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je ne sais quoi: French, noun phrase: An indefinable quality, something indescribable or inexpressible
Recently, I conducted an experiment to improve the selection odds of clients through the job interview process. What I found in many cases that involved my clients going through a series of long, rigorous interviews at almost all levels of screening was that they were assured of their selection, only to be rejected in a single round of a final interview, typically involving the CEO or someone with a veto power. In such cases everyone involved, including the hiring manager, starting with the recruiter, were convinced that my client was a shoo-in and the final round with the head honcho was a mere formality. What I found was, quite to the surprise of all involved, my client did not receive the offer they were expecting, with little or no insight as to what happened in such a peremptory rejection.
I started this experiment about a month or so ago and of the four candidate clients that were the use cases for this idea, three, who were going to be rejected in the final round, were turned around each getting an offer, and the fourth one is pending as of this writing.
The experiment comprised of handling the selection process with a slightly different strategy. The strategy was to develop one or more champion(s) during the selection process starting with your immediate hiring manager. To win someone as your ally early in the process requires diligent preparation, near-flawless interviewing skills, ongoing follow-up, and building strong relationships with everyone in the interview chain, especially with those whom you want as your champions. Once you have this champion allied with you after you win their trust they will often coach you to further navigate through the interview process. They will tell you about the people you are going to meet during your subsequent interview rounds and how you can win their nods, which will take you to the next stop.
If you have come this far with someone giving you advice on how to ace the ratcheting rounds of interviews you can be sure that you have someone, who wants you to get the offer and join their team. In cases where you clear all the serious interview rounds and are told that there is yet one more final round with veto power (although no one will say that, but depending on who that one interviewer is you can infer this on your own) you need to get coached by your champion(s) so that you have the best chance of presenting yourself to this majordomo!
However, this does not mean that your winning answers are what this person is now looking for. On the contrary, they are looking for some mysterious je ne sais quoi that only that person has any calibration on. So, the best strategy you can use in this last round is to leverage all the tips your champions provided to you to ace this final round and just act normal without trying too hard to deal with the indefinable. If you go on that route to second-guess what that might be youll lose because it will show how you come across with your ersatz charms and you will vitiate your own purpose to get the final offer. Being aware of this is critical. With this in mind you have now completed your veto round with the head honcho. If you are concerned about knowing exactly what your je ne sais quoi is that they are looking for, dont worry; youll soon find out!
When your champion loops back with this head honcho with their veto power they will hear the reason why they have decided to pass on you. Because your champion has already a vested interest in protecting their desire to hire you they will dig deeper into the reason with the big boss to find out where you came up short. It is in this discussion that your champion will uncover your je ne sais quoi that the big boss was searching for.
Let me now tell you about the four cases, each one looking for that je ne sais quoi and how we overcame the objection the big boss raised, by claiming it:
Case 1: As a VP-E candidate, my client brought every attribute the hiring manager, founder (CTO) was looking for. After my client received tips from the CTO, the veto interview with the CEO went well and was about one hour. The CEO decided that my client was not aggressive enough to deal with the fractious team he was inheriting and did not have the minatory demeanor he was looking for to hold the team accountable for the slipping milestones. He told that to the hiring manager.
So, when the hiring manager called my client telling him that the CEO wants to look for another candidate who is more aggressive and mean looking, we decided to send a Thank-you note to the CTO acknowledging how he (my client) may come across as a nice guy, but also describing instances from his immediate past where he had whipped his team into shape, including firing some under performers, who were not strong team players. When the CTO saw that Thank-you note, cleverly written do showcase what they CEO felt was missing, he realized that CEO was merely judging the book by its cover. After seeing that Thank-you note the CEO changed his mind and my client got the offer the next day.
Case 2: As an SVP candidate my client had gone through five rounds of interviews with various high-level executives at a large conglomerate. His hiring manager was an EVP reporting to the CEO who had championed my client all through these five interview rounds. He was sure that the CEO would be a mere courtesy stop to get his blessing for this hire. Once again, the CEO interview was about one hour and he was looking for that je ne sais quoi to qualify my client. After that interview my client got a call from his hiring manager, EVP, and told him that the CEO felt that my client lacked the spark he was looking for to galvanize the global team, which was mostly comprised of Gen-Y and Millennials. My client was in his mid 40s. The EVP felt that this was going to be a deal breaker.
Once we knew what the CEO felt was missing in my clients attributes we wrote a detailed Thank-you note to the EVP (with the full expectation that he would pass that on to the CEO!), cleverly showcasing my clients team, which comprised of all those age groups and how he had inspired them to deliver some awesome products during his previous stints. Sure enough, that note got passed on to the CEO and he changed his mind. My client got that offer he was expecting within the next few days.
Case 3: Lead Architect: In this case my client was interviewed for a Lead Architect role at a fast-growing software product company. She had gone through four different rounds involving both technical and management interviews and was considered a shoo-in for the role. Here, too, before the offer stage my clients hiring manager called for one last round with the SVP and told her how to deal with any objections the SVP may present. So, my client prepared for that veto interview with all those inputs and felt that she did great with the SVP throughout that interview.
Once again, the hiring manager, who had championed my client called and apologized for the SVPs decision to continue looking. When pressed for more details the hiring manager told her that the SVP felt that they needed a person who was more of a manager than a nerdy architect, someone who could build a collaborative ethos across the growing organization and who could act more like a leader than as code pusher. The hiring manager told my client that although everyone loved her except the SVP, but for that attribute, she was sure that the deal was off!
Taking that input we wrote yet another Thank-you note to the hiring manager clearly showcasing how my client had worked in the previous roles to build cohesive teams across the companies and how she had led initiatives that went beyond her exceptional architectural abilities. Here, too, that note got passed on to the SVP and they decided to move forward with hiring my client in a few days.
Case 4: In this case my client was a Biz-Dev leader in large companies where he had opened up new alliances that were breakthroughs in that ecosystem. Here, too, he went through many rounds, with his immediate hiring manager becoming his champion. When the final veto round came with the CEO my client felt that he had done well, but the hiring manager came back with the show-stopper that surprised my client: He had no start-up experience!
Here, again, in our Thank-you note we responded how my client had built these entrepreneurial teams in large companies, where he had worked and how he had created that start-up ethos to get things done despite the prevailing bureaucracy. This is the response that is still pending as it just was presented a few days back. We are awaiting their final decision.
Although this idea of claiming your je ne sais quoi by waiting till the veto round is in its early stages the successes so far have been encouraging. Most candidates merely take the veto input and move on, disappointed. The main challenge here is framing that Thank-you note in a subtle yet forceful way to not betray your champions confidences and positioning it in a way that it would be presented to the veto authority! It is tricky but doable as you can see here.
Good luck!
|About Author
Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn's #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip's professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation.
After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master's in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California's Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control.
During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip's third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership.
Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life.
Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip's focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions.
Dilip's central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand.
Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who's Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.
Website: https://dilipsaraf.com/job-search-claiming-your-je-ne-sais-quoi/
Disclaimer: Please use this channel at your own discretion. These articles are contributed by our users. We are not responsible or liable for any problems related to the utilization of information of these articles.


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Tabatinga or Leticia to Manaus in Slow Boat or Plane Information
Manaus is a humongous, concrete and modern city comparing to Leticia or Iquitos. It has nearly 1.7 million inhabitant and is the capital city of the state of Amazonas in northern Brazil. Manaus is a monster comparing to Leticia...
- Posted April 30, 2014

