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365 Reasons to Smile – Day 348
My memory is generally pretty good, so I actually remember some of the conversations I had the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year – a time when I thought I knew a lot and actually knew very little.
Now, 34 years later, all I can do is laugh at myself. That creates fewer issues than rolling my eyes as my daughter goes through that same stage.
But here's the thing about my daughter – she's more grounded in reality than I ever was. Maybe that because technology makes the past and the present more accessible than it was when I was her age.
I realized that when I was picking her and a friend up from play practice yesterday. When they got in the car, they were talking about Bill Cosby and his comedy. And they were appreciative of it.
That really made me smile.
Day 348: Bill Cosby Day 347: Air Conditioning
Day 346: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble Day 345: Fresh Strawberries Day 344: Great Dads Day 343: The Ability to Heal Day 342: Realizing Humanity Will Always Triumph Technology Day 341: Summer Reading Programs Day 340: Margaret Thatcher's Great Quote Day 339: Chalk Art Day 338: Tom Petty Day 337: Dogs in Cars Day 336: Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! Day 335: The Sound of a Harmonic Day 334: Significant Dates in Our Lives Day 333: Rocking Chairs Day 332: Lemonade from Fresh Lemons Day 331: Feeling at Peace Day 330: Not Letting Age Slow You Down Day 329: Raindrops on Roses Day 328: Old Newspapers Day 327: When My Pets Get Attention Day 326: Odd Little Distractions from Every Day Life Day 325: Wearing White before Memorial Day Day 324: Avoiding a Poison Ivy Rash Day 323: Ferris Bueller's Day Off Day 322: Breezes Blowing Through my Kitchen Window Day 321: Iris Gardens Day 320: Ginger's Ridiculous Wardrobe Day 319: Wildlife in My Midst Day 318: Teamwork Day 317: The Golden Rule Day 316: When Weather Cooperates Day 315: When Humans Respect Nature Day 314: Books We Pass on to Our Children Day 313: Wildflowers Day 312: The Right to Vote Day 311: Staying True to Your Beliefs Day 310: Doris Day and "Que Sera Sera" Day 309: Lessons Learned from Motherhood Day 308: When a Difficult Problem is Solved Day 307: Living Near Hills and Mountains Day 306: Recognizing How Far Women Have Come Day 305: Creative House and Yard Decorations Day 304: The Power to Forgive Day 303: Marrying Someone Who Always Knows How to Make Me Smile Day 302: People Who Sport the Breaking Bad Car Magnet Day 301: The song of the whippoorwill Day 300: Coming Home Day 299: Clean Water Day 298: Blue Bells Day 297: Listening to Books When Driving Long Distances Day 296: Walking in the Woods Day 295: The Warm Sun on My Face Day 294: Turning Loud Shoes into a Conversation Item Day 293: Seeing Something New in the Every Day Day 292: Dreams Day 291: "What a Wonderful World" Day 290: Softly Falling Petals During Spring Day 289: Home king with Love Day 288: Coloring Easter Eggs Day 287: The View From Above Day 286: The Wisdom of Mr. Rogers Day 285: The Princess Bride Day 284: All Creatures Great and Small Day 283: The Legend of the Dogwood Day 282: Sleeping with the Windows Open Day 281: Four Significant Birthdays in One Year Day 280: Discovering Great Music Day 279: Funny Names for Wi-Fi connections Day 278: Sad Cat Diary Day 277: The Smiling Cow Day 276: Celebrating 16 years of motherhood Day 275: Seeing Potential in Our Children Day 274: Stained Glass Day 273: Naturalization Ceremonies Day 272: "Let It Be" by the Beatles Day 271: Sharing Meals with Great Friends Day 270: Daffodils Day 269: April Fool's Day Day 268: Acoustic Music Day 267: Country Roads Day 266: Sunsets on Pamlico Sound Day 265: The Sound and Smell of the Ocean Day 264: Crossing the Bonner Bridge Day 263: Mark Twain Quotes Day 262: Old-fashion Fun Day 261: The Far Side Cartoons by Gary Larson Day 260: Nostalgic Theme Songs Day 259: Appreciating Life's Rewards Day 258: Awkward Conversations With Strangers Day 257: The arrival of Spring Day 256: Being Saved by Buffy the Vampire Slayer Day 255: Thoughtful Husbands Day 254: The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow Day 253: When Kids Want to Clean Day 252: Conversations in Cars Day 251: Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day Day 250: Bonnie Bell Over-sized LipSmackers versus Egg-Shaped Eos Lip Balm Day 249: Watching Those I Cherish Sleep Day 248: Getting Back on My Bike after the Longest Winter ay 247: "Don't Worry. Be Happy." Day 246: Multiple Reminders of Beauty Day 245: Being Nice to Total Strangers Day 244: The Perfect Phrase Day 243: Little Girls With AttitudeDay 242: The Soup Nazi Day 241: Contagious Smiles Day 240: Oklahoma Day 239: Dr. Seuss' Persistence Day 238: Over-Dependence on Spell Check Day 237: Only 28 days in February Day 236: Genuine Signatures Day 235: Television Personalities Who Don't Take Themselves Too Seriously Day 234: The Words "Happy Birthday" Day 233: Teenagers Who Care about Their Grandparents Day 232: "Morning Has Broken"Day 231: Avoiding Jury Duty Day 230: Melting Snow after a Long Winter Day 229: Hungry Teenage Boys Day 228: Having a DreamDay 227: Mispronunciations Day 226: Awkward Animal MomentsDay 225: Shaking Hands With Scott HamiltonDay 224: Having an Office With Windows Day 223: Watching Our Children Mature Day 222: Getting the Upper Hand Over Life's Challenges Day 221: St. Teresa's Prayer Day 220: Children Who Are True to Self Day 219: Frosted Sugar Cookies Day 218: Children with a Global Perspective Day 217: Enchanted Day 216: Having a "secret weapon" Day 215: Jack and Diane Day 214: The Volkswagen Beetle Day 213: Moments that Can't Be Recreated Day 212: "The Soul" Quote Day 211: Rubber Ducky Day 210: Tracks in the Snow Day 209: Finding a Penny on the Ground Day 208: Kids who Use Their Manners Day 207: Reminders of Warm Sunny Days Day 206: Dogs Playing in the Snow Day 205: Descriptive Phrases Day 204: Arsenic and Old Lace Day 203: Reminders of Resiliency Day 102: Stephanie's Ponytail Day 201: Being Asked to Help Day 200: Boys and Their Toys Day 199: The Most Important Person Day 198: People With Courage to Do What is Right Day 197: Being Pleasantly Surprised by My Children Day 196: Being Told I'm Young Day 195: Good News Day 194: Meaningful Eye Contact Day 193: A Sense of Accomplishment Day 192: Growing Into the Person I'll Someday Be Day 191: Matt Groening Day 190: Tuning Out Bad News and Tuning In to What We Enjoy Day 189: Parents Who Encourage Independence Day 188: Watching Young Minds at Work Day 187: Funny Phone Calls Day 186: Healthy Lungs Day 185: Reality Checks Day 184: Coincidence Day 183: Lame Attempts to Go Retro Day 182: Learning From Our Mistakes Day 181: Goofy Childhood Memories Day 180: A soak in a bathtub Day 179: Optimism Day 178: The Year's Top Baby Names Day 177: Reading on a Rainy Day Day 176: "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey Day 175: Watching the Torch Pass Day 174: Converse Tennis Shoes Day 173: Family Acceptance Day 172: Christmas Day 171: The Mr. Grinch Song Day 170: Positive People Day 169: Watching Movies From my Childhood With My Kids Day 168: Jealous Pets Day 167: Family Christmas Recipes Day 166: Church BellsDay 165: School Holiday 164: Unexpected Grace Day 163: Letting Go of Things We Can't Control Day 162: Anticipating a good story Day 161: Hope Day 160: When Dogs Try to Avoid Embarrassment Day 159: Surprises in the Mail Day 158: Kids who aren't superficial Day 157: A Garage on Winter Days Day 156: Real Christmas Trees Day 155: Being a Parent Day 154: Selfless People Day 153: Nelson Mandela Day 152: Memorable Road Trips Day 151: Great Neighbors Day 150: Oscar Wilde's quote about being yourself Day 149: Love Letters Day 148: The first day of Advent Day 147: The Breakfast Club Day 146: Marriage and Shared Anniversaries 145: JFK's quote about gratitude Day 144: Watching My Dog Play Day 143: Having my Family's Basic Needs Met Day 142: When Our Children Become Role Models Day 141: Random Acts of Kindness Day 140; People Watching Day 139: Sharing Interests with My Children Day 138: Eleanor Roosevelt's Best Advice Day 137: Weird Human Behavior about Garbage Day 136: Postcards from Heaven Day 135: Mickey Mouse Day 134: Generous Souls Day 133: I'm Moving On Day 132: A Family That is Really Family Day 131: A Personal Motto Day 130: Mork and Mindy Day 129: The Bears' House Day 128: Veterans Day 127: Doppelgangers Day 126: Letting Life Unfold as It Should Day 125: The Constantly Changing Sky Day 124: When History Repeats Itself Day 123: The Love Scene in The Sound of Music Day 122: Helen Keller Day 121: The Welcome Back Kotter Theme Song Day 120: Sheldon Cooper Day 119: Having Permission to Make Mistakes Day 118: A Diverse Group of Friends Day 117: Family Traditions Day 116: The Haunting Season Day 115; Life Experience Day 114: Changes Day 113: The Wooly Bear Caterpillar Day 112: The National Anthem Day 111: Parents Who Care Day 110: Good Friends Day 109: My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss Day 108: A.A. Milne QuotesDay 107: Spending Time Wisely Day 106: Parades Day 105: The Peanuts Gang Dancing Day 104: Sharing a Secret Language Day 103: The Electric Company Day 102: Doing the Right Thing Day 101: When Siblings Agree Day 100: Being Optimistic Day 99: Trying Something New Day 98: The Sound of Children on a Playground Day97: Good Advice Day 96: Red and white peppermint candy Day 95: The Soundtrack from the Movie Shrek Day 94: Accepting Change Day 93: True Love Day 92: Camera Phones Day 91: Bicycle Brakes Day 90: HeroesDay 89: The Cricket in Times Square Day 88: The Grand Canyon Day 87: Unanswered Prayers Day 86: Apples Fresh from the Orchard Day 85: Being Human Day 84: Captain Underpants Day 83: The Diary of Anne Frank Day 82: In Cold Blood Day 81: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Day 80: The Outsiders Day 79: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Day 78: The First Amendment Day77: People Who Touch Our Lives Day 76: The Rewards of Parenting Day 75: Improvements Day 74: Family Traditions Day 73: Learning From Our Mistakes Day 72: Live Music Day 71: Sleeping In Day 70: Grover Day 69: A Good Hair Day Day 68: A Sense of Community Day 67: Kindness Day 66: Living in a Place You Love Day 65: Gifts from the Heart Day 64: The Arrival of Fall Day 63: To Kill a Mockingbird Day 62: Green LightsDay 61: My Canine Friends Day 60: Differences Day 59: A New Box of Crayons Day 58: Bookworms Day 57: Being Oblivious Day 56: Three-day Weekends Day 55: A Cat Purring Day 54: Being a Unique Individual Day 53: Children's Artwork Day 52: Lefties Day 51: The Neighborhood Deer Day 50: Campfires Day 49: Childhood Crushes Day 48: The Words "Miss You" Day 47: Birthday Stories Day 46: Nature's Hold on Us Day 45: Play-Doh Day 44: First Day of School Pictures Day 43: Calvin and Hobbes Day 42: Appreciative Readers Day 41: Marilyn Monroe's Best Quote Day 40: Being Silly Day 39: Being Happy Exactly Where You Are Day 38: Proud Grandparents Day 37: Chocolate Chip Cookies Day 36: Challenging Experiences that Make Great Stories Day 35: You Can't Always Get What You Want Day 34: Accepting the Fog Day 33: I See the Moon Day 32: The Stonehenge Scene from This is Spinal Tap Day 31: Perspective Day 30: Unlikely Friendships Day 29: Good Samaritans Day 28: Am I a Man or Am I a Muppet? Day 27: Shadows Day 26: Bike Riding on Country Roads Day 25: When Harry Met Sally Day 24: Hibiscus Day 23: The Ice Cream Truck Day 22: The Wonderful World of Disney Day 21: Puppy love Day 20 Personal Theme Songs Day 19: Summer Clouds Day 18: Bartholomew Cubbin's VictoryDay 17: A Royal Birth Day 16: Creative Kids Day 15: The Scent of Honeysuckle Day 14: Clip of Kevin Kline Exploring His MasculinityDay 13: Random Text Messages from My Daughter Day 12: Round Bales of HayDay 11: Water Fountains for Dogs Day 10: The Rainier Beer Motorcycle Commercial Day 9: Four-Leaf Clovers Day 8: Great Teachers We Still RememberDay 7: Finding the missing sock Day 6: Children's books that teach life-long lessonsDay 5: The Perfect Photo at the Perfect Moment Day 4: Jumping in Puddles Day 3: The Ride Downhill after the Struggle Uphill Day 2: Old Photographs Day 1: The Martians on Sesame Street
Posted on June 19, 2014, in My life, perspective and tagged 365 reasons to smile, Bill Cosby, comedy, humor, life, musings, People, smiles. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.


