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Republicans in Hartford warn of higher taxes
HARTFORD -- A nearly $490 million predicted decline in tax collections over the two-year budget that starts July 1 prompted minority Republicans on Wednesday to say, "I told you so."
Republican leaders warned that majority Democrats might seek to raise taxes during the upcoming negotiations on a new $44 billion spending package.
But Speaker of the House J. Brendan Sharkey said he believes the next budget will reflect further spending reductions to get to the bottom line, without raising taxes.
Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said the projected decline in revenue is proof that after the state's historic tax hike two years ago during Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's first year in office, the state's spending still needs curbing.
"Our long-term economy and the growth of the state of Connecticut is declining, and that's the result of his budget," McKinney said in an interview in the Capitol. "It's the result of spending too much and taxing too much."
McKinney and House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, said they're being shut out of budget negotiations with Democratic legislators and Malloy.
Cafero, in an interview outside the House chamber, recalled that last December it was GOP leaders who helped Malloy and Democrats cut spending during a special legislative session.
"We were extremely helpful in making sure there were no tax increases," Cafero said. "We have, as we did then, a ton of ideas, a ton of suggestions and a willingness to help. This budget is in freefall. If they don't invite us in the room, we have to do our own thing."
The recent budget approved by the Appropriations Committee addressed a projected $2 billion deficit over the next biennium, which starts July 1. The $488 million revenue decline means lawmakers and the governor have more work to do before the legislative adjournment at midnight June 5.
Sharkey, speaking to reporters in the hall of the House, said Democrats will be able to make additional cuts. He also wants to use at least some of a $52 million surplus in the current fiscal year to help in the next budget.
"Overall, we have to stay on track toward no new taxes and try to find the cuts that are necessary," he said.
Sharkey said final talks with the governor's staff are at the preliminary level and if Republicans want to join in, he's supportive.
email@example.com; 860-549-4670; twitter.com/KenDixonCT; facebook.com/kendixonct.hearst; blog.ctnews.com/dixon


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Every January, the US national team convenes its first camp of the year. Dubbed "Camp Cupcake" by some, its purpose is to look at young players who might break through into a bigger role with the team, give a look to a veteran who has improved his league play or provide a home to a key contributor who's rehabbing an injury and trying to round into game shape.
In the most recent version of Camp Cupcake, one of the young players who excited the most interest among fans of the US team was Houston Dynamo defender Geoff Cameron. He'd come into the league as an unknown in 2008, played virtually every position save goalkeeper, and eventually settled in as MLS' most outstanding central defender of 2009.
[inline_node:315878]Cameron is big, athletic, daring, and comfortable on the ball. In that sense, he's an atypical MLS defender, but was considered by many US fans to be "exactly what we need!" He'd be used to ignite attacks out of the Yanks' own end while securing the back line himself.
Cameron, of course, got hurt during the camp. And even before then, Bob Bradley had caused some amount of confusion and hand-wringing among the hard-core US fans when reports surfaced that, no, Cameron wasn't being used as a central defender. He'd been used as a central midfielder.
Ten months later, in the script labeled "MLS in 2010," Bradley's decision to use Cameron in the midfield stares back at us like Chekhov's gun. Nobody really thought much of it at the time, but now it stands out as an early reveal of how the plot was ultimately to play out.
As it turns out, 2010 was the lowest-scoring season in MLS history. Real Salt Lake had the best defense in league history, conceding just 20 goals, while D.C. United had the worst offense.
The LA Galaxy, newly minted winners of the Supporters' Shield, had the third best defense in the history of the league. FC Dallas tied for fourth-best ever, and the New York Red Bulls are in a tie for sixth-best. For the first time in MLS history, no team scored 50 goals.
It's no secret that MLS is a fast, physical, sometimes-brutal league. And as managers have tried to adapt over the past decade, one of the consequences is that players like Cameron have been moved higher up the pitch in order to destroy the attack of their opponents.
"Attack out of the back" has been sacrificed for "Destroy from the front."
Shalrie Joseph is, by any measure, one of the three best players of the decade. He began his career as a pure defensive midfielder and occasional fill-in on the backline of Steve Nicol's great New England Revolution teams.
Today, he's used in an attacking role, the more advanced of two central midfielders in Nicol's 4-4-2. He's still destructive on the defensive side of the ball; now he's just doing it higher up the pitch. Joseph's transformation presaged that of Cameron's.
[inline_node:320482]One of the more celebrated signings in league history, Rafa Márquez spent the best years of his club career playing as a central defender for Barcelona. Upon his arrival with the New York Red Bulls, he's been used strictly as a midfielder. Daniel Hernandez, once a defender for the MetroStars, transformed FC Dallas with his midfield play in 2010.
As the league acquires more and more attacking talent – be it through the draft, the Home Grown player rule or foreign acquisitions – it's become a tactical imperative to push bigger, faster, more destructive players into the midfield in order to keep the opposition under wraps. The defensive schemes of most MLS teams are sort of a bizarro-version of the Dutch "Total Football" of the 1970s.
Everyone defends. Everywhere on the pitch. 90 minutes.
Contributing to the mind set is the current boom of defensive-minded players in the US. The last two MLS Rookie of the Year winners have been defenders, and New York's Tim Ream could make it three on the trot.
You have to go all the way back to 2004, when Clint Dempsey won, to find an attacker on the list. Dempsey was the fourth attacker in a row to win the award. None of the four on that list is in MLS any longer.
This whole cycle of defensive dominance is driven by a pressure to win that's greater than it has been at any other time in MLS. One of the early and legitimate complaints about the league was that the proportion of teams that made the playoffs was too high. With as many as 75 percent of teams in the league making the postseason, regular-season games were devalued, and the result was too often two teams full of guys giving something less than their all.
[inline_node:315969]Not anymore. With only half the teams qualifying for the playoffs, each and every game is significant. And when that is the case, coaches almost unanimously stress defense first, last and always. There are no more freebies on the schedule because nobody wants to suffer the ignominy of being eliminated from playoff contention with three months left in the season.
The bright side – if you like goals and wide-open play, anyway – is that most teams regularly play against their Development Academy teams. And not coincidentally, the first crop of talent from league academies are almost all attackers, guys who had to learn how to create offense against bigger, faster, professional players.
Andy Najar and Tristan Bowen had solid seasons for D.C. United and LA, respectively. Juan Agudelo impressed in his brief time with New York. And FC Dallas have a seemingly endless supply of forwards and attacking midfielders coming through their academy.
So the pendulum is bound to swing back in the other direction eventually. Probably not in 2011 – the league's four best teams this year had the league's four best defenses, after all – but maybe not too long after.
Matthew Doyle can be reached for comment at email@example.com and followed at twitter.com/mls_analyst.
Ready to Launch: MLS Matchday 2010, The new official MLS iPhone app. It's FREE! Download it here!

