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I've been in Roman Catholic churches as well as Orthodox churches. Why is it that Orthodox churches have so many icons, and they don't in the catholic churches?
How in Mor's good nameone hundred fifty four postsNo Rachel Weisz picSelam
I suppose that a major reason for that is because the debate about the appropriateness of icons raged in the East, not the West, and did so for centuries. Once the Icons were finally restored to their rightful place, there was a flurry of iconography, and certainly many people trained in the art. So in one sense it is logical that those who placed so much theological and emotional capital in the debate would in the end utilize the form most often.
I didn't know we had statues in church,,when did this happen,i never heard about it ...are they inside the church or on the outside...at the libertyville serbian monastery in libertiville ill,they have a statue of jesus over the arch on the main entrance to the church grounds only... thats the only place iv ever seen a statue.....stanislav
Not that I'm aware of; it has, however, along witht the monastery itself, survived arson probably set by the Turks during the Ottoman times or Albanian Muslims since it's in Kosovo.
Interesting. Would that mean that sacred sculpture is okay in the EO tradition? For us Latin Catholics, we do not have a great deal of the stylized kind of icons (the closest we have in most churches are the stained-glass figures), but we recognize them as legitimate sacred images. Do EO recognize sculpture as legitimate, though it is not very common in the EO tradition?
A statue can't burn unless it's a wooden statue.....?...is it wood ....stanislav
The Serbian statue may be a unique situation. I don't believe statues are generally accepted in Orthodoxy. If anyone knows why feel free to chime in.
I don't recall where, but I remember reading somewhere that statuary was frowned upon because it's too lifelike, while traditional iconography is far more stylized. I really don't see how that argument holds up in the face of the hideous Western-style icons that have popped up.
An idol is one thing, a statue is another thing, and an icon (or picture) is a different thing. For an idol differs from an icon in that the icon is a likeness of a true thing and its original, whereas the idol is an image of a false and inexistent thing, and is not the likeness of an original, according to Origen and Theodoret — just as were the idols of the false and inexistent gods of the Greeks. We call those images which embody the whole figure statues and carved or sculptured figures in general. As for this kind of images, namely, the statues, the catholic (Orthodox) Church not only does not adore them, but she does not even manufacture them, for many reasons: 1) because in its present definition this Council says for images to be produced with paints (or colours), with mosaic, or tessellated work, and with any other suitable material (which means with gold and silver and other metals, as Theodosius the bishop of Amorion says in Act 4 of the same Council) upon the sacred utensils, and robes, including sheets and cloths; upon walls and boards, and houses and streets. It did not mention a word about construction of a statue. Rather it may be said that this definition of this Council is antagonistic to statues; 2) because neither the letters written by patriarchs in their correspondence with one another, and to emperors, nor the letters of Pope Gregory to Germanus and of Pope Adrian to the present Council, nor the speeches and orations which the bishops and monks made in connection with all the eight Acts of the present Council said anything at all about statues or sculptured figures. But also the councils held by the iconomachs, and especially that held in Blachernae in the reign of Copronymus, in writing against the holy icons, mention oil paintings and portraits, but never statues or sculptured figures, which, if they existed, could not have been passed over in silence by the iconomachs, but, on the contrary, they would have been written against with a view to imputing greater blame to the Orthodox; 3) because although the woman with an issue of blood made a bronze statue of Christ in memory of and by way of giving thanks for the miracle and the benefaction which it had conferred upon her; and she set it up in the Panead, at the feet of which there sprang up a plant, or herb, which cured various ailments; and, as some say, that statue was smashed to pieces by the Emperor Maximinus, before Constantine the Great, and the bronze was seized by him; or else Julian the Apostate seized it, and put in its place the statue of Jupiter, as an anonymous writer says. Though, I say, the woman who had an issue of blood did make this statue (which the Christians took into the Church and honoured; and people went to see it out of a yearning for the original of it, as Philostorgus the Arian historically records), yet, as a matter of fact, that work of the woman who had an issue of blood was a concession from God, who, for goodness' sake accepted it, making allowances for the imperfect knowledge of the woman who set it up; and because that was an embodiment and mark not of the grace of the Gospel, but of the old Law, as Pope Gregory II says in writing to St. Germanus (for the old Law had the two Cherubim, which were gold statues and sculptured figures containing all the body of the angelic powers, according to ch. 38 of Exodus, which Cherubim, according to an unknown expositor, had the face of a calf, and adored the Ark of the Covenant (here called the Ark of the Testimony, and by this adoration separated the Israelites from the idolatry of the Egyptians, who used to adore the calf. For the Jews learned from this that if a calf adored the Ark, it followed that the Egyptians were wrong in adoring it as a god). Not only the old Law, but also the custom of the Greeks fostered the erection of statues and sculptured figures, as St. Germanus writes in a letter to Thomas of Claudiopolis which is to be found in Act 4 of the present Council, and which says: "It being obvious that the Saviour levelled His own grace to condescension with the faith of the woman, and showed what has been made evident to us above, namely, that it is not that what is performed is in general the object, but that it is the aim of the one performing it that is being reduced to experience . . . ." And again: "We do not say this, so that we may find an excuse for exercising the art of making bronze pillars, but merely in order to make it plain that the Lord did not discard the national custom at this point, but, instead, availed Himself of it to exhibit therein for a considerable length of time the wonder-working and miracle-working efficiency of His own benevolence; on which account it is not devout to disparage the custom of a somewhat more pious nature which has prevailed among us." You see here three things as plainly as day, to wit: 1) that the erection of the statue of Christ was moral, and that the Lord accepted it as a matter of compromise with the times; 2) that statues ought not to be manufactured; and 3) that it is more pious and more decent for the venerable images to be depicted, not by means of statues, but by means of colours in paintings. For the same saint said above by way of anticipation that in historically recording the facts concerning the statues, he historically recounts the fact that the icons of the Apostles Peter and Paul, painted in colours, were still extant . . . Canon LXXXII of the 6th, moreover, says that we ought to prefer the grace of the Gospel to the legal form, and ought to set up the human character, or figure, of Christ in icons instead of the olden lamb even in oil paintings. So that from all that has been said it is proved that the Westerners are acting contrary to the definition of this holy and Ecumenical Seventh Council, and contrary to the tradition of the Church in making statues and sculptured figures and plaster of paris replicas, and setting them up in their churches. We said hereinabove those representations which embody the whole of that which they represent are called statues and sculptured work and plaster of paris figures in general, whereas those representations which do not embody the whole of the person or other object which they are intended to represent, but at most merely exhibit them in relief, projecting, that is to say, here and there above the level and surface of the background, are not called statues or sculptured work or plaster of paris figures or any such name, but, instead, they are called holy icons (or, if they are not holy, simply pictures). Such are those which are to be found engraved or stamped or otherwise delineated upon the sacred vessels, on divine Gospels, and other holy books, on precious crosses, of silver and gold, according to Dositheus (p. 656 of the Dodecabiblus); to the same class are assigned also images cast in wax and more or less in relief, that is to say, projecting at various points above and receding at other points below the plane surface of the image, concerning which divine Chrysostom (in his Discourse wherein he argues that one and the same Lawgiver is the author of both the Old and the New Testament; and in Discourse 307 on the vesture of priests, the origin of which is to be found in the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ) says the following: "I myself have loved the images cast in wax as a matter of piety. For I beheld an angel in an image driving back hordes of barbarians. I saw barbarian troops being trodden underfoot, and the words of David coming true, wherein he says: 'Lord, in thy city Thou wilt do their image havoc' (p. 852 of the second volume of the Conciliar Records, in Act 6 of the 7th C.; and p. 647 of the sixth vol. of Chrysostom). Oecumenius, too, accepts and approves this kind of image which is cast in wax in the manner above described (in his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews). Hence, in writing to Symeon the bishop of Bostra, Anastasius the Patriarch of Antioch says: "though, as a matter of fact, an image is nothing else than a piece of wood and colours mixed and mingled with wax" (p. 845 of the second volume of the Conciliar Records). In the same class with these images are placed also the images which are carved in wooden crosses (crucifixes) and medallions. They, too, likewise are wrought in relief and project above the plane of the level surface, and do not compromise the whole body of the person or thing represented. The reason and cause why statues are not adored or venerated (aside from the legal observation and custom noted hereinabove) seem to me to be the fact that when they are handled and it is noticed that the whole body and all the members of the person or thing represented are contained in them and that they not only reveal the whole surface of it in three dimensions, but can even be felt in space, instead of merely appearing as such to the eye alone, they no longer appear to be, nor have they any longer any right to be called, icons or pictures, but, on the contrary, they are sheer replications of the originals. Some persons, though, assert or opine that the reason why the Church rejected or did away with statues was in order to avoid entirely any likeness to idols. For the idols were statues of massive sculpture, capable of being felt on all sides with the hand and fingers.Source
I didn't know we had statues in church,,when did this happen,i never heard about it ...are they inside the church or on the outside...at the libertyville serbian monastery in libertiville ill,they have a statue of jesus over the arch on the main entrance to the church grounds only... thats the only place iv ever seen a statue.....stanislav.... ps we have statues [busts ] hope this is the right word ]of our national hero's on the church grounds allso..
