text:
KINGSTON, N.H. — Her nickname was "Beanie."
She grew up here in her family's 1740s farmhouse not far from the town's center, an idyllic New England backdrop of general stores, ice cream shops, and the historic home of Josiah Bartlett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
By all accounts, Nancy Jean Champion — or Beanie, as her high school yearbook calls her — had a charmed upbringing. Her mom was a school nurse. Her brother became a town police officer. And after she married her sweetheart in 1981, becoming Mrs. Peter J. Lanza, the couple built a house next door to her childhood home.
"They were very nice people," said the owner of the local pizza shop here. "They are from a lovely family."
In 1988, the couple welcomed a baby boy, Ryan. Four years later, another baby boy arrived: Adam. Nancy, who worked in the Boston financial district to put her husband through college, became a stay-at-home mother increasingly focused on the challenges of her youngest.
Last week, Adam shot his mother four times in her bed, authorities said, killing her. Next he gunned down 26 other people, most of them not much older than he was when he bounced around the grassy family homestead as a little boy.
While investigators don't know or haven't said why Adam Lanza went on a horrific killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a clearer portrait of the family that raised him is emerging through interviews around the country with friends and family and in divorce documents sealing the end of the Lanza's marriage three years ago.
From the outside, the Lanza family portrait was one of wealth and privilege, of jobs landed at marquee corporations — he at General Electric, she briefly at John Hancock. They moved to a hilltop home in Newtown, a village exurb of New York City.
But it was their difficult second son who came to dominate the family's time and collective psyche, especially Nancy's. He had few friends, had trouble in schools and had difficulty reaching the steppingstones of normal teenage life. At age 20, he had only recently begun to drive.
As time passed, the family fractured and broke apart. Around the time of the divorce, Ryan Lanza graduated from college and moved to work in New York. Adam stayed with Nancy Lanza, and her life took on strange habits. She didn't let visitors into their home. She collected powerful weapons. And she began to bring her increasingly troubled son to "multiple shooting ranges," officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Monday, to practice using those guns together.
"She wasn't afraid to be there for her kids," Marsha Lanza, who is married to Peter Lanza's brother Michael, said at her home in Crystal Lake, Ill. "She was involved. That's why, when I heard that he shot her, that floored me. That just didn't make sense to me, because your mom did all this stuff for you. What the hell were you thinking? Why did you take your revenge out on her? What did she do?"
Nancy and Peter moved to Newtown in 1998. Peter commuted to New York City to work as a vice president for GE. Nancy had health problems — multiple sclerosis — for which she sought treatment in New York, according to her former sister-in-law.
In 2009, the couple filed for divorce, saying their 28-year marriage had "broken down irretrievably," according to court records. What led to the breakup is unclear. Peter has remarried, to Shelley Rae Cudiner, a librarian at the University of Connecticut.
Nancy was a stay-at-home mom when they divorced, listing no income in court papers. Peter made $445,000 a year and agreed to pay $240,000 a year in alimony and child support, according to court records. That sum was set to rise in 2012 to $289,800.
Adam had Asperger's syndrome, the parents told Paula Levy, the family therapist who was their divorce mediator, Levy said in an interview with the Associated Press. The parents were unified in their commitment to meet all of Adam's needs, Levy said, and gave few details about his condition.
The generous settlement, said John Aldrich, a family law attorney in Connecticut, "could have been, they took into account that with a special-needs child, the mother was going to be more hands-on, require more money for her son. There is no magic percentage."
The couple agreed to joint custody of Adam and of their partial set of Boston Red Sox season tickets. Nancy got the house and the rights to final decisions about Adam.
"They always stayed civil," Marsha Lanza said. "They always stayed friends."
Caring for Adam took time and patience, and educating him presented challenges.
Newtown school officials couldn't be reached to comment on his schooling, but interviews in recent days with acquaintances and family members, as well as published reports, suggest that Adam bounced from public school, to a private Catholic school, to home schooling, to taking college courses at Western Connecticut State University, according to the Associated Press.
He was not close with his older brother, Ryan, who lives in Hoboken, N.J., and works for Ernst & Young.
"I know they were totally different kids," Marsha said. "Just totally different kids. Oil and water. I mean, they didn't obviously click. They tolerated each other because they were brothers."
Father and son have been in seclusion since the shooting, and through an attorney issued a statement that read, in part, "Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy. . . . We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why."
The Champion family also issued a statement to "express our heartfelt sorrow for the incomprehensible and profound loss of innocence."
At some point while he was in high school, Adam joined a technology club, a move Nancy apparently supported.
Gloria Milas, whose son Joshua was in the club, said the teens would sit around and link to each other by computer and play games — called LAN parties, for local area network — with each player on a computer. She said that contrary to published reports, the games were not violent. She likened them to Mario Bros. games.
"They were always laughing," she said. "When this all came out, I asked my son, I begged him, 'Were you playing games that were violent?' He said no."
Adam did like to shoot guns — real ones, with his mom. It is not clear when Nancy became a gun collector, but she had at least six firearms registered to her, including the semiautomatic assault rifle used in the massacre, and she sometimes showed off an antique rifle to visitors. The mother and son's "shooting activities" at "multiple ranges" went back several years, ATF officials said, but the last activity was more than six months ago.
If Adam Lanza's mental health had begun to worsen, Nancy Lanza had not shared it widely. The crowd at My Place, a local restaurant where she often hung out, always was happy to see her show up and have a microbrew at the bar. But those friends didn't really know her home life.
She did confide that she had recently discovered a school in Washington state that she thought would be good for Adam, said Mark Tambascio, the restaurant's proprietor.
"They were going to move out there together," Tambascio, who had known Nancy Lanza for several years, said Sunday night.
Her connections to her New Hampshire home town remained strong.
Her brother, James Champion, rose to become a captain on the eight-member Kingston police force. He retired in November 2011 but remains a part-time officer and county sheriff's deputy. Nancy returned to Kingston for her brother's retirement party.
Less than a week before Nancy was killed, her brother was hailed as a town hero after he resuscitated a man who began having an apparent heart attack while running on the high school track.
"He's always been a great guy," said Brian Stack, the principal at the high school. "He single-handedly saved that guy's life, and he should be celebrating that this week instead of this."
As Newtown began a wrenching week of multiple funerals Monday, two services had yet to be planned.
"She was my friend," Marsha Lanza said. "I said to my husband, 'Who's going to bury Nancy?' He said, 'Knowing my brother, he'll take care of it, because that's the right thing to do.' "
Nancy's family, including her mother and three adult siblings, have gathered at the old family farmhouse in Kingston, according to a family friend. They have been told the two bodies may not be released by the medical examiner for another week.
The first snow of winter came Monday, and the ground was covered in white, as were the cars coming to the home carrying people from around town offering condolences. There's a banner outside that says, "Merry Christmas."
Rosenwald reported from Washington and Slevin reported from Chicago. Rick Maese and Peter Hermann in Newtown and Sari Horwitz, Alice R. Crites and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.


text:
Search items by entering keyword(s) in the search field. The table will filter the results as you type. Click the header of a column to alphabetically sort the items. Click again to reverse the order of the sort.
|Pyles, Milton V.
|King, Laura M. (Miss)
(Note: This is the only existing pre-1876 Courthouse fire marriage license in the Archives.)
County Telephone Operator 817-884-1111
Tarrant County provides the information contained in this web site as a public service. Every effort is made to ensure that information provided is correct. However, in any case where legal reliance on information contained in these pages is required, the official records of Tarrant County should be consulted. Tarrant County is not responsible for the content of, nor endorses any site which has a link from the Tarrant County web site.
This site is best experienced with supported browsers: Internet Explorer 9 and above, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari. If you use an older or unsupported browser, you might notice that some features do not function properly. Click the browser name above to learn more about the recommended browsers.
100 E. Weatherford, Fort Worth, Texas 76196
Copyright 2001-2022 Tarrant County, TX

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Export 5 results:Author Title Type [ Year]
Filters: Author is Rocha, A. V. [Clear All Filters]
Postfire energy exchange in arctic tundra: the importance and climatic implications of burn severity. Global Change BiologyGlobal Change Biology. 17:2831-2841.. 2011.
Scaling an Instantaneous Model of Tundra NEE to the Arctic Landscape. EcosystemsEcosystemsEcosystems. 14:76-93.. 2011.
Understanding burn severity sensing in Arctic tundra: exploring vegetation indices, suboptimal assessment timing and the impact of increasing pixel size. International Journal of Remote SensingInternational Journal of Remote Sensing. 32:7033-7056.. 2011.
The footprint of Alaskan tundra fires during the past half-century: implications for surface properties and radiative forcing. Environmental Research LettersEnvironmental Research LettersEnvironmental Research Letters. 7. 2012.
Phenological response of tundra plants to background climate variation tested using the International Tundra Experiment. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological SciencesPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological SciencesPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences. 368. 2013.


