage combined with high summer humidity. And never before have so many residents returned not only to homes that were torn up physically by the storm, but also to homes that hosted an unprecedented population explosion of mold.
Molds are a category of fungi.They serve as nature's recycler by helping to break down dead materials. Molds produce tiny spores that float and spread easily through the air, so they are just about everywhere. Live spores act like seeds, forming new mold growths (colonies) when they find the right conditions—moisture, nutrients (nearly anything organic), and a suitable place to grow. Of these, moisture in either liquid or vapor form is the key factor—both for growth and for control.
Mold begins to grow on materials that stay wet longer than two or three days. The longer it grows, the greater the potential health hazard and the harder it is to control. So as soon as it is safe to return, it's crucial for the homeowner to begin cleanup and to dry out the house as safely and effectively as possible. After such a massive disaster, many if not most homeowners faced the task of doing this on their own, with limited help and resources.
First Things First
If your home has been flooded, take photographs before cleaning up for insurance purposes. Today, most homeowners' insurance policies do not cover mold damage or cleanup costs, but flood insurance may cover these expenses.
Once you have taken the photographs, you should get started as soon as possible. Don't wait for the claims adjuster to see your home before you remove wet and moldy materials.
If you are hiring a contractor to clean your home, seek out licensed or certified mold remediation contractors with special training and equipment. Get in writing the cost, methods, and steps to be used.Talk to several contractors and compare each contractor's procedures with the following guidelines. Effective procedures may vary, depending on what specialized equipment and chemical treatments the contractor uses, but the contractor that you choose should address the principles listed in the following guidelines.
Mold and Health
People are exposed to mold mainly by breathing spores or other tiny organic fragments. People can also be exposed through skin contact—for example, by touching moldy surfaces— and by eating mold-contaminated food. The health effects of exposure vary widely and are usually hard to predict. They depend on the sensitivity of the person, the amount and type of exposure, the length of exposure, the type of mold, and many other factors.
Some people are much more sensitive to mold than others, but long-term or heavy exposure is unhealthy for anyone. Mold commonly triggers allergic reactions and asthma attacks,may lower resistance to illness, and may affect people's health in other ways.Young children, the elderly, and the ill are most vulnerable.
Many types of mold can produce harmful chemical compounds called mycotoxins, but they can do so only under certain conditions. If a toxin is produced, it may be present in both live and dead spores and in fragments in the air. The commonly used term "black mold," when used to refer to a species that produces toxins, is misleading, since many types of mold are black. Although the potential damaging effects of specific mycotoxins are known and varied, identifying a mold that can produce mycotoxins does not tell you whether you have been exposed to a toxin. Still, all indoor mold growth is potentially harmful and should be removed promptly, no matter what type of mold is present, and no matter whether it can produce a toxin.
Mold testing to identify the type or quantity of mold in a house is not usually necessary, and it cannot tell you whether you have been exposed to a toxin, as I have just explained. Some insurance companies and legal services may require sampling for evidence. Professional mold remediation contractors may test before and after cleanup to verify that the mold is no longer present.
Do It Yourself: Ten Steps to Cleaning Up Mold
To clean up safely and effectively, follow these steps and refer to one of the following publications. A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture, and Your Home and Mold Remediation in Schools and Commercial Buildings, both published by EPA, are available online at www.epa.gov/mold. The CDC's Mold Prevention Strategies and Possible Health Effects in the Aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is also available online at www.bt.cdc.gov/ disasters/mold/report/.
Wear protective gear during cleanup. Wear gloves, goggles, rubber boots, and a particle respirator that has received a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) rating of N-95 or higher. Some types of respirator have valves to make it easier to breathe. For heavy, long-term exposure, a properly fitted half-face or full-face respirator is recommended.
Isolate work area and ventilate to the outdoors. Disturbing mold colonies during cleanup can cause a huge release of spores into the air, so seal off the moldy areas from the rest of the house.Open windows, and don't run the central air system during cleanup.Tape plastic over air grilles, and close off the stairwell with taped plastic if the second story is dry and clean. If the power is on, put a fan in a window, facing out, to exhaust mold-filled air to the outdoors.
Remove moldy porous materials. Porous moldy or sewage-contaminated materials should be removed, put in plastic bags if possible, and thrown away.To reduce the release and spread of mold spores, it is helpful to cover moldy material with plastic sheeting before removing it.
Remove all flooded carpeting, upholstery, fabrics, and mattresses right away. It's best to discard them, but if you hope to salvage a valuable item, have it cleaned, disinfected, and dried quickly outside the home.Never reuse flooded carpet padding.
Remove all wet fibrous insulation— even if the wallboard appears to be dry. Wet insulation will stay wet for far too long, leading to the growth of unhealthy mold and decay fungi inside the walls. Cut wall covering above the level that was wet; water can wick up above the flood level—sometimes as much as 3–4 feet above it.
It's best to remove all moldy, porous materials, especially if there is heavy or long-term mold growth—including gypsum wallboard, processed wood products, ceiling tiles, and paper products. Plaster, wood paneling, and nonpaper- faced gypsum board walls that have dried, are in good condition, and are not insulated can be cleaned and sanitized to salvage them.There is a risk of mold on the back side, however, and this mold can release spores into the home through air leaks in the walls. Remove vinyl wallpaper, flooring, and other coverings on wet materials.
First clean, then disinfect. Surface mold can be effectively cleaned from nonporous materials such as hard plastic, concrete, glass, and metal; solid wood can also be cleaned, since mold grows only on its surface. Cleaning should remove, not just kill, the mold, because dead mold spores and fragments can cause allergic reactions, and some may still contain harmful toxins. Wash dirty or moldy materials with nonphosphate all-purpose cleaners, because phosphate residue is mold food. Rough surfaces may need to be scrubbed. Rinse,but don't use a highpressure spray that can force water into materials. Be sure to remove any sediment. Hose out opened wall cavities.
After cleaning, you may use a disinfectant product to kill any mold missed by the cleaning. Don't try to disinfect until after you have cleaned, as soil can make some disinfectants, such as bleach, less effective. If there was sewage contamination, you must disinfect. If you disinfect, follow the directions and warnings on the label, and handle all disinfectants carefully; never mix bleach with ammonia or acids. Many disinfectants kill molds, but do not prevent the growth of new mold if the material remains damp.
On colorfast, nonmetal surfaces, you can disinfect with a solution of 1/2 to 1 cup of household chlorine bleach to 1 gallon of water. Do not use a bleach solution in the air conditioning system. Milder, less corrosive disinfectants include alcohols, phenolics, hydrogen peroxide, and other commercial disinfectants.
Consider borate treatment. Applying a borate treatment to wood framing can provide multiple benefits; it allows the wood to resist termites, decay, and mold. Treatments formulated to penetrate wood offer greater protection. Fungicides can also help to inhibit the regrowth of mold during drying. Do not apply sealants to wood or interior surfaces. If desired for added protection from any remaining mold, cleaned surfaces can be encapsulated with latex paint or other permeable coatings that do not form a water vapor barrier.
Flush the air. After cleaning and disinfecting, air out the building. Open all windows and use fans in windows on one side of the house to pull mold spores to the outdoors. Be careful not to depressurize the house to the point where you are pulling contaminated air from the crawlspace into the house.
Speed dry.After cleaning and disinfecting, dry all materials as quickly as possible. In warm weather, close all the windows and run the air conditioner to remove moisture from indoor air (run the air conditioner on auto, not constant fan). In cool weather, heat the home to reduce the relative humidity. Run fans and use a dehumidifier if possible. If there is no power, keep the windows open.
Remain on mold alert. Continue looking for signs of moisture or new mold growth.New mold can form in as little as two days if materials stay wet. Wood and other materials that may look dry can still be wet enough to support regrowth. If mold returns, repeat cleaning and if possible use professional speed-drying equipment and moisture meters. Regrowth may signal that the material was not dry enough, or that it should be removed.
Do not restore until all materials have dried completely. Wood moisture content should be less than 20% before you restore the interior. Do not use vinyl wallpaper, oil-based paint, or other interior finishes that block drying to the inside.
Restore with flood-resistant materials. Consider restoration with "wet floodproofing" in mind to reduce damage from future flooding. Choose water-resistant floorings such as tile, with area rugs that can be removed before the storm. Consider installing drainable, cleanable walls with rigid or spray foam insulation, removable wainscoting, or paperless drywall.
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Nevermind the crazy lime green they've put on Russians Marat Safin and Mikhail Youzhny; I can overlook that if adidas keeps working this clean, classic, white/gold (and black) look for Juan Monaco, Nole Djokovic and Paul-Henri Mathieu.
One could say that they should have saved the white for next month's Wimbledon, but they eschewed color tastefully, unlike what Reebok put on Igor Andreev and what Nike forced on Oliver Patience.
What do you think of the look? Tell us.