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At the Christian Science Monitor, Graham Fuller gets off a good "gotcha."
. . . we have been through this debate endlessly since 9/11. Why is there so much anti-American sentiment? No, it's not because "they hate our values."
Wait for it (as they say) . . .
It's our lack of values in foreign policy they don't like.
Good one, Graham. Expanding on that, he writes that it's "our hypocritical lack of commitment to democracy, except when it meets our immediate needs."
The entire essay, US can blame itself for anger in the Middle East, and start making peace, is as eloquent as anything you'll read on the subject by an American. As he brings the piece to a close, Fuller writes, "We favor democracy — but only when it produces the leaders and policies that suit our interests, not theirs." Okay, we know that, but then he waxes epigrammatic again:
Democratization is always a punishment we deliver upon enemies, never a gift bestowed upon friends.
In fact, we're as biased in our choice of states to which we grant democracy as we are with nuclear weapons.

subset: commoncrawl


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Today's News: Our Take - Pitch Perfect Star Skylar Astin Sings on Ground Floor with "Funny Johnny C." McGinley
As one of the stars of Broadway's Spring Awakening and the hit a capella film Pitch Perfect, Skylar Astin has won fans and stolen hearts thanks in no small part to his beautiful voice. Which is why it makes total sense that, despite the fact that he's playing a suit-wearing banker on the new workplace comedy Ground Floor (Thursday, 10/9c), TBS is putting his singing talents to good use. Not only does he get to rock out to Aerosmith in the show's promos, but he also belts some Elton John in the show's premiere. "It's always done with a comedy twist," Astin tells TVGuide.com. "It's always done out of a real, genuine story-driven moment and it never feels cheap or unearned. People are really going to have their cake and eat it too."
To preview his new show, in which his character, Brody, falls for a maintenance supervisor (Briga Heelan) who works on the ground floor of his building, Astin talked with TVGuide.com about moving to TV, co-star John C. McGinley's stories and performing in front of a live studio audience.
The most memorable TV weddings
Why did this role appeal to you? Why did the show appeal to you?
Skylar Astin: When I read the script, I responded. I thought that Bill [Lawrence] had a fun, simple story that had so much humor in this situation. I was hopeful that he would cast a wonderful group. So once I got to set and got to really get a vibe for the people involved, I thought it had the recipe to be very successful and very fun and that's exactly what it's been.
Was TV something you were particularly looking to do?
Astin: I wasn't looking to do one thing over the other. I sometimes think that too when I see certain actors going to TV. I go, "Oh wow, he was looking to do TV?" Maybe that's the case for them, but for me, I just got the script like any other day. I wanted to dedicate the potential multi-year contract because I thought that I could invest in this character and live in this character's shoes and just have a really good time making people laugh and giving them just a little bit of heart every week. I thought why not?
Bill Lawrence has doneCougar Town andScrubs, and his work has a very particular feel to it. Were you a fan of his other shows?
Astin: I'm a fan of all of his work so you don't really want to say no to Bill Lawrence. He always has such a vision, and if I'm involved in that vision, I would have to be really silly to not get on board immediately.
Exclusive: Ground Floor serves up John McEnroe appearance
Brody and Jenny's upstairs vs. downstairs romance is obviously a modern telling of Romeo & Juliet. What do you think this show adds to the story?
Astin: That story is the age-old tale of star-crossed lovers. It's certainly not a tragedy like Romeo & Juliet, but that forbidden love is something that's always prevalent. I think if you've had an office romance or thought about having an office romance, or are firmly against office romance, you're still going to find that common thread. We're not telling it in an HBO world or a super-safe world. We're telling it in an honest, fun situational comedy-way. I just love that. You look at The Office with Jim and Pam, and Cheers with Sam Diane - these things happen at work.
It's clear that Brody and Jenny are attracted to each other, but what will be their obstacles going forward?
Astin: They're working backwards and they can be uncomfortable at times. Because they got together Night 1 and now they're trying to date and not be as impulsive and learn. ... Sometimes people make mistakes, and it's funny to watch Brody make mistakes and it's funny to watch them argue and it's beautiful to watch them get along, but it's not the same story 100 times because why would people watch that? You have the dynamic of the boss/father figure. You have a funny bromance upstairs between Brody and Threepeat. You have the nemesis in Harvard who also is a softie for Jenny. You have the rest of the ground floor crew that's just outspoken and ridiculous. If you combine all of those things and when all those characters get introduced to each other, it makes for a really great ensemble.
Speaking of the father figure, you get to share a lot of scenes with John C. McGinley, who has been in the business for such a long time. What has it been like working with him?
Astin: Yeah, it's been such a learning experience. His resume is insane. The guy has done every form of every movie, and he brings such professionalism to the workplace. But now, I've developed such a personal relationship with him. I goof around with him. We really have fun. He's one of the gang. He's funny Johnny C. I absolutely love the guy. When I first was working with him, it was difficult for me to not see him as Dr. Cox, but he's slowly become such a buddy.
I feel like he's got to have some great stories.
Astin: That's one of the best parts about him, and they come out of nowhere. Sometimes he'll tell a crazy story about a similar situation that happened, but instead of it being me, it was Al Pacino.
You're used to performing on stage in front of an audience from Spring Awakening, but how different has it been filming a TV show in front of a live crowd?
Astin: Even though it's in front of a live audience, it's not live so we get a couple cracks at it. Sometimes we're able to adjust right there on the spot whether it's a funny line that was working in rehearsals, but wasn't working on the show. Or just something that we now know is going to be a bigger laugh. It was a learning experience for all of us, and now tape nights are my favorite night of the week. It's so fun. I don't get nervous anymore. ... You want to jump out of your skin when you're doing it the first night because it's so exciting, but now I've found the balance so I can really hone in the performance and make it work for both the audience at home and the audience on set.
Is there anything special you do before you go out there to tape?
Astin: Coffee, coffee, coffee. I always like at least 30 minutes to myself beforehand just to get everything together and also to conserve my energy because it doesn't take 30 minutes to shoot an episodes. It takes between 3 and 5 hours so I just want to make sure that I'm ready to do that and give my all.
Ground Floor debuts Thursday at 10/9c on TBS.
View original Pitch Perfect Star Skylar Astin Sings on Ground Floor with "Funny Johnny C." McGinley at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com