text:
Crime Magazine's Review of True-Crime Books
by Anneli Rufus
(Vol. 15, Nov. 5, 2003)
In late October I was fortunate to interview true-crime queen Ann Rule. She was in the Bay Area to promote her latest book, Heart Full of Lies. Rule told me that she "can't stand" mystery fiction: As we true-crime fans know, what's the point of reading about made-up murders when the real ones are more gripping? "When I read mystery novels, I'm always finding things wrong with the police procedures," sighed Rule, whose inability to pass the eyesight portion of the test that would have allowed her to become a cop still stands as "the greatest disappointment of my life." Her college major was creative writing, "but only because it was an easy A," she admits. "I never wanted to be a writer." But "as a young mother about to be divorced with four little kids," she started writing for since defunct True Detective magazine. Some 1,400 articles and many bestsellers later, Rule is working on a book about Washington State's Green River Killer case, about which she has filled an entire closet in her home with files and newspaper clippings. After 20 years and some 49 unsolved murders, a suspect has finally been arrested and tagged as the killer. When Gary Ridgway was first nabbed, "my daughter saw his picture on the news and said, 'Mom, that's the guy who used to come to all your book signings,'" Rule recalled with a shudder. "She said, 'He'd stand there leaning against the wall.'"
Heart Full of Lies, by Ann Rule (Free Press, 2003): Ex-cheerleader, screenwriter and mother of two Liysa Northon was a classic sociopath: roping friends, lovers and family members into a complex labyrinth of falsehood and deceit that made Liysa seem like a victim, a survivor, and a hero. After years spent convincing them all that her third husband was an abusive alcoholic, she quietly killed him at an Oregon campsite. Having already bought her stories of his abuse, many were also willing to believe her claim that the killing was in self-defense. Determined to clear Chris Northon's name, Rule investigates this domestic drama with her usual compassion and careful attention to character development.
An Evening with JonBenet Ramsey: A Play and Two Essays by Walter A. Davis (Xlibris, 2003): Davis, Professor Emeritus in the English Department at Ohio State University, does not mince words in his essays on the case. Before JonBenet was a murder victim, she was a victim of chronic sexual abuse, both physical and psychological. Davis, with erudite writing, debunks both prevailing theories about how the 6-tear-old beauty princess came to die: death was no accident and no intruder was involved. To Davis, the preponderance of the evidence points to Patsy Ramsey as the murderer in retaliation for the intimacies her husband John Ramsey took with JonBenet. "A sexualized child is at the center of this tale," Davis writes. "Sex is here the key to everything." In the play, Cowboy's Sweetheart, Davis imagines the life of a child who was murdered by her mother as it might have evolved if she had lived.
Mortal Evidence, by Cyril Wecht and Greg Saitz, with Mark Curriden (Prometheus Books, 2003): World-famous pathologist Wecht spotlights some of the high-profile cases with which he's been involved. From Sam Sheppard to JonBenet Ramsey to O.J. Simpson to Tammy Wynette, we meet once again the celebrity perps and victims of whom the press never seems to tire. Lest you suspect that you've already heard everything about these cases, Wecht proposes his own bracingly controversial theories about them, which keeps those pages turning. Making no bones about his belief that JonBenet died during sex play with someone she knew, he's also pretty sure O.J. had an accomplice.
Memoirs of Vidocq, by François Eugène Vidocq (AK Press, 2003): An international bestseller when first published almost 200 years ago, this autobiography of Paris's celebrated post-Revolutionary police chief introduces an irrepressible raconteur. Also a private detective, Vidocq was an unrepentant ex-criminal himself. French writers Alexandre Dumas, Honore de Balzac and Victor Hugo were his personal friends, so it comes as no surprise that Vidocq's firsthand accounts of clever crimes, perps, and convictions influenced their works, as well as those of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe, whose literary debt to this bon vivant is made ever so clear by these lively memoirs.
Drake's Fortune, by Richard Rayner (Anchor, 2003): In the 1920s, farm-boy-turned-con-man Oscar Hartzell bilked tens of thousands of hapless Midwesterners out of their life savings. As Rayner recounts with breezy journalistic eloquence, Hartzell accomplished this by convincing his victims that they were the legitimate heirs of Sir Francis Drake, and thus entitled to a share of the 16th-century admiral's huge fortune, which was tied up in extensive legal red tape that Hartzell offered to untangle — at a cost. Of course the fortune was a myth, Drake's estate having been settled centuries before Hartzell and his victims were even born. The con man lived in luxury but died mad, as this swiftly paced biography of a determined criminal reveals while bringing a bygone era satisfyingly alive.
(Vol. 14, Sept. 29, 2003)
Books about true crime are moving from the back to the front of bookstores and public libraries. All of a sudden, true crime is in. Major publishers are bringing out new crime books at an unprecedented rate, and promoting them feverishly. True-crime authors are snagging six-figure advances. It was bound to happen sometime. But why now? Because "CSI" and other forensics-based TV dramas are attracting more viewers than other shows? Or because we're all just feeling more fearful, in general, all the time?
The Master Con Man, by Robert Kyriakides (Headpress, 2003): Irish-born Syd Gottfried, a fearless crook, ran ever-more-complex con games in Europe and America for some 50 years, bilking every kind of mark from casino owners to diamond dealers to penis-enlargement-surgery patients. Told in the first person in a conversational style yet published under the byline of Gottfried's former lawyer, this (auto)biography gives the inside dope on how cons work — and begins, chillingly, with an account of the night Gottfried arrived home to find his young daughter murdered.
The Best American Crime Writing 2003, edited by John Berendt, Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook (Vintage, 2003): These nearly two dozen examples of the past year's finest crime reportage include pieces on pedophiles, pimps, terrorists, and other evaders of justice — even Enron executives. They span the globe; a story on the savage murder, in Pakistan, of journalist Daniel Pearl is sobering as is The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger's article on an Eastern European prostitution racket into which trusting young women disappear without a trace.
A Deadly Secret, by Matt Birkbeck (Berkley, 2003): A seeming drifter arrested for shoplifting in Pennsylvania in 2001 was soon discovered to be New York billionaire Robert Durst, heir to a real-estate fortune and key suspect in the still-unsolved 1982 slaying of his wife. Shortly after his arrest, Durst was indicted for the grisly murder of a Texas man. As revealed in the new afterword of this nuts-and-bolts account by a People magazine reporter, Durst is now being eyed for investigation in unsolved vanishings elsewhere.
Journal of the Dead, by Jason Kersten (Harper Collins, 2003): Young city-boy college pals Raffi Kodikian and Dave Coughlin were driving cross-country, On the Road-style, when a campout near New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns took a deadly turn: As Kodikian later reported, the pair had run out of water and a dehydrated Coughlin had begged to be killed rather than endure another hour of thirst. Not as passionate as it could be, this effort by a Maxim writer recounts the incident and Kodikian's subsequent trial for murder; most gripping is the blow-by-blow of exactly what dehydration does to a human body.
Murder in Paradise, by Chris Loos and Rick Castberg (Avon, $7.50): Two Hilo-based writers cover the Christmas 1991 killing of 23-year-old Dana Ireland, who was knocked off her bicycle, raped and battered while visiting the Big Island of Hawaii from Virginia. A trio of neighborhood toughs was arrested for the crime; what elevates this book from standard fare is the detailed picture it paints of a Hawaii that few tourists see: lowdown housing projects and the hopeless Pidgin-speaking drug dealers and addicts who dwell there, preying on locals and outsiders alike.
Dead Center, by Frank J. Daniels (New Horizon, 2003): Hopelessly romantic and newly married for the first time at age 46, Bruce Dodson was shot to death near Snipe Mountain in western Colorado in 1995 on his first-ever hunting trip. His bride of 90 days, Janice, appeared to go into shock after discovering his body. The autopsy, though, showed that Dodson had been murdered: he had been shot three times not once. Suspicion soon fell on Janice, a crack shot who had recently taken out a large insurance policy on Bruce. Local prosecuting attorney Frank Daniels offers a belabored, cliched account of the crime and its subsequent four-and-a-half year investigation that led to Janice being convicted of first-degree murder.
(Vol. 13, July 7, 2003)
For true-crime readers, summer vacation means catching up on old but as-yet-unread favorites as well as scooping up the latest the genre has to offer. This season features some high-profile new releases based on high-profile cases — Aphrodite Jones's Red Zone is sure to score a lot of buzz. You might remember Jones as the author who sued the distributors of the Oscar-winning film Boys Don't Cry, claiming that her own account of the Brandon Teena murder case — a book called All She Wanted — afforded her special rights to the story and its principals. She settled for an undisclosed amount. The San Francisco dog-mauling case on which Red Zone is based made celebrities out of its perpetrators, their victims, and a passel of lawyers. Maria Flook's Invisible Eden banks on celebrity spin as well. The victim of the murder Flook recounts was a high-fashion reporter who hobnobbed with royalty. Buckets of blood, flashes of glitz — that's summer reading.
Red Zone, by Aphrodite Jones (Morrow, 2003): Few crimes are as all-around sordid as San Francisco's dog-mauling case, in which two huge dogs killed a young lacrosse coach in 2001. A pair of down-and-out lawyers was raising the hounds for an incarcerated armed robber who was scheming to sell guard dogs to meth-lab operators. Days after the killing, the lawyers legally adopted the prisoner, who was the object of their fervent sexual fantasies. Rumors of bestiality spice the bloody story even further. Jones luxuriates in the gory details, effectively exposing the pair whom a trial judge dubbed "the most hated couple in San Francisco." But victim Diane Whipple gets jarringly little coverage: a glaring omission that leaves us wondering. Also, even some diehard true-crime fans will find the close-up photographs of Whipple's lethal wounds in bad taste.
Invisible Eden, by Maria Flook (Broadway, 2003): A less forgettable title would attract more readers to this intriguing account of a still-unsolved year-old crime in which a celebrated fashion journalist was killed in her serene Cape Cod bungalow. When Christa Worthington's corpse was discovered 36 hours later, her toddler daughter was suckling at its breast. Flook, a Cape Cod denizen herself, is a powerful, evocative writer who thrives in this "literary investigation." Although some readers may have little patience for first-person passages in which Flook recounts her own history (strikingly parallel to Worthington's in various aspects), the dogged attentiveness with which she investigates Worthington's character outweighs that nuisance. Worthington is a complex victim: always unlucky in love, aristocratic yet unsatisfied, an inveterate pursuer of married men, she defies categorization — as even her closest friends told the author.
Held Captive, by Maggie Haberman and Jeane MacIntosh (Avon, 2003): After vanishing one night from her well-appointed Salt Lake City home in 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart became the subject of a massive search. That she was recovered nine months later, alive, marked a rare moment in child-abduction cases. This mass-market paperback adopts a predictable breathless tone while recounting the tale of the teen's abduction and the back stories of the husband-and-wife Christian zealots with whom she was eventually found. Conspiracy theorists and scandalmongers — and this case spurred more than a few — will find little to go on in this by-the-book book about a very strange crime.
