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It's that time of the year when we stop to consider those things for which we are, or should be, thankful. For starters, I'm glad I'm not a turkey - at least, not the gobble, gobble type. I know there are some who think that word is completely appropriate when referring to me.
As some of you already know, four years ago I was sitting in a hospital at the bedside of my best friend since we were both five years old, overseeing his medical treatment following a horrendous motorcycle accident on a lonely desert road when he encountered a turn he didn't anticipate. So extensive were his injuries that we were not sure if he would make it to the next day. As it turned out, he spent six weeks in the Trauma Intensive Care Unit in a hospital in Las Vegas before finally succumbing to a blood clot that couldn't be dissolved due to the nature of his other injuries.
As I sat there, day after day, week after week, making decisions with the doctors who were orchestrating the delicate symphony of care necessary to try to bring my friend back to us, I had plenty of time to contemplate things that were important in my life. My friend was one of them - we had been best friends for 57 years. Each night I wrote an email message to a few friends, reporting on his condition. Eventually, those nightly messages took on a life of their own and were read by hundreds of people around the world. The response to those messages, which shared their own remembrances of our friend, only reinforced for me the value of true friendship.
Each night, as I tried to put a positive face on a terrible situation for those readers, my mind would turn to the many wonderful times I shared with my friend - the vacations with his family, the double-dates when we first got our driver's licenses, his leadership for athletic programs for the LAPD, of which he was a member for more than three decades. Even though his condition was bleak, we always hoped that he might recover from his injuries. In fact, the week before he died late in December we were making plans to move him closer to home in California for the long rehabilitation that was anticipated. Finally that darn clot got him and, standing in the doorway of his room watching a dozen skilled staff members try time after time to re-start his failed heart, I had to tell them to stop. My friend was gone.
Spending six weeks in and around an emergency room can change one's perspective on life. During that time I watched as some of the most tragic events you can imagine unfolded before me. For example, a Las Vegas firefighter who was injured in an accident as his truck responded to a call spent sixteen days in the unit as a quadriplegic until he transferred to a hospital in Houston that specializes in such injuries. Perhaps the most painful irony of his situation was that the call to which he was responding turned out to be a false alarm.
And there was the evening a young man was brought in after a bit of careless teenage driving caused him to crash his car into a wall. His best friend since kindergarten was a passenger and died after a couple hours of treatment in the room next to his. The young driver eventually recovered enough to leave the hospital, but he will live with the memory that he killed his friend for the rest of his life.
I was there the night a gang of thugs dragged the lifeless body of one of their homeboys into the unit, a victim of senseless gang violence, demanding that he be saved. They had already taken him to another hospital that had no emergency room. I watched for three days as this mob of miscreants milled around the waiting room as their friend's body was kept functioning with tubes and pumps. During that time I overheard angry conversations about "getting even" and, sure enough, a couple nights later a rival gang member was admitted near death from gunshot wounds. Eventually, the gang-banger's parents listened to the doctors and permitted him to be unplugged.
So, what's the point of those grim stories? What kind of "Thanksgiving" message is this, anyhow? Through all that time - in the city I dislike most, where I was obliged to be a friend, a cheerleader, a gatekeeper and, eventually, god - those stories and others reminded me of just how lucky I am. I live in the best neighborhood in our city, have a wonderful wife who loves me, a family who supports me and loyal friends who tolerate me. For an old coot I'm in pretty good condition, except I'm built more for comfort than speed these days. I'm grateful every day for these treasures in my life. I'm thankful for those of you who read what I write - even those of you who don't agree with me and find creative ways to tell me so. Even when I'm dodging those slings and arrows, I'm a lucky guy.
So, as Thanksgiving Day approaches, I hope you will reflect on those things in your life that are really important. This holiday, which has become a celebration of football games and the triptophan-induced stupor from gorging ourselves on turkey, should mean more to us than a full stomach and glazed-over eyes. As you spend this holiday with family and friends - before you jam that first heaping fork full of gravy-soaked turkey and stuffing into your mouth - I hope you will quietly acknowledge your good fortune and make a special effort to tell those you love just how you feel. You just never know what kind of a curve you will find on the road ahead.
Labels: Thanksgiving


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Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. On Apr. 17, 1961, an armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast of Cuba. Trained since May, 1960, in Guatemala by members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the approval of the Eisenhower administration, and supplied with arms by the U.S. government, the rebels intended to foment an insurrection in Cuba and overthrow the Communist regime of Fidel Castro. The Cuban army easily defeated the rebels and by Apr. 20, most were either killed or captured. The invasion provoked anti-U.S. demonstrations in Latin America and Europe and further embittered U.S.-Cuban relations. Poorly planned and executed, the invasion subjected President Kennedy to severe criticism at home. Cuban exile leader José Miró Cardona, president of the U.S.-based National Revolutionary Council, blamed the failure on the CIA and the refusal of Kennedy to authorize air cover for the invasion force, but perhaps more crucial was the fact that the uprising the exiles hoped and needed to spark did not happened. Much later it was revealed that the CIA task force planning the invasion had predicted that the invasion's goals unachievable without U.S. military involvement; it is unclear whether Kennedy or CIA chief Allen Dulles knew of the assessment. In Dec., 1962, Castro released 1,113 captured rebels in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine raised by private donations in the United States.
See K. E. Meyer and T. Szulc, The Cuban Invasion (1962); H. B. Johnson, The Bay of Pigs (1964).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Cuban History

subset: commoncrawl


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Another means of saving paper is through the use of comments and redline/strikeout markings when exchanging a document with a co-worker/colaborator. For example, a draft could be written using WordPerfect, then E-MAILed to a co-worker. They could update the draft and send it back to you. You can use WordPerfect's redline/strikeout features to see the changes. The document need not be printed until it is "final" or in "final draft" status.
Question: Can you use the back side of paper in a laser printer? I have not had much luck. You can use the paper that has been in a laser printer in an inkjet printer by using the other side.
You should purchase smaller computers and monitors when possible. This will save packaging material translating into less solid waste. For example the box for a 15" CRT monitor is 2-3 times the size of the box for a 15" LCD monitor. Linux works well with 15" LCD monitors on smaller computers like the Netwinder or E3000 .
Tough smaller monitors may have another ecological caveat: because it's inconvenient to browse to longer documents, people may tend to print the documents instead of reading them from the screen.
Some have expressed the concern that LCD displays may use more toxic materials and manufacturing processes than CRT displays, hence their usage actually may be worse on the environment. The original information above concerned the solid waste issue, which is fairly tangible and hence more controllable.
Does anyone know of studies or additional research to help clarify and resolve this issue?
Recycle your used paper, ink, and packing materials.
You may use refillable printer cartridges. In Germany the are marked with the Blauer Engel label.
Laser printer cartridges can often be used much more longer if you shake them when the message toner low appears at the message panel.
LaTeX documents: Using \usepackage{ccfonts} replaces the usual fonts by ones with wider lines and bolder serifes, improving readability at low resolutions. They are darker (i.e. use more ink) than the CM fonts and not as beautiful, so I would not recommend them for normal-size printings.
Size-Reduction: Instead of psnup or other parts of the pstools check for enhanced Perl rewritings of psnup.
It has a lot of options, which allow to set all 4 margins and the inner gutter separately. Since reduced documents are not very pretty anyway, this can be used to reduce the margin, leaving more place for the text. This probably requires some experimenting (trying new values over and over, checking the result with ghostview).
The normally used options are:
-p2 (or -p4 etc., like -2 in the old psnup)
-NIH (don't decorate)
-l10 -r20 -b30 -t40 (add to margins)
-g50 (add to gutter)
(these values vary depending on the papersize and the margins of the original, negative values are allowed).
PDFjam is a small collection of shell scripts that provide a simple interface to some of the functionality of the pdfpages package for pdfLaTeX. At present, the utilities available are pdfnup, pdfjoin, and pdf90. PDFjam depends on a working installation of (pdf)LaTeX. pdfnup puts multiple document pages together on one physical page at a reduced size. pdfjoin concatenates multiple PDF documents. pdf90 rotates the pages of PDF documents. For Mac OS X, some example applications (droplets) are provided for drag-and-drop access to the scripts.
Different ink printers are more or less capable to print on the backside of already used paper sheets. That's particularly useful to reuse all single sided paper sheets you receive for free every week! Try different manufacturers. Older Canon ink printers offer 360 dpi, older HP ink printers 300 dpi. The readability of 4 pages/sheet using LaTex 10pt lies in between this features.
Non-Linux: If you have to work with MS-Windows you should get the original Adobe-PostScript-Driver, instead of using the ones from MS-Windows. These drivers offer more than one page per paper sheet. AFAIK both psnup programs don't work with Adobe-PS, MS-Windows-PS and the PostScript extracted from MS-Windows-PDF files. The Computer-Modern-Fonts (without German diacritical characters) are available as TTF fonts on the CTAN servers. With these fonts you may enhance the aesthetical value of documents and save some paper space, too.
Ghostscript has a new output format pswrite, which creates output in correct PostScript. This feature can be used to repair broken PostScript e.g. from Microsoft drivers, allowing their postprocessing with psnup etc.
impose+ is a set of PostScript utilities. The main program is impose, which is used for two-up printing of DSC-compliant PostScript (including that from Netscape, dvips, and FrameMaker). It makes an effort to remove white space from the printout by probing the original PostScript for the bounding box of the printed area. This makes the output much more esthetic than does a simplistic layout of non-cropped original pages.
hpgs is a printer driver that lets you to print on a HP 6xx Series printer using economic mode. It relies on the printer driver included in GhostScript to do everything but put the printer into economic mode.
Besides command line tools for sophisticated printing there are also usefull GUI applications available. KPrinter opens automatically when you click on the "Print" icon of any KDE application. Choose your print job settings by going through the dialog and the click on the "Print" button. kprinter is a very versatile tool. Depending on the actual features and power of the print subsystem of your com- puter, kprinter translates the former's abilities into a nice and easy-to-understand GUI e.g. if your print subsystem does not support duplexing, kprinter will not show the option.
gnome-manual-duplex is a utility that adds manual duplex to the "Print" menu.
ecofont is an open source sans serif font with holes added to save printer ink.
If you need to print a lot of Web pages from inside your FireFox webbrowser, the Nuke Anything Enhanced extension will help you to save some ink and paper. Once installed, it adds a "Remove this object" option to the right-click context menu. Place your mouse over information you don't need printed (menu bars, big graphical logos and so on) and use "Remove this object" to zap them temporarily. Clean up the page, then print just what you need.
Wade Hampton provided the biggest part of this chapter. Some suggestions are from Ralf Muschall.


