2013年3月31日 星期日

Small-farm beginners trade work for land

Instead of bringing gifts, the womens dozen guests hauled scavenged pallets and boards to the edge of a muddy field, where they built a barn for goats alongside the lumbering hogs and pecking chickens of Okfuskee Farm.

Small, organic-minded farms in Chatham County are making use of bartering, sharing labor and passing up a paycheck as part of the search for sustainability. And partners Anderson and Grubbs are joining the movement with a goat-dairy venture on borrowed land.

In exchange for weekly labor, Grubbs and Anderson will earn a place to graze their dairy goats and set up a moveable cabin as their principal residence, skipping the high land costs that often nip farms in the bud.

For Tucker, the couple represent another set of hands on the always busy 20-acre farm, which he runs when hes not working a full-time water resources engineering job. Grubbs and Andersons herd of six goats also will play into Tuckers approach to farming C the animals foraging and defecation will build Okfuskees soil, improving it for future crops.

Youre making the land more productive, said Tucker, who also has paid employees. And whether youre directly making money on it,We sell 100% hand-painted oilpaintingsforsale online. its more eyes ... on the farm, and youve got a bigger pool of community to tackle those jobs.

Farms have always employed unique economic systems, from feudalism to sharecropping, agritourism and communism, so its perhaps not surprising to find a new wave of experimentation beyond the suburban fringe.

Thats the biggest expense for farmers labor, so of course theyre going to seek alternative ways, said Debbie Roos, an agricultural agent for the N.C. Cooperative Extension. Even older growers in Chatham and Alamance counties have entered unusual financial relationships to bring new farmers to their land, she said.

Bartering and non-monetary deals also bring their share of questions about whats fair to workers and landowners, and just how sustainable the economics are.

Ultimately, Grubbs and Anderson arent sure their venture will turn enough profit to allow them to make a living. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduates know theyll need to keep their restaurant jobs as they search for a life off the grid. Their path isnt sure, but theyve got a place now to call their own now.Choose your favorite ultrasonicsensor from thousands of available designs Bobby Tucker, meanwhile, will have a few extra hands as he builds Okfuskee Farm.

The prolific creator will speak at the Ottawa International Writers Festival on April 28 about his career, free speech and sex and violence in art.

Im happiest drawing real people in real clothes doing real things, said Chaykin, joking that when drawing superhero comics his editors would remind him that the characters needed to use their powers.

But in Black Kiss 2, published by Image comics, the characters seem to quickly remove their clothing and do very unrealistic things.

Last summer after delivering the first issue, Diamond Comic Distributors stopped the transfer of the remaining issues to Canada and Britain because the explicit nature of the content may fall foul of customs rules on importing obscene material.

When Ford introduced the hands-free power liftgate, available on the 2013 Escape SEL and Titanium, it said then and confirms now that it would not be activated by an animal running underneath the vehicle. Ford says it uses gesture-based technology with two sensors designed to detect a person using a kicking motion under the center of the rear bumper.

Think of a punter taking a short practice stroke with his kicking leg and you'll get an idea of what it takes. In addition,A parkingguidance is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. the key fob for the passive entry system has to be in close proximity to the rear bumper for the hands-free liftgate to work. The engine can be running, but the transmission has to be in Park for the power feature to open or close.

We've seen some pretty nifty animal tricks, but we have a hard time imagining that a dog or other critter could a) gain possession of the key fob, and b) be able to execute the required kicking motion. Moreover, we've had spotty results getting it to work with a human leg, so we doubt an animal could do better. Maybe we need to switch to a soccer-style kicking approach.

The village was under attack from a feared militia. In this case, the gunmen were motivated not by tribal rivalry but by land, gold and ivory. The village is situated inside a nature reserve in the Ituri rainforest, an area covering 5,000 square miles that is supposed to be off limits to hunters and gold prospectors. The militia, led by a former elephant poacher called Paul Sadala, has terrorised communities inside the reserve since 2012, employing methods brutal even by the grisly standards of this part of the world.

"The attacks were absolutely terrifying," said Justin Oganda,A parkingmanagement is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card. a representative of the residents of Epulu who remain displaced in Mambasa, about 50 miles away. By the end of that day in June, the militiamen had murdered, raped, burned people alive and even eaten the flesh and heart of one of their victims. "To have killed so many people, to burn them alive, the cannibalism Mentally they cannot be normal," Oganda added.