text: Church Marketing Flyer Bundle Vol 030 is sold exclusively on graphicriver, it caters to any Church event, sermon, concert, convention or any event that needs a stylistic, modern flyer. In this package you'll find 3 Photoshop files. All layers in the files are arranged, color coded and simple to edit. Individual Help files and Font Links are included.


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Artists And MusiciansFebruary 23rd, 2012 | Artists and Musicians | journalpulp | 2 Comments
Saphho was small and dark, yet in his famous rendering of her, Raphael made her blond and fleshy. Richard Wagner — who wore pink underwear — was about five feet tall. Gauguin fathered at least four illegitimate children in Tahiti. This in addition to the legitimate clan he abandoned back home. Beethoven, Brahms, Gluck, Haydn, […]Read More


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Public workshop set for Reno's Aces Ballpark deal
The Reno City Council and Redevelopment Agency is expected to meet at 2 p.m. on Nov. 28 to go over the city's potential subsidy deal with the developers behind Aces Ballpark.
The meeting, announced by the city on Tuesday, will include discussions on the baseball stadium's history, the agreements Reno has with the ballpark developers and the current financial condition of the city and its cash-strapped redevelopment agency.
Since October, the Reno City Council has been mulling a potential $30 million subsidy for the ballpark to help refinance a $55 million short-term construction loan used to build the ballpark about five years ago.
The city's potential subsidy would be one part of a larger refinancing package that could include a $15 million subsidy from Washoe County, a $1 million annual lease payment from the Reno Aces owners and a ticket surcharge for Aces fans.
Right now, the future of that agreement is in question after the new City Council last week put a halt to the deal moving forward so they could take more time to go over its terms and its potential impact to city coffers.
The workshop on Nov. 28 won't include any votes to approve a ballpark agreement. The City Council is expected to formally address the Aces Ballpark subsidy agreement at its Dec. 5 meeting.


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Do you have a button for your blog that you would like to share? Here you can post the HTML for your button and a description of your blog. Please post your button under the appropriate heading.
Members: 170
Latest Activity: Aug 24, 2015
Started by Cynthia Tolbert-Wilson Apr 9, 2013. 0 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Monique Rowe. Last reply by Crinthia Runyon Oct 23, 2010. 2 Replies 0 Likes
I'm always looking for new friends to follow and I always follow back. I would love to swap interests with one another.
I would love to increase my readership as well. I am finding it a bit difficult. I do like coming on to the site and reading other blogs. I have found some great blogs. I normally keep track of the blogs that I join and try to comment on them at least once every other week until I just never hear from them. I love having tons of blogs to read and respond too.
&l...
Hi. My name is Karina and I write Mom in the USA. I blog about products that are made in the USA. I created a shopping directory that you can shop from. I also do product reviews and giveaways. I also include stories some personal funny stories.
If you follow my blog from this group, please leave a comment so I can do the same for you. Thank you.
Hi moms!!!
My blog, Letting You Grow, is a place for me to discuss all the joys, challenges, funny and confusing moments of raising a tween!!! Add to the fact that I'm a young mom! You'll find a mixture of everything on my blog...so, come by, read, comment, grab the button (code below) and let me know you've placed it on your blog...I'll definitely return the favor ;-)

Hello, moms!
Intentionally Inspiring Mamas is meant to inspire moms to continually cultivate self-awareness and discover their true selves amidst the chaos of raising kids.
If you want to promote a blog that is dedicated to giving moms simple strategies for infusing mindfulness in their mothering and connecting to their inner-selves on a daily basis, grab my button. (The code is below)

The TOP Giveaway Hop is now live and open to review product links! I'm looking for reviews that offer discounts and promo codes, but all links are welcome as long as they are family friendly and have an FTC disclosure.
In the spirit of Halloween the linky will be open for 3 whole spook days! Hope to see you there!
The TOP Giveaway Hop is now open! Come and add your links!


