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The English High Court has ruled that the government may close a tax loophole allowing online retailers to ship low-cost goods from the Channel Islands VAT free.
Chancellor George Osborne said in November 2011 that the Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR) provision would be abolished on 1 April 2012.
The plan was challenged in the High Court the Governments of Jersey and Guernsey, which claimed the ban would not only discriminate against its exports but was also illegal.
However, the Court yesterday ruled that the Treasury was was within its rights to abolish LVCR.
LVCR allows companies to ship goods priced at less than £15 to be shipped into the UK from outside the European Union without attracting the 20 per cent VAT sales tax. It was originally implemented to speed the import of small shipments of perishable goods into the UK.
However, many online resellers have cottoned on to the loophole during the past two decades, most notably shipping CDs, DVDs and, more recently, Blu-ray Discs from Jersey and Guernsey, which are not part of the EU, to allow them to offer buyers even lower prices.
The practice, the Treasury has estimated, costs the Exchequer around £110m a year. ®


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Family History Day sponsored by NEHGS and Ancestry.com!
This message was giving advance notice of two days to those who might be interested in the Boston Family History Day 2010. (The notice was for those who had registered for the winter Family History Day, which was an enormous success.)
As luck would have it, there were several members of the staff near me and I asked about it. One said, "they are planning for 2,000 people" and the other said, "it's going to be huge." Hum, that is pretty impressive. That is as many people who attend the major conferences, such as the recent National Genealogical Society Conference in Salt Lake City, and I hope the upcoming Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee.
General registration opens on Thursday, July 29, 2010 to everybody, and I'm giving you a little advance notice. I am assuming information about the conference will be in the NEHGS eNews (weekly newsletter). The newsletter is free, and you can subscribe by going to NEHGS eNews.
The last time there was a large genealogy conference in Boston was in the fall of 2006, so it has been some time. We deserve it.
My blog has been changed to make it more appealing for those who have New England ancestors and want to see the area through photos. Things I'll include are typical white New England churches, libraries showing their genealogical collection, historical societies, cemeteries, war memorials, in general, anything to do with history.
For four years I've blogged mostly about my personal genealogy in New England (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire), New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. I still will, can't forget my own roots.
Please check out the labels on the right side for articles. The header tabs at the top are a work in progress.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
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subset: commoncrawl


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Union advocacy group sues over geothermal plant project
A plan to replace an aging geothermal plant at the Casa Diablo site has been sued by a union advocacy group
Mono County's hopes to host a brand new geothermal facility sometime in the near future might have taken a hit, after a group of renewable energy union advocates and individuals sued the county on Dec. 14 over a lesser geothermal project.
The lawsuit targets a proposed replacement of an aging geothermal power plant facility at Ormat Technology's Mammoth Pacific plant site east of Mammoth, according to Stacey Simon, assistant county counsel.
This "replacement project" has been on the books for years, and was supposed to be a relatively simple replacement of the aging infrastructure of one of Ormat's existing geothermal plants located at the site on the east side of Casa Diablo Road east of Mammoth near the S.R. 203 junction.
The replacement project would not change the footprint of the existing facility, officials have said.
But a few years ago, the replacement project began to get comments from various union advocacy groups. The groups claimed concern for the environment and filed pages of comments. Despite this, local officials continued with their support of the project, as recently as December, when the county supervisors approved the replacement project.
According to the lawsuit, the county violated its own general plan when approving the replacement project and the project's environmental review document (Environmental Impact Report, or EIR) "falls well below CEQA (California Environmental Policy Act) minimums."
The lawsuit cites concerns about the endangered Owens tui chub, migrating deer, air pollution and more.
The names of the lawsuit's petitioners include a renewable energy union advocate group called Laborers International Union of North America Local Union N. 783 (LiUNA) and "concerned Bishop residents, an unincorporated association, Russell Covington, an individual, Robert Moore, an individual, Randy Sipes an individual, (and) Randy Sipes Jr., an individual."
The lawsuit follows hard on the heels of several other actions from LiUNA and another union advocacy group called California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURES). The two groups have been involved in commenting on and/or challenging the environmental review planning process for the past few years, making extensive comments about the inadequacy of the EIR, and appealing the Mono County Planning Commission's and, the Mono County Board of Supervisor's approval of the project.
The county has been critical of the tactics of the union groups in the past, calling it "greenmail," wherein a group uses the pretext of environmental concerns about a proposed renewable energy project to try to gain construction work for its union members.
It's a tactic that other counties in California are becoming familiar with.
A project in Imperial County was recently challenged by such groups, and according to a 2011 Los Angeles Times article, "all 12 renewable energy project proposed for the Southern California desert" have been participated in by some of these groups, either by comments, appeals of decisions, or lawsuits.
The end result is some renewable energy companies have caved, signing contracts to build geothermal projects and solar projects with the union groups, according to the article.


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Mail and Safari
In keeping with the Snow Leopard theme, there are only minor changes to other applications - performance was the major goal here. I found the Mail application certainly benefitted from this.
After upgrading, Mail will offer to convert your mailboxes to the app's new format, a process which I found to be much faster (on the Xeon) than earlier transitions.
No great UI changes in Mail
Mail now supports Exchange 2007 servers, something that Windows doesn't do. Come to think of it, Microsoft is dropping an email client from Windows altogether for Windows 7, you have to download the old Outlook Express software, now called Live Mail, separately.
I couldn't test Exchange 2007 support because I don't have access to a suitable server, and while Zimbra 5 can ape an Exchange well enough to use with iPhone's push email, Snow Leopard didn't want to know.
The whole Exchange/Zimbra/Apple compatibility picture is really complicated and a little confused at the moment, so we'll set that aside for now.
Safari is evidently Apple's showcase for the benefits of Snow Leopard - even though Safari has been in public beta for six months now.
You can see why as soon as you try it - it's blazingly fast. It's a credit to the Apple engineers who have raised the stakes for other browser manufacturers. It's certainly good enough for newcomers to the Mac, but not enough to tempt me from the Rolls Royce of web browsers, Opera, which has too many essential usability features. Speed isn't just about rendering a page, but letting you get to information quickly, and rapidly switch between pages too.
With Apple's excellent scripting, Safari makes a capable workhorse for grabbing and manipulating web data. Here's a peek at the Safari library:
Get scripting: Safari's events library


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Hello all!
I posted here back in June about my L'anna needing to be descaled. The advice I got was great! Problem is, I descaled it to make the left side group head flow better. When descaled it, though, it actually seemed to make the problem worse. Now the group head on the left side isn't working at all. It makes a grumpy noise, like so: https://youtu.be/EVmn7GKRbyc
I've tried letting the descaler sit in the boiler for hours at a time, and it continues to come out blue. The ratio I use is 2 Tbs citric acid / 1 L water.
I've descaled it over a dozen times now, but I can't afford to shut it down for a few days. All advice is appreciated; thank you for any help!