subset: commoncrawl


text:
1. scream - noun
· sharp piercing cry; "her screaming attracted the neighbors"
Synonym(s): screaming, shriek, shrieking, screech, screeching
Hypernym(s): cry, outcry, call, yell, shout, vociferation
2. scream - noun
· a high-pitched noise resembling a human cry; "he ducked at the screechings of shells"; "he heard the scream of the brakes"
Synonym(s): screech, screeching, shriek, shrieking, screaming
Hypernym(s): noise
3. scream - noun
· a joke that seems extremely funny
Synonym(s): belly_laugh, sidesplitter, howler, thigh-slapper, wow, riot
Hypernym(s): joke, gag, laugh, jest, jape
4. scream - verb
· utter a sudden loud cry; "she cried with pain when the doctor inserted the needle"; "I yelled to her from the window but she couldn't hear me"
Synonym(s): shout, shout_out, cry, call, yell, holler, hollo, squall
Hypernym(s): utter, emit, let_out, let_loose
5. scream - verb
· utter or declare in a very loud voice; "You don't have to yell--I can hear you just fine"
Synonym(s): yell
Hypernym(s): shout
6. scream - verb
· make a loud, piercing sound; "Fighter planes are screaming through the skies"
Hypernym(s): make_noise, resound, noise
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text:
Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology
Professors: John
L. Worrall (Program Head),
Bruce Jacobs, James Marquart
Associate Professors: Denise Boots, Thomislav Kovandzic, Lynne Vieraitis (Graduate Director)
Assistant Professors: J.C. Barnes, Robert Morris
Clinical Professor: Elmer Polk
Clinical Assistant Professors: Timothy Bray, Sarah Maxwell
The Mission of the Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas is threefold in nature, in order to:
1. Deliver high-quality education to a diverse body of graduate students regarding the etiology, control, and variation of law-breaking across space and time.
2. Serve local, regional, and national communities through professional development programs, public policy analyses, evaluation research, program and policy design, and a forum for new approaches to the study of crime.
3. Advance the understanding of criminology through a multidisciplinary mix of theoretical and applied research.
The doctoral program in Criminology is an interdisciplinary, research-oriented degree offered in conjunction with other graduate programs in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at UT Dallas. The objective of the Ph.D. program is to provide students a coherent, yet intellectually challenging degree that adequately prepares them to conduct research among the many aspects of criminology and criminal justice, varying with individual interests and areas of specialty. Graduates of the Ph.D. program will be qualified to teach at the University level as professors. Graduates will also be competent to enter into analytic and administrative posts within the vast array of research and policy institutions, criminal justice organizations, and in the private sector.
Students have access to the computing facilities in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences (EPPS) in two computing laboratories which equipped with major social science software packages, including E-Views, R, Rats, PASW, STATA, Lexis/Nexis database, and Westlaw for student use. The University's Computing Center provides personal computers and UNIX Workstations. Data and reference materials are also available online via the library and UTD's memberships in numerous organizations.
Graduate Assistantships
Criminology Program Funding is limited primarily to doctoral students, with limited opportunities others. Students should note their desire to be considered for graduate student funding as a teaching or research assistant in their letter of intent to the program at the time of. For more specific information, please see our Criminology Graduate Program Handbook located on our website at http://epps.utdallas.edu/crim/ .
Application and Admission Requirements
The PhD Program in Criminology seeks applicants from a baccalaureate or Masters in Criminology, Sociology, or a relevant discipline. A 3.2 GPA and a GRE score of 1,000 are desirable, but students may be admitted at the program's discretion. All transcripts must be submitted, along with three letters of recommendation (preferably academic) and a one-page essay describing their background, education, and professional objectives. For more information please see our Graduate Handbook on our website.
Degree Requirements
On admission to the Ph.D. in Criminology Program, a student must complete a 90 semester credit hours across three tiers of graduate coursework. Additionally, students must fulfill other requirements including comprehensive exams, and two writing requirements as follows:
• Coursework: 75 credit hours of graduate study (minus transferred or masters hours)
• Analytical Paper Writing Requirement
• Comprehensive Examination
• Doctoral Dissertation
A grade of "C+" or worse in any graduate class requires that the class be retaken with only one retake allowed per course. If the retake results in a final grade of "C+" or worse, the student will be dropped from the program. In addition, all students must meet the University's minimum required GPA of 3.0 or higher. See our Criminology Graduate Program Handbook located on our website for more specific requirements.
Semester Credit Hour Requirements
Coursework Tiers and Credit Hours
Tier I
Required Criminology Core Classes: 15 hours
Electives: 15 hours (9 hours in Criminology/6 graduate hours taken in any other subject)
Writing Requirement for Analytical Paper: 6 hours
Total Tier I Hours: 36
Tier II
Required Criminology Core Classes: 12 hours
Required Additional EPPS Methods/Stats Classes: 6 hours
Criminology Electives: 6 hours
Open Electives (in Criminology or any other program/college): 6 hours
Total Tier II Hours: 30
Tier III
Dissertation/Three-Paper Option Research (minimum of 9 hours)
Total Tier III Hours: 9
Total Program Hours: 75 total credit hours minimum beyond BA/BS
27 Hours Core Criminology Courses
6 Hours Analytical Writing
6 Hours Additional EPPS Methods/Stats Classes
15 Hours Criminology Electives
12 Hours Open Electives (any program/college)
9 Hours Dissertation
75 Hours TOTAL
Core Courses
EPPS 6310 Research Design I
CRIM 6300 Proseminar in Criminology
CRIM 6303 Etiology of Crime and Criminality
CRIM 6307 Extent of Crime and Measurement in Criminology
CRIM 6311 Crime and Justice Policy
EPPS 6313 (Intro to Quantitative Methods) or 7316 (Regression and Multivariate Analysis)
CRIM 7300 Advances in Criminology Theory
CRIM 7301 Seminar in Criminology Research
CRIM 6V98 (Analytical Writing) or CRIM 6V96 (Thesis Writing Research) (6 hours)
CRIM 8V99 Dissertation (18 hours)
Criminology Electives
6305 Law and Social Control
CRIM 6308 Victimology
CRIM 6309 Communities and Crime
CRIM 6310 Delinquency and Juvenile Justice
CRIM 6313 Corrections
CRIM 6314 Policing
CRIM 6315 Violent Crime
CRIM 6317 Courts
CRIM 6322 Crime Prevention
CRIM 6323 Violence and Gun Control
CRIM 6324 Correlates of Crime and Justice
CRIM 6332 GIS Applications in Criminology
CRIM 6348 Drugs & Crime
CRIM 7342 Qualitative Criminology
CRIM 7351 Advanced Criminological Theory
CRIM 7381 Special Topics in Criminology
CRIM 8V01 Independent Study in Criminology
Sample of Additional Methods/Stats Classes
EPPS 6342 Research Design II
EPPS 6346 Qualitative Research Methods
EPPS 6352 Evaluation Research Methods
EPPS 7318 Structural Equation and Multilevel (Hierarchical) Modeling
EPPS 7344 Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables
EPPS 7368 Spatial Epidemiology
EPPS 7370 Time Series Analysis
EPPS 7370 Applied Multivariate Analysis
EPPS 7386 Survey Research


