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Duke has the talent to cope with Jabari Parker's departure, but other questions remain
Jabari Parker is gone, but talent may not be the biggest concern in Durham. (Lance King/Getty)
Well, it was a nice little fantasy for Duke fans: Maybe Jabari Parker might be wired differently. Maybe the tears after a stunning NCAA tournament loss and a contemplative stay-or-go process meant he'd fight the current sweeping him away from campus. Instead, Parker declared his intent to enter the NBA draft after one season in an essay published Thursday on SI.com. It was no surprise. It was one-and-done according to plan.
All it meant was that the Blue Devils' faithful can move on to their next fantasy. Because Parker leaves, and in comes an overloaded recruiting class that makes the program a national championship contender again.
JABARI PARKER: Why I made the difficult decision to go pro
It features the consensus overall No. 1 player in the Class of 2014, center Jahlil Okafor. It features a consensus top 5 player in point guard Tyus Jones, whose chemistry with Okafor already is steeled, since the two were a package deal from the start. It features a consensus top 15 player in small forward Justise Winslow, who might not be a scorer on Parker's level but who can offer athleticism and rebounding while perhaps providing even more defensively. If point production from the wing is a concern, there's four-star shooting guard Grayson Allen, a top 30 prospect who somehow becomes an afterthought in a class teeming with talent.
If it sounds like Duke simply churned out another ready-made starting lineup of four McDonald's All-Americans, it's because that's what happened. These freshmen will have to answer questions about how quickly and effectively they can get up to speed (see: Kentucky, 2013-14), but they will have veteran assistance. Even without Rodney Hood, who also reportedly will leave for the NBA draft, Duke returns upperclassmen in Quinn Cook, Rasheed Sulaimon and Amile Jefferson. They will assume a good deal of the burden, from both a leadership and production standpoint. The roster and depth of talent should provide hope for even more success than the Blue Devils enjoyed the past three seasons.
Ultimately, Parker's return wasn't going to alter the most fundamental issues for Duke. The program must find a way to avoid another galling round of 64 defeat, after two in the last three seasons: Losses to No. 15 seed Lehigh in 2012 and then No. 14 seed Mercer this March sandwiched around an Elite Eight run in 2013. More subtly, Mike Krzyzewski will have to work through some profound staff changes after Steve Wojciechowski departed for the head gig at Marquette. With Chris Collins leaving for Northwestern a year earlier, Krzyzewski has lost two valued aides who spent a combined 27 seasons on the Duke bench. It stands to reason that a guy closing in on 1,000 career victories just might figure things out. But getting really good ideas from trusted voices is no small matter, especially if Duke makes a deep postseason run and faces similarly talented opposition.
In a sophomore version of Jabari Parker, a returning first-team All-America, the Blue Devils would have enjoyed a ridiculous failsafe against some of these issues. But the program won't want for talent in 2014-15. Nor will its expectations be in any way capped. And any of the big questions anyone has about Duke will still be there, even if Parker isn't.
[si_video id="video_ACBACD44-D42D-5D0B-5348-6FD6BE2497E4" height="500"]


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Travel With Peace Of Mind: Full cancelation until 14 days before arrival - valid on all new bookings until further notice.
Casa Familia, a gorgeous Penthouse, is inspired and designed for a family lifestyle. It is beautifully decorated by the owner and you will feel right at home!
Enjoy the open plan living area that leads to the terrace, listen to the waves and feel the refreshing breeze off the ocean. Relax in the jacuzzi, chaise lounges and palapa with al fresco dining or BBQ. Prepare your food, in a Caribbean style, in the fully equipped kitchen with all modern conveniences.
On the main level you have a King Bedroom with an ensuite bathroom. The upper floor leads to two more King size bed suites and a wonderful terrace with a large palapa and sofa area with views over the garden …perfect for relaxing!!
Casa Familia is located in a complex at a gated community, and within a building with its own security. This complex has a huge swimming pool, tennis court and beach side with palapas and chaises. A very short walk takes you to the Puerto Aventuras Marina with the many restaurants, boutiques, delicatessens, bars and much more.
Casa Familia will truly delight you!!
|High Season
|11-Jan-20 / 03-May-20
|Mid Season
|04-May-20 / 30-Aug-20
|31-Aug-20 / 22-Nov-20
|High Season
|23-Nov-20 / 13-Dec-20
|14-Dec-20 / 27-Dec-20
|28-Dec-20 / 10-Jan-21
|High Season
|11-Jan-21 / 03-May-21
|Mid Season
|04-May-21 / 30-Aug-21
|31-Aug-21 / 22-Nov-21
|High Season
|23-Nov-21 / 13-Dec-21
|14-Dec-21 / 27-Dec-21
|28-Dec-21 / 10-Jan-22
Villas Del Mar I – Penthouse (with elevator)
Fantastic Views from condo
Fully Air conditioned
2 large terraces (beachside & also jungle side)
BBQ Gas Grill
Ceiling fans
Coffee maker
Cooking utensils
4 burner cook top (electric)
Linens, bath and beach towels
Bath Robes
Pack and Play Crib
Full size refrigerator
Satellite Television (Living Room and Bedrooms)
Ipod Dock Station
Nintendo and games
Selection of CDs and vacation books (mystery and romance)
Wireless internet – please bring your own lap top
Washer / Dryer
Maid service daily
We provide purified water throughout your stay
Complimentary Spa Soap and Shampoo for arrival
Casa Familia
Bahia Yanten, Villa Del Mar 1
77782 Puerto Aventuras, Quintana Roo
Riviera Maya, Mexico
Cancun International Airport : 1 hrs drive
Playa Del Carmen : 15 min drive
The Ruins of Tulum : 30 min drive
Tulum : 45 min drive
Nearest Restaurant : 2 min drive
Nearest Pub/Bar : 2 min drive
Submit your review
The condo was warm and inviting! It felt like home! Great outdoor spaces including a beautiful beach view but also a peaceful, shaded patio on the second floor was a perfect happy hour spot after a day on the beach. The rooms were lovely and very spacious so that no one felt crowded. A fantastic kitchen made cooking a breeze and housekeeping coming daily was heaven! This will be our "go-to" vacation spot for many years to come!
shawnp726 @Tripadvisor
Just spent a Girlfriend's Weekend here. BEST TRIP EVER! Penthouse is amazing, kitchen is fully equipped, bedrooms and bathrooms are spacious, bed linens, towels are WAY above hotel quality. Daily housekeeping made it even more enjoyable. A very short walk to the beach was perfect. Same short walk across the street to multiple restaurants made meal time very simple. Live music at night can be a fun experience also. Certainly a place I will return as often as possible.
Jansten @TripAdisor
We just returned from a week at Casa Familia. The residence was more beautiful than the photos. Puerto Aventuras, in general, is a wonderful place for a family vacation and
Casa Familia made it even better. It had everything we needed and more. We cannot wait to go back!
We have been coming to this amazing condo for many years. The owners are tremendous and take pride in providing a perfect vacation experience. The views are stunning, the condo has amazing accommodations, the beach is beautiful, the pool is stunning and it truly paradise. There is so much to do or so little to do--you decide. I would highly recommend this for a couples getaway or a family-friendly vacation. We will visit again!
My wife and I came down for a week stay in September. The condo was perfect for us even though we did not use the other two bedrooms. We have stayed in Villa Del Marr a number of times and this condo will be the one we book in the future. It is equipped in the kitchen with everything you would need and had more than we expected. The beach and pool are steps from your building and since it's on the third floor you have a view The added plus is the concierge service you get from Mimi. We have traveled and stayed in numerous villas and condos and she is by far the best concierge we have ever worked with. I enjoyed my stay so much that I returned three weeks later for a golf outing with friends You will not be disappointed if you book that condo
Dear Mark,
A million thanks for your beautiful feedback! Every 5 stars review means a lot to us. I'm delighted to know that you enjoyed your visit with us and know that we will see you soon.
Thank you so much, I wish you the very best.
Riviera Maya Haciendas Team.
Really nice cozy condo, if you wish it is cleaned daily. The complex has two big swimming pools, which you can view from your private terrace (which is quite nice for families with children: you can keep an eye on the while you have a nice quiet cup of coffee in the Mexican sun...) Really convenient: a Oxxo-supermarket and excellent (take out)pizzas right across the street! Also Dolphin Experience and lots of small restaurants in walking distance (as in 3 minutes tops). Puerto Aventuras is a gated community and the Villas del Mar-buildings also have their own guard, so good place for people who are worried about safety. We were here at the end of August and it was really quiet, we often had the pool to ourselves. Special thanks to Cynthia who handled our reservation: really nice and fast with help and requests, even a late checkout. Not a problem for us, but maybe good to know: the beds are quite high to get into (or fall off). Excellent and free Wifi!
It was very spacious and homey. It has everything that a house would have. I really love the balconies and the convenient laundry facility. There was also enough towels, garbage bags, washing detergent, coffee, and water!! I was so happy and impressed that the host even prepared shower gel, conditioner, and shampoo for us.
My family and I stayed at Casa Familia in Puerto Adventuras in August, it was unbelievable! The downstairs patio is perfect for morning coffee, views of the ocean, and two spectacular pools surrounded by lush landscape. My parents loved lounging by the pool, reading their books and taking dips in the pool to cool off.
I put together a surprise birthday dinner for my son with the help of the management company. Lara provided all the information and details for a private chef who prepared a five-course dinner for our family; it was spectacular! We gathered in the dining room, and it was the perfect spot to view the chef, and his assistant working their magic. The kitchen had all the necessities for them to prepare dinner and create a beautiful table setting.
The master bedroom suite on the main floor is perfect for the early riser. My parents were able to move about, and have their morning time without disturbing the rest of us sleeping upstairs who may have appreciated a little more shut eye.
The two master bedroom suites upstairs are gorgeous, and each has their own private bathroom. There is a covered patio upstairs also, and it was the perfect place for "family" happy hour, a cool spot to relax before heading out to enjoy the night life and have great conversations. My son and I spent many late nights hanging out on the upstairs patio, stretched out on the sofas sharing quality time without bothering other family members.
The beach was magical, the water refreshing and our family had many days of fun in the sun. The marina is close and offers an excellent selection of restaurants with warm and hospitable locals who welcome you like family. Everything you would ever want to do or see is within an hours drive.
If you are looking for a place to call home and want five-star luxury accommodations, this is the place! I couldn't image staying anywhere else but Casa Familia. This was the best family vacation ever!
My family and I have been coming here for years. We love the special touches of Casa Familia and there is nothing like waking up in paradise!
This is my favorite place to stay! The view of the private beach from the balcony is amazing! The grounds are immaculate. The condo is so comfortable, plenty of space and wonderfully decorated. It really feels like home. It is a special place that you will want to return to year after year!