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April 8, 2014
Execution of a Texas death row inmate was back on schedule Monday after a federal appeals court ruled that the state doesn't have to reveal where it gets its lethal injection drug.
HOUSTON — The execution of a Texas death row inmate was back on schedule Monday after a federal appeals court ruled that the state doesn't have to reveal where it gets its lethal injection drug.
The ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas, 44, is set for execution Wednesday.
Attorneys for Hernandez-Llanas and another inmate, Tommy Lynn Sells, had filed a lawsuit last week saying they needed the name of the drug supplier in order to verify the drug's potency. They said they feared the prisoners could suffer unconstitutional pain and suffering if the drug weren't tested.
The state argued it was protecting the company from threats of violence.
A lower court initially sided with the inmates, but the 5th Circuit reversed that ruling last week for Sells, who was executed Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the appeals court decision. The appeals court had said it would rule later on Hernandez-Llanas' case.
The state attorney general's office had urged the 5th Circuit to lift the lower court order, arguing that the new supply of pentobarbital came from a licensed compounding pharmacy. The state also noted that the drug had been used "painlessly and successfully" on Sells, and that there was "no pharmacy, no drug and no assurance of quality that Hernandez would find satisfactory."
Attorneys have decided not to appeal Monday's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court because the high court turned down the same request from Sells last week, according to Maurie Levin, among the lawyers who filed the drug secrecy lawsuit.
Instead, his lawyers have turned to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, arguing that his sentence should be commuted to life in prison or his execution at least delayed because of what they say was faulty testimony from psychologists at his trial. The psychologists told jurors that Hernandez-Llanas was not mentally impaired and would remain a future danger, which his lawyers dispute.


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The Columbia Tribune has a fascinating article about how Missouri is changing its approach on offense and defense to reflect the change in styles it faces going from the Big 12 to the SEC. If you're like me in thinking how TAMU and Missouri affect the SEC style of play and vice versa is the most interesting thing to come out of conference expansion, you'll want to read the whole thing, but as a Georgia fan, you might want to zero in on one specific part:
A few obvious trends emerged from the film study. SEC offenses generally work at a slower tempo than teams in the Big 12, where no-huddle systems are more common. That means SEC games feature fewer plays.
SEC offenses averaged 65.5 snaps last year; Big 12 teams averaged 76.2. Over the course of a season, those extra snaps mean Big 12 defenses played the equivalent of two additional games. Last season, Missouri's offense averaged 74.8 plays; the defense averaged 73.1.
Alabama, which led the country in every major defensive category, had its defense on the field for a national-low 720 plays, only 55.4 per game. Having the No. 1 third-down defense played a big part in limiting Alabama's defensive snaps, but the SEC's grind-it-out pace helped, too.
The average Big 12 league game last year averaged 154.5 plays from scrimmage, compared to 129.5 in the SEC.
Steckel believes the SEC's methodical pace could allow for more liberal use of specialized sub packages on defense, a luxury Missouri couldn't always afford in the Big 12.
"The Big 12 is so fast-paced, you don't have time to substitute people," he said. "You have to have your base, nickel and dimes conditioned and trained to do all those different things."
Blame Bobo if you like, but that's not Georgia's story. On offense, the Dawgs led the SEC in plays run last season. Their 1016 total would have placed them fourth in last year's Big 12.
Interestingly, though, in total plays per game, Georgia averaged just under 135, which is considerably less than last year's Big 12 average. That would seem to suggest that Grantham's bunch was pretty good at limiting plays. Anyway, the question is, will this be an advantage for the Dawgs on September 8th? Will Missouri's preparation for a slower-paced SEC hurt the Tigers' ability to defend Georgia's no-huddle, or will it simply be something they're used to?


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The Godfather of Soul passed away on Christmas Day, 2006, and generously left his $100 million fortune to a special trust set up to help poor and needy children. Yet, four-and-a-half years later, not one child has seen a cent. Why?
The court battle over his final wishes has dragged on ... and on ... and on, as court fights often do. While most estate fights are devastating for family members, both emotionally and financially, this one has affected many more -- those that needed help the most. How did this happen?
James Brown passed away with at least nine children, three ex-wives, and a woman who may or may not have been his widow. This woman, Tomi Rae Hynie, was technically still married to another man when she tied the knot with James Brown (although that marriage was later annulled, reportedly). Hynie also had a child named James Brown, II, which may or may not have been fathered by Brown. To complicate the estate, Brown never updated his will or trust during his five-year marriage to Hynie, so it was unclear if he did or did not want to include Hynie or his new son.
Many feel that Brown's wishes were clear however, and those wishes did not include his family. As a recent article in Rolling Stone Magazine pointed out, his former attorney and a former producer who used to work with him both publicly claim that he only wanted his wealth to help needy children, not his own children. His widow and adult children feel otherwise, though, so they have been battling to receive a share of his family fortune.
The case seemed to reach a conclusion, designed to prevent a lengthy and expensive fight, back in early 2009. At that time the Attorney General's office of South Carolina and the family struck a settlement, giving the family a 50% share in the estate. Hynie was to get about one-quarter and another quarter was to pass to all of the children (including James Brown II, who was agreed to be Brown's son). Brown's charitable intent was slashed in half.
Did that resolve things? Not even close. Two of Brown's former trustees, who had been removed from administering the trust, appealed the probate judge's decision to approve the settlement, arguing that Brown's intent was clear and the estate planning documents he signed -- including the trust he established for poor children -- had never been found to be invalid. That appeal is now with the South Carolina Supreme Court.
And one of Brown's former producers, Jacqueline Hollander, also sued to stop the settlement. She claimed that Brown had created a partnership with her to allow her to manage the trust for needy and poor children. She alleged that he has assigned all of his assets into the trust. She says she has undeniable proof, including Brown on videotape affirming his desire to benefit poor children through this trust. Hollander permitted the Rolling Stone writer to review all of her evidence, and together they gave a recent radio interview and explained how Brown's wishes were clear -- he wanted poor children to benefit, not his own children. In fact, they pointed out that Brown's relationship with his children had grown so distant in his final years that they had to schedule an appointment to see him.
Unfortunately for Hollander, her lawsuits haven't gone well. She first sued, twice, in Illinois where she said the partnership was created, but those cases were thrown out. She then tried federal court in California, which also dismissed the case not once but twice, because she sued in the wrong court, the judge ruled. This last dismissal happened just recently and Hollander has already appealed the decision, still fighting desperately to enforce what she believes were Brown's clear wishes.
It remains to be seen whether Hollander's efforts, or the appeal in South Carolina which also seeks to have all of Brown's money pass to charity and not his family, will be successful. But what cannot be questioned is that the legal fees, lost time, and court costs expended in these fights mean that if the poor and needy children that Brown wanted to help ever do benefit from his estate, it will be much less -- and much later -- than Brown ever could have imagined.
Brown's adult children believe that the estate planning documents do not reflect his true wishes, either because of mental incompetency or undue influence, which are the legal theories that family members often use to attack wills and trusts. The family also was able to challenge Brown's wishes due to the fact he failed to update his documents after his marriage and the birth of his son. What a mess it all turned out to be!
Unfortunately, family estate fights are not uncommon, for the rich and famous or for those with even modest estates. The James Brown Estate case serves as a valuable lesson on how important the proper estate planning is. When people take care of their planning early, when there can be no question of incompetence or improper influence, and then update the documents the right way after life events like marriages and the birth of new children, the chances of a fight over the family fortune are greatly reduced.
That is why we use this story, and other celebrity estate tales, in our new television special, Trial & Heirs: Protect Your Family Fortune!, to teach people about protecting their families. No one wants to go through a fight like this one, even if your estate isn't worth 100 million dollars.
By: Danielle and Andy Mayoras, husband-and-wife attorneys, authors of Trial & Heirs: Famous Fortune Fights!, and hosts of the new television special, Trial & Heirs: Protect Your Family Fortune, which premieres August 9, 2011 at 8 pm (EDT) in Michigan, on Detroit's PBS affiliate, and internationally online through ustream.tv. The TV show will air on PBS affiliates across the country in November and December. You can visit www.TrialAndHeirs.com/TV-Special to learn more. Google+