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We Chat With: Einat Admony of Balaboosta
"I feel like it's very hard to limit myself to Israeli food. This is where I play."
Chef Einat Admony of Balaboosta is both a creative, passionate chef and a nurturer by nature who wants family and customers alike to eat often and well. Her dishes tease with familiarity—hummus, pizza, olives, burrata cheese—but then take off in wild and unexpected directions in both flavor and presentation. As Admony speaks about food, you can tell she really loves eating it.
Your menu is interesting because the roots seem Israeli, but with Mediterranean ingredients from beyond. How do you define your cuisine? I don't call this restaurant Middle Eastern. I call it Mediterranean, because in each dish I take from different cultures. But there is always something to bring it back to my roots.
How did you figure out that those cuisines—pan-Mediterranean and Israeli in particular—work so well together? Experience. And experimentation.
Was there a first dish that opened your eyes to that connection? No, but I traveled most of my life. I'm like a gypsy; I barely lived in Israel. I get a lot of inspiration from my travels. I feel like it's very hard to limit myself to Israeli food. This is where I play.
What goes through your mind when starting a dish from scratch? It's very important to me to have crunch and texture at the beginning, and then end with balance. I have to be sure that I'm not flying away with getting out of the borders of what I told myself this restaurant is going to represent.
What are those borders? I really believe that what I do the best is my comfort food. But I don't want to limit myself too much. So it's tricky—how do I exactly define my cuisine? Yes, it's Israeli in its roots and soul, but with other influences and other touches. The way I want to eat, health-wise or taste-wise, is the way I want my customers to eat.
So let's go back to those roots; where did this all start? My mom and my aunt. I've cooked since I was five. My mom is a religious Jew, and on Fridays before Shabbat I was her sous chef. That was my role as early as I can remember. I used to do all the small things: cleaning and opening beans, picking through four pounds of rice. She's Iranian, and slowly I started learning this beautiful and very rich cuisine. I learned very young.
Was there a time you remember when you chose or just accepted that this was what you were going to do as a career? When I was around 23 and living Germany, I was at a cross-roads where I said, "what do I really want to do?" And the answer came naturally. Because wherever I went I became "the cook." It's just what I was; at every house I visited the first thing I did was look to see what I could cook with for people. So I knew I'd never get tired of it.
Along those lines, you often throw extravagant Jewish holiday meals here and then go home and host 30-40 people. What do you get to do differently at home? Things that don't look good, which are all family-style. Even if it's a few courses it's going to be family-style at a long table–more or less a lot of food and a million salads.
Do you still find comfort cooking at home? Yeah. My husband used to come home from work at 2 a.m. when I was sleeping and I'd jump up—BANG!—and start cooking. Fridays I take off work, wake up late and start to cook for family and friends from about ten or eleven until about five o'clock. I love it.
The influence of Israeli chefs has grown the past couple of years. Where do you see the state of food rooted in Israel right now in New York? Do you see our knowledge growing? I call it "New Israeli" cuisine. It's a little bit like what I do. But I think mine is a little bit more specific.
Do you see us moving in the right direction? I like what is happening because it's making people understand more what Israeli food is; people always thought of Israeli food as Jewish food and Jewish food as matzo balls, and that's the worst! They make fun of that food in Israel! Israeli food has so many colors and cultures—people came there from all over. And people in the United States don't know much about that. So in Israel people try to cherish that and not lose that.
So what are some staples we're still missing? A lot of great fish that people don't do the same, a lot of Iraqi food, Jewish Yemenite cuisine, all the soups. I do something here that's very tricky so people don't do it any more: a kibbe soup wrapped with semolina and bulgur, beef inside, and in a broth kind of like borscht but warm, sweet, and sour. Ahhh! I'm going to make it once for you. It's great. I'm putting all of these kinds of recipes in my book so people don't forget. A lot of the recipes are complicated, but I don't care. This is the kind of cuisine I miss that you can find anywhere in Israel.
When you showed us how to make gondi, you told us that you consider yourself almost a "feminist chef" in a way: what did you mean by that? I see a lot of men working here. Yes, but I've also been in a kitchen just with women. I get a lot of questions about how it is to be a woman in this industry. I can tell you most of the places I've worked at, the first position they put me at is garde manger—not the meat station, even though I had the experience. In the beginning that would make me angry.
But I realized I was strong and pushy enough. So in two weeks I would go to the chef and say, "look, you know I'm good. You see my food is fast and perfect. I'm loyal. I am moral. I come early to work, I come on my day off to learn." Then I would move to any station I wanted. So as a woman they would treat me a little bit differently until they realized I could kick ass. I like to work with women—I love it. There's something different about it when there are women working in the kitchen.
Like what? Attention to detail. A study. A better end. I never get jealous of another woman. I appreciate them. It's nice.
Thank you, that's all I've got for questions. Good. Let me get you food.
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text:
Holy Grail could be in Kilwinning
KILWINNING could rival Rosslyn Chapel as a major tourist attraction in the wake of claims it is the final resting place of the Holy Grail.
The Irvine Herald can reveal an historic archaeological dig is to take place in the town's Abbey grounds.
The project is to be carried out by Irvine Bay Regeneration after actor turned historian, Jamie Morton, a recognised expert on Freemasonry, revealed the artefact used by Christ at The Last Supper could have been hidden in the town by the Knights Templar.
He based his theory on historical documents he has uncovered and the town's close connections with The Masonic Order.
Mr Morton has compiled the evidence in his latest book, the foreword of which is being written by members of The Mother Lodge in Kilwinning. The 29-year-old author said: "Historians have been searching for a Templar haven where the members sheltered after their downfall.
"Several places have been pinpointed but all of them are false, I have found that Kilwinning and nearby Irvine had the highest concentration of Templar Knights in Scotland.
"The Templars were Europe's bankers and when they were destroyed, none of the material was returned, it disappeared, so it is possible that it is in Kilwinning or Irvine."
One leading member of the Lodge said he hoped the findings would bring the importance of Kilwinning to Freemasonry to the rest of the world.
He said: "It's great for the town and while I can't claim to be an authority on the topic of the Holy Grail, it certainly has shown just how important Freemasonry is to the world.
"I am interested to know what lies beneath this street as there are wells underneath the surface, who knows what's buried there?"
Jim Miller, spokesman for the ancient Abbey Tower, welcomed the findings.
"It's great news for the town as people will be coming from all over to find out more about Kilwinning's connection to the Holy Grail.
"We have a number of artefacts in the Tower but I'm afraid I don't know the whereabouts of this particular cup.
"I know there are people who follow the Grail Trail and travel all over the world, you just have to appreciate how popular Rosslyn Chapel became following the Da Vinci Code claims so we should be expecting a lot more people in the town."
Kilwinning is thought to be the resting place of the Holy Grail after information was found to suggest The Templars had a major presence in the town.
And he rubbished the claim that Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, was where the Grail was hidden.
"There were no Templars in Rosslyn as the building was constructed after the Templars were destroyed, while Kilwinning Abbey was built shortly after the Templars were created – Rosslyn Chapel is an enigma, a beautiful building but nothing to do with the Templars."
Rosslyn Chapel was saved from certain closure as its visitors shot up from 30,000 to over 120,000 a year with the release of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code book and subsequent Hollywood film starring Tom Hanks.
Now, the search is on as Holy Grail trailers who travel the world looking for evidence about the cup – said to have mystical powers – are expected to invade Kilwinning on the hunt for the Holy Grail.
Hot spots where it could be include:
l The Mercat Cross outside the original Mason's Howff in the Main Street. It is said in Kilwinning folklore that the cross is believed by some to have been part of the original wooden cross on which Jesus was crucified.
l The Abbey Church grounds. The Tower already has a feasibility study for an archaeological dig approved and Irvine Bay Regeneration have also talked of making the town an open dig to draw tourists.
l The Mother Lodge – the new lodge was built next to the Abbey Church and Tower, could this be standing on top of the Holy Grail?
l The Main Street itself – it has already been the subject of an archaeological dig by Irvine Development Corporation. Could it be hiding the Christian chalice?
If Mr Morton's theory is proved, Kilwinning could hold the keystone to re-writing history and give the Main Street a boost with the tourist trade.
by Lorraine Howard, Irvine Herald


text:
I made this very simple program as a test to experiment with animation. I have successfully animated the circle yes, but it leaves a black trail for every iteration of the circle.
How do I "undraw" the circle for every iteration so that visually it appears as just a circle moving with no trail? Do I use the repaint method? I have inserted repaint into the code, but it didn't work... Here's my code:
import java.awt.*; import jpb.*; public class moveCircle { public static void main(String[] args) throws java.lang.InterruptedException { // window is created DrawableFrame window = new DrawableFrame("Check out the moving circle, yeah"); window.show(); window.setSize(1010, 700); Graphics g = window.getGraphicsContext(); // graphics allowed within window // circle is created int xCoordinate = 795; while(true) { Thread.sleep(10); xCoordinate++; if(xCoordinate > 1010) xCoordinate = -75; g.setColor(Color.lightGray); g.fillOval(xCoordinate, 295, 60, 60); g.setColor(Color.black); g.drawOval(xCoordinate, 295, 60, 60); window.repaint(); } } }


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Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is a bit like Eat, Pray, Love with blisters and body odor—only Strayed's account reads more like the story of a real adventure and less like a clever marketing ploy. The author's life doesn't so much fall apart as she torpedoes it—the unexpected death of her mother scatters her small family and sends Strayed out exploring one-night stands, casual hook-ups and drugs until her marriage collapses under the strain. A spontaneous decision, at age 26, to hike the length of the Pacific Crest Trail up the mountain spines of California to Oregon—Mojave Desert to Portland—launches her on a different kind of quest, one to salvage and make sense of her life.
An inexperienced hiker, ill-prepared, with the wrong size boots, a pack that weighs almost as much as she does, no money and some pie-eyed idea of what it means to confront nature on its own terms is a poor risk for a rough trail with few amenities. Strayed encounters bears, rattlesnakes, kind and creepy strangers, impassable high-mountain snow, blazing heat, constant hunger, thirst, missing supply packs, relentless pain, unbroken solitude and killer views for eleven hundred miles. She wrestles with a sense of loss so profound it possesses her like a shade and uses the daily severity of the challenge to scour her soul.
It takes most of the trail to exorcise her demons. We learn about her impoverished and itinerate childhood, the mother who spun a strong web of safety around her three children, the father who abused and abandoned them. She goes into excruciating detail about her mother's death from cancer and her profound inability to deal with it. A hardscrabble life gave her some attitudes useful for coping with deprivation but few skills for months of solo hiking.
I found Strayed's lack of sound planning and ridiculous amount of gear exasperating but her seduction by the solitude and her surroundings convincing. She survived with nothing more serious happening than the loss of a few toenails and that is down to luck as much as optimism. At times, the powerful lure of her single preoccupation, uninterrupted by the normal cares of daily living and uncontaminated by too much civilization, inspires pure envy. But walking on battered feet with a too-heavy pack day after day is just walking. It's mile after boring mile as a journal entry. If you aren't attacked by a flash flood or a rare albino tiger, your story doesn't offer up a whole lot of excitement.
To Strayed's credit, and doubtless with some help from good editing, the adventure keeps up a decent pace and there are peaks to offset inevitable slumps in narrative. Wild is flying off the shelves and getting a lot of attention so the reading public must be starved for pursuits out of the ordinary. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is an adventure that encompasses a lot of dull hours and some degree of privation. It's an odd kind of self-help program although not really all that wild. But I thought it was an okay book and it will likely make a decent movie—even if the hiker never quite reaches the status of heroine as she slogs along with a condom and some 2nd Skin blister pads in her first aid kit and a giant orange whistle to scare away bogeymen and bears.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail Cheryl Strayed | Alfred A. Knopf 2012