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Because of the Puritanical background of Massachusetts one may assume that our fine state was never a part of Tiki Nation. Not so, my dear friends. In fact the Boston area was a hotbed of tiki torch amusements. Those of you who have been in the Boston area for a while will remember Aku Aku, the Polynesian delight that used to occupy the space that now holds Jasper White's Summer Shack near Alewife Station. Boasting sister locations in Worcester and Newton, Aku Aku offered up Polynesian fare and stand up comedy that one could wash down with delicious tiki libations. Heading back to mid-century, Boston hosted Kon-Tiki Ports in the Sheraton at the Prudential Center, Trader Vic's in the Park Plaza Hotel, the Polynesian Village in the Somerset Hotel, Bob Lee's Islander in Chinatown, and the Hawaiian on Boylston St.
The post-war Golden Era of Tiki may have passed, but that doesn't mean a new generation can't live it up Island-style. Also, when's the last time you went to Saugus? Put a little rum in your summer by taking a pilgrimage to any of these Tiki spots. Or mix up one of these bad boys in the comfort of your own home/Island Oasis.
.75 oz Campari
.5 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz simple syrup
4 oz fresh unsweetened pineapple juice
1.5 oz dark Jamaican rum
Shake well with plenty of ice cubes and pour into a double old fashioned glass or a tiki mug. Garnish with an orchid, plus a maraschino cherry speared to lemon and orange wheels. Place a lei around your neck and enjoy.


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Moral legacy of Nazi resister takes root in Germany – and abroad
As Germany's long, often-praised reconciliation with its Nazi past digs deeper, it brings forward characters such as Christian Nazi resister Helmuth James von Moltke.
On his centenary anniversary Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised him as a symbol of "European courage" and for having a vision of a democratic Europe far ahead of its time.
Mr. Von Moltke, descendant of one of Germany's greatest military generals, was executed in 1945 for collaborating against Hitler, partly as the guiding spirit of the Kreisau Circle, a collection of German intellectuals, theologians, and aristocrats committed to ending Hitler's rule and rebuilding Germany.
His commemoration signifies Germany's persistent efforts to face its Nazi past, an effort now praised as a model of reconciliation at a time when Germany holds the EU presidency. The tribute showed a deeper phase of that reconciliation by highlighting the life of a Christian dissenter whose hidden role and clear thinking in the midst of Nazi atrocities is getting more attention in historical, legal, and religious circles.
Along with greater awareness of figures like Von Moltke, Germany is now in a phase of war-era memory that includes the plight of millions of Germans forced to leave Poland after the war. A TV movie last week, Die Flucht, "The Escape" – has been hotly debated here.
"The Germans have done due diligence in looking at history in recent years through education and films, and are a model in some ways," argues Timothy Ryback, codirector of the history and reconciliation project at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria. "The caveat is that Germans can make more of the wartime dissent than was actually present.... For the most part, the German people did not try to topple a tyrant. They loved Hitler."
Working from the midst of military intelligence in Berlin, Von Moltke took great risks by being at the center of intense debates over how and whether to kill Hitler. After the war, Germans found courage in those who carried out the failed July 20, 1944, coup plot to kill Hitler.
"After the war, the coup was something to build on," says a German foreign ministry source, though it was only in 2004 that Germany recognized the coup attempt.
But Von Moltke represented a different path. He warned that the plot would make a martyr of Hitler if it succeeded. And if it failed, it would expose the tiny band of anti-Nazis at a time when the war was already lost – robbing Germany of those individuals best able to rebuild the state.
His warnings were prescient; some 5,000 dissidents were rounded up by the Gestapo and executed after the failed coup led by Klaus von Stauffenberg on Hitler.
Von Moltke focused instead on opportunities to undermine the Nazi apparatus from within. As legal counsel for the Abwehr, a military intelligence office, Von Moltke was in a position to early inform trusted friends about the dimensions of the war and the Jewish extermination camps. He got Jews safely deported through legal channels. He wrote some of the few reports on the psychological disturbances of German soldiers forced to kill Jews and Eastern Europeans en masse.
In October 1941, as the war hit full pitch, he wrote to his wife, Freya von Moltke, that: "In one area in Serbia two villages have been reduced to ashes.... In Greece 220 men of one village have been shot.... In France there are extensive shootings while I write. Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day and another thousand German men are habituated to murder.... May I know this and yet sit at my table in my heated flat and have tea? ... What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time.... How can anyone know these things and still walk around free?"
Dissent in Nazi Germany required enormous discipline, notes Mrs. Von Moltke, now 96. On trips inside Nazi-occupied Europe, her husband pursued contacts with resistance figures. Britain's recently declassified files show that Von Moltke tried twice to contact "trusted Britishers" during the war. He reached out to friends from his days at Oxford, stating he would "go to any length" to assist Allied authorities.
According to media reports on the files, British officials first confused him with his uncle, ambassador to Spain, and the meeting was called off. The second time, MI5 chief David Petrie described it of "enormous psychological interest" but said he needed to see "deeds" rather than "talk," from the German legal official.
In January 1944 Von Moltke was arrested, and executed a year later.
Sunday's commemoration was a triumph for Mrs. von Moltke in her long efforts to have her husband's life and ideas better understood. She and former German president Richard von Weizsacker sat together in the front row of a moving service at the French Huguenot church in Berlin. After the service, a young German, Jens Fischer, said he felt Von Moltke's life showed that "resistance to evil things and having a deeper sense of faith aren't separate but actually the same thing, something mutual."
In recent years, Von Moltke's legacy as a legal thinker has risen – especially in Pentagon debates over whether Afghan combatants should receive POW status. As Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Von Moltke wrote a now-famous memo opposing the Nazi policy to ignore the Geneva and The Hague Conventions for Soviet prisoners, since Moscow was not a signatory. Von Moltke argued it was important to create a "tradition of compliance" with international law, and that good treatment of Soviet prisoners would offer ground for good treatment of German prisoners.
The memo created such a stir in old-line German Army circles, as distinct to Nazi and SS circles, that it required Field Marshal Keitel to finally dismiss it, saying the Geneva Convention was "a product of a notion of chivalry of a bygone era."
"Von Moltke is someone who had a profoundly ethical sense of the lawyer's responsibility to society and to mankind," argues Scott Horton, chair of the New York City bar committee on international law. "The arguments in his memorandum are close to identical to the arguments that are made by Gen. Colin Powell, in the letter he sent to [Attorney General] Alberto Gonzales," in 2002 regarding POWs in the war on terror.
A more detailed look at Nazi dissent has brought the Christian dimension of Von Moltke and the Kreisau circle into fuller view. The Kreisau group was made up of theologians, Jesuits, Protestants, and other religious thinkers.
Von Moltke's parents were Christian Scientists; his father was a principal translator of the German-language edition of the sect's "textbook," Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
A new biography released last week by scholar Gunter Brakelmann includes new letters by Von Moltke, a diary, and other papers shared for the first time by Freya Von Moltke. Like Dietrich Bonhöffer, the German Lutheran whose famous "Letters from Prison" are now a classic on ethics, faith, and responsibility, Von Moltke's last year, spent at Tegel prison, deepened his sense of the New Testament. The biography shows "how intensively [Von Moltke] devoted himself to the Bible, and what power he drew from it...turning to religion really took place ... in an existential sense," notes a recent review in Die Zeit.
In the 1992 Oscar-nominated documentary film, "Restless Conscience" Von Moltke writes that after his epic trial in January 1945 it was clear to him that the battle he was involved in was between "deeper Christianity" and the "Fuhrerprincip" of National Socialism.
He wrote his wife, "The trial proved all concrete accusations to be untenable, and they were dropped accordingly.... But what the Third Reich is so terrified of ... is ultimately the following: a private individual, your husband, of whom it is established that he discussed with 2 clergymen of both denominations [Protestant and Catholic] ... questions of the practical, ethical demands of Christianity. Nothing else; for that alone we are condemned.... I just wept a little, not because I was sad or melancholy ... but because I am thankful and moved by this proof of God's presence."