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Tennessee Gov. OKs Allowing Electric Chair For Executions
Tennessee's governor has signed a bill that would allow the state to use the electric chair if lethal injection drugs are unavailable.
A spokesman for Republican Gov. Bill Haslam confirmed to The Associated Press that the legislation had been signed after passing the state Senate by a 23-3 vote and the House by a 68-13 margin.
The AP reports:
"Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to enact a law to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option. ...
"Dieter said he expects legal challenges to arise if the state decides to go through with an electrocution."
Currently, Tennessee death row inmates can opt for the electric chair instead of lethal injection, but the state gives them a choice. The new law says the state can unilaterally mandate the chair if lethal injection drugs can't be obtained.
The drugs have been in short supply. As NPR's Alan Greenblatt reported last month:
"In 2011, the European Union imposed an embargo on exports of drugs used to carry out the death penalty in America, cutting states off from their primary suppliers of sodium thiopental, the anesthetic they had most relied on.
"Some states consequently have tried out new drugs and dosages in recent months. Some have turned to unregulated compounding pharmacies to make the drugs."
The Tennessee governor's signature follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that halted the execution by lethal injection in Missouri of death row inmate Russell Bucklew. The court granted a stay and kicked the case back to a lower federal court.
Bucklew's execution, if it had taken place as scheduled, would have been the first since last month's botched lethal injection of Oklahoma inmate Clayton D. Lockett.
Lockett died of a heart attack after his execution was aborted.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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West Concedes Congressional Race to Democratic Challenger
TALLAHASSEE | Thwarted in attempts to change the outcome of a razor thin race, U.S. Rep Allen West early Tuesday conceded to his Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy.
In a statement, West said he would drop further efforts to change the outcome of the Nov. 6 election in which Murphy appeared to win the Congressional District 18 race by less than 1 percent of the vote.
After a recount of early voting ballots did not make a significant dent in Murphy's lead, West said it would be imprudent to ask his contributors, who had already given his campaign more than $17 million, to spend even more with only a slim chance of success.
"While a contest of the election results might have changed the vote totals, we do not have evidence that the outcome would change," West said in a statement.
Following a bitter campaign and weeks of uncertainty, Murphy's campaign was quick to respond.
"I appreciate Congressman West's gracious concession today," Murphy said in a statement. "I am truly humbled that the voters of the 18th district have entrusted me to represent them in Washington."
The West-Murphy race was one of the nation's most expensive, and most brutal, Congressional campaigns. Combined, the two candidates raised more than $21 million. Outside groups added millions more.
Elected amid the tea party wave in 2010, West had collected more than $17 million in contributions from across the country as conservative contributors opened their wallets to the often-controversial freshman.
Trailing Murphy by 1,907 votes, or 0.58 percent, the West campaign last week filed a complaint in St. Lucie County Circuit Court asking a judge to order a recount of all 37,379 ballots cast in the 18th Congressional District race in the county during early voting.
State law allows counties to retabulate votes if unofficial results may contain a tabulating error. St. Lucie Elections Supervisor Gertrude Walker said that while mistakes were made in uploading results, the errors were corrected and she remained "confident that every vote has been counted."
The final tally posted on the Division of Election website Tuesday had Murphy with a 1,904 lead out of more than 330,000 votes cast. Still behind by less than the 0.5 percent that would trigger a recount, West threw in the towel.
"While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election," West said. .
The certification deadline for the race was Tuesday morning.


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I found another site that was talking about gays dictating women's size, www.paradunai.org, in a blog titled "To Be or Not To Be: Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered," and then searched and found you.
As a model/athlete, at 18% bodyfat my agent told me I needed to lose in my hips -- needless to say, I didn't get rid of my hips, I got rid of my agent!
I am a classic, Sophia Loren hourglass. My waist has always been 12 inches smaller than my bust and hips since I was twelve! My bust and hips have always been the same.
An artist asked me to model for a Vargas tribute (the famous 40s pin-up artist -- not nude)and he was the first one I heard say this about gays setting the fashion standard. It makes so much sense.
It's definitely not fun when the only place you can see your body type these days is in pornography -- which is disgusting and so sad to me because it wrecks relationships, and is so disrespectful. Or Anna Nicole Smith or faked-out Pamela Anderson -- pathetic and so embarrassing!
I'm always cheering on any intelligent, self-respecting women I see like me in the public eye, but they are so rare. I can tell in a second who is a natural hour-glass but is starving herself to be thinner. I can also easily spot a boob job with 100% accuracy. (By the way, Tyra Banks is real.)
I have to say Erik, while your efforts are much appreciated, and participants, while it's great you are considering alternative definitions of beauty, for some reason, women in general seem to seek external approval and want to squish themselves into numbers. I see that happening here. From one squish to another? Ladies, your mirror needs to be your magazine and your guide -- not Erik, not anyone else. Honestly, greet your body naked in the mirror every morning, ("Hi body, you're looking great!") run around your house naked, exercise naked and watch yourself in the mirror -- love your body! Appreciate your body!
Erik, I know, you're a guy, and you appreciate women's beautiful bodies, which women appreciate, (though the very young-looking, blondes seem to be significantly over-represented here) and I see you trying to assure participants that not being a classic hour glass doesn't mean they are not attractive.
After teaching wanna-be models about fitness and nutrition I learned to veer away from these "perfection" landmines, and refused to go down that path when I identified someone who was wanting an external formula for who they should be in order to be: loved, validated, successful, attractive, etc., etc., etc. Please encourage ladies to love themselves because classic hour-glass or any other formula can be as impossible as skinny. You're in danger of just switching formulas! Heterosexual men used to be in charge of women's fashion (hour-glass sex symbols) and now gay men are in charge of women's fashion. How about women being in charge of women's fashion? Then we could see the whole beautiful kaleidescope of women's beauty!
You've alluded to some great solutions -- one that could be accentuated, and is necessary for this to be successful, is our cultural messages to our daughters about self-respect, self-worth and healthy self-image in the first place. In other words, we can't just suggest a different look in a magazine, we must raise women who don't need to look at a magazine at all to feel great about themselves.
This falls in the mother and the father arena -- mothers how's your self-image, what kind of role model are you for your daughters? Specifically tell your daughters how amazing they are -- they listen, trust me. Fathers, how do you treat women? What value do women have to you? What kind of role model are you for respecting & valuing women for who they are? Specifically tell your daughters how beautiful they are -- so they don't fall for that line from the first player that comes along! They listen, trust me!
Anyway, there's my two cents...


