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Another "Bumper Year" on Church Farms and Ranches
Contributed By By Jason Swensen, Church News staff writer
Article Highlights
- Welfare officials are calling 2013 another "bumper" year thanks largely to the efforts of thousands of Latter-day Saint volunteers.
- Much of the foodstuff that helps define the welfare program continues to be produced on Church farms, orchards, and ranches.
"All we ask for is a willing heart and a strong back." —Wade Sperry, agricultural specialist in the Church's welfare department.
Related Links
A few years ago, a Harvard University professor contacted Wade Sperry, an agricultural specialist in the Church's welfare department.
The professor explained that he was working on a case study about the welfare department's vast and varied agricultural projects. He asked if he could spend a few days visiting Church-owned farms, orchards, and beef ranches.
Brother Sperry accompanied the professor and a team of graduate students on their agricultural tour. At each locale, the Harvard contingent witnessed crews of happy volunteers picking fruit, harvesting crops, and wrangling cattle.
They returned to Boston both humbled and inspired by the charitable spirit of cooperation and compassion they found in each volunteer who donated time and muscle to produce food that would feed families in need.
A short time later, the professor sent Brother Sperry a copy of his case study on the Church welfare agricultural projects.
"He wrote that there is nothing like this anywhere on earth—it's unique," said Brother Sperry.
Since 1936, the Church's renowned welfare program has blessed lives worldwide. Much of the foodstuff that helps define the welfare program continues to be produced on Church farms, orchards, and ranches.
Welfare officials are calling 2013 another "bumper" year thanks largely to the efforts of thousands of Latter-day Saint volunteers. Here are a few highlights of what's happened over the past 12 months on Church-owned agricultural projects, including expected yields.
• Fifty farms and orchards located across the United States and Canada produced some 83 million pounds of wheat and dry beans; 6 million pounds of fruit (apples, peaches and pears); 250,000 pounds of fresh vegetables; and 20 million pounds of row crops such as sugar beets.
• An LDS-owned turkey farm in Moroni, Utah, yielded 5 million pounds of turkey.
• The Church-owned vineyard in Madera, Calif., produced several tons of raisins.
• The Church's peanut farm in Texas supplied the essential ingredient for the Church to produce its own protein-rich peanut butter.
• The Church's five working cattle ranches—staffed largely by "cowboy" missionaries—yielded hamburger and other fresh beef products that stocked the meat section of bishops' storehouses.
The past year's food production numbers are impressive. But the most uplifting figure, said Brother Sperry, is again the volunteer labor hours recorded at the many farms and ranches.
In 2012, volunteers performed some 350,000 hours of labor. That number is expected to be matched by the end of 2013.
The volunteers who reported for duty on the welfare farms, orchards and vineyard are a varied lot. A few are missionary couples assigned to a specific project. But the vast majority are men, women, youth, and children from all backgrounds who simply answered the call to practice "pure religion."
Most volunteer workers had little background in agriculture. Not a problem, said Brother Sperry. "All we ask for is a willing heart and a strong back."
The Book of Mormon prophet Jacob taught that one who has "obtained a hope in Christ" will seek "to feed the hungry" and "administer relief to the sick and the afflicted" (Jacob 2:18-19).
Brother Sperry and other welfare officials consider Jacob's words every time they witness, say, a young family or a carload of young men and young women sling bags across their shoulders and begin picking grapes or peaches.
"They know the fundamental purpose of the Church," he said.
Brother Sperry also noted the pivotal role that agent stakes play in organizing volunteer efforts. It's no small task mobilizing hundreds of workers when apples are ready for picking or beans are ripe for harvest.
Even as the winter snow covers many of the Church farms and orchards, welfare officials look to 2014 for more opportunities to feed those in need. In his definitive book Pure Religion: The Story of Church Welfare Since 1930, Elder Glen L. Rudd writes that the Church's welfare program remains the Lord's plan to care for the poor and needy:
"This work will continue, and lives will be blessed through the united efforts of faithful, charitable members of the Lord's living Church."


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University of Wollongong, Campus News 8 August 1989 (8 August 1989). University of Wollongong Archives, accessed 25/03/2023, https://archivesonline.uow.edu.au/nodes/view/9576

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Ever wonder what pilots do up in the flight deck of an airliner before takeoff?
Article continues below this ad
The folks at Baltic Aviation Academy produced the comprehensive videos above, showing the procedures on a Boeing 737 and Airbus A320, from dark to taxiing. I won't attempt to explain all the technical stuff in the video. But it's worth noting that the APU is the auxiliary power unit, a small engine in the tail of the aircraft that mainly serves to provide power for starting the main engines.
Click through the images to see the flight decks of various airliners. Note a major difference between Boeing and Airbus airplanes is that Boeings have a traditional control yoke between the pilots' legs, while Airbuses have sidesticks.
Article continues below this ad
The Airbus design leaves room in front of the pilots for a table, which the pilots of a Northwest Airlines airplane infamously said they used to pop open their laptops and discuss scheduling, all while overflying their destination by an 150 miles, in 2009 (some experts have said it's more plausible that they actually fell asleep).
Read more aerospace news. Visit seattlepi.com's home page for more Seattle news.