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Tim Tebow, Richard Petty restore NFL star's college car
Tim Tebow has hired a pretty famous person to restore his old college car—The King, Richard Petty.
So the New York Jets quarterback and the NASCAR legend are now partners of sorts.
PHOTO GALLERIES: NFL Wives and Girlfriends | NASCAR Wives and Girlfriends
Soon after Tebow was selected 25th in the 2010 NFL draft, he didn't need his 1995 Ford Thunderbird anymore. So he parked it at his parents' house in Florida and left it there untouched for three years.
MORE: Tebow, girlfriend split | Petty likes a good brawl | Trevor Bayne relates to Tebow
Tebow, who starred at the University of Florida, recently decided that he should get rid of the car so he wondered if his charitable foundation could use it. The foundation decided that it could—not for transportation, but as a fundraiser.
There was only one problem—the car wouldn't even run.
Tebow's car likely could attract a high price from a passionate University of Florida fan, even in shoddy condition. But it likely would bring much more for his foundation if it were restored.
Enter a man who knows something about building and rebuilding cars—NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty.
While Petty's old Petty Enterprises team is no longer operational—Petty now co-owns Richard Petty Motorsports—the team's famous shop in Level Cross, N.C., still exists, with 15-20 cars being restored at any one time at Petty's Garage.
Tebow's foundation knew Petty's people from previously working together. And Tebow, having grown up in Florida, obviously is familiar with stock-car racing. Petty knows a thing or two about college football as well and has been making suggestions on things to do with the car. His employees are one month into the two-month project of refurbishing it.
"This is a '95 Thunderbird that (eventually will have) went from rusty and covered in cat prints to an amazing machine because of Petty's Garage,†said Tim Tebow Foundation Executive Director Erik Dellenback. "The car isn't real special but it will be soon. Timmy knows very well who Richard is. He's a big fan.â€
The restored car likely will be unveiled at Daytona International Speedway during Speedweeks and shown at various Tebow foundation events before being auctioned off at the end of the year. A car such as this one, designed for charity, could go for well into six figures at a car auction such as the Barrett-Jackson.
Tebow will pay for the restoration—"they are giving us a phenomenal deal in the car,†Dellenback said about the Petty partnership—and his foundation tentatively plans to use the proceeds for its work in the Philippines, where it supports an orphanage and is building a hospital.
"We're excited because obviously the legendary status of Richard Petty is a great tie to us,†Dellenback said. "Originally our goal was just to auction it off and as we started seeing what this was going to look like and the interest of people wanting to see it, we decided to use it for a year on promotional tour. … The dollars we can raise off that could literally affect thousands of children.â€
Petty's Garage also plans to use the car as part of a mobile tour of rebuilt performance cars.
"Hopefully when we're done, Tim and his folks will be proud of it and can use it for their charity events,†Petty said. "I know we're going to use it for some of our Petty's Garage mobile tour and that will be a good piece for us to show off.
"We've been talking with Tim and his foundation folks for a while now and things have come together for us to do this. It's been good for everyone and I think we'll all get something good out of it.â€
The car, which had around 80,000 miles on it, will take about 800 manhours to rebuild. It was gutted and will have a new 5.0-liter Coyote Ford engine (500 horsepower) with automatic transmission. It will have new front and rear suspension with big brakes to make it a high-performance vehicle. It will have new custom seats.
The shifter from the old car and parts of the car's body will be used as part of the rebuild.
When the foundation and the Petty people picked up the car, it still had music CDs in it as well as the air freshener that people might recognize from an ESPN documentary just prior to the draft where Tebow is shown driving the car. The car had cobwebs in it and lots of notes—from phone numbers of scouts to notes likely just left on Tebow's car while on the Florida campus.
"It was not your typical college football player's car by no means,†Petty's Garage CEO Jeff Whaley said. "We found a list (of numbers) of when he was being courted to go to school, but there were no beer can lids, no cigarette ashes.â€
Tebow's people believe the car will be a hit.
"This is a one-off—Tim Tebow is one of the hottest commodities going right now and to have him and Richard, if both of them were standing there at Barrett-Jackson (auction) and you had the right Florida Gator fan or Tebow fan or Richard Petty fan, there's no telling what this vehicle would bring in,†Whaley said.
"It was truly his college car. How can you say that about anything else?â€


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Our Work
Public procurement
Free Software is a perfect fit for the public sector. It is a public resource that government organisations can use, study, improve, and share with each other. For citizens, this means transparency, cost efficiency, and the freedom to interact with their government in the way that suits them best.
But not all government institutions are taking advantage of Free Software. In consequence, public funds are being wasted, and programs that should be free are being locked away. This also makes life hard for the Free Software-based companies who employ people in Europe, and pay their taxes here.
FSFE explains the problem
Procurement is a field for specialists. Many procurement officials are still not fully aware of Free Software. Combined with inertia in public sector IT departments, this means that too many public bodies never look beyond their long-standing relations with suppliers of non-free software.
At FSFE, we work with journalists and researchers to highlight the work of public sector organisations that are doing it right. When a public body makes mistakes, we help them to correct them. And when necessary, we put pressure on organisations that insist on harmful ways of purchasing software.
Why procurement matters
Public procurement spending equals nearly 20% of the EU's GDP 1. The public sector's procurement choices have very real effects on the economy, and play a significant role in determining the sort of firms that thrive in the market. Even with current procurement practices, Free Software already delivers very significant benefits for the European economy. Daffara (2012) estimates that Europeans enjoy 114 billion EUR per year in direct cost savings thanks to Free Software2.Anecdotal evidence points in the same direction. Many public adminstrations that begin using Free Software see their IT costs drop by 50-90%.
The public sector's buying decisions also has a significant influence on the development of a healthy supplier ecosystem for Free Software products and services. With more government institutions as their customers, many such companies could thrive more quickly, and there would be more and better Free Software programs available to the public.
FSFE speaks up when things go wrong...
In 2010, the European Commission made a glaring mistake. The Commission had issued numerous policy statements in favour of Free Software and Open Standards. But when it came to buying software and services for itself, it went straight to Microsoft and its resellers. Companies offering Free Software never had a chance, even though their products offered the same functionality.
We saw that the Commission had certainly breached the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. So we took them to task, generating lots of press coverage - right up to the New York Times.
We want the European Commission to procure the software products it needs in an open, competitive fashion, giving Free Software suppliers the same opportunities as it gives to proprietary vendors and their resellers.
We want the EC to take a long-term view of its IT strategy, realise the dangers of lock-in, and figure future exit costs into the price of any solution it acquires.
This is what the Commission owes to Europe's citizens. Sticking to the letter and spirit of European procurement law would be an excellent start.
…and offers independent solutions
Fortunately, most people are more open to progress than that. We help procurement officials understand the full impact of their actions, and we help them to do better -- not only for their organisations, but also for the citizens whom they serve.
At FSFE, we are in constant dialogues with procurement specialists across Europe. We observe new approaches, identify what works, and provide analysis to decision makers. We help specialists in different countries learn from each other.
To speed up change at the ground level, we also work with national governments to help them draft policies that promote Free Software adoption. In January 2014, Italy introduced a rule requiring public bodies to first evaluate Free Software before buying non-free solutions. FSFE's General Counsel Carlo Piana was part of the expert committee installed by the government to design this rule, alongside participants from all sectors of the software market.
This is the sort of change that FSFE helps to create. Please support us in this effort.
- Open Forum Europe (2013): OFE Procurement Monitoring Report 2012 , 2nd Snapshot, p. 2 ↩
- Carlo Dafarra (2012): Estimating the Economic Contribution of Open Source Software to the European Economy. In: Shane Coughlan (ed.)(2012): The First OpenForum Academy Conference Proceedings, pp. 11-14 ↩
All related news and events