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Welcome to Wildfire Farms
We raise 100% natural grass fed and finished beef, and naturally raised chicken, pork and Lamb.
Our meats are free of drugs, hormones, antibiotics, animal-by-products, soy and corn.
For 30 years, we've had grass fed and finished beef for our family members and in the past few years, we decided to share our grass finished beef with you. Our beef is free of hormones, steroids, fertilizers, animal by-products or antibiotics. Read more.
In the summer on Saturdays, you can find us at the Marché St. Norbert Farmers' Market in Winnipeg. Throughout the year we have selected meeting points where you can pick up your orders. You can order by going to our online store or to contact us.
Our pastured chickens are raised outdoors from spring to fall. They spend their days outside and forage in plants, eating insects and grains. Read more.
We have chickens available for September - October. Ordering is based on availability due to limited quantities. If you are interested email us or check our online store to order chickens.
Our Heritage Berkshire pigs are free to roam and dig. They are free to be indoors or outside as the barn door is always open to the outdoor pen. We raise a few handfuls at a time to limit the cramming of pens. They are fed a combination of grains and organic clippings from our vegetable garden. Read more.
If you are interested check our online store or contact us.


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Subsurface oceans may be a common features of the moons of our solar system's gas giants. Evidence has piled up that there's one on Titan, and data from Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede that indicate they too may have a watery layer underneath their crusts. Today's issue of Science turns the focus to Jupiter's moon Io, which has the most active volcanism of any body in the solar system. Instead of a watery ocean, however, evidence suggests that Io has a layer of partially molten rock over 50km thick.
Io's volcanic activity was discovered during the Voyager flyby of Jupiter, and further imaging has revealed a number of active volcanoes on the moon's surface—so many, that their total output is about 30 times the averaged activity of Earth's volcanoes. The power for this activity comes from the extreme gravitational pulls Io experiences. It's the closest to Jupiter of the four planet-sized moons that orbit the gas giant, and so it experiences intense strain as it's pulled between the planet and varying orbits of the outer moons.
To infer the moon's interior structure, researchers used the same technique that helped strengthen the case for a subsurface ocean on Europa. Jupiter's rotating magnetic field sweeps through the moons, and their internal properties will induce changes in that field. Molten rock has a different conductance than solid rock, and so it will induce different changes. Four passes of the Galileo orbiter provided data on the magnetic fields in the neighborhood of Io.
The authors built a model of Io's interior, and changed parameters to find the best fit to the magnetic transformations that were observed. The model that seemed to work well had a partially molten asthenosphere, which is the upper-most layer of the mantle. The level of melt is, at a minimum, 20 percent, and the molten area is over 50km thick. The models indicate that the molten material must also be continuous, rather than composed of isolated pockets of molten rock, which wouldn't produce the same magnetic signature.
The surface lava temperatures on Io indicate that the upper mantle must be over 1250°C, which is consistent with this level of melt. The authors also note that, at these temperatures, the mantle of Io will be too hot to effectively allow the core of the moon to get rid of heat, meaning that the deep interior of Io may be completely molten. All that, simply from the force of gravity twisting the interior.
Science, 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1201425 (About DOIs).


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Privacy Policy
Last Updated: December 17, 2011
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Contact Information
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Today's QuoteFebruary 14, 2018
Penny PostcardFebruary 9, 2018
(Click image to enlarge.) (This is a re-post from 2017.)
This poetic Valentine's Day card was postmarked Perry Ill., 4 p.m., Feb. 13, 1911. The man who mailed it could expect that his beloved, "Birdie," would have it in her hand the very next day—Feb. 14, Valentine's Day. In those days, first-class mail was delivered morning and afternoon and postcards required only a one-cent postage stamp. Note also that in this case the card was mailed and delivered sans street name or number. Small town—everyone knows everyone else—therefore, no street address required. What ever happened to that wonderful postal system? Well, for one thing, Time happened.
Today's GagFebruary 17, 2017
Today's GagFebruary 10, 2017
Today's GagFebruary 4, 2017
Today's TaleDecember 13, 2016
The Princess and the Cobwebs
By Jim Sizemore
Chapter One
There once lived a King in a castle high on a hill overlooking rich farmlands and forests. The King owned everything as far as the eye could see. His peasants labored from sunup to sundown growing his crops, tending his flocks and carefully breeding his livestock. The King, a more-or-less fair man, as absolute rulers go, allowed the peasants to keep a reasonable share of their earnings. So, as peasants go, they were more-or-less happy.
But the King had recently become terribly unhappy. Some years before the time of this story, his wife the Queen had died. The King then shifted all of his love and attention to his only child, and the beautiful young girl became his obsession. For a time, his focus on her was enough to keep the King perfectly happy. But then she changed, as children always do; the once sunny girl turned into a sullen, hyper-sensitive adolescent.
Chapter Two
The King was distraught. He tried reasoning with his daughter, pleaded with her to tell him what the problem was so he could have it fixed. But his heightened concern only made matters worse. She became more and more distant, and soon refused to communicate with her father at all. The King was depressed. His work suffered. The lack of royal leadership was felt across the land. Crops failed. Taxes went uncollected. Battles with neighboring kingdoms over land rights and such were at first neglected, then lost by default.
As powerless administrative bodies often do, the King's Court panicked. Dire interventions into the King's business were considered by some of the younger court members. As young men often do, they even convened a secret meeting to plan a royal coup d'etat. When the Court Wizard heard about what was going on, he suggested a delaying tactic to head off an uprising. The Princess would be handed over to him for a complete physical, mental and spiritual evaluation. The King agreed, despite that doing so amounted to admitting that the Royal Blood had become tainted. A cover-up story was concocted and the exam scheduled. Despite attempts to keep things quiet, the scandal leaked, and it soon became obvious to even the lowest peasant that their King was a desperate man, not unlike the most common of his subjects.
In time the report came back and was duly translated from arcane medical jargon into the King's English. It stated that the only unusual finding was a heretofore unheard of condition, caused by No-One-Knew-What. Small cobweb-like fibers, with the tensile strength of steel, were growing in the girl's ears. The good news: their progress appeared to be very slow. Even so, the condition limited the social life of the princess. For one thing, the sprouts effected her balance. She walked with an erratic gate, couldn't run or jump, and her favorite pass time, dancing, was out of the question. The Wizard explained that all this angst seemed to account for the Princess' bad behavior; it was, he declared, enough to unsettle anyone. The Wizard's report ended with an apology. He confessed that he had already tried all of his magic tricks, and nothing had worked. Therefore, as good fake doctor's do, he recommended taking a "wait-and-see" attitude.
Chapter Three
The King was grateful that the Wizard had at least suggested his daughter's problem, but he was not satisfied with the passive approach. In better days The King had been a man of action, and now he was once again inspired to draw upon that attribute. He instructed his Town Crier to issue a bold proclamation. The King decreed that any man who could free the Princess from her problem, and thereby restore her cheerful character, would be fixed for the span of his natural life—at least gold-coin-wise. Also, subject to the approval of the Princess, The King threw in the possibility of a marriage option.
Every eligible young swain in the Kingdom, every aging bachelor, every social-climbing-son-of-a Duke, applied to have a go at solving the mystery. Some of the men were crude in their approach, as we know men can be, especially when in competition for the hand of a rich and beautiful young woman. Several tried outlandish physical humor: standing on their heads and spinning while juggling three balls. Others took the subtle approach, bombarding her with terrible puns and corny jokes. Then there were the totally clueless ones who attempted to melt the fibers by whispering sweet nothings into her ears. Alas, none of it worked, and the Princess grew only more awkward and ill-tempered.
The King was desperate. Finally the bachelor son of the court sheep herder came forward. This was most unusual. As a rule, a commoner would not dare to think that he had anything to offer one so high-born. But to this sheepherder-in-training, known in the kingdom as Max the Talker, no such self-effacing idea had ever occurred. From birth, Max had shown unusual self-respect, a natural sense of entitlement, so to speak. On the day of his application appointment with Her Highness at the Castle, he showed up perfectly relaxed, head erect, back straight, smiling sweetly.
After just one session with Max the Talker, the King noted an improvement in his daughter. For the first time in three years, she actually smiled. And she asked for permission to see Max again, which of course was granted. Thus it came to be that Max the Talker was allowed to spend one hour each afternoon with the Princess. At first they met in her chambers, chaperoned by her Ladies in Waiting. For the next six months they spent the hour talking about subjects of mutual interest on a wide range of subjects: history, music, clothes, books, food, dancing and suchlike. Max the Talker never mentioned the cobwebs, and neither did the Princess. Nevertheless, she continued to recover. Before long she demanded even more privacy, which the King was quick to allow. From then on the chamber door was locked from the inside, the couple now without adult supervision of any sort. With this new arrangement, it was obvious to everyone that the Princess' rate of recovery had accelerated. She was becoming her old sunny self again.
Chapter Five
The King was ecstatic. His work, such as it was, improved. The Peasants had never been better managed. The Kings' soldiers once again became victorious in battle. Taxes were paid on time for the first time in three years. Quarterly reports indicated that the Royal financial house was in order, again showing profits for each quarter—and at rates higher than ever before. The Wizard, when he reexamined the Princess, was amazed: The "cobwebs" had vanished. This news was quickly reported to the King who, without hesitating, awarded Max the Talker the fortune in gold, plus his restored daughter's hand in marriage. To the King's surprise, and also to his relief, Max the Talker graciously declined the hand of the Princess. He used the golden windfall to buy a small farm, plus a huge herd of sheep, larger even than the King's own.
As the months went by, and when not too busy with chores, Max the Talker was content to hang out with his many peasant friends, discussing this and that—anything they found conversation-worthy. In the evenings, he made notes in his journal. And best of all, he finally had enough free time to write at length, which had always been his passion. Max knew that he could never have been this happy as a member of the King's Court, so he felt not the slightest twinge of regret. He and the Princess remained friends, and met from time-to-time for a longish chat. Eighteen months after the disappearance of her ear problem, the Princess met a handsome peer from a nearby Kingdom and fell in love. And that was that.
Chapter Six
Max the Talker, meanwhile, staying true to his character, spent the rest of his days living just as he had always thought he would—happily ever after . . .
Copyright © 2016 Jim Sizemore
Today's QuoteJune 7, 2016
"Good conversation is not a matter of mutuality of interests or commonly held ideals, it's a matter of temperament: the thing that makes someone respond instinctively with an appreciative 'I know just what you mean,' rather than the argumentative 'Whaddaya mean by that?' In the presence of shared temperament, conversation almost never loses its free, unguarded flow; in its absence one is always walking on eggshells."
Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City, a Memoir
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Today's GagMay 28, 2016
Copyright © 2016 Jim Sizemore.
Today's GagFebruary 12, 2016
Copyright © 2016 Jim Sizemore.