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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 260 Bush 254
News from the Votemaster
Today's harvest is 39 polls in 18 states. In most states the winner didn't change, but we have motion in two key states. The most recent poll in Ohio, Zogby's tracking poll, puts Kerry a tad ahead there, 46% to 45%, well within the margin of error. Other Ohio polls are mixed. Rasmussen's tracking poll puts Bush 4% ahead but the LA Times poll puts Kerry 4% ahead. Let's call Ohio a tie. Which way it goes will almost assuredly depend on the turnout Tuesday, especially among younger voters. Could OSU elect the next president? It is not out of the question.
The other state where we have a change is Michigan. According to the latest poll there (Zogby's tracking poll) Bush and Kerry are tied at 47% each. However, two other polls (Rasmussen and Mitchell Research put Kerry ahead by 6% and 1%, respectively). All in all, by gaining Ohio and having Michigan be tied, Kerry makes a net gain and now leads in the electoral college, but neither candidate has the required 270 electoral votes it takes to win.
Ellis Henican had a very insightful column yesterday that is relevant to the Rasmussen poll I cited yesterday in which 1/3 of the voters weren't sure the election would be fair. Henican said the banks execute millions of ATM transactions every day, giving the customer a printed receipt if requested, and get them all right all the time. Not a margin of 1%, no recounts, but 100% right all the time. Why can't we make a voting system that is 100% right all the time? It would seem to me that the right way to do this would be a touch screen machine that asks the voter to make choices for the various offices in a language chosen by the voter (with audio output if desired), and when all done prints a paper ballot the voter can personally verify and deposit in the ballot box. The computer total would be available instantly after the polls close but in the event of a challenge, these paper ballots could be optically scanned or even hand counted. I can't believe a system like this is infeasible and it would certainly help restore faith in the electoral process.
But the problems aren't only technological. There may be deeper forces at work. Today's New York Times reports that tens of thousands of absentee ballots in Florida's heavily Democratic Broward County have mysteriously vanished. The county says it mailed them but the post office says it never got them.
Several lawyers have contacted me about the issue of what to do if you show up to vote and the election officials say you are not registered. Here is the procedure. First, be absolutely sure you are in the correct precinct. If you are in the wrong precinct, in most states, your vote won't be counted. If you are not 100% certain of your polling place, go to www.mypollingplace.com and check. Alternatively, call the toll-free number 1-866-OUR-VOTE or your county clerk. If you are sure you are in the correct polling place and the officials claim you are not registered, ask for a provisional ballot and fill it out correctly. You are entitled to one by law. Politely, but firmly, insist on being given a provisional ballot.
Today's Washington Post has an excellent story dealing with the issue of whether the polls are accurate. The basic problem is that the vast majority of people refuse to participate, so the sample is no longer random. Surveying mostly elderly, lonely, or bored people can bias the results. The Post reports that one caller apparently was so fed up with telemarketeers and pollsters that he attached a device to the telephone that made such a loud noise it damaged the pollster's eardrum. Even response rates for exit polls on election day have dropped to 50%. This information goes a long way to explaining why the polls are so erratic this year. But in all fairness, the final 2000 polls weren't so hot either. Eleven of the 15 national polls just before the election predicted Bush would win the popular vote by a margin of 2% to 6%. Ultimately, Gore won it by 0.5%.
Legal news: A U.S. District Court judge in Cleveland killed an effort by the GOP to remove tens of thousands of Ohio voters, largely minorities from the voter rolls, but a judge in Cincinnati has granted a temporary restraining order in a related case. See Rick Hasen's Election Law blog for more on these stories.
Stupidity news: One of Kerry's electors in Ohio, Rep. Sherrod Brown, is a congressman. Unfortunately, the constitution forbids federal office holders from being electors. It is possible that if Kerry wins Ohio, Brown's right to cast an electoral vote will be challenged in court. Whoever picked a constitutionally ineligible elector needs to get his or her mental software upgraded to the latest release.
Sleeper news: A Rasmussen poll taken Oct. 26 in Arizona puts Libertarian party candidate Michael Badnarik at 3%. When the pollsters actually ask about him, he does surprisingly well. He might end up canceling out the Nader factor by appealing to disgruntled Republicans who support a balanced budget and small government and are appalled by the current deficit and power the Patriot Act gives the government to snoop on people's lives.
How political involved is your college or alma mater? Take a look at university hits page. Note that there is no correction for size here, just the raw hit count.
Earlier I pointed out a number of prominent conservatives supporting Kerry, such as President Eisenhower's son, John, a lifelong Republican. I said that if any prominent liberals supported Bush I would mention them, too. OK, I'll keep my promise. Several readers pointed out that former NYC mayor Ed Koch, has endorsed Bush. Some people also pointed out Sen. Zell Miller, too, but he is certainly not a liberal and has been voting with the Republicans in the Senate for years, so he is barely even a Democrat.
Several people commented that Hawaii is colored weak Bush when it should be barely Bush. This is simply because Hawaii doesn't have enough pixels. If you have any spare pixels, please donate them to Hawaii.
Projected Senate: 46 Democrats, 52 Republicans, 1 independent, 1 tossup
Click here to tell a friend about this site.
To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Command-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.


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Per Diem Contacts
The General Services Administration establishes travel policy (includes per diem) only for federal employees (excluding federal contractors) on official travel away from their local duty station or areas defined by their agency, and cannot speak for any other state, city, or agency's travel policy.
Please visit the Internal Revenue Service website for further information on per diem, privately owned mileage reimbursement rate, rental car policies, the high-low method including tax withholdings for the non-federal sector.
The Defense Department website establishes all per diem rates for Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. possessions, including Puerto Rico.
The State Department website establishes all foreign per diem rates.
GSA's Office of Government-wide Policy's Center for Travel and Relocation is responsible for addressing all Federal agency inquiries concerning travel and relocation, as well as the content in the Federal Travel Regulation. For all Federal agency inquiries concerns per diem and other travel and relocation questions, visit the Have a Question? section of the travel website to submit your inquiry.


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Super 14 Quotes
Note: The following is a collection of misattributed sports quotes that some enterprising rugby fan applied to the Super 14.
'"Nobody in Rugby should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." - Jono Gibbs - Chiefs
"I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes." – Rodney So'ialo - Hurricanes - on University
"You guys line up alphabetically by height." and "You guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle." - Colin Cooper - Hurricanes head coach
Chris Masoe (Hurricanes) on
whether he had visited the Pyramids during his visit to Egypt: "I can't
really remember the names of the clubs that we went
"He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is." - Colin Cooper on Paul Tito
Kevin Senio (Auckland), on Night Rugby vs Day Games "It's basically the same, just darker."
David Nosafora (Auckland)
talking about Troy Flavell "I told him, 'Son, what is it with you. Is it
ignorance or apathy?' He said, 'David, I don't know
and I don't care.'
David Holwell (Hurricanes) when asked about the upcoming season: "I want to reach for 150 or 200 points this season, whichever comes first."
"Andy Ellis - the 21 year old, who turned 22 a few weeks ago" - Murray Mexted
"Colin has done a bit of mental arithmetic with a calculator." - Ma Nonu
"He scored that try after only 22 seconds - totally against the run of play." - Murray Mexted
"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body." - Jerry Collins
"That kick was absolutely unique, except for the one before it which was identical." - Tony Brown
"I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father." - Tana Umaga
"Sure there have been injuries and deaths in rugby - but none of them serious." - Doc Mayhew
"If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again." - Anton Oliver
"I would not say he (Rico Gear) is the best left winger in the Super 14, but there are none better." - Murray Mexted
"I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat." - Ewan McKenzie
Murray Deaker: "Have you ever thought of writing your autobiography?" Tana Umaga: "On what ?"
"Well, either side could win it, or it could be a draw." - Murray Mexted
"Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer." - Murray Mexted