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Washington (CNN) - Newt Gingrich tops the list in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new national survey.
And a CNN/ORC International Poll released on the eve of a CNN presidential debate focusing heavily on national security and foreign affairs also indicates Republicans consider the former House Speaker the most qualified GOP candidate to be Commander-in-Chief.
See full results (PDF)
Programming note: GOP presidential candidates face off at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday, November 22, in the CNN Republican National Security Debate in Washington, D.C.
According to the survey, 24% of Republicans and independent voters who lean towards the GOP say they are most likely to support Gingrich for their party's nomination, with 20% saying they back Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is making his second bid for the presidency.
Gingrich's four point margin over Romney is within the survey's sampling error. A CNN poll released one week ago had Romney at 24% and Gingrich at 22%. Gingrich was at just 8% in a CNN poll in October.
Gingrich's campaign was left for dead by many in May and June, following a number of controversies that spurred some of his top advisers and staffers quit, and that left the campaign coffers in the red.
But the former House Speaker has performed well in 10 major GOP presidential debates held this year, acting as the elder statesman while many of his rivals for the nomination attacked each other.
"I entered this race with a huge amount of background story, some public, some private, which led people initially to think, 'Well, I'm not sure I want him.' And part of what the debates have done is they've been able to see me without editing, and, therefore, they've been able to say, 'Gee, that's not the guy I thought he was,' " Gingrich recently told CNN's Piers Morgan.
"It seems likely that Gingrich's performance in past debates has helped him - 43% say he is the Republican candidate who best understands complex issues, more than double the number who say that about Romney," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Gingrich gets another chance to shine Tuesday, when he along with seven of his GOP rivals face off in a CNN presidential debate on national security, foreign policy and the economy. CNN is teaming up with the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, two long time Republican-leaning think thanks, to put on the debate, which is being held just a few blocks from the White House.
According to the survey, on national security issues, 36% of Republicans say Gingrich is most qualified to be commander-in-chief - 16 points higher than Romney.
Former Godfather's Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain garners support from 17% of the Republicans surveyed. Cain was at 25% support in CNN polling last month, but slipped after a controversy over sexual harassment allegations from his time as head of the National Restaurant Association during the late 1990s.
Rick Perry is at 11% in the new poll. The Texas governor soared to frontrunner status soon after he entered the race in mid-August, but thanks to stumbles in the debates this autumn, Perry's numbers dropped and are now holding steady in the low double digits. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who is making his third run for the White House, is at 9%, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is at 5%, with former Sen. Rick Santorum at 3% and former Utah Gov. and former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman at 3%.
While Gingrich has some major strengths, the poll indicates he also has some weaknesses. Only 9% of Republicans say he is the most likable candidate. Republican voters also don't think he's the best choice for getting the economy moving again, and they see Romney, not Gingrich, as the Republican with the best chance of beating President Barack Obama next November.
Gingrich is the latest GOP candidate to surge in national and state surveys, following Bachmann, Perry and Cain. Bachmann and Perry slid after their initial surges, and Cain may be headed in the same direction.
"But don't think that Gingrich has risen in the polls simply because other alternatives to Romney have fizzled," adds Holland. "The number of Republicans who would be pleased or enthusiastic if he won the party's nomination has grown from 51% in May to 70% now - not the kind of numbers you would expect if voters were 'settling' for Gingrich."
Although he is no longer at the top of the list, Romney is viewed as the most likable candidate, and the one most likely to get the economy moving again. And significantly, by a two-to-one margin, Republicans say Romney is the candidate with the best chance to beat Obama.
Although many Republicans are clearly looking for an alternative to Romney, they don't oppose him. Only 28% say they would be displeased or upset if Romney won the GOP nod.
The poll also indicates that the race is far from over: Only 27% of Republicans say they have definitely made up their minds.
The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from November 18-20, with 1,019 adult Americans, including 402 Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP, questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error for Republican primary questions is plus or minus five percentage points.
Newt's kindred spirit is Tom DeLay. That tells you the whole story. Their unseemly alliance was an acid burn on the history of the the Congress, from which we haven't recovered. Brethren in corruption. Newt and Tom. A love story for the ages.
Come on people; don't be bamboozled by the democratic masses and media juggernauts. What they are doing is typical political persuasion. Avoid listening to what the media has to say about each candidate and research for yourself the backgrounds of each candidate. The media juggernauts have already made up their minds who they want to be the GOP candidate. They will try their best to influence your decision for their benefit. They started off with Romney, Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman, Cain and now Gingrich. Within two weeks, the media will have you believing that Ron Paul will be leading the polls. The democrats and the media will do whatever they can to lead voters away from the candidate they fear the most and that is Mitt Romney. This is all planed out strategically based off who the democrats think has the best chances of beating Obama.
It's reassuring to know that, in spite of all the chaos, and division in our nation, even a sadistic old crank like Newt can have a shot at being President of the United States.
I hope the GOP nominates him. I don't think he stands a snowball's chance of being elected.
Clap clap. Clap clap. Let's meet back in 2016. 2012 is a guaranteed Democratic victory.
I don't want a president named "NEWT". If his parents don't take him seriously, neither will I.
Go gop!!please tear this country apart brick by brick from within. Thank u lord. Thank Jesus. We deserve it and more. I hope mitt fuc us up good.
The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from November 18-20, with 1,019 adult Americans, including 402 Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP, questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error for Republican primary questions is plus or minus five percentage points.
Oh, lol, now I understand why these numbers don't make any sense.
He'd make a great Commander-in-Chief! Look at the raid he pulled off leaving his dying wife on her deathbed (check it out, it's true!). Very Stalin-esque.
Im in for RomneyGingrich ticket. That pathetic socialist Oblamer must go!
This field of GOP candidates clearly leave a lot to be desired. What remains true is the superiority of conservatism versus liberalism. Despite very flawed republican politicians, they still trounced democrats in the last cycle. If I'm a democrat my number one fear is a capable republican politician. Even the incapable ones seem to win. Conservative ideas are simply better, and resonate with more Americans.
oh COME ON....we must be able to do better than this. Newt if a classic example of a sociopath.....his longstanding record of the past 20 years is not just that of a lying politician...he goes well beyond that while also knowing that he's inflicting pain and suffering on people stuck at the bottom and through absolutely no fault of their own.
We have to do better than Newt....we can't possible have a sociopath with his finger on the button.
People with fat heads and beady little eyes don't get elected president..
if Newt is more than a flavor of the month.. then Mitt is going to run the most negative campaign you have ever seen... After being a 2 time loser, Mitt wants that nomination more than anything else in the world. He has enough cash to run smear campaigns in 50 states.. dont think he wont do it..