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A thief with a sweet tooth got away with about 5,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in storage.
A thief with a sweet tooth got away with about 5,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in storage.
The Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office is investigating a cookie caper — the theft of about 450 cases of cookies from a warehouse belonging to Carey Moving & Storage of Spartanburg. The company has assisted with the storage and distribution of Girl Scout cookies in the area for 40 years said owner Brian Carey.
Carey said cookies began arriving at the warehouse on Feb. 15, and employees began doing an inventory on Tuesday and realized that cases of Thin Mints and Shortbreads were missing. The stolen cookies are valued at $18,900.
"We don't think it was a break in," Carey said. "The warehouse is very secure, with an alarm system and video (surveillance)."
Cookie sales won't be affected, as the missing sweets were extra inventory and the Girl Scouts won't be charged for them, Carey said.
"Someone who would do that to the Girl Scouts, it's very disheartening," Carey said. "I was very saddened. We've never had this issue before and our employees undergo background checks and drug tests. My great-grandfather started this company in 1907 and we don't want anything to tarnish our reputation or the Girl Scouts."
Susan Schneider, director of public relations and advocacy for Girl Scouts of SC — Mountains to Midlands, said the incident will not affect sales at cookie booths in coming weeks.
"We're still business as usual," Schneider said. "We have plenty of cookies."
Girl Scout Troop 1013 is planning "Cookie Palooza," a large public event Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Cowpens Town Hall. 5330 N. Main St. The family-friendly event will feature a cookie sales booth with a disc jockey and music, a cookie drive-thru and a goal of selling at least 100 boxes of cookies for soldiers overseas.
The Girl Scout Cookie Program generated $790 million in revenues last year. It is the largest girl-led business in the country. Cookies will be sold at local retail locations on weekends from now until March 18, according to a written statement from the organization.
Scout leaders say selling cookies has tremendous benefits for the scouts and their communities and teaches goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics.
Schneider said she is curious about whether someone plans to sell the stolen cookies and pocket the money, or if he or she just really likes Thin Mints or Shortbreads and will eat them all. She said Girl Scouts will be out in their uniforms or other identification selling cookies with at least one adult. Boxes cost $3.50. Some proceeds from cookie sales go back to each community through beautification and other community service projects by the Girl Scouts.
"I am disappointed that people with a sweet tooth would go to such lengths," Schneider said. "Not only are they short-changing the Girl Scouts, they're short-changing their community as well. I hope we'll find out what they were thinking and what they planned to do with them."
No suspects were listed on the incident report. The case remains under investigation and deputies are hopeful of catching a thief with his or her hand in the Thin Mints soon, possibly through surveillance footage from the warehouse that has been turned over to the sheriff's office.
"There is no new information, but our investigator has good information and he is feeling good about the direction the investigation is taking," Lt. Tony Ivey said Wednesday.
Anyone with information about the missing cookies may call CrimeStoppers at 1-888-CRIMESC.


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Civil Rights after September 11th
After the September 11th terrorist attacks, politicians responsible for security issues quickly agreed that the previous laws were not tough enough. In rapid succession they changed passport laws, scanned existing data banks and created new ones. In doing so, they blatantly violated data privacy laws—yet without repercussions. A commentary by Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti
New passport laws on both sides of the Atlantic now allow the introduction of biometric information in visas and passports in order to identify people by their fingerprints or faces. But at the same time, the efficacy of biometric systems of identification is still under question. Some systems have failure rates of up to 20 percent, and they are not immune to falsification. In 2002 a Japanese mathematician was able to fool eleven biometric fingerprint systems by using artificial fingers made of gummi-bear gelatine. With 23 percent humidity, the gelatine has similar physical properties to real fingers. With even more primitive tinkering, computer journalists were able to get around not only fingerprint systems, but also face identification and even iris scanning systems, which are considered very accurate. At the moment, the German government has scientists testing the feasibility of options for digital personal identification.
With its Germany-wide wanted-persons search, the German Federal Criminal Police Office has gathered approximately 20,000 data entries on alleged Islamic "sleepers." The aim of the wanted persons search was to identify more "sleepers" in order to prevent attacks. But the profiles on the wanted posters were of such poor quality that the data banks in universities, utility services and transportation services in effect were out to identify "all male Islamic students." The constitutional permissibility of the method used was never thoroughly reviewed—despite the fact that the only success thus far claimed by this method of apprehending terrorists was the arrest of the Red Army Faction terrorist Rolf Heissler in 1979. And again this time the nation-wide search did not lead to direct results. But nonetheless, in the European Council the Federal Minister of the Interior pushed for the introduction of the wanted persons search throughout Europe.
Central European data bank for "Islamic terrorism"
Another suggestion gained attention in the conservative camp after the terrorist attacks: The former president of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Eckhart Werthebach, called for a central data bank for "Islamic terrorism." The military counterintelligence agency (MAD), the Federal Border Control and the Customs Investigation Office were to contribute their data to this central file. Werthebach's idea found little resonance initially. However, the new Schengen Information System (SIS II), which has been in development since 2002, is intended to collect biometric data and compile new data banks. These data banks will contain information about "troublemakers" within the Schengen states who have been issued a travel ban based on certain occurrences, as well as information about visas for demonstrators from third countries, other travel bans and identified terrorists. SIS II will link up people with other data and thus will in principle allow for a Europe-wide wanted persons search.
But it is above all in the US where the idea has dominated that the terrorist attacks could have been prevented if it had been possible to "connect all the dots." The US government thus invested in the development of wide-ranging data banks which were to be evaluated through the process of data mining. Interesting data analyses are anticipated above all from communications data, which track who has faxed, telephoned or mailed with whom and who has visited which web-sites when. With the appropriate software, networks of relationships can be mapped. But this type of data collection only takes on meaning when many countries participate. Those sought may build up communication networks throughout many countries. These networks only become apparent when investigators have access to the provider data from each country potentially involved. At the request of the American president, the member states debated in the European Union the idea of storing communication data via Internet providers. But a new regulation has not yet been established because Germany has resisted the measure. At the UN summit meeting in December, this will likely be a concern raised by the US, which is pushing for a broad passage of the Council of Europe agreement on cyber crime. If passed, this regulation will mean that no one will be able to telephone or surf the Internet without potentially being observed.
EU security measures violate the law
The first application of a wide-ranging data bank in the US is a new control system for flight passengers. The data are allegedly able to recognise terrorists within five seconds on the basis of an analysis and a risk evaluation. Europeans will also be monitored with this system. Since March 2003, US border officials have access to the flight passenger data banks of European airlines. In addition to passengers' names, dates of birth, addresses and telephone numbers, information such as the name of those accompanying passengers as well as their travel agent and company are included in the data banks. Additional desired information includes billing addresses, email addresses and travel status. If passengers request Halal meals, this is also recorded in the system. The EU Commission agreed to allow access to this information because otherwise the US would have rescinded the airlines' landing rights. As data privacy experts have determined, these measures are against the law. The consequences? None so far.
The examples above show that since September 11th the basic right to information privacy as grounded in the German federal court ruling on the census in 1983 has been violated. In a democratic state, this is disturbing. Combating terrorism should not endanger the same principles that it is meant to protect.
Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti, Qantara.de;
translation from German: Christina M. White
© 2003 Qantara.de