There's a monastery in Libertyville? That's interesting. I will be going there in a couple weeks. Maybe I can stop by. Do they take visitors who don't speak Serbian?
I've been in Roman Catholic churches as well as Orthodox churches. Why is it that Orthodox churches have so many icons, and they don't in the catholic churches?
Theognosis, this argument doesn't stand up. In earlier centuries, the papacy often had more (earthly) power and money than kings. In fact, many well-known artworks from the Renaissance, Baroque and other periods were the results of papal commissions. Perhaps the most famous of these is Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings.
It is a matter of theological and doctrinal approach by the West, not economics. Please look again at posts #17 and #18 on this thread. It must also be remembered that iconography from quite early times was rendered in an abstracted, geometric, non-naturalistic style. It is a common misconception that the iconographers of the early Christian period "couldn't draw or paint", that this was a primitive or naïve art form. In this regard, it must be remembered that the Byzantines were the descendants of the Greeks and Romans who gave the world the physical perfection of Classical sculpture and murals (such as the sculptures of Praxiteles and Pheidias, or the frescoes of Pompeii), and where the development of geometry allowed the refinement of linear perspective in depicting three dimensions on a flat surface.
By the time of the Renaissance, the West had already developed its own style of liturgical art over many centuries.
Theognosis, if you care to look, it wasn't until the early 1300s at least where Giotto and his contemporaries began painting religious art in a style diverging from the strictured, non-naturalistic art of iconography. You only need to look at illuminations of that time, and previous to that time, such as the Book of Kells, and other illuminated manuscripts, if not before, to see parallels with iconography in content, if not in artistic style. In many areas of western Europe, a "naturalistic" artistic style did not appear until the 15th C. This is not insignificant.
The church of Rome had lost the notion of "liturgical art" progressively after the 8th C, as I earlier posted.
To this day, there is little to compare the liturgical veneration of icons as has been continuously practiced by the Orthodox Church with the regard that Roman Catholics have for their religious art. Do Roman Catholics have a tradition of venerating their religious paintings as do the Orthodox? Do Roman Catholic churches have their religious art displayed in such a way where they can be venerated, in the way that Orthodox churches have their icons on analogia/analoiy or on iconostases which the faithful venerate? Is there a Roman Catholic equivalent equivalent of the liturgical censing of the icon of the saint or feast commemmorated on any particular day, being at Matins, at Vigil (combined Vespers and Matins), or at any other office of the Orthodox Church? The only Roman Catholic equivalent I am aware of is the censing of the Crucifix during Good Friday services. There may be others, but there is nowhere near the same praxis as is the case with the Orthodox.
In fairness to our Catholic brethren, people should not underestimate the theology behind Western Art.
A good case of recently-appeared religious images rendered in an "iconographic" style, but which are contrary to Orthodox doctrine and theology are the images of the "Holy Family" (Mother of God, St Joseph, and the young Christ), and the image of St Joseph the Betrothed holding the Christ-child. Such portrayals may be acceptable in western churches, but are completely contrary to Orthodox liturgical, doctrinal, and iconographic tradition. However, because of their similarity in appearance to traditional icons, they can be mistaken by well-meaning Orthodox people as being valid icons.
I don't believe statues are generally accepted in Orthodoxy. If anyone knows why feel free to chime in.
Sounds like a good rule of thumb to me. Its just so much easier and makes so much more sense for "windows to heaven" to be flat. Whoever heard of a sphere or box-shaped window?... that's not a window at all... its a display case that totally encompasses and locks in the object. So instead of looking through it, we look directly at it. We can't walk through a flat surface and explore every single part/perspective of the subject(s), therefore, we are humbled and the mystery remains. But we can walk around a completely 3-D object, viewing it from any perspective we choose, therefore, we feel powerful because nothing remains unknown.
Could you elaborate on this?
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Synopsis: La Niña is favored to develop during the Northern Hemisphere summer 2016, with about a 75% chance of La Nina during the fall and winter 2016-17.
During the past month, sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies decreased across the equatorial Pacific Ocean, with near-to-below average SSTs recently emerging in the eastern Pacific. The latest Niño region indices also reflect this decline, with the steepest decreases occurring in the Niño-3 and Niño-1+2 regions. The surface cooling was largely driven by the expansion of below-average subsurface temperatures, which extended to the surface in the eastern Pacific. While oceanic anomalies are clearly trending toward ENSO-neutral, many atmospheric anomalies were still consistent with El Niño, such as the negative equatorial and traditional Southern Oscillation indices. Upper-level easterly winds persisted over the central and eastern Pacific, while low-level winds were near average. Enhanced convection continued over the central tropical Pacific and was suppressed north of Indonesia. Collectively, these anomalies reflect a weakening El Niño and a trend toward ENSO-neutral conditions.
Most models predict the end of El Niño and a brief period of ENSO-neutral by early Northern Hemisphere summer. The model consensus then calls for increasingly negative SST anomalies in the Niño 3.4 region as the summer and fall progress. However, there is clear uncertainty over the timing and intensity of a potential La Niña (3-month Niño-3.4 SST less than or equal to -0.5°C). The forecaster consensus favors La Niña onset during the summer, mainly weighting the dynamical models (such as NCEP CFSv2) and observed trends toward cooler-than-average conditions. Overall, La Niña is favored to develop during the Northern Hemisphere summer 2016, with about a 75% chance of La Nina during the fall and winter 2016-17.
ENSO events typically translate to drier than normal conditions in the northern and mainland portions of SE Asia.
The entire region should be slightly to moderately warmer than normal especially mainland SE Asia.
Much of insular SE Asia should be near normal to slightly wetter than normal. For mainland SE Asia the northwest half should be near normal to slightly to moderately drier than normal. Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and much of Viet Nam should be near normal to slightly wetter than normal. Parts of Northwest Luzon in the Philippines should be drier than normal as well as northern Sumatra.

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Visual Markers: Interview with Dushko Petrovich
I first met Dushko Petrovich in 2013 at the "Painting Expanded" symposium at the California College of the Arts. In his brief presentation and in the panel discussion that followed, it was clear that Petrovich is a thoughtful artist not afraid to question his own and others' artistic practices. This quality is also evident in the publications he co-produces with Roger White, the art journal Paper[…..]


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From a press release:
President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney will be visiting the University of Miami on Wednesday, September 19th (Governor Romney) and Thursday, September 20th (President Obama) as special guests of Univision broadcasts entitled: "El Gran Encuentro con el Gobernador Mitt Romney" and "El Gran Encuentro con el Presidente Barack Obama."
Tickets for these two events will be very limited. Per our agreement with the two presidential campaigns and Univision, UM Young & College Democrats and certain affiliated organizations will have initial access to the student tickets for President Obama's event. Similarly, UM College Republicans and certain affiliated organizations will have initial access to the student tickets for Governor Romney's event.
Remaining student tickets will be distributed via a lottery system.
There are no tickets available for faculty or staff
Within the next 24 hours, ALL currently enrolled students will receive a personalized email with information on how to enter the ticket lottery. The email will contain a link to the Ticket Lottery Entry Page, on which students will be required to enter their C# and other biographical information to confirm their identity. The form will contain checkboxes where you can indicate which event you are interested in attending (President Obama, Governor Romney, or both). Your name will be entered into the two separate random lotteries based on your responses.
Once the entry deadline has passed, winners will be randomly selected and notified via email. Any tickets that are not claimed by the deadline will be re-distributed to alternates.
All currently enrolled students (undergraduate, graduate, School of Law, School of Medicine, RSMAS) interested in obtaining a ticket are required to enter the online lottery.
All undergraduate, graduate and law students on the Coral Gables campus will be required to pick up their ticket at the Whitten University Center according to the schedule below.
All Medical and RSMAS Campus students will be able to pick up their ticket at the Will Call table on the day of the event.
Tickets are non-transferable, and must be used by the student who won the lottery. A valid Cane Card is required to pick up tickets at all locations.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012 – Personalized emails will be sent out to all CURRENTLY ENROLLED students with a link to enter the ticket lotteries
Wednesday, September 12, 2012 (5pm) – Deadline to enter the ticket lottery
Thursday, September 13, 2012 – Lottery winners will be notified via email
Monday, September 17, 2012 (8:00 am to 6:00 pm) - Lottery winner ticket pickup at Whitten University Center
Tuesday, September 18, 2012 (8:00 am to 6:00 pm) - Lottery winner ticket pickup at Whitten University Center
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 (12:00 noon) – Lottery winner ticket pickup deadline
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 (1:00 pm) - Alternates will be notified via email and ticket pickup begins immediately (Subject to change)
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Additional event details will be provided to ticket holders closer to the event date.
For additional information on the ticketing process, please contact the Department of Student Activities at 305-284-6399.


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The Geographic Information Coordinating Council adopted the US National Grid as a presentation layer for NC OneMap data. This provides an additional visual option for users of the NC OneMap web viewer. You will note the US National Grid coordinates in the grey bar below the map, next to latitude and longitude. North Carolina, supported by a grant from the Federal Geographic Data Committee, developed custom GIS datasets and training materials, held workshops in 2008, and demonstrated the use of the US National Grid in mapping and group navigation. The final report details the grant activities, shows North Carolina examples, and clarifies the benefits of the US National Grid for finding locations in emergencies when state or federal assistance is needed. The project file, including training materials, are available as a ZIP file.