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As the sea churned all around us, we leaned over the edge of the boat to get a better look. Dozens of dorsal fins cruised here and there; somewhat menacing half-moon tails thrashed about; and, now and then, a colossal gaping mouth breached the water's surface. The creatures' size was daunting; their beauty captivating. Scores of white spots and faint stripes decorated their gray-blue backs—patterns that evoked ribbons and specks of light weaving and glinting on a rippling sea.
"Jump!" our guide Jose shouted. Donning snorkel masks and fins, my younger brother Brandon and I leapt into the warm waters surrounding Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. At first, I saw nothing but turquoise. Then a looming silhouette, a fin, an eye. With startling speed a bus-size shark swam past us, only a few feet away. A pair of young sharks approached from a different direction. And another. Their enormous gills flexed and flapped. Ghostly suckerfish clung to their sides. All these sharks—between 500 and 800 in total—had gathered for a seasonal buffet. Fortunately, we were not on the menu. In fact, the sharks seemed largely indifferent to our presence, hardly altering course to avoid colliding with us. Given their size, we were the ones who scrambled to get out of the way.
Stretching more than nine meters and weighing around 10 metric tons, whale sharks are the largest fish in the world. They are also the giant polka-dotted Roombas of the ocean. Although they have more than 300 rows of tiny teeth in their mouths they do not seem to use them. Like basking sharks and megamouth sharks, whale sharks are filter feeders. By opening and closing their mouths to create suction or swimming with their mouths hanging open—as though in a perpetual state of shock—whale sharks direct huge volumes of water across 20 fleshy sievelike structures in their throats. As the water escapes through the gills, those spongy filter pads catch fish eggs and billions of microscopic drifting animals and plants known as plankton. Sometimes the sharks dine on krill and squid; they've even been filmed vacuuming silverside fish out of fishermen's nets. Eventually all that edible flotsam rolls into a big briny bolus that the shark swallows with a kind of shudder.
Twenty years ago, scientists did not know much about what whale sharks ate, where they spent their time or how they reproduced. Historically, seeing a whale shark in the wild was a rare experience, even for veteran divers. Jacques Cousteau reportedly encountered only two whale sharks his whole life. Up until the 1990s most shark biologists had no idea that whale sharks routinely convene in the dozens and hundreds in coastal regions. Discovering such congregations—first in Australia and later in the Yucatán—allowed researchers to locate, tag and observe large numbers of the animal season after season. Studies in the last 15 years have greatly improved researchers' understanding of these giant fish and overturned previous misconceptions. At the same time, knowledge of the fish's seasonal smorgasbords has created a new form of ecotourism, the full consequences of which remain unclear. When properly managed, tourism seems to benefit the sharks. Some scientists worry, however, that shark tourism in Mexico is growing too large too fast, threatening to usurp one of the fish's primary feeding grounds.
Just about every year since 1994 Robert Hueter of the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., has traveled to Quintana Roo in the Yucatán to study sharks. He focused almost exclusively on the blacktip shark until a fateful conversation in 2002, when a Mexican fisherman casually mentioned that shortly after Hueter and his team left each year hundreds of whale sharks gathered nearby. "Come again?" Hueter said. In more than 40 years as a shark biologist he had seldom seen or studied whale sharks. Researchers already knew that the fish assembled in Australia but Hueter had never heard of them meeting in Quintana Roo—certainly not in such large numbers. Apparently, local fishermen had known about these gatherings for many generations but word had never reached the scientific community at large.
Scientists began to survey the legions of whale sharks near Quintana Roo from the sky and sea, pinning the fish with ID tags and small electronic devices that would record temperature and depth and measure daylight duration to estimate latitude and longitude before beaming all this information to a satellite. Meanwhile researchers in Australia had been tagging whale sharks as well. There's still a lot to learn, but studies tracking whale sharks have already divulged a few secrets.
Researchers have established that whale sharks migrate thousands of miles annually, uniting in more than a dozen spots around the world including the Yucatán, Madagascar, Australia and the Philippines to gorge on plankton, krill and fish eggs. For reasons that remain unclear, most of the sharks in these collectives are young males. Hueter suspects that female whale sharks also complete long journeys to give birth. In 1995 Taiwanese fishermen harpooned an 11-meter whale shark with 300 fetuses inside her two uteruses, confirming that whale sharks give birth to live young, rather than laying eggs encased in leathery pouches like some shark species. Scientists also learned that whale sharks are late bloomers: they may live to 100 and do not reach sexual maturity until sometime between 18 and 30 years. But where the fish mate and gave birth remained a mystery. To date, no one has observed whale sharks breeding in the wild. Between August 2007 and January 2008, however, one of Hueter's satellite tags tracked a female with a swollen belly traveling about 7,200 kilometers from the Yucatán to a region of the mid-Atlantic just below the equator. There, Hueter proposes, she gave birth. Young sharks would be much less vulnerable to predators in the open ocean than in highly trafficked coastal areas. Recent research has also revealed that whale sharks regularly dive into deep, cold water. In 2008 Hueter and Eric Hoffmayer of the National Marine Fisheries Service recorded a whale shark diving a record 1,928 meters in the Gulf of Mexico. The reigning hypothesis is that by gently gliding toward the ocean's bottom while still moving forward, sharks manage to continue their journey, cool off and conserve energy all at once.
Not only are whale sharks largest fish in the ocean, they are the heaviest as well, rivaling Tyrannosaurus rex and other giant dinosaurs in size and weight. As Hueter and his Mote colleague John P. Tyminski have written, whale sharks are probably the largest animal on Earth that people can approach in the wild without being in any real danger. (Anyone concerned by the fish's cavernous hoovering mouths will be glad to hear that the chances of reliving Jonah's experiences are slim to none. A 2011 Daily Mail story claims that one diver was almost swallowed by a whale shark, offering photographic evidence of the supposed close encounter; photographer and documentarian Mauricio Handler of Maine, who took the photos, says he and his friend were in no danger whatsoever. Besides a whale shark's esophagus is too small to accomodate a human.) Around the same time that Hueter first learned of whale sharks off Quintana Roo, Willy Sabatina and other entrepreneurial fishermen on nearby Isla Holbox began to experiment with organized whale shark tours, which were already popular in Australia. They realized people would pay handsomely for the opportunity to see and swim with the gorgeous, gentle giants. The following year Mexico's National Commission to Protect Natural Areas (CONANP) established the Domino Project, a collaborative research and conservation program intended to study whale shark biology and protect the creatures as whale shark tourism became increasingly popular.
Whale shark ecotourism is now a global phenomenon, drawing people to Mexico, Thailand, South Africa, Mozambique, Honduras, the Maldives and Ningaloo Reef in Australia, among other locales. In some ways, whale shark tours are an example of well-intentioned, well-executed ecotourism that arguably benefits both the animals and local communities. Fishermen and conservationists in Ningaloo, Belize and Mexico have established codes of conduct to protect the sharks: touching the fish is not allowed, for example, and only so many snorkelers are permitted in the water at any one time. Whale shark tours can discourage fishing and finning, superseding them as a more profitable source of income. The Philippines shut down its whale shark fishery when fishermen started earning far more money as tour guides. And the popularity of whale sharks has transformed Isla Holbox and neighboring Isla Mujeres from relatively sleepy fishing towns into bustling tourist hotspots where people from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Asia set themselves up in air-conditioned hotel rooms, order margaritas by the pool, drive around in golf carts and pay people on the islands to take them sport fishing, snorkeling and scuba diving. In turn, such revenue can spur governments to protect the animals that attract so many visitors. Encouragingly, the Western Australia Department of Environment and Conservation reports that (pdf), overall, ecotourism does not seem to hurt local whale sharks. Mark Meekan of the Australian Institute of Marine Science is convinced that ecotourism has helped safeguard whale sharks in his country.
Whether shark tourism is similarly beneficial in the Yucatán is much less clear. In part because of their proximity to the internationally renowned resort town Cancún, Isla Holbox and Isla Mujeres are home to the fastest growing whale shark tourism industries in the world. Whereas Gladden Spit in Belize and Ningaloo Reef in Australia have only 15 to 30 licensed tour boats each, the Yucatán has 240 licensed tour boats as of 2012, each of which can carry around 8 to 10 people. Hueter, Tyminski and other researchers argue that ecotourism in the Yucatán and elsewhere harms whale sharks in known and unknown ways. In Australia, where whale shark tours have been around longer than anywhere else, officials routinely fly over the few tour boats in small planes to make sure everyone is following the rules. Mexico's CONANP, however, does not have enough resources or authority to properly enforce their codes of conduct. Instead, they essentially rely on the honor system: tour guides are supposed to report one another if they see inappropriate behavior. In all likelihood, rules are sometimes bent and broken, even in places where ecotourism has brought new respect for the whale shark. In the Philippines some guides have taken to hand-feeding whale sharks to keep them near boats; others in Kenya have proposed corralling the fish into lagoons to guarantee tourists an encounter.
Research conducted in Australia shows that between the mid-1990s and today the average body size of local whale sharks has shrunk by two meters and the total population has declined. Hueter and a few other scientists say ecotourism may be to blame, at least in part. They speculate that snooping snorkelers and hovering boats inhibit sharks from feeding and discourage them from returning to their favored feeding sites. Although the sharks I encountered near Isla Mujeres did not seem to mind all the human visitors, they are known to dive when startled or touched on the head. And I have to admit that the whole situation felt too claustrophobic: so many sharks, people and boats in a rather small patch of ocean. Because whale sharks spend a lot of time filter feeding at the surface, they are vulnerable to potentially fatal collisions with boats and their propellers. The surging growth of whale shark tourism in the Yucatán would only exacerbate these potential problems.
Meekan and other scientists argue that the link between ecotourism and whale shark population decline is tenuous and contradicted by direct evidence. "I am very firmly of the opinion that the declines have nothing to do with tourism," Meekan says. "We can individually identify sharks by their stripe patterns and, based on our data, we can say that animals that have swum with many tourists are no less likely to return to Ningaloo than whale sharks that did not swim with many tourists." The real threat to whale sharks, Meekan maintains, and the likely reason for Australia's shrinking whale shark population, is fishing. In the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean people never heavily fished whale sharks because they were not considered good eating. Taiwan and other parts of Asia, however, have prized whale shark flesh and fins. Although Taiwan, India and other countries have closed their commercial fisheries, China's appetite for whale shark is growing. Whale shark meat is so thick and firm that people in Asia have dubbed it "tofu shark." Some restaurants want the fish's huge fins not for the shark fin soup they sell, but rather to hang in windows and on doors as billboards. Whale sharks have also been found in the Philippines and Maldives impaled with spears or missing all their fins.
Definitively disentangling the influence of tourism from fishing will require more reliable long-term data. For now, it may be safest to assume that they both take their toll, at least when ecotourism is new and relatively unregulated. "The operation in Yucatán in its infancy," Meekan says. "I'm fairly confident that with time everyone will realize that protecting the sharks is in their best interest. That has certainly been the pattern."
The Kiswahili word for whale shark is papa shillingi, meaning "shark covered in shillings." A Kenyan legend says that soon after creating the whale shark, God and his angels scattered gold and silver coins across the fish's back in honor of its beauty. In a sense, we're still throwing money at whale sharks. The question is whether, instead of entertaining ourselves at the expense of these magnificent animals, we can satisfy our curiosity and honor them at the same time.
How to Love a Whale Shark
Every year thousands of tourists descend on congregations of the world's largest fish. What is the cost of all that attention?
As the sea churned all around us, we leaned over the edge of the boat to get a better look. Dozens of dorsal fins cruised here and there; somewhat menacing half-moon tails thrashed about; and, now and then, a colossal gaping mouth breached the water's surface. The creatures' size was daunting; their beauty captivating. Scores of white spots and faint stripes decorated their gray-blue backs—patterns that evoked ribbons and specks of light weaving and glinting on a rippling sea.