As ever with Congo, it is not just a simple tale of victims and villains. Sadala, who goes by the nom de guerre Morgan, and his "Mai Mai Morgan" gunmen are thought to have powerful supporters in the security forces who enable their lucrative illegal trade in ivory and smuggled gold. Some local people with an eye on the gold in the ground beneath their feet tacitly support Morgan, who improbably also likes to be called Chuck Norris.

"There is complicity between [Morgan] and certain elements within the army," said Jefferson Abdallah Pene Mbaka, the MP for Mambasa. "With the support of certain army authorities [Mai Mai Morgan] have increased their poaching activities. The sale of ivory is organised by these figures in the army." Many people in the region believe soldiers have orders not to arrest Morgan.Have a look at all our solarpanel models starting with free proofing.

Mayor Chris Rey works to bring change

Mayor Chris Rey wheeled his pearl white 2004 Cadillac Escalade into the front parking area of Boyd's Monogram and Sewing. It was a Thursday afternoon,Manufactures and supplies smartcard equipment. a time when most weeks the mayor cruises the streets of his often-maligned town to chat with residents and business owners.

He regards Rey's longtime predecessor, Mayor Ethel Clark, as a wonderful person, but he believed the town needed a fresh perspective from its leadership. That's why he supported Rey, a political newcomer with bold plans and a sweeping vision when he won in a landslide two years ago.

"We needed a young mayor that could get young people involved," Boyd said. "I think Chris come in and had a new outlook on life. To keep up with all things happening. He come in here knowing he could make a difference, and he made a difference."

In December 2011, when he took office as Spring Lake's 13th mayor, Rey assumed leadership over a town beset with glaring problems: a downtown in dire need of renovation, sections of neighborhood blight and traffic woes that needed addressing. The town's Police Department had just regained its authority to investigate felony crimes, two years after a corruption scandal.

Fifteen months later, he feels he's starting to sort out the true role of town government in the lives of Spring Lake's citizens. Supporters say he has already left his mark.

The 35-year-old Rey has become the face of Spring Lake, a town in transition. An account of his life and cometlike appearance on the political scene require a look back at the community's troubled past.

For years, Rey said, Spring Lake was known among soldiers as the place you didn't want to live while stationed here. It had earned the reputation of a trailer-park town rife with drugs and crime.

"We've always tried to change our image," said Billy Wellons,The Motorola streetlight Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. a prominent businessman in the town. "Spring Lake - I've said this forever - I think most of Fayetteville considers Spring Lake the wrong side of the tracks. Our world is changing out here. We always said people in Spring Lake would go to Fayetteville to shop, but people from Fayetteville would never come to Spring Lake to shop. Within the next five to 10 years, Spring Lake is going to provide all the entities that people need. We've got so many rooftops. Our boulevard is going to change."

Mayor is a part-time job in this town, with Rey logging as many as 30 hours during a long, strenuous week. Full time, he serves as an information technology strategic planner and policy director for the Department of Defense. On the side, he also runs C2Vizion LLC, a business consulting management firm.

"If I never ran for anything again," he said, "this would be the best political job I ever had. You know, I have this philosophy: Mayors are truly individuals who get things done. You find the resources that are necessary and important for your community. Yes, the council (Board of Aldermen) deliberates and makes the decisions. But it's the mayor who brings it back to the community. I feel that goes back to how I started being shaped at East Carolina (University). I was just that go-to guy who made things happen for the folks I was representing."

But the self-assured Rey, a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands and former Army captain who had come of age in the humble trailer parks of Eureka Springs and Spring Lake,Large collection of quality chipcard at discounted prices. ran a strong grass-roots campaign under the Democratic banner. The result was both an upset and landslide victory, with Rey receiving 76 percent of the vote, 644 to 203.

These days, the 67-year-old Clark says she'll support Rey if he runs again. "I was glad that he stepped up to the plate to run," she said. "He's a very intelligent, bright young man who can go a long ways.Parkeasy Electronics are dedicated to provide oilpaintingsupplies."

From the mayor's office of the Spring Lake Municipal Building, Rey said he's about ready to start gearing up for another run. There has been chatter of his seeking higher office, perhaps sooner than later. His name has been mentioned in some circles for a seat in the N.C. Senate.