Lethal Intent, by Sue Russell (Kensington, 2003): Yes, women can be serial killers, and Russell shows how Aileen Wuornos emerged from childhood traumas to become one of the nation's most notorious. Executed this year in Florida, Wuornos murdered seven men in that state (wives, warn your husbands not to pick up hitchhiking prostitutes) and declared after her capture that she would gladly kill again. Lambasted in the world press as a "man-hating lesbian," she gave gays a bad name. Interviewing many participants in the saga, including men who, as teenage boys, were initiated sexually by Wuornos, Russell writes with empathy for killer and victims alike. That Wuornos was the daughter of a convicted kidnapper and child molester whom she never met gives the nature-not-nurture folks grist for the mill.
Gangs, edited by Sean Donahue (Adrenaline, 2003): Famous fictional excerpts such as part of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange supplement thoughtful, true, journalistic accounts of gang life and its violent consequences. Particularly gripping is an inside look at New York's Chinese gangs, in which senseless murders wreck the dreams that brought immigrants halfway around the world. A startling commonality in many of these essays and articles is how young the gang members are. Parents of teens will read this book with especial horror.
(Vol. 12, May 28, 2003)
After a long legal struggle, British courts have granted notorious child-murderer Mary Bell the right to lifelong anonymity. Retold in the fascinating book Children Who Kill, which was covered in the last installment of this column, Bell's is a harrowing tale in which an 11-year-old girl murdered a 4-year-old boy and a 3-year-old boy in 1968. Now a mother herself, living under a different name, the former Mary Bell was incarcerated until 1980. The parents of her young victims are among many now protesting the court's decision, arguing that the killer forfeited any right to public mercy when she was paid some $100,000 recently for contributing to a book based on her life. This situation brings up a ticklish topic for true-crime buffs. Sure, most books include a short-term epilogue. But after a book goes to press and hits the stores, the story it started to tell goes on and on and on. Just as we wonder "Where are they now?" about vanished celebrities, we might also ponder the long-term fates of victims' families and perps of every stripe. Those stories would make for good books too.
Dangerous Attractions, by Robert Scott (Pinnacle, 2003). Ever-so-prolific Scott takes on an 11-year-old case in which a white-supremacist ex-con gangbanger murdered his on-again, off-again girlfriend in idyllic coastal Southern California. Prosewise, it's not top-notch, but this nuts-and-bolts rendering of an utterly pointless killing enters the violent, drug-addled minds of neo-Nazi skinheads. What it finds there is scarier than any isolated crime.
The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease (Feral House, 2003). If it's not JFK's brain in the official autopsy X-rays, then whose is it? If Sirhan Sirhan continues to allege his innocence, should we believe him? If James Earl Ray didn't kill MLK, then who did? This collection of dozens of essays previously published in Probe magazine pours new fuel into the ongoing furor vis-a-vis snafus, cover-ups, conspiracies, and alternative endings to the most famous American assassination cases of the last 50 years.
The True Intrepid, by Bill Macdonald (Raincoast, 2001). Said to be the flesh-and-blood model for James Bond, Manitoba-born master spy William Stephenson attracted a bit of attention 30 years back as the putative subject of another book, A Man Called Intrepid. But spy that he was, Stephenson moved amid a constantly changing and continually remade series of state secrets, false fronts, and duck blinds. CIA historian Macdonald tracked down the genuine article, a crime fighter of the old school and a nonpareil WWII character.
The Rabbi and the Hit Man, by Arthur J. Magida (Harper Collins, 2003). Southern New Jersey's Jewish community had its faith shaken to the core when, in 1994, beloved Reform Rabbi Fred Neulander hired a ne'er-do-well to murder his mild-mannered, cake-baking wife. A shanda to end all shandas, entailing multiple affairs and a complex web of lies, the crime landed both clergyman and killer behind bars for the long haul. This book could have used an editor with a firm hand, and Magida's characterization of certain key players, including the victim, falls far short of what they — and this story — deserve.
Crimes of New York, edited by Clint Willis (Adrenaline, 2003). This collection — part of a series whose many other titles include Mob and NYPD — includes the work of many illustrious writers, who riff on gangsters, hoods, and wrong-place/wrong-time situations in the city that never sleeps. Lillian Ross writes about 10th-grade girls in trouble; Calvin Trillin unveils wrongdoing on Wall Street. Drugs and guns punctuate a high-caliber reading experience, but the inclusion of fictional works in what is mostly a true-crime anthology is unsettling; we might like P.G. Wodehouse but we don't want him here.
Guillotine: The Timbers of Justice, by Robert Frederick Opie (Sutton, 2003). From a British publisher comes this unique 200-year history of a device whose ingenious and grisly efficiency has, as Opie tells us, captivated the public unlike no other method of execution. Examining its use during the French Revolution, by the Nazis during WWII, and beyond — including its last official deployment in the 1970s — this serious work affords insights into politics, crime, and human nature. Illustrations bring us almost to the present day by including a photograph of France's last public execution: the 1939 guillotining of murderer Eugène Weidmann.
Born to Steal, by Gary Weiss (Warner Books, 2003). Crooked, Mob-connected brokerage houses known as "chop houses" use cold-calling to loot millions from the gullible and greedy all over the United States. Weiss, an investigative reporter for Business Week, melodramatically traces the improbable rise and inevitable fall of one young broker. The stupidity of investors is as astounding as the lack of government enforcement.
(Vol. 11, April 7, 2003)
For the last 30-plus years, women have been struggling to escape, change, or adapt the traditional roles set in place by society and history. But in the world of crime — and true-crime writing — women and girls have traditional roles as well. By an astounding majority, we are the victims. It is we who are abducted, tortured, raped, easily overpowered by men with or without weapons. It is we who fall in love with the wrong men, we who pay dearly when we try to break up with them. It is we who become the subject of sexual fantasies — either in the minds of strangers who stalk us, or in the minds of acquaintances who mistake our friendliness or politeness for flirting. Yet, as two new books reveal unflinchingly, it is an emerging fact of life in the modern world that females can be vicious, heartless perps too.
Murderous Women, by Frank Jones (Firefly, 2003): Updating a work originally published in 1991, journalist and true-crime veteran Jones has added several chapters about more recent cases, as well as epilogues to some of the earlier ones. Much-loathed Canadian sex-killer Karla Homolka and South African Mariette Bosch, hanged for shooting her best friend because she wanted his husband, are among the new additions. The Myra Hindley/Ian Brady case might seem like such old hat that you're tempted to skip Jones's chapter on it, but don't. Interviews with investigators cast a fresh light, as do the personal insights, visual details and analysis that make this and the rest of the book a thoughtful, absorbing read.
Children Who Kill, by Carol Anne Davis (Allison & Busby, 2003): The Scots author of Women Who Kill comes back with a bracing new follow-up. School shooters, teenage sex killers, kidnappers who were kids themselves: They did the unthinkable, yet rather than take the easy route and demonize them, Davis delves deeply into their lives before and after their crimes. It's rare for authors of any kind to pay such intense, authentic attention to kids' feelings and characters; Davis's doing so makes these crimes and criminals all the more interesting. Complex yet so simple, these two dozen or so stories implicate abusive parents and other irresponsible adults who might have saved these kids — and thus their victims — but didn't.
The Montesi Scandal, by Karen Pinkus (University of Chicago, 2003): Mild-mannered Roman ingénue Wilma Montesi was found dead on a beach outside the city one day in 1953. At first called an accidental drowning, as there were no signs of assault, the mysterious death spawned a huge scandal in which all of Italy buzzed with talk of orgies, drugs, movie stars — and murder. Comparative literature professor Pinkus reexamines the case and its aftermath in what many if not most readers will find a daunting format: as the production notes for a never-made film. Characters are introduced, scenes are described, and the story gets told — but the film-notes conceit makes for a long and not-so-rewarding effort.
Con Men, edited by Ian Jackman (Simon & Schuster, 2003): Mike Wallace wrote the introduction to this collection of profiles, from the "60 Minutes" archive, of swindlers and flim-flam men, forgers and fakers, mail-order ministers and pyramid-scheme pirates. Dating back several decades, these range from a phony doctor running a phony health spa in Southern California to the case of Santé and Kenny Kimes, mother-and-son scammers-cum-killers, whose plan to steal a wealthy woman's Manhattan apartment house ended with their convictions for her murder. Each case includes background details on how "60 Minutes" investigators pulled off their "sting" operations and exposés. Not a deep read, but a quick, fun one.
(Vol. 10, Jan. 25, 2003)
As the old year slid into a new year, the headlines were as much about corporate crime as about the other, more familiar and more personal kind. Corporate crime – its dynamics, terminology, and mechanisms – presents a much more complex picture than that other kind, an almost abstract image onto which it is difficult to put a real human face.
Best Business Crime Writing of the Year, edited by James Surowiecki. (Vintage, 2002): In an earlier era, the very idea of such a book would be implausible and far from exciting. But the fact that this collection even exists, that its contributing writers include some of America's top reporters, and that it makes for a whole new kind of thrilling true-crime book says a lot about our times. Previously published in the likes of Vanity Fair and Newsweek, these stories include the stock scandal involving Martha Stewart, the Enron debacle, and more.
Finders Keepers, by Mark Bowden. (Atlantic Monthly, 2002): By the author of Black Hawk Down, this true tale of a South Philly down-and-outer who had a lucky break explores the age-old question: What would you do if you found a million dollars? After coming across a full bag that had fallen out of an armored vehicle, this guy made choices that led straight to misery, as the author reveals in a scintillating blow-by-blow.
Mr. Nice, by Howard Marks. (Canongate, 2002): Some 20 years back, the author had dozens of aliases, dozens of phone lines, and dozens of businesses that were used to launder the earnings from his true avocation: drug-dealing. In this engaging memoir, Marks – who really does seem to live up to the book's title – starts with his childhood in Wales, then tells the whole story, through his capture and incarceration, and then beyond.
Dangerous Waters, by John S. Burnett. (Dutton, 2002): If you think pirates went extinct with Captain Hook, think again. Terrifying anecdotes fill this journalist's in-depth account of modern-day piracy on today's high seas. From fishing boats to oil tankers, vessels of all kinds around the world are fair game for professional thieves who board them by stealth and will stop at nothing in their quest for cargo and cash.
Like Father, Like Son, by Robert Scott. (Pinnacle, 2002): Depravity takes on a whole new meaning in this tale of a killer who turned his own son into a sex slave, then as the boy grew the father turned him first into a pimp, then into a partner in crime. Together, father and son abducted, abused, and slew a 9-year-old girl, making their crime Nevada's first father-and-son death-penalty case.
Portrait of a Killer, by Patricia Cornwell. (Putnam, 2002): The best-selling author of mystery novels spent many years and lots of money pursuing her personal theory about Jack the Ripper's true identity. In this nonfiction account of that pursuit, Cornwell makes the case that Jack was actually the famous British artist Walter Sickert. Cornwell's purchase and subsequent slashing of a Sickert painting raised eyebrows and rampant criticism last year; she tells her side of the story in this big and somewhat self-indulgent book.