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ORDER BY o.order_number
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Slaughter dissed: Republicans say no to environmentalist
Last summer, when Governor Mark Warner named former mayor Kay Slaughter to the State Water Control Board, it seemed like a sure thing. After all, most gubernatorial appointments are routinely approved by the General Assembly.
That wasn't the case on January 28 when Republicans on the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee voted along party lines to block confirmation of Slaughter's appointment, seven months after it was made.
Slaughter, an attorney for Southern Environmental Law Center, had sued the State Water Control Board to stop Newport News from building a reservoir on the Mattaponi River in King William County. Calling that a clear conflict of interest, the committee first gave her the option of withdrawing her name from consideration. Slaughter declined, and her fate was sealed with the 9-4 vote against her. On February 3, the full Senate rejected her nomination with a close 20-19 vote.
"Once the General Assembly rejects you, you can't be reappointed," says Senator Creigh Deeds, who represents Albemarle County and who sits on the committee.
Slaughter was not surprised by the committee vote. "I was told a week ago they were going after me," she says. She had higher hopes for the Senate vote, where she picked up three Republican votes. "I felt like there it would be less partisan."
Overall, though, Republicans reportedly were not impressed with her efforts to distance herself from the Newport News suit.
"I think she went out of her way to clear that," says Deeds, a Democrat in the minority on the committee. "She removed herself as counsel of record on the case, she removed herself from participating in the case, SELC agreed not to appear before the Water Control Board while she was in office, and she said if the Newport News case came up while she was in office, she'd leave the building," he says.
Deeds says he's disturbed by the "new standards" applied to Slaughter, arguing, "I don't know anybody with more expertise than Kay Slaughter."
In the past, says Deeds, "We've approved the appointments of spouses and business partners with the clear appearances of impropriety, but the governor has the prerogative of making that appointment."
Democrat Delegate Mitch Van Yahres agrees that the rejection of Slaughter's appointment is unprecedented. "If that's conflict of interest, half our boards and committees have conflicts," he says.
"When we were in the majority, the rule we had was that whatever the governor wants– even if we didn't agree with his choice– he gets," says Van Yahres. "They're his people."
Republican Peter Way believes the governor has a prerogative– within reason. "I don't think he can run roughshod," says the former delegate. "I'm surprised he made the appointment in the first place. I thought he'd recognize the conflict."
Way describes Slaughter as "certainly qualified on paper for the position, but she's also the epitome of a partisan, highly liberal Democrat." He adds that people frequently don't get appointed for those reasons.
"I was on the Commission on Local Government, and I knew I wouldn't be reappointed to that because I'm a partisan Republican," says Way.
Political expert Larry Sabato says that while the vast majority of a governor's appointees are approved, not all are. "It's not unprecedented, but it is rare," he says, noting that the General Assembly blocked some of Governor Jim Gilmore's appointments.
Slaughter has her own theory about why she wasn't confirmed: "I think it's to embarrass the governor because I'm the first environmental advocate on this board in 10 years."
"She's been an advocate for so long she's probably stepped on some toes," says Deeds.
Van Yahres concurs. "I think the Republicans found a target," he says. "She had stirred them up for years as an environmentalist."
Beyond being green, Slaughter thinks there's another reason Republicans voted against her. "Unconscious or not, they pick on women," she says. "They can't stand to see a strong advocate."
That theme was echoed January 29 by Senator Leslie Byrne, who accused the Republican majority of abusing its power and sending a message that "no matter how competent a woman is, no matter how qualified a woman is, or the breadth or depth of her support in the community, if the GOPers want to get her, they can," according to the Associated Press.
However Senator Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who led the charge against Slaughter, denies that Republicans are anti-women, pointing out that 360 women have been appointed to positions, reports the AP. In fact, Slaughter was the only one of Warner's appointees not confirmed.
Slaughter already has attended three meetings and two hearings of the seven-member citizens' board that issues permits, passes regulations, initiates legal action, and in general sets water policy. Local developer Hunter Craig is chairman of the board.
She feels her experience as an environmental advocate could help the board because the issues are often complicated and "the board becomes a rubber stamp." Just knowing the questions to ask the Department of Environmental Quality, says Slaughter, is helpful to clarify the process.
In her statement to the Privileges and Elections committee, Slaughter said that if confirmed, she'd seek a formal opinion from the Virginia State Bar and would resign if a conflict were found.
Ethics counsel for the State Bar Jim McCauley wrote an informal six-page opinion that Slaughter presented to the Senate confirming that she's taken appropriate steps to avoid conflict of interest.
State Bar president Ben DiMuro says that conflicts of interest fall into two categories: those that can be waived by setting up barriers to improper influence, and those that are not waivable because, despite good faith, the conflict is so strong.
Without commenting specifically on Slaughter's case, DiMuro says, "There are very few conflicts that are not waivable."
Slaughter has another theory on the conflict of interest argument: "It's politics, pure politics."
Slaughter seems reconciled to her decision to go before the committee rather than withdraw from the position. "I felt good that I answered the questions," she says. "Sometimes all you can do is stand up and let the chips fall where they may."


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If the assignment from the teacher was to "turn in something or you will get an F, then the options would be obvious.
The teacher said nothing about what grade you would get if you turned in a really bad paper, one that you had simply thrown together.
The only goal is to get something.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Thus was the case Wednesday with the California legislature. The 80-member Assembly and 40- member Senate were told by voters that their paychecks would be suspended for each day without passage of a state budget.
Now comes word that a budget will be ready by the end of the day, but one that is apparently designed to "turn in" a spending plan in time so that lawmakers will still get paid.
The plan is apparently filled with borrowing, fees and an assortment of budget gimmicks that might not withstand judicial scrutiny. Republicans say they will take it to court.
Evidence of just how weak the budget plan is can be found in an item roundly criticized by Democrats in the past but has now been embraced.
Back in play are scores of state buildings that the legislature wants to sell for quick money.
The Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles apparently is one of them.
Governor Jerry Brown long ago opposed the idea which he will certainly veto.
Brown has long believed that at the root of government's problems is a growing distrust from the public it serves.
This budget will do little to alleviate that mistrust.
The lawmakers may get their paychecks but it will cost them further political capital with the voting public… not that they have much left.
Additional budget countdown coverage here.


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Good morning all. I've been lurking here for a number of years, but, finally decided to come out of the shadows. I've messed around with various flavors of P25 gear for the last ~15 year; mostly XTS, but also includes the EFJ 5100 series.
I just recently acquired another 5100, and it is displaying some weird behaviors. Seeing as how this seems to be where the best and brightest EFJ minds hang out, I thought I'd open up a discussion, and see if anyone has any thoughts. I don't have much in the radio, but would love it make it play. It's absolutely gorgeous - in GREAT shape.
Radio Specifics:
Arrived with 4.8.10, I upgraded it to 4.14.05, using Express Updater.
Was using PCC 2.8.2, now using 2.10.2 since the update.
The issues I'll describe here were present before the firmware upgrade. I was hopeful that it may have helped. It's an interesting project, and I have always loved these radios. I apologize in advance if I am duplicating any parts of this topic. I did a reasonable amount of searching, and didn't find anything with the same issues.
Issue #1: The radio, on 442.000 and 443.000 range repeaters, goes "microphonic" on receive. However, on a repeater in the mid 444.000 range or simplex in the 446 range (or GMRS channels), it does not. After the volume is turned up about 1/3 of the way, this starts. It becomes an echo, then a howl, then a really loud howl, then starts clipping and cutting itself out. One interesting note, attaching a speaker mic eliminates the issue. It does almost sound, both with and without the speaker mic attached, that I can hear my fingers moving on the radio.
Issue #2: A couple of times, the radio went "dumb". Wouldn't receive or transmit, though the red light came (and stayed on) when the PTT was pressed. I seem to recall this being an issue somewhere along the line. And the UI board possibly being bad. But, I figured I'd add this to the discussion, since, not sure if it is somehow related to the other issue.
If all this unit becomes is a parts source, that's ok too. But, I figured I'd open some discussion, as I am planning on doing some playing with this platform. Thank you in advance, if anyone has any ideas!
EFJ 4-series / issues
Forum dedicated to discussion on EF Johnson Radio products
Moderator: willbartlett
Post Reply
2 posts • Page 1 of 1
Re: EFJ 4-series / issues
Its just a guess but being microphonic sounds like an iffy soldering connection. If you have a microscope it might be worth looking at the PCBs and seeing if anything looks unsoldered or cracked. Its always nice to have some known good boards you can swap to localize the issue.
Post Reply
2 posts • Page 1 of 1