After driving by his former school, Lillian Black Elementary on Third Street, Rey continued to make the Thursday round of town, passing vacant lots once cluttered with inhabitable mobile homes. The Cadillac Escalade rolled by a massive dirt pit off Pate Street, where soil is taken for the Interstate 295 expansion project, and by abandoned trailers, homes in disrepair and debris-cluttered yards that blemish the landscape of the town and adjoining county.

"There are lots of challenges and issues. I can't do so much with this stuff," he said of the places just outside the city limits. "But I have a plan.Wear a whimsical Disney landscapeoilpaintings straight from the Disney Theme Parks! Slowly and surely."

The Escalade stopped in front of Noah's Art, a new business that opened its third location in North Carolina a couple of weeks ago in the Cedarwood Shopping Center on N.C. 210. "I'm so excited about this," said Rey. "It's a place for kids to express themselves through art."

Driving along Manchester Road on the outskirts of town, he pointed out defense contractor RLM Communications, calling it "my jewel." In December, RLM and the town completed a deal that gives the defense contractor control over nearly half of the Spring Lake Business Industrial Center.

Andre Iguodala says he'll test free agency this summer

The list of marquee free agents just got a little bigger. Andre Iguodala told Chris Tomasson of Fox Sports Florida that it is very likely he will opt out of the final year of his contract with the Denver Nuggets. Even though he is scheduled to make $16.1 million next season, Iguodala says that he is approaching his free-agency decision from a long-term standpoint.

"Players get like $50, $60 or $70 or $80 (million over multiple years), whatever the number was, they gave up a big number (in an option season by opting out)," he told Tomasson." But in the grand scheme of things, pretty much get it back. You got security.''

Iguodala, 29, will have no shortage of teams interested in him if he does opt out. He's been an integral part of the recent success of the Nuggets, who currently hold the third-best record in the Western Conference and recently won 15 straight games. Denver will undoubtedly attempt to re-sign him, although Iguodala doesn't seem inclined to give the Nuggets a hometown discount.

"Obviously, it's a business, so you're going to look at your options," he said. "Here we have some good (prospects). But I'm not making any promises. But I've liked the last month and a half, two months, three months or however long (that Denver has been on a roll). It's important for the future, so I'm just trying to win.''

Because of his defensive versatility and lack of needing the ball in his hands on offense, Iguodala is the kind of player who could fit in well on most of the teams who will have the cap space necessary to sign him.

The Atlanta Hawks could be one such suitor. First-year GM Danny Ferry unloaded the hefty contracts of Joe Johnson and Marvin Williams last summer in hopes of clearing cap space to make a splash in free agency. But while the Hawks' two primary targets will be Chris Paul and Dwight Howard, neither superstar is widely expected to leave the Los Angeles Clippers or Lakers, respectively. Should Atlanta miss out on those two,How cheaply can I build a yyshoucang? Iguodala could be a natural fit next to Al Horford. That duo would be formidable defensively whether or not Josh Smith is brought back.

Assuming Monta Ellis opts out as expected, the Milwaukee Bucks could be another potential suitor for Iguodala. Even though they'll likely have to pay Brandon Jennings a max-level contract to re-sign him, they should still have enough money left over to sign Iguodala. Pairing his elite perimeter defense with the inside dominance of Larry Sanders on that end could make the Bucks an intriguing team in the Eastern Conference playoff race.Choose your favorite ultrasonicsensor from thousands of available designs

The Detroit Pistons will have plenty of cap space and don't have much in the way of perimeter defense. If rookie center Andre Drummond develops as expected, he and Iguodala could make the Pistons dangerous defensively, given Iguodala's ability to defend four positions at a high level.

The Houston Rockets are always a team to keep an eye on with regards to any major free agents, but Iguodala would be an especially good fit there. This year's Nuggets have a transition game similar to the Rockets' high-speed style, and Iguodala would give Houston a defensive presence on the perimeter they don't have currently. He has posted a usage rate below 20 the past three seasons, so his offensive needs would not infringe on those of the Rockets' two ball-dominant guards, Jeremy Lin and James Harden.