text:
The site software is now updated, so that we're running Joomla 2.5.x and the latest version of phpBB3. This should ensure that the site keeps running fine the next few years.
Riseofpersia.com has just started using the content management system Joomla! and integrated its forum with the rest of the website, for easier access and better visibility of our website content.


text:
Micromax Canvas Play 4G Q469 firmware
How To Flash a SPD Phone or Tablet
- Download and Install Spreadtrum USB Driver on your Computer. If in case Spreadtrum Driver is already installed on your computer then SKIP this Step.
- Download .pac firmware for your device (Itel, other)
- Download and extract Spreadtrum Upgrade Tool on your computer.
Now, open UpgradeDownload.exe.Once Spreadtrum Upgrade Tool is launched, connect your Android device to the computer (make sure your device is switch off).
- If Smartphone is properly connected to the computer, click on the Load Packed Button and add the .pac file (stock rom which comes as .pac).
- Having successfully added the .Pac file in Spreadtrum Upgrade Tool, click on the Start Downloading button to begin the flashing.
- During the flashing process your device will restart automatically.
- Once flashing is completed, you will be able to see the Green Passed Message in Spreadtrum Upgrade Tool.
- Now you have successfully flashed your Android Device using Spreadtrum Upgrade Tool.
After device is booted up successfully, Go to Settings > About Phone > Check firmware. Done!
How To Flash a MTK based Phone or Tablet
- First, you need to download and install sp flash tool
- Download and install MTK android USB drivers
- Then download Firmware file/Flash file/Rom for your phone
- Your phone must have 50 % charging before this process
- switch off yourmobile remove the battery (if removable) reinsert the battery and plug the USB cable in charging socket
- Now open SPflash tool.exe
- When sp flash tool open, go to download button in sp flash tool
- In download tab, click on scatter load button
- After locating the scatter tab, click on the download button
- Now connect your smart phone with a USB cable and press volume up or volume down key for easy detection (remove and re insert your phone battery if it is removable)
- Now flashing is completed, a green ring will appear in sp flash tool
- Close sp flash tool on your computer and unplug phone
- Power on the phone and enjoy
How To Flash a Qualcomm Based Phone or Tablet
QualComm CPU Flashing is carried out in two phases:-
1- Driver Installation
2- Software Upgrade
Driver Installation:
1- Download and install Qualcomm driver. While installing driver avoid using cable for successful installation.
2- After installation, connect Phone to PC using USB cable.
3- While connecting to PC, phone should be switched off and press volume up & down as boot key.
4- If it makes Qualcomm port, then driver has been successfully installed.
Software Upgrade:
1- Download the QPST tool & driver.
2- Make sure your device has the Power to support flashing.
3- Run QFIL tool.
4- Click on Browse under the Programmer path to select MBN File.
MBN File Format:
5- As soon as the MBN file is selected, Select Build will automatically select the Update or Stock ROM.
6- Click on Load XML, select rawprogram_unsparse_without_qcn.xml and then choose Patch0.xml
Load XML comes with two option:
a- rawprogram_unsparse_without_qcn.xml : On choosing this file, data will not be lost.
b- rawprogram_unsparse.xml : Will lose RF Calibration data, IMEI and WiFi/Bluetooth Address.
7- Switch off the device and connect it to PC by pressing Volume up & down key.
8- Click on Select Port and choose the port.
9- Click on Download to start flashing.
10- Unplug USB cable, when Finish Download appears.
Note: Do not unplug cable when Reset Phone or waiting for Reset Phone is in the process.
All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this Blog are for identification and learning purposes only.


text:
The "six strikes" anti-piracy program is on its way, for real. Jill Lesser, head of the Center for Copyright Information—the enforcement agency in charge of the system—confirmed that the system is coming this year in a September interview with Ars. Speaking at a New York Internet conference, representatives of two of the biggest ISPs, Verizon and Time Warner, have finally described how their systems will work.
Despite the "six strikes" moniker, both Verizon and Time Warner talked about systems that work in three essential phases. First comes the "notice" phase, which simply involves letting users know they've been tracked on copyright-infringing sites. Verizon customers, for example, will send notifications to primary account holders via both e-mail and telephone. "We send a notice to the customer, saying there's been an allegation [of] illegal activity with copyrighted files," said Verizon VP Link Hoewing.
Next is the "acknowledgement" phase. This is when the customer will have to actually acknowledge having received those notices. Hoewing said his company's customers will experience this as a pop-up window. The idea here is to make extra sure they're getting to the right people. In a house or apartment with a shared Internet connection, he noted, five people may be using the same account, with just one person—likely not the account holder—engaged in copyright infringement.
Finally, there's the "mitigation" phase. This is when users who have traded copyrighted files are actually punished, and Time Warner and Verizon take different tacks here. Verizon users will have their speeds throttled for between two and three days, said Hoewing. And even then, they'll have the right to appeal the case, which will be handled by an independent arbitration firm, he said. (The user will have to pay a $35 filing fee for the appeal.) Before the speed reduction begins, subscribers will be given a 14-day advance notice.
Time Warner users will see popular websites blocked. "We're constructing a soft landing area, where the customer is restricted in the type of browsing that they can do," said Time Warner VP Fernando Laguarda. "If they appeal, all those measures are suspended pending the appeal."
The target of "six strikes" is the casual copyright infringer, not dedicated pirates. At one point, moderator Declan McCullagh of CNET asked how the content owners and ISPs would deal with customers who might use a system like TOR to hide their identity. "Will this just push determined pirates into a darker area of the Internet?" he asked. "Will you just catch the loser ones, who aren't that smart?"
CCI head Jill Lesser responded that the goal isn't to stop "serial pirates" trying to avoid IP laws. Rather, it's to educate "the vast majority of the people for whom trading in copyrighted material has become a social norm, over many years."
Both the content company participants and the ISPs emphasized that "education" is the goal, rather than lawsuits. "This is not about suing users at all," said Ron Wheeler, a senior VP at Fox Broadcasting who was on the panel. "This system is not designed to produce lawsuits—it's designed to produce education."
Other ISPs may be participating soon. A Cox spokesperson told TorrentFreak, which first reported on the conference, that it was invited to participate but decided not to, for now.


text:
Top Videos: Michael Emerson Sings "Happy," How to Communicate Like Jack Bauer
This week, Person of Interest star Michael Emerson set out to prove that he isn't always dark and intense, while CollegeHumor compiled a 24 video proving that Jack Bauer ... well, is almost always dark and intense. Full House was reimagined as a horror movie, and Saturday Night Live filmed a sketch with Andrew Garfield paying tribute to '90s sitcoms (but was forced to cut it from the broadcast). New judges Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams made their debuts on The Voice (sort of) by performing Stefani's hit "Hollaback Girl." And Sally Field destroyed Julia Roberts in a "Curse-Off" on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Check out those clips and more in our weekly roundup of the best online videos:
Add new fall shows to your Watchlist!
SNL's"Wing": This sketch may have gotten cut for time during Saturday's broadcast of SNL, but it was subsequently released online. In "Wing," which perfectly parodies '90s sitcoms, terrible transitions and all, host Andrew Garfield plays a young man who's debating which of his friends deserves the last chicken wing.
Full House as a horror movie: Ever wondered what Full House would look like as a horror movie? Wonder no more.
100 days of Napoleon Dynamite's dance: This guy re-created the title character's epic dance from Napoleon Dynamite for 100 days straight - and then edited the footage into one amazing supercut.
Julia Roberts and Sally Field's Curse-Off: Things we learned this week: Sally Field has a filthy, filthy mouth. Julia Roberts, sadly, does not.
"Hollaback Girl": This s--- is bananas! Watch Gwen Stefani and Pharrell team up for "Hollaback Girl" on The Voice.
Michael Emerson sings "Happy":Lost alum Michael Emerson is worried he might be getting typecast in dark, intense roles, so he went on The Arsenio Hall Show to prove that he really is a lighthearted guy. Unfortunately, his rendition of "Happy" may not be the best way to illustrate his point.
How to communicate like Jack Bauer: Jack is back! Everyone's favorite CTU agent returned in all his raging glory this week in the premiere of 24: Live Another Day. As this video illustrates, the best way to communicate like Jack Bauer is to repeat things LOUDLY AND FORCEFULLY if you don't get the answer you want the first time around.
Hulu's Behind the Mask: Hulu's original series Behind the Mask, which follows four sports mascots, was nominated for a Sports Emmy Award this week. Watch the first episode here:
View original Top Videos: Michael Emerson Sings "Happy," How to Communicate Like Jack Bauer at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com