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|The CW Fall 2012 Schedule
The CW has three new dramas premiering this season, perfectly reflecting their youthful demo and perfectly complementary to their current line-up of shows. With shows frequently set with one foot in the beyond and one in the real world, the CW is able to cast a smaller net but often with greater accuracy. Though they come nowhere near getting the kinds of numbers than the other networks often attain -- but not always, we must remember -- the CW knows its audience well.
Tuesdays at 9pm the CW premieres Emily Owens, M.D., starring Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer (The Good Wife, The Big C) as the title character, a young woman newly graduated from medical school who is interning at a Denver hospital alongside several of her friends and enemies. Emily quickly learns that life at the hospital is a lot like high school, with all its attendant cliques, rivalries, romances, secrets, lies and like that. Dr. Emily is surrounded by an interesting circle of colleagues, including her actual former high school rival played by Aja Naomi King (Blue Bloods), her med school crush played by Justin Hartley (Smallville, Passions), a friendly intern played by Kelly McCreary (White Collar) who's a closeted gay woman and also happens to be the daughter of the Chief Resident played by Harry Lennix (Ray, Dollhouse, Little Britain USA, 24). Emily's cardiac surgeon role model is played by Necar Zadegan (The Event, 24), and her other doctor pal on the staff is played by Michael Rady (The Mentalist, House of Lies, Melrose Place, Swingtown, Sleeper Cell).
If the young women watching the CW want a medical soap opera of their own -- the younger version of ER or Grey's Anatomy -- then Emily Owens, M.D. will be the perfect prescription. We know that part of the appeal of medical dramas is the heightened sense of drama with lives on the line and enormous medical bills being piled up every second, but the main appeal, to be sure, is the white coat and scrubs uniform fetish that gets played out on these shows. Whatever works, right? Whether Gummer and associates end up looking like real docs or just kids playing Halloween dress-up remains to be seen. Emily Owens, M.D. premieres on 10/16/12 at 9pm on the CW.
The Arrow to the CW. The story of a pampered young billionaire who's lost at sea but later mysteriously turns up alive, is returned to civilization and turns into a secret vigilante against crime. The Arrow stars Stephen Amell (Heartland, Private Practice, Hung) in the title role, with James Ramsey (Dexter, Outlaw,Blue Bloods) playing his chauffeur and confidante. Colin Donnell (Pan Am) co-stars as The Arrow's best friend, Katie Cassidy (Supernatural, Gossip Girl, Melrose Place, Harper's Island, and she's David Cassidy's daughter) is his ex-girlfriend for whom he still holds a torch. Willa Holland (The O.C., Gossip Girl) is The Arrow's little sister, and Susanna Thompson (Cold Case, Kings, NCIS) is his mother, an ambitious woman whose present is even more dastardly than anyone guesses. Paul Blackthorne (The River, The Gates, Lipstick Jungle, 24, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India) is The Arrow's resident skeptic, a hard-nosed police detective who's determined to get to the bottom of what's up with the new secret crimefighter in his city, and he also just happens to be the girlfriend's father. What a tangled web we weave....
Perhaps the best thing about The Arrow is that it gives the CW a terrific Wednesday night, with its long-running and always outstanding series Supernatural following in the 9pm time period. The CW often knows how to get it right with series with fantastic elements, from their current hits to way back with the network's progenitor the WB and its history-making Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Arrow is a perfect companion piece to Supernatural and we wish the network luck with this great twosome. The Arrow premieres Wednesday, 10/10/12 at 8pm.
Thursdays at 9pm is the home for the CW's new Beauty and the Beast, a sort-of reboot of the 1980's cult favorite series of the same name. While the original was famous for Ron Perlman's fantastic leonine look as Vincent, a beast-like man/creature (cause known) who lived underground with a mostly genteel bunch of society's drop-outs, this newest take has its Vincent as more of a Hulk character. This Vincent, played by New Zealander Jay Ryan (Terra Nova, Young Hercules, Xena: Warrior Princess) is a former military doctor who has been living in hiding after being stricken with a condition that causes him to gain superhuman strength when enraged. Totally Hulk, right? Catherine Chandler, played by Kristin Kreuk (Smallville) is a homicide detective -- the 1980s Catherine worked in the D.A.'s office -- and her police partner is played by Nina Lisandrello (Nurse Jackie, Law & Order). Football player-turned-banker-turned-actor Brian White (The Cabin in the Woods, The Shield, Moonlight) is their boss, Brit Max Brown (The Tudors) plays the flirty medical examiner, and Nicole Gale Anderson (Jonas) is Catherine's little sister. Austin Basis (Life Unexpected) plays Vincent's childhood friend and only confidante.
The twist here is that Catherine eventually figures out that a decade ago Vincent saved her life during an gun battle in which her mother died. She didn't know what or who had rescued her then, but there's a bond between Vincent and Catherine that is inexplicable and unbreakable. Question -- did the CW think that audiences today wouldn't accept a Vincent that was mostly beast and not conventionally handsome? Maybe the CW demo doesn't like its heroes to be facially-challenged; the decision to nix the ugly in the beast's make-up job feels like pulling your punches, but the network seems to understand their audience so perhaps this was the best way to go. In any case, Beauty and the Beast has a compatible lead-in with the successful The Vampire Diaries and there's no reason why viewers who watch that series would want to turn away from this one. (There was a second Beauty and the Beast project that almost made it to ABC this season, too.) Beauty and the Beast premieres on Thursday, 10/11/12, at 9pm.
That does it for our Fall Preview for the major broadcast networks. There are many mid-season entries also coming up, but we'll catch them as they premiere throughout the season.
Happy Viewing!


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Trying to explain the problems of supermajorities to Californians is a difficult task. I had an "I want to tear my hair out moment" yesterday reading a brief commentary on one of my efforts at the Flash Report, a leading conservative blog run by Jon Fleischman, a Republican party official whom I personally like and admire.
Fleischman dismissed my piece on supermajorities in the Sunday LA Times as "liberal" and as an argument for "spend spend spend." In fact, the piece explained the truth of supermajorities is precisely the opposite. They have produced more spending, and more debt.
That's counterintuitive -- contrary to conventional wisdom. But also true. Here's how it works: By mandating supermajorities for all sorts of budget items, members of both parties need to sign off on every budget. As a result, neither party takes full responsibility for the budget. Without the two-thirds budget vote requirement, whatever party has the majority would legitimately get the blame when state finances go south or taxes get too high. But in a two-thirds system, no one may fairly say that a budget belonged to one party or the other.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
The result? Both parties behave far more irresponsibly than they might in a majority vote system.
Each budget season, the minority Republicans use the leverage provided by the 2/3 rule to block the budget until the majority Democrats meet a list of Republican demands. These demands usually involve things that cost money -- tax cuts and increased spending on programs Republicans like. Inevitably, the Democrats have to meet these demands, and so they pile the Republican spending on top of whatever spending Democrats have insisted upon.
Plus, the Democrats' spending is almost certainly higher than it would be in a majority vote system, because they know that Republicans can eventually be blamed for any excesses.
To pay for all this spending, the legislature turns to questionable borrowing and various budget gimmicks. Which is why this state has persistent budget deficits.
The excessive spending produced in supermajority systems shouldn't be a revelation. In a 1996 report, the California Constitutional Revision Commission described this same dynamic: "Although conventional wisdom indicates otherwise, the two-thirds vote requirement does not seem to limit higher levels of spending. In practice, it encourages it."
One would think California's fiscal conservatives would want to reverse the two-thirds rule. Instead, they cling to it -- because of the power it gives their party, the Republicans. In California, it seems, political power trumps good budget policy -- and math.


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A PMI requires a temporary organization structure that exists outside of people's day-to-day jobs. That structure should consist of five types of teams with clear accountabilities for addressing each of the primary sources of value in the integration and for managing critical areas of risk.
The Steering Committee is the key decision-making body that ensures all aspects of the integration come together as a coherent whole. Depending on the size of the deal, the Steering Committee could be headed by the CEO or a business line leader.
The Project Management Office is responsible for chartering teams, setting the PMI's agenda, establishing synergy targets and tracking delivery against them, and orchestrating the change process.
Platform Teams provide specialist support in key areas such as finance, HR, IT, legal, and real estate.
Integration Teams are responsible for executing the integration and realizing identified synergies. They are usually organized by function, business unit, business process, region, or some combination thereof. They develop recommendations for capturing synergies, design the operating models and organization, and prepare for day-one operations.
Special-Issue Teams are temporary units that come together to resolve cross-functional issues. Examples include determining the implications of the integration for the combined company's brand portfolio or maximizing customer retention during the PMI.