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The Situation of Earmarks
Posted by The Situationist Staff on February 27, 2008
The February 22 edition of Bill Moyers Journal (PBS) "profiles Seattle Times reporters on the trail of how members of Congress have awarded federal dollars for questionable purposes to companies in local Congressional districts—often to companies whose executives, employees or PACs have made campaign contributions to their legislators." It's a fascinating 30-minute story that illustrates some of the situational sources of political manipulation and capture.
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.pbs.org posted with vodpod
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Tonight our subject is the growing scandal surrounding earmarks. Once upon a time an earmark was just that — a mark farmers made on the ears of livestock for identification. No longer. An earmark is how politicians fund their pet projects — including some that reward their pet donors. In this year's spending bills alone Congress has inserted 12,881 earmarks worth over 18 billion dollars. . . .
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NARRATOR: Reporters David Heath and Hal Bernton [reporters for the Seattle Times] have come to a tiny Washington town in pursuit of a big story.
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Heath and Bernton are here in Bremerton following a money trail chasing down what are known as "earmarks" — the federal dollars that members of Congress slip into spending bills, often at the last minute, usually to benefit individuals, companies or institutions in their state or district.
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Earmarks are a perfectly legal form of political pork — and nearly everyone in Congress sponsors them. But as these reporters have learned, they're not always easy to track.
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DAVID HEATH: There were a lot of scandals going on at the time. You had a Congressman in San Diego, Duke Cunningham, who was taking bribes . . .
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JIM LEHRER: Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty today in a major investigation of influence peddling. He appeared in federal court on…
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NARRATOR: In each of these cases, a crime occurred; people went to jail.
But every year, private interests donate millions of dollars to congressional campaigns, and Congress doles out tens of billions in earmarks and it's all business as usual.
DAVID HEATH: Sometimes you have scandals where you have a Congressman taking bribes and you think, "Okay, well that was a bad actor." The question is, is that all there is or is it, or is this something bigger that's going on? Is there something wrong with the whole culture?
NARRATOR: To try to answer that question, Heath would ultimately have to leave the comfortable terrain of the state of Washington for the back room dealings of that other Washington. But first, he would do some reporting with his computer. A specialist in data analysis, he decided to home in on Congress's 2007 defense spending bill all 400 billion dollars of it. His plan seemed simple: he'd create a database jammed with everything he could find on the bill's earmarks. He just needed to get the list of them. But there was no list to be found.
DAVID HEATH: They're literally hidden. I mean they, they're not in the bill. They're not in the defense bill. And I finally had to call an expert, a guy who, named Winslow Wheeler, and ask him, "Where are these earmarks anyway? How do you find them?"
NARRATOR: Few understand earmarks better than Winslow Wheeler. The former Capitol Hill staffer spent more than 30 years serving powerful senators from both parties often helping to craft earmarks for his bosses.
WINSLOW WHEELER: If you look at a Department of Defense appropriations bill, you'll, you'll not find very much pork in it. What you need to do is look at the committee report — 99% of the pork is in the committee report, not in the statute.
NARRATOR: That is -the "Conference Committee Report. Before a bill is passed, both Houses meet in conference. It's there that they hammer out all their differences, and they finalize their earmarks. When Heath found the 2007 Defense Appropriations Conference Committee Report online, he struck gold: 2700 earmarks, worth nearly 12 billion dollars. Now it was simply a matter of transferring the earmarks into his own database. He'd get some assistance from two college interns.
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NARRATOR: In fact, deciphering Congress's earmarks proved nearly impossible.
DAVID HEATH: They'd actually taken simple text and they shrunk it down, tiny little type.
LIZ BURLINGAME: You couldn't copy and paste any of the information into the database.
DAVID HEATH: And on top of that, the earmarks themselves are in language that's like a code.
CHANEL MERRITT: Four million dollars, this is just an example, uhm, for NG4BW. And you're like, "What?"
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DAVID HEATH: It was like they had hired a consultant to figure out how to make this as hard as possible.
NARRATOR: Winslow Wheeler told Heath that to unscramble the earmarks, he should take advantage of Congress's penchant for self-promotion.
WINSLOW WHEELER: A lot of these members of Congress put out press releases that delineate the pork they've added to the various bills. And in there you can probably find out who the manufacturer is. You can get, rather than three words to describe it, you can get maybe three sentences. And you start unraveling the string.
DAVID HEATH: There's 535 members of Congress. And I had to go through their individual websites and basically spend all that time hunting through their Web sites for that press release about their earmarks.
DAVID HEATH: I got to know, by the end of the process, the name of every single company that got an earmark. OK, there was a company that sells shock absorbers had gotten an earmark. There was an eye doctor, you know, one-man shop that had gotten an earmark.
NARRATOR: It took Heath and his team months of full-time work, but in the end they had produced an unprecedented database containing a list of all the earmarks in the defense bill, the congressional sponsors and the private-sector recipients. They also added information on six years' worth of campaign contributions made by those earmark recipients, plus data on the millions they spent lobbying Congress.
DAVID HEATH: For lobbying expenses they had spent, in 2006 alone, one year, 160 million dollars lobbying Congress. Big money, but they got 12 billion dollars in earmarks.
NARRATOR: But unless a bribe can be proven, earmarks aren't illegal. And for all David Heath knew, they might well be critical to the nation's defense. To find out, Heath would look into what taxpayers were buying with all the earmarked money.
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NARRATOR: After nearly a year's painstaking work, it was time for Mr. Heath to go to Washington. In the fall of 2007, Heath journeyed to the nation's Capitol and sat down to interview Senator Patty Murray and Congressman Norm Dicks. Both defended their earmarks, and denied any wrongdoing.
NORM DICKS (audio): There's never, ever been any quid pro quo. You know, people, if they want to support me they support me. If they don't want to support me, I still might do their earmark. I mean, if I thought it was a worthy project. If you went to a system where you couldn't take a campaign contribution, then the only people you could get- the.only people you could get money from are people that you've never helped.
NARRATOR: Senator Murray told Heath that her earmarks gave Washington State businesses a fair shot at federal dollars:
PATTY MURRAY (audio): People tend to talk about earmarks as something that is a bad thing. I see it as a way to make sure that the tax dollars that are spent are spent in a very wise way and help our state economically.
NARRATOR: When pressed specifically on the problems Heath had uncovered with the Nomad, Murray admitted things don't always turn out well:
PATTY MURRAY (audio): I wish every single dollar that I put in to any project was a thousand percent successful. It's unfortunate that there is one that isn't working well and nobody regrets it more than I do. None of us bat a thousand, and obviously this one didn't or potentially hasn't and, you know, we'll just keep trying to get close to a thousand as we can. That's what my job is.
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NARRATOR: The TIMES "did the story" in the fall of 2007: the earmarks, the campaign contributions, the money spent on products the military didn't want or couldn't use and the response from the legislators.
And on its Web site, the paper has posted David Heath's one-of-a-kind database. Now, anybody can find out about those 2700 defense bill earmarks.
And Heath is not stopping there. He's writing follow-up stories, and is creating an earmark database for all 2008 appropriations bills.
* * *
BILL MOYERS: Don't, for a moment, think that the "favor factory" uncovered by SEATTLE TIMES reporter David Heath is unique to the Pacific Northwest. To the contrary there are 535 members of Congress and only 13 of them requested no earmarks last year. Thirteen out of 535.
Top prize in the house for raking in the earmarks goes to Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi with over 177 million dollars. Before moving to the Senate this year he was on the House Appropriations Committee, which attracts campaign contributions like honey attracts bees. Others on the top ten list: Murtha $176 million, Young $169 million, Hoyer $139 million, and on and on.
Over in the Senate the champion earmarker is Thad Cochran also of Mississippi. He's the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, that's another big honey pot. Runners up after Thad Cochran's $837 million dollars are: Landrieu, Stevens, Bond, Shelby, Inouye, Byrd, Murray, Clinton, Durbin.
JEFF FLAKE: I rise today for concern over what earmarks are doing to this body.
BILL MOYERS: Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona has been fighting earmarks.
JEFF FLAKE: For every group that directly benefits from earmarks there are hundreds who see it as a transparent gimmick to ensure our own reelection. Mr. Speaker, our constituents deserve better. This institution deserves better than we're giving it. Let's return to the time honored practice of authorization, appropriation, and oversight that has served us so well.
BILL MOYERS: But look what happens when you take on the system. Jeff Flake wanted a seat on the House Appropriations Committee but the party's leaders turned him down.
Public discontent over the corruption of earmarks has produced some modest results. The House now requires members to put their names next to the projects receiving the money. At least citizens have a better chance at finding out who's getting the loot. Go to our Web site on pbs.org and you'll find links to several watchdog groups like the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense, who have made it easier for all of us to follow the money.
* * *
Related links:
- The Favor Factory: containing the results of the Seattle Times investigation; trace earmark dollars by state and representative;
- David Heath's article "Defense Spending Bill Packed with $11.8b in Earmarks"