Villas at Fox Run homes are set in a specially landscaped environment and are designed to meet the needs of busy professionals or those looking to downsize.Online shopping for rtls. In addition, these ranch-style homes in a maintenance-free community allow the homeowner more time to do what they enjoy rather than what they would have to do if they lived elsewhere.

This once-a-year event allows us to show potential homebuyers both decorated models as well as a number of personally owned homes that are not normally available for tour,A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. said Fox Run sales manager Kelly Hurst. Many people have never had the chance to see the interior of occupied homes. It provides a great opportunity to speak with current homeowners as well as see different furniture layouts and ideas.

Each of these ranch homes have a dry-walled 2? car garage, tray ceilings, panoramic windows and optional fireplaces. For maximum privacy, the free-standing single-family homes do not share any common walls with their neighbors. Plus,We sell 100% hand-painted oilpaintingsforsale online. each of these homes have direct access to a private landscaped courtyard, which creates a unique, private outdoor entertainment area.

In addition to stand-alone homes, Villas at Fox Run also has two attached floor plans constructed in a pinwheel format, allowing each home tolive as an end unit. Both the Abbey, a 1,718-square foot home base-priced at $199,990, and the Canterbury, an 1,816-square foot home base-priced at $214,990, display stone and fiber-cement-board siding, brick architectural accents, and appealing rooflines. Because of clever design, each building looks like a large, luxury single-family home when viewed from any angle.

All of the ranch homes offered at Villas at Fox Run come standard with such as raised-panel interior doors with colonial trim, lever handles, and ceramic floor tile in the entry foyer, and an appliance package. All Villas at Fox Run ranch homes feature central air conditioning, energy-efficient gas forced air heating and a quick recovery 50-gallon water heater.

2013年3月28日 星期四

Historic Tampa buildings open for business

So rhetorically asked Mayor Bob Buckhorn last week at the long vacant S.H. Kress & Co. building downtown. Mayor Bob was there because the historically artsy, erstwhile five and dime that closed in 1981 was the cherry-picked venue for his second State of the City presentation. It was a cool, savvy move by Tampas salesman-in-chief.

The mayor told the audience that packed the ground floor of the 84-year-old, downtown icon that Tampas charge was to dream big and think big C including being recognized as the gateway to the Americas. And such outsized aspirations would necessarily mean upping the ante on all those attributes that first-class, modern cities must have to grow companies and attract the jobs of the future as well as to keep and attract the energetic young people who can reshape an economy through technological innovation.

And, yes, that plan will require a first-class transportation system. And, yes,Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. that darn sure means rail. And, yes, he will work with C or around C whomever can help, from Hillsborough County to Tallahassee. And, yes, that was a less-than-subtle jab at Gov. Rick Scott who was a one-man, high-speed derailment two years ago.

Buckhorn was all about Tampas future C which includes its past. Its National Registry of Historic Places past.

Thus, the seemingly surprise choice of the Kress Building for his upbeat address that barely acknowledged the blip of a projected $20 million 2014 deficit. Its still apparent that when Samuel H. Kress built his store, he considered it tantamount to commissioning public art. Thats how a department store gets bedecked with Renaissance Revival terra-cotta facades and warrants high ceilings. Its still special C and worthy of much more than a VIP party for 2012 convening Republicans.

But back to Buckhorn priorities. The mayor envisions C make that really, really wants C more critical-component in-fill and upgrades for downtown. Of course, he does. His continuous sales-pitch loop to would-be developers is that those intriguingly vacant properties C from the now-restored Floridan and the reincarnating federal courthouse to the potential-oozing Kress Building and adjacent Woolworths and J.J. Newberry C are open for business. The pragmatic, history-savoring, redevelopment business.

Downtown Tampa is more than high-rise rentals, new museums, newer restaurants, a nearly-finished Riverwalk, and futuristic scenarios for all those surface parking lots. Its a Florida city uniquely blessed with key remnants of history that have managed to avoid the wrecking ball of urban renewal. Such that, repurposing is now part of the downtown mantra.

Larry Wilkerson,An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. a former member of the National Security Council under President George W. Bush and former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, waxed frank about the militarys take on relations with Cuba. The Pentagon has absolutely no inclination in considering Cuba a threat to the U.S., he emphasized. Quite the opposite. It thinks our policy is preposterously stupid.Find a great selection of customkeychain deals. Hell, theyre (Cuba) not sponsoring revolution. Theyre sponsoring health care.