subset: commoncrawl


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The other part of it is that some therapies are better suited to some issues than others. There is no model that works for all issues equally.
Read the whole article.
Are All Psychotherapies Created Equal?
Certain core benefits cut across methods, but some differences in effectiveness remainImage: MARIO WAGNER
As a prospective client searches for a psychotherapist, numerous questions may spring to mind. How experienced is the therapist? Has he helped people with problems like mine? Is she someone I can relate to? Yet it may not occur to clients to ask another one: What type of therapy does the clinician deliver? People often assume that the brand of therapy offered is irrelevant to the effectiveness of treatment. Is this assumption correct?
Psychologists do not agree on whether the "school" of therapy predicts its effectiveness. In a survey in 2006 by psychologists Charles Boisvert of Rhode Island College and David Faust of the University of Rhode Island, psychotherapy researchers responded to the statement that "in general, therapies achieve similar outcomes" with an average score of 6 on a 7-point scale, indicating strong agreement. In contrast, psychologists in practice averaged a rating of 4.5, signifying that they agreed only moderately with that position.
As we will discover, both camps can justify their point of view. Although a number of commonly used psychotherapies are broadly comparable in their effects, some options are less well suited to certain conditions, and a few may even be harmful. In addition, the differences among therapies in their effectiveness may depend partly on the kinds of psychological problems that clients are experiencing.
Tale of the Dodo Bird
At least 500 different types of psychotherapy exist, according to one estimate by University of Scranton psychologist John Norcross. Given that researchers cannot investigate all of them, they have generally concentrated on the most frequently used approaches. These include behavior therapy (altering unhealthy behaviors), cognitive-behavior therapy (altering maladaptive ways of thinking), psychodynamic therapy (resolving unconscious conflicts and adverse childhood experiences), interpersonal therapy (remedying unhealthy ways of interacting with others), and person-centered therapy (helping clients to find their own solutions to life problems).
As early as 1936, Washington University psychologist Saul Rosenzweig concluded after perusing the literature that one therapy works about as well as any other. At the time, many of the principal treatments fell roughly into the psychodynamic and behavioral categories, which are still widely used today. Rosenzweig introduced the metaphor of the Dodo Bird, after the feathered creature in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, who declared following a race that "everyone has won, and all must have prizes." The "Dodo Bird verdict" has since come to refer to the claim that all therapies are equivalent in their effects.
This verdict gained traction in 1975, when University of Pennsylvania psychologist Lester Luborsky and his colleagues published a review of relevant research suggesting that all therapies work equally well. It gathered more momentum in 1997, when University of Wisconsin–Madison psychologist Bruce E. Wampold and his co-authors published a meta-analysis (quantitative review) of more than 200 scientific studies in which "bona fide" therapies were compared with no treatment. By bona fide, they meant treatments delivered by trained therapists, based on sound psychological principles and described in publications. Wampold's team found the differences in the treatments' effectiveness to be minimal (and they were all better than no treatment).
One explanation for the Dodo Bird effect is that virtually all types of psychotherapy share certain core features.