text:
Mr. Jingles answers dinner bell at NC courthouse, sweeps halls clean of rats
HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. -- A rat infestation at the historic Henderson County courthouse is history, thanks to Mr. Jingles, an abandoned tabby brought in from the county's animal shelter as a rat deterrent.
The rodents plagued the building for months, raiding snacks and sugar packets in the Heritage Museum, killing potted plants in Paralegal Kathy Finotti's office and gnashing about 30 "Henderson County Recycles" T-shirts into a rat's nest in the basement.
"They were everywhere," said Megan Piner, the county's environmental programs coordinator whose box of promotional T-shirts was unceremoniously recycled by the vermin.
Maintenance crews put out rat poison, "and that's when we found 'Ratzilla' in Commissioner (Tommy) Thompson's office," said County Manager Steve Wyatt. "He was in Europe, and the smell of Ratzilla decomposing alerted me that something was afoul — more than usual — in Commissioner Thompson's office."
The decaying rat carcass raised not only a foul stench, but the possibility that other poisoned rats could crawl into the walls of the courthouse and die.
"And that's awful," said Wyatt, who began to mull over how to build a better rat trap.
Enter "Rascal," a black-and-gray striped cat up ready for adoption at the county's animal shelter and physically suited for the task at hand.
"We had a size requirement, because we didn't want him to be outmanned, so to speak," Wyatt said, adding the large droppings left behind indicated the rats weren't of average size. "Rascal was a big boy, but he was a scaredy cat. He spent his time hiding, both from the county, the IRS and the NSA. So I fired him."
Shortly after arriving, Piner said Rascal "got in the wall and hid and we couldn't get him out."
Despite his timidity, county staff thought the cat deserved more of a chance to prove himself, but Wyatt saw the writing on the wall.
"I caught a little grief from employees when I terminated him, but I knew that we had several eager applicants waiting in the wings," he said.
Second up was Mr. Jingles, a short-haired tabby that Brad Rayfield, director of the county's Animal Services Center, had originally eyed for the job. But at the time Wyatt called for help, he had not been fixed, micro-chipped or inoculated for rabies. When Rascal returned to the shelter (where he was later adopted out), Mr. Jingles was ready.
"Our next applicant proved to be a more worthy opponent," said Wyatt. "He's leaner and perhaps a bit hungrier. The reason we call him Mr. Jingles is he had this little bell on his collar, which he ditched himself. We know why he did that, because it put him at a disadvantage when it came to stalking his prey."
Starting in early May, Mr. Jingles made himself at home in the basement of the courthouse, where he has a bed, a litter box and toys donated by cat-lover Terry Wilson, clerk to the board of commissioners. During the day, he's kept to non-public areas, but he roams at night.
And the rats disappeared.
"We believe Mr. Jingles is relocating them elsewhere," Wyatt said. "I don't know that he's stacking them up, but I believe they're seeking greener pastures. He's the best employee I've got and I don't have to pay his health insurance."
"He's done a good job of keeping the rats away," agreed Joanne Hinson, a legal administrative assistant who no longer has to lock up her snacks.
Not only has Mr. Jingles solved the courthouse's rat problem, he's become a feline ambassador of sorts, consorting with politicians and winning over staff members who previously considered themselves dog people.
"He has the run of the secure part of the building," Wyatt said. "He'll visit engineering, legal and budget. He's not real happy with budget, apparently, because he doesn't spend much time there. He's particularly fond of Commissioner (Grady) Hawkins and the clerk to the board, Terry Wilson. And he did crawl up in the sheriff's lap and sniff him."
How did Sheriff Charlie McDonald react to that? "He's always cool as a cucumber."
Custodian Paul Johnson is usually the first in in the morning, so he feeds Mr. Jingles — if Wilson doesn't beat him to it. The employees share litter box chores. The biggest challenge for staff is keeping Mr. Jingles from escaping. Signs warn courthouse visitors to "Beware of Cat" for the purposes of keeping him put.
"He definitely keeps things interesting," Piner said. "He tried to come into a commissioners' meeting (during the budget process). He was outside the door, just going nuts."
He may be new on the job, but Mr. Jingles knows who rings his dinner bell.


text:
Create an Account - Increase your productivity, customize your experience, and engage in information you care about.
Thank you for your interest in employment with the City of Converse. Browse through the following to learn about available opportunities. If you have trouble viewing the list of opportunities below, visit our Career Portal.We recommend that applicants use Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer 11 or higher.


text:
Cash for Junk Cars in Muscoy (CA)
|🇺🇸 Service area:
|Muscoy city
|✅ Average Time To Pick Up:
|10 hours 17 min
|💲 Lowest Weekly Cash Price Paid:
|💲 Highest Weekly Cash Price Paid:
|✅ Service Areas
|✅ We buy junk cars since:
|✅ Same Day service:
(909) 366-3041 - We pay TOP $$$ for your Junk Car!
Are you looking to get rid of that old car in your driveway? You're in luck, as USJunkCars.com offers car removal and cash for junk cars, trucks, vans, and other clunkers in and around the Muscoy, California region.
With our auto cars for cash car recycling program, you can trade your damaged car for cash! Even if it doesn't run, USJunkCars.com will give you cash for junk cars in California!
About USJunkCars.com
Based in Muscoy, CA, USJunkCars offers cash for clunkers of all types, including:
- car wrecks that have been damaged in an accident;
- vehicles with fire or water damage;
- old cars and trucks that don't run;
- and other cars that are unwanted and in the way!
USJunkCars.com accepts all vehicles, including trucks, cars, sports utility vehicles, vans, and minivans. So rather than searching out someone who specializes in auto salvage, trying to part it out yourself, or paying someone else to take care of car removal, we'll pay you with our cars for cash program.
USJunkCars.com will pick up your automobile from virtually any location in the Muscoy, CA area, including your home, place of employment, or other location. In some cases, our team can even collect your vehicle from the side of the highway in the event that it's broken down for the last and final time and you're ready to get cash for your old car!
How It Works
How can USJunkCars.com offer cash for clunkers of all makes, models, and conditions? It's simple, really. Here's an overview of how the process works:
- You decide you're tired of looking at that unsightly junk car on your property, or perhaps you're sick of dealing with neighbor complaints.
- You call USJunkCars.com to inquire about our cash for clunkers program or use our online form to request a quote.
- You'll provide us with some basic information about the vehicle and our friendly staff will provide you with information on how much money we can offer for the vehicle.
- We'll arrange a time and location for the car removal. USJunkCars.com serves the entire Muscoy, CA area. Same-day or 24-hour pickup is available in some instances, so please feel free to inquire!
- One of our friendly auto removal technicians will arrive at your location to collect your vehicle and you'll get cash for your clunker! Our techs will also provide you with a receipt for your records.
- Your old car will be taken to our junkyard facility, where it will be evaluated. Useful auto parts that are in good condition will be removed and offered for resale. Some wrecks may be sold as fixer-uppers.
- In cases where many of the car parts are removed, the remaining car parts will be sold for scrap metal and recycled.
With USJunkCars.com cash for the clunkers auto recycling program, everybody wins! You'll get rid of that old car and you'll get cash, and we'll get vehicles that we'll use for parts or scrap.
Don't pay someone for car removal services! Sell junk cars for cash with USJunkCars.com! We provide free tow-away services for old cars that don't run, so you won't need to spend a dime to get rid of that old auto; we pay you cash for your car!
How to Get Cash for a Car
Are you wondering how much money you can get for your old car, truck, van, or SUV?
Simply call USJunkCars.com at (909) 366-3041.
Our car recycling experts will ask you a bit of general information about your auto, including:
- Make;
- Model;
- Year;
- General condition;
- Problems and damage;
- Information on any missing parts or components.
Based on the information you provide, we can offer a quote for how much money you'll get for the vehicle.
Also, check out USJunkCars.com online quote request form. Simply complete the form and you'll get an instant offer of cash for an old truck, car, SUV, or van!
Can I Still Get Cash for My Old Car if I Don't Have a Title? Keys?
Don't have a title for your old car? No worries! USJunkCars.com can still give you money for an old car providing it meets the following criteria:
- You must be the vehicle's owner;
- The automobile must be 10 years old or older;
- The vehicle is registered in your name.
If you meet these criteria, then USJunkCars.com can give you cash for your old car. We also give cash for old trucks, SUVs, minivans, and vans.Since we'll be towing your vehicle, then selling it for parts or scrap, we don't need the keys. Of course, the keys are helpful, but if you don't have them available, we can still remove the vehicle and give you cash for your unwanted car!
Before You Get Rid of That Old Car...
Before the vehicle is removed from the premises and towed away, you must remember to remove your personal belongings from inside the auto. In addition, you will be asked to remove the license plates, which must be returned to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Also, if the vehicle is registered, remember to contact your insurance company to cancel the policy on your car.
If you don't own the vehicle, you must provide USJunkCars.com with a title that has been signed over to you by the legal owner. In cases where an old car has been abandoned on your property, you will need to contact your local police department to obtain special paperwork that must be completed. Once this is tended to, you can sell the junk car for cash from USJunkCars.com!
Don't let that eyesore sit on your property any longer! Get cash for old cars and trucks with USJunkCars.com auto salvage and recycling program.
We offer cash for clunkers to private citizens, non-profit organizations, and commercial establishments.
Get Money for Your Old Car!
Selling your car's parts on Craigslist can be time-consuming - it can literally take months or years to find buyers for all the parts, plus you'll need to actually remove the parts, clean them and ship them out to the buyers! It's a huge time-consuming hassle!
And leaving that old vehicle to rot on your property causes a tremendous eyesore, plus it's a liability!
Get cash for cars in Muscoy, California and the surrounding area with USJunkCars.com!
Use our online form to find out how much cash you can get for that old vehicle!
Or call USJunkCars.com today at (909) 366-3041.
→ Who buys junk cars in Muscoy, California?
If you are looking for someones who buy junk cars in Muscoy, CA - you are in the right place.
Buyers are:
- Salvage Yards
- Junk Yards
- Auto wreckers
But, if you are interested in who pays the most for junk cars in Muscoy - USJunkCars.com is your choice. We Pay Top Dollar for all unwanted cars in any condition! Call us at (909) 366-3041
→ Who buys junk cars without title in Muscoy, CA?
Many of our customers ask themselves: Can I sell my junk car without a title & how can I junk my car without a title in Muscoy.
People often lose the titles of their cars, and we buy junk cars without titles depending on the State Regulation. All we need is the VIN (vehicle identification number) from the car, and we can perform a title search with the Muscoy DMV. If there is no lien on the title, and your state permits us to purchase your vehicle without the title, you're free and clear and ready to receive your cash. If there is a lien on the title, we can assist you with releasing it from the lienholder. And you can receive cash for scrap car without a title.
Just call USJunkCars.com at (909) 366-3041
Some of Customer Reviews in Muscoy:
By Brian pitchford (California, Muscoy), on June 16, 2022
Can't fault these guys. The best quote on the market by a significant margin, great communication from the company. I recommend USJunkCars.
By Nick Ashley (California, Muscoy), on June 19, 2022
Didn't even realize that we have such a wonderful service! Thank you so much!
By GC (California, Muscoy), on June 25, 2022
Great rates and very efficient friendly staff
By Connagh West (California, Muscoy), on July 12, 2022
Had no time to deal with everything but you made the entire process easy, thank you guys!
By Mr. Nicholaus Jenkins PhD (California, Muscoy), on July 21, 2022
Thank you guys! You helped me out of a jam! I had lost my title and didn't have the time, knowledge or desire to recover it. Your professional service enabled me to sell my car in a timely manner. I would recommend your service to anyone who is looking for a quick, easy way to sell an old car.
By Abigail J (California, Muscoy), on September 22, 2022
The car was moved urgently to remove the eyesore from the driveway before a funeral was to take place. Many thanks for that. Will use again.
By John Cena (California, Muscoy), on September 24, 2022
The time has come to sell my car. You can't see her, her time has come! Thank you guys for such a great service!
By Alan Weston (California, Muscoy), on May 5, 2022
They gave me the best quote I could ever get for my old junk ford! Plus, I didn't have to deal with the paperwork. Thank you for making it quick and easy!
By J Smith (California, Muscoy), on May 29, 2022
They were very polite and the tow truck was on time. They did everything that they promised! Would recommend!
By August Hardy (California, Muscoy), on September 17, 2022
US Junk Cars will pay cash for your junk car
Share your thoughts with community.
Some of Recent Pickups in CA:
Make: Chevrolet
Model: Tracker
Year: 2016
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Ford
Model: E-Series
Year: 1994
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Chevrolet
Model: Silverado Classic 1500
Year: 1984
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: GMC
Model: Savana Passenger
Year: 2000
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Honda
Model: Prelude
Year: 1989
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Jeep
Model: Grand Cherokee
Year: 2000
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Ford
Model: Focus
Year: 1997
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Chevrolet
Model: 3200
Year: 1997
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Mercedes-Benz
Model: ML350
Year: 2005
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Acura
Model: No car models for select.
Year: 2001
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Infiniti
Model: QX 45
Year: 1997
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Audi
Model: 200
Year: 1970
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Mitsubishi
Model: Mirage
Year: 2014
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Chevrolet
Model: Monte Carlo
Year: 2010
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Dodge
Model: Avenger
Year: 1997
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Jaguar
Model: XJ
Year: 1988
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Ford
Model: F-150
Year: 01
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Nissan
Model: Xterra
Year: 2002
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Lexus
Model: ES
Year: 1999
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Ford
Model: Mustang
Year: 2003
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Chevrolet
Model: Tahoe
Year: 2001
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Honda
Model: Civic Hatchback
Year: 1993
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Volkswagen
Model: Cabrio
Year: 2001
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
Make: Ford
Model: Explorer
Year: 1990
Service Area:
Muscoy, California
Customer Ranking:
We pickup junk cars in the following zip codes in Muscoy:
We buy junk cars in the following cities San Bernardino county:
- Adelanto
- Apple Valley
- Barstow
- Big Bear City
- Big Bear Lake
- Bloomington
- Chino
- Chino Hills
- Colton
- Crestline
- Fontana
- Grand Terrace
- Hesperia
- Highland
- Joshua Tree
- Lake Arrowhead
- Loma Linda
- Mentone
- Montclair
- Ontario
- Rancho Cucamonga
- Redlands
- Rialto
- San Bernardino
- Twentynine Palms
- Upland
- Victorville
- Yucaipa
- Yucca Valley
- Phelan
- Oak Hills
- Fort Irwin
- Spring Valley Lake
- Piñon Hills
- Lucerne Valley
- Silver Lakes
Customer TestimonialsView more...
Featured On