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John Medlin, owner of Rockland Athletic Supplies on Union Street, started riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge three years ago to help out a friend with cancer.
John Medlin, owner of Rockland Athletic Supplies on Union Street, started riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge three years ago to help out a friend with cancer.
His friend, the late Jen Maher, was suffering from the disease and could not ride in the event – as she typically did with her husband, Mike – because she was too weak.
Jen asked Medlin if he would ride instead, and he said he would do it.
Jen died two years ago, but Medlin has continued to ride in the Pan-Mass Challenge. This will be his third one, which will take place Aug. 1 and 2.
The 12-member team he'll be riding with is named Jenstrong, in memory of his late friend. The team wears bracelets with Jenstrong written on it.
"I haven't been training like I did last year," Medlin said. "I'm really going to start pushing myself over the next month."
He said he plans on taking two or three shorter rides during the week while taking a 50-plus mile ride on the weekends. The week before the Pan-Mass Challenge, he will be taking a 75-mile practice ride."This is not a race, this is a ride," Medlin said.
Cyclists can choose from seven routes of varying mileage designed to cater to all levels of cycling strength and time availability. Two-day rides include the original 190-mile Sturbridge to Provincetown route; 180-mile Sturbridge-Bourne-Wellesley route; 163-mile Wellesley-Bourne-Provincetown route; or the 153-mile Wellesley-Bourne-Wellesley route. One-day riders cycle the 110-mile Sturbridge-Bourne route, the 84-mile Wellesley-Bourne route, and the 47-mile Wellesley-Wellesley Sunday loop. Cyclists are required to raise between $1,000 and $4,200 to ride in the PMC, depending on the chosen route, yet the average PMC cyclist raises more than $6,000.
Medlin will be taking on the 190-mile route and said his personal goal this year is to raise $10,000 after raising more than $11,000 last year.
Medlin said his wife, Linda, really helps him with raising funds each year.
"If it wasn't for her, I couldn't do this," he said, adding all the money raised from the event go directly to the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston. He said many Rockland businesses have supported him over the last few years, as have those in his hometown of Marshfield. He said when parishioners at Medlin's church – Our Lady of Assumption in Marshfield – found out he was taking part in the event again, they all wrote him checks to donate toward the cause."Everyone has been super supportive," he said. Linda said she is very proud of her husband for doing this.
"In the 30 years we have been married, I have never been more proud of him," she said. "To be at both finish lines each day is so emotional for my son, daughter and myself. John suffers from chronic back pain and has a ruptured disc, but he never even gives it a thought. To him it is nothing compared to the pain that people fighting cancer have. His commitment to this cause and his promise to our friend Jen, who died of cancer two years ago, is so strong that he just keeps on pedaling. He is the oldest on the Jenstrong team so he takes a lot of kidding from his younger teammates who love to hear all the moaning and groaning. His goal in this ride is to find a cure for cancer in our lifetime, and it is all well worth it."
Medlin said he is looking forward to this year's Pan-Mass Challenge, but noted there will be some challenges during the ride.
"When you're going through the hills of Truro, it gets really tough," he said. "I'm not very good with hills. But when things get tough, all I have to do is think of Jen.
"I just need to keep my own pace because as I said, this is a ride, not a race."
He said riders who have not taken part in the event, but are planning to do so this year, should definitely keep hydration in the front of their minds.
He said aside from keeping hydrated during the ride, people should just enjoy the sights and sounds. For Medlin, the best ones are the sounds of cancer survivors cheering the riders from the sidelines screaming out things like "thank you.""I get goosebumps just thinking about that," Medlin said.
"I think it's great that he's gotten so into it," said David Evans, who works with Medlin at Rockland Athletic Supplies.
Medlin said he is still fundraising. His wife is hosting a fundraising party for him on July 17 at Venus II in Marshfield. He said if people can give to the cause, that would be a big help.
"All the proceeds go to help fight cancer and who hasn't been touched by this disease?," he said. "Without question, taking part in this event is one of the best, most gratifying things I've ever done with my life."
To contribute to John Medlin's cause, send checks to Pan-Mass Challenge, c/0 John Medlin, 41 Partridge Brook Circle, Marshfield, MA, 02050 or log on to www.pmc.org and type in Medlin's rider ID: JM0467.
Rockland Standard


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For two decades, Luis Vargas worked as a San Diego Superior Court judge in Chula Vista and later heard construction defect lawsuits in a courtroom on the third floor of the Hall of Justice in downtown San Diego.
Vargas retired from the bench in January, but he didn't have to go far to begin work at his new job. He agreed to take a position created by District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, working 10 floors above his old courtroom in an office just down the hall from Dumanis'.
He will earn $95 an hour in the new job, capped at 40 hours a week. Vargas gets no benefits, vacation or sick time. If he works full time for 52 weeks, he would earn $197,600 for the year.
When Dumanis announced in a Friday afternoon news release in early December that she was hiring Vargas, 56, she said the veteran jurist would be working on several issues. Those included civil litigation, appellate cases and "cross-border issues," the release said.
A week later, she spoke to the board of directors for the labor association that represents prosecutors. She told them Vargas would be working on civil matters relating to economic crimes and environmental issues, and cross-border issues, according to minutes of the meeting.
But the month before, Dumanis' top lieutenant gave a different justification for the need to hire Vargas in a memo to the county's Department of Human Resources.
Assistant District Attorney Jesse Rodriguez said Vargas was needed to work on the appeal of a lawsuit Dumanis filed in 2011 over the commutation of Esteban Núñez's sentence in the killing of a Mesa College student. He is the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles.
Dumanis sued former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over the commutation, which reduced the sentence to seven years from 16, saying his action should be reversed because it violated the constitutional rights of crime victims under Marsy's Law.
Vargas would serve as "an expert consultant in a high-profile matter," Rodriguez wrote. He said the case could end up before the state Supreme Court.
In an interview in his new office, Vargas said he had not been told he would work on the Núñez case.
"If Bonnie decides it is something I need to work on because it is on the appellate level, or there is other legislation that needs to be considered, it will land on my desk. It hasn't," Vargas said.
A judge in Sacramento, where the case is being heard, along with a similar lawsuit, ruled in September in the state's favor. That decision is being appealed. No hearings are scheduled, and no legal briefs have yet been filed.
Dumanis said that Vargas will be working on the case at some point. It has been handled by Deputy District Attorney Laura Tanney, the chief of the office's Appellate Division.
"When it starts back up again, he'll be available to work with her," Dumanis said.
Vargas said that he knew Rodriguez and Dumanis, both former judges, when they all served on the bench. After 20 years as a judge, he said, he wanted to reevaluate what he was doing and welcomed the chance to continue working in public service when he was approached about the job with Dumanis.
As a judge, Vargas made $178,789 a year. Until he turns 60, he's not eligible to collect his judicial pension.
He said he plans to work with judicial officials in Mexico on cross-border issues that affect civil and criminal cases here. Mexico is in the process of retooling its court system to make it more transparent, and Vargas said it's important to be involved in that process.
"Anything that helps build a more transparent system right across the border is important to us here," he said.
Dumanis said Vargas brings a valuable background in civil and criminal cases. He also has been involved in legislative issues in his role with the California Judges Association, and she said he can assist when there is legislation affecting the office pending in Sacramento. The office already uses special assistant Gail Stewart-Brockman to work on legislative issues.
The district attorney said she was able to hire Vargas at his pay rate because of "good fiscal management" of her office's budget.
Last year, during Dumanis' unsuccessful run for mayor of San Diego, rumors circulated that Vargas would join the office to become Dumanis' successor if she won the race.
Dumanis, who was elected in 2002, has now announced she is running for another four-year term next year. At the Dec. 14 meeting with the Deputy District Attorneys Association board, she assured the prosecutors that Vargas was not being hired to take a top leadership position in the office, according to the minutes.
The minutes also stated that she said she would work with the labor association's board to "identify and prepare DDAs (prosecutors) from within the office to be the next District Attorney."


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If you watch TV ads and listen to radio ads during this election season in California, you might wonder at all the agreement. Everybody who is running, and every measure on the ballot, sees the same problem in California: "the politicians."
So you'll see all kinds of measures denounce "the politicians." Molly Munger's Prop 38 deserves your support, she says, because "politicians" won't be able to touch the money raised by her temporary income tax increases. Prop 30's supporters insist their money too is guaranteed for education. Prop 31 is all about putting budget restrictions on the politicians. Prop 35 is about getting tough on human trafficking because the politicians in the legislature wouldn't do it.
This anti-politician rhetoric seems routine and boilerplate at this point. But it shouldn't be. Indeed, blasting "the politicians" is misleading the public about what's really wrong with California.
U.S. & World
And what's really wrong is that "the politicians" can't do much at all -- because voters and others have so limited their power. The state's complicated budget rules and long constitution leave little room for discretion. As a result, "the politicians" handle very little money and make very few decisions about it. Instead, most decisions are already made by the messy sea of formulas, many approved by voters, who lock in spending. Since these formulas don't fit together, the state has constant budget problems. But there isn't a whole lot "the politicians" can do about this
What would fix this problem? Simply put: giving "the politicians" more power to touch money, balance interests and make tradeoffs. With the freedom to operate, the politicians would be able to make changes, adapt to different levels of revenue and get closer to balancing budget.
So when you hear "the politicians" denounced in an ad, try to replace those words -- "the politicians" -- with a different two-word phrase -- "human beings." Because that's what the ad is really saying. Politicians are the humans who can use their judgment and discretion and make decisions for you. When you take power away from "the politicians," you're taking it away from human beings -- and giving it all the formulas and rules in California that have morphed into a runaway machine.
In other words, you're choosing to be governed by the machine, not by humans.
Maybe you prefer the machine. But you shouldn't. Humans have flaws, but they also are flexible, and can fix mistakes. California's machine of formulas and algorithms, on the other hand, cannot fix itself.