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Even the most technologically inclined amongst us encounter products so overly bedecked with buttons and features that we can't imagine how normal people could possibly use them, and it turns out we're right and they actually can't:
More and more, Americans are being caught in a dilemma: They love electronic gadgets with lots of bells and whistles. But they're also frustrated when they get their new toys home and find out they aren't easy to install or operate. Half the products returned to stores are in good working order, but customers can't figure out how they work, says a recent study conducted at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. On average, American consumers will try for just 20 minutes to get a new gadget to work before giving up, the study adds.
Okay, so we're gadget-obsessed, but twenty minutes? That seems a little too fast to give up on getting something to work, especially when you consider how long it probably takes the average person to drive to the mall, find a parking spot and get into the store to buy or return something. We thought it was interesting that the Best Buy supervisor interviewed in the piece said customers tend to take products home again instead of returning them if they let employees show them how to use them. Some kinds of gadgets are more poorly designed (and have more poorly written manuals) than others, and so we'd love to see a chart of the percentage of working return rates broken down into categories, maybe even brands.
Has any product's learning curve tested your patience recently? Share your frustration in comments.
(Photo by John Hartnup)
A fast rate of return [Christian Science Monitor, via The Morning News]


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ARCHIVE2015 • June 19th+20th+21st
OUR PRESENTERS - a click on the images will get you further ...
... is a three-day event on creative sexuality, BDSM, body work, dance, performance and ritual.
... offers more than 40 workshops, demonstrations, lectures and performances on different aspects and variations of sexuality.
... presents unusual individuals who play with, work with, and explore the phenomenon of sexuality. Individuals who have developed amazing techniques and rituals on their way. These forms are as varied as sexuality itself. more...
The Family "Feeling protected. Feeling Supported. Feeling encouraged. Feeling seen. Feeling loved. Feeling endangered. Feeling repressed. Feeling Humiliated. Feeling rejected. Feeling punished...." more about the Concept for 2015...
The Xplore InnovationAn article by Dr. Peter Banki
All workshops are learner-centred and for every-body. Even though some workshops may be quite physical, sexual contact as such is in no way required to participate and enjoy.. more...
Workshops' List
Schedule & Language
The Xplore Rome 2015 Festival took place at:
Borgo PaolaI-00062 Bracciano-Pisciarelli ROMA
Review on Xplore Rome 2015 by Marianne
Testimonials on Xplore Rome (in Italian only)
The links to the TESTIMONIALS & REVIEWS of all the other international Xplore Festivals are located up in the main menu >>>Voices<<<
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Xploring Rome
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cardinal or redbird, common name for a North American songbird of the family Fringillidae (New World finch family). In the eastern cardinal, Richmondena cardinalis, the male is bright scarlet with black throat and face; the female is brown with patches of red. Both sexes have crests and red bills. The Arizona, gray-tailed, Louisiana, and San Lucas cardinals frequent the S United States and Mexico. The pyrrhuloxia of the SW United States, gray with red face, crest, breast, and tail, is called gray cardinal or parrotbill. Cup-shaped nests are built by male and female, and the male helps rear the young. Cardinals are essentially monogamous, and are not very gregarious. They are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Passeriformes, family Fringillidae.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Vertebrate Zoology