subset: commoncrawl


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Debt Owed By All Who
By the time this column is printed, school will have started in some of our school districts. Not long ago, one of my grandchildren told me, "Only 20 more days until school starts." I smiled as I heard the child's excited voice.
Of course, part of that excitement is getting back together with your friends. The days in the first couple of weeks of the new school year are not near long enough for everyone to catch up with everyone else about their summer.
I remember how excited I was at the new school year beginning. Not only did I get to see all of my friends, but for me there was the excitement of being at the next level of my education and what lay in store for me to learn.
As a youngster I would often hear stories from elderly people about how they had not had the chance to get very far in school. That once they learned the basics of reading and writing, they had to end their school days in order to help support the family. Listening to them I was always struck by the sadness in their voices at not completing their formal education.
Education was very important to my parents. All of my grandparents had not been able to go beyond the third or fourth grade. Dad had to leave school after third grade. Mom managed to get through the seventh grade before she had to quit in order to take care of her father. And none of their brothers and sisters finished high school.....some of them had not even finished grade school.
Dad told me when I was in grade school that no matter what it took, no matter what he and Mom had to do or give up, my brother and I were going to graduate from high school. He also told me that the most important job my brother and I had was to get our education.
To me that meant we had to pay close attention in class and do the very best we could do. Nothing less would be satisfactory.
Years later I remember telling my own children some of the other lessons my dad taught me. That we are able to obtain an education because of what people have done in the past to give us that opportunity ... the sacrifices they made, their hard work, their unselfishness.
I also told them that if they didn't do their very best, the one they hurt the most was themselves. In not doing what they were capable of they would shortchange themselves. That they were very fortunate in not only being able to complete high school, but to also go to college if they so chose.
A debt is owed by everyone who obtains an education. That debt can only be repaid by doing the very best possible while in school and by making certain school is available for all to attend just as it was made possible for us.


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I'm awestruck.
I remember reading about the effects of the depression on the musicians of the time and how, for some, the only steady work they could get was in the newly formed animation studios doing scores and sound tracks for cartoons. They must have loved it.
Watching old B&W Looney Tunes, you can't help but notice the precision, tempo, sound quality and apparent fun the tuba player had. The cartoons wouldn't exist without him (?) because all of the synchronization for movement depended on the tuba. Frank Marsales knew just who to get for the job. His choice in tuba must have been an easy one. Frank Marsales was a symphony musician who became the music director for Warner Brothers Cartoons under the direction of former Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, scoring many classic cartoons in the 1930s, including every Harman & Ising Looney Tune and Merrie Melodie.
Now for the question...who was that masked man on the tuba? He certainly deserves recognition and acclaim, along with laurels for the historical role played syncing the early Warner Brothers cartoons and making the music/sound track unforgettable. Frank Marsales did a great job there. I can't remember ever hearing someone maintain such impeccable timing and flawless tempo for such duration. AND the pace. Imagine the number of takes and the rehearsals it must have taken to get it totally perfect.


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WASHINGTON – For the women who play it, roller derby is more than a sport. Weeknights are scheduled around practices, weekends are taken up by bouts and broken bones are just part of the game.
What started as a World War II-era spectacle has turned into a full-contact sport complete with helmets, knee pads and mouth guards.
In the 1970s and 1980s, roller derby looked a lot like the World Wrestling Federation: Flamboyant costumes and senseless violence drew cynical crowds just looking for a fight.
The sport has since evolved into a game filled with suspense and strategy, but that doesn't mean the crazy names and torn fishnet stockings are gone. Sometimes dressing up also means getting beaten up when it comes to the DC Rollergirls.
On a blustery Monday night, the D.C. Armory is transformed into a maelstrom of skates and sparkles. Women from throughout the region arrive from work or after class. A skater's adolescent daughter helps her mom's teammates prepare for practice.
"When I first saw it live, I immediately knew I wanted to try it," says Christy Chason, who skates for the DC DemonCats under the moniker Bat Cat.
That refrain is heard again and again from the Rollergirls. Because the current incarnation of roller derby is new within the last decade or so, even the most veteran of skaters only have a few years of experience. Everyone is essentially new to the sport, and almost everyone claims to have been converted the first time they saw a bout.
"I was 38 and realized that my coolness factor wasn't there anymore and I had to do something," says Carol Wilkes, also known as Mini Vandal.
After a quick online search for roller skating, the recently divorced mother stumbled upon roller derby. She collected a group of friends and went to a bout.
"We pull up … and there's a couple of biker dudes and the [other moms] wouldn't go in. I finally convinced them after 30 minutes," she says. "We got there, they hated it and I fell in love with it immediately."
Roller derby can look a little like rugby on skates to the uninitiated, but the actual sport is much more complicated:
- Two teams line up on the track with five members each. Blockers skate in a pack, hip-checking and preventing the "jammer," designated by a star on her helmet, from passing them.
- Each skater a jammer passes is a point scored. Extra points are awarded when one jammer, typically the fastest and sneakiest skater, laps the opposing team's jammer.
- During each round, known as a jam, both teams assist their own jammers while also preventing the other team's jammer from breaking their line, effectively playing offense and defense at the same time.
"My favorite thing about roller derby is that anyone can do it," says Emily Gerston, or Oxford Commakaze. "There are people who have come into derby literally not knowing how to stand up on skates who are now absolutely amazing skaters."
DC Rollergirls formed in 2006 with skaters practicing in a Rosslyn parking garage. One year later, the league celebrated its first bout. Since then, it has expanded to include more than 70 skaters, who all volunteer their free time to arrange practices, procure venues and even sell concessions on game days.
Meet some of the DC Rollergirls by clicking on the image gallery above, and check out their next bout Saturday at the Dulles Sportsplex in Sterling, Va. Click here for ticket information.
Watch the video below to see them in action:
Follow @WTOP on Twitter.
(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)