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Emmitt Smith was FREAKING INCREDIBLE on Dancing with the Stars last night. By far the most impressive dancer of the night.
(Yes, Margery and I watched. You scoff? First of all, more people watch DWTS than almost any other show on TV; that doesn't make it unmockable -- however, it does put me in the mainstream to be watching. Second, I'll continue to argue that ballroom dancing is a sport. Certainly more of a sport than, say, poker. Third, like last season, there is a HUGE sports hook: The leading rusher in NFL history is participating. My question: How could you NOT be watching him?)
Anyone who previously made a joke about Emmitt embarrassing himself on this show (and I think I was one of them) is WRONG. Couldn't be more wrong.
He was relaxed. He was enjoying himself. And his moves were legit! Given Jerry Rice's success on the show last season, it's obvious that there's something to translating football skills to the dance floor.
But Emmitt was awesome. I'm stunned. Given that (a) it was live and (b) it was a huge chance for Emmitt to embarrass himself on national TV, it was a pretty gripping 2 minutes. Certainly more dramatic and exciting than the last 2-plus seasons of his NFL career.
(Meanwhile, my pick, Mario Lopez, was pretty damn good; one judge called Lopez the guy to beat Why do my "expert" "sports" "predictions" always hit the jackpot on the lamest shit?)
ESPN "MNF" ratings are HUGE: Not just huge, but ESPN's largest audience EVER. (And you know how I love a good superlative.)
In fact, it was the second-most-watched cable TV event ever, behind... do you know off the top of your head? (It was the Gore-Perot debate about NAFTA. It is mind-blowing that a public policy debate would be the most-watched thing ever on cable.)
I think these numbers justify the "Is It Monday Yet?" hype. It's no small thing to produce your biggest audience number ever, particularly in the digital cable/PS2/iTunes/YouTube era.
But I'll be curious to track how they hold up over the season: Fans' appetite for the NFL -- particularly "MNF" can't be much higher than the season-opener. What happens when the matchups start to get a little less exciting? (Maybe they'll import Dick Vermeil for a little extra sizzle. The one consensus from MNF Week 1 seems to be that he was the best of the TV analysts. Did people forget how good he was on college football games before his return to the NFL with the Rams?)
Lance: "Hatchet job!" Armstrong calls NYT story about his 1999 TdF teammates' EPO use a "hatchet job." Actually, if he was upset by the guilt-by-association from the article, what does he think of the recent wink-wink, nudge-nudge gossip coverage of his, um, friendship with Matthew McConaughey?
File this quote away: "I don't believe there's a lot of uncaught use." That's NFL union honcho Gene Upshaw on the NFL's HGH problem. He said it because he's the head of the union, but it's ludicrous.
Shell calls Raiders "embarrassing": So what does that make the coach?
More Raiders: Jerry Porter denied openly rooting against his team on Monday night. (But you have to imagine that he was rooting against them on the inside. Did anyone ask him THAT?)
I want a scale model of Danica Patrick's hot new Batmobile-looking "Danica-mobile" race car. (Wait: Or do I want a scale model of Danica herself? Is there an action figure yet? Is that, uh, weird?)
Bengals' Henry pleads guilty: If every
Rick DiPietro: 15 years, $67.5 million. (Wait, I'm sorry: GUARANTEED.) Who says that the NHL's finances are a wreck? Wow, that lockout was SO worth it...
Big Ben questionable for Week 2: Cowher says if he can play, he'll play. But having watched "my" Jags D on Sunday, I can say with confidence that the Steelers should NOT play him.
Deion Branch's new deal: 6 years, $39 million ($13 million bonus). (Yes, you bet your ass that holdout was worth Every. Damn. Penny. If he'd stayed in NE, he would've been paid a paltry $1 million. No wonder the Pats want $800K back.)
Kevin "Munchies" Grubb refused to submit to a random drug test at a NASCAR event over the weekend. Yeah, there's no WAY he was on anything.
ESPN to stream Champions League online: I'm all for any new TV deals that wrap in b'band. And for a mere $1,250, you can catch every game.
Uniform Watch: Here's a jaw-dropper. Not to steal Paul Lukas' gig, but this is cool: Instead of taking money from some random sponsor to put their logo on their jerseys, FC Barcelona – reigning Champions League champ – will actually pay UNICEF $2 million a year for 5 years to have the UNICEF logo on their jersey. Before this, Barca had never had a logo on their jersey. Now, when they decide to do it, it's more good-of-the-world than greed. (Take that,
More DWTS: Anyone watch the season premiere last night? Let me say this: I actually KNOW that hottie co-host Samantha! We went to Northwestern together! We once worked on an econ class project together! That's as close as I've come to TV stardom since my ill-fated appearances on "Around the Horn." (I gotta put those on YouTube...)


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The world celebrates today,the 100th anniversary of the birth of T.V.'s greatest comedian, Lucille Ball.(WIKI) (Happy 100th birthday Lucy…we love you!!!) In honor of the life of this great comedian, Google posted a doodle on their home page in memory of the late great legendary ditzy red-head, who was not a ditz at all, yet […]
Posts Tagged 'lucille ball biography'
Happy 100th Birthday To THE Funniest Comedian EVER On TV…Lucille Ball…R.I.P.August 6, 2011
Posted in Entertainment News |
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1 month, 3 weeks ago
Comrades, more about our beautiful new book soon. For now please see Radical Intimacies, Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities book intro+ table of contents on this link:
4 months, 1 week ago
We are sad that Felix Beltran is not with us anymore. We met Felix in Havana in 2016 when we did Memefest there. He was one of the most important Latino American designers and the key designer in the Cuban revolution as well as the communist party in the Castro regime. The design tradition he was co developing is close to our hearts, infused by critical theory and daring visual language, his aim was to steer the viewer away from beeing a consumer of images. We also think he did really beautiful work. I also have one of his original prints, this op art poster from 1969 I got in Havana in a dusty book store. Here is a little piece about Felix and his work: https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-felix-beltran-art-director/
5 months, 2 weeks ago
Hello comrades,
Memefest never had an Instagram account but as we recently were in Saigon, our students insisted and created one. It will be updated, please follow if you like: https://www.instagram.com/memefest_network/
1 year, 9 months ago
Hello Comrades,
here is a little gift for you.
Culture Jamming Australia! Part political satire, part eco-horror, part road movie, TERROR NULLIUS is a political revenge fable constructed entirely from samples pirated from the Australian cinema cannon. I could not recommend it more!
Read full description and watch it via the link bellow- online only till September 20th.
2 years, 8 months ago
This is super: between 1st- 31st October 2020 anyone can get 30% off the Food Democracy book online using the code FAN30 at the checkout!!
2 years, 8 months ago
David Graeber was connected to Memefest mostly via his incredible work on Debt.
This is an invitation to come together across the world for a memorial carnival in the spirit of the one and only, David Graeber, who just left us so suddenly and unexpectedly. The invitation emerges from his wife Nika and a handful of his friends.
2 years, 11 months ago
Here is the sound file of the dialogue between Arturo Escobar and I at the recent Participatory design conference at the Festival de la Imagen in Manizales, Colombia. It was such a pleasure and honor to talk to Arturo but also pure joy to be connected again with Colombia again and in especially in this a way!!
The Onto-epistemic Politics of Participatory Design: A Dialogue Between Oliver Vodeb and Arturo Escobar
Oliver Vodeb and Arturo Escobar have in this special dialogue, Participatory Design Conference at the 2020 Festival de la Imagen in Manizales, looked into the radical potential of participation and design, especially in relation to knowledge. Taking a close look at the relations between the academy, practitioners and social movements, the dialogue focused on the politics of the possible, namely, a reality open for cohabitation of different worlds by design.
The conversation examined the potential for epistemic pluralism and participatory epistemologies to foster radical intimacy with each other and the earth. Looking at the growing field of critical design, Vodeb and Escobar discussed capitalism's predatory strategies and design's role in it, while suggesting that another design, and another possible, are possible.
More on Arturo Escobar here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Esco…_(anthropologist)
More on Oliver Vodeb here: memefest.org/en/about/who_we_are_oliver_vodeb/
More on Arturo Escobar here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Escobar_(anthropologist)
3 years ago
You can join now our Memefest channel via the Telegram app:
3 years ago
"What kind of problem succumbs to domination and control? The kind caused by something from the outsi..."
3 years, 1 month ago
I will be posting three lectures on comradeship by Jodi Dean in the coming weeks. Here is the first one:
Learning about comradeship with Jodi Dean: Class 1
3 years, 1 month ago
"Hi Thomas, really nice to hear from you!
I know what you mean. We left the post online for a day an..."
3 years, 1 month ago
"I like this initiative a lot Stephen. Somehow I just got the opportunity to look into it now. Same q..."
3 years, 1 month ago
3 years, 3 months ago
The Para-Academic Handbook: A Toolkit for Making-Learning-Creating-Acting
Edited by: Alex Wardrop and Deborah Withers
There is a name for those under-and precariously employed, but actively working, academics in today's society: the para-academic.
Para-academics mimic academic practices so they are liberated from the confines of the university. Our work, and our lives, reflect how the idea of a university as a place for knowledge production, discussion and learning, has become distorted by neo-liberal market forces.
We create alternative, genuinely open access, learning-thinking-making-acting spaces on the internet, in publications, in exhibitions, discussion groups or other mediums that seem appropriate to the situation. We don't sit back and worry about our career developments paths. We write for the love of it, we think because we have to, we do it because we care.
3 years, 4 months ago
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President
How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election
3 years, 5 months ago
Merry Christmas everyone! As the holidays center so much around food, family and community we'd like to give you a little gift.
Produced by Goucher student Kylie Miller, hosted by Kylie Miller and Tashi McQueen, Featuring Eric Jackson and Floyd Godsey this podcast presents the amazing and inspiring work on Food Apartheid our brothers and sisters at the Black Yield Institute in Baltimore are doing.
The podcast is one of the many outcomes of Baltimore's Food Apartheid, a collaboration between Goucher College, Black Yield Institute and Memefest, which happened in November in Baltimore.
3 years, 6 months ago
Montreal friends, come and join us this coming Wednesday:
Members of the Memefest Network were recently in Baltimore, USA working with the Black Yield Institute and students at Goucher College tackling the subject of Baltimore's Food Apartheid. Food Democracy/Food Sovereignty has been a focus of Memefest's work over the last few years and it was a special opportunity for us to work with Black Yield, an amazing community organisation based out of Cherry Hill who seek to "Cultivate Self-Determination Through Black Land & Food Sovereignty".
Memefest's Oliver Vodeb and Vida Voncina, who will be visiting Montreal, alongside Kevin Lo (LOKI/Memefest) are interested in presenting a public debrief and discussion on the work done with BYI and Goucher, as well as the Memefest Network and project more broadly. We invite those interested in design and media activism, radical pedagogy, food justice (and more!) to join us for a casual "salon" at LOKI's studio.
See more details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/571852240242300/
3 years, 6 months ago
The Hong Kong protests are incredibly significant for many reasons. Not only are they exceptional as people are protesting more than six months, it is also the tactics that the protesters use that are highly sophisticated.
Here is a good article about the many subversive cultures emerging from the HK uprisings:
3 years, 6 months ago
The Hong Kong protests are incredibly significant for many reasons. Not only are they exceptional as people are protesting more than six months, it is also the tactics that the protesters use that are highly sophisticated.
Here is a good article about the many subversive cultures emerging from the HK uprisings:
3 years, 6 months ago
"As we are working a lot with photographers here is an article on Afrapix, a radical photo collective..."
Lucas Ferraço Nassif F. dos Santos
Birth year