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Soldiers Died in the Great War CD-ROM Version 2
… the benchmark for flexibility, accuracy and ease-of-use …
If you're serious about your Great War research this CD-ROM is essential.
First issued in 1998, its fully searchable format allows flexible interrogation of over 703,000 records.
Its publication rewrote the rulebook and placed the Naval & Military Press in the forefront of serious military publishing. This highly-acclaimed CD-ROM has gone on to sell several thousand copies. Since publishing the original Version 1 disk in 1998 and the Version 1.1 in 1999, operating systems have advanced significantly, so we have taken advantage with this new pressing of the disk to make substantial and worthwhile improvements. Geoff Bridger, the editor of Soldiers Died in the Great War CD-ROM, has been working with the raw data since Version 1 was produced and we have now been able to incorporate many corrections to the original data. A complete overhaul of the functionality has been carried out by XRM, the database engineers, under the guidance of Geoff Bridger, and Version 2 incorporates many features and improvements that existing users have requested.
Version 2 Improvements
Over 10,000 amendments have been made to the data.
Known typographical errors corrected – ' Pre & Post War' death dates corrected.
Important addition of a Note Pad feature for each record enabling your own notes to be added, edited and printed with main record.
New facility to search using the powerful Boolean Operators, 'And' 'Or' 'Not' thus providing far greater flexibility.
Date of death search facility improved.
Facility to save and merge search results and subsequently recall all data when required.
Facility to delete chosen records from search
result prior to saving.
Facility to delete previously saved records from personalised list.
Advanced sort features allow you to order by chosen consecutive preference over the 15 search fields.
Facility to transfer saved searches and Note Pads between computers.
Simplified and easier to use indices for Regiments, Theatres of War, and Ranks.
Victoria Cross now standardised to 'VC' to avoid wild card searches also giving cases of R.A.V.C. (Royal Army Veterinary Corps) and A.V.C.
Search screen appearances tidied up and improved.
Inclusion of Safe Disk.
Rewritten comprehensive guidance notes on how to get the very best from the CD-ROM.
Redesigned packaging and disk face.
Lifetime accidental damage warranty, conditions apply.
© 2004 Naval & Military Press
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|The Green Papers: 2018 General Election
2018 Governor's Chairs
by State
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
|Michigan 4 year term, Election Cycle: 2014, 2018. Term Limit: 2 consecutive 4-year terms
|Partisan Composition: 1 Republican
|** Open Chair (no incumbent) **
|Natural Law
|Keith Butkovich
for Lieutenant Governor: Raymond Warner
|Political Parties Parties appear in parenthesis and italics when a candidate receives the endorsement of a given Party and/or official sources indicate a candidate's association with a particular Party but only where the Party in question does not appear on the actual ballot as such.
|Major Parties
| Democratic
| Democratic-Farmer Labor
| Republican
|Major Third Parties
| Constitution
| Green
| Libertarian
| Reform
| Wisconsin Green
|Other Third Parties
| Clear Water Party of Iowa
| Compassion
| Conservative
| Earth Rights
| Grassroots - Legalize Cannabis
| Griebel Frank for CT
| Humanitarian
| Independence
| Independent American
| Independent Party of Connecticut
| Independent Party of Oregon
| Liberty Union
| Marijuana
| Moderate
| Natural Law
| Progressive
| Republican Takeover
| Serve America Movement
| Socialist Workers Party
| U.S. Taxpayers
| Unity
| Women's Equality
| Working Families
| Independent
| No Affiliation
| No Party Affiliation
| No Political Party
| None
| Nonpartisan
| Petition
| The Wisconsin Party
| Unenrolled
|Write-in/Scattered/otherwise not readily classifiable
| None of these candidates
| Not readily classifiable
| Scattering
| Write-in
Candidates for office appear on this page in italics where 'The Green Papers' does not yet have independent confirmation from a legal election authority that the person has been officially certified to appear on the ballot.
2018 General Election Home


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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The Jacksonville Jaguars have tried to bolster their receiving corps for years, desperately looking to recapture the days when Jimmy Smith and Keenan McCardell gave opposing defenses fits.
They might finally have the combination to make it happen.
The Jaguars traded up to select Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon with the fifth pick in the NFL draft Thursday night. They gave up a fourth-round selection to swap spots with Tampa Bay.
That's a reasonable deal for a big, physical, fast and productive receiver Jacksonville hopes will provide an immediate boost to the NFL's worst offense. The Jaguars will pair Blackmon with free-agent signee Laurent Robinson, potentially creating a duo with the kind of big-play ability missing in Jacksonville since Smith and McCardell complemented each other so perfectly between 1996 and 2001.
"I think we've improved since we've been here," new coach Mike Mularkey said. "Obviously, today, that was great addition to our football team."
Gabbert, drafted with the 10th pick in 2010, struggled as a rookie. He completed 50.8 percent of his passes for 2,214 yards, with 12 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
The front office cited coaches and receivers as the main reasons for Gabbert's slow development.
The Jaguars have a revamped staff and three new receivers: Blackmon, Robinson and veteran Lee Evans.
The small-market franchise has failed repeatedly to find someone to replace Smith and McCardell. They drafted R. Jay Soward in the first round in 2000, selected Reggie Williams in the first round in 2004 and chose Matt Jones in the first round in 2005. All three are out of the league.
Throw in Mike Sims-Walker, Jerry Porter, Ernest Wilford and Dennis Northcutt, and the Jaguars have simply whiffed while trying to land a go-to guy. Even recently drafted receivers like Mike Thomas, Jarett Dillard, Tiquan Underwood and Cecil Shorts have done little to reverse the trend.
Blackmon could change things for years to come.
The 6-foot-1, 207-pounder caught 122 passes for 1,522 yards and 18 touchdowns last season. He had 111 receptions for 1,782 yards and 20 touchdowns the year before.
"He's got an edge to him," Mularkey said. "He's one of these guys who doesn't think he can be covered. That's pretty important at that position with that kind of confidence, that you can line up and dare somebody to try to stop you and believe that you can't be. I like that edge."
Blackmon said it helps.
"With that mindset, you're always thinking about scoring," Blackmon said.
Being able to block also is key in Mularkey's run-oriented offense. Mularkey compares Blackmon to former Pittsburgh Steelers standout Hines Ward and Atlanta's Roddy White.
Coaches likely will put him right in the starting lineup opposite Robinson during summer workouts and training camp.
"He's a competitor," general manager Gene Smith said. "He attacks the ball. He's strong to the ball and he's strong with the ball."
Blackmon also could help take some pressure off franchise running back Maurice Jones-Drew. He led the league with a franchise-record 1,606 yards rushing last season despite facing eight- and nine-man defensive fronts.
"If we're productive in the passing game, it will help in a lot of areas - the run game, other receivers, tight ends, backs," Mularkey said.
Blackmon will travel to Jacksonville on Friday, getting a tour of the facility and his first look at the playbook.
"I'm very excited and anxious to get up there and start working and try to earn a way to the playing field," Blackmon said.
The Jaguars talked about wanting to trade down from No. 7, but got few takers. Smith talked to several teams before the draft about trading up, but it didn't start developing until Blackmon fell to the Buccaneers at No. 5. Tampa Bay signed go-to receiver Vincent Jackson in free agency, and the player the Bucs coveted - running back Trent Richardson - was already off the board, so trading down made sense.
What will he bring to Jacksonville?
"I'm a competitor, someone that likes to compete, go up and get some ball, not afraid to run across the middle, someone that's going to give it all he has every time he steps across the line," he said.