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I really am sort of freaked out about this whole thing. You guys have always had my back and given me good guidance on here. So please tell me what you would say...
I've daydreamed about how a conversation with my old southern baptist pastor would go... I would give him plenty of facts, he would have no good arguments in return and revert to his poor excuses for arguments he has used a thousand times before. But I did not think my dad would actually set up a meeting for me with the pastor after I mentioned how I could set the pastor straight the other day. Sigh...
I don't want to turn down this opportunity though. I'm curious of what he will say about some things and I'm wondering how well I can do holding up my end of the argument as well. Who knows... Maybe both of us will get something useful out of our conversation.
So here it is. If you were face-to-face with a southern baptist pastor you didn't really know, what would you say to him about atheism vs christianity?
Views: 1226
I predict that this is going to degenerate to the "faith vs. fact" argument; just be sure to have all your facts about the reliability of faith in addition to all of your other facts. Also, be prepared for the " ... you are the one who is deficient if you can't perceive a higher power ..." chastisement.
Above all, please be the respectful one no matter what.
Being an engineer, I find myself constrained to fact, to what has been demonstrated, proven and verified as reliable. Religion has none of this. It has subjective experience, personal revelation and epiphany, but nothing which two or more people can observe and agree upon as being objectively real. The god they speak of has no substance, any more than heaven, hell, soul or spirit have any demonstrable substance. If it were me in that conversation, these facts are at least in part what I would lean on...
... but that's me. I hope this helps.
Keri, I'd tell him that he is doing his part in perpetuating injustice. I would ask him to examine how law and society operate where fundamentalism is strongest. I would obtain an admission that those values are antithetical to the advance of civilization. I'd adduce the historical record of christianity in promoting war, sexism, racism, xenophobia, support of slavery, dictatorships, oppression of the common man, guilt over sex, brain washing, stigma of mental illness.
And after establishing the ineluctable conclusion that christianity in a real sense is an anachronism which mankind must overcome I'd get to the issue of the falsehood of it all. Let him know that the myths of christianity predate its origin. Retelling lies do not enhance the veracity of the lies. Christianity is just another cult which perchance became widespread and powerful. Let him know that we have a natural explanation for the way things are and that it is insane for an adult to rely on supernatural lies. Assert the obvious truth that science and religion are not compatible and that the bible is therefore bullshit. Let him know that the accident of his birth and environment have determined his beliefs-had he been born in Saudi Arabia he would be a muslim with every bit as much conviction as he now holds.
Religions are mind viruses.
First ask him if he cares about what he believes being demonstrably true. Then ask him what he believes and why he believes it. Furthermore, ask him to provide verifiable evidence that what he believes is true. If he says it's true because the bible says so, ask him how he knows the bible is true. Many different sacred texts claim to be the one and only true word of god, and in this plethora of holy books and religious denominations, all which claim to be the true path, how can one definitely determine which one is genuinely true, and which others are false. The only logical and plausible answer is that they are all false.
Also remember that the burden of proof is on those making the claim. As an atheist, you do not have to make the claim that a god doesn't exist... only that there is insufficient evidence to warrant accepting theistic claims. If he wishes to have you accept that there is one divine, eternal, all powerful and all knowing deity that created the universe, and HE has a personal relationship with it, he better have some damn convincing evidence indicative of his position. The bronze age ramblings of semi-literate, bigoted, genocidal, raping, pillaging, sheep-herding Jews is wholly unconvincing.
Try phrasing it more tactfully than that last part though, lol.
Bad news first, you aren't going to change the pastor's mind(Not immediately anyway,and possibly never). The good news is that if this pastor is any good at his job you should have a very enjoyable conversation. Don't go into the discussion with the intent of changing his mind or proving that there is no god. Instead, try to find out what makes him still believe even after attending seminary. And, you can share with him why you don't believe. This is an opportunity to get to know someone better who is different from yourself. Also, don't rush any reply. Make sure that you are saying what you mean to say. Listen closely to what he says and more importantly what he doesn't say. Make an honest effort to learn about him, and you might learn something new about yourself. Have fun.
I sincerely hope we're going to get an update here as to how this meeting went down!
As to what I would say, well, first let me say that I think you are probably going to come out of there pretty frustrated, not with the pastor per se, but mostly with yourself. The arguments on both sides can go pretty deep. As a student of philosophy, I no longer quickly dismiss religious arguments. They can be sneaky because they often touch on things which are true but then explain them in ways we wouldn't accept. My predication is that you will come out of there banging your head, wishing you had thought to say this and that and cursing the trickiness of these theists.
There are a great many points which can and should be touched on, but seeing as your meeting is today and time doesn't permit it, I will say that the number 1 argument which the atheist should always bring up is that faith is not only unsupportable by reason, but is entirely contradictory of reason. The theist's argument generally goes that there are things which we cannot know, and in those circumstances we are somehow justified in using faith to arrive at the beliefs we want to get to. When we object, they argue that even science, shoot, even reason relies on faith, because we don't have absolute proof of anything. So, what, in the absence of absolute proof to the contrary we are permitted to believe any crazy, unsubstantiated claim we want? If we stick to what is reasonable to believe, we can make out just fine in this world. But the theist has in place all manner of defense mechanisms which prevent him from admitting this to be true.
So again, how did it go??
Keep it cool. don't let him interpret your arguments however he wants. Let him explain his "reasons". Don't be offensive and don't let him offend you. Keep your head together no matter what and take a quick look at the 30 Human Rights.
Don't think you're gonna convince him about how wrong he has been all this time in a discussion like that. Probably he's lost already. However, that doesn't mean you should go easy with your arguments. A lot of his ideas are based on unreal stories from the bible so you can corner him with a couple of basic facts that categorically refuse them. IDK, like creationism. Be ready to fight against the typical "free will" argument. That's one way the use to explain how their benevolent God allows misery in innocent believing people.
I'm back.... XP
I know you guys said I would be exhausted and unhappy with how the pastor would beat around the bush, not answer my questions, or say something fancy instead. So true.... Ugh... One hour and fifteen minutes... ehh... I don't think I left anything out on my side of the argument though. It was a nice conversation. He's a great guy. But.... Ah.... Let me get to what actually happened. I'm sure I'll leave a few things out. We covered a lot. I'm going to go out of order of when we talked about things.
I quoted the founding fathers for him. I asked him what he thought the founding fathers thought of religion. He said that they were for religious freedom but they were generally for Christianity. My quotes from Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were quite to the contrary. He asked me where I got my morality from without christianity. Eh... Didn't anticipate that, but it doesn't prove things one way or the other. I talked about how the 10 commandments were common sense or not necessary. I talked about how pieces of different religions have good points but a person can decide morality easily enough for themselves. He disagreed with that. I brought up the christian woman that drowned her children. It became very circular.
I brought up how Horus had the exact same story as Jesus in the Egyptian Book of the Dead from 1280 BC. There was also Krishna, Mithra, and others that were extremely similar. I was surprised that this was the first time he had heard of this. (my dad thought the pastor had heard everything before) He talked about how the great writings of antiquity gave him enough proof of the bible. I told him that didn't answer this issue. Then he beat around the subject and it became circular again.
I talked about the percentages of people being christians in foreign countries. I said that if he was born in the middle east, he would be a dedicated Muslim and that your religion is based on where you are born with you having no control over it. He quoted the bible and said that it is all up to the individual (I guess regardless of their culture... anyway...)
I talked about the story of Job. He had a fine response which was about Job knowing God better afterwards. I didn't care to continue arguing on that one and he had a fair point.
I listed all the people the bible says to kill (a long list). I said God also killed children, curious people, and committed general mass murder. He asked me when god killed children. I was stunned. After writing all the information about God specifically saying to kill people, I wrote some minor not detailed info about the others. You know... he never really answered about all the suggested killing. Darn...
I told him all about the astrology behind christianity. I talked about the star to the east followed by the 3 stars that make up arion's belt, also called the three kings. The Winter Solstice being the reason for Dec 25th being the birthday. Easter being at the spring equinox when days become longer than night because the sun god (jesus/Horus) is winning against the evil dark god (satan/set). 12 disciples = 12 star constellations. Virgo = virgin mary. the cross comes from a pagan symbol for the zodiac. I talked about the zodiac ages being symbolized in the bible very specifically. Taurus= golden cow, Aries = moses (I left out moses in other religions but I referenced that other bible stories had been used before), Pisces is now with Jesus, and Aquarius is next with the man with a pitcher of water, which is mentioned in the bible. Eh... (and I forgot the bit about Joseph and Jesus having the same stories). After all that he asked me what my point was. I stared at him for a second. I told him that christianity is entirely based off of astrology and so are many other religions which christianity is also based off of. He talked about the antiquities things again, saying there was proof in other writings. When I asked what they were, he gave me a handout that didn't answer any of my questions immediately because I have to do more research about what it talks about. He's going to email about these other sources though. Sigh.... and I mentioned that Noah came from the epic from Gilgamesh and Moses came from the story or Sargon. I forgot about the bible contradictions I was going to mention...
Then I talked about Noah's ark. Most of the information I used came from this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_BzWUuZN5w I highly suggest the nonstampcollector videos. He is brilliant and funny with anti christianity stick figure videos.
At other parts of the conversation, he asked me the dumbest question of all... "What if you're wrong?" I can't believe he actually said that, and I told him so. I talked about religion being blackmail because you burn and suffer if you disagree with christians. At another point I almost cried while referring to my grandfather dying in front of me a few months ago. My point was that it was the first death I had experienced since becoming an atheist, but I felt all alone at the time because no one could tell me anything comforting except that he was going to freaking heaven... sigh... Not completely relevant, but good to bring up.
He talked about going through bad things when he was young and being saved by God. I brought up the Law of Attraction (which he also had not heard of), the chaos theory, the power of the human brain, and said any self help program could change him, especially since he had hit rock bottom. You know the saying, there is no where to go but up. We agreed to disagree on that one.
In the end, he believed the same things as before and I believed the same things as before (but had a better understanding of people who refuse proof. Some people really can't be saved FROM christianity). He promised to watch Religulous by Bill Maher. And I promised to read the Case for Christ. But a deals a deal. We are going to keep in contact and discus more. We may have talked all day if he didn't have a conference call scheduled. So that's most of what went down. I'm sure I left a few things out. But geez...
Good job, Keri - BRAVA!
Regarding The Case for Christ, do yourself a favor: A|N member Steve Shives has done a most thorough job of utterly DISMANTLING Strobel's crap, and I heartily recommend his observations to you. You will find Steve's commentary broken down by chapters on YouTube. Interesting to note: Shives is currently working on C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, which fares somewhat better, but not much.
My own commentary on morality is simple: I want to get along with others while at the same time having a healthy regard for my own well being. Add empathy to that mix and you have most of what is necessary for at least a foundation in godless morality. And thinking about morality and Job: sure, Job may have been restored afterward, but his wife and kids were still dead because of a bet god made with the devil. I'm sorry, but that is clearly below the belt!
Hey Keri, thanks for the thorough follow-up. While I think you did an admirable job (I didn't even know half the stuff you brought up!), there were two or three points you definitely could use some help on, imho.
1. "He asked me where I got my morality from without christianity. Eh... Didn't anticipate that, but it doesn't prove things one way or the other"
Ack! That is the number 2 thing you should have been prepared for, right after the whole reason vs. faith thing. Short answer: evolution. But a much better argument here is to ask him whether he would be a raving homicidal maniac if he didn't have the threat of punishment or the promise of reward hanging over his head. We do what is right because of how it makes us feel as people, not because (and often even despite!) of the consequences. If he believes that he is really a good person, then he wouldn't want to be a murderer etc. even if there were no god, which demonstrates conclusively that you do not need god to be moral. Case closed!
2. "I talked about the story of Job. He had a fine response which was about Job knowing God better afterwards. I didn't care to continue arguing on that one and he had a fair point."
No he did not! Well, having just written a paper on the subject (you can find it here if interested: http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/wanderer-s-group/forum/topics/the...), there are some really powerful arguments against the belief in a just god in there, any one of which might have helped derail his argument. God allowed Satan to destroy Job's children on a bet, and all your pastor has to say is he knew god better afterwards? Yeah, knew him for the SOB he really is.
Did you tell him that god created evil? That he created satan? That he created hell? That he made us what we are and then arbitrarily punishes or rewards us for it? The ridiculousness of the claims made by the theist have no end. I like Hitchens' treatment, where humanity has existed for at least 100,000 years but for 95k or so god just sits back and watches as we endure short, brutal lives, strife with disease and utter lack of education, and then all of the sudden decides that's enough, but instead of making himself known in China where people are educated, he appears in a burning bush in the middle of the most inhospitable, barbaric place in the world to an illiterate people, and so on. One of the things that always gets me is the fact that we didn't have flight until 100 years ago (skipping over computers and telephones and tv and electricity and most of modern medicine and so much more), shoot, we didn't even know about the entire western hemisphere until a little over 500 years ago, it is clear we are only just emerging as a species out of a profound ignorance of the way the world is, yet we are supposed to believe that god revealed himself thousands of years ago (but not too many thousands) with absurd "miracles" and "prophets", AND we are supposed to somehow be able to distinguish only those true prophets and miracles belonging to the right religion from all the countless other prophets and miracles and religions and myths and stories? It's like Hitch says, if you can believe all that, you can be made to believe absolutely anything. They are displaying an inordinate amount of credulity which can only be taken for gullibility when they wholly buy into this nonsense.
Hey Jedi! You have some great points! I will definitely use your point on morality in the future. And I really did pull for the Job story... but this pastor was very stubborn. I will try to word it better in the future though. And it didn't really occur to me to compare hell with morality. I just don't think that way anymore. XD I forget Christians view the two together too much. I did later mention the religion lottery and being threatened to suffer in Hell if you don't go for Christianity. I refrained from the argument about people around the world suffering because of God though. I figured he would anticipate that one.
Thanks for your input! :)
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So after getting some comments from "mike" I decided to switch the forums over from phpBB to Vanilla, and moved over all of the comments.
Sadly if you are one of the few users who registered on the old forums you will have to register again, sorry for the inconvenience.
Please let me know what you think of the new forums, I'm not sure what it is but for some reason I really like what they've done with Vanilla. At first I was a bit put off by the look, but as I used it more I really liked the "flatter" discussion oriented look.
Hopefully I'm done fooling around with the forums and I can actually get back to some python!
So go browse the forums!