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Joseph Serino necesitaba un nuevo diseño de botón o icono y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 11 diseños de 5 diseñadores freelance.
In Media Communications
A creatively, strategic marketing communications consultancy, with 15 years experience across a range of digital interactive market research, business development and communications projects and programs.
Corporate clients in publishing, communications and entertainment industries,.that need assistance in determining market potential and developing and managing online projects .
A set of eight, circular, 2-3 color, Home Page 'display' buttons, adaptable to website content page headers and navigation bar. The overall website concept is pedicated on custom button type or symbolic images, that deliver on the "range of development management capabilities" positioning of the firm.
The buttons are to be in a matrix arrangement on the Home Page. Three across and three down. The ninth space is held by the company logo. The Home Page background is white.
The words to be imaged are:
About Us
Contact Us
The buttons need to work as larger Home Page "display" art, as well as content page navigation. They need to scale, or can be two seperate images that have clear association.
I have roughed an initial treatment, that can be shared. Email firstname.lastname@example.com
I am comfortable with a mix of type treatment and images for different buttons. EXAMPLE: "About Us" in text, symbol for 'Publications".
The Look: Vibrant Sophistication
Shape: Circular
Colors: Brite Red, Dark Blue, Light Bue, White


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MWC 15 Special
Today, at it's press event in New York, Nokia announced first devices in its Windows Phone 8 Lumia range: the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 820. The Nokia Lumia 920 is the company's new flagship Windows Phone 8 smartphone, including the latest advances in Nokia PureView imaging innovation. Using advanced floating lens technology, the camera in the Nokia Lumia 920 is able to take in five times more light than competing smartphones without using flash, making it possible to capture clear, bright pictures and video indoors and at night. It also compensates for hand movement while the photo is being taken. The Nokia Lumia 920 also comes with Nokia City Lens, the latest addition to the Nokia location suite.
By pointing the camera at a city street, City Lens overlays information about restaurants, shops, hotels and more on the surfaces of buildings, for the most intuitive way to explore surroundings. Nokia City Lens is the start of a new augmented reality experience that also enhances Nokia Maps, making it possible to move between maps view and augmented reality view to help people check their direction and surroundings. Along with enhancements to Nokia Drive and Nokia Transport, the Nokia location suite of services represents the most comprehensive, integrated mapping experience of any smartphone.
The Nokia Lumia 920 also comes with Nokia's largest ever battery (2000mAh) and, for the first time, built-in wireless charging for an easy, convenient way to get more out of every day.
The Nokia Lumia 820 is a stylish, mid-range smartphone that delivers high-end performance in a compact package. While the Nokia Lumia 820 has the same unibody look and feel as the high end Lumia smartphones, it comes with an exchangeable shell design. Exchangeable shells not only make it possible to select from a range of colors, but also to add wireless charging. Beneath the shell is room to insert a micro SD memory card.
Windows Phone 8 provides a more personal smartphone experience, with a start screen that can be more easily rearranged to reflect individual priorities and new animated Live Tiles for real-time updates on the things that matter most. The ability to sync content between Windows Phone 8 smartphones, Windows 8-based PCs and tablets or Xbox means files, music, pictures and video can be accessed in whichever way is most convenient. With Internet Explorer 10 for faster, safer browsing and Microsoft Office apps built into the platform, Windows Phone 8 is also the easiest way for getting things done.
Nokia also announced a range of wireless charging accessories and partnerships. The Fatboy Recharge Pillow provides a fun way to recharge, while JBL introduced the JBL PowerUP, a wireless charging docking station with high quality audio in retro styling.
Deals with Virgin Atlantic to put wireless charging stations in the London Heathrow Clubhouse lounge and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to put charging plates on tables in some of their cafés, were the first of many deals Nokia intends to sign to take wireless charging outside the home and office.
The Nokia Lumia 920 will be available in yellow, red, grey, white and black while the Nokia Lumia 820 will come in red, yellow, grey, cyan, purple, white and black.
Both phones will be available in pentaband LTE and HSPA+ variants and are expected to start shipping in select markets later in the year. Nokia will announce pricing and specific roll-out dates country by country when sales are due to begin.
Cheers ~ Arne
Article Source
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The world really doesn't. But Capcom didn't ask the world. It looked at the Japanese sales for its wildly popular Monster Hunter games and crapped out this camera.
It may sound like I hate this 3 megapixel camera. I don't! It so ridiculous that I cannot help but like it.
The camera features a Felyne, those cat people that appear in Monster Hunter, from the cute Monster Hunter spin-off games.
Going on sale this month, the Felyne digital camera is priced at ¥6,993 (US$91) and has a face only a Monster Hunter player could love.
You can contact Brian Ashcraft, the author of this post, at email@example.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.