text:
Book News: New Book To Feature Unseen Works Of Art By Jean-Michel Basquiat
Alastair Grant/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
- The former girlfriend of the late, iconoclastic artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is reportedly planning to write a book that will include previously unseen works of art — including murals he painted on the walls of her apartment when they lived together in the 1970s. Basquiat began his career as a graffiti artist before falling in with Andy Warhol and then becoming briefly famous before his death of a heroin overdose in 1988. Now Basquiat's paintings sell for tens of millions of dollars.
- "The cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-metaphysical mediocrity!" — Ayn Rand on C.S. Lewis.
- Amazon bought Goodreads, the book recommendation website with 16 million members, which NPR's Krishnadev Calamur wrote about last night. Salon reported that "a shudder went through the entire world of publishing Thursday afternoon." A blogger for the small publisher Melville House added, "[Goodreads] CEO Otis Chandler wrote that the seven year old website had 'join[ed] the Amazon family.' Our regular readers will know that this is akin to claiming you've been adopted by your neighborhood sarlacc pit." The acquisition seems to be partly a response to the launch of Bookish.com, a book recommendation website funded by publishers Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Hachette.
- E. L. Doctorow, the author of Ragtime, is coming out with a new novel in 2014, according to publisher Random House.
- "That [my Wikipedia entry] hasn't been deleted is as close to fame as one now gets." — writer McKenzie Wark, in an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books.


text:
Group: Syrian regime missiles kill over 140 in Aleppo
- HRW%3A Syrian military fired at least four missiles into the northern province of Aleppo last week
- The international rights group said the strikes hit residential areas
- The international rights group said half of the victims were children
BEIRUT (AP) — At least 141 people, half of them children, were killed when the Syrian military fired at least four missiles into the northern province of Aleppo last week, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
The international rights group said the strikes hit residential areas and called them an "escalation of unlawful attacks against Syria's civilian population." The statement from the New York-based group followed a visit to the area by a HRW researcher.
Aleppo, Syria's largest city, has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the civil war pitting President Bashar Assad's regime against rebels bent on ousting him.
Rebels quickly seized several neighborhoods in an offensive on the city in July, but the government still controls some districts and the battle has developed into a bloody stalemate, with heavy street fighting that has ruined neighborhoods and forced thousands to flee.
A Human Rights Watch researcher who visited Aleppo last week to inspect the targeted sites, said up to 20 buildings were destroyed in each area hit by a missile. There were no signs of any military targets in the residential districts, located in rebel-held parts of Aleppo and its northern countryside, said Ole Solvang, the HRW's researcher.
"Just when you think things can't get any worse, the Syrian government finds ways to escalate its killing tactics," Solvang said.
Human rights watch said 71 children were among the 141 people killed in the four missile strikes on three opposition-controlled neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo. It listed the names of the targeted neighborhoods as Jabal Badro, Tariq al-Bab and Ard al-Hamra. The fourth strike documented by the group was in Tel Rifat, north of Aleppo.
"The extent of the damage from a single strike, the lack of (military) aircraft in the area at the time, and reports of ballistic missiles being launched from a military base near Damascus overwhelmingly suggest that government forces struck these areas with ballistic missiles," the report said.
Syrian anti-regime activists first reported the attacks last week, saying they involved ground-to-ground missiles, and killed dozens of people. The reports could not be independently confirmed because Syrian authorities severely restrict access to media.
Human Rights Watch said it compiled a list of those killed in the missile strikes from cemetery burial records, interviews with relatives and neighbors, and information from the Aleppo Media Center and the Violations Documentation Center, a network of local activists.
The rebels control large swaths of land in northeastern Syria. In recent weeks, Assad's regime has lost control of several sites with key infrastructure in that part of the country, including a hydroelectric dam, a major oil field and two army bases along the road linking Aleppo with the airport to its east.
A key focus for the rebels in the Aleppo area is to capture the city's international airport, which the opposition fighters have been attacking for weeks.
Opposition forces have also been hitting the heart of Damascus with occasional mortars shells or bombings, posing a stiff challenge to the regime in its seat of power.
U.S. and NATO officials have previously said that Syria has a significant ballistic missile capability and is believed to have a few hundred missiles with a range of some 440 miles that could hit targets deep inside Turkey, a NATO member and one of the harshest critics of the Assad regime.
NATO has in recent weeks deployed Patriot missile systems along Turkey's border with Syria.
The missile attacks have outraged the leaders of the exiled opposition who have accused their Western backers of indifference to the suffering of the Syrian people.


text:
In his own words: living with Hodgkin's disease
Three years ago at age 39, Rob* was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Fortunately, it was detected in the early stages and was aggressively treated with chemotherapy and radiation. He continues to get good reports at his follow-up visits and has returned to his active lifestyle with his wife and four children. Rob is in sales, and enjoys biking, hiking, and just being outdoors.
What was your first sign that something was wrong? What symptoms did you experience?
I was driving in my car when a bug flew in the window and hit me on the neck. As I brushed it away, I felt a bump. Another thing was that I was always so exhausted. However, the tiredness was such a gradual thing; I didn't really associate it with something being wrong. For two years I had a rash in the middle of my chest that I thought was just dry skin. I didn't realize these were warning signs for what turned out to be Hodgkin's disease.
What was the diagnosis experience like?
I went to my family doctor first about the bump on my neck. He looked at it and said it was unusual, but wanted to give it a week or two. It didn't go away, so he referred me to a general surgeon to have it biopsied. The biopsy came back indicating it was Hodgkin's. The bump was a lymph node that was very close to the surface. The cancer was classified as a 2A (1A being the best and 4D being the worst).
What was your initial and then longer-term reaction to the diagnosis?
Initially, you think the world is coming to an end. I guess I was nervous, and there was a little bit of fear there. It was hard to believe this was really happening to me. But once we got further into it, I learned that the type of cancer I had was actually considered curable. So I realized that it wasn't so bad. Had I let it go, it could have killed me.
How is Hodgkin's disease treated?
First I went through 4 months of chemotherapy—eight cycles going every other week. The chemo I was given was fairly strong, so I took medication to boost my immune system. I also took medication for heartburn, which was a side effect of the chemotherapy. The side effects of the chemotherapy seemed to get progressively worse. I would feel worse for a longer period of time. By the time I had my last chemo treatment, it would really take my energy away. I would be in bed for 2–3 days following the treatment.
One of the drugs I was taking affected my lungs. I would have periods of time where I couldn't catch my breath. They took me off of it for the last two treatments. Then I had six weeks of radiation after that—going five days a week. I've been doing three-month follow-up visits for the first two years, and then six-month follow-up visits this past year. They do a CAT scan and a full exam. After this year, they'll just do an annual check to be sure everything is okay. Other than that, I don't really have to do anything for treatment.
Did you have to make any lifestyle or dietary changes in response to having Hodgkin's disease?
As far as dietary changes, we are much more aware of cleaning fresh vegetables and fruits before we eat them. We soak all our vegetables in a solution to help remove the pesticides. You can see the stuff coming out of the vegetables when you do that. There's usually a film that surfaces at the top of the water. I eat more organic foods and health foods than I did before. I guess the biggest change is that I drink more water. I just try to eat a balanced diet. I don't want to be a fanatic. We have always exercised, so I can't really say that's a change.
I don't know if this is a lifestyle change, but I think I'm more aware of people who go through something like this. I feel more empathy for them than I used to before my diagnosis. It has also caused me to do a lot more evaluation of my life and my future.
Did you seek any type of emotional support?
My family was real supportive. They were always there for me. I've been blessed with a family that really loves me. Also, my faith in God grew leaps and bounds. It is a very humbling experience, because you aren't in control and you don't know what's going on with you. It was a great peace to know that my life was in God's hands. I can't imagine going through it without my family and my faith.
There was also a group in town called, "Ribbon of Hope." They are a support group for people diagnosed with cancer. They called me one day and wanted to know if it was okay for them to come to my house to visit. They came over and talked to me about how I was handling the diagnosis, treatment, and just dealing with having cancer. They invited me to the meetings, but I never ended up going. I guess I felt that I had the support I needed, but if I didn't, I'm sure I would have gone. It seemed like a really great organization. I've told several other people about it.
Does having Hodgkin's disease have an impact on your family?
I think my wife and kids were real fearful that they might lose me. We spend more time together than we did before. My wife said the treatments had an impact on my emotions, but I didn't really realize that. My wife has been a real trooper.
What advice would you give to anyone living with Hodgkin's disease?
I would suggest that they make God a priority in their life. Second, I would suggest that they get a support system to help them get through it. It just helps to talk to other people who understand.
*Not his real name