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Oriental Beef & Broccoli
6 medium carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 medium onions, cut into wedges (I used about 2 Tbl dehydrated onion flakes)
1-1/2 lbs beef round steak, bias-sliced into 1/2 inch strips
1 Tbsp. minced fresh ginger (I used about 1 tsp ground ginger powder)
2 cloves garlic, minced (I used my garlic press)
1/2 c. water
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1, 3/4 oz. envelope of beef gravy mix
4 cups broccoli florets
3 cups hot cooked rice
1. In a 3-1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker, place carrots, onions, beef strips, ginger and garlic. Stir together water, soy sauce, and beef gravy mix. Pour over meat and vegetables in cooker.
2. Cover and cook on low-heat setting for 8 to 10 hours or on high-heat setting for 4 to 5 hours.
3. If using low-heat setting, turn to high-heat setting. Stir in broccoli florets. Cover and cook 15 minutes more oruntil broccoli is crisp-tender. Serve over hot rice.


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text:
The benefits of Logan International Airport's switch to a new GPS-based navigation system are, officials say, quite clear: safer takeoffs and landings; smoother rides; and increased efficiency that translates into millions of barrels of aviation fuel saved.
But the view of residents in communities such as Milton and Dedham is less positive: "Figure out something else," wrote one in an online petition that has already garnered more than 800 signatures, most in the past week.
Noise is the reason for the opposition. The fierce public outcry has caused delays in the process, which began three years ago and is now almost complete. Public comment has been extended to March 15.
Unhappy residents object to the new plan because the proposed new flight path proposed for Runway 33L — currently spread out over a broad, 3-mile swath — will become a much narrower corridor as planes depart the airport. That means homes directly under that path get noise from all departing flights.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters declined to comment on the concerns brought up by residents, but said the agency "will consider all comments it receives" as it begins the process of switching to the narrower flight path.
Logan officials said the FAA, which designed the new plan, will reassess the path after it is in place for six months and determine whether improvements can be made to limit its effect on the community.
The changes come as part of a comprehensive plan mandated by federal legislation to use technology to increase safety at airports around the country and reduce aviation's effects on the environment by identifying the most direct routes between airports, potentially saving barrels of fuel per flight.
"It's really a generational change," said Flavio Leo, Logan's deputy director of aviation planning. "There's a lot of positive and important changes that have happened, and will happen."
The key lies in using the most direct path for airplanes, rather than having to zigzag between way stations equipped with radar.
The ecofriendly approach also means smoother rides. Rather than using a stair-step technique for descents that burns excessive fuel, the GPS helps planes glide steadily to their destination, more like coasting a car to a stop sign instead of pumping the brakes at the last minute.
But the biggest changes involve flight paths. Under the new system, pilots must now use the GPS to run exact routes to the airport, rather than eyeballing a prescribed path, a decades-old practice that leads to a wider dispersal of airplanes headed in and out of Logan.
For some of Logan's runways, where automated flight paths have already been introduced, the changes have helped to cut down on noise by positioning flight paths where the fewest number of people will hear airplanes — over the causeway leading to Nahant, for example.
But this new system has a downside: If you live right underneath one of the condensed flight paths, all the air traffic is focused directly over the heads of a few, rather than being spread out over several communities.
"It wasn't so bad when it was the three-mile radius," said Milton Selectman Denis Keohane. "But now it's being concentrated on this one little corridor."
"It's almost like a super-highway in the air," said Ginny Corcoran, 55, a longtime Milton resident concerned about the effects the new flight path will have on her community.
Promises of a review in six months have been little consolation, said Corcoran, for whom the din of passing airplanes is already a too-prevalent part of her home soundtrack.
"All we want them to do is maintain what they currently have," she said.
Corcoran said she recognizes that everyone in the region benefits from air travel, but she believes the decision to condense air traffic over a route does not fairly distribute the ill-effects of a thriving airport.
Her friends and neighbors, she said, have experienced even worse issues with the noise.
"We're really shouldering our burden, and we're not shying away from sharing as part of the herd," Corcoran said. "But why should we have all the traffic?"
Most of all, residents said, they fear the FAA has not been listening to their issues. At public meetings, Logan Airport officials have heard the deluge of concerns and complaints, but explain that they are not the ones making decisions about the flight paths.
Keohane said he has been frustrated by what he called a lack of communication from the FAA.
"I believe that they're not giving truthful information," Keohane said.
Because planes will be 1,000 to 2,000 feet higher than they currently fly, less noise will travel down to residents underneath, said Leo, Logan's deputy director of aviation planning.
"I understand where the communities are coming from, because certain communities may look at it and say, well, this looks like it's going to have an impact on me," he said. "But we really believe the change will be imperceptible or negligible."
Martine Powers can be reached at email@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @martinepowers.


