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New Market Study, "Confectionery in Argentina", Has Been Published
New Food research report from MarketLine is now available from Fast Market Research
Boston, MA -- (SBWire) -- 01/02/2014 --Confectionery in Argentina industry profile provides top-line qualitative and quantitative summary information including: market size (value 2008-12, and forecast to 2017). The profile also contains descriptions of the leading players including key financial metrics and analysis of competitive pressures within the market. Essential resource for top-line data and analysis covering the Argentina confectionery market. Includes market size data, textual and graphical analysis of market growth trends, leading companies and macroeconomic information.
- The confectionery market consists of retail sales of chocolate, gum, cereal bars and sugar confectionery. The market is valued according to retail selling price (RSP) and includes any applicable taxes. Any currency conversions used in the creation of this report have been calculated using 2012 annual average exchange rates.
- The Argentinian confectionery market had total revenues of $2.3bn in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.6% between 2008 and 2012.
- Market consumption volumes increased with a CAGR of 3.1% between 2008 and 2012, to reach a total of 237.5 million kg in 2012.
- The performance of the market is forecast to decelerate, with an anticipated CAGR of 3.1% for the five-year period 2012 - 2017, which is expected to drive the market to a value of $2.7bn by the end of 2017.
View Full Report Details and Table of Contents
Save time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the size, growth, and leading players in the confectionery market in Argentina
Use the Five Forces analysis to determine the competitive intensity and therefore attractiveness of the confectionery market in Argentina
Leading company profiles reveal details of key confectionery market players' global operations and financial performance
Add weight to presentations and pitches by understanding the future growth prospects of the Argentina confectionery market with five year forecasts
Macroeconomic indicators provide insight into general trends within the Argentina economy
Key Questions Answered
What was the size of the Argentina confectionery market by value in 2012?
What will be the size of the Argentina confectionery market in 2017?
What factors are affecting the strength of competition in the Argentina confectionery market?
How has the market performed over the last five years?
About Fast Market Research
Fast Market Research is an online aggregator and distributor of market research and business information. Representing the world's top research publishers and analysts, we provide quick and easy access to the best competitive intelligence available. Our unbiased, expert staff will help you find the right research to fit your requirements and your budget. For more information about these or related research reports, please visit our website at http://www.fastmr.com or call us at 1.800.844.8156.
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You may also be interested in these related reports:
- Sugar Confectionery Market in South Korea to 2016
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- Sugar Confectionery Market in United Kingdom to 2016
- Sugar Confectionery Market in India to 2016
- The Future of the Confectionery Market in South Korea to 2017
- The Future of the Confectionery Market in Slovakia to 2017
- The Future of the Confectionery Market in South Africa to 2017
- The Future of the Confectionery Market in Finland to 2017
- The Future of the Confectionery Market in Hong Kong to 2017
- The Future of the Confectionery Market in the Netherlands to 2017
Media Relations Contact
Bill Thompson
Director of Marketing
View this press release online at: http://rwire.com/422156


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Best Ornamental Grasses for Midwest Gardens
Ornamental grasses add easy, airy beauty to Midwest gardens.
Add Beauty with Ornamental Grasses
Because of their color, texture and movement, ornamental grasses are wonderful additions to our landscapes. Even better, you get all this beauty for little work—once established, just water during drought and cut them back in early spring. And they withstand pests (even deer avoid them). There are many varieties available, so finding one to suit your garden style and growing conditions as well as your taste should be easy. Here are our picks for Zones 2-7 (that's a wide range, so make sure your selection fits your Zone).
A mounding plant with a lovely shape, its name refers to its graceful spray of foliage and late-summer plumes of fuzzy flowers. The white, pink or red plumes (according to variety) continue into fall and bring an informal look to gardens. Some Pennisetum self seed freely, which means they can become invasive. Although some species will reach 5 feet in height, the dwarf types like 'Hameln' generally stay below 3 feet. 'Purpureum' is grown as an annual in cool climates but has lovely purple leaves and crimson flowers.
Size: 10 inches to 5 feet tall and 1-4 feet wide, depending on variety
Conditions: Full sun and well-drained soil
Zones: 5-9
Best for: Its graceful arching shape and plumes
Blue Fescue
Blue fescue are one of the smallest of the ornamental grasses (under 1 foot tall), which makes them perfect for many different uses in the garden. Plant them at the base of leggy shrubs, in masses as a ground cover, in rows as edging, as accents or in containers. Evergreen in all buts its northernmost range, the bluish foliage looks best in early summer. Seed heads turn tan when mature; cut them off to keep plants looking neat. 'Elijah Blue' has powder-blue leaves.
Size: 6-10 inches tall and wide
Conditions: Full or partial sun and well-drained soil
Zones: 4-8
Best for: Its sweet little size
Related: 10 Reasons to Use Ornamental Grasses in Midwest Gardens
Blue Oat Grass
Refined and elegant, this grass has beautiful blue-gray, fine-textured leaf blades that grow in a mound. It is stunning throughout most of the season and combines well with most perennials. In fall, brownish spikelets reach for the sky.
Size: To 4 feet tall, 1-2 feet wide
Conditions: Full sun and well-drained soil
Zones: 4-9
Best for: Its blue-gray color and neat appearance
Little Bluestem
Little bluestem is a native prairie grass that is both lovely and tough as nails. These perennials have gray-green foliage that turns bold shades of purple, red and orange in fall. It produces tan flower spikelets that turn silvery white as they age. Its fine-textured growth means it is gorgeous when backlit by the sun. Look for cultivars like 'The Blues' for bluish summer foliage and reddish fall color.
Size: 2-3 feet tall, 1 foot wide
Conditions: Full sun and most soils
Zones: 4-9
Best for: Its blue coloring in summer
Related: Why You Should Consider a Prairie-Style Yard—And How to Start One
Feather Reedgrass
Feather reedgrass is one of the most popular ornamental grasses. Plants have dark green leaves and narrow, tan plumes in early summer. This variety tends to grow straight and upright, giving an architectural element to landscapes even in winter. They have tiny flowers in early summer; seed heads mature to golden tan by midsummer and remain attractive into fall. 'Karl Foerster' is a popular cultivar noted for its adaptability and attractive plumes. Also look for 'Overdam', a cultivar with variegated foliage.
Size: To 6 feet tall, 1-2 feet wide
Conditions: Full sun and well-drained soil
Zones: 5-9
Best for: Its architectural shape
Switchgrass is a native grass that is becoming popular in landscapes. The perennial offers airy plumes in late summer and fall. In late summer, lightly branched spikelets appear above the foliage for more altitude. 'Heavy Metal' and 'Shenandoah' have dark metallic summer foliage and reddish fall color. 'Dallas Blues' has blue-gray summer foliage that also turns orange-red in fall. The open plumes of 'Strictum' begin to bloom earlier than other cultivars, but remain showy throughout the season. Some self-seed freely.
Size: 2-5 feet tall and 9 inches to 3-1/2 feet wide, depending on variety
Conditions: Full sun or partial shade and well-drained soil, withstands heat
Zones: 4-9
Best for: Attracting wildlife and fall color
Maiden Grass
Miscanthus cultivars are go-to choices in the ornamental grass market because of their sky-high, easy growth. Narrow, arching foliage makes a perfect backdrop to showcase other perennials. Silvery plumes look enchanting when the sun shines through them. This perennial's dramatic plumes of spikelets rise above the foliage and last well into winter. Leaves range from green-and-white striped, yellow striped, dark green and greenish white depending on cultivar. Plumes emerge at different times.
Size: 5-10 feet tall and 2-5 feet wide, depending on variety
Conditions: Sun or partial sun and well-drained soil
Zones: 4-9
Best for: Its height
Often called hardy pampas grass, this massive, fast-growing perennial commands attention when in flower in late summer because of its great height. It is a wonderful grass to add drama in the landscape or to hide an unsightly view. Just be sure to plant it where it can take center stage—not much else will stand up to this tower of beauty.
Size: to 12 feet tall, 3-6 feet wide
Conditions: Full sun; well-drained, lean soil; little water
Zones: 6-9
Best for: Great height
Evergreen depending on climate, tufted hairgrass gets its name from the hairlike flowers that rise above the leaves. Its needlelike leaves form mounds, then this perennial sends out airy plumes in shades of golden, silver, purple and green.
Size: To 6 feet tall, 1-2 feet wide
Conditions: Full to partial sun; moist, well-drained soil
Zones: 4-9
Best for: In moist soil or partial shade
Purple Moorgrass
Chose a variety based on your garden size, then plant in masses for impact. It has delightful mounding foliage that turns brilliant gold in fall. The tall, delicate panicles are beautiful. Dense tufts of arching leaves are handsome spring through summer and offer good fall color.
Size: 2-7 feet tall and to 1 foot wide, depending on variety
Conditions: Full to partial sun, moist soil
Zones: 5-9
Best for: Bold shape and fall color
Northern Sea Oats
This fast-spreading species is loved for its seed heads, which hang off the stems and look like bronze-color wind chimes, which are attractive in fresh or dried arrangements. Leave the plants standing in winter if you like. But cut off the seed heads in fall to keep this prolific self-seeder tamed.
Size: 3 feet tall, 2 feet wide
Conditions: Full to partial sun, well-drained soil
Zones: 5-9
Best for: Lovely seed heads in fall
Japanese Forestgrass
This low-growing, mounding plant has bright yellow, green-striped leaves, making them perfect for brightening shady spots in gardens. From late summer to midautumn, it bears needlelike, pale green spikelets.
Size: 14 inches tall, 16 inches wide
Conditions: Partial shade and well-drained soil
Zones: 5-9
Best for: Adding bright color to shade gardens
A spreading prairie grass that thrives in moist or wet soils, it's a good choice to plant along a pond or stream. Pale green spikelets top the arching green leaves by autumn.
Size: to 5 feet tall, 3 feet wide
Conditions: Full sun and moist soil
Zones: 8-11
Best for: Moist or even wet soils
Fiber Opticgrass
This tender perennial will have to be used as an annual in the Midwest. But its fine texture and low, mounding growth make it perfect for containers. And watch how it catches eyes with its slender, bobbing blades tipped with ball-like seed heads.
Size: To 12 inches tall, to 8 inches wide
Conditions: Full to partial sun and moist soil
Zones: An annual
Best for: Its unusual appearance