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CND Shellac is a designed with a unique soak off gel polish formula that is currently making it the best selling gel in the world. The Shellac gel will cure beautifully under UV lamps and will last for up to 2 weeks. The perfect mirror finish is gorgeous and will remain chip resistant making it best for manicures.
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Its dark purple
Love the curved brush. Colour is slightly darker than I had anticipated but still beautiful. Wish it came in 0.5oz.
This color does not look like the picture in real life. It's purple with sparkles in it not red.
Awesome fall color, rich dark burgundy with a slight shimmer that really catches in the sun.
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It has become a bit of a cliché: really innovative technology comes from garage-level startups. Once a company gets too large, it focuses its energy on keeping its existing customers happy, and loses its edge. But, for the most part, the technology we rely on for getting things done—providing the hardware and networking infrastructure, for example—comes from mature, profitable companies. So, we thought it might be interesting to take a step back and look at what tech companies are among the most successful at marketing products and services that are widely put to use.
Of course, any measure of "success" is inviting argument. Should it be profits, units sold, recent growth? We settled on two measures. The first is the market capitalization, which provides some sense of how the financial community views both a company's current fiscal strength and its potential for future growth. To provide some sense of how much of that is growth potential, we chose the price-to-earnings ratio as our other measure—the higher the number, the more the company's perceived growth potential factors into its market cap.
Defining tech
For starters, a couple of thoughts on companies we've chosen to leave out. One category that is extremely high-tech is the pharmaceutical industry. Either through in-house work or acquisitions, every major pharmaceutical company is now a biotech powerhouse, and relies on some really cutting edge approaches to generating products. Pharma companies are also huge. J&J, Roche, Pfizer, and Novartis are all within the top 30 (3 others are in the top 50), and would have made it onto our list, displacing more traditional tech companies.
Similarly, we're excluding telecommunications providers, even though some of them are equally huge. (China Mobile sits right behind Apple, AT&T is ahead of Google, and Telefonica and Vodafone are in the top-50). They both integrate lots of high-tech products and enable the latest and greatest tech toys, but progress here has been pretty evolutionary of late, and it's hard to escape the sense that they're simply offering pipes for others to send innovation through.
A couple of these are judgement calls. GE and Siemens, for example, would make the list, and definitely have a significant high-tech portfolio. But they're also massive conglomerates that make a lot of industrial equipment, so their market valuation is largely dependent on something other than tech. Samsung may have a significant presence in markets like home appliances, but it plays a major role in the tech world both as a chipmaker and as a seller of end-user products like hard drives, displays, and phones, so it made the cut.
So, who's left?
(All positions are taken from the Financial Times' list for the end of 2009. Market capitalization and P:E ratios were obtained on August 19th, and may not reflect the positions at the start of the year, or the date you're reading this. Currently, both values are relatively low for most stocks, due to recent volatility.)
Market cap: $212.27 billion, 4th overall; P:E of 11.7. The fact that Microsoft has stayed near the top of the heap for so long despite the fact that its stock price hasn't changed much in years is a testament to the staying power of its primary products: Windows and Office. Over the past several years, its Server and Tools group has joined Office and Windows as a steady contributor of profits for the company. These three divisions will ensure that Microsoft won't drop out of the top 10 anytime soon, and the pervasiveness of Microsoft's software means that it provides a backdrop for just about anything that happens in the technology world.
If the Office/Windows/Server trinity ensures that there will be no unpleasant surprises, though, the company has suffered from a dearth of pleasant ones in recent years, which has shifted it's P:E ratio well out of the growth range. The two areas that have shot Apple and Google into the top 10—portable consumer devices and Web services—remain thorns in Microsoft's side.
If those general outlines of the company's revenue are apparent to anyone who is paying attention, some of the specifics can be pretty difficult to figure out. Microsoft's internal organization often results in some odd pairings. For example, Entertainment and Devices includes the Xbox, Zune, and phone groups—but has also played host to the Macintosh software division. The group that registers Windows income, which is undoubtedly large, is saddled with Windows Live services, which will probably take a while before some substantial up-front development costs turn into a steady income stream for Microsoft's cloud services.
Those substantial caveats aside, as of the last financial quarter, the Windows and Business divisions are hugely profitable ($3.1 billion and $3.3 billion in income, respectively), while Server and Tools is pulling in nearly as much revenue, but costs a bit more to run—it produces a mere billion and a half in income from revenue that's only slightly lower than that of these other two divisions. Right now, those billions are floating the Online division, which continues to lose significant amounts of money, and the Entertainment and Devices group, which tends to bounce around being income-neutral.
Over the past few months, Microsoft has famously swapped places with number two on the list, Apple, although the situation remains fluid in the current, volatile market.
Market cap: $229.68 billion, 10th overall; P:E of 18.9. Anybody who has followed the company's history can remember times when adjectives like "beleaguered" and "insignificant" seemed permanently affixed to Apple. In terms of valuation, though, the company has now cracked the top 10 globally and is shooting towards the top. Although its valuation is typically ascribed to growth potential, the company's ability to keep adding profits through the recession means that it's now solidly in the middle of the pack when it comes to the P:E ratio of a typical tech company. And, as the company's earnings continue to climb, the ratio is actually dropping rapidly.
Even with those numbers, it seems that Apple's recent success has allowed it to have an impact beyond its numbers. We've reached the point where Apple can simply announce its intention to enter a market—take e-books, for a recent example—and trigger a complete reset. It's impossible to separate unreasonable expectations (on the part of everyone—consumers, press, competitors, etc.) from a realistic recognition of the company's marketing prowess and intensely focused management.
Apple tends to focus on unit sales of each of its major products—desktops, portables, iPods, iPads, and iPhones—but its 10-Q form contains a section with dollar figures on these (for its most recent quarter, it was on page 35). Desktops brought in $1.3 billion, laptops $3.1 billion, and iPods $1.5 billion. Two mind-blowing numbers: iPhones and related services were $5.3 billion, over a third of the company's revenue; and the iPad is already worth over $2 billion. Music products and services kicked in another $1.2 billion, and peripherals and software a few hundred million.
The actual income from each area isn't broken out, so it's difficult to know what to make of some of these figures. The company typically says that its music sales do a bit better than breaking even, but in a recent quarter, those were bringing in nearly the same sales that iPods themselves are. Apple has always used its software as a lure for hardware sales, but the relatively small sales figure suggest it could start giving all its software away for free tomorrow, and its bottom line would barely notice it.
Market cap: $162.14 billion, 17th overall; P:E of 12.1. IBM may have helped to fuel the personal computer revolution, but the number of IBM-branded PCs in existence is steadily shrinking as they retire. Although a major portion of its income comes through consulting now, the company has managed to stay relevant in a large number of areas of interest to the tech community through its open-source work, fabs, supercomputing efforts, and so on—its research labs make regular appearances in our science section, as well.
Although IBM is in some markets with a potential for growth, those are simply too small a portion of the company overall for anyone to consider it a growth stock.
In IBM's most recent quarter, it drew in $23.7 billion, good for an income of $3.4 billion. $5 billion of that came from software sales, like WebSphere and Tivoli; this group also had gross margins of nearly 90 percent. Hardware like mainframes and POWER systems supplied another $4 billion, but only had margins of 36 percent.
The conclusion that IBM is no longer a hardware company becomes more obvious when you start to consider the services divisions. Global Technology Services kicked in $9.2 billion in revenue and Global Business Services $4.5 billion. A large part of the company's earnings release is devoted to describing the amount of service contract income still outstanding, as well. None of this is to say that the company's hardware is completely unimportant. Some of IBM's software is run on its own hardware, and some of its service contracts are met using it. But it's certainly not essential, given that something like WebSphere also runs on Linux, Solaris, and Windows.
Market cap: $150.80 billion, 26th overall; P:E of 20.6. Google has a P:E ratio that says growth, and it's not difficult to see why: two quarters ago, its year-over-year earnings growth was over 400 percent. Although the recession caused Google to cut back on some of the experimental projects that weren't working out, the company can still afford to keep things in beta for years without putting a dent in its overall growth.
To some extent, you might expect that Google's influence would be limited by the appeal of its cloud services. Lots of folks like online e-mail services, but a lot less enjoy editing a word processing document in a Web browser. But the company's tendency to integrate and aggregate means that events like its rollout of the Buzz social service, which inadvertently dragged in a lot of casual Gmail users, can have an overly large impact.
Right now, the company is in a somewhat unusual position, in that it doesn't entirely control what its next major move will be. Judge Denny Chin will get to decide whether Google becomes a book retailer and copyright clearinghouse or not, a decision that could have a very disruptive effect on a number of markets.
Until that happens, Google is likely to continue to be a one-trick pony, with over 95 percent of its revenue coming from advertising. That figure helps make sense out of some of the chaotic collection of services that the company is developing and testing: all of them either put ads in front of users or help Google to index information that enables them to target more relevant advertising. There's no doubt that Google would love to have sold more of its Nexus One hardware and more licenses to its cloud services, but, so far, it certainly hasn't had to.
Cisco Systems
Market cap: $126.61 billion, 34th overall; P:E of 16.8. When most people think of Cisco, they think of the high-end routers that help manage the traffic flows within and between large institutions. But, over the past several years, the company has been making strategic moves that indicate a desire to have access to the consumer market. It has purchased consumer networking company Linksys, the set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta, and is now making noises about wanting in on the hardware portion of the smart grid. In nearly every one of its markets, however, it's competing with a handful of companies that make substantially similar products, which is one reason that its announcements don't attract the attention of some of the companies in the same neighborhood, even when they've been excessively hyped.
Financially, it's been a steady money maker, and its cash reserves substantially outweigh its debt. Still, it's not paying a dividend, its P:E ratio has been on the high side until recently, and there are reasonable questions as to whether any of the markets it's currently in have the potential for sort of growth this ratio implies.
Cisco's 10-Q filing is infuriatingly vague about how it makes its cash. Over $1.7 billion from routers, another $3.6 billion from switches, and then everything else is dumped into Advanced Technologies ($2.4 billion) and Services ($1.9 billion). The advanced group is defined as including "application networking services, home networking, security, storage area networking, unified communications, video systems, and wireless technology." There's no effort made to define services or provide a glimpse into whether any of these segments are more or less profitable.
So about the only thing that can be said is that Cisco's attempts at diversification are generating some sales for the company, but it remains heavily reliant on its core businesses in the realm of high-end hardware.