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backchannel discussion. His emphasis on snail-mail marketing techniques also hit a nerve. Once the piling-on began, people outside the conference chimed in, escalating it to a trending topic on Twitter--one that dominates the day's discussion.
Say what you will about live-tweeting at meetings (and I say it's a phenomenon speakers must expect these days), speakers can learn a lot from audiences by listening to what they have to say on Twitter. That's true not just of this disastrous presentation, but every day. I've gone back through the thousands of tweets commenting on this one presentation to glean what speakers can learn from this audience:
- Know--or get to know--your audience. For me, this always has been the starting point for any communication, in any format. The Eloquent Woman blog offers 5 ways to find out about your audience, and Twitter's an excellent resource if you're speaking to a social-media-savvy audience. (This conference also had its own online community that speakers could consult.) But you can't go wrong with asking and listening, in addition to research.
- Find out what their expectations are--and check your assumptions at the door. Speakers must add value. No one has to listen to you and everyone has other distractions--or can make some, if bored. Are you helping them learn? Think through issues? Strategize? A focused group like the one in this case comes to conferences for professional development, and if nothing develops from your comments, a revolt might.
- Think of technology as respect for the audience. That white slide with yellow lettering got the ball rolling--and to this audience, it signaled, "Watch out, if this is what we're in for." And while speakers may think of technology as something they can ignore, audiences see it as enabling a respect for your listeners. Can they hear you? Can they read your slides? Can they see you and what you're showing them? Are you leaving one slide up too long? All basic, and all essential.
- Learn to read when you're losing the audience. One tweet from yesterday's debacle noted that most of the audience's faces were lit by their smartphones as they tweeted and texted during the presentation. That's normal these days--but not throughout the entire speech. If you're not engaging them in real life, you need to change course. Check out The Eloquent Woman's tips on what to do when you're losing the audience. And look and listen to your audience while you're speaking. Develop a good ear for those dreaded silences.
- Listen to yourself before your speech. Audio- or video-recording, easy enough to do on your own, can help you learn which words you repeat. In this case, fillers like "actually" serve as a slightly longer version of "um." Like "um," if your audience is bored and hears any word too much, they'll start counting. Are you overusing other words, like "actionable" in this case? Find alternatives so your presentation holds the reader's attention better.
- Connect with the audience or it will connect elsewhere. Whether it's asking questions at the start of your talk, involving volunteers to make a point, or sharing examples from people you know will be in the audience, you need to make sure you're not talking over or at them, but with them. In this case, the connection was so unattainable that this tweet suggesting an "I survived..." t-shirt was met, minutes later, with a real t-shirt available for purchase. Don't wait till it goes this far to engage your audience.
Inviting live tweets at your meeting
Creating tweetable presentations (guest post)


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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A rise in heroin abuse in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire is being blamed partly on aggressive marketing by out-of-state drug dealers and the higher cost of prescription drugs sold illegally on the streets.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A rise in heroin abuse in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire is being blamed partly on aggressive marketing by out-of-state drug dealers and the higher cost of prescription drugs sold illegally on the streets.
In Vermont, Rutland Police Chief James Baker calls the spike in heroin use "mind boggling." Manchester Police Chief David Mara says he's seen a definite "uptick" in heroin cases in New Hampshire's largest city.
In Maine, Portland is reporting terrible consequences from increased heroin use — 14 drug overdoses in a single month, including four in one 24-hour period. One person died of a suspected overdose.
The outbreak has been so bad in Portland it prompted a community warning from police, fire and health officials.
Vermont's U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin blames simple economic forces.
"If you get addicted to prescription pills, it's really hard financially to keep that up," he said. "Heroin is cheaper."
Coffin is leading federal, state and local officers in a crackdown and warns dealers there will be serious consequences for them in the hunt for easy profits. Special multi-agency teams have been set up to share information and target offenders while also stepping up educational efforts and treatment programs.
Coffin said authorities saw the crisis coming as far back as 2009 when experts on opiate addiction sounded a warning at a meeting in Vermont.
Officials with the Maine Drug Enforcement Administration say the agency also anticipated users would switch from prescription narcotics to heroin because of a diminishing supply of prescription drugs on the streets.
"That's been a concern for a good number of years," said agency Director Roy McKinney. "We're talking about opiates, whether it's synthetic coming through pharmacies or from heroin. Those people who're addicted to that drug — they're going to go wherever there's the least resistance to satisfy their dependence."
In Manchester, Mara suspects the surge in heroin cases was fed by oxycodone and painkiller addicts who switched to heroin because they can no longer afford to buy pills on the streets. An 80 milligram tablet sells for about $80 compared to a bag of heroin that costs about $15, he said.
Anthony Pettigrew of Boston, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency office for New England, said no single factor explains why heroin abuse has spiked but he agrees users are switching from prescription pills to heroin and dealers are aggressively marketing the drug.
"As people see the cost of getting a painkilling opiate go up, sometimes they look for heroin as a cheaper alternative," Pettigrew said. "The other area is profit. People are going to try to make money on selling heroin.
"So if they can move heroin from New York or Philly or Boston or Lowell and Lawrence up into Vermont and make a significant profit, they are going to do that," Pettigrew said.
In the past, heroin arrived in Maine in prepackaged one-dose bags. Now law enforcement officials say they are seeing larger amounts coming into the state, where the drug is then milled and packaged, McKinney said.
Earlier this month, Kennebec County officials seized 3 ounces of heroin, the equivalent of about 4,000 doses. Kennebec County Sheriff Randall Liberty said it was the largest seizure he'd seen in 20 years.
In Vermont, police have been arresting suspected dealers with large amounts of heroin, cash and in some cases guns. Most of the drugs come from New York or other East Coast cities, from western Massachusetts, or farther away from Detroit and Chicago.
Baker said opiate addiction in the Rutland area is the worst he's seen in his 35 years of policing.
Vermont health officials are making it easier for people to get methadone services through existing centers, many of which are being expanded while new ones are opening up.
State Deputy Health Commissioner Barbara Cimaglio said, "We're creating a more integrated network, which will result in better treatment, more capacity and more comprehensive services."
AP writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Lynne Tuohy in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.


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Dharma Initiative Alarm Clock
Buy this and earn
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4 8 15 16 23... 46? Oh $#%@!!!
It's been a long, boring day down in the Swan, chilling in your khaki jumpsuit, listening to your favorite Mama Cass record and staring at a blinking cursor.
Where's your partner? Why can't you switch off number-punching duties? Oh, right. You killed him. And now you have to wake up every 108 minutes or the world starts shaking and metallic objects threaten to pin you against the wall.
Trust us, brother, this is no way to live. And luckily--or not, right, Hugo?--you don't have to. Our Dharma Initiative Alarm Clock is conveniently programmable to go off only once every 24 hours, and at a time convenient to you.
But if you don't get the numbers right before you see the hieroglyphs, there's no guaranteeing what will happen.
Product Features:
- Two alarm settings: one-minute warning and electromagnetic cataclysm modes
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- Requires 2 x AAA batteries
- 23-year warranty, or until your house implodes
- Walt, geodesic dome, and polar bear not included
Dharma Initiative Alarm Clock Video:Go there...


text:
Check out the latest RPG news | Podcasts | Twitch Streams
So the half mil is for reassurance more than anything, or is it for quick cash now thing, like selling your gold and relics?
I'm pretty disappointed by this announcement. I heard about the Vic Ireland project a week or so ago from Zeboyd's website, but it ends up being Class of Heroes? If I wanted to play a dungeon crawler I'd just fire up Etrian Odyssey. I was hoping for Last Ranker or Shining Blade.