subset: commoncrawl


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Heartening News, if Not an April Fool's Joke
Jonathan Partow of the Washington Post reports from Kabul that the lower house of Aghanistan's National Assembly has rejected Hamid Karzai's attempt to seize control of the Electoral Complaints Commission. Partow reports:
"This is a very important day for Afghanistan's democratic institutions," said Peter D. Lepsch, a senior legal adviser for Democracy International in Kabul. "The legislative branch has used its constitutional authority to stem presidential power. That's a big deal."
The most contentious proposed change in the elections law would allow Karzai to appoint three of five members of the Electoral Complaints Commission…
This appointment proposal was a driving force for many lawmakers to vote against it by waving red cards in the air, according to Mirwais Yasini, the deputy speaker of the lower house.
"We had a very bad experience in the presidential election; it cannot be considered legal. The credibility of the current president is under question. Looking ahead, we have to have good transparency. We had to reject this law," he said.
The members present in the lower house — about half the total — overwhelmingly voted against the proposal.
–Jonathan Partow, "Afghan parliament's lower house rejects Karzai election proposals," The Washington Post, April 1, 2010.
The Trenchant Observer
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/trenchantobserv
Comments are invited, in any language. If in a language other than English, please provide an English translation. A Google translation will be sufficient.


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Back issues of the Toledo History Museum Quarterly are available at the Museum during normal visiting hours. They can also be purchased online via our PayPal store:
|Title, Description
|Add To Cart
v.1#1 (March 2007)
|v.1#2 (June 2007)
"Honoring the Honorable O'Brien O'Donnell," by Ona Russell
"Before Jackie Robinson – Setting the Record Straight," by John Husman
"DeVilbiss Perfume Atomizers," by Marjorie Waterfield
"We Heard It Here First – 100 Years Ago: The Dawn of Radio," by Seymour Rothman
|v.1#3 (Sept. 2007)
"The Near-Battle of Fort Miamis," by Sarah E. Miller
"Pearl Arthur Barber: Scholar, Gambler, World Traveler," by Kenneth Dickson
"Alvin Woolson: Father of the Advertising Card," by Marjorie Waterfield
Original Documents: Jesup Wakeman Scott's Speech, 1842, part 1
|v.1#4 (Dec 2007)
"Four Toledo Captains and a Flotilla of Ships," by Kathy Covert Warnes
"WSPD Radio in the 1940s," by Marjorie Waterfield
"Wood County Historical Center & Museum," by Christie Raber
Original Documents: Jesup Wakeman Scott's Speech, 1842, part 2
Letters: Toledo-Adams Township
|v.2#1 (Mar. 2008)
"The Bells of St. Mary's of the Assumption Catholic Church: 150 Years of Toledo Music," by Kathy Covert Warnes
"Church Records: A Research Asset," by Richard Baranowski
Museum Review: The German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven
Original Documents: "Sunday Afternoon Street Rides of Long Ago and Other Memories," by Harold J. Sherman
|v.2#2 (June 2008)
"Dream Team: Toledo's 1953 Sox," by John Husman
"Scene of Violence, Fit of Frenzy: How the Mayor's Daughter Eloped," by Alan Borer
Original Documents: Cholera &c Paper Read before Toledo Med[ical] Association, 1868 by William W. Jones, M.D.
"White Tower Restaurants," by Michael Drew Shaw
|v.2#3/4 (Sept./Dec. 2008)
Original Documents: Autobiography by Frank J. Scott
Book Review: Kenneth R. Dickson, Something for Nothing
Book Review: John & Sandy Husman, ed. You Will Do Better in Toledo: From Frogtown to Glass City (from the postcard collection of Ken Levin)
|v.3 (2009)
"Joseph L. Tillman: An Early Industrialist and Civic Leader of Toledo," by Marjorie Waterfield
"A Toledo Stamp Story," by James C. Marshall
"Oral History," by Richard Baranowski
"Toledo's Bayou," by Thomas Glassmoyer
Toledo Map, 1868
"Searching for the Miami and Erie Canal," by Thomas Glassmoyer
Original Documents: Manhattan Branch, Miami & Erie Canal
"Who is This Guy, Harrison, of Harrison Rally Days?" by Clint Mauk
"Ohio's First Baseball Game: Played by Confederates and Taught to Yankees," by John Husman
|v.4 (2010)
"Swan Creek and the Miami & Erie Canal: A Photo Essay," by Fred Folger
"The Glassmakers Revisited: A History of Owens-Illinois, the Beginning, 1888-1930," by Jack Paquette
"Oral History: Dan Rowand," by Richard Baranowski
"Ty Cobb and the Mud Hens Beat Babe Ruth," by John R. Husman
Reprints: Charter and By-Laws of the City of Toledo, 1837
|v.5#1/2 (Mar./June 2011)
"The Anthony Wayne Trail Tanker Explosion," By Thomas Glassmoyer with Jeff Knapp
"Toledo's Dynamite Explosion," Typed by Gayleen Gindy
"Honors at Chickamauga," By Clark Waggoner
"Unwritten History," Cincinnati Enquirer, January 27, 1882
"Honors at Chickamauga, a Reply," Cincinnati Enquirer, February 6, 1882
"In Honor of Gen'l. James B. Steedman," Toledo Soldiers Memorial Hall
Review: "Old Steady: The Role of James Blair Steedman at the Battle of Chickamauga," Northwest Ohio Quarterly, (Spring 1950), pp. 72-94, By Dale Benington
"Seligman Brothers," By Robert Dietsche
|v.5#3/4 (Sept./Dec. 2011)
"Perrysburg's Civil War General," By Richard Baranowski
"From Snake Oil to the Ruptured Duck," By Donald R. Adams
"The Auto-Lite Strike, Toledo, Ohio, 1934," By Marjorie Waterfield
"Ashland Avenue Baptist Church, 1986-2011," By James C. Marshall
"Toledo, Its Early History," Transcribed by Gayleen Gindy
"Ketcham's Coat, By Edmund Vance Cooke
"Toledo's Future Water Supply," By A. H. Smith
Original Documents: "Letters from A. R. Ketcham to Daniel Segur" and "Report of Committee on Water Supply"
|v.6 (2012)
"Western Avenue Methodist Church," By Marjorie Waterfield
"Toledo's Day in the Sun: an Account of the 1919 Willard-Dempsey Prizefight," By Willis Stork
"Washington Township: From Industry to Homes," By Thomas Glassmoyer
"The Magic of Summer Nights in Auburndale around the Burn Barrel," By Thomas Glassmoyer 17
"Lighthouse Keeper Harrison Haynes, West Sister Island, Ohio," By Martha A. Dykes
"Beneath Promenade Park: Toledo Fireman Captain James Fraser," By R. Douglas Tracy
"Sergeant John Jacob Nohl,"
"Col. Wm. Dudley's Defeat Opposite Fort Meigs,"
"Oration of Cassius Marcellus Clay Before The Maumee Valley Historical & Monumental Association, of Toledo, Ohio,"
"Speech of Hon. Isaac R. Sherwood of Ohio in the House of Representatives, March 2, 1911,"
|v.7 (2013)
"They Loved to Share Their Wealth," By Jack Paquette
"'The Garden of Eden,' Toledo, Ohio 1915 – 1955: A Religious Shrine or a Giant Hoax?" By Marjorie Waterfield
"John Gunckel, 1846-1915," By Renee Jayne
"WWI Hero, Sergeant York Battles On: Defends Prohibition in Perrysburg Speech," By Richard Baranowski
"Rediscovering Toledo's Not-so-Hidden Past," By Thomas Glassmoyer
"Toledo's Press Coverage of the Emancipation Proclamation," By Bruce Way
"Michigan Boundary History," By Donald R. Adams
Reprints: The Mott Houses and The Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation


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THERE IS A POSSIBILITY OF MORE SEATS BEING ADDED. PLEASE CONTACT DEVON AT email@example.com TO BE ADDED TO A WAITING LIST.
April 30th, 2023 (Sunday)
Tentative Class Time: 11am - 4pm
Location: Barbecues Galore - 3100 Harvester Rd, Burlington, ON L7N 3W8 -
Link to Google Maps here.
Join us for a half day of instruction and some awesome food. This class is targeted at the beginner through intermediate BBQ'er, and we will learn all about true, low 'n slow, Southern-style Barbecue. Intermediate cooks who have taken our classes have picked up enough knowledge to win Grand Championships of their own!
We will be cooking throughout the class and we will have our award winning food for you to try. You'll go home with our award-winning Blue Ribbin' BBQ sauce and spice rubs, and a detailed handout covering everything we discuss in class, and more. Class is held indoors, with several topics covered outside - so please dress accordingly. We will cover:
- Preparation of 4 meats - Brisket, pulled pork, ribs, and chicken. We will teach you how to select, trim, season, and cook these meats. (5th bonus meat to be announced in class!)
- BBQ rubs, mops, sauces, glazes, etc.
- Cooking fuel (charcoal, pellets, etc) and wood selection - seasoning with smoke
- "Low 'n Slow" in theory. We'll discuss "Hot & Fast" cooking also.
- Equipment - all types smokers and grills for cooking real BBQ - we have cooked on them all, and most are present in class.
- Tools for 'Que, both necessary and unnecessary
- Myths in the BBQ world, and science too
- Basics of Competition - requirements, entry guidelines, judging, etc.
- Lots of stories from the BBQ trail