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Great Lakes Vintage Chart
$ 79.50
Four feet x Five feet of Fleecy Lake BLISS. What's better than a beautiful souvenir of the place you love? A beautiful souvenir you can wrap yourself in!
Printed 1 side from a vintage 1968 chart, this will be your fave go-to blanket.
Machine wash, gentle and hang dry. Keep all your fleece, including this blanket, out of the high heat dryer. Ships in 5 working days from Newport, Rhode Island.


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Below is the solution for Annual book prize crossword clue. This clue was last seen on April 1 2023 New York Times Crossword Answers in the New York Times crossword puzzle. While searching our database we found 1 possible solution matching the query Annual book prize. Please check the answer provided below and if its not what you are looking for then head over to the main post and use the search function. You can always go back at April 1 2023 New York Times Crossword Answers.
Annual book prize


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Kent Bush: Dispelling the pop culture fantasies
I'm no prude.
I always try to be a good guy, a good father and do the right thing. But I don't think of myself as the male version Dana Carvey's "Saturday Night Live" character the Church Lady.
When I see popular television shows and hear musicians trying to sell music, I don't think the game is any different than it was when I was a kid – and we all turned out well enough.
Did you ever listen to Prince's "Purple Rain" album? You won't hear a few of those songs at Sunday School. Did you notice that when his music wasn't capturing enough attention, he changed his name to be just a symbol to stay interesting?
Don't you remember Madonna singing "Like a Virgin" while writhing on the stage in a white wedding dress at the Video Music Awards 29 years ago – when there was actually a channel that played music videos?
I know my sons will see and be influenced by pop culture. I just want to be able to adequately dispel the pop culture fantasies for my boys.
I'm not so worried about Dawit yet. I will have plenty of time to worry about him.
But as he moves from "Thomas the Tank Engine" to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," my fears are not aroused. When he watches "The Guardians" and hops around like Peter Rabbit for the rest of the week, I'm not so concerned.
Where I worry is my 9-year-old wanna-be-teenager.
Blake is a smart kid. He can get on any Mac product or even my Android phone and find a game to wile away the hours.
But the problems come when he starts watching YouTube videos that he finds funny and then finds music he likes, and suddenly what happened at Sunday's Video Music Awards becomes relevant even though no one in my family would waste time watching it.
I don't care if Miley Cyrus is still having emotional issues from being the real life daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus and imaginary Disney star Hannah Montana.
I know she is just trying to make the step from child star to real star and gain hope of not becoming the subject of comments that begin with "remember when … ."
She's just following the formula. Being a good girl just doesn't sell very well after you're 14.
So you grab a foam finger and proceed to go on stage to stroke the naughty parts of the son of that dude who was Kirk Cameron's dad on "Growing Pains." Of course that is after she revisited the dance craze called twerking. Don't be overly shocked by Cyrus breaking away from daddy's line dancing to some booty-shaking twerk moves.
A lot of Andover, Kan., students took up twerking last year and started a Twitter campaign where the twerk team tried to get then Superintendent Mark Evans to give students an extra snow day with all of the tweets hash tagged #willtwerkformark.
This is nothing new.
The fact that she twerked with giant robot teddy bears was nothing but a desperate person trying to hold on to fame.
But how do I convince Blake that 10 million Elvis fans can, in fact, be wrong?
I want him to be attracted to girls for the right reasons. I want him to be drawn to friends who help make him a better person. I don't want him falling for tricks and hanging around with people who only want to use him up before they move on to their next victim.
There are always going to be those who compensate for inadequacies with outrageous behavior. Anyone can get attention. But is it the kind of attention you really want to get or even the kind of person you want to give your attention to?
If you want to stand out at the grocery store, get a tattoo on your face. People will notice you. But that might not be the best way to get noticed.
Women who are willing to titillate a crowd with lewd behavior always get recognition. Miley Cyrus knew it because she watched Disney stars turned pop vixens Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera do it. They knew it because they watched Madonna. Madonna knew that Marilyn Monroe was a famous actress, but her fame didn't come from acting.
You may never be a good enough singer to earn your way onto the stage at the VMA's, but if you can flail around a bit and howl a few choruses, they will let you on stage. The catch is you have to share that stage with giant robot teddy bears and pretend to be an awkwardly-shaped stripper. If you are willing to grope the singer of another song, they will even keep you around for a duet.
We won't be the generation that changes the fact that sex sells. We won't change pop culture to recognize talented people who are fascinating with their clothes on singing lyrics with a positive message.
But we can make sure we have the conversation with our kids that it is sad that someone has to behave this way to cling to fame. We can build their self-esteem so that when faced with the choice, they choose to be less popular and hold on to their character.
The reward won't be fame or fortune, but it will be worth it.
That's the message. We have to deliver it.
Kent Bush is publisher of the Augusta, Kan., Gazette.


text: Scroll through this ALDI catalogue valid from 31 May 2023 to 6 Jun 2023 to see the latest deals. On 24 pages of the current weekly catalogue, you will find the best goods from the Supermarkets category. If you want to save on your next shopping trip to ALDI, don't forget to look through the entire catalogue from page 1 to page 24. If you want to shop smart and save on your next shopping trip to ALDI, don't miss the latest weekly catalogue full of amazing prices and wonderful sales. Come back to Au Catalogues every day to make sure you don't miss out on great specials offered by your favourite retailers.