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|- Wheeling reports and pics pics, pics, pics... Stories of the trail and race
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Wenas Wildlife Area 4×4 Snow Wheeling Run - Jan 26th 2013
Wenas Wildlife Area 4×4 Snow Wheeling Run
Report by Clay Graham / Eastern Washington Adventures
Umtanum Ridge, Kittitas County, Washington - Photo by Clay Graham / Eastern Washington Adventures
On Saturday January 26th, 2013 Eastern Washington Adventures members met up at the Eastern Washington Adventures Club House in Selah Washington for the Wenas Wildlife Area 4×4 Snow Wheeling Run. We had five Jeeps on this run, TJ40 TJ, Guido TJ, Foxracer TJ, Rangerat YJ and Ceg JK. TylerB rode with me. We convoyed to Sheep Company Road and aired down.
Once aired down, we headed on up Durr Road and then turned up Bel Tel Road. Near the top of Umtanum Ridge we climbed out of the fog. The weather was very nice on top of Umtanum Ridge. We took a break as we turned Northwest on Umtanum Ridge Road.
We ran Umtanum Ridge Road getting stuck here and they due to dry powder snow drifts. We passed a few other ORVs a long the way. About a 1/4 mile from Black Canyon Road the dry powder snow drifts got to deep to push on. We back tracked Umtanum Ridge passing more ORVs. At Durr Road we headed back down toward Sheep Company Road. Not far off the top of Umtanum Ridge we dropped back down into the fog.
Down at the Sheep Company entrance of Wenas Wildlife Area we aired up for the pavement. Guido and Rangerat headed home and the rest of us went back to the Club House for dinner.
This was a very fun day!
See full report with photos at: EWA Wenas Wildlife Area Snow Wheeling Run Jan 26 2013
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Herbalife Formula 1, Nutrional Shake Mix & Formula 3, Protein Powder both contain Soy Protein.
Article: The Big Debate - Soy Vs Whey Protein
How much Protein does your body need? Use our online lean protein estimator to find out: Protein Estimator
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Soy protein is approved for those who are lactose intolerant, and can be used as a meat substitute. Much more than just an ingredient for a protein shake, Soy protein can be used for cooking instead of flour, producing high protein foods that are extremely low in fat, a bodybuilder's dream come true! Soy protein is derived exclusively from soy beans.
As an athlete training up to 12 times a week you always keep an ear to the ground for any new products that may help performance. However, I am very cynical of new revolutionary products that can change the way you train and perform. But, I tried Herbalife and haven't looked back. Structuring my nutrition around the Herbalife products couldn't have been easier and they are easy to use and fit into a hectic schedule.
I have found in my training that I am training harder and more consistently than before. I am lifting heavier weights but doing more reps, my times and tests on the rowing machine are getting faster but more importantly being consistent and training on the water is much quicker and I am now able to push myself harder than before. But for the most important thing…racing. At the last Head Race in my single scull not only was I the fastest sculler in my status but the fastest sculler of the whole event! This stuff really works. I am looking forward to a successful winters training that I can then take forward into the regatta season of 2009! - Tim Goldsbrough
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Lake Monocan is closed under the Virginia COVID-19 regulations at this time. Please check back for re-opening plans.
Lake Monocan, a 20-acre lake and park is located at 239 Camping Ridge Lane in Stoney Creek in the valley and is staffed daily with a lifeguard, weather permitting. Snack bar, canoes, kayaks, fishing equipment, sand volleyball court, sandy beach, lounge chairs, picnic area and outdoor charcoal grills are available. Some fees apply; towels not provided.
Lake Monocan is open Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day. Please check This Week at Wintergreen for current hours of operation.
Lake Monocan FAQ. Call 434-325-8180 for more information
Members and all registered resort guests have complimentary access to Lake Monocan Park. You will need to present a proper ID or pass for complimentary access. Each guest will be required to get a wristband at the snack bar (located at the dock).
|Members and all registered resort guests have complimentary access with proper ID or pass. Public access for the rates listed below.
Adults: $14 (Guest of Member: $10)
Children 6-12: $9 (Guest of Member: $5)
Under 5: Free with paying adult
|Lake Monocan is only open to registered Wintergreen Resort guests, Members and Guests of Members (fees apply). Lake Monocan is closed to the general public on Saturdays.
|Adults: 5 visit pass: $50; 10 visit pass: $85
Children 6-12: 5 visit pass: $35; 10 visit pass: $50
Under 5: Free with Adult pass purchase
|Not valid Saturdays or for scheduled special evening events. Limited number available; call 434-325-8180.
Any of six picnic areas can be reserved for a fee, in addition to the Park Access Fee. Each picnic area has an eight foot long table, charcoal grill and trash can.
To reserve one, call 434-325-8180 or email [email protected].
A full service snack bar offers cheeseburgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, mini pizzas, candy, novelty ice creams and smoothies. A small selection of retail items are available.
The lake offers rental canoes, kayaks and paddleboats on an hourly basis. Last rental is available one hour before scheduled closing. There is a paved two mile walking/running trail that follows the lake and the Stoney Creek Golf Course.
Lake Monocan Rental Rates:
239 Camping Ridge Lane, Nellysford, VA 22958. From I-64 take Exit 107 (Crozet, US-250). Take US-250 West 4.7 miles to VA-151 South, turn left. Follow VA-151 South 11 miles to Monocan Drive - look for the Stoney Creek at Wintergreen sign. Continue on Monocan Drive for 1.9 miles; turn right on Camping Ridge Lane (you'll see a sign for Lake Monocan Park).


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Howdy all! Welcome to the Kingdom of Goofiness…umm…Tiredness…ahh..Total Unpreparedness!! Honestly, I had a mixture and delight and horror when I got Heather from SITS's email. Happy as heck my day is finally here, panicking like when surprise company pops by (is the house a mess? Are there under-grunders on the floor? Did the boys leave the seat up??).
But WELCOME! I am SO happy you are here! Take a minute pop around and read some of my fav posts like fish-emergency-in-express-lane or my series of quotes-of-week
Take a sec to take a peek at two of my passion projects, and the reason I don't sleep much!
http://www.travelactivitybags.blogspot.com AND http://www.lakesareamomsquad.blogspot.com
But most of all, just enjoy my humorous look at life and parenthood. So grab a cup-o-coffee, put the cell on vibrate, send the kiddies off to school and read some of the silliness that IS Franticmommy!
Thanks for stopping by!


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Well, I'm sorry to announce that Lightbringer must once again go on hiatus. Chad Rocco, or CR! as he's more popularly known, sadly sent me an e-mail today that he couldn't continue working on Lightbringer because of a lack of time.
Now there should not be any ill will towards him for making this decision. Webcomics are not exactly money in the bank and even I've considered shutting the comic down for good due so I can redouble my efforts in focusing on Atop the Fourth Wall and my other video projects. However, I have so many ideas, so many stories I do want to get out there that I feel bad about delaying them. Furthermore I hate to do a disservice to you, the fans, by just stopping this ride before you've seen everything there is to see about this universe and the characters in it.
So no, I'm not ready to say Lightbringer is gone for good. However, I do know that I can't draw a comic every week and with CR! gone there's simply nothing that can be done at the moment.
As such, all I will say is thanks for all of your continued support and hopefully I'll be seeing you all again soon. Thanks again for everything!


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I am working on a basic isometric game, and am struggling to find the correct mirrors.
Mirror can be any form of transform.
I have managed to get SE out of SW, by scaling the sprite on X axis by -1. Same applies for NE angle.
Something is bugging me, that I should be able to also mirror N to S, but I cannot manage to pull this one off.
Am I just too sleepy and trying to do the impossible, or a basic -1 scale on Y axis is not enough?
What are the common used mirror table for optimizing 8 angle (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) isometric sprites?


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Industry elder statesman John Bogle did not refrain from speaking his version of truth to power at a national gathering of investors, condemning the financial industry's grip on corporate America while taking other unpopular stands in a wide-ranging keynote discussion.
"The mutual fund industry owns 35% of the stock in America," Vanguard founder and the fund firm's former CEO told Morningstar's Don Phillips, in a conversation hosted by the fund research firm at its annual convention in Chicago.
"But it's actually much more than that because the big firms run institutional money as well. So it's probably 50% of stock. So we control corporate America," Bogle said, adding that such power leads to abuse.
"Executive compensation is a disgrace," he said, and the retired Vanguard CEO also criticized corporate philanthropic gifts, which he said corporations do "in their own interest," calling for shareholder approval for such pseudo-magnanimous gestures.
Bogle said that courts, regulators, security analysts and with few exceptions the news media have all failed to tame large financial industry firms and fully subject them to their shareholders.
Quoting a passage from the New Testament, Bogle said a man cannot serve two masters. And that's the attempt that takes place when a firm like Deutsche Bank, one example he named, say in effect "we love our investors but we're not going to cut their fees."
Low fees is the outspoken Vanguard founder's biggest claim to fame, and though the index giant retains that legacy, its former CEO did not refrain from criticizing Vanguard, where he still works every day.
"Can our directors be fiduciaries and understand the workings of 160 mutual funds?" he asked. "The answer is pretty obvious you can't do it all; you need some help. They need staffs," Bogle said, noting that things were different when he founded the firm in the 1970s with a staff of just 28 and only one fund the team had to know.
The Pennsylvania-based firm today has 14,000 employees, so it's impossible to know them all, but Bogle still tries, noting in passing that he went to the firm's exhibit hall both to meet the employees there.
Bogle acknowledged that the current management of Vanguard may be frustrated with his unwillingness to "shut up"—"I just like a fight," he said—but said that disagreement is just a part of life that human beings must "face with good humor and a smile."
Bogle said one mutual fund executive who got on the wrong side of former New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer approached him at a book signing, in a book in which Bogle criticized his behavior. The former exec had done some jail time, but assured Bogle in the awkward meeting that "I was a bad apple" deserving of the punishment.
Bogle was outspoken during the Spitzer prosecutions, calling for more aggressive legal approach than the lawyers and courts pursued.
"I looked at it as a conspiracy of insiders and hedge fund managers to defraud the long term owners of the fund," he said.
He called out fund giant Putnam, two of whose former CEOs had ethical problems, he said, condemning a ruling in whch one of them paid just $25,000—a pittance for "making all that money for Marsh and McClennan," he said, referring to the inside dealing that landed the insurance giant in trouble in 2004 in a case ultimately settled out of court.
While Bogle acknowledged that fund stewardship is better today than a decade ago, he expressed dissatisfaction with its progress, a process he said should be continual. A key problem for the fund industry today, he said, was a gap of 3% between fund returns and investor returns.
"That shows the industry doing something wrong in the way it attracts investors," he said, criticizing ads showing only top-performing fund rather than the performance of all funds.
The indexing champion didn't even spare indexing, saying that, "like any good idea, it attracts marginal players, people who jump on the bandwagon." He cited an ominously named "emerging cancer" index fund that didn't make it, as an example.
And he unhesitatingly answered yes to Phillips' question as to whether he'd rather buy a low-cost actively managed fund than a higher cost passively managed fund—"since
I believe cost is the single most important factor in investing," he answered.
On a pending fund controversy, regulation of money market funds, Bogle vocally opposed the industry preference for a fixed net asset value.
"We really out to be thinking about the shareholder and the society and not having the Treasury bail us out again," noting that while the probability a bailout would be needed was small the cost to society of such a bailout would be enormous—and unfair for a "profit-making business."
He said the fund industry wants a fixed NAV for marketing reasons.
"I'm fundamentally opposed to marketing," Bogle later said in a separate meeting restricted to members of the media.
Check out complete coverage of the Morningstar Investment Conference.