Llanio Gonzalez-Lopez, general counsel at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, was actually here in Tampa for the gathering. It was thought he would have to Skype or phone it in as Cuban diplomatic personnel have been routinely prohibited from traveling beyond the D.C. perimeter. Obviously, travel restrictions have been eased by the U.S. and Gonzalez-Lopez, who had 48 hours for his Tampa sortie, obviously appreciated his first-ever trip to Havana-rooted Tampa. I feel like Im in Cuba, he said with an animated, ironic smile.

Qualitatively, Florida has an ongoing love-hate relationship with charters. Theyve been lavishly praised by some for being a welcome public-school alternative, but publicly criticized by many more on several fronts C ranging from problematic for-profit management-taxpayer scenarios to underperformance to questions of operational oversight.

Take soccer as an example. It's a tremendously competitive sport, and often times one team tries to work mayhem on the other team's best player. The referee's job is to limit this mayhem and rein in extreme forms of competition.

Regulation is similar. Most ambitious young men will be more aggressive than they should. That's what happened with investment banking. I mean, look at Lehman Brothers. Everyone did what they damn well wanted until the whole place was pathological about its extremeness.

When Hitler was in his bunker before he shot himself, he said, "This isn't my fault. The German people just don't appreciate me enough." That's the attitude of a lot of bankers. They think their silliness is necessary. Banks will not rein themselves in voluntarily. You need adult supervision.

The smart way to regulate is to act like a referee. You have to curtail the activities that are permitted. There should be less trying to fix things and more trying to prevent bad outcomes. There's an old saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." That's wrong. An ounce of prevention can be worth an entire ton of cure.

Greenspan was a smart guy but he totally overdosed on Any Rand when he was young. You can't give bankers the freedom to create gambling games. That's what it was. Wall Street was a gambling house, and the house's odds were better than a Vegas casino. And real casino operators have to build parking lots,You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. fly in entertainers, pay for bars and restaurants. It's expensive. Wall Street was like a casino with no overhead. It was hog heaven for them. But it created vast damage with terrible consequences to civilization.

Lanza's secret arsenal

A chilling portrait of a troubled young man surrounded by the tools of extreme violence emerged Thursday as investigators released some of what they found after the Newtown school massacre.

During three days of searching shooter Adam Lanza's home, investigators discovered 1,400 rounds of ammunition in his bedroom, assorted rifles and shotguns,Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. three large samurai swords, eight knives, a bayonet and a powerful rifle scope.

There were three photos of a dead person, covered with plastic and apparently bleeding. Lanza had a newspaper clipping of the 2008 shooting at the University of Illinois in which a student dressed in black killed five and wounded 21 others.

"It's shocking that they had that much ammunition and firepower in their home and that someone was legally able to purchase that amount,'' said Newtown Action Alliance leader Po Murray, who lives close to the Lanzas' neighborhood.

On Dec. 14, Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 first-graders and six adults, shocking the quiet and bucolic town of Newtown and thrusting the nation into a debate over gun control and mental health.

Search warrants released yesterday provided a glimpse into Adam Lanza's murky world.

He played "Call of Duty," a violent video game, and had a gun safe, found open and unlocked, in his bedroom. He had Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation game consoles and handwritten notes showing the location of various gun shops.

There was also evidence of Lanza's troubled mental condition among the 85 pages of search warrants released by the state judicial department.

The paperback book, "Train Your Brain to be Happy," was found inside the home, with pages tabbed. Other self-help books included "Look me in the Eye -- My Life with Aspergers," and "Born on a Blue Day -- Inside the mind of an Autistic Savant."

"This is exactly why we need to ban high-capacity magazines and why we need to tighten our assault weapons ban," said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. "I don't know what more we can need to know before we take decisive action to prevent gun violence. The time to act is now."

President Obama, flanked by grim-faced mothers who have lost their children to guns, on Thursday said Washington must do something after the Newtown shootings. He called out to the families of four children killed at Sandy Hook sitting in his audience.

In the days and hours after the shooting, investigators obtained five search warrants for Nancy Lanza's two-story colonial house on Yogananda Street, her black Honda Civic and another car. The warrants initially were ordered sealed by a Superior Court judge.