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All About Glass
All About Glass
This is your resource for exploring various topics in glass: delve deeper with this collection of articles, multimedia, and virtual books all about glass. Content is frequently added to the area, so check back for new items. If you have a topic you'd like to see covered, send us your suggestion. If you have a specific question, Ask a Glass Question at our Rakow Research Library.
The Corning Museum of Glass presents its popular 2300° series of art happenings each year, featuring live music, hot glassmaking, and great food and drink. This video gives you an inside look at the festivities at 2300°: Americana (November 15, 2012), including music by The Andrew and Noah Band,


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The list of features included with each Kinetic helmet is impressive. Bold original artwork on the exterior compliments a plush interior, generous ventilation, and dual density EPS liner.
- DOT approved certification
- Poly alloy shell is crafted with a combination of high strength poly materials to create a durable light weight shell
- Dual density EPS liner has two layers of EPS (Expanded Polystyrene), one softer, one slightly harder, that combine to provide more progressive impact absorption for different levels of impact
- Removable liner & cheek pads keep you looking clean, help extend the life of your helmet and are easy to use with our "Quick Snap" system
- 10 massive vents aligned with EPS (Expanded Polystyrene) channels flow a huge volume of air through the helmet keeping you cooled. Large exhaust vents eliminate heat build up
- Hi-Flow mouthpiece with plenty of air flow
- Optional breath guard available for cold weather P/N 73-43810


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Tagged: 15 wins
Fantasy Baseball Sleepers: Jhoulys Chacin, Mat Latos, Matt Moore
There was once a time when drafting a Colorado Rockies pitcher in your fantasy league was nothing but trouble, but after we saw Ubaldo Jimenez not just tame the altitude, but dominate in it, fantasy managers are willing to invest in a Rockies hurler. One pitcher who is drawing a great deal of interest is Jhoulys Chacin.
The 24-year-old hurler was hurt last season by a lack of defensive and offensive support as his record was just 11-14 and more than 10% of runs scored against him were unearned. However, some of his struggles were self-inflicted. Chacin walked 87 batters and surrendered 20 home runs. Though he still managed a solid 3.62 ERA, he was flirting with danger despite the stellar .231 average against.
What makes Chacin so effective in Coors is that he keeps the ball on the ground. In fact, of all pitchers in the Majors last season with at least 100 innings pitched, Chacin ranked seventh with a 57% ground ball rate.
While Chacin is a solid pitcher the question is whether he will become a great pitcher. In order to do so he has to improve his control, which would result in a lower WHIP, better ERA, and a career-high in wins. At 24 years old, there is a great deal of upside for Chacin and it is fair to assume that he'll take a step in the right direction this season.
Typically pitching in a pitcher's park is more advantageous than a hitter's bandbox. There is an argument to the contrary for Reds hurler Mat Latos who makes his way from San Diego's PETCO Park to Cincinnati. The greatest liability in Latos statistics last season was the 9-14 record. Otherwise, the second-year hurler was stellar with a 3.47 ERA and 1.18 WHIP.
The idea here is that Latos could use a little run support. With Adrian Gonzalez having left the west coast for Boston last season, Latos had few batters to offer the run support needed for a winning record. That should not be an issue this season as he once again will have an MVP candidate manning first base with Joey Votto, plus the presence of Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce among others in the lineup.
Expect a rise in the ERA as the hitter-friendly ballpark can't be ignored, but it will come with nearly 200 strikeouts and around 15 wins.
The Rays will compete once again in the AL East thanks to the fine young talent making up their starting rotation. While the Yankees and Red Sox acquire talent in trades and via free agency, the Rays secure their stars via drafts.
The next top prospect to follow the path of David Price and Jeremy Hellickson as prospects turned stars is rookie Matt Moore. In his first taste of the Big Leagues, Moore actually pitched more post-season innings than he did in the regular season. In 19.1 combined innings, Moore fanned 23 batters compared to just six walks.
In the minor leagues, Moore dominated while fanning batters at a shocking rate. The sunshine state southpaw surpassed 200 strikeouts in both seasons despite pitching 155 innings or fewer. Similar to Hellickson last season, Moore will likely make an immediate fantasy impact, though with more K's. On the other hand, the Rays will likely play it safe and limit him to around 180 innings.
While most fantasy managers prefer proven commodities when it comes to fantasy drafts, there are very few hurlers with the upside of Moore's, and yet you can likely nab him as late as the 10th round. For more fantasy insight visit BloombergSports.com.


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Office Phone:
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(732) 528-3700
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(732) 528-3833
Ward Wight Sotheby's International Realty
208 East Main StreetManasquan, NJ 08736
View my Additional Website
(ARA) - Up to 80 percent of water used around the home during the summer is for outdoor use -- primarily to irrigate gardens and lawns. To keep lawns green and lush during the long, hot summer, most people pull out the hoses, turn on the sprinklers and pour on the water. Household water consumption has increased drastically in the past 30 years, and the combination of increased water demands, rising water bills and drought-induced watering restrictions has prompted many homeowners to rethink their approach to lawn care.
But there's an easy and permanent solution to this problem. Instead of being held hostage by Mother Nature or the local water utility, many homeowners are replacing thirstier grasses with water-thrifty zoysia grass. Zoysia's vigorous root system is so deep and extensive the grass rarely, if ever, needs watering. In fact, Zoysia Farm Nurseries' grass (product name Amazoy) requires up to 80 percent less water than other grasses.
Zoysia is a durable, spreading turf grass that grows into a permanent, perennial lawn that also naturally resists insects and diseases, and it doesn't require chemical-heavy weed killers or heavy doses of fertilizer.
Unlike other grasses grown from seed or installed as sod, Amazoy is sold as individual starter plants, or plugs, that can be planted into bare ground or bare sections in existing lawns. Amazoy zoysia grass plugs quickly send out roots and sprouts from which new plants take root. The densely growing zoysia grass spreads outward, choking out all other growth -- including crabgrass and other summer weeds.
Within two to three growing seasons, in most climates, the grass plugs will spread to completely cover the lawn area. And because zoysia grass actually prefers summer heat, it doesn't need gallons and gallons of supplemental water during the warmer months to keep it healthy and green. The result is a durable lawn that can stand up to playground punishment, animal waste, summer heat and drought, while still looking green and feeling plush.
Zoysia also needs no care or maintenance during the cold months. In areas that get frost, zoysia grass quietly goes dormant and stops growing. Zoysia is cold-tolerant, surviving temperatures as low as minus-30 degrees Fahrenheit. When the weather warms up again the following spring, zoysia grass regains its natural green color and starts growing again.
Amazoy zoysia grass is available direct from the grower. Log on to www.zoysiafarms.com for more information.
Copyright © 2007, ARAnet, inc.


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This is the fourth in a series of posts summarizing the research on the hidden situation of our consciousness. This post excerpts a New York Times article (07/31/07) by Benedict Carey. In the article, "Who's Minding the Mind," Carey summarizes some of the fascinating new research–including studies by Situationist contributors John Bargh and Aaron Kay–that reveals the power of those activities of our mind and body that fly hidden below the radar of our consciousness.
* * *
In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people's judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.
That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.
Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there's a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there's a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like "dependable" and "support" — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.
Psychologists say that "priming" people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it's a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.
More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it chooses.
The give and take between these unconscious choices and our rational, conscious aims can help explain some of the more mystifying realities of behavior, like how we can be generous one moment and petty the next, or act rudely at a dinner party when convinced we are emanating charm.
"When it comes to our behavior from moment to moment, the big question is, 'What to do next?' " said John A. Bargh, a professor of psychology at Yale and a co-author, with Lawrence Williams, of the coffee study, which was presented at a recent psychology conference. "Well, we're finding that we have these unconscious behavioral guidance systems that are continually furnishing suggestions through the day about what to do next, and the brain is considering and often acting on those, all before conscious awareness."
Dr. Bargh added: "Sometimes those goals are in line with our conscious intentions and purposes, and sometimes they're not."
* * *
Some scientists also caution against overstating the implications of the latest research on priming unconscious goals. The new research "doesn't prove that consciousness never does anything," wrote Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, in an e-mail message. "It's rather like showing you can hot-wire a car to start the ignition without keys. That's important and potentially useful information, but it doesn't prove that keys don't exist or that keys are useless."
Yet he and most in the field now agree that the evidence for psychological hot-wiring has become overwhelming. In one 2004 experiment, psychologists led by Aaron Kay, then at Stanford University and now at the University of Waterloo, had students take part in a one-on-one investment game with another, unseen player. [For a slightly more detailed description of this experiment, click here.]
Half the students played while sitting at a large table, at the other end of which was a briefcase and a black leather portfolio. These students were far stingier with their money than the others, who played in an identical room, but with a backpack on the table instead.
The mere presence of the briefcase, noticed but not consciously registered, generated business-related associations and expectations, the authors argue, leading the brain to run the most appropriate goal program: compete. The students had no sense of whether they had acted selfishly or generously.
* * *
The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious one. In a study that appeared in the journal Science in May, a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the more of the loot they could keep.
As expected, the players squeezed harder when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of a penny did — regardless of whether they consciously perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the participants responded.
"This area is located in what used to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of the brain," said the study's senior author, Chris Frith, a professor in neuropsychology at University College London who wrote the book "Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World."
The results suggest a "bottom-up" decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all, Dr. Frith said.
Scientists have spent years trying to pinpoint the exact neural regions that support conscious awareness, so far in vain. But there's little doubt it involves the prefrontal cortex, the thin outer layer of brain tissue behind the forehead, and experiments like this one show that it can be one of the last neural areas to know when a decision is made.
This bottom-up order makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. The subcortical areas of the brain evolved first and would have had to help individuals fight, flee and scavenge well before conscious, distinctly human layers were added later in evolutionary history. In this sense, Dr. Bargh argues, unconscious goals can be seen as open-ended, adaptive agents acting on behalf of the broad, genetically encoded aims — automatic survival systems.
In several studies, researchers have also shown that, once covertly activated, an unconscious goal persists with the same determination that is evident in our conscious pursuits. . . .
* * *
Mark Schaller, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, has done research showing that when self-protective instincts are primed — simply by turning down the lights in a room, for instance — white people who are normally tolerant become unconsciously more likely to detect hostility in the faces of black men with neutral expressions.
"Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones," Dr. Schaller said, "because we can't moderate stuff we don't have conscious access to, and the goal stays active."
Until it is satisfied, that is, when the program is subsequently suppressed, research suggests. In one 2006 study, for instance, researchers had Northwestern University undergraduates recall an unethical deed from their past, like betraying a friend, or a virtuous one, like returning lost property. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, an antiseptic wipe or a pencil; and those who had recalled bad behavior were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. They had been primed to psychologically "cleanse" their consciences.
Once their hands were wiped, the students became less likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a graduate school project. Their hands were clean: the unconscious goal had been satisfied and now was being suppressed, the findings suggest.
Using subtle cues for self-improvement is something like trying to tickle yourself, Dr. Bargh said: priming doesn't work if you're aware of it. Manipulating others, while possible, is dicey. "We know that as soon as people feel they're being manipulated, they do the opposite; it backfires," he said.
And researchers do not yet know how or when, exactly, unconscious drives may suddenly become conscious; or under which circumstances people are able to override hidden urges by force of will. . . .
Yet the new research on priming makes it clear that we are not alone in our own consciousness. We have company, an invisible partner who has strong reactions about the world that don't always agree with our own, but whose instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive.
* * *
To access the entire article, click here. Part I and Part II drew from a 2003 article by Situationist contributors Jon Hanson and David Yosifon "The Situational Character." Part III summarized research by Situationist contributor Aaron Kay and his collaborators, Christian Wheeler and Lee Ross.
For a sample of previous posts (that are not part of this series) discussing the role of unconscious and automatic causes of behavior, see "The Situation of Reason," "The Situation of Ideology – Part I," "The Magnetism of Beautiful People," and "The Unconscious Genius of Baseball Players."