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Sarasota Officer Suspended; Suspected of Slamming Homeless Man Into Wall
SARASOTA | Authorities say a Sarasota police officer has been suspended after a video surfaced that showed him slamming a homeless man into a wall during an arrest.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune (http://bit.ly/WynbNl ) reports Sarasota City Manager Tom Barwin viewed the video on Thursday and deemed it was "clearly excessive force."
The video was captured Oct. 6 by a security camera at the downtown bus depot. The newspaper reports the video showed officer Derrick Gilbert pushing Roger Alan Fields into the wall, splitting open his head.
Barwin called Police Chief Mikel Hollaway and told him to suspend the officer. Gilbert was placed on administrative leave.
The matter will be investigated by internal affairs.
The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the city, claiming it uses a trespass ordinance to single out homeless people.


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Education comes in all shapes and sizes and is something one should never outgrow. But no matter how much you love learning, arguably the best education is one paid for with help from someone else, such as Uncle Sam. Parents–provided they don't earn too much–can claim a $2,500 per child American Opportunity Tax Credit for their undergraduate college student children. But adults who already have an undergraduate degree, or go to school only part time, or who have a felony drug conviction, don't quality for this credit.
Adults may be able to claim the Lifetime Learning Credit equal to 20 percent of qualified education expenses up to $10,000–for a maximum credit of $2,000. Unfortunately, the income cutoff for Lifetime Learning is even lower than for the undergraduate credit; it begins to phase out for singles with modified adjusted gross income above $48,000 and couples above $96,000. (For details on educational credits, see IRS Publication 970.)
Fortunately, there's another option: deducting your educational expenses as a job or career expense. For self-employed folks operating as sole proprietors, that means writing it off as a business expense on Schedule C. For employees, it means claiming it as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, specifically an "unreimbursed employee business expense." For those in the higher brackets, this can work out to a nice educational subsidy, with Uncle Same picking up 35% of the cost of your courses.
Here are 10 things you should know about deducting educational expenses.
1. You can't deduct courses your employer paid for.
Your employer can pay for up to $5,250 a year of classes for you–without it counting as income to you–so long as it's a benefit formally offered to all workers. Not surprisingly, any course your employer sprang for, you can't deduct.
2. Lots of surprising expenses qualify.
For deduction purposes, the definition of job related "education" is surprisingly lax. Skills courses, personal development courses, and even certain activities not involving formal instruction may be considered education. It's usually possible to predict what the IRS will disallow, after you bone up on the two-option test discussed below.
3. You can use either of two tests.
An educational expense will qualify if it meets either one of two tests. First test: The expense maintains or improves skills that are required in your employment or your current trade or business. Treas. Reg. § 1.162-5(a)(1). Examples include negotiation seminars for a salesperson, employment law or employee benefit seminars for HR managers, and finance courses for bookkeepers. Second test: The expense meets the express requirements of your employer or of applicable law or regulations, imposed as a condition to the retention of your employment, status, or rate of pay. Treas. Reg. § 1.162-5(a)(2). Examples include update courses required to maintain a law or accounting license, police marksmanship courses, truck driver transportation updates, etc.
4. "Educational" has broad meaning.
In McCulloch v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1988-84 (1988), an elementary school teacher who took a sabbatical in Ireland reading children's literature was able to deduct it. In Voigt v. Commissioner, 74 T.C. 82 (1980), nonacq, 1981-2 C.B. 3., a social worker was able to deduct the cost of her own psychoanalysis as educational. The Tax Court agreed that it maintained or improved her skills. (Of course, she might also have deducted it as a medical expense. For more on medical expense deductions, click here.) In another case, an airline engineer deducted the costs of flying his own plane. See Bosler v. Commissioner, 77 T.C. 1124 (1981), acq., 1984-2 C.B. 1, aff'd in unpub. op., (9th Cir. Dec. 22, 1983).
5. Required doesn't really mean "required."
You can claim an educational expense is "required" to maintain or improve skills in your employment even if it is of marginal value. In fact, the way the tax law has been interpreted, "required" doesn't really mean required. If a seminar on positive thinking seems helpful to a bank teller's job, it is deductible.
6. But it can't qualify you for a new career.
If education qualifies you for a new trade or business, it doesn't qualify for a tax deduction. That means if you incur education expenses to obtain a law degree or a CPA license, you can't deduct that cost. In contrast, you can deduct the cost of a Tony Robbins Personal Power seminar because you think it will help you connect better with your customers and be a better hair dresser. It may seem illogical, but that's the way the tax law works.
7. The "new career" standard is objective.
Can you get around this rule by making it clear that you don't intend to get a new job, and just want to improve your skills in your existing job? Suppose you go to night law school to become savvier about contracts, thus making you a better copy machine salesman? Nope, no deduction. Why? Because even though you subjectively may not want to change careers–and in fact you might never leave your copy machine sales job–your law degree does qualify you to do something else.
Thus, a CPA couldn't deduct the cost of a law degree even though he undertook it only to improve his skills and never intended to practice law. O' Donnell v. Commissioner, 62 T.C.781 (1974), aff'd, 519 F.2d 1406 (7th Cir. 1975). Even an IRS agent who tried to deduct law school was denied! Weiler v. Commissioner, 54 T.C. 398 (1970). Moreover, the cost of a basic college degree is almost never deductible as a work or career related educational expense, since a bachelor's degree qualifies the graduate for a host of new jobs.
8. Your specific circumstances are relevant.
Whether you qualify for a new profession is objective. Nevertheless, there are subjective elements. For example, all manner of people have tried to deduct the cost of an MBA, with mixed results. From an objective perspective, an MBA doesn't (on its face) qualify you for a new job or a new career the way a law or medical degree does. In fact, whether an MBA qualifies you for a new career will depend on your own situation.
9. It pays to marshal your evidence
If you want an example of how to play your cards right in deducting educational expenses, consider the recently decided case of Lori Singleton-Clarkev. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2009-182. Just reading her big victory in Tax Court is a good education (although not deductible). Singleton-Clarke had a nursing degree, and had worked as a nurse or in administrative posts for 24 years. She was already working in a managerial capacity when she decided to boost her skills with an online MBA. The IRS disallowed her claimed deductions, and she appealed to the Tax Court. The IRS argued Singleton-Clarke not only qualified for a new job with her MBA, but in fact got one shortly after getting her degree. The Tax Court, however, believed Ms. Singleton-Clarke when she said she got the MBA to become more effective in her then-present duties and later switched jobs to work closer to home. Moreover, she showed she would have gotten the new job anyway–with or without the MBA!
10. Don't count on deducting an MBA
Don't assume that getting an MBA will now always be tax deductible. After Singleton-Clarke's victory, it may be easier to deduct the costs of an MBA, but you could still have a fight with the IRS on your hands, and you still could lose. There's a long line of tax cases considering the MBA, and many taxpayers have failed to qualify, primarily based on the "new job or career" rationale.
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Way back in January, 2008, I wrote a blog post called "Five DMV Queries That Will Make You A Superhero!" which continues to get lots of hits three years later. I thought it was time to update this with a new version that you can download from here.
Query 1 looks at cumulative waits for the entire database instance since the last time SQL Server was started (or the last time the wait stats were cleared with the command shown below).
-- Clear Wait Stats for entire instance DBCC SQLPERF('sys.dm_os_wait_stats', CLEAR);
Query 1 tells you what resources that SQL Server is spending the most time waiting for. This can help you focus your subsequent diagnostic and troubleshooting efforts, so it is very valuable. I do want to caution people not to obsess over the results though. What I mean by that is that I frequently see people get very worried about what ever shows up as the top wait type, even if their SQL Server instance is running just fine, with no performance or scalability problems.
SQL Server is always waiting on something, but many wait types are pretty benign (which is why I try to filter many of them out). If your instance is running well, with no other indicators of trouble, relax a little! This query is much more valuable when you are experiencing performance problems, or you see other symptoms of stress.
Query 2 lets you look at memory clerk usage, which will help you find issues with procedure cache bloating with ad-hoc query plans. Back in SQL Server 2005 days, the SQL Server Agent was a major culprit here. I also see many ad-hoc plans coming from SharePoint 2007 and 2010. The worst offender may be your own developers, if they like to write ad-hoc SQL by concatenating a T-SQL query in the client or middle-tier.
You can use the "Optimize for ad-hoc workloads" instance setting (which was new in SQL Server 2008) to help minimize this problem. You may need to use the old band-aid approach of periodically running the command shown below.
-- Clear ad-hoc SQL plans for entire SQL instance DBCC FREESYSTEMCACHE('SQL Plans');
Query 3 will find the most expensive cached stored procedures in the current database, from a CPU perspective. You would definitely want to run this if you saw any signs of CPU pressure. You can easily change the sort order and column selection of this query to focus on other pain areas, such as logical reads, logical writes, etc.
Queries 4 and 5 will help you tune your relational index usage and selection. I usually call those two queries, "the dynamic duo", since they are so useful for getting the right number of useful indexes for your workload. This is critical for getting the best performance and scalability for your databases.
I talked about this subject in much more detail recently in a post called "Index Tuning for Mere Mortals".
These five queries should give you plenty of opportunities to "save the day", and impress your boss with your awesome SQL Server tuning skills, so have fun!