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The following is from LCH.Clearnet...
NASDAQ OMX NLX ("NLX"), the new London market offering a range of both short-term interest rate (STIRs) and long-term interest rate (LTIRs) euro- and sterling-denominated listed derivative products on a single market, and LCH.Clearnet Ltd. (LCH.Clearnet), the multi-national, multi-asset clearing house, have received the necessary regulatory approvals to launch the NLX market on Friday 31st May.
NLX will launch trading of futures products in 3-month EURIBOR®, 3-month Sterling, Long Gilt, 2-year Schatz, 5-year Bobl and 10-year Bund. All products will be cleared through LCH.Clearnet.
"We have worked closely with the regulators in our application process and would like to thank them for their efforts and support to create this new market," said Charlotte Crosswell, Chief Executive Officer of NLX. "NLX has collaborated with the market to develop a unique proposition that brings much needed competition to European interest rate derivatives.
"We look forward to launching a market that provides ease of access, efficiency and the flexibility to respond to customer demand and list new products rapidly."
Alberto Pravettoni, CEO, LCH.Clearnet's Repo and Exchanges business said: "We are delighted with this milestone, which further demonstrates the regulatory drive for an open, transparent and competitive market place. We look forward to working with NLX to bring innovative risk management solutions to the European interest rate derivatives market."


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Adam's Glass Cleaner is not just a better glass cleaner; it's also Eco-friendly and the pleasant fresh scent will make you smile as well. Let's face it; none of us like doing windows; but with the right glass cleaner; the job is much easier. Adam's Glass Cleaner is the right stuff. and for sure the best glass cleaner you will ever use!
Adam's Glass Cleaner contains no harmful or harsh chemicals; including ammonia or alcohol; that damage your car or the environment. Instead; we discovered an ultra-fine polishing agent that gently removes dirt and grime from glass and clear plastic by polishing it away. The final result is a polished finish without streaks or smears
Everyone says their glass cleaner doesn't streak or smear; and our really doesn't. Just mist; wipe and buff for glass and clear plastic so clean it almost seems to disappear! It's so gentle; you can even use it on the most delicate window tint films and navigation displays.
Adam's Glass Cleaner even tackles the tough stuff; like the nasty film that builds up on the inside of your windows. It easily polishes away window film buildup with ease. Guaranteed!
PRO TIP! All glass cleaners are sensitive to dirty towels. So; if you use a towel that's previously been used for polishing or waxing; remaining product residue is bound to leach out and smear your glass. Dedicated glass towels are your best bet.
PRO TIP! Do you have hard to reach areas of glass inside your car? You can stop trying to be a contortionist and make the job easier by laying your towel on the back side of your hand to wipe.
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It's a tough call on Sunday night with the first night of the official ratings year bound to lead to some squabbles over the remote.
Seven is going for the heart-strings at 6.30pm with its special on separated conjoined twins Trishna and Krishna: the Quest for Separate Lives. Then it's on to Airways, Bones and Castle – a pretty solid line-up.
Nine's hand is forced by the cricket and the forthcoming Winter Olympics, so we get the movie Mission Impossible III at 9pm. Yawn.
Ten has the enviable line-up of The Biggest Loser at 6.30 followed by its multi-generational hit quiz/panel show Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation in its new home at 7.30pm. Oh and it's in 3D, apparently, so get your goggles from this week's TV week.
At 8.30pm is where the trouble starts and where you might need to crank up the PVR, DVDR or VCR if you still have one.
Ten has the series premiere of The Good Wife, featuring Julianna Margulies in her Golden Globe winning role.
Since leaving ER (she was Nurse Carol Hathaway to George Clooney's Dr Doug Ross), Margulies hasn't has much luck on the small screen; her last series Canterbury's Law didn't even screen in Australia to the best of my knowledge.
Margulies is Alicia Florrick, the good wife in question, who is forced to return to work as a lawyer after her husband, former state's attorney Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) is jailed over a political corruption and sex tape scandal.
Alicia has plenty on her plate – the humiliation of sex tapes revealing her husband had sex with prostitutes, raising two children and returning to work in a law firm where she has to compete to keep her position against a cocky and conniving junior, Cary.
Margulies is a bit stiff in the pilot but that's almost to be expected as Alicia tries to keep it together in public and private.
Chris Noth, aka Mr Big from Sex and the City and Detective Mike Logan from Law & Order and Law & Order: CI, is well-cast as her adulterous husband Peter.
Noth's not in it a lot and most of that he's in jail or but his presence is important.
What I enjoyed most about the first few episodes is the multi-layered plot. This isn't just another legal drama.
Alicia is struggling to fit back into the workforce while raising her teenaged children with the help of her mother-in-law.
Meanwhile, Peter thinks everything will be fine once he is released from prison and he misguidedly tries to steer clients and information Alicia's way.
Bubbling along below the surface is the truth about Peter – is he really guilty of corruption and infidelity or could he have been set up?
Alas, there's also a compelling documentary on at exactly the same time as The Good Wife (and episode three of House).
Forget the tears and sob stories of The Biggest Loser and So You Think You Can Dance: I cried more than I have in years watching Inside the Firestorm.
To commemorate Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires of February 7, 2009, the ABC will screen this feature-length documentary at 8.30pm on Sunday.
Heart-breaking in the extreme, it follows events as they unfolded, using a single narrative to create a compelling drama where the audience is at various times left not knowing the fate of the various participants.
The horrific heatwave weather conditions, a breakdown in fire alerts and a monster fire that did not play by the rules resulted in 173 deaths.
Families that should have been safe perished. Fire-fighters saved people's homes and businesses but lost loved ones. People who fled their homes and shouldn't have made it somehow survived. Courage and despair, hope and tears, bravery and battles lost. It's all there. This is must watch TV.
Many Australians have become complacent about the dangers of bushfires. This is the sort of program that needed to be made and needs to be seen.
Hats off to director Jacob Hickey, all the brave survivors and narrator Hugo Weaving for his compelling and important piece of work.
For more of an insight into the making of Inside the Firestorm, visit the ABC website.