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Antique Limestone
Alexandra Misczynski, interior designer: "Antique French limestone has a rustic feel that looks great with contemporary elements like stainless steel. We used it for floors at our Los Angeles home, indoors and out."
Exquisite Surfaces' Dalle de Bourgogne limestone, xsurfaces.com.
Photo: Matthew Hranek
Ghislaine Viñas, interior designer: "Forbo's linoleum is a natural product that comes in great colors. Install it in a striped motif for something a little happy and crazy, such as this ruglike design I created for the entry of a beach house."
Forbo Marmoleum, forboflooringna.com.
Photo: Elizabeth Felicella
David Mann, architect: "Leather scratches easily when new but after a couple of months it patinates nicely. For Pierre Hardy's shoe store in New York, I laid black leather tiles in long strips, like wood planks."
Edelman leather floor tile, edelmanleather.com.
Photo: Eric Laignel Photography
Reclaimed Wood
Brian Messana, architect: "We create custom floors from wood that's been salvaged from old snow fences and horse barns. Don't use a urethane finish: Oil and wax really bring out the grain of the wood."
LV Bespoke reclaimed floors, lvwoodfloors.com.
Photo: James Carroll, LV Wood Floors
Michael Gabellini, architect: "For a New York loft, we combined poured concrete with a radiant floor system. It's a very sensual material."
To give an existing floor the look of concrete: Ardex SD-M Designer Floor Finish, ardex.com; Ann Sacks Aeon concrete tile, annsacks.com.
Photo: Paul Warchol
Stephan Jaklitsch, architect: "An aluminum floor is an unexpected way to add visual depth to a room. It's easy to maintain and good for high-traffic areas. I used it in the Marc by Marc Jacobs store in San Francisco."
AlumaFloor tiles, aluminumfloors.com.
Credit: Courtesy of Alumafloor
Plus, try these materials for outdoor floors.


text:
Wife St. Sauveur 1
The Wife - Happy New Year 2012
The Wife - Wet and Wonderful
The Wife - In a Corner
The Wife - ready to go
Car Show - The Wife 1
The Wife - Dorwin Falls 1
Blau Varadero, Cuba 68
Blau Varadero, Cuba 67
Blau Varadero, Cuba 66
Blau Varadero, Cuba 65
Blau Varadero, Cuba 64
The Wife - Tread Softly
The Wife - No Parking
A little nostalgic look.
Mellow Yellow
Another one of my favourite subject.
Another one of my favourite subject. Another in the series 2
Another one of my favourite subject. Another in the series 3
Another birthday shot. Makes you feel like you're in the Islands. Well, it makes me feel that way.
The Wife, my favorite subject
An odd pair
Neon pants and what did you do with my feet ?
The Wife. My favorite subject.
Waiting for the train The Wife, my favorite subject
My wife in Varadero.
The Wife. Pensive in Havana
The Wet Look
The Wife, my favorite subject, 2002
Something a little different


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IN LEXINGTON, high school teachers have worn clown noses to class to lighten the atmosphere.
In Newton, they've instituted homework-free weekends and are training kids in yoga and meditation.
That's a start, I suppose.
But changing the culture in pressure-cooker high schools is going to take something bolder.
This week, US News and World Report released its annual list of top high schools in America, ranked by standardized test scores and AP-class enrollment, and, likely, by general misery. It's wonderful to emphasize achievement, but at some point, the pressure to excel takes too great a toll. And lately, some districts are starting to acknowledge that students are sleep-deprived, overwhelmed with make-work homework, and convinced their entire futures depend on taking five AP classes instead of two.
The extent of this problem is a matter of debate. Tom Loveless, who studies education at the Brookings Institution, believes the pressure is self-imposed and overstated. Parents in certain communities know what they're getting their families into, he says. And today's kids don't have it that tough, relatively speaking; a century ago, he notes, many teenagers were working full-time on farms or in factories and mines.
"Our teens today are about as well off as kids have ever been in human history," he said. "And yet we're wringing our hands saying, 'Oh, these poor kids.' ''
But Denise Clark Pope, a lecturer at Stanford University's graduate school of education, says she's seen increased stress among students across demographics. It's fueled, she said, by an increased reliance on standardized tests, more stringent college admissions, and more pressure from well-meaning parents who ask, "How'd you do on the history test?" rather than, "Did you learn anything interesting in school today?"
Pope hopes to change schools from within. Through an organization called Challenge Success, she meets with parents, students, and teachers, encouraging them to set limits on homework, place value on free time, and look beyond name-brand colleges. It's a hard sell, she concedes.
She starts by asking parents how they measure their kids' success. They tend to answer with "happiness" and "fulfilment." Yet what they're valuing, at least in the short term, she tells them, is test scores, grades, and prestige.
It seems unrealistic to think that parents and kids will change themselves. The high-achievement arms race is too hard to resist. The change needs to come from someplace else.
How about college admissions offices?
In my ideal world, they'd penalize the most overzealous applications, imposing something like a sports-team luxury tax: points off for too many AP courses or absurd numbers of extracurriculars.
Or they could just change the way they choose kids altogether.
Last fall, Bard College, a liberal arts school in New York, introduced an alternate admissions process. You can apply the traditional way, with transcripts and letters of recommendation. Or you can apply by writing four essays, selected from 21 choices, from an analysis of Gogol's "The Nose" to an explanation of why computers can beat humans at some games, but not others.
These aren't 20-minute exercises in faux deep thought. They're research papers, which students have months to complete, based on reading material the college provides, with suggested lengths of 2,500 words. They're graded by college professors, who give feedback.
The idea, Bard College President Leon Botstein said, is to challenge a system that clearly doesn't work. "The admissions process is cruel," he told me. The self-serving personal essays on the standard application "are a terrible genre, a useless genre."
But a substantive essay levels the playing field, he said, eliminating the bump you'd get from SAT prep classes or from having the financial wherewithal to load up on extracurriculars. Plus, it gives students a sense of the work they'd be doing in college.
"We thought this would be enjoyable, interesting, and revelatory," Botstein said.
Out of 7,000 applicants to Bard last fall, 41 opted for the essays; 17 of the essay writers were admitted. Scaling up the process would require a lot of work. So would convincing other colleges to switch to a system that relied on thoughtful analysis.
Maybe it's as unrealistic as thinking that yoga will solve the problem. But just imagine if this were what high schools trained students to do. It would be the difference between "How did the test go?" and "Did you learn anything interesting today?"
Joanna Weiss can be reached at email@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @JoannaWeiss


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Donald Harrison to headline Chicago Jazz Festival
The headliners at this summer's Chicago Jazz Festival are drummer Jack DeJohnnette, saxophonist Charles Lloyd, pianist Jason Moran and New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison.
Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events announced the lineup Wednesday.
The free festival takes place over Labor Day weekend, running Aug. 29 to Sept. 1.
Other acts will include trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, who will perform a new piece written to commemorate the 50th anniversary this year of the March on Washington. It's part of a multimedia project with video artist Jesse Gilbert.
Moran will perform his Fats Waller Dance Party tribute on Aug. 31 at in Millennium Park.
Headliner Harrison closes out the festival with his Mardi Gras Indian Congo Square Nation band.