The USNG is a presentation format standard developed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee [fgdc-std-011-2001]. The coordinate reference system was adopted to provide a nationally and globally consistent language of location optimized for local applications and larger-scale mapping.
The USNG is intended for everyday applications by the general public and public safety providers, and for improved business practices in support of the general economy. Commercial vendors and publishers of street and highway maps in North Carolina are encouraged to adopt the USNG.
The availability of feature locations as USNG values is particularly valuable during times of disaster, such as major hurricanes where the street signs and landmarks have been destroyed. The USNG improves public safety by providing a uniform means to describe an incident location where street addresses may not be specific enough – such as a large campus or industrial complex. This also benefits mutual assistance operations. Furthermore these USNG values can be directly used in low-cost consumer Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to guide a person to the precise point of interest or to locate it on a web-mapping portal.
View an example USNG map atlas from Murphy, NC.
The National States Geographic Information Council recently hosted and recorded an informative presentation by Talbot Brooks. Click here to view it.
North Carolina now has a parcel data set that includes all 100 counties and areas comprising the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians.
36 counties have recently been added to NC Parcels.
The 2014 orthoimagery is now available from the NC OneMap GeoSpatial Portal. Read on for all of the details.
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A.G. Schneiderman & D.A. Gascón Launch Nationwide "Secure Our Smartphones" Initiative
Coalition Of Law Enforcement Officials, Institutional Investors And Consumer Advocates To Urge Smartphone Industry To Protect The Safety Of Consumers
Schneiderman & Gascón: This Nationwide, Bipartisan Coalition Is Committed To Encouraging Industry To Be Good Corporate Citizens, Ensure Safety Of Consumers
NEW YORK -- New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón today announced the formation of a nationwide Secure Our Smartphones (S.O.S) Initiative aimed at encouraging the cell phone industry to adopt technologies that would deter theft by drying up the secondary market on which stolen devices are sold.
As part of the launch of the S.O.S. Initiative, Schneiderman and Gascón commended New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli for urging the four leaders of the smartphone industry to protect consumers, and shareholder value, by working with law enforcement agencies and government officials to pursue a meaningful solution to the spike in smartphone thefts.
Co-chaired by Schneiderman and Gascón, the S.O.S. Initiative is a groundbreaking coalition of state Attorneys General, District Attorneys, major city Police Chiefs, state and city Comptrollers, public safety activists and consumer advocates from around the country. Attorney General Schneiderman and District Attorney Gascón announced the formation of the new initiative on the same day representatives from Apple, Google/Motorola, Samsung and Microsoft participated in a Smart Phone Summit convened at Attorney General Schneiderman's office in New York.
"The epidemic of violent street crime involving the theft and resale of mobile devices is a very real and growing threat in communities all across America," said Attorney General Schneiderman. "According to reports, roughly 113 smartphones are stolen or lost each minute in the United States, with too many of those thefts turning violent. This nationwide coalition of leaders is committed to doing everything in our power to encourage industry to be good corporate citizens and take responsible steps to ensure the safety of our consumers."
"Smartphones have become a part of our everyday lives. Over half of the U.S. population owns a smartphone creating an environment ripe for violent street crimes," said District Attorney George Gascón. "The cell phone industry cannot ignore that smartphone theft is a crime that can be fixed with a technological solution. That is why law enforcement leaders across the country are joining us in the Secure Our Smartphones (SOS) coalition to urge the industry to exercise social responsibility for the safety of our communities."
New York State Comptroller DiNapoli wrote to the Chief Executive Officers of Apple, Google/Motorola, Microsoft, and Samsung asking them what steps each company is taking "to protect its brand and assure public officials that it is acting responsibly."
As the trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund ("Fund"), DiNapoli urged each company to position itself "as a leader in working with law enforcement agencies and government officials to pursue a meaningful solution to this ongoing problem. Such action would send a reassuring message to shareholders and consumers alike."
According to Consumer Reports, the theft of cell phones makes up 30 to 40 percent of all robberies nationwide. In 2012, 1.6 million Americans were victimized for their smartphones. A Harris poll of phone owners found that nearly 10% said their phone had been stolen at one point, and a recent study found that lost and stolen cell phones cost consumers over $30 billion last year.
According to a recent Time magazine report, New York City saw a 40 percent increase in mobile thefts in 2012. Last year, approximately 50 percent of all robberies in San Francisco involved a mobile communications device.
The Secure Our Smartphones Initiative announced today in New York will attempt to address this national epidemic by focusing on several areas:
1. Analyzing patterns, causes and trends behind the growing and increasingly violent problem of device theft;
2. Investigating the capability of manufacturers to develop technology that would deter theft, including a "kill switch" that would enable stolen devices to be permanently disabled, therefore eliminating the economic incentives for would-be thieves;
3. Understanding how the economics of device theft have affected decision-making by the smartphone industry;
4. Working with device manufacturers to make a "kill switch," or equally effective deterrent technology, a standard feature of their products; and
5. As appropriate and necessary, investigating impropriety on the part of manufacturers, raising public and shareholder awareness about industry practices in this area, and using all available tools to press for safety-oriented innovation and responsible corporate citizenship.
"The growing number of violent crimes and senseless deaths connected to smart phone thefts demonstrate just how serious a problem this is in our communities," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said. "We must stop these crimes, and it is imperative that manufacturers and wireless carriers are part of the solution."
"I support Attorney General Schneiderman in this important initiative," said Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson. "I hope that the cell phone manufacturing industry seizes this opportunity to work with regulators to find common sense solutions."
"Personal electronics are easy targets for thieves, particularly in crowded urban environments, and there has been a dramatic increase in the theft of smartphones from pedestrians and straphangers," said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., President of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York "That is why my Crime Strategies Unit has been addressing this spike in Manhattan for the last several years from the law enforcement end. I applaud Attorney General Schneiderman's 'Secure our Smartphones' initiative for both its timeliness and approach. By analyzing theft patterns and working with manufacturers to make smartphones less appealing targets, this initiative seeks to do the most important thing we can do in law enforcement – prevent a crime before it occurs."
"When would-be phone thieves know stolen phones won't work, they'll stop stealing them, so it's critical that smartphone manufacturers add 'kill switches' to make stolen phones inoperable and valueless," said Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen M. Rice, President-Elect of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York. "Millions of Americans have been victims of smartphone theft, some even losing their lives, so all smartphone makers must take swift action to help stop these thefts that continue to endanger their customers. I thank Attorney General Schneiderman and District Attorney Gascón for their leadership on this important public safety issue."
"As more people across New York State and the Country move towards using smartphones, criminals will continue to steal them in order to make a profit," said Albany County District Attorney David Soares. "I fully support efforts for members of law enforcement and our nation's cell phone manufacturers' to work together to prevent the theft of personal property and develop strategies to render stolen phones' unusable. I thank AG Schneiderman for taking the lead on this issue."
"No one should be afraid to walk down their street with a smartphone, or be afraid the mobile device they buy their son or daughter will make them a target for a violent crime," said Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley. "I applaud District Attorney Gascón and Attorney General Schneiderman for leading this national effort to make our streets and communities safer."
"We stand with District Attorney George Gascón and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and urge the phone industry to take accountability for the rise in smart phone theft all across the country," said Charles Ramsey, President of the Major Cities Chiefs Association and Police Chief of Philadelphia. "The only way to stem the rampant theft of these devices is to disable electronic devices when they are stolen."
"The Crime Commission applauds Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's outstanding efforts to protect the public by making our streets safer from the increasing scourge of smart phone theft," said Richard Aborn, President of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City. "Likewise, the Crime Commission applauds the willingness of the manufactures to discuss this critical public safety matter and attempt to develop a technological solution. When corporate America aligns with government to develop innovative solutions to crime, everyone benefits."