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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
DRAGONFORCE: CANCEL LA, CALIFORNIA, Troubadour Tuesday, Oct. 18 SHOW
UK metal warriors DRAGONFORCE have cancelled the bands previously announced show at
Los Angeles' Troubadour on Tuesday, Oct. 18.
Due to circumstances beyond their control, DragonForce have been forced to cancel their sold-out show at Los Angeles' Troubadour on Tuesday, Oct. 18. The show would have been the live debut of brand new singer Marc Hudson. However, upon his arrival in LA on Saturday evening, he fell ill, contracting a virus which is preventing him from performing. Hudson made the valiant effort to try and salvage the show, consulting with a doctor last night for the final time. He was told that there was no way he could possibly perform in his condition.
The band is incredibly frustrated to come all this way, only to be tripped at the last minute. DragonForce extends its apologies to all the LA fans they were looking forward to playing for but the situation is completely and entirely out of their control.
The band's Toronto and New York City performances slated for later this week should go on as planned.
Thanks-Stay Metal, Stay Brutal-\m/ -l-


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1990 Geo Tracker - Readers' Rides
DiggerVehicle: '90 Geo TrackerOwner: Neil TackettTires: 31x9.50-15 Swamper TSL radialsWheels: 15x8 black steelSuspension: 111/42-inch coil spacers with front upper strut flip mount and Crown Victoria rear shocksDrivetrain: 1.6L eight-valve engine, five-speed manual tranny, 5.13 gears Performance: K&N air and oil filters, Calmini header, 2-inch exhaust system Other Mods: 2-inch body lift, custom-built front bumper, skidplate/truss for front A-arm mounts, Mile Marker E3000 winch, Bosch driving lights, CB, Hi-Lift Jack, auxiliary back-up lightsDoes Everything Work The Way You Want?: Yes, nothing has let me down yetAnything You Would Change: I would've built the bumper before the body lift for better fitmentFunniest Wheeling Incident: Going for one last loop around the trails and finding a new offshoot that had a bottomless quagmire at the end of it.
Submission InformationOK, so we think some of you may not be reading this intro, and that's OK, because lots of times we wouldn't read it either. But we did make a couple of changes, including some specs, so we're including a submission form this month so we can catch the attention of those guys (obviously not you) who never read this part. We'd really like all fields filled out, and remember to shoot your truck in the dirt, because that's the way we like to see 'em. Getting all of these things right will greatly increase your chances of getting your ride in Readers' Rides, and for those of you who don't...well, maybe we'll run out of submissions that are correct, but not likely. For you digital-savvy photographers, please make sure the photos measure no less than 1600 x 1200 pixels (or two megapixels) and be saved as a TIFF, EPS, or a maximum-quality JPEG file.
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San Diego Mayor Bob Filner and the city's hoteliers have resumed their feud over the release of tourism marketing funds, a little more than a week after an accord was reached.
The City Council had been poised on Tuesday to finalize an agreement that would pave the way for millions of dollars in funds to be spent on marketing the city, but Filner said the proposed language leaves the city's general fund at great risk should the Tourism Marketing District be found illegal.
A 2 percent hotel room charge that is used to finance tourism promotion via a special citywide assessment district is being challenged in three lawsuits filed against the city. Those suits are not likely to be resolved for months, if not a year.
The council voted unanimously to continue the matter until Monday but vowed to make a decision then even if a consensus cannot be reached in the interim.
"We need all the parties, the city attorney, mayor and the TMD (Tourism Marketing District) to provide us with draft amendment language to see a way forward out of this mess -- and make no mistake, this is a mess," said Councilwoman Sherri Lightner. "This is hurting everyone, most of all the taxpayers who have elected us to lead."
At stake is $30 million a year in marketing money that is generated by the hotelier-run district. The city's Tourism Authority, which relies on the funds for 80 percent of its budget, already has canceled more than $8 million in television advertising at a time when other major cities are promoting themselves for the summer traveling season.
The agency is also facing layoffs of nearly all its staff if funding does not become available by early May. Layoff notices already have been issued.
While some council members were unsure as to whether all the parties could reach an agreement, they encouraged them to resume negotiations. Although the council had previously passed a resolution ordering Filner to sign an operating agreement for the marketing district, it believed that the mayor and the hotel industry had reached an accord that would no longer lead to further confrontation. A mayoral veto of that action is still possible on Thursday, the deadline for Filner to take such an action.
Addressing the council, Filner was insistent that the hoteliers step up and indemnify the city against all potential losses, not just the funds their individual hotels contribute toward marketing. Under language agreed to by the TMD, at least 20 of the largest hotels would indemnify the city against refunds to hotel guests if the marketing fee is overturned. The city would release only as much of the funds as are covered by such hotel agreements.
"I put forward what I thought we memorialized," Filner said. "I have signed that. My indemnification protects every single nickel that the city may be on the line for. They'll tell you there's little risk for the city. If there's little risk, why not sign the agreement."
Terry Brown, chairman of the marketing district board, said that while the board is willing to continue negotiating, it cannot agree to the indemnification demands Filner is making.
"It would shut the TMD down," he said. "We won't be able to perform under Filner's indemnity proposal."
Filner, who was sued by the district corporation in an effort to compel him to sign the tourism pact, prevailed in court, but the judge left the door open for the council to pass a resolution specifically directing Filner to sign the agreement, which it already did last month.
City Attorney Jan Goldsmith advised the council, as he has before, that the best protection for the city's general fund is to release none of the tourism funds until the lawsuits against the city are resolved. He said, however, that it is up to the council as to how it wants to proceed.
Councilman David Alvarez, who had helped broker the original agreement between the marketing district and Filner, said he will try once again to see if an accord can be reached.
"Come Monday, we wil have a decision and there will be no more delay beyond Monday," he said. "At this moment what I'm seeing is the best protection is not to release the funds. I don't know that that's what the mayor or council want to do. I'd ask the city attorney to provide us with guidance on what protections we could add to this agreement. If we don't do the marketing, there is some potential lost revenue in (hotel taxes). This is a balancing act."