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Lantern, you've covered the environmental impact of meat a number of times. Where do eggs fit in? And would it be better for the planet to buy free-range or cage-free eggs?
The Lantern has good news for those of you who, like her, are devotees of the 24-hour breakfast menu: According to the best data we have so far, eggs are on the green end of the animal-protein spectrum. That doesn't mean they're particularly good for the planet, however. An omelet may have less of an impact than a strip steak or a pulled-pork platter, but eggs aren't necessarily any greener than the chickens that lay them.
In a report published in Livestock Science earlier this spring, two Dutch researchers gathered data from 16 different life-cycle analyses in order to compare the environmental impacts from five conventionally raised animal products: pork, chicken, beef, milk, and eggs. (All but one of the studies were from Europe, where the lion's share of food-related life-cycle analyses is conducted.) On a per-kilogram-of-protein basis, nearly all the data showed that beef production requires the most land and energy and produces the most greenhouse gas—often by a significant amount. When it comes to ranking pork, chicken, milk, and eggs, the differences weren't quite as clear.
Take land use, for example. Producing one kilogram of chicken protein (roughly the amount in three dozen chicken breasts) requires between 42 and 52 square meters of land. To get a kilogram of egg protein (what you'd get from about 10 dozen eggs) you need roughly the same amount: between 35 and 48 sq. m. Pork came in a bit higher, at 47 to 64 sq. m., and milk a little lower, at 33 to 59 sq. m. But there's enough overlap among the reported ranges that you can't always make a clear call one way or the other.
The reported ranges also overlapped when it came to greenhouse gas emissions. With regards to energy use, pork had the highest numbers and milk the lowest, with chicken and eggs ranked somewhere in the middle. (The report also looked at eutrophication—a kind of water pollution caused by excess nutrients—and acidification, but found conflicting data in these categories.)
What about different types of eggs—could you make a greener omelet by choosing cage-free or organic eggs over the conventional type?
Since the majority of the impacts associated with chicken-rearing come from producing their feed, one way to look at the question is as a matter of efficiency: Which type of bird does the best job turning the food it eats into the eggs we eat? In that sense, there's a pretty clear hierarchy, according to Hongwei Xin, director of the Egg Industry Center at Iowa State University.
Data from Europe indicate that chickens raised in conventional cage systems—the much-maligned "battery" cages now being phased out in the European Union—are the most efficient layers: It takes them about 2 kilograms of feed to produce 1 kilogram of eggs. Chickens raised in cage-free or barn systems—in which the birds are free to roam around the building but don't necessarily have access to the outdoors—require about 14 percent more food. Free-range birds, with access to the outdoors, require about 18 percent more than conventional caged birds. Organic chickens, whose feed is grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, need roughly 20 percent more food than birds kept in cages. (For assistance decoding the dizzying variety of egg labels out there, see this helpful guide from the New York Times.)
The differences in feed efficiency arise in part because cage systems allow farmers to carefully calibrate the birds' temperature, so the animals expend less energy keeping themselves warm. That energy can then go toward making more eggs. Chickens in noncage systems also waddle around and flap their wings a lot more than their cooped-up cousins, which leaves even less energy for egg-laying. Plus, mortality rates are often higher when birds are allowed to roam. Finally, in noncage systems, it's harder to regulate ammonia emissions from chicken poop—a major issue of environmental concern on poultry farms.
Of course, many green-minded consumers prefer eggs from uncaged hens precisely because of the things that reduce their efficiency as layers—like the freedom to exercise and engage in natural behaviors, like nesting and dust-bathing. (Keep in mind that "free-range" doesn't always mean that the hen spent its days frolicking in sun-kissed fields; it could mean the bird had some access to a concrete lot.) In addition, organic eggs may come with benefits that aren't necessarily reflected when you judge by efficiency alone—like a reduction in pesticide and fertilizer applications, which is good for soil and water quality.
What if you decide to skip the supermarket and get your frittata fixings from the farmers' market or another local purveyor? Well, besides the happy, satisfied glow that comes from knowing where your food is produced, buying from a well-managed small farm can have eco-benefits. On a farm that rotates cattle and chickens on the same pastureland, for example, hens can pick out and eat the bugs from cowpies, providing the bird with important nutrients and helping tamp down fly problems. Birds that are "pasture raised"—i.e., that eat a lot of insects and grass alongside regular feed— produce eggs that may have health benefits, like higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids. It's often said they taste better, too, though that luscious flavor will probably come with a higher price tag. Whether small-scale farms can meet the world's egg demands is another question—and a crucial one to consider in terms of the overall sustainability of our food systems. But for her personal grocery needs, the Lantern likes going small and local when she can.
Finally, what if you have embraced your inner farmhand and are raising chickens yourself, like Susan Orlean? Xin speculates that these birds will perform about the same as the free-range type, in terms of feed utilization and carbon footprint. However, as many suburban hen-keepers note, backyard birds can become important parts of your home's ecosystem, performing useful services like pest control, food waste disposal, and compost turning. Plus, you don't have to worry about those pesky food miles—making a homegrown hard-boiled egg the ultimate locavore treat.
Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to email@example.com, and check this space every Tuesday.
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by Toby Swaford, K-12 Education Coordinator
Learning about local and state history has become a full time job and something of a passion for me over the last few years. While it's always rewarding to use the knowledge that one acquires, it's usually the most fun when applied in a surprising or unexpected way. Having recently purchased the first season of the original Star Trek series on Blu-ray (power to the geek, my brothers) I identified two instances of Colorado history in two consecutive episodes, guaranteeing my status as King Nerd of the Sofa for at least one more evening.
The first episode in question is the Spock-centric "Galileo Seven." That's the one in which Spock, Scotty, Dr. McCoy, and a few characters we've never seen before, crash-land their shuttlecraft on a mysterious fog-shrouded planet. Following standard Starfleet regulations, the main cast stays behind to repair the ship, while the guys in the red shirts wander off to show the audience exactly how the monster works. You know who I'm talking about, they usually get lines like, "Captain, over here, I've found some…aarrrrrgghh!"
In this particular case, what the red-shirts discover are 12-foot tall, humanoid creatures that end up terrorizing (and occasionally killing) members of the crew by lobbing spears the size of telephone poles from somewhere just off camera. While everyone else is busy panicking (and occasionally dying), Spock calmly analyzes the lethal projectiles noting that the stone tips are similar to Folsom points. This is the point (no pun intended) at which I really got my geek on.
You see, Folsom points are an important part of our local history here in Fort Collins. Named in 1926 in Folsom, New Mexico, this type of stone point was first found by amateur archaeologists in 1924 at the Lindenmeier dig site, located just north of Fort Collins. These points and other stone tools belonging to what is collectively known as the Folsom culture help establish human occupation in North America dating back to the last Ice Age, some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.
Incidentally, the Fort Collins Museum features one of the most extensive collections of Folsom technology in the world, including items such as points, drills, and gravers.
The function of some of these tools has been determined: points were hafted onto spears or other projectiles for hunting, drills were used for placing holes into bone and other material. What gravers were used for remains a mystery, although several theories exist — including that the fine, sharp point on a graver could be used to decorate skins. Precisely whose skin has yet to be determined — both the application of pigments to animal hide and the scarification of human flesh have been suggested.
By the time I finished my explanation of Folsom culture, the shuttlecraft had safely returned to its docking bay aboard the Enterprise, and it was time for the next episode, "The Squire of Gothos." The Squire in question is an almost omnipotent being named Trelane, who pulls members of the starship crew down to his planet to provide him with companionship and entertainment. Though he views humans as a primitive, predatory species, Trelane is none the less well versed in human history — especially the darker chapters involving warfare.
His knowledge also seemingly extends to ancient legal systems, and Trelane dons a judge's wig as he holds trial against an uncooperative Captain Kirk. It is during this scene that Trelane sentences Kirk "to hang by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead!" This is the same sentence handed down by Judge M.B. Gerry to the notorious Colorado cannibal known as Alferd Packer.
Of course, it was soon after I pointed out this latest tidbit of information that I found myself abandoned on the sofa. Alas, King Nerd rules a lonely domain.