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ALT Linux
ALT Linux uses repackaged official rpms since 2003. From
8.20.8 version we use repackaged installer for unified build for all supported distributions and upstable repository (due lack of rpm supporting xorg 7.0). All disributions from Master 2.4 have fglrx as part of kernel-complete package installed on first stage. So if you install any ALT Linux distribution (starting from Master-2.4) you have recent fglrx already. Next steps are necessary if you want install fglrx independently or if stock version from distribution are old for your hardware (like X1K series).
Features in brief:
- i386 and x86_64 packages.
- unifield build for all supported distrbutions.
- fixes for recent (2.6.16 ) and non-standard (realtime-preempt) kernels.
Prepare stage
fglrx package in ALT Linux consist of 3 parts: kernel module, glx/x11 driver part and configuration tools package. All 3 parts are depends from each other. So for manual install you must prepare/download 3 packages:
- fglrx_glx (glx/x11 driver part)
- kernel-modules-fglrx-%flavour-%version (%flavour kernel fglrx module)
- fglrx-tools (optional).
%flavour may be identified by uname -a string. May be std-(up|smp), std26-(up|smp), wks-(up|smp), wks26-(up|smp) etc.
Install stage
Afer download/prepare you may install packages using rpm (for packages made manually) or apt (for repositories).
example install string for rpm:
# rpm -ihv fglrx_glx-%version.i586.rpm kernel-modules-fglrx-%flavour-%version.i586.rpm fglrx_tools-%version.i586.rpm
where %version is fglrx version what you want install
example string for apt:
# apt-get install fglrx_glx kernel-modules-fglrx-%flavour fglrx_tools
Useful resources
- ALT Linux FAQ. Have some notes (in russian) about fglrx. Use
fglrxkeyword in search form.
- Sisyphus Backports page. Backports is the packages from unstabe Sisyphus repository made for older distrubutions. Have recent fglrx packages for Master-2.4.
- ALT Linux page
|Distribution Neutral Steps


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Gay Washington state couples get marriage licenses
SEATTLE (AP) -- Hundreds of same-sex couples across Washington state started picking up marriage licenses Thursday as a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage took effect.
SEATTLE (AP) -- Hundreds of same-sex couples across Washington state started picking up marriage licenses Thursday as a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage took effect.
King County, the state's largest, opened the doors to its auditor's office in Seattle just after midnight to start distributing licenses. But hundreds of people had lined up hours earlier, snaking around the building on a chilly December night. By Thursday afternoon, more than 430 licenses had been issued in Seattle, where the mood was festive overnight.
"We waited a long time. We've been together 35 years, never thinking we'd get a legal marriage. Now I feel so joyous I can't hardly stand it," said 85-year-old Pete-e Petersen, who with her partner, 77-year-old Jane Abbott Lighty, were the first to get a license.
After meeting 35 years ago on a blind date in Sacramento, Lighty and Petersen plan to get married Sunday. The couple has been out buying shoes and clothes for the wedding.
Washington state now joins several other states that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed. Gov. Chris Gregoire and Secretary of State Sam Reed certified the election results of Referendum 74 on Wednesday afternoon, and the law took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.
R-74 had asked voters to either approve or reject the state law legalizing same-sex marriage that legislators passed earlier this year. That law was signed by Gregoire in February but was put on hold pending the outcome of the election. Nearly 54 percent of voters approved the measure.
The law doesn't require religious organizations or churches to marry gay or lesbian couples.
Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday. Same-sex couples who previously were married in another state that allows gay marriage, like Massachusetts, will not have to get remarried in Washington state. Their marriages became valid here Thursday, when the law took effect.
Vicky Dalton, the Spokane County auditor, was designated as a point person for all of the counties on preparing for same-sex marriage licenses. She said that numbers were still coming in from around the state, and several counties extending their office hours Thursday.
At the Thurston County courthouse Thursday morning, Deb Dulaney, 54, and Diane McGee, 64, both of Olympia, arrived just before 9 a.m. The couple have been together for 16 years and moved to Washington state in 2005 from California, where they were registered as domestic partners.
McGee said they wanted to get married there but were unable to before voters passed 2008's Proposition 8, the amendment that outlawed gay marriage after it had been approved by court ruling. A federal court has since struck down Prop. 8, but an appeal on that case is still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dulaney and McGee registered as domestic partners in Seattle in 2005, and then through the state when the state's domestic partnership law passed in 2007. Now they wanted to take that final step of marriage. They haven't set a wedding date but said a simple service is planned within the 60 days that their license is valid.
"I feel much more moved by it than I thought I would," Dulaney said. "I thought we were just going to come here, get the paperwork and go home. But now, it's like, 'whoa.'"
"It's for real now," McGee told her.
Last month, Washington, Maine and Maryland became the first states to pass same-sex marriage by popular vote. They joined six other states -- New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont -- and the District of Columbia, which had already enacted laws or issued court rulings permitting same-sex marriage.
Couples in Maryland also started picking up marriage licenses Thursday, though their licenses won't take effect until Jan. 1.
"I really imagined my life as being just with a partner and never having a wife, so to have this day come about and to be a part of it, it means everything to me," said Kim Hinken, who was the first person to get a marriage license in Anne Arundel County, Md.'s Circuit Court. The 52-year-old Edgewater resident said she has waited nearly 10 years to become legally married to Adrianne Eathorne.
Maine's law takes effect Dec. 29. There's no waiting period in Maine, and people can start marrying just after midnight.
In addition to private ceremonies that will start taking place across Washington state this weekend, Seattle City Hall will open for several hours Sunday, and several local judges are donating their time to marry more than 140 couples starting at 10 a.m. In Olympia, a group of local judges has offered to perform wedding ceremonies just after midnight on Sunday at the Thurston County courthouse.
Washington state has had a domestic partnership law in place since 2007. The initial law granted couples about two dozen rights, including hospital visitation and inheritance rights when there is no will. It was expanded a year later, and then again in 2009, when lawmakers completed the package with the so-called "everything but marriage" law that was ultimately upheld by voters later that year.
This year, lawmakers passed the law allowing gay marriage, and Gregoire signed it in February. Opponents gathered enough signatures for a referendum, putting the law on hold before it could take effect.


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Alabama and Florida are at the top of the season's first BCS standings, making it yet another all-SEC top two, with Oregon and Kansas State close behind the Gators. The Crimson Tide in first was no surprise. Alabama is an overwhelming No. 1 in both polls used in the BCS formula. Florida in second was less anticipated. The Gators are No. 3 in the polls, but rated best by the computer rankings That gave them a slight edge over Oregon and Kansas State when the numbers were crunched. Florida's BCS average is .9092. Oregon's is .8993 and Kansas State's is .8963. Notre Dame is fifth and not too far back at .8774. Despite the strong showing by the Southeastern Conference, another all-SEC national championship game is still a long shot. Oregon's schedule is backloaded with strong opponents and the Ducks will likely be able to close the gap in the computers if they keep winning. The Ducks play Arizona State on Thursday (5-1) and still have games against Southern California and Oregon State left, and a possible Pac-12 title game. Florida has some tough games left, too, starting Saturday against South Carolina. With half the season still to play, there are plenty possibilities and teams still alive. Teams with one loss, such as sixth-place LSU, seventh-place South Carolina, ninth-place Oklahoma and 10th-place USC are still very much in the race as long as they keep winning. Oregon State is in eighth, the lowest rated of the unbeaten teams. This is safe to say: If Alabama keeps winning, the Tide will play for its second straight national title, and third in four seasons. Alabama has never before been first in the initial standings. Seven times since the Bowl Championship Series was implemented in 1998, the team that was first in the initial standings went on to play in the BCS title game. Seven times the team that started second played for the BCS title. And only twice has neither of the teams that were in the top two spots in the first standings reached the title game.
BCS STANDINGS: Alabama, Florida rank 1-2 in season's first standings
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