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Another awardee struggles with wondering to whom he can pass the award … You know guys, not everyone is especially sympathetic to the lament that you've gotten too many awards!
I've just been notified by Tyson over at Head In A Vice that he has nominated me (or more accurately my blog) for "Blog of the Year 2012" award. *again, just hear announcer Gary Owens (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In) saying the words quoted.*
This has to be my favourite award nomination. Although it has a bittersweet tang to it, because Tyson also nominated Marilyn over at Serendipity and John over at WRITTEN IN BLOOD which are two of the nominees I would have chosen. Cue face palm.
I should quickly explain that the nomination is my favourite not because of the award itself – which is grand, don't get me wrong here – but because the "penalty" for accepting the award is that you have to pass it on to three more bloggers who deserve it. When I read the rules that Tyson provided I was…
View original post 623 more words


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Welcome to the home of Finsbury Designs Limited. We offer a vast array of services including:
- Residential new builds
- Commercial new builds
- Extensions
- Renovations
- Loft Conversions
- Project Management
- Land Purchases
- Option/Promotion agreements
We pride ourselves on our reputation and bespoke high quality service that we offer to our clients. In turn, our company has grown because of the great image that we have built up over the past 10 years. Please take a look at a small selection of previous projects that we have completed. These can be found under the 'Projects' tab. If you have any questions that you would like to ask, please feel free to send us a message using the 'Contact Us' page on this website.


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Monster Hunter Freedom Unite Cheats[ PSP ]
Search "narga" in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite Tags :
Glitch - Knocking out a Narga
Nargacuga, the jet-black wyvern and a pair of glowing eyes when raged. This wyvern can be easily stunned by using a Hammer or Hunting horns. Obviously, by attacking the head over and over again, right? Logically, that's true. However, did you know that you can KO a Narga using a different (and hilarious) method? If not, here's what you have to do:


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Forbidden Lie$
Here's another "WOW!" alert. Talk about a web of lies, deceit and confusion; they most certainly exist in this new documentary called, Forbidden Lie$. There are as many twists and turns as there are in just about any action-packed thriller. First though, you need to understand the background information.
In 2003, a Jordanian woman known as Norma Khouri published a book called, "Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern Day Jordan."
The book tells a horrific story of a woman that is "honor killed" by her father and her brother for dating a Christian while being a Muslim. The author claimed that these events were true and that the "honor killing" happened to a friend of hers when they were teenagers living in Jordan. The book became a near instant international best seller for exposing honor killings in Jordan.
In 2004, Australian journalist Malcolm Knox of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote a news story exposing the book as a complete hoax. Knox exposed seventy three factual errors in the book and called into question whether or not such an event ever took place to begin with. Knox went on to receive a prestigious journalistic award for uncovering those factual errors in the book while Random House began pulling the book from its shelves.
In 2007, Anna Broinowski decided to film Norma Khouri as they searched for evidence that there was a real honor killing in Jordan and that her childhood friend really did exist as the true heroine in her book. What should have been a simple case to either prove or disprove turned out to be web of deceit and lies. I doubt that anyone will ever know the truth. Take a look at the trailer below:


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A Mennonite pastor convicted last year of helping a woman flee the country with her daughter in order to keep the little girl from being handed over by court order to the woman's former lesbian partner was sentenced March 4 by a federal judge to 27 months in prison.
In 2009, Virginia Amish-Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller (shown, at center) helped former lesbian Lisa Miller (no relation) leave the country with her daughter, Isabella, after a court granted custody of the child to Miller's former partner, Janet Jenkins. Jenkins is not biologically related to the girl, and never went through legal proceedings to adopt her.
According to LifeSiteNews.com, the now 10-year-old girl "was conceived by artificial insemination while Jenkins and Miller were in a Vermont civil union, which was dissolved in 2003. Following the end of her relationship, Miller returned to the Baptist religion of her youth and consequently disavowed homosexual behavior. She has raised Isabella with the same values."
Although two experts testified in sworn affidavits that Isabella suffered serious emotional trauma connected to the court-ordered visits she had with Jenkins, in 2009 a Vermont family court judge gave custody of the child to the Jenkins after Miller refused to share custody with her. However, by that time the Rev. Miller had helped the mother and child to escape to Nicaragua, where the minister's Beachy Amish sect reportedly has a mission.
While the Rev. Miller said he thought Isabella's mother retained sole custody of the child, and was not aware that he had broken the law by helping her evade Jenkins, a jury nonetheless convicted him in August 2012 of "aiding and abetting a parental kidnapping. He had remained free for over a year until federal judge William K. Sessions sentenced him to two years and three months in prison.
Isabella's mother, Lisa Miller, also faces charges of kidnapping her own daughter, but thus far federal agents have been unable to locate either her or Isabella, and Nicaragua, the country to which the two originally fled, does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
Prior to the March 4 sentencing, prosecuting attorney Christina Nolan took aim at the Rev. Miller's faith, accusing him of using it as justification to ignore the requirements of the law to the emotional detriment of Jenkins, whom she claimed felt like a mother who lost her child. "He sees Ms. Jenkins as a homosexual associated with the powers of darkness," Nolan charged. "He answers to a court higher than this one [and] blames the victim for his crime." She added that "there is no sentence you can give that can begin to take [Jenkins'] pain away" over losing Isabella.
Nolan charged that because of the Rev. Miller's "brazen intervention, a child — an American citizen — is growing up outside this country, and a mother must bear the unimaginable daily torment of being separated from her child, without any word on her child's health or well-being. Kenneth Miller's offense could not be more serious."
In a letter to Judge Sessions before sentencing, Miller explained his actions and challenged that any punishment he receives is aimed against his faith and values. "If it is true that my actions flow out of my faith in Jesus, and from my deeply held moral beliefs — and I sincerely think they do — then it must follow that whatever judgment is being brought against me by the United States of America is judgment on my faith and conscience and deeply held moral beliefs. I was faced with a woman in distress who needed help to protect her daughter from what seemed to be an inhumane court decree."
In handing down the sentence, Sessions claimed that he thought highly of the Rev. Miller and his decision to act upon his moral convictions. But, he added, the law required him to sentence Miller to prison for his actions. "My responsibility as United States District Judge is to enforce the laws and respect the system of justice," he said. While Miller's attorney, Brooks McArthur, requested that the minister be sentenced to house arrest rather than prison, noting that he has no criminal record and is not violent, Sessions refused, insisting that a "strong message" must be sent against Miller's crime, adding that the "horror of this cannot be overstated." He then sentenced the pastor to 27 months behind bars, plus a year of supervised probation.
Miller is unlikely to serve any of the sentence for the time being, after McArthur announced that he would appeal the verdict in the case based on the trial venue. "Our hope is that he does not ever have to serve any time," McArthur told reporters. He explained that Miller's defense team plans to challenge the decision to try the case in Vermont, where Lisa Miller and Isabella lived until fleeing the country, rather than in Virginia.
The Rev. Miller had been in jail for several weeks prior to sentencing because of his refusal to provide testimony regarding others who may have aided in the escape of Miller and her daughter. The pastor is now free pending the appeal of the sentence.
Following his unexpected release from jail pending the appeal, Miller told the Christian News Network: "I just thank God for his mercy. This was wholly unexpected today. I fully expected to go back to my cell mates … at the Northwest State Correctional Center." He said that the experience has brought him and his family closer together, even though he has been separated from them during his incarceration. "And it has definitely brought us all closer to God," he added. "My time in the cell was like a spiritual retreat in a lot of ways, and just an amazing work that was done in my heart and the hearts of my family through all this."
Photo of Rev. Kenneth Miller leaving court after his sentencing Mar. 4: AP Images