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Strategy Nerd
Mix a board/card game with fast skilled based action combat with randomized loot and you get this. The amount of cards they have added for free is awesome. I find myself logging in after a month or two and it seems there are always more cards to unlock. At the time of writing I have 26 hours in game and still only have about 75% of the cards. The more cards you get the more challenging the game becomes, but the better loot you will find as well.
You'll find yourself trying to beat the one card in the dealers deck to get more gear, blessings and gain cards for your later runs. But as the dealer says, you'll unlock many cards, some you wish you hadn't. You can set your own challenge as you go or just go all in. Build up to beat that one card so you can get more cards for the next run or try and beat the story line or try the endless mode.
The games of chance can even be tipped in your favor. The cards are shuffled, sometimes more quickly based on the event or curses or more slowly based on blessings. You can attempt to watch the card be shuffled and attempt to choose the correct one. It's an extremely effective system surprisingly.
The combat has dodging, parrying and blocking and they are absolutely necessary to get good at in order to move forward in the game. The combat has been balanced immensely since release and is now a really solid challenge. THIS IS NOT JUST A CARD GAME. There is action based combat which requires real skill, reaction speed and practice to proceed.
Absolutely worth the money if you like rogue-like, fast paced and brutal yet balanced game with mechanics that allows you to achieve more every run. The game balances the new cards with new difficult encounters and curses that can do all sorts of mildly irritating things. But it is a 'rogue-like', you will have frustrating runs. However when you succeed in getting that difficult encounter and you gain new things, it makes it all the more satisfying.
One of the best parts of playing this game is the atmosphere and the dealer's excellent voice acting. The setting in which you play the card game is perfect for playing in the dark in a relaxed setting. While it can be a frustrating game at moments, when you come out of the action combat you are in a nice calm atmosphere simply playing cards. This has some unusual mood affect which seems to strangely calm your inevitable frustration. The game mixes two genres together that really aren't meant to be together, but Hand of Fate pulls it off flawlessly. There is only one con I can think of about the game, the shops sometimes take a strangely long time to load. Other than that I can't think of much more that could be added to the game to make it better, other than new card encounters, monsters and gear of which there
This was certainly one of my favorite single player games of 2015 and I hope they keep adding more content either for free, DLC, expansion or a new game all around. Highly recommend you play with a controller and only with a controller. Steam controller works great as well and is a great game to play with Steam Streaming. The game fits very well on a big screen in the living room.
I have started a website dedicated to full loot multiplayer games. Be sure to check out Gank Mode.
Finally a real strategy game has come to the IPad. The now popular board game has now come to digital form and is in the app store. The game is a turn based galactic conquest game. It include research and ship building! For a board game it is complex, but it's complexity take a certain form of streamlined simplicity. It's limited to 9 rounds but you have many actions during each round, including explore, research, building ships and orbitals, upgrading your ships and moving your ships. It's an example of extremely straight intuitive and immersive game design. Thank of a civilization game that can be played in about an hour once you really get into the game. The tutorial is excellent for getting started as well. Did I mention multiplayer? If you have an IPad I highly recommend this game. According to the developer they are currently just behind Minecraft in 5th place in sales on the ITunes store.
Eclipse ITunes
Big Daddy Creation - Eclipse Done
This is another game that crept up on us. It's a game called Banished and it's a realistic simulator for probably what would be something similar to an early 19th century town. It features realistic population growth and food gathering. It's slated for a mid to late 2013 release. There are more videos and pictures available on www.shiningrocksoftware.com
Gamespot released this video of Total War: Rome 2. I've always enjoyed the Total War series as it always mixes realistic battles with a sandbox campaign mode allowing to run your country through a grand map. The Total War series finally comes full circle back to the time period that brought us Total War. I for one cannot wait to rule Rome and command it's armies. The only thing Total War: Rome needed was a better UI, better AI and a bit of polish. This tech demo shows what we have been waiting for all this time.
This is an example of what a great action adventure puzzle game should be like. It's sandboxy and hilarious. The beta is on Steam but you need an access code. I'm not sure if they are still giving out beta keys but if you are interested I recommend signing up for the newsletter at gunpoint.com. The video above doesn't do the game justice.
Paradox Interactive has officially gone mobile and funky. Soon after it's Magicka IOS release, it's now releasing Leviathan: Warships a tactical turn-based fleet management game. It's cross-platform multiplayer is beyond innovative. Most gaming companies are too scared to try. This game boasts multiplayer between all major platforms PC, MAC, Android and IOS. That is extremely impressive and risky move. You customize your fleet and arm your ships with your weapons of choice. It will release April 30th, 2013. Check out this funky trailer.
Civilization V: Brave New World will bring about a much needed improvement to the culture and diplomatic victory. Policy Adoption will play a more important role with conflicting ideologies becoming more important in how you interact with other civilizations. The emphasis is to improve the late game experience and make the culture and diplomatic victories more viable and more interesting. A type of archaeology system will be added to the game. Trade will become more important bringing about a new unit called the caravan. A world congress will be featured. Nine new civilizations and 2 new scenarios and new units and buildings. This new expansions is slated for release this summer.
Day Z - TBA
Day Z Game Official Site
I am not one of those zombie loving hipsters. I'm not even a fan of post apocalyptic horror films and games. I don't really like them, I'm not into the theme. But Day Z has capitivated me. I'm a fan of simulations, I'm a fan of realism. Day Z gives a chance to experience what life could really be like in a zombie apocalypse. With humans fighting together and against each other in an endless war for beans, ammunition and survival. Dubbed Hiking Simulator 2013 by some, the great moments come when you meet face to face with another human and must decide weather to try and talk to them or shoot them and steal there stuff. Looking online you can find some spectacular moments that have been found in the Arma 2 Mod version of this game. Day Z is truly deserving of it's standalone version and we are all hoping the fews bugs will be few and there will hopefully be far less hacking. This game has more potential than most games coming out 2013.
The game has been delayed, and understandably so. The game is ambitious and the technological problems they face are vast. My guess is we will know more by summer and we can probably expect some kind of beta by Q3 2013.
Arma III - Q3 2013
Arma 3 Steam
The world's premier military simulator is already available on Steam in a Alpha version. We're all hoping that Arma 3 brings the needed polish and user friendliness that Arma 2 so badly needed. The Arma series has been notoriously difficult to get into, primarily because it is a military sandbox.
Europa Universalis IV - Q3 2013
Feature List of Paradox Forum
What are we going to do tonight Brain? The same thing we do every night Pinky... try and take over the world. Come on you know you want to. Pick your favorite country, and go from there. With a new trade system involving your navy, a revised combat system, revised religion, revised map and everything any Europa fanboy could want. This is my most anticipated game of the year.
Civilization Brave New World - Summer 2013
This new expansion set to release this summer will feature new much needed diplomatic features and revised trade system. It will also feature a sort of cultural mini game, featuring ideological wars. Not a lot of information is out, but it sounds like cultural victories may be more viable and more interesting. Think cold war scenario.
Stardrive - May 2013, Beta availabe now
Stardrive on Steam
Featuring tons of 4x features, the beta version is out on Steam and the full version is on it's way. It's 4x space empire game that features the usual ship building and research trees. The combat system will probably set this game apart from the others. It features crew boarding and ground forces into the genre, something that has been largely been ignored or abstracted away in other games like Endless Space. The twist is that it's real time and you can even control one of your ships with WASD. It's a strange game, something that hasn't really been done before. I am torn between playing this and Endless Space.
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game - August 2013
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game
I have never waited so patiently in anticipation of a board game before. In the genre of the new "living card games" made somewhat popular by Fantasy Flight. Paizo Publishing, publisher of the now popular D&D reboot Pathfinder is creating a card game version of Pathfinder. Instead of having the dungeon master tell you what is happening in your adventure, the game tells you what's happening and all of the items, characters, locations and adventure lie within hundreds of cards. The base set will be released in August 2013 at GenCon in Indianapolis. Subsequently more and more of the adventure will be released on a monthly basis, adding more and more cards to the game. Something like a 1000 cards will released by the end of the first adventure. It's a persistent card, something which hasn't been done hardly at all. You level up, you find loot and defeat monsters and you keep going until you die. It's a cooperative game that can even be played solo.
Eclipse IOS - Probably May 2013
Big Daddy Creations
The board game is a hugely successful space empire building game that is complex, yet streamlined. It includes ship building and tech trees. However the game is getting even more streamlined and being put onto the iPad with AI.
Eminent Domain Escalation - December 2013
Eminent Domain Escalation Kickstarter
As of right now there are 57 hours left in the Kickstart campaign for the board game expansion for Eminent Domain. Eminent Domain is an excellent new twist on deck building strategy and the expansion will probably prove to be just as innovative. I love playing this game and I am looking for to this expansion. You can get the original game through the Kickstarter as well. I highly recommend this game.
Warhammer Quest (IOS) - April 2013
Rodeo Games
Warhammer Quest is one of those unique board games made a long time ago by Games Workshop. It wasn't initially all that successful, but the world changes and people came to realize how great the game was. Now the board game sells for $400 on Ebay and there is still no talk of a reprint. The board game is dungeon tile questing game in which you continue playing and exploring the dungeons leveling up your character. So the game doesn't end just like every other dungeon crawling game, it keeps going. You visit towns, get items, fight monsters and level up. Now the game is coming to IPads and IPhones. It's being made by the same people that made Hunters which is there own custom strategic fighting game that would probably fit well in the realm of Warhammer 40,000. I recommend checking out Rode Games
I have hoped this day would come for years. A digital download of Age of Empires II (1999) is coming to Steam and not only that it's going to support modern native resolutions and multiple monitors! No longer will you have to resort to Amazon, adventuring or pirating just to find a copy of this glorious game. I can't say how many times I have bought a copy of this game, but it's been more than twice. Incidentally I somehow still have my copy of Age of Empires I with the massive manual that came with it. However it just goes to show how timeless this game really is.Finally Microsoft found the lost screw and got one there of many heads properly attached to the body of the mighty hydra beast that is Microsoft. This game needed a digital download because it's a big fat giant pinata filled with money. Microsoft is going to finally cash in as the game will be available on Steam for $19.99, currently $17.99 before release. That's a mighty big profit considering the game has already paid for itself and the development being put into it is not some kind of massive rewrite or expansion.
The game is getting a lot of great features that are going to make the age of AOE less obvious and with the Forbidden Empires mod which improves AI, the game will be a beast that will transcend it's own age. If you already have the game and haven't tried out the Forbidden Empires mod, then you are missing out on the best improvement to the game, the only improvement it really needed, better AI. This is a glorious day.
I shouldn't have to tell anyone reading this how good Age of Empires II is, if so you are on the wrong blog. You can be sure when I finally finish my best strategy games of all times list, this will be in the top 3 if not number one.Here are the features:
Links: Forgotten Empires Age of Empires II HD on Steam
Diablo III has had a lot of stumbles. The game isn't really bad, in fact it does a lot right. I have about 700 hours in game. The combat is fun, but the itemization is a bit off. The auction house creates an environment that causes rare loot be far more rare than would normally exist. However these aren't deeply rooted problems that can't be fixed. Combat is the thing you do most, and combat is sheer fun. The actual problem at Blizzard is a PR problem.
Blizzard has long used it's ambiguity to create a shroud of secrecy that creates the whispering rumors in nerd forums that creates a good launch environment. This has helped make Diablo III one of the biggest PC launches of all time. Even though the launch was rocky, the sales had already gone through and the auction house was buzzing with an unknown godly amount of money. Diablo III is a monetary success for Blizzard, however it's longevity has been in danger for some time because the veil of secrecy Blizzard is known for has been taken to a level that is unhealthy for the Diablo community.
The 1.07 patch is a much anticipated patch. Then Diablo announces a downtime and thousands of people sit around speculating. Is it the patch? Should I plan a big game day? Nobody knows, because Blizzard tries so hard to create this veil of secrecy that breeds anticipation. However as the game is already out and people know what the game is like. The veil of secrecy around a somewhat major but publicly tested patch is completely ridiculous and over the top. The only thing Blizzard accomplishes is alienating it's audience by simply not announcing what the downtime is for.
I was hoping for a better PR stance and a more open environment from Blizzard after Jay Wilson leaving. I know if this was my game and my baby, PR would run differently. Somebody needs to tell there community relations department (There actually is one!) at Blizzard that keeping people in the dark about things that should simply be public information is not creating the type of veil of secrecy that they are looking for. They are simply being inconsiderate to it's userbase that needs flat simple information about the basic status of the game. Some of us do have lives and plans outside of the world of Diablo. You can have secrecy that breeds anticipation without cutting off the entire line of communication to your audience. I have only one piece of advice for whomever becomes the new game director, fire somebody in community relations and make an example out of them because alienating your audience is a completely unacceptable business practice and you are losing users and money because of it.
I've been gaming a while and I have never seen such a large horde of angry fans over a video game, except for maybe the short lived War Z fiasco. Jay Wilson will for better or worse be the butt of every game manager joke from here until the next big game PR disaster. Much of it is undeserved really, but a lot it is simply anger over the perceived lack of respect for your audience. In short Blizzard, get your PR shit together.
Let's face it, the world of Android games suck. When it comes to strategy games, you are pretty much reduced down to a handful of decent tower defender games. Developers have a hard time justifying development of a game for a system that generally requires a complete rewrite of an app the was written for IOS. That and the fact that most people own an IOS device, not Android. On top of that there are a million Android devices with tons of different hardware and screen sizes. With Apple there just a few devices and a few screen sizes, easing the development process a bit.
Strategy games don't generally sell well, especially on mobile devices. Even when you do find one it's often some sort of pay to win money pit. I bought my Android tablet about 6 months hoping to see a larger influx of strategy games come in. I don't like Apple, I don't like there restrictions and I don't like how they overcharge for every single device and service they sell, just because it is almighty Apple. They have a couple things going for them though, they have huge demand and a huge amount of users, this translates to good apps and good variety. While I have problems with the restrictiveness of there App Store, it does a couple things. It ensures the quality of apps and increase security. All these things combined have created a good ecosystem for Apps in the IOS world.
However if you go over to the Android Google Play store, you find an endless pile of steaming crap. There are crappy apps in the IOS store as well, but not the seemingly endless mile of crap you find in the Android store. Mix that with no real category sorting and bad search filtering and you can't even find the good games because they are drowned in an endless maze of crap. It's pretty terrible that search is so bad on Google Play, considering Google is considered the best with search. If Google can't begin to get developers developing quality titles for Android, then Apple will remain on top of the gaming market, and Sony PSP Vita and Nintendo DS will continue to actually do pretty well in mobile gaming when a few well timed changes could put Android on top. Right now Nintendo DS has better strategy titles than Android, see Civilization, Anno and Age of Empires all actually pretty great games for strategy gamers on a mobile device.
I bought an Android device because I wanted to "fight the power" that is Apple, I didn't want to cave in. However if nothing changes in the next 6 months, I'll be buying a damned IPad, because that is where are all the good boardgames and strategy games are being developed. Google needs to do something about the App Store to start filtering out the crap. A few steps have been taken but nothing that will definitively drive development. If you want good strategy games on your tablet or phone, I would not recommend Android devices.
I've been away for a while, playing video games of course. Here is my list of the best strategy games of 2012.
Official Site
Hands down one of the best co-op games of all time. This game can only be described as pure joy. A mix of 3rd person shooter and tower defense. You will slaughter Orcs by the hundreds as they attempt to run through your gauntlet or traps while you shoot and maim them. I can't recommend this game enough.
You'll feel like Captain Picard on the bridge of the Enterprise with this rogue-like spaceship simulator. You'll command crew, upgrade your ship, target weapons at shields, engines, engineering and crew all the while protecting your crew, engines, venting fires and making sure your oxygen tanks don't explode. Your commands will be the essential decisions needed to keep your crew alive and your ship in one piece. This is a great little game for any aspiring ship captain. Also it's JefMajor approved.
Sins of a Solar Empire is back with epic space battles, planet bombing, giant starbases and giant tech trees. Just with any epic strategy game, there is a fairly steep learning curve, but Rebellion's great AI tuning will get you in the game at a pace you can enjoy. While the improvements in Rebellion aren't all that vast, this already great epic strategy game has been improved and made into a standalone game so more can enjoy and jump into what is a great strategy game.
Remakes don't generally turn out well or remain true to there ancestor's but the new XCOM is a refreshing take on an old favorite. It may be more storyline driven than the original, but this doesn't really detract from it's openness and it's turned based tactical combat is refreshingly new and exciting. You run your secret black project alien annihilation station managing research and engineering projects from your underground bunker, organizing alien interceptions and managing your relationship with world powers. This part of XCOM resembles city building strategy which then seemless stream into combat scenarios where your recruits that may have been alive for many missions put there lives and skills on the line in nail biting tactical combat. Usually turn based combat isn't known for putting you on the edge of your seat, but it gets tense when you have veteran soldiers that have been alive since the beginning of your game could die at any moment, the combat situation gets tense.
Endless Space has taken a combination of things that have proven to work well together: turn based civilization game, resource management, research, ship and fleet design and thrown in a dose of refreshing combat mechanics into an epic turn based space civilization game. It takes a certain amount of patience to learn and play a game like Endless Space, but if you're like me, sitting back and meticulously planning your enemies demise is your favorite part of any game, then this game is for you. You design your own ships and fleets and manage every single planet and solar system from micro to macro and somehow it doesn't feel tedious on a grand scale. Throw in a an interesting card based combat mechanic that I have never seen in any other game and you have a streamlined epic strategy game known as Endless Space.
Of course I can't wait for Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis IV, PC's premier historically accurate grand strategy game.
Tropico remains one of the greatest city building games, but it's somewhat lost track of what made the game popular in the first place.
With Tactical Mode now in the game, this game is actually pretty good. I only wish there was either some sort of coop or multiplayer mode, but obviously such a mode would present difficulties in a game like this.
Phenominal score of 35/100 metacritic, I regret ever previewing it on this site or getting hyped about it at all. Kalypso's reputation took a big hit on this one.
A very buggy release, and even after several issues have been fixed, the game has been overshadowed by Endless Space with it's streamlined gameplay and interface and simplified combat system. For the extremely hardcore masochist strategy gamer, Sword of the Stars II could be for you?
If you haven't signed up for the greatest MMOFPS ever made then you are missing out. Sign up for Planetside 2 over at planetside2.com
About a year ago I posted a video about a game in development called Castle Story. The engine looked promising and the gameplay looked awesome. To push a long the game into final development stages and for publishing. The programmers behind Castle Story started a Kickstarter to fund the game to be published. They asked the Kickstarter community for $80,000 and so far they have gotten $250,000 and they still have a whopping 27 days to go. The fund currently has over 9,400 backers.
The Kickstarter will expire on August 27 in which the project will be fully funded and then some. I highly recommend putting up some money towards it just to get some early access to the game. They also have T-Shirts and posters and the ability to get your name in the credits. It's nice to hard work for game with a lot of promise being rewarded. These guys deserve it.
Follow to the link below to help fund them even more. There is great video there with some new and interesting gameplay.
Kickstarter - Castle Story
Update 8/9/2012 - Castle Story has reached over $420,000 with 17 days to go!
Update 9/7/2012 - Castle Story Kickstarter campaign has finished with over $700,000.
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2 remain in custody in Britain attack, police say
British police say that two people remain in custody following last week's attack in London as messaging services face criticism for encrypted networks that allow attackers to communicate in secret.
Attacker Khalid Masood is believed to have used the messaging service WhatsApp before running down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and storming a gate outside Parliament armed with two knives. Four died in the rampage, including a police officer.
Encryption makes it more difficult to know whether Masood was acting with an accomplice. Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd wants technology companies to do more to make it possible for security services to have access to such messages.
Police say that a 30-year-old man arrested in Birmingham on Sunday and a 58-year-old man arrested shortly after the attack remain in police custody.