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The Kansas City Art Institute is pleased to announce the spring 2013 lineup of artists, designers and scholars who will speak as part of the college's "Current Perspectives."
Unless otherwise noted, all lectures are free and open to the public and will be held at 7 p.m. Thursdays in Epperson Auditorium, Vanderslice Hall on the KCAI campus, 4415 Warwick Blvd., Kansas City, Mo.
Co-sponsored by the H&R Block Artspace at KCAI and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
The Xijing Men produce video art performances about the imaginary place of Xijing, which was conceived as an idealized western capital, meant to complement three other directional capitals of East Asia: Beijing, the northern capital; Nanjing, the southern capital; and Tokyo, the eastern capital. Since forming in 2006, the Xijing Men, Tsuyoshi Ozawa (Japan), Chen Shaoxiong (China) and Gimhongsok (Korea), have staged scenarios drawing heaviliy on absurdity, satire, sarcasm and humor. Their visit is part of a 10-day residency to create and install new work to be exhibited at the H&R Block Artspace Feb. 2-April 3.
Marty Maxwell Lane, assistant professor of graphic design; Hugh Merrill, professor of printmaking; Brett Reif, foundation professor; Phyllis Moore, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the School of Liberal Arts; and Alison Heryer, fiber instructor, will discuss projects underwritten by recent faculty grants.
Pictured: Current Perspectives presentation in Epperson Auditorium
Sponsored by the illustration department.
Nathan Fox ('97 illustration) is chair of the M.F.A. program in visual narrative at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he pursued graduate studies in the "Illustration as Visual Essay" program after earning a B.F.A. degree in illustration from KCAI.
Fox has been a freelance illustrator and storyteller whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Interview, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Wired, ESPN Magazine, Print, Entertainment Weekly, Mother Jones, Spin, Mad Magazine, MTV Store Windows and T-shirts, Burton US Open 2009, Instant Winner and REAL Skateboards, DC Comics, Vertigo, Dark Horse Comics, Marvel and many other publications and media.
For more information, visit www.foxnathan.com.
Pictured: "C'Est Bon" by Nathan Fox (2006)
Sponsored by the photography and digital filmmaking department
Ross Sawyers ('03 photography) began his career as an educator teaching photography at KCAI and then at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California-Riverside.
His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the Henry Art Museum in Seattle; and the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington. In 2011, he presented his third solo exhibition at Platform Gallery in Seattle.
His work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Hallmark Photographic Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection.
Sawyers holds an M.F.A. degree in photography from the University of Washington and a B.f.A. degree in photography from KCAI. He lives in Chiago, where he is an assistant professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago. For more information, visit www.rossawyers.com.
Pictured: Untitled, by Ross Sawyers
Matthias Pliessnig's fluid, skeletal furniture forms are made using traditional steam-bending techniques with oak wood. Human interaction imposed by the furniture's inherent structure intrigues Pleissnig and is reflected in his one-of-a-kind bench designs. his interest in bending wood developed in 2006 after he created a boat.
A sculptor and woodworker, Pliessnig studied sculpture at KCAI and earned a b.F.A. degree in furniture design from the Rhode Island School of Design. He earned an M.F.A. degree in woodworking in 2009 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Pliessnig has received national attention for his work and is considered one of the top artists/designers working with wood today. In 2008, he received a grant for his M.F.A. project from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and in the same year was given the Best of the Year Award for lounge seating by Interior Design Magazine. In 2009, he received a grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and his work was purchased by the Museum of Art and Design for their permanent collection. In 2010, he received a United States Artists Award. Most recently, the Smithsonian and Renwick Gallery chose eight pieces of his work to be included in the prestigious Renwick Craft Invitational. He was one of four artists selected who represent the forefront of contemporary craft and design.
For more information, visit www.matthias-studio.com.
Pictured: "Rivulet," Matthias Pliessnig, 2009, steam bent white oak, 96 inches by 35 inches by 28 inches
Co-sponsored by the School of Liberal Arts
Juliana Spahr is the author of many influential works of poetry and prose, including "Well Then There Now," "The Incinerator," "The Transformation," "This Connection of Everyone with Lungs," "Everybody's autonomy," "Fuck You - Aloha - I Love You" and "Response."
She co-founded the journal "Chain" with Jena Osman in 1993 and has edited numerous essay collections and anthologies, including "Poetry and pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary," as well as "American Women Poets in the 21st Century."
A National Poetry Series Award winner, two-time winner of the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, four-time NEA grant recipient, Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and winner of the Folger Library's Hardison Poetry Priz, Spahr is the Aurelia Henry Reinhardt chair of the English department at Mills College in Oakland, Calif.
Pictured: "Chillicothe," Juliana Spahr, 2011, self-portrait.
Co-sponsored by the graphic design department
Mike Weikert is the founder and director of two programs at the Maryland Institute College of Art: the Master of Arts in Social Design program and the Center for Design Practice. The M.A. in Social Design is an immersive, project-based program exploring the designer's role and responsibility in society, with outside organizations to examine challenges facing our communities. Weikert has his own design studio in Baltimore, Weikert Design, and serves as an advisor to Project M, an international social design initiative committed to helping young designers use their skills to create positive change in the world.
Previously he served as co-chair of the graphic design department at MICA and as a partner and creative director at the Atlanta-based Iconologic, and he was a design consultant to the International Olympic Committee. He also has worked as a designer with Pentagram and taught graphic design and branding at the Portfolio Center in Atlanta. In 2011, he was nominated for the 2011 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award.
His work has been recognized in many publications, including Baltimore Mgazine, Communication Arts, GOOD Magazine, Graphic Design USA and others, and his work has appeared in design books including "Design Alliance," "Designing for Social Change: Strategies for Community-Based Graphic Design," and "Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications and History of Graphic Design.
Pictured: Mike Weikert
Co-sponsored by the painting department
Theaster Gates has developed a practice that ranges from object-making and installation work to full-scale real estate development in coordination and collaboration with communities and arts organizations. His practice is a model of multicultural interactions.
Gates's training as an urban planner and sculptor, and subsequent time spent studying clay has given him keen awareness of the poetics of production and systems of organizing. Playing with these poetic and systematic interests, Gates has assembled gospel choirs, formed temporary unions and used systems of mass production as a way of underscoring the need that industry has for the body.
Recent exhibition and performance venues include Locust Projects, Miami; the Seattle Art Museum; Art Basel Miami Beach; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Milwaukee Art Museum; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; and the Whitney Biennial and Armory Show in New York.
Gates was a participating artist in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany, with his "12 Ballads for Huguenot House," In Fall 2012, Gates debuted in London with his solo show "My Labor is My Protest" at White Cube Bermondsey.
Gates was recently awarded the inaugural Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, honored by the Wall Street Journal as Arts Innovator of the Year and commissioned as the Armory Show Artist 2012. USA Artists named him as the USA Kippy Fellow 2012. A Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2011, Gates has received awards and grants from Creative Capital, the Joyce Foundation, Graham Foundation, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and Artadia. Gates is represented by Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and White Cube in London.
For more information, visit http://theastergates.com/home.html.
Co-sponsored by the printmaking department
One of the founders of the New York Graphic Workshop, Luis Camnitzer has served as curator for the Viewing Program at the Drawing Center and is currently a professor emeritus at SUNY College at Old Westbury as well as pedagogical curator for the Ibere Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil. An influential critic and theorist, Camnitzer is a frequent contributor to "Art Nexus" and author of "New Art of Cuba" as well as "Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactic of Liberation."
Camnitzer studied sculpture and architecture at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (National School of Fine Arts) in Montevideo's Universidad de la Republica and later won a grant to study at the Academy of Munich. In 1961, he received a Guggenheim fellowship in printmaking and three years later settled in New York, where he continues to live and work.
For more information about his work, visit www.alexandergray.com/artists/luis-camnitzer/.
Pictured: "Landscape as an Attitude," Luis Camnitzer, 1979, silver gelatin print, 8 inches by 10 inches.
Sponsored by the ceramics department
Shawn Spangler earned an M.F.A. degree from Alfred University in New York and recently finished a residency at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia. He has taught workshops at numerous art centers, colleges and universities throughout the United States and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Western Illinois University.
His wheel-thrown porcelain forms are complex, yet clearly articulated, oftentimes created through the combination of multiple parts. the forms are reminiscent of both the Koryo and Song dynasites, examples he observed as a resident artist in China in 2002. His work is an amalgamated map of the world upon which he reflects. Producing pottery is a kind of play for the artist: a regenerative act, ripe with reverence, revealing the human hand's enduring connection to creativity.
Spangler's current collaborative project with Bryan Czibesz raises questions concerning authorship and commoditization of objects, opening a dialog that highlights the connections and margins between digital and analog processes of producing ceramic vessels.
For more information about Spangler's work, visit www.shawnspangler.com.
Pictured: Ewer and stand, Shawn Spangler, 2011, glazed porcelain with incised decoration and stain inlay, 14 inches.
Sponsored by the painting department
Pictured: "Hard Shadows," Dike Blair, 2012, painted wooden crates, framed mixed media on paper, 72 inches by 66 inches by 85 inches.
Sponsored by the H&R Block Artspace at KCAI
Karen Kice ('01, ceramics and art history) is the Neville Bryan assistant curator in the department of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work focuses on contemporary architecture and urbanism with a particular interest in the influence of the political economy on the built environment and the role of branding, identity and mobility in architecture.