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The next billion users will virtually all be on mobile
This presents unique challenges for web developers who must abandon the limited mobile first approach in favor of a comprehensive mobile strategy.
You can address these challenges by focusing a few key areas listed below.
Design for seamless connectivity
Low bandwidth and intermittent connectivity are the norm for many people accessing the web. Most people online still have 2G connections or "3G" that downgrades to 2G. Even by 2020, more than 10% of users will still be on 2G. Many smartphones are used offline, and users regularly turn on airplane mode to avoid data consumption.
Conserve data usage
High data cost is often a greater barrier to access than poor connectivity. Mobile users are cost-conscious; even "unlimited" plans can become expensive when roaming or if unexpected fees are applied. Many mobile users are extremely cost conscious, with good reason: for example, a 500MB data plan in India costs the same as 17 hours of minimum wage work.
Reduce battery consumption
Many people, even in urban areas, don't have access to a reliable and affordable power supply. This makes power conservation a critical factor in all app and content design.
Optimize for device capability
Low spec is the norm. Globally, most new internet users have low-cost devices with basic hardware: single-core processors, 4" screens, limited memory, and limited storage.
Build multi-device content
Large-layout, graphics-heavy content frustrates users and discourages them from using your app or site. Content that is too wide or too tall is overlooked by some users and deliberately avoided by others — and excess content adds page weight and data cost.
Transactions & monetization: think global
Payment systems are inaccessible for many people on the web. Many users globally don't have bank accounts and don't use credit cards — including 8% of US households. Many payment systems don't work well on small viewports or with unreliable connectivity.
Plan for localization
Localization can help you access new markets. Many websites are only published in English, but English is not the first language of most people online. Only 5.52% of the world's population are native English speakers and US or European cultural conventions may not be familiar or intuitive. Instructions or prompts that are succinct and compact in English may be verbose and obtrusive in other languages.


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Start stocking up on heavy coats, flannel and thermal underwear. We may have mostly lucked out for the past two years, but now the venerable Farmers' Almanac is predicting a cold, frosty, wet winter for most of the United States. Even worse, the annual publication says this year's Super Bowl may take place during a particularly bad February week.
This year's predictions come by way of "Caleb Weatherbee," the pseudonymous weather forecaster for the almanac. (Weatherbee doesn't actually exist; it's just a name that has been used by all of the publication's forecasters for generations.)
So what exactly is the Almanac predicting for this winter? New England, New York and most of Pennsylvania will experience a bitterly cold and snow-filled season. The mid-Atlantic states will be cold, wet and blanketed in white. The Southeast will be chilly and wet all winter. Texas and other Southern states will experience frost and above-average dampness. Illinois and the surrounding states will have "biting cold" and snow. The Midwest will see "piercing cold" with normal snowfall. The Pacific Northwest will see a dry and chilly year. The one good region in the predictions is California, Nevada and Arizona, which will see a season of cool with near-normal precipitation.
"Weatherbee" says that the almanac is "red-flagging" the first 10 days of February "for possible heavy winter weather." That will hit Super Bowl XLVIII hard on Feb, 2. The game, to be played at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, will be played outdoors — something not normally done for the big event. "We are forecasting stormy weather for this, the biggest of sporting venues," Weatherbee wrote. "But even if we are off by a day or two with the timing of copious wind, rain, and snow, we wish to stress that this particular part of the winter season will be particularly volatile and especially turbulent."
The almanac is also predicting a mid-March "wave of storminess stretching from coast to coast, bringing a wide variety of precipitation types as well as strong and gusty winds."
So how much credence should you put in the almanac's predictions? Well, despite the publication's long history and claim of 80 percent accuracy, it doesn't really have all that good a track record. As the Washington Post's Jason Samenow wrote in the Capital Weather Gang blog, "no one — with any degree of accuracy ' can predict the specific days when cold snaps or storms will occur months in advance." He looks at the almanac's predictions for the winter of 2012-2013 as an example. Last year Weatherbee said it would be cold in the East and mild in the West. "The opposite occurred," Samenow wrote. "The eastern two-thirds of the U.S. had a milder than normal winter and it was cooler than average in parts of the West."
So you might want to take the Farmers' Almanac predictions with a grain of salt. Just in case, though, you might also want to plan on watching the Super Bowl from the comfort of your living room instead of the frigid fields of New Jersey.
Related on MNN:


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Daily Show host Jon Stewart tore into the NRA on Wednesday night, quipping that the organization was a covert operation run by Michael Moore in an "attempt to discredit responsible gun owners."
But Stewart saved his harshest NRA criticism for the reaction to President Barack Obama's proposals to curb the nation's rash of gun violence.
Stewart cut to a clip of a pro-gun rights guest on CNN, who said that the U.S. needs to simply enforce the gun laws it already has on the books. Stewart went on to explain how that was nearly impossible because of the restrictions imposed on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Stewart highlighted Rep. Todd Tiahrt, who in 2007 suggested that mayors shouldn't try to trace the source of illegal guns because the ATF is "going after them 24/7."
But in reality, Stewart said that the ATF is full of dysfunction because of inadequacies in its setup. For instance, its current director, B. Todd Jones, doubles as the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota.
"You're telling me this dude ... has another full-time job?" Stewart quipped. "He's just moonlighting?"
The Senate hasn't confirmed an ATF director since 2006. The body has to confirm the position because of a 2006 provision inserted into a Patriot Act renewal by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner.
"I don't have footage of that. ... I do have footage of Sensenbrenner from that year, accepting the NRA's coveted Defender of Freedom Award," Stewart said.
Stewart pointed out other problems—like how the ATF is prohibited from creating a federal registry to track gun sales. It also is barred from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor.
Stewart then revealed that the Congressman who authored the amendment with so many limits on the ATF was the aforementioned Todd Tiahrt. Stewart said the amendment couldn't be worse if the NRA wrote it themselves."
Stewart got word from his "messenger pigeon" that, indeed, the NRA "did write that law."
Watch the clips below:


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Faced with drastic funding cuts, superintendents from all 12 Lenawee County school districts met Thursday to encourage state lawmakers not to make schools the latest casualty of the statewide budget crisis.
During a press conference, Del Cochran, president of the Lenawee County Superintendents' Association and superintendent of Adrian Public Schools, said governor Jennifer Granholm's proposed $122 cut in per pupil funding could prove unmanageable for the many districts already near the brink of financial insolvency.
If the funding cut is approved, Lenawee County schools would lose an estimated $2,170,460 a year, with a $108,198 projected loss for Morenci.