Co-chaired by District Attorney Gascón and Attorney General Schneiderman, the Secure Our Smartphones Initiative includes:
· Attorney General Martha Coakley, Massachusetts
· Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Illinois
· Attorney General Beau Biden, Delaware
· Attorney General Lori Swanson, Minnesota
· Attorney General David Louie, Hawaii
· Attorney General George Jepsen, Connecticut
· Attorney General Jon Bruning, Nebraska
· Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, California
· State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, New York
· District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, Alameda County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr, New York County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Kathleen Rice, Nassau County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Mark A. Peterson, Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Jeffrey F. Rosen, Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Donald DuBain, Solano County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, San Mateo County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Sandra Doorley, Monroe County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney David Soares, Albany County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney R. Seth Williams, Philadelphia County District Attorney's Office
· District Attorney Jackie Lacey, Los Angeles District Attorney's Office
· Comptroller John Liu, New York City
· Mayor Jean Quan, City of Oakland
· Senator Mark Leno, California State Senate
· Senator Leland Yee, California State Senate
· Assemblyman Marc Levine, California State Assembly
· Council member Libby Schaff, Oakland City Council
· Board Member Betty Yee, California Board of Equalization
· New York State Association of Chiefs of Police
· Superintendent Garry McCarthy, Chicago Police Department
· Chief Greg Suhr, San Francisco Police Department
· Commissioner Thomas V. Dale, Nassau County Police Department
· Commissioner Charles H. Ramesy, Philadelphia Police Department
· Chief Greg Suhr, San Francisco Police Department
· Chief Michael Davis, Brooklyn Park Police Department
· Chief Edward Flynn, Milwaukee Police Department
· Commissioner Anthony Batts, Baltimore Police Department
· Chief Susan Manheimer, San Mateo Police Department
· Superintendent Colonel Rick Fuentes, New Jersey State Police
· Commissioner Ed Davis, Boston Police Department
· Chief Jane Castar, Tampa Police Department
· Chief Kim Jacobs, Columbus Police Department
· Major Cities Police Chiefs Association
· President Marty Halloran, San Francisco Police Officers Association
· Executive Director Chuck Wexler, Police Executive Research Forum
· Director Sue Rahr, Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission
· Richard Van Hauten, East Division Representative, Fort Worth Police Officers Association
· Sean Smoot, Chief Legal Counsel, Illinois Police Benevolent and Protective Association
· ConsumersUnion
· Christine Cole, Executive Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School
· Malcolm Sparrow, Professor of the Practice of Public Management, Harvard Kennedy School
· Bernard Melekian, Paratus Group
· Psychologist Richard G. Dudley Jr., MD, Vera Institute Trustee
· David Weisburd, Professor of Criminalogy, George Mason University
· Tracey Meares, Walton Hale Hamilton Professor,Yale School of Law
· Anthony Braga, Don M. Gottfredson Professor of Evidence-Based Criminology, Rutgers School of Criminal Justice
For copies of the letters from New York State Comptroller DiNapoli and for more information on efforts by District Attorney Gascón and Attorney General Schneiderman to combat "Apple-Picking," visit the San Francisco District Attorney's websiteor the New York State Attorney General's website.
- Letters from State Comptroller DiNapoli to Smartphone Industry
- Secure Our Smartphones Initiative Statement


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Hope College continues to receive accolades from editors of college guides as the newest editions of a variety of the publications debut in tandem with the advent of the school year nationwide.
Recent guides that list Hope among the select number of institutions they single out for praise include the 2012 "America's Best Colleges" published by "U.S. News & World Report," the 2012 "Fiske Guide to Colleges" and the "America's Top Colleges" guide published in August by "Forbes Magazine."
The annual rankings compiled by "U.S. News & World Report" have once again included Hope College among the 100 best liberal arts colleges in the nation.
The college is 94th out of 280 institutions that are considered national liberal arts colleges in the rankings.
In addition, Hope also continues to be included among the institutions that the publication recognizes for providing outstanding undergraduate research/creative project opportunities.
The rankings were announced on Tuesday, Sept. 13, and are featured on the "U.S. News & World Report" website at https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges.
"U.S. News & World Report" has included Hope among the nation's top 100 liberal arts colleges for the past several years. Hope has been on the listing of approximately 30 institutions outstanding for undergraduate research/creative projects since the "America's Best Colleges" guide initiated the category in 2003 (the institutions are not ranked).
The "U.S. News & World Report" rankings group institutions in four categories: National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities and Regional Colleges. The overall rankings are based on the publication's measurement of academic quality as indicated through seven categories including peer assessment, retention and graduation of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, and graduation rate performance and high school counselor ratings. The listings in the undergraduate research/creative projects and undergraduate-teaching categories are based on nominations from senior college administrators from around the country.
The "Fiske Guide to Colleges," now in its 28th edition, continues to include Hope as one of only about 310 colleges and universities that it highlights as "the best and most interesting institutions in the nation - the ones that students most want to know about." The guide does not rank the institutions it selects, but instead includes statistical information for each--such as enrollment, test-score ranges and graduation rate--and multi-paragraph profiles that discuss qualities such as the academic and social environments.
The "Fiske Guide" profiles are based on questionnaires sent to administrators and students at the institutions selected for conclusion. The 2012 guide notes that "Hope's "academic and athletic programs continue to grow and prosper, helped out by an array of new facilities." One of the students quoted observed that "The academic programs, particularly the research and collaborative opportunities, far surpass those of Hope's rivals," while another commented that students "tend to be very involved in academics, extracurriculars, athletics, and social events."
Hope is one of 650 institutions selected for inclusion in the "America's Top Colleges" guide published by "Forbes Magazine" in August. Hope is 194th in the "Forbes" listing, which uses 12 factors in its rankings, grouped into one of five general categories: how satisfied students are with their college experience; graduates' success in their chosen professions; student debt; student graduation in four years; and students' achievement in obtaining nationally competitive awards such as Goldwater scholarships, National Science Foundation fellowships and Fulbright awards. More information, including the rankings, can be found online at: http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/


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I am a humble artist. Thank You God for every day! Contact me at email@example.com The passion to create came to me when I was very young. Art is my life. Using color, shape, texture, form, values, interesting subjects. After several years of traveling I have only touched the surface. I first create for my own tastes and I hope that everyone else will like my work as well. Thanks to all that have make great comments about my art work This web site is the replacement for a gallery. God has healed me to let me be with my family. God is Love and light and is real as real can be. Thank You for healing me and keeping me to this day!! Art is also a gift of joy. I, now live to learn from almost 70 years on earth. After reading...
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Staten Islanders tell of heart-stopping rescues, heartbreaking losses as death toll mounts
At 7:30 p.m. on Monday night, as Hurricane Sandy churned toward the coastline, Donna Carnivale, 51, was baking ziti in her one-story bungalow in the Midland Beach section of Staten Island when she heard a neighbor scream.
She flung open the front door in time to see a cluster of cars bobbing down the street, buoyed on the rising flood water. As she did so, water began pouring into her house.
Story Continued Below
Carnivale, who works at the deli counter at a local ShopRite, managed to slam the door shut, and ran to grab armfuls of pillows, blankets, three gallon-bottles of water and the green reflective vest she uses when riding her bike at night. Her husband, Kevin Burr, a burly 55-year-old with diabetes and high blood pressure, filled a box with power tools, a jigsaw, an axe, and rolls of toilet paper. Together they climbed up into their attic.
Within minutes, the water had reached the top step of the attic stairs. High tide was still over an hour away.
"This is why my husband is my hero," Carnivale told me as she sat at a cafeteria table in a storm shelter at Tottenville High School the following afternoon. While they were in the attic her husband sawed a hole in the roof, and then swam back into the first floor to turn off the standing gas pilots.
"That way our house wouldn't explode," she said happily.
The couple remained in the attic overnight. Shortly after dawn, Carnivale heard helicopter propellors chopping the air overhead, and managed to flag one down by waving the green vest out of the hole in the roof.
The New York Police Department's Scuba Team pulled Carnivale out of the attic, squeezed her into a metal basket dangling from a helicopter, and set her aloft. (Burr, too heavy for an airlift, was placed in an NYPD rowboat and rowed to higher ground.)
"When I was up there in that basket, I got a view of my whole neighborhood," Carnivale said. "It looked like those pictures of Katrina, where you could only see the tips of the houses for blocks and blocks. Like they were set in the middle of a lake."
Carnivale is not the first to make the comparison between Sandy and Hurricane Katrina, and though on a wide scale the usefulness of those comparisons may be debatable, it fits the experience of many Staten Islanders caught in this superstorm.
Her story is not unique, but it ended happily where others did not. Of the 34 deaths in New York City that some media outlets are counting, 14 occurred in Staten Island.
One of those deaths was 28-year-old off-duty cop Artur Kasprzak, whose home was in the South Beach neighborhood of Staten Island, just north of Carinvale's neighborhood. Here's how an official statement from the NYPD recounts his story:
As flood water surged into the house, Officer Kasprzak was able to get six adults and a 15-month-old boy into his attic to escape the rapidly rising water. Officer Kasprzak then told one of the women he was going to check the basement, but would be right back.After he did not return, she called 911 to report Officer Kasprzak missing. NYPD Emergency Service and SCUBA units quickly responded, but could not access the home due to down, electrified power lines in the water. A search commenced as soon as the house was safe to enter.
At approximately 7 a.m. Tuesday, Officer Kasprzak's body was located, unconscious and unresponsive, in the basement. EMTs pronounced him dead at the scene.
Near the South Beach shoreline, police spent much of the afternoon searching for two boys, two-year-old Brandon and four-year-old Connor Moore, who were separated from their mother, Glenda Moore, when she tried to escape with them in her car and water submerged them on Father Capodanno Boulevard, about an hour and a half before the water rushed into Carnivale's house. On the morning of Nov. 1, police found the bodies of the boys in a marsh near McLaughlin Street.
Carnivale was like several others among the roughly 75 people who took refuge in Tottenville High School on Tuesday, whose experience during tropical storm Irene led them to ignore evacuation warnings issued by city officials for their areas earlier in the week.
Staten Island borough president James E. Molinaro had foreseen this eventuality on Monday afternoon. After a tour of the island's storm shelters, he noted that far fewer evacuees were seeking shelter from Hurricane Sandy than they had from Hurricane Irene last summer.
The shelter at the Petrides Center, another one of the boroughs five storm shelters, "had something like 41, 42 people," Molinaro told the Staten Island Advance. "Last year they had well over 400."
Staten Island Assemblyman Matthew Titone said that while all the infrastructure seemed to be in place that could have been, the campaign to get people to heed evacuation warnings wasn't a success.