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WE RECOMMEND: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
In 2010, both the Easton, Pennsylvania and the Bedford, New Hampshire School Districts challenged Nickel and Dimed (by Barbara Ehrenreich) after several parents complained about the book's "promotion of economic fallacies and its biased portrayal of capitalism." However, I would argue that the book actually shows the true nature of capitalism; that it creates winners and losers.
As an experiment, Ehrenreich set out to discover if she could survive working low-wage jobs. She waited tables in Florida, cleaned houses in Maine, and worked at a Wal-Mart in Minnesota. She almost always needed a second job, so she often found herself working seven days a week, adding work as a nursing home aide and as a hotel maid at different points of her research.
In all three locations, she struggled to find housing that would be affordable for people who earned six or seven dollars an hour. A couple of her coworkers were actually homeless and living in their cars, because they always lacked enough money for first month's rent and deposit on an apartment. Also, maintaining a healthy diet was an issue sometimes. When she was lucky enough to find affordable housing with a kitchen, she was able to cook for herself sometimes, but often she had to rely on fast food. And Ehrenreich often notes that the lunches of her coworker's were unhealthy and insufficient for the back-breaking work they were doing.
What Ehrenreich took away from this experience is that there is no such thing as unskilled labor. None of the jobs were easy; they were all physically demanding and she never had a coworker that she would describe as "lazy." She also comments that "You don't need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents are too high" and that when the rich and the poor compete for housing, the poor always lose. She concludes that something is very wrong when people can work as hard as they do and are still barely able to support themselves.
Overall, Nickel and Dimed is a thought-provoking read. For many, the problems of the poor are misunderstood or simply invisible, but Ehrenreich describes the problem of poverty in the United States in a knowledgeable and compassionate way. She also states that poverty is an emergency and I think anybody who would like to understand that statement better should read Nickel and Dimed.
- Kayla Whitehead, Technical Services Assistant/Serials Specialist
Tags: Ehrenreich, labor, low-wage, Nickel and Dimed, nonfiction, poverty


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Based in Los Angeles, James Jeans is a sophisticated denim line created by husband and wife duo James and Seun Lim. Seun, who excelled at couture pattern making, drapes each and every pattern by hand, constantly updating and perfecting the fit. Fashion-forward but never overly trendy, James Jeans enjoys a devoted following of women who want to feel comfortable, confident, and sexy in expertly cut jeans.
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The National Zoo is welcoming three new Asian elephants to its herd.
The zoo says the female elephants arrived Friday at the zoo after a three-day, 2,500 mile trip from the Calgary Zoo in specially-made, 10,000-pound crates. They're on loan from the zoo, which is relocating its elephants to more suitable habitats.
Kamala and Swarna were born in the wild in Sri Lanka in 1975 and 23-year-old Maharani is Kamala's daughter. They will be introduced slowly to the zoo's herd of four after 30 days in quarantine, but fans can check on them on a new elephant cam.
Asian elephants are endangered in the wild. Their median life expectancy in captivity is about 50 years.
The move was funded through a $2 million gift from businessman David M. Rubenstein.
National Zoo Welcomes 3 New Elephants From Canada
The National Zoo is welcoming three new Asian elephants to its herd.
Copyright AP - Associated Press


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Dancers and Dance Fans Unite: Please Help This Dance Instructor Who Was Hurt In The Boston Bombings
Did you know there was a dance instructor hurt in the Boston Bombings? Her name is Adrianne Haslet-Davis. She was at the Boston Marathon with her husband, Air Force Captain Adam Davis, who had just recently returned home from Afghanistan. Both were injured when the second bomb exploded near them. Adrianne's left foot and part of that leg had to be amputated. Despite her injuries, she has vowed to dance again and do whatever it takes. Below she talks with Anderson Cooper about it in case you missed this on his show last night. My heart broke in two when I saw this and yet, something in me says, she 'will' dance again. What a sweet, strong, and courageous young woman. If you'd like to help her, please visit this website. Even the smallest amount can make a difference.
Thanks to Eileen for sending this news to us last night!
UPDATE: No idea if this is true or not, but, one of our readers is reporting that Adrianne Haslet-Davis and her story might be spot lighted on Dancing With The Stars next week. Also, below is the cast sending her some love and cheer on Inside Edition Monday night.
UPDATE2: Tom Bergeron announced on the show tonight that they are indeed spot lighting Adrianne Haslet-Davis on next week's results show. They will also be announcing how the show plans to help her (So awesome!! And according to what Codebear reports to us, he, Elena Grinenko, and Nick Kosovich were able to get the ball rolling for this.). Read more..


text: This was not a competition, but rather a "you have to see it to believe it" one-of-a-kind production and live event.56th Annual Grammys parties seemed like a bore, only the "Shooter Diva" would be able to gain access to one of the hottest events of the year. On January 25, Pole Show LA 2014 the largest, most entertaining and spectacular pole production was held at 333 Live located at 333 South Boylston avenue from 8:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m.There are pole competitions, pole fitness events and pole dancers out there but nothing compares to the excitement and wild entertainment POLE SHOW LA 2014 delivered. A spectacular night of dance acrobatics, and aerial. This Hollywood affair was classy, provocative and an exciting way to spend an evening.Pole Show LA was back for 2014 and it was truly bigger, badder and hotter than any before. With celebrities from Kate Bosworth to Rampage Jackson in attendance and FOUR 15 foot poles with seating in the round, this year the audience got the best view of everything.Pole Show LA creator Leigh Ann Reilly said, "I love producing Pole Show LA each year because I'm able to watch my creative fantasies come to life. It's like everybody's big pole dance dream come true. This is a totally new wave of entertainment I can't wait to show it to the world".Starring the current reigning International Pole Champion for 2014 Natasha Wang, Pole Show featured 70 LA performers, 500 guests and an estimated 18,000 fans streaming live. For 2014, Pole Show LA brought the best of the best. Glamorous costumes by Kelly Maglia Couture has helped to change the silhouette of pole dancing while the uniquely choreographed group pole routines made Pole Show LA 2014 a marriage between "Cirque Du Soliel & the Pussy Cat Dolls."Sponsored by X-Pole and BeSpun, Pole Show LA featured the best, most fit, most creative and most daring Pole Artists in the country. This years performers Natasha Wang (USA), Sarah Jade (USA), Marion Crampe (France), Mina and Nadia (USA), Sara Scott (UK), Michelle Shimmy (AUS), Sergia Louise (USA), Jamilla Deville (AUS), Josiah Grant (USA) as well as other Featured Performers and notable dancers including Leigh Ann Reilly, Samanta Star, Tiffany Hayden, Amy Raven, Jennifer Kim, Brynn Route, Alex Magala, Nicole "The Pole" Williams, Mary Kolacinski, Sienna Spaulding, Adrienne Strauss and Lindsay Kimura.Media: Handsonpr, Social media: @leighannreilly, Photos by Partyby5