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Jonathan Ellis chairs the Cassandra project at the Apache Software Foundation and is the co-founder of Riptano, a commercial entity that provides software, support, and training for Cassandra. Prior to the founding of Riptano in the spring of 2010, Jonathan was a system architect at Rackspace, and before that, he designed and built a large-scale storage system at Mozy.
In this interview, we cover:
- The Cassandra distributed database, originally developed by Facebook
- A critical benefit of the cloud; deferred capacity planning
- Before databases like Cassandra, the Web 2.0 forefathers were stuck using SQL databases in a NoSQL way
- Controversies and options for scaling with relational and distributed databases
- High-profile attempts to move to Cassandra, such as Reddit and Digg
- What's in store for the future of Cassandra
Robert Duffner: Jonathan, could you take a minute to introduce yourself and the Cassandra Project, and explain what Riptano offers on top of Cassandra?
Jonathan Ellis: Sure. I'm project chair of Apache Cassandra, which graduated from the Apache incubator earlier this year and became a top-level project. We have contributors and committers from Riptano, Rackspace, Twitter, Digg, and a long tail of more than 100 people in the open source community who've contributed patches to the project.
It's really an open source success story, because when I started working on Cassandra, I was at Rackspace. Rackspace knew they needed a distributed database both to help customers who were deploying in the cloud, and also internally, because Rackspace is getting big enough that they have the need for that kind of scale internally.
Facebook released the source to Cassandra in July of 2008, and I really picked it up and ran with it at Rackspace. Other companies got involved, with Digg and Twitter as a couple of the earliest ones, and the whole became greater than the sum of its parts.
When Facebook open-sourced it, it had a very promising foundation, but it was clear that it was designed specifically to handle their use case. After being open-sourced, it grew to become a much more robust solution.
I started Riptano in April with Matt Pfeil to provide commercial support and services around Cassandra. We're about to have a beta of our performance suite for Cassandra called Ripcord, which will complement the support and services that we're currently providing.
Robert: Distributed databases clearly are fundamental to the cloud. Google developed BigTable, Amazon developed SimpleDB, Microsoft developed Azure Table Storage, and Facebook developed what ultimately has become Cassandra. Could you tell our Windows Azure community why this type of distributed, non-relational storage is so critical to cloud development?
Jonathan: I think there are a couple of reasons. First, when people deploy in the cloud, they're becoming used to the ability to scale on demand; they just make some API request calls, and they have 50% more capacity. Traditional databases don't work that way.
This ability to scale is part of the reason that the cloud is taking off. People can defer capacity planning until the last minute and just know that they'll be safe because they have the ability to turn that switch.
Traditional databases can't scale on demand like that. You have two avenues for scaling: either vertical scaling by buying more and more expensive platforms to deploy on, or ad-hoc scaling by sharding, partitioning horizontally and vertically.
The problem with that approach is that once you've decided that this is your partitioning strategy, it's difficult to jump to the next order of magnitude of performance. It's also very much a one-off for each application. eBay pioneered this approach, because way back in 2002, they outgrew the largest servers Sun could sell them to run Oracle on, so they partitioned across several dozen machines.
They've had that technology for eight years now, but even if they wanted to open-source it, it couldn't be usefully applied to other infrastructures, just because these kind of solutions by their nature are not application-transparent and are very tied closely to that one use case.
Robert: Are you shocked by the scale of storage that these technologies enable? Flickr gets something like 3,000 photos uploaded every minute, and Facebook adds something on the order of 12 terabytes per day to a 21 petabyte data store. When did you first realize that the data stored by user-generated content sites could be so unimaginably large?
Jonathan: My background before I started working on Cassandra was building a petabyte-scale storage system for a backup company called Mozy, so I was used to that idea.
In a lot of ways, though, that's an easier problem, because you're dealing with unstructured data, whereas with databases, you need low latency and low volatility. Obviously, people using S3 like low latency as well, but the expectations are of a different order of magnitude than what you expect your database to respond in.
Cassandra's part of what's been loosely termed the NoSQL movement. Most of the time when people think of NoSQL databases, they really mean something that's targeted at structured data with very low latency requirements, as opposed to something like Hadoop and HTFS, which you could refer to as non-relational data stores. They're just dealing with unstructured data, and it's really more of a distributed file system than a database.
Robert: Apparently, Facebook is still using MySQL, but they're using it essentially in a NoSQL fashion.
Jonathan: Right; a lot of Facebook's infrastructure predates their work on Cassandra, and it's a similar story at Twitter. eBay is using Oracle, also very much in a NoSQL fashion. I think that if those projects had been started today, they would make different decisions, but having made that investment and ironed out the problems, there's low motivation to switch.
As project chair of Cassandra, I'm a little bit of a Cassandra evangelist, but I'm not dogmatic about it. Part of being a mature CTO is keeping your engineers from chasing the new shiny for every project, although it would make sense to evaluate Cassandra very carefully for new projects. Cassandra will get you to the goal of having a scalable infrastructure for a new application, rather than taking the same approach you did five years ago for your legacy data.
Robert: I often talk to newer Azure customers about when they would use a SQL store in the cloud. Google has SQL relational databases on their road map, we have SQL Azure, and Amazon offers a relational database service. Many people just load an existing RDBMS, whether it's MySQL or something else onto Amazon EC2.
But there still seems to be a need for relational storage in some scenarios. Do you see that as mainly to support legacy applications or even for new cloud development, or do you think relational databases will still be important in the context of the cloud?
Jonathan: I think relational databases are going to stay important. They solve some important problems, and there's a very rich ecosystem of tools around them, which keeps time to market low. I see Cassandra as particularly appealing to companies that started on something like SQL Server and then reached the point where favorable price/performance to buy larger machines isn't there anymore. The pain they're feeling from the pressure to scale is greater than the pain of learning a new technology like Cassandra.
I was at JavaOne last month speaking about Cassandra, and two thirds of the audience said that, in the very near future, their data needs are not going to fit on a single machine anymore. Traditional relational databases are just not an option, and at that point you can start looking at something like Oracle RAC and its SAN-based solution or Exadata. Both of these start at millions of dollars, or you can start to explore a distributed system like Cassandra.
So people using relational databases are looking to move to Cassandra, mostly because of the scaling aspect, also sometimes for the reliability aspect. Cassandra deals very well with multiple data centers, in terms of preparing for one or more of them failing and clients having to access a different one.
To go back to your question, I do think that some applications are a good fit for relational databases just because of their nature. Scale is not a problem, either because the nature of the problem is limited in terms of a limited problem domain, a limited amount of data you expect to be in it, and a limited number of queries per second, or because the relational features are important enough to use.
I think that in some cases, it's worth throwing money at the problem with something like Exadata. I'm thinking in terms of situations like where JP Morgan Chase had an outage a couple of weeks ago because of Oracle replication getting corrupted, so they had to restore it from a backup.
I don't have any inside information, but from what I've read, that was complicated by this being basically their database for everything. I think we are going to see people more and more moving away from having a relational database as their universal repository.
People are going to realize that lower complexity, lower total cost of ownership, and higher reliability are good reasons for putting data that is a good fit for Cassandra in that kind of system. That will let them pare back relational storage to just what it's good at, in a relatively small core.
Robert: Back in January of 2008, there was a blog post written by David DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker under the title, "MapReduce: A Major Step Backwards." They characterized it as a sub-optimal implementation that was not novel but rather a specific implementation of well-known techniques. They also said it was incompatible with all the tools DBS users have come to depend on.
On the other hand, a recent report from GigaOM states that between 15% and 40% of data that is currently stored in an RDBMS today would be better suited to non relational platforms such as Cassandra. How do you think that relationship between traditional relational data systems and NoSQL-focused DB models will evolve over time?