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There may be times when one desires to navigate the Internet anonymously. This can greatly aid in downloading movies, music or is helpful for those who simply wish to browse the web without having their IP address tracked. Let us take a look at how this can be accomplished.
The Best 5 VPN Services for Windows
Searching on the Internet we will find as many as a hundred VPN services making it extremely difficult to choose among them the best 5 to be used for Windows, but the various tests many of them have gone through show that Express VPN, Private Internet Access, VyprVPN, IPVanish and ibVPN cannot be surpassed at the moment.
The Best 5 VPN Services for Linux
A Virtual Private Network is very essential especially when highly confidential messages are passed within a public network. The encryption services help in preventing third parties from accessing the information.
The Best 5 VPN Services for MAC
A Virtual Private Network is technology used to ensure that there is security when someone is using a public network such as the internet. Connected computers are able to share information across each other. However, if this information is not encrypted, security is breached. This is why it is entirely important to have a VPN.
Blacklogic VPN
Blacklogic.com: Black Logic Inc. was founded in October 2006 in Toronto, Canada. They manage over 350 servers and provide security consulting in the areas of VPN and IT.
VPN Service Providers
If you want to leak something, you have to be sure to use a VPN Provider who doesnt save any logfiles so you can be 100% sure that your real IP Adress cannot be revealed.
Strong VPN
Strong VPN.com are one of the best reliable VPN service providers started in 1995 with headquarters at San Francisco. They are known to provide excellent customer services with over 140 servers in San Francisco and 300 servers all over the world.
Kepard VPN
With more and more people gaining access to the World Wide Web than ever, it has become imperative to ensure that a solid and effective VPN is used. VPN stands for Virtual Private Networks and it allows data and information to be shared and transferred via the internet, both securely and confidentially.
IPVanish is a VPN (Virtual Private Network) provider that can be considered apart from other US companies, as it offers a high degree of anonymity to users. Besides, it offers an international service in more than 40 countries.
A Virtual private Network (VPN) substitutes the actual IP address with a proxy, allowing the user to browse anonymously. This has its uses in keeping cyber-criminals, cyber-snoopers, and unmwanted marketers away, circumvent geo-targeting, geo-blocks or ban on many websites and Skype, thwart many other restrictions in place, and more.


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Kurt Nimmo
September 14, 2009
|A crowd outside Federal Hall where Obama gave his banker takeover speech.
Obama delivered one of his famous teleprompter speeches today at Federal Hall in New York on the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers scam. It was a cynical move, considering Obama spoke from the building where the country's founders once argued over how much the government should control the national economy. Federal Hall also served as the first capitol of the United States of America.
"President Obama came to Wall Street to chastise executives and to urge Congress to pass tougher regulation of the bankers and brokers whom he blamed for the crisis in the financial markets a year ago," reports the Christian Science Monitor. Obama said the United States needs "strong rules of the road to guard against the kind of systemic risks we have seen."
It was a wink and a nod speech, considering the sort of people Obama supposedly lectured now run his administration. Geithner, Summers, Clinton, Mitchell, Holbrooke, Volcker, Rice, James, Haass — on and on, ad infinitum, these are Federal Reserve, CFR, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg members, bureaucratic minions of the private and international bankster cartel.
In fact, as Judge Napolitano notes in the video below, if the proposals Obama soft sold to the American people today are implemented, it will amount to a final coup d'état by the banksters and their technocrats and enforcers at the Federal Reserve, the unconstitutional and privately held bankster Mafia operation that masquerades as a government agency. It will install a dictatorial regulatory power by the international bankers over entire U.S. economy — right down to the local grocer and the hot dog vendor on the corner. It will require you to ask permission for the most mundane and routine of financial transactions. It will control your life down to the smallest detail.
"President Obama's plan to give the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy, which is likely to be enacted before the end of the year, will officially herald the beginning of a new form of government in the United States – an ultra-powerful banking dictatorship controlled by a small gaggle of shadowy and corrupt elitists," Paul Joseph and Steve Watson wrote for Prison Planet on June 18 of this year.
As the Watson brothers and Judge Napolitano note, the new rules will give the Fed the unchallenged authority to "regulate" any company activity it believes may threaten the economy and the markets — that is to say, all who would threaten the monopoly men with independent an unregulated financial activity. Even the Los Angeles Times admitted the Obama Federal Reserve takeover bill would effectively grant the clout required to seize and take over any company.
[efoods]Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin Robert Auerbach pointed out the obvious earlier this year: "The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach. The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate. Bank regulation begins at its 12 district Federal Reserve Banks, each governed by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district."
"The government is ready to hand over everything to a monolithic private corporation and a gaggle of bastard banker offspring, that have gobbled up an amount close to the entire GDP of the country in taxpayers' money and figuratively stuck the middle finger up regarding questions over where that money has gone," the Watsons conclude. "It can be no more apparent than at this time that legislation to audit, repeal and eventually end the Federal Reserve, must be supported by Americans if they want to see their children and their grandchildren grow up without indentured debt and entrenched servitude to a fascistic marriage of private banks and hugely inflated government."
It remains to be seen if Ron Paul's Audit the Fed legislation will be enacted. It has powerful foes arrayed against it – and a growing number of people steadfastly behind it. Enemies of the audit will attempt to push Obama's plan through Congress and establish a complete private banker dictatorship over the economy and sideline the legislation.
Obama's appearance at Federal Hall — the site of George Washington's inauguration and where nine of the 13 colonies met to draft a message to King George III, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, claiming entitlement to the same rights as the residents of Britain and protesting the colonies' "taxation without representation" — is particularly obscene and criminal.
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Right now, I'm sitting in a gorgeous ninth floor room at the W Hotel in South Beach.
The ocean view is breathtaking. The weather is tropical. The guaranteed madness of the 2014 Gumball 3000 lies ahead. And like sharks poised for a feeding frenzy, angry supercars circle the surrounding streets. A few minutes ago, one of the Gumballers entertained the constant stream of tourists by furiously revving the engine of his Lamborghini Aventador—and the resulting flames caught the shrubbery bordering the driveway on fire.
Miami might as well be heaven on earth.
Since I arrived in the Sunshine State just over 24 hours ago, every minute has been jam packed—and the Rally hasn't even officially kicked off! As soon as I landed, I went straight to Rally Central to get my credentials—an extremely official feeling fabric wrist band—then ditched my luggage and hooked up with the AnastasiaDate Team.
Then we jumped in a cab and headed to a cocktail party at the headquarters for the Porsche Design Tower Miami, an automobile-centered, 57-story building which will feature an automated system allowing residents to park their cars on the same floor as their homes.
Think low-income housing, but with robotic valets and prices starting at four million.
Unsurprisingly, the parking lot was lousy with exotics. When we arrived two Bugatti Veyrons were already out front, and before we even manged to get inside, a Gumball-liveried Ferrari F12 Berlinetta rolled up.
The party was the first chance I got to talk to the ladies I'll be riding with over the next seven days, and we had a blast. Though we managed to do plenty of practicing anyway, Margarita—the blonde—was clearly impressed with my pronunciation of the traditional Russian toast nostrovia.
Elisa—the brunette—is hilarious, and can snap from being a total goofball into laser-focused model mode with a speed that could give a camera shutter whiplash. Though their English isn't perfect, and my Russian—drinking cries excepted—is nonexistent, it was obvious both were super stoked, if a little nervous, to be driving on the Gumball. That was just fine with me, because if they were about to embark on a trans-continental road rally with a 120 speed-crazed gearheads in 550hp Italian supercar, and weren't a little nervous, I would have been.
Of course, while we waited for the custom-wrapped Lamborghini to be unloaded from the trailer the next morning, Margarita and Elisa did a bunch of on-camera interviews with the local press, and played it like they'd just happened to take a break from racing in the spec-Gallardo Super Trofeo to do the Gumball.
When they had wrapped everything up, we headed over to the parking lot of the Miami Beach Convention Center, so they could get familiar with the E-Gear set up, and everything went fine.
An Audi-derived AWD system makes the Gallardo a thoroughly modern supercar, which basically means the vehicle is not actively trying to turn you into a crimson-colored stain on the pavement via twitchy, tail-happy handling.
It's confidence inspiring, even if it is a break from tradition.
In another departure from some of Lamborghini's past product, drivers can also count on functioning radios and climate control, along with the ability to raise and lower the top without a contacting a crack team of Italian tent construction professionals.
Tomorrow, I'll be alternating between stints in AnastasiaDate's Mercedes-Benz Sprinter chase van and the purple Lamborghini as Margarita and Elisa blast up toward the rally's first destination city—Atlanta, Georgia. Until then, check out the gallery below and head over to AnastasiaDate's official Gumball 3000 site for all the info you can handle on this pair of Russian dolls!
Source: Audiworld
All rights reserved.


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Alice in Wonderland Jigsaw Book: with seven 48-piece jigsaws- by Lewis Carroll.
With John Tenniel illustrations, coloured by Harry G. Theaker and Diz Wallis.
This edition published by Ted Smart, 2000, but first issued by Macmillan in 1999.
From the publisher:
A gift book with some of the most famous illustrations in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" presented as seven 48-piece jigsaw puzzles. Each puzzle is accompanied by an extract abridged from Lewis Carroll's books as well as some of his nonsense poems and songs.