text:
Job Description
Welcome to the Virtual Interview for the 29679 Database Administrator. Please create an account and confirm your camera is working by taking a profile photo and saving a test video. Once complete you can respond to the interview questions, review your responses and click SEND.
About Us
American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is a leading international insurance organization serving customers in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions. AIG companies serve commercial, institutional, and individual customers through one of the most extensive worldwide property-casualty networks of any insurer. In addition, AIG companies are leading providers of life insurance and retirement services in the United States.
AIG Property Casualty is a global market leader, one of the few truly global property casualty franchises.
AIG Life and Retirement is one of the largest life insurance organizations in the U.S., and provides protection, investment and income solutions needed for financial and retirement security.
If you are applying on a mobile device please download one of the below apps to complete your videos. Once you have downloaded the app, be sure to open the app, sign in and search the job you are interested in.


text:
Step-By-Step: How to Diffuse Curly Hair
This expert guide will get you perfectly defined, frizz-free curls
Image via Imaxtree
SEE NEXT PAGE: Step 5: Mist with hairspray
Older comments
Excellent advice. I have a lot of natural curl, and I see stylists following these steps instead of using any curlers or curling irons. They simply work the curls with their fingers.
by GigiSD Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 07:37PM Report as inappropriate
Very good advice!
by luckygal79 Monday, December 31, 2012 at 01:26PM Report as inappropriate
Great tips!
by T_rod93 Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 03:34AM Report as inappropriate
Thanks! This was very helpful! I'll be sure to keep this in mind when my karmin salon pro hair dryer arrives! It comes with a diffuser so I hope they hurry up with the shipping :D
by laura_wolfhart Friday, June 22, 2012 at 08:32PM Report as inappropriate
very helpful! i will try on my frizzy mess!
by pamken Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 07:44AM Report as inappropriate
I have a diffuser for my curl hair, it works great at enhancing my curls. Having a pro hair dryer helps too, mine is a Karmin G3 Salon Pro Professional and it's the best i've used so far :)
by mtaylor722 Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 05:59PM Report as inappropriate
VERY helpful tips, I just wish there were pictures or a video to make it easier to understand.
by mrselliott08 Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 03:43PM Report as inappropriate
Very true..it's taking a long time!
by maryjane_baja Friday, March 23, 2012 at 11:21PM Report as inappropriate
WOW I learned so much! Thank You for publishing this!
by Mishashawnea Friday, March 16, 2012 at 01:16AM Report as inappropriate
Maybe I'll get it right, now!!
by powerwoman033 Monday, March 12, 2012 at 08:06AM Report as inappropriate


text:
Bethenny Frankel is being sued by her ex-manager, Doug Wald, who claims that he helped her make the deal to create the Skinnygirl cocktail brand — but was cut out of the profit share. According to this report, "Wald says Frankel specifically sought out his advice because she thought the Skinnygirl cocktail was underexploited and he could help her make some money from it." The Skinnygirl cocktail brand is a huge success, because women love booze but hate calories, and when the line was acquired in March, it was a $120 million deal. Wald wants his ten percent — $12 million - and $100 million in damages. Ouch. [Hollywood Reporter]
Lindsay Lohan's probation report reveals the night she had a tiff with a Betty Ford employee, she'd been drinking alcohol. And! When it comes to necklace theft, she "has been suspected of similar conduct in other jewelry stores." [People]
Will Smith's ridiculous trailer is ridiculous. Come on. [People, NY Post]
Chelsea Handler and 50 Cent never officially admitted to seeing each other, but in an interview with Piers Morgan, Chelsea finally says: "We dated, very casually." And: "He's a very sweet, nice guy… I was sampling, kind of, the atmosphere, seeing what was out there, and I was satiated." What does that mean? That Fiddy knows how to please a woman? Chelsea also says that Mr. Cent is "the complete antithesis of what you'd imagine," but complains: "I don't really like when men buy me ridiculous gifts, especially when I don't know them well… I can buy my own gifts. I really don't like gifts from rappers in general, since I'm not a hooker." [People]
Teen Mom's Amber has lost primary custody of her daughter Leah. [NYDN]
- HUGE blind item: An unnamed plaintiff is suing an A-list internationally famous celebrity for intentionally spreading herpes. And there's video evidence! Who could it be? (Oh, and it was a while ago, but do you remember the herpes chart? And the herpes tree?) [TMZ]
- Katie Holmes is not, repeat, NOT pregnant. She may have had a large lunch, however. [Daily Mail]
- Leonardo DiCaprio and Bar Refaeli are dunzo. It was amicable, they're still friends, blah blah blah. Here's what's important: Leo is single and Kate Winslet is single, so all you Jack and Rose shippers may finally see your dreams come true. If Jack can manage to stop dating models, that is. [Just Jared, Page Six]
- Despite the dumb dumb dumb hubbub, Common performed poetry at the White House. Go Common. Video at the link. [ONTD]
- Kanye, Jay-Z, Mayor Bloomberg, Mary-Kate and Ashley. Best party ever? [Gatecrasher]
- Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen are officially a couple, and hit the red carpet together in Cannes. [Digital Spy]
- Do you feel kind of broke? Like, you're squeaking by, but could use more cash? Talk to Ryan Seacrest, who now earns $55 million a year. Trying to figure out what his biweekly paycheck looks like hurts my brain. [Us]
- Quentin Tarantino, Lady Gaga, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Oh, to be a part of this posse! [Contact Music]
- Beyoncé's fourth album will be titled 4. [Contact Music]
- Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri have announced a new show, "the cooking equivalent of Dancing with the Stars." It will be called Guy Vs. Rachael's Celebrity Smackdown. Prediction: A star is going to chop a finger off accidentally. [ONTD]
- Sienna Miller is dating someone named DJ Slinky WIzard, and that is all I have to say about that. [Contact Music]
- Hayden Panettiere and Wladimir Klitschko: Dunzo. [Contact Music]
- David Hasselhoff has joined the cast of Piranha 3DD. The second D is for downgrade. [Perez, Page Six]
- What kind of jerks steal 21,000 bottles of vodka from Dan Aykryod's company warehouse? [TMZ]
- Tom Sizemore's girlfriend has been missing for over a month, and the actor has been questioned about her disappearance. [TMZ]
- MOAR blind items! 1. "Which prominent TV personality is about to come out with the help of public relations guru Howard Bragman, who has helped dozens of celebs announce their sexuality? The media blitz will begin next week." Not sure, but it could rhyme with Manderson Looper? 2. "Which apparently clean singer has a huge drug problem and had to make a big payout to a tour manager, who quit and sued after he was asked to look after a suitcase that turned out to be packed with drug paraphernalia?" Whitney? Gaga? [Page Six]


text:
Spain last night killed a controversial anti-P2P bill that would have made it easier to shut down websites that link to infringing content. The move was a blow to the ruling Socialist government, but it may be of even bigger concern to the US, which pushed, threatened, and cajoled Spain to clamp down on downloading. And Wikileaks can take a share of the credit for the defeat.
Known as the "Sinde law" (ley Sinde) after Spain's current culture minister, the bill was actually an amendment to a much broader economic rescue package known as the Sustainable Economy Bill. The Sinde law would have set up a new government committee that could draw up lists of sites which largely link to infringing content. These sites would then go to a Madrid court, which would have four days to rule on whether they should be fully or partially blocked.
Spain has become notorious among rightsholders for its levels of online piracy. International music trade group IFPI said earlier this year that Spain "has one of the highest rates of illegal file-sharing in Europe" and that "sales by local artists in the top 50 have fallen by an estimated 65 percent between 2004 and 2009."
That's of real concern to local Spanish artists, but it's also a big deal to Hollywood and the US music industry, which together supply plenty of the pirated fare. They've leaned on the US government, which has in turn leaned on Spain—and hard.
I've got a little list
Thanks to Wikileaks, we now have access to some of the cables sent from the US Embassy in Spain, and they show just how the US gets things done in other countries. Spanish daily El Pais reported on these cables at length and made them front-page news in Spain; for English-speaking readers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a helpful summary.
In essence, the US demanded that Spain take government action to curb file-sharing, or the US would put Spain on its annual "Special 301" intellectual property watchlist. In 2008, the US Embassy in Spain sent this cable back to Washington:
We propose to tell the new government that Spain will appear on the Watch List if it does not do three things by October 2008. First, issue a [Government of Spain] announcement stating that internet piracy is illegal, and that the copyright levy system does not compensate creators for copyrighted material acquired through peer-to-peer file sharing. Second, amend the 2006 "circular" that is widely interpreted in Spain as saying that peer-to-peer file sharing is legal. Third, announce that the GoS will adopt measures along the lines of the French and/or UK proposals aimed at curbing Internet piracy by the summer of 2009.
The background here: Spain's levy system on blank media, like that in many other countries, is widely perceived to be a payment to artists that allows for unlimited downloading, even though it was designed far more narrowly. Spanish prosecutors have also suggested that, while P2P remains illegal, it is essentially decriminalized. And the "UK" and "French" proposals involve graduated response mechanisms that, in France's case, could lead to Internet disconnections.
Spain didn't play ball, so the US went ahead and put Spain on its Section 301 Watchlist. The 2010 version of this list (PDF), which puts Spain right between Romania and Tajikistan, says:
The United States remains concerned about particularly significant Internet piracy in Spain, and strongly urges prompt and effective action to address the issue. The Spanish government has not amended portions of a 2006 Prosecutor General Circular that appears to decriminalize illegal peer-to-peer file sharing of infringing materials, contributing to a public misperception in Spain that such activity is lawful. Spain's existing legal and regulatory framework has not led to cooperation between Internet service providers (ISPs) and rights holders to reduce online piracy. On the contrary, rights holders in Spain report an inability to obtain information necessary to prosecute online IPR infringers, further reducing their ability to seek appropriate remedies. Spain's legal system also generally does not result in criminal penalties for intellectual property infringement.
The US was heartened, however, by the Sinde law, which "would allow a committee based in the Ministry of Culture to request that an ISP block access to infringing materials hosted online."
But the Sinde law has had trouble in Parliament, and yesterday it broke down altogether when the Socialists couldn't muster up any additional support. The Sustainable Economy Bill, to which it would have been attached, will now proceed from the lower to the upper house without the Sinde amendment.
One lawmaker told El Pais yesterday that the Sinde law was a "response to pressure from the US film industry lobby, as Wikileaks has revealed."
Original rendering courtesy of Shutterstock