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The number e
|Number theory index
|History Topics Index
One of the first articles which we included in the "History Topics" section of our web archive was on the history of π. It is a very popular article and has prompted many to ask for a similar article about the number e. There is a great contrast between the historical developments of these two numbers and in many ways writing a history of e is a much harder task than writing one for π. The number e is, compared to π, a relative newcomer on the mathematics scene.
The number e first comes into mathematics in a very minor way. This was in 1618 when, in an appendix to Napier's work on logarithms, a table appeared giving the natural logarithms of various numbers. However, that these were logarithms to base e was not recognised since the base to which logarithms are computed did not arise in the way that logarithms were thought about at this time. Although we now think of logarithms as the exponents to which one must raise the base to get the required number, this is a modern way of thinking. We will come back to this point later in this essay. This table in the appendix, although carrying no author's name, was almost certainly written by Oughtred. A few years later, in 1624, again e almost made it into the mathematical literature, but not quite. In that year Briggs gave a numerical approximation to the base 10 logarithm of e but did not mention e itself in his work.
The next possible occurrence of e is again dubious. In 1647 Saint-Vincent computed the area under a rectangular hyperbola. Whether he recognised the connection with logarithms is open to debate, and even if he did there was little reason for him to come across the number e explicitly. Certainly by 1661 Huygens understood the relation between the rectangular hyperbola and the logarithm. He examined explicitly the relation between the area under the rectangular hyperbola yx = 1 and the logarithm. Of course, the number e is such that the area under the rectangular hyperbola from 1 to e is equal to 1. This is the property that makes e the base of natural logarithms, but this was not understood by mathematicians at this time, although they were slowly approaching such an understanding.
Huygens made another advance in 1661. He defined a curve which he calls "logarithmic" but in our terminology we would refer to it as an exponential curve, having the form y = kax. Again out of this comes the logarithm to base 10 of e, which Huygens calculated to 17 decimal places. However, it appears as the calculation of a constant in his work and is not recognised as the logarithm of a number (so again it is a close call but e remains unrecognised).
Further work on logarithms followed which still does not see the number e appear as such, but the work does contribute to the development of logarithms. In 1668 Nicolaus Mercator published Logarithmotechnia which contains the series expansion of log(1+x). In this work Mercator uses the term "natural logarithm" for the first time for logarithms to base e. The number e itself again fails to appear as such and again remains elusively just round the corner.
Perhaps surprisingly, since this work on logarithms had come so close to recognising the number e, when e is first "discovered" it is not through the notion of logarithm at all but rather through a study of compound interest. In 1683 Jacob Bernoulli looked at the problem of compound interest and, in examining continuous compound interest, he tried to find the limit of (1 + 1/n)n as n tends to infinity. He used the binomial theorem to show that the limit had to lie between 2 and 3 so we could consider this to be the first approximation found to e. Also if we accept this as a definition of e, it is the first time that a number was defined by a limiting process. He certainly did not recognise any connection between his work and that on logarithms.
We mentioned above that logarithms were not thought of in the early years of their development as having any connection with exponents. Of course from the equation x = at, we deduce that t = log x where the log is to base a, but this involves a much later way of thinking. Here we are really thinking of log as a function, while early workers in logarithms thought purely of the log as a number which aided calculation. It may have been Jacob Bernoulli who first understood the way that the log function is the inverse of the exponential function. On the other hand the first person to make the connection between logarithms and exponents may well have been James Gregory. In 1684 he certainly recognised the connection between logarithms and exponents, but he may not have been the first.
As far as we know the first time the number e appears in its own right is in 1690. In that year Leibniz wrote a letter to Huygens and in this he used the notation b for what we now call e. At last the number e had a name (even if not its present one) and it was recognised. Now the reader might ask, not unreasonably, why we have not started our article on the history of e at the point where it makes its first appearance. The reason is that although the work we have described previously never quite managed to identify e, once the number was identified then it was slowly realised that this earlier work is relevant. Retrospectively, the early developments on the logarithm became part of an understanding of the number e.
We mentioned above the problems arising from the fact that log was not thought of as a function. It would be fair to say that Johann Bernoulli began the study of the calculus of the exponential function in 1697 when he published Principia calculi exponentialium seu percurrentium Ⓣ. The work involves the calculation of various exponential series and many results are achieved with term by term integration.
So much of our mathematical notation is due to Euler that it will come as no surprise to find that the notation e for this number is due to him. The claim which has sometimes been made, however, that Euler used the letter e because it was the first letter of his name is ridiculous. It is probably not even the case that the e comes from "exponential", but it may have just be the next vowel after "a" and Euler was already using the notation "a" in his work. Whatever the reason, the notation e made its first appearance in a letter Euler wrote to Goldbach in 1731. He made various discoveries regarding e in the following years, but it was not until 1748 when Euler published Introductio in Analysin infinitorum Ⓣ that he gave a full treatment of the ideas surrounding e. He showed that
e = 1 + 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + ...and that e is the limit of (1 + 1/n)n as n tends to infinity. Euler gave an approximation for e to 18 decimal places,
e = 2.718281828459045235without saying where this came from. It is likely that he calculated the value himself, but if so there is no indication of how this was done. In fact taking about 20 terms of 1 + 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + ... will give the accuracy which Euler gave. Among other interesting results in this work is the connection between the sine and cosine functions and the complex exponential function, which Euler deduced using De Moivre's formula.
Interestingly Euler also gave the continued fraction expansion of e and noted a pattern in the expansion. In particular he gave
usually written 1/1+ 1/6+ 1/10+ 1/14+ 1/18+ ... or [0; 1, 6, 10, 14, ...]Euler did not give a proof that the patterns he spotted continue (which they do) but he knew that if such a proof were given it would prove that e is irrational. For, if the continued fraction for (e - 1)/2 were to follow the pattern shown in the first few terms, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, ... (add 4 each time) then it will never terminate so (e - 1)/2 (and so e) cannot be rational. One could certainly see this as the first attempt to prove that e is not rational.
or [1; 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, 1, 1, 6, ...]
or [1; 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, 1, 1, 6, ...]
The same passion that drove people to calculate to more and more decimal places of π never seemed to take hold in quite the same way for e. There were those who did calculate its decimal expansion, however, and the first to give e to a large number of decimal places was Shanks in 1854. It is worth noting that Shanks was an even more enthusiastic calculator of the decimal expansion of π. Glaisher showed that the first 137 places of Shanks calculations for e were correct but found an error which, after correction by Shanks, gave e to 205 places. In fact one needs about 120 terms of 1 + 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + ... to obtain e correct to 200 places.
In 1864 Benjamin Peirce had his picture taken standing in front of a blackboard on which he had written the formula i -i = √(eπ). In his lectures he would say to his students:-
Gentlemen, we have not the slightest idea what this equation means, but we may be sure that it means something very important.Most people accept Euler as the first to prove that e is irrational. Certainly it was Hermite who proved that e is not an algebraic number in 1873. It is still an open question whether ee is algebraic, although of course all that is lacking is a proof - no mathematician would seriously believe that ee is algebraic! As far as we are aware, the closest that mathematicians have come to proving this is a recent result that at least one of ee and e to the power e2 is transcendental.
Further calculations of decimal expansions followed. In 1884 Boorman calculated e to 346 places and found that his calculation agreed with that of Shanks as far as place 187 but then became different. In 1887 Adams calculated the logarithm of e to the base 10 to 272 places.
Anyone wishing to see e to 10,000 places - click THIS LINK.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson


text:
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