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Embedded systems often need to communicate with other systems of some kind. In the past, RS232 was a popular choice for communication with other computers (PCs or other embedded systems like smart sensors). The hardware was cheap and plentiful. A lot of CPUs had built-in support for doing the serial conversion and if not, it was easy to bit bang an RS232 port at logic levels completely in software. A little extra hardware for level conversion and you were good to go.
But the sun is setting on serial ports. The motherboard I just installed has a serial port, but no connector for it. Most of the motherboards I looked at didn't have one at all. I haven't seen a laptop with a serial port in a long time.
There are a few reasons for this, and a few solutions. The first is that you can find USB to serial adapters that are robust and will work in nearly all cases that you would use a serial port. You can also find PCI cards that provide serial ports. So even though I have my motherboard serial port disabled (I was too lazy to mount the connector in my case), it didn't matter because I have 2 PCI-based ports, and 9 (that's right… 9) USB serial ports, most of which come from an Edgeport USB 8 port adapter (these show up on eBay regularly).
This is fine for you and me. But if you are delivering a piece of hardware to end users, it might be too much to expect them to have a slew of serial ports on their modern computer. The predominant choice now is USB. However, most people choose to essentially build in a USB to RS232 cab ***a***le – often in the form of the chips these cables use instead of an actual cable. There are many modules that offer this function, and they allow your embedded system to stay the same. I've used cheap no-name adapters from eBay and in production quantities I've used this little module.
If you are really worried about preserving your investment in RS232, you can even get a DB9 connector that has the cable built in.
However, these are halfway measures. Some CPUs are including USB support these days. And I am always surprised that more people are not bit banging USB. If you look around, some people are using the term "bit bang" to mean using a USB interface chip to provide discrete I/O. That's not what I mean here. What I mean is using software in a microprocessor to convert a few general-purpose I/O pins into a USB port.
It isn't as trivial as bit banging USB, but it can be done. Click here for one example. Click here for another.
One of the challenges to USB (and many other modern protocols) is that they are differential. I'll talk more about that next time. In a bit banged RS232 implementation, the inputs and outputs are single ended (and often inverted):
for (bitcount=0;bitcount<7;bitcount++) SETBIT(PORTC,SERIAL_OUT_BIT, (byte & (1<<bitcount))?0:1);
With a differe ***a***ntial input (or output), two pins have to be in the opposite state which make it more complicated. For example:
for (bitcount=0;bitcount<7;bitcount++) { int state=(byte & (1<<bitcount))?0:1; SETBITS(PORTC, OUT_BIT_A, state, OUT_BIT_B, state?0:1); }
I'll talk next time about why differential encoding is a good thing. The extra processing does put more demand on the processor though. In addition, USB requires things like bit stuffing and timing for NRZI decoding. This article has a good overview of the issues encountered by a developer building a software USB stack.
I miss the days when I could count on serial ports that didn't require me to mess with getting vendor IDs and worrying about driver support. But those days are nearly gone and we have to learn to move on to the new technologies.


text:
Bryant Ranch Prepack
Bryant Ranch Prepack
- Description
- Clinical Pharmacology
- Indications & Usage
- Contraindications
- Warnings
- Precautions
- Side Effects
- Overdosage
- Dosage & Administration
- How Supplied
- Patient Counseling Information
- Supplemental Patient Material
- Boxed Warning
- Patient Package Insert
- Dexamethasone 1.5mg Tablet
Dexamethasone Tablets 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2, 4 and 6 mg USP, Dexamethasone Oral Solution, 0.5 mg per 5 mL and Dexamethasone ™ Oral Solution (Concentrate), 1 mg per mL are for oral administration. Intensol
Each tablet contains:
Dexamethasone 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2, 4, or 6 mg
Each 5 mL of Oral Solution contains:
Dexamethasone....................................................... 0.5 mg
Each mL of ™ Oral Solution (Concentrate) contains: Intensol
Dexamethasone....................................................... 1 mg
Alcohol 30%
Glucocorticoids, naturally occurring and synthetic, are adrenocortical steroids that are readily absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. Glucocorticoids cause varied metabolic effects. In addition, they modify the body's immune responses to diverse stimuli. Naturally occurring glucocorticoids (hydrocortisone and cortisone), which also have sodium-retaining properties, are used as replacement therapy in adrenocortical deficiency states. Their synthetic analogs including dexamethasone are primarily used for their anti-inflammatory effects in disorders of many organ systems.
At equipotent anti-inflammatory doses, dexamethasone almost completely lacks the sodium-retaining property of hydrocortisone and closely related derivatives of hydrocortisone.
Contraindicated in systemic fungal infections (see : ) and patients with known hypersensitivity to the product and its consituents. WARNINGS Fungal Infections
Information for Patients
Patients should be warned not to discontinue the use of corticosteroids abruptly or without medical supervision. As prolonged use may cause adrenal insufficiency and make patients dependent on corticosteroids, they should advise any medical attendants that they are taking corticosteroids and they should seek medical advice at once should they develop an acute illness including fever or other signs of infection. Following prolonged therapy, withdrawal of corticosteroids may result in symptoms of the corticosteroid withdrawal syndrome including, myalgia, arthralgia, and malaise.
Persons who are on corticosteroids should be warned to avoid exposure to chickenpox or measles. Patients should also be advised that if they are exposed, medical advice should be sought without delay.
Drug Interactions
Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, Impairment of Fertility
No adequate studies have been conducted in animals to determine whether corticosteroids have a potential for carcinogenesis or mutagenesis.
Steroids may increase or decrease motility and number of spermatozoa in some patients.
Nursing Mothers
Systemically administered corticosteroids appear in human milk and could suppress growth, interfere with endogenous corticosteroid production, or cause other untoward effects. Because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from corticosteroids, a decision should be made whether to discontinue nursing or to discontinue the drug, taking into account the importance of the drug to the mother.
Pediatric Use
The efficacy and safety of corticosteroids in the pediatric population are based on the well-established course of effect of corticosteroids, which is similar in pediatric and adult populations. Published studies provide evidence of efficacy and safety in pediatric patients for the treatment of nephrotic syndrome (patients >2 years of age), and aggressive lymphomas and leukemias (patients >1 month of age). Other indications for pediatric use of corticosteroids, e.g., severe asthma and wheezing, are based on adequate and well-controlled trials conducted in adults, on the premises that the course of the diseases and their pathophysiology are considered to be substantially similar in both populations.
The adverse effects of corticosteroids in pediatric patients are similar to those in adults (see ). Like adults, pediatric patients should be carefully observed with frequent measurements of blood pressure, weight, height, intraocular pressure, and clinical evaluation for the presence of infection, psychosocial disturbances, thromboembolism, peptic ulcers, cataracts, and osteoporosis. Pediatric patients who are treated with corticosteroids by any route, including systemically administered corticosteroids, may experience a decrease in their growth velocity. This negative impact of corticosteroids on growth has been observed at low systemic doses and in the absence of laboratory evidence of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis suppression (i.e., cosyntropin stimulation and basal cortisol plasma levels). Growth velocity may therefore be a more sensitive indicator of systemic corticosteroid exposure in pediatric patients than some commonly used tests of HPA axis function. The linear growth of pediatric patients treated with corticosteroids should be monitored, and the potential growth effects of prolonged treatment should be weighed against clinical benefits obtained and the availability of treatment alternatives. In order to minimize the potential growth effects of corticosteroids, pediatric patients should be to the lowest effective dose. ADVERSE REACTIONS titrated
Geriatric Use
Clinical studies did not include sufficient numbers of subjects aged 65 and over to determine whether they respond differently from younger subjects. Other reported clinical experience has not identified differences in responses between the elderly and younger patients. In general, dose selection for an elderly patient should be cautious, usually starting at the low end of the dosing range, reflecting the greater frequency of decreased hepatic, renal, or cardiac function, and of concomitant disease or other drug therapy. In particular, the increased risk of diabetes mellitus, fluid retention and hypertension in elderly patients treated with corticosteroids should be considered.
(listed alphabetically, under each subsection)
The following adverse reactions have been reported with dexamethasone or other corticosteroids:
Treatment of overdosage is by supportive and symptomatic therapy. In the case of acute overdosage, according to the patient's condition, supportive therapy may include gastric lavage or emesis.
Dexamethasone 1.5mg Tablet
Dexamethasone TABLET