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Too Busy Having a Life…
… to blog about it!
I've been walking, riding, doing house stuff, visiting friends, shopping (ugh), working on final edits of the book… that kind of thing. I've even been too busy to keep my horse diary updated, so I'll just do a brief overview of horse activities, along with one detailed highlight. Non-horsey readers can jump to here if they want to skip all the heavy-duty horse stuff!
After Aero's day of… um… hypersensitivity in the woods, I rode him in the arena the next day. We ran through our ground exercises in the round pen first, finishing up with an attempt at liberty work. The problem is that he's had 10 years of being told "you must stay out on the circle when you're being lunged and you're not allowed to come in to me." Now with the travail sur sol, he's supposed to turn to face me when I invite him to stop, so that he's ready to pick up the next command. Yeah. That's going to take a while.
I took him into the main arena and mounted and we set off. He was full of beans – not anxious, tense and fearful like he was this time last year, but a sort of YAY! What are we doing next? Can we canter? Oh. Ok I'll leg yield… can we canter now? Oh. Yeah, I'll do a few walk/trot transitions. Tum-ti-tum… Oh sorry, you mean you didn't want walk/canter?
I had a sort of slowly dawning realisation that day – not a light-bulb moment, maybe a candle moment. I feel unworthy riding this horse. I feel that when he does something that I haven't asked for, it's my fault, because I've pushed the wrong buttons. And yeah, that's partially true – but he has to start figuring me out as much as I've been figuring him out. Yes, he's more horse than I need, but he's the horse I've got and I'm the owner he's got, so I've got to get over this feeling that he's "too good for me" and that he "knows more than I do." So when I ask for something (walk/trot, for example) and he gives me something else (walk/canter), I go back and ask again, the same way, and I make sure I get the answer I want. And do you know, I think it's working.
The other thing I've been trying very hard to do with my arena work is keep my hands up and ask the horse to work into a contact with my hands at that level all the time. Not easy. For years, I've lowered my hands and basically pulled the horse into an outline – not forcefully, but it's not the right way. If you keep your hands reasonably high ("Carry your hands!" my friend Naomi used to shout at me!) then when you play with the bit, the action is on the corners of the mouth and the tongue. If your hands are low, the action is on the bars of the mouth, the tongue and the corners of the mouth – much more severe. This whole concept is a re-education for both me and the horses, so yeah, that's going to take a while too.
I'm driven mental with bloody bot-fly eggs on Aero. Every time I scrape them all off, there's another batch on his legs the next morning. There was a cold snap two weeks ago and I thought that would kill them off, but it wasn't severe enough and it's been really warm ever since, so they're still around. Still, it'll be cold soon enough…
Flurry has been working away nicely with no issues. Our ground exercises are improving, he is more responsive to me but there is always an issue with getting him to start paying attention.
The farrier came and trimmed them both on Tuesday. I hadn't done any hoofcare since his last visit, so he took quite a bit off and both horses were a little footsore afterwards. This is the one niggle I have with this guy, he's really good and very willing to advise and guide me, but I don't like the fact that the horses are tender after being done.
At the start of the week, MC rang and asked if I'd like to join her and two other liveries on a ride at a nearby forest. They had been exploring and had found some lovely woodland trails. We would have to box the horses over and she offered to take Flurry in the truck with Quieto. Hell yeah was my response. We need to leave the farm at about 12.30, she thought. We would load Flurry and then drive down to her house and pick up Quieto, and the other liveries, Mr & Mrs Endurance, would leave the farm at about one and meet us on the road.
I got up to the farm way too early. I brought Flurry in and groomed him, but he was miraculously clean. He's got a very respectable winter coat now, although he's not quite at his Teddy Bear best yet.
Then I sorted out all my gear and piled it in a heap, ready to go into the truck. After that, I took Flurry for a pick of grass while I waited.
And got distracted by this guy chirruping on a bale beside me.
MC arrived and we ate our picnic lunch. Then we waited some more.
Finally, Mr & Mrs Endurance arrived. While they went to get their horses, MC and I loaded Flurry and set off to collect Quieto. He loaded no bother, politely said hello to Flurry as he went in, we shut the ramp and went back out onto the main road again, to find Mr & Mrs Endurance behind us. Perfect timing! Only an hour later than planned!
We arrived at St Martin les Eaux at about 2.30 and we all set to work tacking up.
These guys flew overhead – geese, migrating to… somewhere? They were flying East/West – maybe from Eastern Europe to warmer parts of Southern France and Spain? We could hear their honking and the whish of their wings as they flew along.
Once everyone was ready, we headed into the Forêt de Pelissier for our ride. The Endurances had promised that all the trails were great, with a sandy surface, but their horses aren't barefoot! Sure, the trails were better than in the woods near the farm, but they were still pretty stony.
After about fifteen minutes, I was ready to put Flurry's boots on, but they assured me that the trail would improve in a few minutes, which they did.
Then they disimproved again and I gave in – I hopped off and put Flurry's boots on. I'd brought the Renegades instead of his Cavallo Sport boots, as the sport boots were a bit tight and tough to get on the last couple of times and I thought the Renegades would be easier to fit quickly. I was right, they were on in no time…
…but right after these photos were taken, he stepped on one as we went through rocky ground and ripped the cable out. Stuff it, I said, he'll have to go barefoot, but actually the ground was very good for ages after that so it wasn't too bad.
We passed right through the HQ of an operation called Geosel. A friend told me about it afterwards. It's a massive storage facility for methane and crude oil, buried right into the eastern end of the Luberon. Rumour has it that there is enough oil stored there to power France for several years. That's a lot of oil! My friend has hiked around the forest a bit and she told me that when you get close to the storage areas, there are sign saying encouraging things like "If you hear a sound like an explosion, run like hell."
Noted. I'll remember that next time.
After passing through the Geosel office compound, we climbed a hill towards the site of an old chateau. There are traces of the old ruined chateau around, but this large house was built on the site in modern times and subsequently abandoned – when they heard about the millions of gallons of oil being stored underneath it, perhaps. It was discovered that there's a very rare species of bat living in the roof of this house, though, so it has been re-roofed in a bat-appropriate manner.
I guess the bats don't realise they're living on top of a whole pile of oil.
There was a stone tablet saying something about La Mort d'Imbert – the death of Imbert. I looked it up afterwards. Imbert was hopelessly in love with a young lady called Laure, daugher of an inn-keeper in St Maime, who fell in love with and married Audibert, the nephew of a local lord. In a rage, Imbert waylaid them on the road and contrived to kidnap Laure with the help of six ruffians. He kept her prisoner while Audibert sought help from his uncle the lord. Audibert returned alone and was met with the six ruffians and Imbert who all attacked him. It seemed hopeless, but Laure was clearly not one of those heroines who needed to be rescued. She escaped from her room, grabbed a kitchen knife as she left and stabbed Imbert between the shoulder blades, killing him. The ruffians ran off and she and her lover made their getaway on horseback…
Did it all happen here? Who knows! Good story, anyway!
Finally, we made our way back along more stony trails until we returned to St Martin les Eaux.
We had covered 12km in two and a half hours. The longest ride I've done in a while and my ass was killing me again! Forgot the damn cycling shorts…
Phew, this has been a long, rambling post! Thanks if you managed to read this far!
À la prochaine…