From 2010 to 2012, Kice studied architecture and urban design in the Ph.D. program at the University of California-Los Angeles, where she was a senior research associate at the university's cityLAB, an urban think-tank. Kice was the project manager for the Westwood Village Vision research initiative, which investigated the complex urban and political forces contributing to the state of the area of Westwood Village, a once vibrant retail district of Los Angeles. The initiative culminated in specific recommendations to revitalize the area.
Kice also was involved with Hi-C, a program in experimental curatorial and theoretical practices, and she was part of a curatorial team that developed Ultra Expo, an exhibition that focused on the Osaka Exposition of 1970.
Prior to studying at UCLA, Kice was a research assistant at Van Alen Institute in New York, working on multiple projects including the 2006 exhibition and publication "The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation," as well as the 2007 exhibition catalog "Coney Island: The Parachute Pavilion Competition."
Kice earned an M.Sc. degree in architectural history and theory from The Bartlett School of Architecture at the University College London and a B.F.A. degree in ceramics and art history from KCAI.
Pictured: Karen Kice
The following members of the KCAI faculty will discuss projects associated with recent grants: Paul Donnelly, assistant professor of ceramics; Rebecca Dubay, Ph.D., assistant professor of art history, specializing in contemporary art and theory; Julie Farstad, associate professor of painting; Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, professor and chair of fiber; Hal Wert, Ph.D., professor of history of World War II, the Cold War and modern Japanese literature; and Michael Wickerson, associate professor and chair of sculpture.
The following members of the KCAI faculty will discuss projects associated with recent grants: Kim Eichler-Messmer, assistant professor of fiber; Jessie Fisher, associate professor of painting, and Misty Gamble, assistant professor of foundation; Milton Katz, Ph.D., professor of American studies, art, literature and film of the Holocaust and peace and conflict resolution; Jan Kennedy, Ph.D., assistant professor of liberal arts; and Karen McCoy, associate professor of sculpture.
Co-sponsored by Charlotte Street Foundation
Independent Chicago-based curator, writer and artist Jamilee Polson Lacy holds two undergraduate degrees in studio arts and art history and a masters degree in comparative literature and arts from Northwestern University. She founded and currently directs the Twelve Galleries Project, a transitory, collaborative exhibition experiment. Her independent curatorial projects focus on the visions, colors, histories and ideas shared between authors, architects and artists, while her artwork and writing search for what is lost and gained between text, image and object. She has engaged in solo and collaborative projects with numerous Chicago creatives and institutions, including A+D Gallery at Columbia College Chicago, The Black Visual Archive, Chicago Artists Coalition & Hatch Projects, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center and Quite Strong and Swimming Pool Project Space. Polson Lacy is the inaugural Charlotte Street Foundation curatorial resident. For more information about Polson Lacy's work, visit www.jamileelacy.virb.com.
Image courtesy of Charlotte Street Foundation.
Co-sponsored by the Kansas City Artists Coalition
Saul Becker is a painter and sculptor based in Washington. His work is focused on landscape painting and its implications in contemporary attitudes toward the reception and defining of nature.
Becker was born in Tacoma, Wash., in 1975 and received a B.F.A. degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an M.F.A. degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. He was the recipient of an Artist Trust fellowship in 2011, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in painting in 2010 and a Virginia Museum of Fine Art fellowship in 2005. Recent residencies include Steep Rock Arts in Washington, Conn., the Arctic Circle in Svalbard, Norway, and Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, Canada. His work has been exhibited in solo projects at Horton Gallery (Sunday L.E.S.), Artists Space and Volta NY, all in New York. Becker has received critical approbation in The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Pictured: "Folding Coastline," Saul Becker, 2012, watercolor, ink, and gouache on paper, 29.5 inches by 41.5 inches.
Co-sponsored by the graphic design department at KCAI
Julie Beeler is the co-founder and managing director of Second Story Interactive Studios, with a background in visual design, art history and liberal arts. Beeler leads the studio in shaping unique, innovative, interactive experiences that pique curiosity, spur discovery and inspire audiences. She has helped define and sustain an approach to interactive media design that focuses on reaching diverse audiences while pushing the limits of technological innovation. From concept through completion, Beeler interacts with various industry disciplines, guiding the studio to realize holistic approaches to successful projects.
Beeler is a frequent speaker at various conferences and schools across the country on topics ranging from interactive design methodologies to usability and the marriage of rich content and technology. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.F.A. degree in graphic design and art history from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif.
Pictured: Interactive tables at the National WWI Museum in Kansas City, designed by Second Story.
Co-sponsored by The School of the Foundation Year at KCAI
Nick Van Woert's work draws on the tools and rituals developed throughout Western civilization. It simultaneously criticizes and surrenders to the built environment and our tendency toward territorial and material expansion. Common materials are imbued with meaning through our daily relationship to them outside the context of art. Van Woert's practice is rooted in the artist's interest in architecture, ancient history and nature. Growing up in Reno, Nev., situated the artist between the city's gaudy, over-accessorized buildings and the raw, unadorned, natural landscape of the surrounding desert. The stark contrast between the way elements occur in nature, constantly changing through erosion and accretion, and the way elements are fabricated in the city provides inspiration to Van Woert.
Nick Van Woert was born in Reno, Nev., in 1979 and currently resides in Brooklyn, N.Y. He received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Oregon and an M.F.A. degree from Parsons School of Design. He is represented by Grimm in Amsterdam and Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York and Paris and has been reviewed in Art in America and FlashArt. Pictured: "Poor Me," Nick Van Woert, 2010, marble impregnated resin bust and polyurethane plastic, 35 inches by 39 inches by 14 inches.
Co-sponsored by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist, educator and author. He explores history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd in work that takes many forms. His work as an educator has usually intersected his interest as an artist, reflecting on issues of interpretation, dialogue and the role of contemporary culture. This intersection is best exemplified in his project "The School of Panamerican Unrest," a nomadic think-tank that crossed North and South America by car, travelling from Anchorage, Ala., to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina and making 40 stops in between. Covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record.
From 1998 to 2005, Helguera was head of public programs in the education department at the Guggenheim Museum and since 2007 has been director of adult and academic programs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. His publications include Education for Socially Engaged Art and The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style.
Pictured: Ælia Media, an alternative arts radio station, launched Oct. 15, 2011, live from the heart of the historical university district of Bologna, Italy in Piazza Puntoni. Ælia Media was a participatory art project conceived by Pablo Helguera, winner of the first International Award for Participatory Art.
Co-sponsored by H&R Block Artspace and Charlotte Street Foundation
Since 1997, the Charlotte Street Foundation has recognized and provided support for visual artists in Kansas City and has helped fund projects for 77 artists through its fellowship program. Anne Austin Pearce (attended), Marcus Cain ('98 painting) and Luke Rocha (attended) were selected by the Charlotte Street Foundation as the 2012 Visual Artist Award Fellows. Each artist received a $10,000 unrestricted cash award, and their work will be shown at the H&R Block Artspace at KCAI in an exhibition this fall. Pearce, Cain and Rocha were chosen from a group of 125 applicants.
Marcus Cain's drawings and paintings veer back and forth between abstraction and representation, with the figure as a recurrent element explored in relationship to environment and physical form. His latest paintings are part of an ongoing series of semi-abstract works that draw on the form of an iconic portrait head to explore a threshold between cognitive absence and presence. Cain earned a B.F.A. degree in painting and printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1998 and has actively exhibited in the Kansas City area and nationally since.
Anne Austin Pearce's recent ink, acrylic and colored-pencil drawings on paper are explorations of human psychology and emotion — our inner lives. These manifest as exaggerated, visceral representations of bodily forms tangled within and emerging from dense passages of gestural, abstract marks and patterns. Pearce earned a B.F.A. degree in printmaking from the University of Kansas in Lawrence and an M.F.A. degree in drawing and painting from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.
Luke Rocha is a self-taught artist who creates sculptures, installations, publications and collages from found materials. He attended his foundation year at KCAI. Particularly interested in the lesser-known or underappreciated expressions and artifacts of specific cultures and subcultures, Rocha, a consummate collector, seeks to re-focus attention on these forms while bringing them into new dialogue with one another in the present. In 2010 he was commissioned to create the Kansas Citian of the Year Award for the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City and he was a Charlotte Street Foundation Urban Culture Project studio resident from 2010 to 2011.
Pictured: "Pulse," Marcus Cain, 2012, acrylic, ink, latex, spray paint and watercolor on wood panel. Image courtesy of E.G. Schempf.
Co-sponsored by H&R Block Artspace
Swaziland native Nandipha Mntambo graduated with an M.F.A. degree (with distinction) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2007. Mntambo was recently named the 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art, which included her work being featured in a national touring exhibition ending at the University of Potchefstroom Art Gallery in South Africa. In 2010 she was the recipient of a Wits/BHP Billiton fellowship and took up a four-month artist's residency in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2006 she was one of five young artists selected for the MTN New Contemporaries exhibition at Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa.
Group exhibitions include the 17th Biennale of Sydney in Australia; the 9th Dakar Biennale in Senegal; "Peekaboo: Current South Africa" at the Tennis Palace Art Museum in Helsinki in 2010; "Life Less Ordinary: Performance and Display in South African Art" at the Djanogly Gallery in Nottingham, England in 2009; "Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities" at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta, Ga. in 2009; "Les Rencontres de Bamako" biennial of African photography in Bamako, Mali in 2012; "Beauty and Pleasure in South African Contemporary Art" at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway in 2009; ".ZA: Giovane Arte dal Sudafrica," at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, Italy in 2008; and "Apartheid: The South African Mirror" at the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona in Spain in 2008.
Pictured: "Mlwa ne Nkunzi," Nandipha Mntambo.