"This is the storm of a lifetime, so I don't think anyone could have been truly prepared for it," he told me on the telephone Tuesday afternoon as he left an emergency meeting at the Staten Island Borough Hall. "But a real lack of preparation took place in the evacuations. It wasn't until the storm was really going on that people realized: We need to get out of here. And then it was too late. Touring the shelters on Monday, I saw 70 people, 50 people. It wasn't until late in the evening that I started getting calls from shelters that had an influx of 200 people, with no food to feed them."
He said also that Staten Island residents were altogether unprepared for the specific dangers of a storm surge.
"With Sandy, people were told that there would be more wind surge than we had during Irene," he said. "So people weren't expecting rain, and didn't think they'd be flooded. But with the wind surges from the hurricane, we basically had a tsunami on Staten Island."
In interviews with evacuees at Tottenville High, many said they had remained in their homes despite mandatory evacuation warnings partly because the dire predictions for Hurricane Irene had resulted in so little damage to Staten Island, or so they thought. (In fact, Staten Island sustained serious damage during Irene.) Why, they reasoned, would Sandy be any different?
"I realize now that that wasn't very smart," said George Rentas, whose wife and two sons, George (18 months) and Max (7 weeks), had to be rescued from their Mayberry Boulevard apartment on Monday night.
And again, comparisons are invidious. While many are focusing on the size and power of Sandy compared to Irene, there are also elements of New York City geology and Sandy's storm path that come in to play, and reasons that lessons from one storm don't always apply to another.
Irene entered the area moving pretty much due north, and put much of New York City to its left, the weakest side of a storm. Sandy took a left turn and made landfall moving pretty much due West; its enormity put the entire New York City shoreline, including the devastated south shore of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island, and the eastern and southern shores of Staten Island, squarely in the path of its massive surges.
That storm path plays into the the problem of the New York Bight, the geological feature of the east coast that creates a right-angle in the shoreline, with New York Harbor and the Raritan Bay right in the crux. Water rushing in has no outlet but to rise up onto land. And it did, with a speed that many Staten Islanders were describing in the storm's wake.
Rentas had faith in the 15-foot cement wall that separates their apartment from the bay across the street. But around 8 p.m., a giant wave crashed over the wall, sending water gushing through the apartment windows.
"I opened the front door and it was like someone had picked up our house and put in back down on the edge of the ocean," Rentas said. "Our neighbor's car floated into our driveway, and it was leaking gas into the water. You could smell it."
Members of the fire department rescued Rentas and his family around midnight, after mistakenly breaking into the first-floor apartment. By then, Rentas said, the water in the basement had risen to his chest.
"I don't know what we're supposed to do," said Rentas's wife, Donel Franco, who cried softly as she held George on her lap. "I thought the Red Cross was going to come. I think I'm traumatized. We just bought the baby a new crib, all these new toys..."
A motherly volunteer put her hand on Franco's back. "Those are just things," she whispered. "What you have here is what's important. Your babies, your husband."
At Tottenville High, couples with children had been assigned cots in the cafeteria, while other evacuees were placed in the gymnasium. Dozens of volunteers had shown up for the relief effort, distributing bags of bagels, diapers, baby formula. Teachers with vans, navigating streets with non-functioning traffic lights, arrived with donated pizzas and food from neighborhood spots like Top Tomato, Fratelli, Ambrosino's and Waldbaum's, all of which had remained open despite the power outages across the borough.
Though many of the evacuees' homes had been destroyed, some had no home at all.
A 21-year-old man, who gave his name only as Isaac, said he'd been living on the subway since being evicted from his apartment days before. Learning of the subway's closure and the impending super storm, he'd hitched a ride from the Richmond Valley station to Tottenville High.
"I told myself I'd never stay in a shelter," he said quietly. "But this is pretty nice. I have a lot of people looking out for me here."
A few miles east, a group of people had gathered at the southern end of Armstrong Avenue, a residential street in the Eltingville neighborhood, to photograph and gawk at the collection of 20- and 30-foot boats piled up on the grass. The avenue itself was slick with mud and debris, with felled electrical wires running through it like snakes. In someone's front yard a grey Dodge Durango sat perched atop a brick wall, as if a tornado had dropped it there.
"We're in Zone A," said Joe Spadafora, 64, whose front door had been ripped off its hinges by the flood. "By 5 p.m. Monday, there was five feet of water in my house."
Spadafora made his retreat in a 2008 Mustang to his son's house on nearby Amboy Road. But when he arrived, the car, still partially inundated with floodwater, shorted out and caught fire in the street.
The house next to Spadafora's belonged to Yelena Turetskaya, 59 (left). Still stunned by the sight of it, she offered a tour of the house's mud-soaked interior, at one point stopping to measure her height against the 5-foot-high waterline on the wall.
"All the furniture was upside down," she said. "Everything is destroyed."
Before leaving, she pointed at the backyard, where the rising seas had deposited a large shed and a hot tub, among other detritus.
One of the earliest confirmed deaths in Staten Island was that of Angela Rose Dresch, 13, whose house on Yetman Avenue, at the edge of the borough's South Shore in the Tottenville neighborhood, had been crushed by an enormous wave and then dragged out to sea, leaving only its foundation behind.
Angela's mother, Patricia, remains in critical condition at Staten Island University Hospital. Her father, George, is still missing. Neighbors said the family stayed behind because their house had been looted when they evacuated during Hurricane Irene, according to the Staten Island Advance.
At 7 p.m. on the night after the storm, the end of Yetman Avenue was blocked off as the search for George Dresch continued. A dinosaur-sized pile of debris lay at the corner of Yetman and Billop Street, illuminated by bright overhead spotlights. A few generators hummed in the distance, and an NBC News truck idled nearby.
"My husband and I left on Sunday," said Michelle Gagliardi, 42, who was standing on her front lawn and staring in disbelief at where the Dresch's house used to sit. "I tried all day to call them to make sure they'd left. But I just found out their house was taken away by the ocean."
Politics will inevitably play a part in what follows the devastation in Staten Island, with borough leaders already worrying that the island's decided "fifth-borough" status, and the habitual association of serious storm damage with the Jersey, Queens and Long Island shorelines, will distract attention away from Staten Island.
Indeed, while individual stories from the Island are making their way to the front pages and homepages of local and national papers, wide-ranging coverage of the damage tends to use language like "From the Bronx to Breezy" or in the case of The New Yorker, "The Lower East Side to Brighton Beach."
"I don't think people realize how bad Staten Island has been hit," Titone told me. "The media is paying more attention to places like Breezy Point, where you'd got dozens of houses up in flames. But Staten Island has been devastated. We had a water tanker wash up on Front Street in my district."
"These are some of the images we hope people see so we're not left out of the FEMA loop," he said.


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|Columbus, Ohio
|High School:
|Upper Arlington
|Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
2013-14: Overall record: 9-13...NFC record: 6-7...finished 19th at The Big One Invitational (11/2)...was fifth in the "C" pool of the New England Championship (2/22) with a record of 7-6...swept Boston University, went 2-1 against Wellesley, and tacked on a win over Sacred Heart en route to a 6-7 ledger at the NFC season opener (11/16)...posted a 2-1 performance versus Duke and added a victory over Air Force at the Duke Invitational (2/9)...generated a 2-1 total versus Brandeis in addition to a win against Harvard for a 3-6 outing at the Beanpot (2/12).
2012-13: Overall record: 3-14...NFC record: 2-4...finished 40th at The Big One Invitational (11/3)...was fifth in the "C" pool of the New England Championship (2/23) with a ledger of 8-5...went 1-1 against Boston University in the first NFC competition of the season (11/17)...defeated an opponent from Smith at the second NFC outing (1/26)...in her only appearance at the Eric Sollee Invitational (2/3) she defeated her foe from Yeshiva.
Off the Fencing Strip at MIT: Majoring in electrical engineering and computer science with a concentration in theater arts...research assistant for Professor Susan Solomon, studying the phaseout of CFCs prior to and following the Montreal Protocol...was a summer research assistant at SEAri creating computer games to teach the main ideas of systems engineering...National Merit Scholarship...publicity chair of the MIT Student Branch of IEEE/ACM...EECS Freshman Pre-orientation Program counselor.
High School: A 2012 graduate of Upper Arlington High School...finished third in women's sabre at the 2010 Ohio High School Championship...captured first place in the U17 Junior Olympic Qualifier...placed eighth in the Epee Battle of the Blade Tournament...National Honor Society...Cum Laude Society...National Merit Society...Math Club president...team leader for 2011 Intel ISEF finalist project...co-founder of Chinese Club...Mock Trial team leader...Student Ambassador...math and physics tutor for Link Crew...secretary and treasurer of the Photography Club...served as social media presentation representative for the local police department...2010 Governor's Award for Energy Research...mayoral commendation for 2011 Intel ISEF research project.


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The Enterprise's Inclination to Private Cloud
By Uwe Lambrette, Director of Service Provider Solutions, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)
Cisco IBSG's recent interviews with about 45 enterprise CIOs and architects clearly revealed that enterprises have a preference for private cloud. They want to maintain control over their IT, especially where the architecture is new and skills need to be built. In addition, they are not comfortable with accepting externally provided cloud solutions (although there are certainly exceptions).