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Attorneys say Sarasota Police slammed him face-first into squad car; police chief is investigating
Sarasota Police arrested a homeless man for panhandling last week, 10 days after the ordinance prohibiting the practice was repealed by the City Commission.
The homeless man, 31-year-old Jon Hill, was injured in the incident, something he and his attorneys claim was the result of officers slamming him face first into their squad car. The arresting officers claim that a struggling Hill intentionally threw himself forward, causing the impact on the car's window.
The incident is just the latest in a running struggle between city police and civil liberties advocates, who have accused the department's officers of organized "bum hunting" and using excessive force in the earlier arrest of a homeless man.
Newly sworn in Sarasota Police Chief Bernadette DiPino said she was made aware of Hill's arrest Monday morning but had not heard he was injured.
"This is the first I'm hearing about anyone complaining about any use of force," DiPino said, adding that she would investigate the claim.
Sarasota Police officers were sent an email on the day of Hill's arrest, telling them the panhandling ordinance had been repealed, DiPino said.
She also noted that her predecessor, Mikel Holloway, had issued orders in December for officers to stop making arrests for solicitation.
"We're trying to find out why they did what they did," DiPino said, meaning Hill's arresting officers.
The chief's efforts to piece together what happened and why comes as the city of Sarasota is once again receiving unwanted attention for its treatment of the homeless. An Associated Press story published last week by media outlets in Massachusetts, Texas, Illinois and other states talks about the series of events in Sarasota that have put the city and the American Civil Liberties Union at odds over the homeless issue.
Drawing fresh attention
The most recent incident occurred Thursday when officers Adam Arena and Jake Nelson were dispatched to investigate a vehicle crash.
They saw Hill standing in the median of U.S. 301 and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way. One officer wrote in his report that he saw Hill "limping around trying to solicit funds from vehicles stopped at the traffic light."
The officers warned Hill to stop soliciting, to which they say he "retorted with vulgar comments."
The two officers continued to the crash.
After they had completed their accident investigation, the officers returned and arrested Hill, who they say threw himself to the ground and refused to comply with their instructions or to stand.
The officers lifted him up, at which point, according to their report, "the defendant intentionally threw all of his weight forward causing him to slam his face into the window of the patrol vehicle."
Hill was charged with soliciting and obstructing officers without violence. He spent the weekend in the Sarasota County Jail, unable to come up with the $870 he needed for bail.
The incident drew attention from the ACLU, which has made the city's treatment of homeless people one of its core efforts in recent years.
Either the officers who arrested Hill deliberately violated their orders, or they were unaware that the panhandling ordinance had been repealed, said Michael Barfield, a paralegal who chairs the Sarasota ACLU's legal panel.
"I don't know which one is worse," Barfield said. "Apparently, they let their frustrations get the better of them."
In an email to Barfield, City Attorney Robert Fournier wrote: "I cannot speak to why an arrest was made for a violation of the section, as I'm not familiar with the process used by SPD to communicate information to personnel about matters that they need to be made aware of and informed about."
Sarasota attorney Andrea Mogensen, another ACLU member, convinced a judge on Monday to order Hill's release. Mogensen said that Hill denied hurting himself, telling her that the police officers "slammed his head into the car."
In his jail booking photo, Hill has what appears to be a fresh cut above his nose.
Challenges for new chief
DiPino, who took the reins of the Sarasota Police Department this month after a decade as chief in Ocean City, Md., took a break Monday from the city's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast and Community Awards Ceremony at Booker High School to talk about Hill's arrest.
She said she was "trying to determine why officers and supervisors allowed it to happen."
During the interview process with city commissioners for a new police chief, two themes that figured prominently were the city's relationship with the homeless and with the minority community.
DiPino already finds herself dealing with both.
Besides questions about Hill's arrest, DiPino on Monday was contending with the aftermath of a melee early Sunday morning that occurred during another part of Sarasota's celebration of King's birthday.
The incident in the 1900 block of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way started after Sarasota police attempted to cite two participants for urinating in public. It ended with four men being arrested, including one who was hospitalized after he was hit in the face by an officer swinging his flashlight.
After the incident, DiPino and one of her captains contacted community leaders, including the president of local NAACP chapter.
There also could be additional fallout from Hill's arrest.
Mogensen, Hill's Sarasota attorney, said she plans to file a lawsuit today asking the court to prohibit Sarasota Police from enforcing an ordinance that has already been repealed — "to make it clear that this ordinance is dead, and any arrest made under it would be contempt of court."
Mogensen, who with Barfield has created almost a cottage industry of suing local governments, said additional legal action is likely.
"There are First Amendment issues, false arrest issues, excessive force and more," she said. "We shall discuss these with Mr. Hill and see how he wants to proceed."


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Justin Gehring brauchte ein neues Website Design und hat einen Wettbewerb auf 99designs gestartet.
Aus 36 Designs von 10 Designern wurde eine Gewinner gewählt.
A Youth Program in Minnesota is looking to redesign it's primary webpage. This site impacts students and parents of over 3000 church members. We focus on all areas of christian youth ministry, but are primarily a sending church. Our church's website can be found here: http://www.woodburylutheran.org/
We are in the process of merging two sites into one. The existing sites are:
• http://www.wlcyouth.org/
• http://www.bridge121.com/
We have already established our logo and offline identity and do not wish to change it. The new sites primary brand will need to be tied the bridge121 logo. You can see this logo here:
There is also a zip file containing EPS files for our logos colors, the font, etc. Feel free to make use of this material for this project. We simply ask that you DONT attempt to change the logo.
Also, this year's theme is based around the word "Free" as in "Free to Live" or "Freedom through Christ". Some verses we are considering include: Galatians 5:13-16a, Galatians 5:1, Romans 6:18, Romans 8:2
Feel free to work this theme into your design.
The site has 2 very unique audiences:
Primary: Highschool Teens, 7th to 12th grade.
These kids are very involved in social networking sites like facebook and twitter. Modern, flashy, edgy design is what it's all about for them. (But not overkill either)
Secondary: Highschool Parents,
Although we need the site to have some edge and flashy, it can't do this at the price of usability, readability, or general parental sanity :-).
- Must incorporate the Bridge121 Logo as part of the branding
- Must Deliver .jpg and layered PSD. We always like any .AI's, .ttfs, etc. that may have been generated during production as well (and the rights in the clear).
Desires for Front Page (main design we are looking for)
- Grid Type layout (easily expandable)
- Room for Things like:
-- A Flash Video
-- A mini calendar of upcomings events
-- Email List Signup
-- Facebook and Twitter Integration
-- A footer (for location information)
-- News blurbs
- Would like it to have the "free" theme incorporated as described in "tell us about yourself"
- Would prefer it to be fix width < 1000px (if grid, I like 960px)
- Would prefer to not have stock photos in it (as other than placeholders).
- Would like to site to remain "seeker sensitive", so try not to go all gung-ho on the crosses/etc. Would rather it be a more "general" youth site.
Other Things we may try to incorporate
- Photos
- Blog Posts
- A Forum
- Chat


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- 10 billion pages of textual records
- 12 million maps, charts, and architectural and engineering drawings
- 25 million still photographs and graphics
- 24 million aerial photographs
- 300,000 reels of motion picture film
- 400,000 video and sound recordings
If you are not familiar with how the National Archives works, there is an online Guide for Genealogists and Family Historians directed at the Archives Online Catalog. There is also an section dedicated to genealogists. Here is a screenshot of the Resources for Genealogists page:
The National Archives has its own YouTube channel called appropriately, U.S. National Archives. Looking at the number of views of these presentations, it appears that these online resources are relatively unknown. Here is a screenshot of the YouTube channel:
In addition, the National Archives held a Genealogy Fair on September 3 &4, 2013. Recordings from the Fair are online at the National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair website. This is an annual event.
You may also want to view the Online Research Tools and Aids webpage. Don't get the impression that there are actually records online. The "online" portion of the records consists mainly of catalogs. The National Archives relies mostly on Ancestry.com to provide some of its record collections.


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This is an offshoot of the Community Promotion Contest underway on on Gaming.
I am putting together a series of contests to help promote and enliven Stack Exchange communities.
Communities would be able to pick a contest appropriate to their site and run with it. These "recipes" would provide a step-by-step process to launch these contest, without all the guesswork and flailing about needed to crowd-source these ideas.
We have the resources to provide funds, prizes, promotions, materials, or any database/programming support you might need, so don't worry about costs or logistics at this stage; That's our problem.
Submit your ideas below.
We're looking for bits of ideas or fully-formed concepts for contest that could be used to promote Stack Exchange sites. A few simple examples:
- Best post about a hot topic — Think in terms of what's hot in your industry that isn't being posted about enough? Nominations could be conducted through meta.
- Best canonical answer to an often-asked question — Announce the contest that you need the best possible answer to this question. The benefit to the site is that you can close the repetitive questions with a link to this awesome, award-winning, canonical answer.
- Make a video — Participants could create the best how-to demonstrations of a product, a do-it-yourself tutorial, a walkthrough of a game, etc. The video should point back to the site and the entries linked from a meta thread.
- Photo contests, design contests, competitions — figure out how these activities work for your site.
This is a brainstorming activity. I made this wiki, so feel free to jump in and work off each other's ideas.
Below are some guidelines to keep in mind about the goals of this project:
The activity should leave useful artifacts
We're looking for activities that either provide good content, encourage useful community participation, or generally promote the site. A contest to guess when the millionth question will be posted doesn't help a site move forward.
The execution should be crowd source-able
In the most ideal case, these contests should be executed through small, incremental units of work by the community. Promotional activities generally flat when it takes one person to do a lot of the work. — but sometimes it's okay to appoint a "project leader" to coordinate the efforts, if that's what it takes.
Contests should be generally applicable to multiple Stack Exchange sites
Some communities are predominately academic while others are professional or consumer-oriented. If a contest applies to all Stack Exchange sites, great! But keep in mind these diverse groups when considering your contest idea. Meh… If the idea is only applicable to your site, post it anyway.


text: Adult spotted unicornfish can be anywhere from bluish-gray to olive-brown in color. They often have small irregular stripes on the sides of their body. The juveniles, however, may have darker spots. The fish's prominent horn is not found in juveniles and actually develops later in life. These unicornfish are typically found in small groups in reefs and along lagoon drop-offs. They have also been spotted along rocky coasts. In addition, they may group into larger schools at times. Did You Know? The spotted unicornfish's horn develops later in its life. Diet Adults feed primarily on zooplankton but may also eat algae. Size Reported to reach a maximum length of 60 centimeters. Range They live in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, from along East Africa to Hawaii, and as far north as southern Japan. Population Status Listed as "least common" on the IUCN Red List Back to the Top