Jonathan: This is a point of confusion for a lot of people; I've said several times that relational databases don't scale, whereas Stonebraker is saying, "Well, Vertica scales just fine, thank you very much." The difference is that things like Vertica, Teradata, and Greenplum present a relational model over an analytical database, meaning low query volume with very high latency. Data gets bulk loaded into the system every so often, but it's not responding to user requests at the rate of thousands or millions of requests per second.
So when Stonebraker's talking about MapReduce versus relational, he's speaking in the context of analytics. Honestly, Stonebraker has a history of using his position as an elder statesman of the database world as a platform for his commercial ventures.
In this case, MapReduce is frankly kicking his company Vertica's butt in terms of mindshare right now, and I think that's what motivated that article. That mindshare relationship is especially true for Hadoop. Hadoop HTFS is more of an unstructured storage solution, but it works fine for analytics where you don't really care about latency.
That goes back to something I mentioned earlier: that some people lump Hadoop in with NoSQL, but if you're talking about OLTP or transaction processing with requirements for low latency and millions of requests per second, that would not include something like Hadoop.
Still, some of the modern NoSQL databases are starting to integrate analytics ability into their OLTP-focused products. Cassandra, for instance, added support for running Hadoop jobs against data that's in Cassandra in January.
If you started in the database world long enough ago, you remember the days when you had maybe one database machine running your live application, and then you had a slave that you ran your analytics queries against. It's the same system. You don't have to do an export and load, and that makes life really pleasant for your ops team.
For a while, you couldn't do that. You had to load your analytics data into something like Vertica or into a separate Hadoop cluster to do your analytics queries against, because you couldn't do both of them in the same kind of system.
So I think we're coming full circle, where with Cassandra you can run your live application against your Cassandra cluster and replicate your data to several nodes for running Hadoop queries against so the two workloads don't interfere with each other. People really like that story, where you're able to do that in a single system.
Robert: It really comes down to the underlying issue of picking the right tool for the job, and I think looking at MapReduce merely as a database produces the wrong impression. One of the comments I saw on that initial posting was that if you think of picking the right tool for the job, MapReduce is basically a mechanism for using lots of machines to process very large data sets.
There have been some recent discussions around the struggles Digg has had with implementing Cassandra, and it's led some to compare Digg's efforts with Reddit's more successful move to Cassandra, with their initial migration completed in 10 days.
What do you think are some of the core concerns or changes in thinking that organizations need to address to be successful with that type of storage?
Jonathan: First of all, I think Kevin Rose made Cassandra a bit of a scapegoat for Digg's problems. In a Quora discussion, a couple of Digg engineers came out and said that Cassandra's not responsible for the problems they had.
From the outside looking in, it looked like Digg tried to change too much at once, which is a classic operational danger sign when you throw out the old system and put in a new syst m. In their defense, I'm not sure how they could have done it otherwise, because they're moving to a new database with a new application design, but there's always a danger when you make a transition like that.
By contrast, the change Reddit made was a much simpler one. Their application stayed the same, and they just changed their caching layer from MemcacheDB to Cassandra. Especially with a new technology like Cassandra, an incremental approach is definitely easier to keep under control.
I feel bad for the Digg guys, because it feels like they got hit by a perfect storm of things mostly out of their control. They did a pilot of Cassandra itself in June, I think, of '09, and they ported part of their v3 site to Cassandra to get experience with it. It seems like they did everything right, but Murphy's law got them anyway.
Robert: Indeed. You've stated in the past that it's basically a fiction that Cassandra is simply for data that you can afford to lose. Can you expand on what led you to post that on your blog a few months ago?
Jonathan: People tend to paint not just Cassandra, but all modern NoSQL databases with that brush. The kernel of truth behind that is that a lot of NoSQL databases simply aren't concerned with durability, meaning that if I send an update request to my database, the database acknowledges it, and then the database loses power and comes back online, that update may or may not actually be there.
The fact that a lot of NoSQL databases don't provide durability is partly because it's a hard feature to implement, and partly because you can get higher performance if you ignore it. Still, Cassandra does provide durability, and its log-based storage nature means that Cassandra data files, once written, are never updated in place. They're immutable until they're no longer needed and they're garbage-collected by Cassandra. So it's actually a safer design under the hood than a traditional system that does overwrite in place.
Robert: Thanks for that clarification. I'd like to shift gears a little bit and talk about the relationship between open source projects and the commercial entities affiliated with them. One issue that comes to mind is that, for example, people occasionally accuse Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical leadership in general with pursuing more of a Canonical-first strategy than a purely community-oriented one.
I experienced a similar situation from the inside when I was at IBM and we acquired Gluecode, with which we acquired the major contributors of Apache Geronimo. There are a lot of questions around IBM's motives there, as well. What are your thoughts about navigating those types of concerns that the Cassandra community might have around Riptano?
Jonathan: The first thing to consider is that all the changes and improvements we make to Cassandra itself go back to the open source project and the Apache Foundation. Our committers on the project have signed contributor license agreements with Apache, so there are no issues in that respect.
I think people will see that and realize that we're trying to make this a win-win for everyone. I don't doubt that if we're successful enough, some people will be upset with something we do, and we'll just have to deal with that as it comes up. Even with as well-intentioned a company as Red Hat, for instance, some people get pissed at things they do, and I think that just comes with the territory.
Robert: I have definitely had my fair share of challenges in that area, but I believe there can be very healthy relationships between corporate entities and open source projects, notwithstanding cases like the direction Oracle's moving with the MySQL and OpenOffice communities.
Jonathan: Some companies have done a better job than others, and we're trying to follow those examples.
Robert: A recent comment in a Hacker News thread suggested that the reason Twitter didn't move ahead with Cassandra as their data store was simply the time it was going to take for them to migrate all their data. Still, if Twitter could start from a clean slate today, I think they would go with Cassandra. Do you feel that's a true statement?
Jonathan: I think it's a fair assumption that Twitter would indeed use Cassandra if they were starting from scratch today. I do recall that comment about the time requirements for migrating data, and I don't think it's correct. Basically, in a situation like that, you have your application start performing rights to both Cassandra and your existing data store. Then you fill in Cassandra with the previous data set.
That would take some time, but it's something they knew how to do. Ryan King has posted on their blog as well as on Quora about this. To paraphrase him, it goes back to what I said about one of the responsibilities of a CTO being to avoid spending time fixing a system that's already working.
They have a system that's working well enough, and they realized correctly that their resources would be better spent on doing newer projects like geolocation in Cassandra, rather than moving something that's already working.
Robert: We are getting near the end of our time, so to wrap up, what are your thoughts about the future of Cassandra, and what are some scenarios or capabilities that you see Cassandra and Riptano evolving to support?
Jonathan: We're just about to release our 0.7 version of Cassandra, which is really exciting. It's taken us longer than our earlier releases, partly because in 0.7 we said we're willing to break backward compatibility to fix some problems that we've been carrying along for the last year and a half or so. We've wanted to get all those incompatibilities out of the way in one release so we can go back to guaranteeing backward compatibility for at least the next year.
One of the exciting capabilities coming up is secondary index support. Cassandra has never been exactly a key-value database, because you can have multiple columns within a row, which lets you use rows as materialized views. You can have very large rows and can answer more complicated queries that way. You access data by a row key, and then you can request some subset of that row.
Secondary indexes support, for example, instances where if I have a users table and I want to show users who were born in 1976, I can tell Cassandra to build an index on the birth date column and have it take care of building the data structures to support that query. It's bringing us much closer to the kind of rich query support that people are used to, and that's going to lower the barrier to entry a lot.
Robert: Thanks for giving the Windows Azure customer and developer community an opportunity to hear your thoughts on Cassandra and Riptano.
Jonathan: Thank you.