At the same time, the survey indicated that once enterprises have gained private-cloud experience, they are more willing to allocate this architecture to an external provider.
This is reminiscent of the classic outsourcing cycle, where corporate functions are moved externally once they have become a commodity.
This trend has significant implications for cloud providers: their primary competition will often be internal IT delivery, not another cloud provider, and they must address migration of workloads and hybrid solutions. Often, an entry product should help the enterprise build an internal solution — either through advisory services, or through managed infrastructure blocks that can be deployed in the enterprise. Further, this highlights a need to rethink hybrid cloud, which must allow the enterprise to have orchestration control. This represents a change in philosophy for service providers who are used to controlling and orchestrating all infrastructure themselves.
Because of this, service providers are often relegated to a supporting function in the enterprise. In addition, enterprises often do not seem to "buy" the promise of integration of network and IT.
At the same time, service providers are in demand as full solution providers (including the network) for the commercial sector, where companies typically have revenues of less than US$10 billion and about 1,000-4,000 employees. In this case, however, it is not sufficient just to provide the infrastructure solution: these customers expect a complete and managed stack, including application and professional services that aid deployment and operation of the solution, as well as its integration with on-premise IT.
In an effort to keep conversations fresh, Cisco Blogs closes comments after 60 days. Please visit the Cisco Blogs hub page for the latest content.
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Which Replica Brands Online You Should BuyCategories:Other Brands
There are a lot of Christmas shopping ideas 2015 guides online and practically every seller has something for you, which can get a little exhausting to say the least.
But if replica brands online sound like an attractive idea to you, my advice is to focus on certain brands to make sure your gift will be appreciated!
Of course, Christmas shopping ideas 2015 will vary depending on the person you are buying the gift for. But I think it's no surprise that my idea for a great Christmas gift revolves around replica brands online! Replica bags or replica watches are not the cheapest gifts but they are definitely not the most expensive either and the best part is that there is one for every taste.
You can already find Christmas gift ideas for moms, Christmas gift ideas for men and Christmas gift ideas for teens here on the blog but now I'm going to focus on you ladies. A late Christmas gift doesn't sound so bad when it's a gorgeous new replica bag, does it? You can still get it in time for New Year's Eve, so maybe consider something you could wear to the New Year's Eve party, like a small bag or a clutch. My pick? The Chloe Drew replica bag in shimmering gold!
Christmas Shopping Ideas 2015 – Opt For Classic Styles!
Either if it's Christmas shopping ideas 2015 you're looking for or Christmas gift ideas for any other year, opt for a popular style that's been on the market for some time now. Buying a new style is a bit riskier when it comes to replica handbags because replica manufacturers need time to practice and make great replicas. So if the bag was released just a month before, it's better to give it some time before you buy it. That's why I would definitely go for a top luxury brand and a classic style like the Louis Vuitton Neverfull replica or a Speedy replica, a Hermes Birkin, a Saint Laurent Sac De Jour replica and so on. You can take some chances when you order it for yourself, but when you're planning to buy it for someone else, I'm sure you don't want to risk it to be a failure!
So if you were planning to buy a replica bag from a less known brand or a style that was just released even in authentic version, save the idea for some other occasion and concentrate your Christmas shopping ideas 2015 around the classic styles that I mentioned! Of course, this goes for replica watches as well.
Christmas Shopping Ideas 2015 – Replica Brands Online For All Budgets!
The replica market offers gift options for every budget. For those of you who can't afford buying designer replica handbags, consider buying designer sunglasses, jewelry, scarves or even watches and bag charms for women. There are plenty of replica brands online to choose from but my advice to you is to go for classic styles because like I said, you really don't want your Christmas gift to be a failure.
Even though you might think there are less options on a budget for men, it's not really like this! Add to your Christmas shopping ideas 2015 list a designer wallet or a passport cover, cufflinks, belts or maybe a cool pair of sneakers or shoes but ONLY if you know how to order the right size! If you have no experience with ordering replica shoes, maybe it's better to choose something else.
The thing is that no matter what replica brands online you're interested in, if you haven't ordered by now, chances are they will not arrive in time for Christmas. Even the best fake bags online and all the other replica products are shipped from China, so it's difficult for them to arrive in less than a week from now. I don't think that any replica site could guarantee this 100% at this point but you can still try.
Shopping For Replica Brands Online – General Rules
So here are some general rules for this Christmas shopping ideas 2015 guide for replica bags. I suppose you're not going to buy a replica bag for a complete stranger but rather for someone you know well, so think about their wardrobe and personal taste: which colors do they generally prefer, what bag color would match most of their outfits, what's their style, what do they need it for, what size do they normally prefer when it comes to bags? These answers should make your choice easier.
But there's one more card up my sleeve that is perfect for late shoppers! My last resort for this Christmas shopping ideas 2015 guide is buying a gift card! I know that many fashion sites like Zara have gift cards but if you're looking for replica brands online, you can try the one on PurseValley. You can choose any amount you want between $50 and $1000 and you can send it directly online. You just have to add the name and the email address of the person you're offering the gift card to and you can also add a customized message which is kind of cool. This is perfect for those of you who just haven't had the time to go shopping by now or if you don't know the person that well and want to let them choose what they like the most. In case you're interested, here is the PurseValley gift card.
I hope that each and every one of you will find the perfect gifts for your loved ones! And I also hope that you will receive some awesome gifts too! Maybe we will all have something to brag about after this Christmas haha!
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JACKSON, Miss. (Nov. 10, 2009) – The Alabama Department of Agriculture & Industries halt on the sale of imported Asian catfish and related fish contaminated by banned drugs underscores the urgency of implementing a Congressionally-approved law for tough, USDA inspections and regulations of imported catfish and catfish-like products, according to the Catfish Farmers of America.
The contaminated catfish products, which had slipped through the Food and Drug Administration's weak safety net, tested positive for antibiotic Fluoroquinolones banned for use in fish or other seafood products sold in the United States because of the health and safety danger to consumers.
Alabama's findings come as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is weighing a decision on how to implement a law approved by Congress last year shifting responsibility for the inspection and regulation of imported and domestic catfish and related fish from the FDA to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That law requires that catfish and catfish-like products meet the same stringent USDA health and safety standards as beef, poultry and pork.
"The contamination found in the Asian fish tested by Alabama authorities demonstrates the urgency of this health and safety issue," said Joey Lowery, president of the Catfish Farmers of America. "We need Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to enact this law now in the most comprehensive manner possible. It will help ensure that all imported catfish and catfish relatives meet the toughest regulations and inspections that will protect American consumers and make certain that imported fish meet the same standards for quality and safety as our U.S. Farm-Raised Catfish."
Last year, the FDA inspected only 2 percent of the 5.2 billion pounds of seafood imported into the United States, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The U.S. Congress, responding to evidence of serious problems with the quality of imported catfish and related fish, as well as inadequate inspection and regulation by the FDA, voted as part of the 2008 Farm Bill to move inspections and regulation of those fish to the USDA. Secretary Vilsack, who has made food safety one of his top priorities, is now considering whether to require that all domestic and imported catfish and related fish – including basa, pangasius and swai from Southeast Asia – meet USDA standards, or only domestic and Chinese catfish.
In fact, Chinese catfish represented only 29.7 percent of all foreign catfish products imported into the United States in 2008. Imports from Vietnam totaled 52.2 percent of foreign catfish-like products sold in America, and another 12.3 percent were from Thailand.
"Applying USDA regulations to only Chinese imports will not provide the protection American consumers need," Lowery said.
The Alabama laboratory test results announced last week found the high percentages of contamination among the catfish relatives imported from Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and China.
Among the two percent of seafood inspections conducted by the FDA in the first nine months of this year, authorities found Vietnamese basa – a catfish-like – contaminated with salmonella and illegal veterinary drugs, according to the FDA's Import Refusals data base. But that is only a small sampling: Fully 98 percent of all seafood imports entering the United States from foreign countries are not inspected.
"There is absolutely no way to determine whether all these imports are safe from contamination or harmful chemicals that aren't allowed here in the U.S.," said Lowery. "We want USDA approval that every catfish product imported into America meets the same rigorous standards for quality and safety as our U.S. Farm-Raised Catfish."
Alabama Commissioner Ron Sparks, in calling a halt to the sale of contaminated imported Asian catfish and related fish, said emphatically that contaminated fish "will never make it to the dinner plates in Alabama."
"Our question is: Why should the rest of American consumers have to wait for the same protection from their government," said Catfish Farmers of America President Lowery.
For additional information, please contact:
Joey Lowery, President
Catfish Farmers of America


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Better World Campaign
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The Better World Campaign works to foster a strong, effective relationship between the United States and the United Nations through outreach, communications, and advocacy. We encourage U.S. leadership to work constructively through the United Nations and to strengthen the United Nations' ability to carry out its invaluable operations around the world. And we engage policy makers, the media, and the American public to increase awareness of and support for the United Nations.


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The major issue that I have is the erratic handling of the Danish language specific characters æ ø å.
I can send the same message to two different mailings lists and get different results and within the same message can the rendering be different in the subject and the body.
The other two are more general improvements:
The ability to "park" a message (as in TheBat!) to prevent accidental deletion
a smooth scrolling function in the message body as Mozilla's SmoothWheel add-on.