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BY THE SEA, HONAH LEE – Amid the controversy surrounding an RNC member's racist song, Puff the Magic Dragon has finally stepped forward to take a stand.
Chip Saltsman, a GOP strategist seeking to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee, recorded and distributed to committee members a CD called "We Hate the USA" containing songs ridiculing liberals. But one parody, "Barack the Magic Negro", set to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon", has attracted the most controversy.
Peter Yarrow, one of the Puff song writers, has written of his disapproval, stating "Puff, himself, if asked, would certainly agree" that Saltsman should not be considered for the chairman position.
Puff has now stepped forward to declare his unhappiness. "I was frolicking in the autumn mist when little Jackie brought me my usual strings and sealing wax. He slipped in the daily paper, and I roared when I read what this Saltsman nitwit had done!"
He angrily blew smoke out of his nostrils. "Honah Lee is a magical land of inclusion, as stated in Constitutional Amendment 4 concerning non-discrimination. If I ever see that mooncalf, I'm taking him out sailing and only one of us is coming back, you know what I'm saying?"
Puff then cut the interview short to continue his allotted frolicking for the day.


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Graduate Class Gift
The members of the 2011 graduating class initiated a program to support students following in their footsteps: the Graduate Class Gift (GCG). This is a great way for those embarking on the next stage of their legal career to make a gift to Southwestern in honor of their graduation, with proceeds benefiting Public Interest Grants (unless otherwise specified).
The Graduate Class Gift Committee has set a lofty goal - they are shooting to get 100% of the graduating class to make a gift before Commencement in May, and those who make a gift of $100 have the opportunity to join the Dean's Circle at the Young Leader level. The Dean's Circle is normally reserved for donors who make gifts of $1,000 or more, but as a Young Leader, those students will have access to exclusive Dean's Circle networking events during the coming year. Other gift levels include the Graduate Year level (with a minimum gift of $20.12) and the Participation level (with a minimum gift of $1).
A gift at any level is important and makes a difference. In fact, the true focus and goal of the Graduate Class Gift is participation. In addition, alumna Judith L. Jacobs '94 has offered a $10,000 matching gift - she will match any donation from a graduating student, even $1, with $100 toward Public Interest Grants, up to $10,000 (if a student decides to join at the Young Leader level, she will match it with $200).
To make a gift online, click here.
Students may also contact the Institutional Advancement Office with questions or to complete their gift (over the phone or in person).


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HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane Tuesday joined federal and state enforcement actions against the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's LLC and its parent company, the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
The lawsuit alleges misconduct by S&P involving securities backed by residential mortgages that were at the heart of the nation's financial crisis.
Pennsylvania's complaint alleges that despite S&P's repeated statements emphasizing its independence and objectivity, S&P allowed its analysis to be influenced by its desire to earn lucrative fees from its securities-issuing clients.
This alleged misconduct became particularly acute between 2004 and 2007, and continued as recently as 2011. By way of example, the Commonwealth contends that S&P altered its rating methodologies in order to win business, thereby making false or misleading its public representations about its own independence and the reliability of its credit ratings.
S&P, according to the complaint, sought to increase revenue and keep its high market share which in turn led S&P to make adjustments to its analytical model so as to make the ratings more business-friendly and appealing to securities issuers.
Securities backed by mortgages were at the center of the financial crisis, according to Kane. These securities, including residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), derive their value from the monthly payments consumers make on their mortgages.
'Countless investors and market participants were misled by S&P's promise that its analysis was independent and objective,' said Kane. 'We believe S&P violated the trust that it purposefully cultivated with the marketplace, leading to disastrous results.'
The lawsuit seeks: A court order declaring that the company's conduct violates the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law;
A court order directing the defendants to comply with that law; and
Civil penalties and disgorgement of ill-gotten profits.
Connecticut was the first state to sue S&P in March 2010. Its lawsuit, brought under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, is pending in Hartford Superior Court. The States of Mississippi and Illinois filed lawsuits against S&P in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Pennsylvania is among the states filing complaints today. Others include: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.
The complaint further alleges that S&P's monitoring, or surveillance, of previously rated RMBS and CDOs was affected by revenue considerations. In particular, the complaints allege S&P delayed taking rating actions on impaired RMBS and continued rating new CDOs even after it determined that the securities underlying collateral was impaired, because it wanted to continue to earn lucrative fees.
The congressionally-appointed bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded in its final report that the financial crisis 'could not have happened' without ratings agencies such as S&P
The commonwealth's case is being handled by Senior Deputy Attorneys General John M. Abel and Michael C. Gerdes.