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Helpful tips
Every now and then we need something quick but we have a hard time to find it for various reasons. In this chapter I have my collection of hard to find tips.
I was looking for it and now that I have found it I save it here for future reference. I hope it will help you, too.
The following is a list of all documents in this chapter.
As will all pages in my Knowledge Base this will never be complete list just a collection of random occurences.


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German luxury fashion brand MCM held an 'MCM 2011 S/S Collection' fashion show on the 31st of March at the Crystal Ballroom of Lotte Hotel, Seoul. SNSD's Hyoyeon, Yoona and Seohyun attended the event along with other artists such as SM sunbaes, Yunho and Changmin of TVXQ.
While that was going on, SNSD's Sooyoung attended the Jain Song fashion show at the 2011/12 F/W Seoul Fashion Week held at SETEC in Gangnam, Seoul.
Hit the jump for more pictures from the events! (major pic spam ahead)


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This year we have been running two contests – one for Photographs of the Faire, and a Story Story/Poetry competition too. Both these contests will close at midnight today (May 31st).
In the Photographic Competition, we are looking for the photographs that best capture the spirit of the sims – and the winners will be included in a calendar (with credits for the photographers) that will be created in real life using Cafe Presse and sold to raise money for Relay for Life. So this year, people really will be able to take the Faire home with them – and share it with their friends and family too!
You can find full details of the competition here (and note that the deadline was extended from May 11th – May 31st).
For the short story/poetry competition, the top entries will be published in the summer issue of Prim Perfect magazine, coming out in September 2014.
You story/poem can focus on one region – Sanctum, or Hopes Horizon or Heavenslough, for example – and ignore all the others. Or you might use the juxtaposition of two regions, or even draw on more of the Fairelands, as a whole vast realm, perhaps surrounding an inland sea. It's up to you. And your story or poem can be sad or happy, wise or witty. It can make us laugh, cry, gasp, nod with agreement … or do all of these things by turns.
But we must have it by midnight today!


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Braintree board approves fortune teller licenses
BRAINTREE – The aura was very good at Tuesday's license board meeting. Three women who had applied for fortune teller licenses were swiftly approved on unanimous votes.
All three will operate in separate suites at the same address, 22 River St., near Braintree Square. With the approvals, Braintree's fortune teller licenses have quadrupled. The town had only one such license holder for 20 years. Now there are four.
"We're thrilled that we can work now," said Kathleen Folsom of Weymouth, who will do business as as Readings, Reiki and Rocks.
Joanne McManus of Weymouth and Stephanie Stanislovitis of Abington, the other applicants, also said they're relieved and looking forward to being open for clients.
"We're happy that it's over," McManus said of the license application.
McManus will operate as Psychic Scissors. She said she previously gave psychic readings and acted as a medium at Open Doors, which until now held the town's only fortune teller license.
Stanislovitis will do business as Blue Angel, a reference to the Archangel Michael in the deck of angel cards she says she uses to channel messages – not fortunes – to clients. She also practices the stress-reduction exercise Reiki, and does what she calls "sound healing."
The trio didn't get a single question about their businesses from police Chief Russell Jenkins, fire Chief James O'Brien and other licensing commissioners. License and inspections director Mary Elizabeth McGrath said they all had clean police records, and that their fire safety plans were approved.
As they left the hearing, O'Brien said jokingly, "Can you you tell us how long this meeting will last?"
The aura must have gotten even better. The board adjourned after 20 minutes.
Lane Lambert may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com or follow him on Twitter @LLambert_Ledger.