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A new survey says that nearly half of middle and high schools students in America have been sexually harassed by a classmate thanks in large part to social media or smartphones.
The study by the American Association of University Women found that 56 percent of almost 2,000 students surveyed said they have been subjected to some form of sexual harassment via social media, text or physical groping.
A large percentage of those attacks came from social media sites, such as Facebook. Other students said they were slurred or harassed via text messages.
Students typically reported being called "gay" or "lesbian" or having a fellow student make an unwanted sexual advance via text message or social media.
The survey involved 1,002 girls and 963 boys from both public and private schools from across the country.
The students were asked whether they had experienced sexual harassment and how it made them feel or impacted their school work
About a third of those surveyed said the harassment made them feel sick and other reported avoiding school.
To read the full survey for yourself, visit the AAUW's website.


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Corporate-sponsored groups have launched a campaign of litigation in the lower federal courts challenging the legality of the second major piece of President Barack Obama's legislative program, one that received a lot of attention in last week's first presidential debate: the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. When these cases reach the Supreme Court, we could very well see a reprise of the drama surrounding its decision on the Affordable Care Act at the end of this past term.
As was true of the ACA, a Democratic-controlled Congress passed Dodd-Frank over almost universal Republican opposition, including a Senate filibuster. Unlike the ACA, however, Dodd-Frank — while monumental in its regulatory scope — was enacted with relatively little fanfare or controversy among the general public. The statute's essential purpose is to prevent the kind of reckless and wholly unregulated financial shenanigans that led to the 2008 financial meltdown.
While Dodd-Frank may not be as well-known or as controversial as the ACA, the public is certainly aware that highly speculative and undercapitalized betting on the success of subprime mortgages by the "too big to fail" banks caused the crisis, and that when those banks couldn't pay off their bets, the American taxpayer was called on as the lender of last resort, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Those banks survived and prospered, but the U.S. economy as a whole did not.
Even though the second Great Depression was prevented by taxpayer bailouts, the pain to those taxpayers was dire. In the financial meltdown's immediate wake, $19 trillion of household wealth was lost, 8.7 million jobs disappeared, and 6.3 million more Americans sank below the poverty line.
The Dodd-Frank Act has been hailed by most financial market reformers as a way to provide the regulatory weapons to stop these opaque, reckless and undercapitalized casino operations by the big banks. Unfortunately, unlike key provisions of the ACA, Dodd-Frank is not self-executing; almost all of its provisions must be implemented by agency rule-making done in compliance with the rigorous standards dictated by the Administrative Procedure Act.
For example, Dodd-Frank requires the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the first time to police the previously unregulated and highly toxic derivatives market, which has a notional value of $300 trillion. That includes the now infamous multitrillion-dollar "naked" credit default swaps market, in which the big banks bet on whether the subprime mortgages held by low-income borrowers whose houses were financially underwater would be paid off. The CFTC must implement by year's end well more than 50 rules consistent with both Dodd-Frank and the Administrative Procedure Act to put itself in a position to ¿stabilize these "too big to fail" gambling ventures.
Having failed to block the passage of Dodd-Frank, the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, have aggressively sought to repeal the act or, failing that, to starve the regulators financially so that they cannot enforce the law. Also prominent in this strategy is the flood of lawsuits in federal courts challenging the Dodd-Frank rules by claiming that regulators have used improper cost-benefit analyses.
As interpreted by every administration since President Ronald Reagan's, cost-benefit analysis has entailed a pseudo-scientific algorithmic "test" that foregrounds the costs of business compliance with a given regulation and minimizes its social and economic benefits. Moreover, Wall Street's champions argue that such cost-benefit analyses may be applied only prospectively, meaning that the trillions of dollars in costs that taxpayers have already borne because of a lack of regulation will never be considered.
The Wall Street strategy of using cost-benefit analysis to overturn Dodd-Frank was clearly revealed in a July 2011 decision by a panel of three conservative judges on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Business Roundtable & U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawyers for the Roundtable and the Chamber argued that an SEC "proxy access" rule mandated by Dodd-Frank failed a cost-benefit test. (The SEC rule requires public companies to provide shareholders with sufficient information to choose among candidates for corporate boards nominated by the shareholders themselves.)
Dodd-Frank has no requirement that a regulatory agency conduct cost-benefit analyses when promulgating a rule, but that did not trouble the appellate panel. It interpreted a very general and highly ambiguous requirement in the SEC's general governing statute — that the commission consider "whether [its] action will promote efficiency, competition, and capital formation" — as mandating that it consider "the economic implications" of its actions and therefore carry out a strict cost-benefit analysis.
Ignoring Justice Antonin Scalia's complaint (quoting Judge Harold Leventhal) that the use of legislative history to interpret a statute is like "entering a crowded cocktail party and looking over the heads of the guests for one's friends," the judges in the Business Roundtable case looked through the "crowded" administrative SEC record to find evidence friendly to Wall Street's cause, while dismissing as "unpersuasive" the economic evidence produced by the SEC to justify the rule. Thus, the judges' reasoning in Business Roundtable trumped that of the SEC, the most expert agency on corporate governance issues.
The judge-made law in Business Roundtable harks back to the Supreme Court's 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York and its progeny, wherein the Court's conservative justices substituted their own laissez-faire economic ideology for that of Progressive-era state legislatures and later for that of the early New Deal Congress. It was only the "switch in time that saved nine" — namely, Justice Owen Roberts' defection from the conservative bloc to the Court liberals — that ended judicial second-guessing of legislative actions and possibly saved the Court from Roosevelt's "court-packing" plan designed to add six New Deal justices.
Encouraged by the ruling in Business Roundtable, Wall Street trade associations have since filed two more major challenges to Dodd-Frank that rely heavily on the argument that financial regulators should be required to conduct these rigged cost-benefit analyses. The crucial question is: How will the Roberts Court respond to future challenges to Dodd-Frank on those grounds?
The Roberts Court's record on the review of financial regulations is mixed. When considering private parties' access to the courts to challenge securities laws, liberal justices have sometimes made it more difficult for these actions to be brought, as in Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd. (2007), whereas conservative justices have at times shown open-mindedness, as in Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co. (2011).
Two recent cases dealing with the substance of private rights of action under the securities laws are, however, problematic. In Janus Capital Group Inc. v. First Derivative Traders (2011), Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for himself and the four other conservative justices, defined the word "make" in an SEC rule to mean that an investment company could not be sued for the false statements in a subsidiary's mutual fund prospectus, even if it helped prepare the document, because the parent company did not "make" them; instead, the subsidiary did when it filed the prospectus with the SEC. To reach this conclusion, Justice Thomas relied heavily on his choice of competing dictionary definitions of "make." In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer noted: "Neither common English nor this Court's earlier cases limit the scope of [the word] to those with 'ultimate authority' over a statement's content." Thus the Roberts Court twisted the word "make" to allow an "untrue statement of material fact" to go unsanctioned, just as the D.C. Circuit Court, in its Business Roundtable decision, twisted the hortatory language of Congress to require regulators to perform a pro-Wall Street cost-benefit analysis.
In Morrison v. National Australian Bank, Ltd. (2010), Justice Scalia, writing for himself and his four conservative colleagues, threw out a private citizen's suit against the Australian bank on the grounds that it was outside the reach of U.S. securities laws, even though the alleged fraud was committed by the bank's wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, a Florida-based mortgage company. Justice Scalia held that the Australian plaintiff couldn't bring suit in a U.S. court because the stocks claimed to be fraudulent had been purchased on the Australian stock exchange, and the governing statute did not "clearly express" Congress' "affirmative intention" to apply the law extraterritorially.
Wall Street has repeatedly read Morrison as broadly suggesting that if the underlying financial transactions are executed by a wholly owned subsidiary of a foreign company, the financial transactions cannot be regulated under Dodd-Frank. Accordingly, Wall Street banks and their U.S. corporate customers have threatened to execute as many of their over-the-counter derivatives transactions as possible through foreign subsidiaries in order to evade Dodd-Frank. Of course, U.S. taxpayers will in the end be asked to bail out the U.S. parent companies, just as they rescued AIG, whose undercapitalized bets were executed by a single British subsidiary in London. Never mind that Congress, in passing Dodd-Frank, responded to Morrison by clearly stating its "affirmative intention" to apply important parts of the Dodd-Frank extraterritorially.
Wall Street's hope of curtailing the investor protections in Dodd-Frank through the courts is predicated on a shift in the Supreme Court toward favoring corporations that dates back decades, to the 1972 appointments of Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist. As a private lawyer, Justice Powell famously prepared an oft-cited memo calling on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to launch a litigation campaign responding to "the assault on the [free] enterprise system," an invitation the Chamber has since taken up with a vengeance. This pro-corporate stance by the Court — which, it's important to mention, is often not limited to its "conservative" members — can be seen as early as a 1978 decision, Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp., in which Justice William Brennan interpreted the National Banking Act as allowing a Nebraska bank to charge Minnesota consumers higher interest rates than were permitted under Minnesota law. Two decades later, in Smiley v. Citibank (1996), Justice Scalia led a unanimous Court in extending Marquette, barring California from using consumer protection laws to protect its residents by limiting the credit card late fees imposed by a South Dakota bank. Recently the Court has split on whether national banks are exempt from all state power, with a five-member majority rejecting Michigan's ability to subject mortgage lenders to registration and inspection in Watters v. Wachovia Bank (2007), while a different five-member majority in Cuomo v. Clearing House (2009) carved out a narrow exception allowing New York to investigate — but not prosecute — the lending practices of national banks in the state.
In the context of Dodd-Frank, the stakes before the federal courts are much higher than ever before. Most of the aforementioned Supreme Court cases were decided without the backdrop of a potential worldwide financial Armageddon. If the U.S. economy is not protected from another crisis like that of 2008, the results will hurt every American household through more lost jobs, lost pensions and lost wealth. Moreover, the American public will probably never again stand for another trillion-dollar bailout of the big banks. In the fall of 2008, economists across the spectrum warned that the country would face another Great Depression if the banks were not rescued. The country's political will and financial resources are now fully tapped.
Despite this fact, will the five conservative justices on the Roberts Court unleash yet more reckless banking activity by undercutting Dodd-Frank, again exposing the world economy to the deluge? We can only hope that at least one of the justices will think twice and make a "switch in time."
Michael Greenberger is a professor at the University of Maryland's Francis King Carey School of Law. This article, Copyright 2012 The Nation, is distributed by Agence Global.
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Latest News
Redwolf Airsoft Labs (2009-03-24)Our very own mad scientists put together some weird and wonderful tests, guides and tutorials in a short easy-to-consume video clip. Check out all the videos we have made so far:
Episode 5
Continuing our pursuit of fruit destruction we carry on the carnage with a gigantic watermelon and two guns. We compare the G&P M4 WOC gas blowback with the Echo1 M134 Minigun. Watch the video to see more Shoot The S**t Up action:
Episode 4
In this episode, we start a new Lab feature: Shoot Sh*t Up. For the first in this line we are showing the Echo1 M134 Minigun (Short) pulverizing a little red apple. Why? Because we prefer oranges! Watch the video below:
Episode 3
To prove that the Airsoft Innovation's Tornado Grenade does have an effective 360-degree coverage, we did a quick video of a "ring-o-death" test. Watch the video below:
Episode 2
We received a comment from one of the viewers of the first Redwolf Labs video, requesting that we try the Airsoft Jenga test with an Airsoft Innovation's Tornado Grenade (for entertainment value, most likely). Not being one to turn down an opportunity for a bit of fun, we shot another video highlighting the subtletly (or lack of) of playing Airsoft Jenga with an airsoft grenade. Watch the video below:
Episode 1
We test the accuracy of the Hurricane Holosight vs a standard iron sight, with a Jenga set! Although it is not supposed to be a proper technical test on accuracy, it is a fun test to show and prove that using a sight such as the Hurricane Holosight actually does improve your accuracy. Please note that this video was shot as it happened, NONE of it was staged or faked.