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Quality management
The BSH Quality Management System
In order to continuously improve the quality of its processes and results, BSH operates a quality management system in its entire area of responsibility, which has been certified according to ISO 9001 by an independent accredited certification body. The concern of interested parties is the focus of this steering instrument.
The BSH quality management system is further developed on the basis of a long-term quality objective and implemented in accordance with short-term, regularly updated quality specifications. These include
- the quality policy, in order to define clear objectives and specifications and to constantly adapt these to the changing requirements of the BSH, the safety of shipping and the marine environment,
- Definition of the processes of the BSH in procedural instructions that are valid in addition to the general administrative regulations,
- Regular internal quality audits and management reviews to examine the effectiveness of the quality management system.
|Certificates and attestations of the BSH quality management system
Quality policy and QM measures
Quality objective
The quality objective of the BSH is to achieve the highest level of quality in the performance of its tasks. To this end, the following quality features must be observed for services, products and work processes and, if necessary, adapted to new or changed requirements.
Quality features
The essential quality features of the services and products are
- the greatest possible customer orientation,
- accuracy, reliability,
- reliability,
- timeliness,
- prompt completion,
- availability.
In order to achieve the quality objective, the work processes at BSH must be constantly optimized with regard to mutual coordination, cost-effectiveness, efficiency and minimum effort.
The following measures are carried out to improve the quality characteristics mentioned above:
Implementation of the quality management system.
In order to fulfil the quality objective, the present quality management system is maintained, which defines the necessary work processes, the associated roles with their respective responsibilities and the validation methods. This minimizes the possibility of errors in the development, production and distribution of products.
Evaluation of the economic efficiency and use of the technology.
Procedures and workflows are optimised through the use of modern methods/techniques and tools as far as possible and appropriate in order to improve the quality characteristics of the products and increase the efficiency of their manufacturing processes.
Organisation of work processes and training.
The BSH's work processes and the implementation of the quality management system are organised as effectively as possible. This also includes the qualification of employees for their tasks through appropriate training and further education measures.
As part of the annual planning process, special quality requirements are defined for the continuous improvement of BSH's processes and results. Quality targets are concrete, measurable parameters (especially values for quality characteristics) that are derived from the quality objective. Quality requirements that affect the entire BSH or several departments are defined annually by the President that affect one department by the department management. The short-term quality specifications are only defined after a target/actual comparison.


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Joseph Bruno expected to face second criminal trial
ALBANYFormer state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is expected to face a second federal trial after an appeals court on Tuesday rejected his claim of double jeopardy.
Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County, was convicted in 2009 of two counts of mail fraud, but the conviction was overturned after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a portion of the "theft of honest services" statute Bruno was charged under.
Federal prosecutors, however, were allowed to file a superseding indictment against Bruno if they could prove a quid pro quo took place when he took $440,000 in consulting payments and $80,000 for a worthless horse from an Albany-area business man during his tenure as Senate Republican leader.
Bruno's attorneys argued that amounted to double jeopardy since prosecutors had "abandoned" trying to prove a quid pro quo arrangement in his original trial. But the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan didn't agree Tuesday.
"Bruno argues that the government is barred from retrying him on a quid pro quo theory because it abandoned that theory at his first trial," the panel of judges wrote. "We are not persuaded."
The appeals court ruling sends the case back to federal court in Albany, where Bruno, 84, is expected to stand trial.
Bruno was a state senator representing a portion of the Capital Region from 1977 to 2008. He was majority leader from 1994 until his resignation.


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Editor's Note: Aaron David Miller is a vice president and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and was a Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations. Follow him on Twitter.
Story highlights
Aaron Miller says President Obama seems to be leaning to the least bad option in Syria
He says limited strike may be risky but less so than doing nothing or trying for regime change
Miller: If Obama doesn't act after large chemical weapons attack, he'll be written off as ineffective
Among the most enduring urban legends about high-level policy-making in the U.S. government is the proverbial memo with three options: 1. do nothing; 2. do everything; 3. find a middle ground and muddle through.
And yet in truth, Barack Obama really does have only three options in Syria. It appears that the president, rightly the avoider-in-chief when it comes to Syria, has chosen option three, the least bad alternative. And here's why.
Do nothing
This isn't really an option. Forget the fact that the president a year ago drew his own red line against Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons. Disregard the reality that this is reportedly the largest single deployment of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein used them against the Kurds in 1988; dismiss the fact that 100,000 Syrians have died in this civil conflict; and the president is accused of fiddling, Nero-like, while Syria burns.
Just focus on the events of the past five days in Washington. What has been emanating from administration officials both on and off the record is the most well-advertised and telegraphed military action in the history of modern warfare. Rarely do we get this kind of preview of the operation, its size and character.
Combine that with the Secretary of State John Kerry's brief but powerful statement of moral outrage the other day and the president's PBS interview, and you get as authoritative a commitment to strike as is humanly imaginable.
Indeed, forceful statements and actions of the past few days have now constituted their own red line. And if the president doesn't enforce it, he will be truly damaged goods when it comes to foreign policy for the remainder of his term.
Neither his regional allies (Israel and the Saudis) nor his adversaries (Iran, Hezbollah, Russia) will find him credible or believable. As it is now, everyone says no to the U.S. without much cost or consequence.
Do everything
From the beginning, Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham and a whole host of liberal interventionists and neoconservatives outside the government have repeatedly called for a more robust policy on Syria, even suggesting that the president, by not acting sooner, enabled all of this misery to unfold. Syria, the president's critics maintain, is a major threat to U.S. interests – and to our allies in the region – and only a takedown of the al-Assad regime through supporting the opposition and direct application of U.S. military power will begin to address the problem.
The argument has not called for boots on the ground but for extensive use of no-fly zones, the use of U.S. air and missile power to degrade the regime and military support for the opposition.
President Obama has wisely and willfully avoided this approach. And he continues to avoid it now. The reason has to do with the general problem of an open-ended military commitment and the lack of correlation between the use of U.S. military power and its relation to the end state.
Syria is in the throes of a brutal civil war. The opposition is composed of more than 1,000 disparate rebel groups, the most effective allied with al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists. A victory of the latter would be a blow to U.S. interests. Ousting al-Assad won't be cheap or easy. It took eight months to get rid of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, and he had no weapons of mass destruction, no serious air defenses or military capacity and no credible allies. And look at the end result: a post-Gadhafi environment in which there are too many guns, grievances and regional rivalries and no credible central authority.
And Libya pales in comparison with Syria's complexities. Devising a serious military strategy to get rid of al-Assad – serious weapons for the rebels; no-fly or -drive zones; and sustained air/missile strikes against Syrian military units, infrastructure and leadership targets – also means U.S. responsibility for what follows. Barack Obama has avoided this option because he rightly doesn't want America getting stuck with the check for Syria.
Muddle through
The option the U.S. is likely to undertake – focused more narrowly on trying to deter the Syrians from using chemical weapons again and degrading al-Assad's military capacity in the process – is far from ideal. Although I think the administration's military actions will be far more devastating than the limited strikes being talked about, it is unlikely to change the arc of the battlefield balance.
There are other downsides, too. Once the glass ceiling against the use of force is broken, the expectations and pressures to use it again will grow. There's always the danger too of a response by Hezbollah or Syria against Israel, however unlikely. And sooner or later, al-Assad will commit some other horror that will require another U.S. response. This kind of episodic intervention without a real strategy can undermine American credibility, too.
To be sure, there are real risks in acting on option three, and Obama most assuredly is a reluctant warrior. Indeed, in view of the parliamentary opposition to British Prime Minister David Cameron's willingness to join the U.S., he may be a lonely warrior, too. But he's going to war with Syria nonetheless. Al-Assad's apparent use of chemical weapons, the president's own words and those of others in his administration leave him no other choice.
Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.
Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Aaron Miller