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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Annexation
ANNEXATION (Lat. ad, to, and nexus, joining), in international law, the act by which a state adds territory to its dominions; the term is also used generally as a synonym for acquisition. The assumption of a protectorate over another state, or of a sphere of influence, is not strictly annexation, the latter implying the complete displacement in the annexed territory of the government or state by which it was previously ruled. Annexation may be the consequence of a voluntary cession from one state to another, or of conversion from a protectorate or sphere of influence, or of mere occupation in uncivilized regions, or of conquest. The cession of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany by France, although brought about by the war of 1870, was for the purposes of international law a voluntary cession. Under the treaty of the 17th of December 1885, between the French republic and the queen of Madagascar, a French protectorate was established over this island. In 1896 this protectorate was converted by France into an annexation, and Madagascar then became "French territory." The formal annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria (Oct. 5, 1908) was an unauthorized conversion of an "occupation" authorized by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), which had, however, for years operated as a de facto annexation. A recent case of conquest was that effected by the South African War of 1899–1902, in which the Transvaal republic and the Orange Free State were extinguished, first de facto by occupation of the whole of their territory, and then de jure by terms of surrender entered into by the Boer generals acting as a government.
By annexation, as between civilized peoples, the annexing state takes over the whole succession with the rights and obligations attaching to the ceded territory, subject only to any modifying conditions contained in the treaty of cession. These, however, are binding only as between the parties to them. In the case of the annexation of the territories of the Transvaal republic and Orange Free State, a rather complicated situation arose out of the facts, on the one hand, that the ceding states closed their own existence and left no recourse to third parties against the previous ruling authority, and, on the other, that, having no means owing to the de facto British occupation, of raising money by taxation, the dispossessed governments raised money by selling certain securities, more especially a large holding of shares in the South African Railway Company, to neutral purchasers. The British government repudiated these sales as having been made by a government which the British government had already displaced. The question of at what point, in a war of conquest, the state succession becomes operative is one of great delicacy. As early as the 6th of January 1900, the high commissioner at Cape Town issued a proclamation giving notice that H. M. government would "not recognize as valid or effectual" any conveyance, transfer or transmission of any property made by the government of the Transvaal republic or Orange Free State subsequently to the 10th of October 1899, the date of the commencement of the war. A proclamation forbidding transactions with a state which might still be capable of maintaining its independence could obviously bind only those subject to the authority of the state issuing it. Like paper blockades (see Blockade) and fictitious occupations of territory, such premature proclamations are viewed by international jurists as not being jure gentium. The proclamation was succeeded, on the 9th of March 1900, by another of the high commissioner at Cape Town, reiterating the notice, but confining it to "lands, railways, mines or mining rights." And on the 1st of September 1900 Lord Roberts proclaimed at Pretoria the annexation of the territories of the Transvaal republic to the British dominions. That the war continued for nearly two years after this proclamation shows how fictitious the claim of annexation was. The difficulty which arose out of the transfer of the South African Railway shares held by the Transvaal government was satisfactorily terminated by the purchase by the British government of the total capital of the company from the different groups of shareholders (see on this case, Sir Thomas Barclay, Law Quarterly Review, July 1905; and Professor Westlake, in the same Review, October 1905).
In a judgment of the judicial committee of the privy council in 1899 (Coote v. Sprigg, A.C. 572), Lord Chancellor Halsbury made an important distinction as regards the obligations of state succession. The case in question was a claim of title against the crown, represented by the government of Cape Colony. It was made by persons holding a concession of certain rights in eastern Pondoland from a native chief. Before the grantees had taken up their grant by acts of possession, Pondoland was annexed to Cape Colony. The colonial government refused to recognize the grant on different grounds, the chief of them being that the concession conferred no legal rights before the annexation and therefore could confer none afterwards, a sufficiently good ground in itself. The judicial committee, however, rested its decision chiefly on the allegation that the acquisition of the territory was an act of state and that "no municipal court had authority to enforce such an obligation" as the duty of the new government to respect existing titles. "It is no answer," said Lord Halsbury, "to say that by the ordinary principles of international law private property is respected by the sovereign which accepts the cession and assumes the duties and legal obligations of the former sovereign with respect to such private property within the ceded territory. All that can be meant by such a proposition is that according to the well-understood rules of international law a change of sovereignty by cession ought not to affect private property, but no municipal tribunal has authority to enforce such an obligation. And if there is either an express or a well-understood bargain between the ceding potentate and the government to which the cession is made that private property shall be respected, that is only a bargain which can be enforced by sovereign against sovereign in the ordinary course of diplomatic pressure." In an editorial note on this case the Law Quarterly Review of Jan. 1900 (p. 1), dissenting from the view of the judicial committee that "no municipal tribunal has authority to enforce such an obligation," the writer observes that "we can read this only as meant to lay down that, on the annexation of territory even by peaceable cession, there is a total abeyance of justice until the will of the annexing power is expressly made known; and that, although the will of that power is commonly to respect existing private rights, there is no rule or presumption to that effect of which any court must or indeed can take notice." So construed the doctrine is not only contrary to international law, but according to so authoritative an exponent of the common law as Sir F. Pollock, there is no warrant for it in English common law.
An interesting point of American constitutional law has arisen out of the cession of the Philippines to the United States, through the fact that the federal constitution does not lend itself to the exercise by the federal congress of unlimited powers, such as are vested in the British parliament. The sole authority for the powers of the federal congress is a written constitution with defined powers. Anything done in excess of those powers is null and void. The Supreme Court of the United States, on the other hand, has declared that, by the constitution, a government is ordained and established "for the United States of America" and not for countries outside their limits (Ross's Case, 140 U.S. 453, 464), and that no such power to legislate for annexed territories as that vested in the British crown in council is enjoyed by the president of the United States (Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 692). Every detail connected with the administration of the territories acquired from Spain under the treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) has given rise to minute discussion.
See Carman F. Randolph, Law and Policy of Annexation (New York and London, 1901); Charles Henry Butler, Treaty-making Power of the United States (New York, 1902), vol. i. p. 79 et seq. (T. Ba.)