text: This offseason, MiLB.com is honoring the players -- regardless of age or prospect status -- who had the best seasons in their organizations. We're looking at each farm system to determine the outstanding Minor League seasons. Find out when your favorite team's All-Stars will be revealed and peruse those already announced.


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1 - Sail lyrics
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text: I am the Vivarium Director and a Licensed Veterinary Technician. I earned two B.A. degrees in Public Relations and Organizational Communications from Marist College, my M.S.T. from SUNY Potsdam and an Associates Degree in Veterinary Science from SUNY Canton before arriving at St. Lawrence. The course I regularly teach is Lab Animals which focuses on government rules and regulations pertaining to research with animals, anesthesia/analgesia, surgery techniques and overall animal care. I lecture in 10-12 labs per year that use research animals in the departments of Biology, Psychology and Neuroscience. I am also a collaborator on all research projects that include animals, especially those through our NIH grants and SYEs.


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If you are reading this from some other part of the world : No, this is definitely not an April Fools' prank.
Two days ago, on the 30th March 2013, the country has survived the worst day ever in its history. After the torrential rainfall of the 13th February 2013, Mauritians never thought that there could be worst. Today, the country is crying the death of 11 persons who have paid for the incompetencies of authorities with their lives. Several of them have drowned in the muddy waters either in the Caudan pedestrian underpass or in the underground parking of the Harbour Front building (Mac Do Port Louis). Rivers and canals going through the capital have over flooded the roads, leaving them not only unsafe but also impossible to use. In several regions, the level of water has nearly reached the roof, sometimes even forcing people to climb on top of their houses. Bref, during these two days, the country was in a deplorable state.
If you want to have a look at the pictures and videos, you can head over to my Facebook profile.
Who to blame?
While some will argue by saying that I should not put the blame on others, I will rather say that the dreadful experience of the previous devastating torrential rainfalls and floods have not been of any use. The authorities have clearly failed in so many points. Is the role of the authorities only limited to the allocation of contracts to "petits-copains" and Soornack, giving public beaches to hotels and delivering speeches?
Mark my words : The consequences could have been less serious: lives saved and keep damages at a minimum.
Just to give you an idea of things that could have been prevented :
- The Caudan flyover was transformed into a large pool with several vehicles trapped in the water.
- Just inaugurated, the pride of the government aka the Ring Road was converted into the largest water drainage system of the island.
- Concrete barriers built along lanes of the motorway has largely contributed to worsen the situation since the large amount of water had no way to leave the motorway.
- For the second time within a few months, the Place d'Armes and Caudan area merged to form an immense muddy water bassin.
- Several areas of the recently constructed Jeetoo Hospital was flooded.
Why? Probably the lack of proper drain systems and the incompetency of our engineers for their modern design. And our meteorological services? If they can't forecast the weather, I think that it is high time to shut it down.
The reaction of the London Boy
And we have a Prime Minister who compares Mauritius to other countries even in tragedies. During his press conference, he mentions the climatic change which is causing several disasters around the world. How lame! Seriously man, assume your responsibilities as the prime minister!!! I agree that there are things that cannot be predicted like natural disasters but what about the recently road constructions, buildings and drains systems which failed???
I'm so disgusted by the persons in power. We have been going through so many tragedies because of the incompetency of people and the tolerance of the population. Unfortunately, we tend to accept things as they are.
Sincere sympathy to the families affected. May the souls of the victims rest in peace.