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(CNSNews.com) – For the estimated 62 million women of reproductive age in the United States, "virtually all of them will use a contraceptive method other than natural family planning at some point in their lives," regardless of their religious beliefs, states the Guttmacher Institute in a new report, Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use.
The report showed that, "among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning" and that "this figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women."
"This research suggests that the perception that strongly held religious beliefs and contraceptive use are antithetical is wrong – in fact, the two may be highly compatible," reads the Guttmacher report. "Contraceptive use by Catholics and Evangelicals, including those who frequently attend religious services, is the widespread norm, not the exception."
The data showed that 83 percent of women of reproductive age (15 to 44) have a religious affiliation: 48 percent Protestant; 25 percent Catholic; and 11 percent identify with another religion, such as Buddhism, Islam and Judaism.
Among that 83 percent of women of reproductive age, 33 percent go to church at least once a week, according to the report, and 20 percent go monthly and 26 percent less than once a month. Another 20 percent do not attend church at all.
Sexual experience among never-married women of all religious affiliations is fairly common, according to the survey, with 69 percent (ages 15 to 44) saying they have engaged in sexual activity at some point in their lives.
In addition, for all women who are sexually active – married and unmarried – the data show that 69 percent use some form of artificial birth control, such as sterilization (33 percent), the Pill (31 percent), IUD (5 percent) and condom (14 percent).
The report noted that, "While Catholic and Evangelical women are slightly more likely than Mainline Protestants to be married; patterns of contraceptive use do not differ by religious affiliation among married women."
Only 3 percent of married Catholic women practice natural family planning, while 72 percent use artificial means to contracept, such as the pill or IUD, while 40 percent rely on sterilization.
According to the Catholic Catechism, section 2370, any action that proposes "as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is "intrinsically evil."
Further, "the regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood," reads section 2399 of the Catechism. "Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception."
The Guttmacher Institute report was based on a study of the extent to which women of various religious affiliations practice contraception and preferred methods. "Data for this report come from the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) which gathered information on contraceptive use from a nationally representative sample of women," stated the document.
In its introduction to the report, the Guttmacher Institute criticized in particular the Catholic Church and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for opposing artificial means of birth control as apparent "preventive and public health care."
"[C]ontraception continues to be perceived as controversial among some policymakers and is opposed by the Catholic hierarchy and some other socially conservative organizations," said the Guttmacher Institute report. "[T]he USCCB and other socially conservative groups have long opposed publicly funded family planning programs for young and low-income women and continue to advocate for special exemptions so broad as to allow entire institutions, including insurance plans and hospital networks, to refuse to provide contraceptive services and supplies."


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Red Hat has contributed extensively to Free and Open Source software. A partial list of software that Red Hat has contributed towards include the following.
Red Hat has a similar page with many more details on its involvement, and a list of projects that Red Hat is heavily involved with.
Fedora Project
Red Hat is the primary sponsor of Fedora Project and provides hosting, engineering and other resources. It has several hundred active developers participating and leading the project in different ways in coordination with the volunteer community members. It is a highly successful model pioneered by Red Hat within the Fedora Project that has inspired several other distributions like OpenSUSE and free software projects like MySQL and OpenSolaris.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a open source product based on Fedora and commercially supported by Red Hat.
Upstream Focus
Fedora Project has a strong focus on staying close to upstream projects as much as possible in all the different software it includes in the repository. The following is a general set of best practice guidelines on why this is a good idea, tips for sending your patches upstream, and the potential exceptions Fedora might make. The primary goal is to share the benefits of a common codebase for end users and developers while simultaneously reducing unnecessary maintenance efforts.
Linux Kernel
Red Hat is the largest contributor and Red Hat developers are the leading contributors to the Linux Kernel.
Red Hat is also the largest contributor to Xorg according to this report.
Proprietary Software Freed
- Sistina GFS file system, LVM2 and associated clustering tools acquired for 31 million dollars and completely released as Free and open source software
- Netscape directory server open sourced as Fedora/Red Hat directory Server - Bought for around 25 million dollars and is completely released as Free and open source software. More information about Fedora Directory Server .
- Netscape Certificate System open sourced as the Dogtag certificate system. More information about Dogtag certificate server .
- Red Hat played an instrumental role in encouraging Google to Open Source the Google Plugin for Eclipse (Eclipse tooling for GWT and GAE). More information about the Google Plugin for Eclipse
Source for dates of acquisitions, where applicable
Red Hat donated all the eCos copyrights to FSF
Free Desktop
Desktop Software
Red Hat is the leading contributor to GNOME Desktop as shown by a GNOME census
- Firefox: we added support for the GTK+ and GTK+2 toolkits. Pango support, GNOME Integration. Current upstream contributions include security patches, and co-ownership of various linux-specific pieces of the project.
- GNOME Shell - Primary development by Owen Taylor and many Red Hat developers and interaction designers
- gnome.org infrastructure, hosting and bandwidth
- Plymouth: graphical boot system
- pango: originally written and maintained
- glib, gtk+: most primary maintainers and developer work
- metacity: written and maintained
- nautilus: co-maintained
- udisks : originally written and maintained
- upower: originally written and maintained
- gnome-panel: co-maintained
- gnome-session: maintained
- gnome-power-manager: written (employee) and maintained
- vte: written and maintained
- cairo: written (employee) and maintained
- pixman: maintained
- gconf: written and maintained
- palimpsest: written (employee) and maintained
- D-Bus: written (employee) and maintained
- udisks, upower : written and maintained
- PolicyKit: written (employee) and maintained
- Avahi: maintained
- PulseAudio: maintained
- gnome-keyring: written and maintained
- gnome control-center: co-maintained
- evince: written and maintained
- NetworkManager: written and maintained
- OpenOffice.org: fontconfig font/glyph fallback, headless plugin, xdg-userdirs, email-mailmerge backend, MSWord 2.0 filter, gcj port of Java dependencies, ppc64 port, co-author on gnome dialogs, x86_64 port, ...
- vino: written and maintained
- gnome-menus: written and maintained
- sabayon: written
- dogtail - UI automation and testing framework
- Xorg: major contributions and maintenance.
- AIGLX : Compositing desktop framework.
- virt-manager: written and maintained
- Ogg Theora: major contributions and maintenance
- Lohit Indic Fonts
- Liberation fonts which provide Free metric equivalents to key Microsoft fonts
The Core Operating System
- coreutils - developed and maintained
- LVM2, md - maintained
- KVM virtualization- developed and maintained
- Autofs - maintained
- SELinux
- Maintains User space tools
- Targeted policy
- MLS Policy
- Setroubleshoot
- Kernel 2.6 Audit subsystem - written and maintained
- ipsec - maintained
- crypto - maintained
- ext3 - Written and maintained
- vfs- Written and maintained
- usb - patches
- Kernel 2.6 Virtual Memory manager - Written and maintained
- kernel 2.6 CPU scheduler - Written and maintained
- netdump and netconsole
- NPTL - Written and maintained
- Tux - Written and maintained
- several SATA drivers
- Several network drivers
- Network stack
- parted - co-maintained
- grub - development
- util-linux-ng - maintained
- rsyslog - co-maintained, significant influence
- cronie - development
- abrt - development
Key Open Source Development Tools
- glibc - Major contributions. Maintained.
- gcc and gcj - Major contributions
- Autoconf - Maintained
- binutils -
- diffutils - Maintained
- elfutils - Written and maintained
- gzip - Maintained
- libuser
- "libxml2 and libxslt" development - Written and maintained
- gamin - FAM replacement library done within Fedora - Written and maintained
- Gnulib - GNU Portability Library - Major contributions. Written and maintained.
- M4 - Maintained
- Eclipse
- Autotools plugin : written and maintained
- OProfile plugin : written and maintained
- Valgrind plugin : written and maintained
- SystemTap-based call graph plugin : written and maintained
- ChangeLog plugin : written and maintained
- RPM Specfile editor : written and co-maintained
- On-going work to ensure upstream releases work for Linux distributions (aka "eclipse-build")
- Continues long-standing work in same vein
Administration Frameworks
- RPM - Written and maintained
- up2date - Written and maintained
- anaconda - Written and maintained
- firstboot - Written and maintained
- system-config-tools - Written and maintained
- yum - Maintained
- func - Written and maintained
- cobbler - Written and maintained
- spacewalk - Written and maintained
System Clustering
- gfs - Written (Sistina) and maintained
- gfs2 - Written and maintained
- dlm - Written and maintained
- gulm - Written and maintained
- cman - Written and maintained
- rgmanager - Written and maintained
- ccs - Written and maintained
- fence - Written and maintained
- system-config-cluster - Written and maintained
- gnbd - Written and maintained
- dmraid - Written and maintained
- bddraid - Written and maintained
- csnap - Written and maintained
Service Management
- booty - Written and maintained
- chkconfig
- initscripts
- kudzu - Written and maintained
- mkbootdisk
- mkinitrd - Written and maintained
- ntsysv - Written and maintained
- rhpl - Written and maintained
- rootfiles
- sysreport - Written and maintained
- sos - Written and Maintained
(Ascending Sorted)
- CJK Uni Fonts - Chinese Unicode Fonts
- gettext
- IBus Intelligent Input Bus for Linux / Unix OS, upstream: including ibus-anthy, ibus-chewing, ibus-m17n, ibus-pinyin, ibus-qt, ibus-sayura, ibus-table, ibus-rawcode
- Liberation Fonts - Document Portability Fonts, upstream
- Lohit Indic Fonts - Upstream
- M17N - Indic Input Method Engine
- PAPS text printing filter
- SCIM - Input Method Engine Framework
- SCIM Anthy, Anthy - Japanese Input Method Engine
- SCIM Chewing, Chewing - Chinese Input Method Engine
- SCIM Hangul - Korean Input Method Engine
- SCIM PinYin - Chinese Input Method Engine
- SCIM Table - Input Method Engine
- Transifex - Web Localization Infrastructure
- libvirt: The Virtualization API
- oVirt: The web based virtualization management app
- Virtual Machine Manager: A Python + PyGTK management application built with libvirt
- VirtInst A python library for simplifying provisioning of guest VMs with libvirt
- sVirt SVirt it the integration of Mandatory Access Control (MAC) security and Linux-based virtualization
- Supporting Xen virtualization
- Sponsoring KVM hypervisor development
- DeltaCloud The Cloud Management API
- Spice The SPICE remote desktop / VDI protocol & implementation
- libguestfs The virtual guest filesystem management API
Other Emerging Technologies Projects
- Cft: Record configuration changes and export as puppet manifest
- Augeas: Configuration editing tool and API
- Thincrust: Tools for Building Appliances
- One Laptop per Child Creating operating system, designing and implementing both UI and drivers.
- NetCF The network interface configuration API
- cdparanoia - maintained
Upstream Developers
This is not a comprehensive list of all developers on major upstream projects but just some well known Red Hat employeees from the past and now to show the breadth and depth of Red Hat sponsored development.
TODO - Add many more
Linux Kernel
- Alan Cox - Core developer, numerous contributions
- Ingo Molnar - x86 subsystem maintainer
- Al Viro - VFS subsystem maintainer, #1 committer according to Linux Foundation report
- David Miller - Sparc Port maintainer, #2 committer according to Linux Foundation report
- Jeff Garzik - Sata subsystem maintainer
- John Linville - Wireless subsystem maintainer
- Stephen Tweedie - Ext3 filesystem developer
- Eric Sandeen - XFS, Ext4 filesystem developer
- Josef Bacik - Btrfs filesystem developer
- Rik Van Riel - VM developer
- Ric Wheeler - Filesystem developer
- Val Henson - Filesystem developer
- Dave Jones - Fedora kernel maintainer
- Kyle McMartin - Fedora kernel maintainer
- Chuck Ebbert - Fedora kernel maintainer
- Eric Paris - LSM/SELinux/Audit/Capabilities maintainer
- Eugene Teo - Security Response
Core components
- Ulrich Drepper - Glibc, lead maintainer
- Jakub Jelinek - GCC developer
- Roland Mcgrath - Glibc developer
- Jim Meyering - Coreutils, Parted, lead developer; Gnulib, diffutils, gzip, idutils, grep, patch
- Karel Zak - util-linux-ng, lead maintainer
- Eric Blake - M4, Autoconf, lead developer; Gnulib, findutils
Xorg developers
- Dave Airlie - Direct Rendering Infrastructure, ATI drivers developer
- Peter Hutterer - #1 Xorg committer, MPX (multi pointer X) developer
- Kristian Høgsberg - Compositing desktop (Underlying feature for Compiz) including AIGLX
- Adam Jackson - Xorg release engineer and core developer
- Kevin E Martin
- Rik Faith
- Søren Sandmann Pedersen
- Ben Skeggs
GNOME developers
- Mathias Clasen - GTK, lead maintainer
- Owen Taylor - GTK developer
- Dan Williams - NetworkManager lead maintainer
- David Zeuthen - DeviceKit/HAL, PolicyKit lead maintainer
- John Palmeri - D-Bus, lead maintainer
- Ray Strode - GDM developer
- Colin Walters - D-Bus developer
- Richard Hughes - gnome-power-manager, PackageKit lead maintainer
- Bastian Nocera - Totem, lead maintainer
- Dan Winship - core GNOME developer
- William Jon McCann - GDM. ConsoleKit developer
- Jonathan Blandford - early GNOME developer
KDE developers
- Than Ngo - Fedora KDE maintainer
- Lukáš Tinkl - Fedora KDE maintainer
SELinux developers
- Dan Walsh - SELinux Policy and Userspace maintainer
- Eric Paris - SELinux Kernel Maintainer
- James Morris - SELinux Kernel Maintainer
- Miroslav Grepl - SELinux Policy Maintainer
- John Dennis - SETroubleshoot Maintainer
OpenJDK developers
Current team
- Lillian Angel
- Gary Benson
- Deepak Bhole
- Andrew Haley
- Andrew Hughes
- Ioana Ivan
- Omair Majid
- Mark Wielaard
Former members
- Thomas Fitzsimmons
- Kyle Galloway
- Francis Kung
- Keith Seitz
- Joshua Sumali
Internationalization developers
(Ascending Sorted)
- Akira Tagoh
- Asgeir Frimannsson
- Caius Chance
- Dean Chen
- James Ni
- Jens Petersen
- Parag Nemade
- Peng Huang
- Pravin Satpute
- Rahul Bhalerao
- Sean Flanigan
- Takao Fujiwara
- Linux Ecosystem - Analysis showing Red Hat as the leading contributor to a number of core projects including Linux, Xorg, GCC etc.
- Security Response - Red Hat's transparent and better security record.
- Who wrote 2.6.20? Analysis showing Red Hat as the leading contributor to the Linux Kernel
- Who wrote - and approved - 2.6.22 Analysis showing Red Hat as the leading contributor to the Linux Kernel
- Who wrote 2.6.23 Analysis showing Red Hat as the leading contributor to the Linux Kernel
- Where 2.6.25 came from Analysis showing Red Hat as the leading contributor to the Linux Kernel
- Linux Kernel Development - Study by Linux Foundation (August 2009); analysis shows Red Hat as leading contributor to the Linux kernel
- http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2c1895%2c2121087%2c00.asp - Linux Kernel Reaps the Fruits of Real-Time Technology