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THURSDAY, March 7, 2013 (HealthDay News) -- Carrying around excess body weight, particularly in early adulthood, can result in a dangerously enlarged heart later in life, a new study finds.
"There are already multiple reasons to target obesity at a young age, but this study adds yet another," said one expert not connected to the study, Dr. Eugenia Gianos, an assistant professor in the department of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, in New York City. "Targeting obesity at a young age is exceptionally valuable to improving cardiovascular health and this study reaffirms this."
In the study, British researchers assessed the body mass index (a measurement based on weight and height) and heart health of more than 1,600 men and women at different time periods in their lives.
They found that those who were overweight throughout their lives were much more likely to have increases in the heart's left ventricular mass and relative wall thickness. Both of these are strong and independent predictors of cardiovascular disease and death, the researchers said.
However, the earlier in life that a person became overweight, the greater the increase in his or her heart size later in life. For example, the hearts of people who were overweight beginning in their 20s were 7 percent heavier than the hearts of people who became overweight in their 60s, according to the study scheduled for presentation Thursday at an annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), in San Francisco.
"Being overweight in your 20s can have detrimental effects on the heart 40 years in the future, especially if you keep the weight on over the years," lead investigator Arjun Ghosh, a clinical research fellow at the International Centre for Circulatory Health of Britain's National Heart and Lung Institute, said in an ACC news release.
"It's probably the wrong attitude to think 'I know I'm overweight now, but I'll lose the weight later' because the longer you spend overweight, the greater the weight of your heart muscle," Ghosh explained. "And we know from other studies that even if we take away or account for high blood pressure, diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease, somebody with a bigger heart muscle is more likely to have a heart attack, die or have other problems, such as stroke."
The study results come from 44 years of data and few, if any, other studies have been able to examine the connection between body weight and heart size over such a long time period, added Ghosh, who is also with the U.K. Medical Research Council's Unit for Lifelong Health and Aging.
Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum is a preventive cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York City. She explained that "the effects of being overweight ... are not simply in increasing heart risk factors, but also in increasing the amount of work the heart has to do, which results in hypertrophy of the heart muscle. In time, this can result in a cardiomyopathy and worse outcomes."
This may be especially important in youth, Ghosh said.
"Our findings add to the wealth of evidence that obesity and being overweight from a young age is not good, and provide yet another reason why we need to focus on preventing obesity and promoting a healthy lifestyle," Ghosh said. "Being overweight is a significant risk factor for heart disease, and worldwide, people seem to be becoming overweight at younger and younger ages."
He noted that one-third of school-aged children in North America are overweight, with an increasing number of children carrying excess pounds when they reach adulthood.
Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The U.S. National Institutes of Health outlines steps you can take to reduce heart risks.


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Chanur's homecoming
Phantasia Press, 1986 - Fiction - 312 pages
As the races of the Compact alliance mobilize for interplanetary war, Pyanfar Chanur and her crew must take a final desperate gamble that threatens the very fabric of the galaxy
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LibraryThing ReviewUser Review - John_T_Stewart - LibraryThing
Chanur's Homecoming by CJ Cherryh. This is the third in a trilogy telling a story that follows on from a previous stand alone book that set the seeds for this story (The Pride of Chanur). The leads ... Read full review
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I spent a large fraction of this year reading these books, and still have very conflicted feelings about them. I can't tell if the author intends you to feel slightly confused by the complex alien ... Read full review
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Author: Ben Martin
Collabtive is a modern Web application that allows teams to collaborate on projects, manage tasks, milestones, and files, and send instant messages to each other.
Collabtive is licensed under the GPL, but it is not packaged for Fedora, openSUSE, or Ubuntu. I'll build from source using the latest version 0.4.8 of Collabtive on a 64-bit Fedora 9 machine. A warning up front: the Collabtive tarball does not expand into a subdirectory, so you will want to create and change into a new directory before you expand it.
Collabtive requires PHP 5.1 or later and MySQL 4 or later. On the browser side, it optionally uses Flash for diagrams and sound playback. The installation process, shown below, should be run as root on the LAMP server on which you wish to run the Web application. You may need to change your DocumentRoot depending on which Linux distribution you are running.
# grep DocumentRoot /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf ... DocumentRoot "/var/www/html" ... # cd /tmp # mkdir collabtive # cd collabtive # tar xzvf /.../collabtive048.tar.gz # mkdir /usr/local/collabtive # mv install-readme-* /usr/local/collabtive/ # mv docs changelog.txt license.txt /usr/local/collabtive/ # mv collabtive /var/www/html/ # cd /var/www/html/ # chown -R root.apache collabtive # cd collabtive # chmod g+w templates_c files # chmod +s templates_c files # chmod 670 config/standard/config.php
Once the installation is successful, if you load http://localhost/collabtive in your browser, you should be asked to log in to Collabtive. However, you need to create a MySQL database and perform final configuration of Collabtive before you can actually log in. The commands to create a new database and set up permission for localhost-only access are shown below:
# mysql -p mysql> create database Collabtive; mysql> GRANT ALL ON Collabtive.* TO Collabtive@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'CollabtivePass'; mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; mysql> q
After you run the MySQL commands, open http://localhost/collabtive/install.php in a browser to tell Collabtive the database connection parameters. At this stage your should see a screen like the one shown below. As you have already set up the file permissions for config.php and the various cache directories that Collabtive uses, setup 1 should show a status OK for each test. I have already inserted the database connection parameters into the form.
The final setup step, shown below, allows you to create the root user of Collabtive. Once that's done, you will be shown a link to allow you to log in as the administrator user you just created. You can then set up Collabtive and create new users and tasks. The screen as shown on initial login is shown below.
The row of buttons in the top right corner of the screen have text labels that appear as you move the mouse over them. The buttons, from left to right, are Desktop, My Account, Administration, and Logout. Clicking on the My Account button lets you see your avatar and current contact information. Initially you will see just an edit button where contact details should be presented, as nothing is known about your user. There is also a button allowing you to download your contact information as a VCard so you can easily share it with others. At the bottom of the page you can see the projects with which you are involved.
When you are logged in as the administrator, clicking the Administration button in the top right of the screen shows you the current open and closed projects, and displays a toolbar allowing you to perform project, user, and system administration.
The System administration screen allows you to change the Web site name, subtitle, time zone, locale, and template — though only one template currently ships with Collabtive. You can also import data from an existing Basecamp site, and change the settings that Collabtive uses to send email, including the SMTP server, username, and password, and you can select between using the PHP
mail() function or SMTP.
The Project administration page lets you create new projects and edit, delete, and close existing ones. Having the ability to close a project is handy, because closed projects do not show up on your desktop but you can retain information about them in the system. When you create a new project you give it a simple name as well as an HTML description, due date, and a list of users who are involved in the project. The HTML description input uses a WYSIWYG widget to allow those unfamiliar with HTML to administer projects.
As you would expect, the User administration page lets you create, edit, and delete users. When you create a new user you can supply a name, email address, initial password, and project list, and assign the user to one of three categories: user, admin, or client. As long as you have the proper permission you can edit most of the VCard information for existing users as well as change the user password.
You can always reach your desktop by clicking the Desktop button in the toolbar in the top right of the screen. When viewing your desktop, clicking on a milestone or project takes you to the Dashboard view. I clicked on the test2 project to generate the below screenshot of my dashboard. The buttons in the Dashboard toolbar, from left to right, are Dashboard, Milestones, Tasks, Messages, Files, People, and Timetracker. The leftmost Dashboard button lets you see a particular Project and its related information. Because I created milestone1 and assigned it to the test2 project, it is shown in the Milestones section of the display. At the bottom on the screen you can see the recent changes for the project. Hovering over a disk icon at the bottom of the Activity section (off the bottom of the screenshot) brings up a submenu that allows you to download the activity information as an Excel or PDF file.
The Dashboard is linked to the project on which you clicked on your desktop to get to the Dashboard. For example, on my desktop the Milestones section shows all of the milestones for all the projects which I am assigned to. If I click on milestone1 from my desktop, because milestone1 is for the test2 project, my Dashboard will show information (milestones, tasks, messages, and files) only for the test2 project.
You can add tags to both users and files to allow another way of grouping and finding these objects in the system. The developers say that this will be extended to projects and tasks in the future. In the screenshot below I have tagged the testfile1 with the Urgent tag. You do not need to manage tags at all and can simply enter whatever text string you like, including multiple tags separated by commas. Clicking the Urgent tag will show you a list of all the files that have that tag. Tags are not case-sensitive. One unfortunate design choice is that you have to click the little arrow to expand a row in order to see a file's tags. This makes searching by tag a two-click operation. It might be nice if files with only a few tags had these shown directly. Also, to remove a tag you have to click the edit button for a file and then edit the original plain text tag string.
Another enhancement I'd like to see would be the ability to get at tasks and milestones as iCal URLs, so you could also subscribe to these with Evolution or other groupware software.
Collabtive makes you master many concepts: projects, milestones, tasks, messages, files, and people and time tracking. Some of the concepts take a little getting used to if you're not familiar with project management already; for instance, the difference between what should be a task and what should be a milestone are not so obvious at first. In Collabtive, the major difference between a task and a milestone is that a task is assigned to a particular person.
Of course, it always takes a bit of time to get used to any new system, so I wouldn't expect less of one that aims to let you manage projects and tasks, track your time, and collaborate over the Web. Collabtive is easy to install, so the barrier to using it on a pilot project is low. That should make it easy for you to see how well Collabtive works for your organization.
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