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Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Rose and Gold Touches
My latest attempts at nail art have been feeble to say the least so I kept it quite simple with a mish-mash of glitter and stamping.
The two gold glitters used on the accent finger are W7 Gold Dazzle and a coat of a Brazilian brand called Dote Preciosos - Cristais Dourados, sent to me by Bia. I stamped using BM14 and Barry M Golf and Silver Foil.
11 comments:
That looks really pretty :) I like the roses.ReplyDelete
So pretty, I've never used Leighton Denny but i've been told his polishes are amazing!ReplyDelete
Jazz x
Pink + Gold = perfect!ReplyDelete
Did you like that Dote polish? =)
Perfect combination!ReplyDelete
I love the pink and gold together. This is definitely one for my inspiration folder :)ReplyDelete
It's gorgeous.ReplyDelete
this is really pretty, i love pink polish!ReplyDelete
greaaaaat *-*ReplyDelete
..follow me on facebook, bloglovin and gfc (?) thanks! :*
The pink and gold is a great combo. Very feminine and delicate.ReplyDelete
This is a very elegant look and I really like how the gold & pink brings out the girlyness.ReplyDelete
PARABENS PELO BLOG! ADOREI SUAS NAIL ART! JÁ ESTOU TE SEGUINDO... SE PUDER RETRIBUIR, FICAREI MUITO GRATA!ReplyDelete


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Rainbow Designs - Paddington from Movie - Talking Plush Toy
As seen in Paddington The Movie, This Paddington is made from super soft plush and is wearing a removable blue duffle coat and red hat. 30cm tall press Paddington's tummy to hear one of his 5 phrases "Hello My Name is Paddington","Im very rare sort of bear", "Marmalade sandwiches are my favourite", Its nice being a bear especially a bear called Paddington. Paddington also has a removable duffle coat.
Size : 30cm
Suitable from birth; remove all swing tags
and accessories before giving to a child
Surface wash only
Made in China
Out of stock
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Email: email@example.com
Whatsapp: +8618701200681
Wechat: 18701200681
Tele: 008618701200681
Hi My friends,My name is Selena and I am a licensed English-Speaking tour guide in Beijing.
A guided tour with me will be a highlight of your stay.
You are here to enjoy your visit and have a great experience in Beijing and my passion is to make sure you do just that.
You know how you just want a simple to arrange tour that is good value?
Well, what I do is offer:
*A flexible tour itinerary
*Access to a comfortable vehicle with a competent driver
*A taste of good, local food
*A reasonable and competitive price
I am honest, reliable, and knowledgeable and I love nothing more than showing visitors this amazing city.
Whether you are visiting Beijing for the first or fiftieth time, I want to ensure you will have a comfortable, enjoyable and unforgettable experience and get the most from your visit. So let me be your local host in Beijing.
Need help planning your time in Beijing?
Feel free to contact me by email to ask questions about your visit. Let me help you with your itinerary by linking you with other services and tours. This is a free planning service I like to offer visitors even if you use another provider.
Contact me to start planning your Beijing tour now
Email: email@example.com
Whatsapp: +8618701200681
Wechat: 18701200681
Tele: 008618701200681
Travel Beijing
1 post • Page 1 of 1
- Beijing New Citizens
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2017 6:56 am
- Country: China
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Thailand is a country with abundant natural resources, including a wide variety of flora and fauna, and distinct ecological zones. There are over 100 Thailand national parks, including more than 20 marine parks, and each park features unique attractions, outstanding facilities, and opportunities to see animals in Thailand. Those interested in trekking, mountain biking, photography, birding, camping, scuba diving, or getting up close to exotic animals in Thailand have many options to choose from.
A visit to a Thailand beach or one of the many Thailand islands is an opportunity for visitors to relax, experience exotic marine life, or even learn to scuba dive. However, across Thailand, whether at a beach, island, or Thailand National Park visitors will discover unique flora and fauna and distinct ecological zones, from the temperate forests of the northern mountains and the plains of central Thailand to the savannahs of the northeast and the mangrove forests of the southern coasts. Animals in Thailand include not only elephants and monkeys but also bears and whale sharks, the world's largest fish.
Beaches and Islands
Visiting a Thailand beach or island is the preferred holiday for hundreds of thousands of visitors to Thailand every year. Thailand is blessed with natural beauty and its islands are amongst the most scenic and beautiful in the world. Likewise, each Thai beach, such as Karon Beach in Phuket, Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui, or picturesque Maya Bay on Koh Phi Phi, is simply stunning, and many feature powdery sand, crystal clear water, and postcard-perfect scenery.
Each Thai beach and island has its own character and identity and therefore draws a specific type of visitor. Each coastal area contains a slice of heaven suitable for a different style of traveler: The west coast of Thailand, along the Andaman Sea, features beaches that appeals to every type of traveler, including the activity-filled resort island of Phuket; the popular backpacker beaches of Koh Phi Phi, Koh Lanta, and Krabi; the family friendly, laid back, and pristine coast of Khao Lak (the launching point for trips to the spectacular Similan Islands); and the remote, undeveloped islands of the far south.
Along the Gulf coast, the resort island of Koh Samui lies nearby the natural splendor of Koh Phangan and the scuba diving paradise of Koh Tao. Closer to Bangkok are the popular resort town of Hua Hin, a favorite among Thais, and its quieter neighbor Cha Am. Finally, to the east of Thailand, the northern Gulf features Bangkok weekend getaway Koh Samet, and the up-and-coming resort island of Koh Chang, which has both upscale resorts and budget beach bungalows.
Certain Thai beaches and islands, like Koh Tarutao National Park, offer limited accommodation and facilities and draw more adventurous travelers who are looking for a more 'back to basics' holiday experience. Others, such as Kamala Beach in Phuket, offer world class facilities (accommodation, restaurants, nightlife, etc) to entice visitors with bigger budgets who require creature comforts. It is important to note that this diversity exists not only between the islands, but between different beaches as well. Whereas one Thai beach might offer raucous entertainment, another a few kilometers away on the same island might only draw those looking for a quiet holiday.
Phuket, Thailand's largest island, is a perfect example of this contrast. Phuket is certainly the most developed Thai island, having been the first Thai beach resort destination. Located on the Andaman coast, Phuket contains numerous beaches, including the activity filled Patong beach, with its exciting nightlife, and the more family friendly Karon and Kata beaches. Across the island are luxurious five-star resorts and a wealth of Thai spas that serve to pamper visitors on any budget. In addition to a lush, tropical interior that features a variety of exotic wildlife, Phuket is an ideal location for day trips to nearby islands, such as Koh Phi Phi, a favorite destination for scuba divers, and Phang Nga bay, where visitors can snorkel, kayak, and visit iconic James Bond Island (Koh Tapu). Phuket is easily accessible via its international airport that connects domestically with Bangkok, Koh Samui, and Chiang Mai.
Koh Samui is the prime island attraction in the Gulf of Thailand. The most popular beach, Chaweng, features accommodation from five-star luxury resorts to affordable beach bungalows, and dining includes fine dining on international cuisine and casual beachside seafood barbeques. Samui is both family friendly and budget oriented with a host of activities, some of Thailand's finest spas, and is conveniently located nearby some of Thailand's finest diving off neighboring Koh Tao. Samui International Airport connects domestically to Bangkok, Krabi, Phuket, and Chiang Mai.
Krabi is a province on the mainland Andaman coast, near Phuket. In addition to popular beachside resort areas, such as Railey Beach, Krabi includes a number of spectacular islands, such as the Phi Phi Islands and Koh Lanta, off of which some of Thailand's most popular scuba diving sites are found.
National Parks
For any traveler wishing to explore the wonders of nature, a Thailand National Park is an outstanding destination. There are many forest parks if you long to explore the tropical rainforest or travel deep into the wild jungle to see some of the exotic animals in Thailand. If you prefer scuba diving, snorkeling, or sea kayaking there are a number of national marine parks in the south and east of Thailand that are simply stunning.
In fact, Thailand has over 100 national parks, including more than 20 marine parks; each park in Thailand contains unique flora and fauna as well as basic amenities, including some bungalows with electricity and grounds for camping (even if you don't bring your own tent.) Most of these parks are easily accessible and admission fees are relatively modest, though booking ahead is often recommended as some parks are very popular with Thai visitors, particularly over long holiday weekends.
Eco-oriented activities at a national park in Thailand range from trekking, kayaking, nature photography, camping and snorkeling to spotting exotic birds and other animals in Thailand unlike those found elsewhere in the world. However, simply relaxing and enjoying the pristine beauty of unspoiled Thai nature may be the most rewarding experience of all.
A few of Thailand's more popular national parks are:
Khao Yai National Park is perhaps the most popular Thai park as it is just 200 km from Bangkok and the bucolic surrounding area features a variety of accommodation options, a variety of activities, and diverse wildlife that includes wild tigers, elephants, bears, and exotic birds, such as the giant hornbill.
Doi Inthanon National Park in Northern Thailand features Thailand's highest peak and contains waterfalls and forests containing numerous species of orchid. The area is also inhabited by indigenous hill tribe villagers.