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New workout generating a lot of hoopla
Round and round go the pounds, according to hula hoop fitness instructor Allyson Makiej.
Makiej is introducing students to hula hoop training as the latest exercise regimen targeted to tone muscles, gain balance and lose weight.
Yoga, she said, plays a large part in her hula hoop exercise.
"Yoga helps my students stretch themselves through a variety of positions. This stretching opens up the students. With this technique, one woman, who was 70, was able to get up from the stretching and be able to do the hula hoop. She couldn't do it before the stretching," she said.
"I open up students in a nurturing kind of way, which is the opposite of what a lot of workouts are usually about."
Markiej, 46, is based in Lowell and has been training students in Westford and surrounding towns for the last two years. She uses a three-way approach to fitness: yoga, hula hoop movements and natural foods nutrition.
"The combination of those three for me has been phenomenal," she said. "When I teach these three things I feel as if I am teaching a Western take on Eastern philosophy. This lends itself to one-on-one sessions but I also do groups."
She also introduces the hula hoop regimen to women who are having gatherings and parties. She has taught classes at hospitals, bariatric weight loss groups, even birthday parties.
She says hula hoop exercise can also improve one's self-esteem.
"My background has been as a private learning coach. I ... was an academic tutor and a self-esteem coach. I did that for a long time, more than 15 years. I discovered hula hooping after recovering from a serous illness. I thought, 'This is a really cool thing that I could teach people,' " she said.
She said hula hoop exercise helps people with their posture and balance and that helps them present a better public image and helps them with their self-esteem.
The hoops she uses are larger than the ones kids used in the 1950s when the hula hoop was the craze.
"I carry 18 different sizes and weights of hula hoops. Not only do adults need larger hoops than kids, but they also need different weights of the hoops. Too light a hoop can lead to neck and shoulder stress. A hoop that is too heavy can make the exercise exhausting," she said. She sells custom-made hoops that cost from $20 to $45.
Markiej says workouts usually take from 30 to 50 minutes, and in some cases, burn as many as 600 to 800 calories an hour.
"So not only is it good cardio, but it helps with firming the waist and body toning," she said.
She did not learn how to hoop until she was 30.
"Even though I started late, I was always a dancer and I found I could introduce dance moves into a hula hoop session that helps with the variety and makes hooping more fun," she said.
For more information, visit fullmotionfamily.com