text:
Difference between revisions of "Ghost"
(comments on quantization)
m (→Signal types: typo)
|Line 12:
|Line 12:
** Signals that are (or are indistinguishable) from filtered (coloured) white noise
** Signals that are (or are indistinguishable) from filtered (coloured) white noise
* Transients
* Transients
** Whatever
** Whatever fit above I guess
== Signal analysis ==
== Signal analysis ==
Revision as of 21:51, 19 September 2007
This page is meant to track ideas about low-delay, high-quality audio coding. The work has just started, so don't expect anything in the near future (or at all for that matter).
Signal types
There are many signal types that can be found:
- Sinusoids
- A few pure (or nearly pure) tones
- Harmonic
- Periodic waveforms (e.g. voice)
- Many (sometimes closely spaced) harmonics
- Shapred noise
- Signals that are (or are indistinguishable) from filtered (coloured) white noise
- Transients
- Whatever doesn't fit above I guess
Signal analysis
Good when most of the energy is contained in a few sinusoids. May be problematic for very harmonic signals, e.g. a male voice may have close to a hundred harmonics in the full audio band.
Good for harmonic signals. Hard to estimate and code when extra sinusoids and noise are present. At 48 kHz, no need for fractional pitch or anything like that, but sub-band pitch analysis or multi-tap gain is a good idea. Also, there needs to be a way to remove the effect of sinusoids and noise. Even then removing the "noise" also means removing all excitation to the pitch predictor, so that's a problem.
Very general. Can code anything, but not very good at anything. High delay (2x frame size). Could put several "MDCT frames" in each codec frame to make latency smaller.
Just a fancy name for sub-bands with non-uniform width. Probably similar to having an MDCT with few sub-bands, except that that the sub-bands could follow (roughly) the critical bands.
LPC + stochastic cb
Like CELP with no pitch. Could be used to code the noisy part of the signal with low bit-rate. Would need to figure out how to preserve the energy of the noise when going with 1/2 bit per sample and less.
Codec Structure Ideas
Sinusoidal + wavelet
- Preemphasis
- Extract as many sinusoids as possible
- Wavelet transform
- Code wavelet coefs using VQ
Sinusoidal, pitch and noise
- Preemphasis
- Joint pitch + sinusoidal estimation
- LPC analysis
- CELP-like coding of the residual (mainly noise)
Estimation Ideas
Sinusoid Estimation
Very hard to do properly, especially with reasonable complexity and low delay. Some ideas:
Least-square type matching
Step one: estimate sinusoid frequencies.
Tried so far:
- MUSIC fails on non-trivial signals and very complex, although there's an AES paper that recommends first whitening the noise part of the signal before applying the algo. Haven't tried that so far.
- ESPRIT fails on non-trivial signals and very complex (see above for possible solution)
- LPC would probably work, but requires an insane order -> impractical, plus it tends to be numerically unstable anyway.
- FFT poor resolution, but that's all we have left so far. There's an AES paper that describes a sort of time-domain phase unwrapping that could help.
Step two: what to match
Step three: solving
Looks like it's possible to solve an NxM least square problem in O(N*M) time using an iterative algorithm as long as the system matrix is near-orthogonal. If we want to solve Ax=b and A^h*A ~= I, then we start with x(0)=A^h*b and then:
- x(N+1) = x(N) + A^h*(b-A*x(N))
Phase lock loop (PLL)
Quantization Ideas
After the sinusoids have been extracted they have to be quantized. The possible ways are
- Sort the sinusoids according to energy and transmit only a finite number or only ones with a specific energy or above. The indices of the sinusoids before rearranging will have to be sent.
- I think it's worth checking which is most efficient. Sorting the sinusoids will help quantizing the amplitude, but make it harder to encode frequency. Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
- Use the psycho acoustic properties and remove all the sinusoids, which will be masked by other tones.
- Of course, we don't want to encode perceptually irrelevant sinusoids. Actually, we want the resolution (in amplitude, phase and probably frequency) to scale with the amplitude-to-mask ratio or something like that. Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
- After removing perceptually irrelevant and low-energy tones the energy in each critical bands has to be adjusted to match with the initial energy.
- Possibly -- I don't know much on that topic. Monty probably has valuable experience. Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
- Time-differential coding of sinusoids across frames can be used
- Definitely. This is very important if we plan on using short frames. It would be important to minimize inter-frame redundancy, but still make it possible to recover from packet loss. For that, we could either use a leaky predictor (like the pitch in CELP) or use key-frames (like a video codec). Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
Quantization of frequencies
- Quantize frequencies of a few selected sinusoids and recreate other values using interpolation.
- How would you do that? (maybe I'm not following here) Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
Quantization of Amplitudes
- Model the energy curve of the sinusoids – for instance using an exponential curve
- Exponential decay might be a good way to do inter-frame prediction. Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
- Quantize amplitudes of a few selected sinusoids and recreate other values using interpolation.
- Possibly, but probably not at first (hard problem). Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
Quantization of phase and modulation parameters
- Can be scalar quantized with the number of bits allocated being proportional to the energy of the sinusoid
- Yes. Also, this is something that can be predicted very well across frames. It's not even necessary to make that one robust to losses, because as long as the phase is continuous, no one will notice Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
Quantization of indices
Quantization of energy gains in critical bands
Excitation similarity weighting
The idea behind the ESW technique is to select sinusoids such that each new sinusoid added will provide a maximum incremental gain in matching between the auditory excitation pattern associated with the original signal and the auditory excitation pattern associated with the modeled signal. In order to accomplish this goal, an iterative process is proposed in which each sinusoid extracted during conventional analysis is assigned an excitation similarity weight. During each iteration, the sinusoid having the largest weight is added to the modeled representation. New sinusoids are accumulated until some constrain is exhausted, for example, a bit budget. The algorithm tends to converge as the number of modeled sinusoids increases
-- Not sure I understand here. Any reference? Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
Trajectory tracking
Once the meaningful sinusoidal peaks and their parameters have been estimated, the peaks are tracked together into inter-frame trajectories. At each frame, a peak continuation algorithm tries to connect the sinusoidal peak into the already existing trajectories at the previous frame, resulting into a smooth curve of frequencies and amplitudes. The continuation was tested with two algorithms: the traditional one which uses only the parameters of the sinusoids to obtain smooth trajectories and one original method which synthesizes the possible continuations inside certain deviation limits and compares them to the original signal. There is also other systems which use more advanced methods, for example the Hidden Markov Models to track the trajectories. Sinusoidal trajectories contain all the information needed for the reconstruction of the harmonic parts of input signals: amplitudes, frequencies and phases of each trajectory at each frame. To avoid discontinuities at frame boundaries, the amplitudes, frequencies and phases are interpolated from frame to frame.
- Amplitudes are linearly interpolated
- Phase interpolated with cubic polynomials
-- Any reference? Jmspeex 05:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)


text:
This display shows the average player activity per class per week for the specified server and faction.It only shows the averages from entries from within 'prime time' which is considered here between the hours of 6PM and 11PM GAME TIME. The hours are based on the IN GAME time, not EARTH time. Data is collected using the latest version of the CensusPlus UI Mod.
Advertise Here!


text:
Latest Seattle Center Tickets
Currently No Event Available
Seattle Center Presale Codes and Tickets Discount Info
Tickets are not on sale for Seattle Centerright now. If you want the best seats for Seattle Center events with reasonable discounts you can check our site for Seattle Center presale codes.
Question: How to get Seattle Center Presale Codes?
Answer: You can check our Super Seats page to get Seattle Center Presale Codes.
Question: How to apply promo code for upcoming Seattle Center Tickets?
Answer: Thank you for trusting our website to buy your Tickets. You can use the promo code, "PROMO19" at the checkout page to avail a 5% discount. Get your Seattle Center Tickets now to watch your favorite star live!
Question: From where I can get cheap Seattle Center Tickets by using discount code?
Answer: You can get the Seattle Center Tickets you want from our website and that too at cheap prices. Use PROMO19 as the discount code to get a 5% rebate on your Seattle Center Tickets purchase right away.
Question: How to Apply Coupon code on your site for Seattle Center Tickets?
Answer: The coupon code is PROMO19 for Seattle Center Tickets and it entitles you to a 5% discount on your purchase. All you have to do is use this promo code and get your Tickets at a discounted price.
Question: "Seattle Center Tickets Discount Code ": What is the Promo code for 2022 "Seattle Center" Tickets?
Answer: For "Seattle Center 2022 Tickets Promo Code" use PROMO19 and Avail Up to 70% Discount.
Question: What is the promo code for Seattle Center holiday season Tickets?
Answer: For Seattle Center holiday season Tickets use promo code "christmas25" and avail up to 90% discount.


text:
Milky Way Necklace
In Stock | STYLE: NE603-600-00330
In Stock
Sterling Silver Necklace*Prices are subject to change based on fluctuations in metal prices and currencies
Frederic Duclos is an award winning French designer of contemporary sterling jewelry. Established in 1984, this family owned studio is based in Huntington Beach, California. The gems used in each piece of jewelry are carefully chosen, reflecting Frederic's paramount attention to detail while his contemporary designs showcase his artistry as a precious metal designer.