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How It Works
At Indian River Organics®, our simple mission is to help you grow the healthiest plants possible.
You will see immediate results as our premium quality products comprehensively address the 4 pillars of Plant Health: Elemental Nutrition, Beneficial Bacteria, Root Mycorrhizae and Plant Enzymes. Whether you are a home gardener or a large scale agriculture operation, our patent pending organic growing program will maximize your success!
Elemental Nutrition
Provides both the Macro and Micro Nutrients that are required for superior growth, and delivers them in a form that is readily available to the plants for immediate results. Furnishes the necessary food source to stimulate the colonization of beneficial soil microbes.
Beneficial Bacteria
Root Mycorrhizae
Forms a symbiotic relationship with the plant by colonizing the root zone, providing increased water and nutrient absorption capabilities. This results in improved drought tolerance / lower irrigation requirement, enhanced transplant survivability and more vigorous and faster growing plants.
Plant Enzymes
Promotes earlier flowering, fruit set and larger blooms and fruit. Slows the aging process and raises nutritional quality of fruits and vegetables. Improves plant vigor, root development and chlorophyll synthesis.
Where to Use
Whether it is your personal agricultural projects or commercial operations, Indian River Liquid Fish Organic Fertilizer adds value to your growing, generates higher yields, lowers costs and increases potential profits.
Available in Personal & Commercial Quantities
Our Superior Products
Indian River Organics® is more than just Fish Fertilizer. Our product line includes:
- Indian River Organics® Growth Stimulant: Provides healthier soil and healthier plants.
- Indian River Organics® Powdered Nitrogen Concentrate: Provides nitrogen boost to your plants for superior plant growth, increased seed and fruit production and overall health and appearance.
- Indian River Organics® Liquid Kelp PLUS Concentrate: Aids in building and supporting plants' natural immune system and its ability to resist disease, insects, frost and drought.
- Indian River Organics® Bio-Carbon Soil Amendment: Improves the physical properties of soil, increasing its water-holding capacity and reducing the need for soil applied fungicides.
Each of these products comes in a variety of sizes to suit your personal or commercial agricultural needs.
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Last Updated : 28 Feb 2022
Detailed information please contact us at: http://www.jayautamasantikah.comPT. JAYA UTAMA SANTIKAH Smart Market Daan Mogot Blok B No. 5 Jl. Daan mogot KM. 19 Batu Ceper Large Garden, Tangerang 3 Reasons why we invite cooperation in the procurement of goods / services. We are a legal entity (PT / Limited Liability Company) so that transactions with us are ensured safe. • We have a clear office address and can be visited at any time. • Our prices are transparent and the cheapest without hidden costs. Vital Records : Selling prices and product specifications are subject to change without prior notice. In order to maintain a low selling price, it will be very difficult for us to always provide (ready stock) every product that we display on our website and our employees will be very happy to inform you again if there are some products that are not ready stock and the duration order time. We believe only this way, we can still maintain the best and cheapest selling prices for our customers.
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1966 Ford Mustang Borgeson's Power Steering Equipped Gearbox Installation
Add Power Steering Easily With Borgeson's New Power Steering-Equipped Gearbox
Tech | Power Steering Install
Try walking into a Ford dealer today and asking for a stripped down Mustang. Whether it's to save a few bucks, save weight, or just to keep the car "simple," it's simply not possible to order one as such like you could four decades ago. As times change, people want comfort, features, and ease of use. Even the 2010 Cobra Jet factory-built drag racing Mustang comes with power windows. Why? Because Ford doesn't even offer manual windows in the Mustang anymore. Matter of fact, the Mustang has had power windows, power steering, power brakes, and more as standard features since the '05 model and before that the Preferred Equipment Package (PEP) option, which included all of these items, was checked off on the order form about 90 percent of the time. That says something.
Now, a lot can be said about hopping into a classic Mustang and having manual steering and brakes for that "nostalgia" feel. That's fine if your classic sees a once-a-month ride or parade duty. Though if you drive your car regularly, be it as a daily driver or on the weekends, having some of these modern conveniences brings much more driving enjoyment and safety to the table when wheeling around on modern roads in modern traffic conditions.
Also think how upgrades such as power steering, power disc brakes, air conditioning, three-point belts, and so forth, when done correctly and within reason, will increase the value of your classic (none of us want to think about selling our projects, but if it comes to that you can rest easy knowing these upgrades will add value). Most of the classic Mustangs on the road today are not your concours paint-daub trailer queens. They're owned, built, and driven by people who want to recapture the fun of their youth, drive the car they've always dreamed of owning, and generally enjoy the drive. This is why restomodding is so popular; it adds enjoyment, safety, and convenience to your classic ride without taking away the general look of a classic Mustang or Ford. That's about perfect in our book (otherwise we wouldn't be working on this magazine!).
Adding power brakes has been a pretty popular, and easy, upgrade for going on two decades now. With many kits available from several sources, it's a no-brainer weekend upgrade. Power steering on the other hand, has not been as easy a project to tackle. First and foremost is the original style of power "assisted" steering, which used a hydraulic ram to apply pressure on the steering linkage in the direction steered. The system is bulky, prone to leaks, is expensive, and really makes it hard to upgrade to free-flowing exhaust and other modern upgrades. While Ford ditched the system, eventually moving to integral power steering (high-pressure fluid running directly through the steering box) and then rack-and-pinion steering, there's really not been an effective way to upgrade to power steering short of finding all of the non-integral parts, bolting it in, and hoping it doesn't leak.
Now, thanks to the folks at Borgeson, a name known for U-joints for nearly a century, they have released a simple, yet effective bolt-in solution that offers easy driveway DIY installation, better road feel, and better packaging. Systems are available for '65-'70 Mustangs, both manual and factory power steering-equipped, for six-cylinder as well as small-block V-8 engine models. Individual parts are also available if you have a big-block or custom engine/trans/exhaust setup and you only need the steering box, let's say. Check out this '66 Mustang with manual steering that we bring into the 21st century with a Borgeson power steering conversion at Classic Creations of Central Florida.
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Large capacity attachment
For CA-41/61 or CK-4V motor blocks.
Included in CA-41 vegetable preparation machine and CK-45V/48V combi machine.
Optional accessory for CA-61 vegetable preparation machine.
Ergonomic design. Large capacity heading with 7½'' inlet. Head with lateral blade, which distributes the product inside the inlet and cuts and distributes entire products like cabbage. Optional core drill included with the same purpose. High-positioned ejector disc allowing to eject a larger product quantity. NSF approved.
*Please note: codes valid for machines manufactured after December 2016. Ask for codes for previous models.
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