Sam Roi Yot National Park is a favorite for bird watchers as the coastal region of the park features marshes that are home to a variety of waterfowl and other marine life.
Erawan National Park, located in Kanchanaburi Province in western Thailand, features a renowned seven tiered waterfall and a tropical forest that contains numerous wildlife species.
Marine parks include Koh Samet (conveniently located near Bangkok), Ang Thong Marine National Park (a favorite kayaking and snorkeling day-trip from Koh Samui), Tarutao Marine Park (the most remote and unspoiled of Thailand's southern islands), and Ao Phang Nga National Park (a popular day-trip from Phuket that features unique limestone islands such as "James Bond Island" from the film The Man with the Golden Gun).
Floras and Faunas
Plants and animals in Thailand are both unique and diverse. Thailand's geography, which stretches from the coasts of the Malaysian Peninsula to the mountains of mainland Asia, features a variety of climates and thus a diversity of plant and animal species.
Despite a majority of Thailand having been converted to agriculture over the centuries, natural forest still covers roughly 25% of Thailand's area. Thailand's woodlands mostly consist of monsoon forest and rainforest, which are differentiated by the amount of rainfall each receives. Furthermore, monsoon forests typically consist of deciduous or hardwood trees, which shed their leaves during the dry season in order to conserve water. Thailand's most useful hardwood is the teak.
The rainforest zones are mostly covered with evergreen trees, although much of Thailand has considerable overlap and it is not uncommon to find bamboo, coconut palms, and banana trees throughout the country. Across the coastal lowlands, in addition to more predominately rainforest cover, mangroves and rattan abound.
In addition to the aforementioned Teak, Thailand is famous for its variety of fruit and flower-bearing trees and plants, the most iconic of which is the orchid, Thailand's national flower, which appears in over 27,000 different varieties.
While encroachment on their habitat has reduced the populations of many exotic animals in Thailand, there are still a great variety of indigenous species. The most iconic of these is the Elephant, of which roughly 1,000 remain in the wild, mostly within the National Parks in Thailand. Among the larger mammals are the tiger, leopard, Malaysian sun bear, sambar deer, otter, and civet cat. Climbing animals include the gibbon and many species of monkeys. There are also sheep, goats, oxen, tapirs, wild cattle, wild hogs, and a wide variety of snakes, including cobra. Crocodiles, lizards, and turtles are also very numerous and fish abound in the rivers and coastal waters.
Finally, there are over 900 breeding bird species indigenous to or that migrate to Thailand. Bird-watching tours are particularly popular in Sam Roi Yot National Park and Khao Sok, which is home to six species of hornbill.


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Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, 1st Duke of Cumberland, 1st Earl of Holderness (German: Ruprecht Pfalzgraf bei Rhein, Herzog von Bayern), commonly called Prince Rupert of the Rhine, KG, PC, FRS (17 December 1619 – 29 November 1682), was a noted German soldier, admiral, scientist, sportsman, colonial governor and amateur artist during the 17th century. Rupert was a younger son of the German prince Frederick V, Elector Palatine and his wife Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James I of England. Thus Rupert was the nephew of King Charles I of England, who made him Duke of Cumberland and Earl of Holderness, and the first cousin of King Charles II of England. His sister Electress Sophia was the mother of George I of Great Britain.Prince Rupert had a varied career. He was a soldier from a young age, fighting against Spain in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), and against the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany during the Thirty Years' War (1618–48). Aged 23, he was appointed commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War (1642–46), becoming the archetypal Cavalier of the war and ultimately the senior Royalist general. He surrendered after the fall of Bristol and was banished from England. He served under Louis XIV of France against Spain, and then as a Royalist privateer in the Caribbean. Following the Restoration, Rupert returned to England, becoming a senior British naval commander during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch wars, engaging in scientific invention, art, and serving as the first Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rupert died in England in 1682, aged 62.Rupert is considered to have been a quick-thinking and energetic cavalry general, but ultimately undermined by his youthful impatience in dealing with his peers during the Civil War. In the Interregnum, Rupert continued the conflict against Parliament by sea from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, showing considerable persistence in the face of adversity. As the head of the Royal Navy in his later years, he showed greater maturity and made impressive and long-lasting contributions to the Royal Navy's doctrine and development. As a colonial governor, Rupert shaped the political geography of modern Canada—Rupert's Land was named in his honour—and he played a role in the early African slave trade. Rupert's varied and numerous scientific and administrative interests combined with his considerable artistic skills made him one of the more colourful individuals of the Restoration period.
Source: dbpedia


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Welcome to the Ruby community in Stockholm. This group is open to any and all who have an interest in the Ruby programming language, and want be part of the Stockholm community around our favourite language.
We have a long tradition of flat hierarchies, and have been organizing meetups for years without any sort of leadership. Pretty cool, actually, and we intend to keep that spirit alive.
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The user group belongs to you, dear Stockholm Rubyist. Participate and organize events. We're here to help.
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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — NFL rookies are ditching their textbooks for playbooks and getting their first taste of what it'll be like playing for paychecks instead of school pride.
Twenty-three teams wrapped up their three-day rookie camps Sunday. The others held theirs last week.
Until now, football was their pastime; now it's their profession.
NFL teams give their draft picks and college free agents a head start before veterans return Monday for the start of "Phase 3" offseason workouts that feature OTAs, or "Organized Team Activities."
For players, it's their first chance to see what the pros are all about. Coaches get their first look at the new crop of college players their personnel departments have studied for months.
As Denver defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio said, "It's like opening a present at Christmas time."
With draft parties already a hazy memory, rookies arrived at their new jobs for physicals and fittings. They picked their jersey numbers and lockers before gathering for introductions and admonitions about such things as the pitfalls of social media and hangers-on dragging them down.
They toured team headquarters, checked out weight rooms and some even signed their first contracts.
"I was like a little kid. As soon as I put the jersey on, the shorts, the cleats, I wanted to take all types of pictures and send them to my friends," said Broncos running back Montee Ball, who starred at Wisconsin. "But it's all about business."
The actual practices and position drills were what the weekend was mostly about.
"You can't really get ahead of yourself or let the expectations get to you or the pressure get to you," said Kansas City Chiefs tackle Eric Fisher. "It's good being here finally."
For some, such as Manti Te'o, this weekend was all about a fresh start.
"I'm here to play football," Te'o said after practicing for the first time with the San Diego Chargers, determined to push his infamous girlfriend hoax and his lackluster national championship play into the rearview mirror. "I'm not focusing on what is going on on the outside. I'm worried about what we're doing here in San Diego and I'm looking forward to when the veterans come in on Monday."
Whether they were the league's No. 1 overall pick like Fisher or a long shot like Chiefs tight end Demetrius Harris, a basketball star at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which doesn't even field a football team, they're all in the same boat: NFL novices hoping to prove or disprove personnel people's notions about them.
"I've had to relearn everything," said Harris. "In high school we had basic stuff. This is all new."
To some degree, it's unfamiliar to everyone, even to those who played at big-time college football programs.
"It's been a mental beat down," said Denver Broncos tackle Vinston Painter, a sixth-round draft pick out of Virginia Tech. "But at the same time we just have to stay composed and listen to what Coach is saying and learn from your mistakes every day. There's always something that can be fixed. It's a nice-sized learning curve, but I feel like I'm handling it pretty well."
Going from college to the NFL is akin to jumping from high school to college, only "it's more intensified," said Broncos wide receiver Tavarres King, a fifth-round pick from Georgia. "It's kind of like you have to be perfect out there."
Their every move is monitored in one way or another.
"They're probably a little more under the microscope than maybe they were in their colleges," Broncos coach John Fox said. "You just try to educate them and bring them up to speed as fast as possible. You're going to have some mishaps, you're going to have some bumps.
"The disadvantage they have is that they might be competing against guys that have been doing this for four or five years. So, it's hard to play fast when you're thinking and you don't know what you're doing," Fox said. "So this is a great opportunity, even though it's a short opportunity. We bombard them pretty hard in each meeting."
The weekend was beneficial even to a guy like Lerenetee McCray, a linebacker from Florida who went undrafted after tearing his left rotator cuff last fall and who won't be able to participate in team drills until next month.
"It definitely taught me some of their system, how the coaches operate, how they're going to coach me in some of the stuff that we're going to do once camp comes," McCray said Sunday. "I'm behind the guys who have been practicing and the veterans, but I'm definitely ahead of where I was four days ago."
Coaches appreciate the rookie weekend, too. It's their first chance to see how well their offseason wish lists were fulfilled. Sometimes, they have to, as Fox says, use the reins instead of the spurs to slow down the greenhorns.
"Yeah, a little bit. But it's kind of neat. That's the fun part. They're excited," Fox said. "You know, they've waited their whole lives for this. So, it's a great privilege and really a great accomplishment to have a seat in one of those rooms."
It's also the first chance for coaches to get back outside and do what they do best.
"I think any coach worth their weight likes to be on the grass, and on the field coaching," Fox said. "It's the fun part of coaching. That's really why most of us do it. There's no doubt it's an excitement level, even though it's just the rookies, at this point. To be on the field with them is great."
Welcome to the NFL: Rookies get first taste of the league
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — NFL rookies are ditching their textbooks for playbooks and getting their first taste of what it'll be like playing for paychecks instead of school pride.