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The Dust Bowl Is Today
Ken Burns talks about his latest documentary and why a 1930s disaster means so much in the present day
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
The world is changing. You've heard that before if you have ears, but the actual world, Planet Earth, the thing we stand on and live off of, is becoming something it has never been before. Earthquakes, record-level droughts, hurricanes in Manhattan, blizzards followed by 70-degree days. It's all happening, and most of it is happening because of us. Humans, technology, and capitalism haven't mixed well with the world-as-it-used-to-be-known. And it's becoming harder and harder to ignore, as the weather gets more extreme and the consequences more deadly.
While it may seem like a thoroughly modern concept, we've been through this before. About 80 years ago, America's worst man-made ecological catastrophe ravaged the Great Plains. Ken Burns retells the story of the disaster—a disaster we caused—in his latest documentary The Dust Bowl. While the Dust Bowl seems to evoke nostalgia for some post-frontier, pre-industrial, faded-photo America, Burns' film argues that calling it anything other than an unmitigated disaster is just wrong.
We caught up with Burns to discuss The Dust Bowl and all the stories that extend from and beyond the disaster itself. The film debuts this Sunday, November 18, at 8 p.m. ET.
Why the Dust Bowl for your latest film?
I think we choose any film that we've ever done because it's a good story. That's first and last. The thing that we're drawn to in the case of the Dust Bowl: there's been so much superficial, sort of conventional wisdom. It's the picture of a storm. It's a Dorothea Lange photograph of a migrant Okie farm mother. It's The Grapes of Wrath. The story that we understood was much more complex. And it required us to go to that area and find living survivors to chronicle what was a 10-year apocalypse of hundreds and hundreds of storms that blotted out the sun at noonday. The worst ecological disaster in all of American history. And it's that "man-made" that caught our attention. I don't think people understand the full import of what it meant to create the worst ecological disaster in our history and perhaps the whole of world history. That is what we wanted to tell: a complex personal story but also a very large, complex, continental story about agriculture and environment.
Not many understand what kind of devastation this was. You called it an "apocalypse."
It's definitely that—with biblical plagues of locusts and jackrabbits, stuff that we knew killed the farmers' crops but also their cattle and, more importantly, their children. It becomes a story, once you personalize it, of heroic perseverance in the midst of this complete collapse of this spectacular ecosystem that had once been the home of the buffalo and buffalo grass that evolved over thousands of years to hold the moisture in and hold the topsoil in from the ever-present winds.
And people got greedy. We expanded the Homestead Act. Unscrupulous real estate speculators sold land to folks who really desperately wanted to own a piece of land. It coincided with a couple of wet years. Everybody turned over the soil, an area greater than the size of Ohio, which is mammoth. They had some good years, and whenever you had a good year you planted more. Whenever you had a bad year, you planted more. And all of a sudden the bad years never stopped. The wind kept blowing, and the crops failed, and suddenly you were moving more dirt in one day than the entire 10 years it took us to make the Panama Canal. It was on a scale that I think we've forgotten.
We worked very hard, not only to reach out and discover those survivors who are all in their late 80s and 90s but were children at the time of the Dust Bowl to get the first-hand story, but also to find their photos and home movies and to go to hundreds of other archives to find the rest of the still photographs that it takes to tell a story as complex and meaningful in American history as this is. And let's remember also that this is an ecological catastrophe superimposed over the greatest economic cataclysm in the history of the United States, the Great Depression. So it's sort of hurt-squared.
Not many people would say it's the greatest disaster in American history.
No, it's true. Obviously, we've had greater catastrophes: the Civil War, which killed nearly three-quarters-of-a-million human beings fighting over the issue of slavery, and we've been involved in other wars. If you talk about ecological or environtmenal catastrophes, this is the big one. The Exxon Valdez and the BP spill don't come close to its long-lasting effect. And the fact that it went on for 10 years, killed so many people, transformed the southern plains, and took every effort of the government to mitigate it.
Is there any reason it's not necessarily looked at in that way?
No, I don't think we need to belabor it. There's tons of stuff people don't know about. You ask anybody about George Washington, and they say "wooden teeth," which isn't true. It is in human nature to forget. It is in human nature to reduce to the superficial understanding. We, for example, call the second World War the "Good War." It's actually the worst war ever. This is what you find in history all the time. And that's why you do it. You realize that human nature never changes; there are great lessons to be learned in the past. We are dealing with climate change right now and massive weather events, and the shortsightedness of the folks involved in the Dust Bowl becomes a theme not just for our film but our contemporary lives as well.
Is there any particular story that stands out?
Over and over again you're reminded of the power of memory. We think of memory as something dusty and old and covered in cobwebs, but it's actually something on our hard drives that we may have forgotten the password to, but when we access it, it's a portal that's direct and present. So, seeing Floyd and Dale Cohen in our film break down and cry over the death of a little sister who wasn't even two and a half years old, in early 1935, which is a long time ago, and realizing that the pain of that was present. You hear others describe just the sheer terror of the dust bowl, as a black blizzard, they recall, that could blot out the sun at noonday. You realize that history is not then; it's now.
The most tragic part about it, you say, is that it all could've been prevented.
This is a man-made disaster, so yes. If the Homestead Act hadn't been enlarged, if the unscrupulous real-estate speculators hadn't enticed a land boon, if those farmers desperate to own land—very understandable—hadn't come in, if it hadn't coincided with a wet period so that they had early success and the settlement expanded, if they hadn't, essentially, just turned over that buffalo grass, we would not have had the dust bowl. So it is preventable and it becomes part of a complicated human tragedy that, nonetheless, has stories of heroics and character and extraordinarily good people who remind us of the best of ourselves during this horrific ecological disaster.
It's hard not to think of some of the extreme weather we're experiencing today when you think of the Dust Bowl.
The sad thing is that the film we made, detailing events in the 1930s, which is an awfully long time ago, is incredibly relevant. Farm families are suffering again from a drought. We know that man has altered the temperature of the planet through our carbon-dioxide emissions and the trapping of greenhouse gases within our atmosphere, and that these have caused weather extremes, both cold and hot, sort of magnitude events, that we're dealing with today. While there is a huge political debate, unfortunately, there's no scientific debate. History can be a table around which we all agree to have a conversation that's civil and addresses these things.
At the heart of human behavior, you find again and again, in not just this film but in others, the lack of preplanning, the lack of taking the long view. And these environmental things, as the city of New York, the state of New Jersey, and Long Island are learning, require a lot of pre-planning and so too will be the fact that eventually the southern plains will dry out because there's no Ogallala water to keep the soil in place. And people will have to figure out what kind of long-term solutions to make to avoid having an American Sahara. These are questions that seem ancient, but these are also questions that seem utterly contemporary.
What similarities do you see with Hurricane Sandy?
I appeared on Letterman on Tuesday night to an empty theater, and it seemed very ironic that we were talking about a hurricane filled with water called "Sandy," while here I was promoting a film called The Dust Bowl in which people were dying just to get a drink of water, and in a city where people were dying from too much water. And yet they were one and the same thing. They were part and parcel of a planet that was destabilized, all man-created. In the case of the Dust Bowl, it was all specific actions by farmers in an area that we realized, in retrospect, should not have been plowed out. Now we're talking about a global economy that contributes to climate change. And we have to figure out how to mitigate that.
Yet, there's a very good chance something similar could happen again. What lessons can we take from the Dust Bowl as we look forward?
I think there are thousands of lessons to come out of the Dust Bowl, but I think one of them, as I said, is having a longer view. Most human beings tend to think they live in the moment, but they plan for the immediate stuff. They always think the stock market will go up, the always think their house value will go up, they don't think that anything will go down. The cycles of human history tell us that the exact opposite is true. You need to plan for a much more complicated future than just living in this all-consuming and thereby forgettable moment where we're distracted by our electronic devices and our TVs, and forget what the cost of it is. I think the basic lesson is that human beings need to work together to plan things out.
And for as gloomy as this conversation's been, your film still tries to tell an uplifting story.
Embedded within every tragedy is also incredible heroism and character, and those things are on display. And the film abounds with people of extraordinary human character and resilience. These are just universal human circumstances, and this is why we investigate history. You know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.


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OBITUARY: Carol Jean Rumisek, 89, of Ionia
Carol Jean Rumisek, 89, of Ionia, passed away on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012. She was born on March 7, 1923 in the Traverse City area, the daughter of Earl and Vera (Osborne) Dixon.
Mrs. Rumisek graduated from Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic School, was a member of the Mt. Olivet Cemetery Board, worked as an operator for Michigan Bell during World War II, and afterward had a full career at Sears as a manager of communications.
Upon retirement, Carol spent a great deal of time performing volunteer work, and especially enjoyed working the funeral luncheons at Ss. Peter and Paul. She loved to read, was an avid gardener, enjoyed her breakfast club at Shari's, was an excellent cook and baker, and thoroughly enjoyed putting on holiday meals for her family.
Carol loved spending time with her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, as they were the joy of her life. To her, family and education were everything.
Preceding her in death were her parents; husband, Lawrence Rumisek; and sons, Bryan and Ronald Piggott.
Surviving are her children, Terry Piggott of Portland, Dale (Cindy) Piggott of Texas, Sharon (Kevin Shiroma) Martin of Illinois, Monica (Brian) Almy of Eagle, and Maureen Piggott of Ionia; grandchildren, Dana (Scott) Platte, Erica (Steve) Breazeale, Matthew Piggott, Andy (Cinnamin) Piggott, Greg (Nikki) Almy, Tracy (John) Gregory, Lyndie (Jeremy) Nobach, Amanda Shinaver, Marty (Darcy Supp) Piggott, Jacob Shinaver, Thomas Almy, and Meghan Martin; great grandchildren, Chase, Brice and Emma Platte, Emily and Ryan Breazeale, Brittney Piggott, Braeden Piggott-Supp, Faith, Colt and Leah Nobach, Gianna and Aaron Almy, William Gregory, and Levi Robinson; brother, Harry Dixon; and sisters-in-law, Elsie and Mary Rumisek.
The Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Monday, Dec. 31, 2012 at Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Ionia, with Rev. Thomas Boufford presiding. Rite of Committal will take place in the spring at Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery, Ionia. A Rosary will be prayed at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, and the family will receive friends from 5 to 8 p.m. on Sunday at Lehman Funeral Homes, 220 Rich St., Ionia.
For those desiring, memorial contributions may be made to the Hospice House of Mid-Michigan, or the American Cancer Society, in memory of Carol. Online condolences may be made at www.lehmanfuneralhomes.com.


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Tagged: prison-industrial complex
Against Academic Alibis: The Best Education is the Struggle – An Interview with George Ciccariello-Maher
Summary: The author of We Created Chávez, George Ciccariello-Maher, draws on his experiences in the "cauldron of resistance" of Oakland, CA to speak on the relations between education, organizing in universities, and struggles against police and prisons. Against academics' use of alibis, such as 'changing the world by teaching,' to legitimize anything they do as a contribution to radical movements, he calls for academics to more clearly distinguish between their jobs and their political work.
Bloated Corpses and Institutional Limits – An Interview with Mark Paschal
Drawing on his extensive research on the history of universities, Mark Paschal debunks mystified views of higher education. Instead of relying on overly sophisticated theories that are tough to popularize, Mark recommends focusing on what attracts people to universities: opportunities to make better lives for themselves. We can create autonomous universities with a kind of vocational training more in line with historical materialism than the humanities—to learn skills for taking over empty buildings and holding down city blocks for radical causes. To connect such organizing with the informal networks that already exist in marginalized communities, rather than presuming that the knowledge and skills gained in universities can be useful in struggles, learn others' modes of communicating and ask questions about how we can be useful. Since the fucked-up-ness of the capitalist university-prison-industrial complex can seem overwhelming, rather than merely trying to illuminate the problems, we need physical interventions that demonstrate viable alternatives. To inspire a mass exodus from universities, we must continue to struggle within existing institutions—such as through strikes and occupations—while we create autonomous universities that force the dominant ones to confront their own limits.