On Thursday, the judge agreed to redactions requested by the state. The warrants were released, accompanied by a statement from Danbury State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky III, who is overseeing the probe.

Sedensky said all weapons involved on Dec. 14 had been purchased by Nancy Lanza, 52, and there is no evidence Adam Lanza attempted to purchase guns. He said a gun locker in the family home was not broken into.Find a great selection of customkeychain deals.

Superior Court Judge John Blawie agreed to black out some information in the documents, such as the name of a "citizen witness" who is referred to in search warrant applications. It's unclear whether Sedensky was referring to more than one witness.

Sedensky said naming certain people would "identify persons cooperating with the investigation, thus possibly jeopardizing their personal safety and well-being."

The judge also allowed omission of serial numbers for several items seized by investigators, such as a game console, as well as phone numbers and credit card numbers seized by authorities. One law enforcement expert said the serial numbers and other information is likely to prove useful to investigators seeking to track down people who had communicated with Lanza.

The documents offer no revelations as to why Lanza, a loner who investigators described as a "shut-in," went on his rampage, or why he chose a school full of elementary students. Lanza attended the Sandy Hook school, and one of his report cards was found at the home by investigators. An individual interviewed by the FBI, whose name was blacked out of the warrant,An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. said the Sandy Hook school was Lanza's "life." But there was no elaboration to that remark in the search warrants.

Investigators also found school records, medical prescriptions, psychiatric records, receipts, subscriptions, newspaper clippings about Adam Lanza and his mother, drawings, written notes, typed notes, telephone records and school records.

The search warrants do not reveal the contents of any of those items or any of Lanza's writings,You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions. which include seven journals.

They found a receipt for a shooting range in Weatherford, Okla., confirming earlier reports that Nancy Lanza frequented ranges.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. She is believed to have been a sport shooting enthusiast who introduced her son to shooting.

Also discovered was a National Rifle Association certificate issued in the name of Adam Lanza. His mother had one as well.

Police even found a holiday card with a Bank of America check made out to Adam Lanza by his mother "for the purchase of C183 [a firearm]." While investigators labeled the C183 a "firearm," they may have been referring a semi-automatic pistol -- a CZ83. At the same time, a Google search also shows a camera bearing the same name. There was a digital print of a child and various firearms and a military style uniform hanging in Adam Lanza's bedroom.

Upper West Side a plastic oh no!

When US officials began collecting consumer complaints about credit cards, one goal was to identify patterns that could help them write rules protecting families with low and moderate incomes.

Nearly two years later, its the well-to-do neighborhoods of New York and Florida that are supplying the most grievances to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an analysis of agency data shows.

Of the top four ZIP codes contributing to the 18,539 complaints published as of March 18, two are on Manhattans Upper West Side and two in south Florida Boca Raton and Palm Beach Gardens.

Almost 60 percent of complaints originated in ZIP codes where the median household income is higher than the national median of $52,762, according to the analysis.

The firms cited most often in the disputes are some of the biggest card issuers: Capital One, Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and GE Capital Retail Bank.

The consumer bureau, established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, started collecting complaints about credit cards in July 2011 and works with financial companies to resolve them.

ZIP codes with median annual household incomes higher than the national median generated 11,045 complaints, or 59.6 percent of the total, the data show. Boca Raton ZIP code 33496 produced 94 complaints, the most in the country, while 54 complaints came from Manhattans Upper West Side ZIP codes 10023 and 10024 combined.

Prosperous people can often get upset over small amounts of money. You find these people with a huge net worth worrying about a $3 fee, said Steven Ramirez, the chief executive of Beyond the Arc, a Berkeley, Calif.-based consulting firm that uses the consumer bureaus system to help companies improve customer service.The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation.

Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who set up the bureau before she won a seat in the US Senate, said in March 2011 congressional testimony that the focus on credit cards was meant to help millions of borrowers who use them to pay for medical expenses, to cover educational costs, to tide them over during a period of unemployment, to cover emergency expenses, or simply to make it to the end of the month.

The fact that more complaints are coming from wealthier communities doesnt mean that the bureau is helping those groups disproportionately,The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. said Matt Simester, managing director at Auriemma Consulting Group, a New York-based firm that advises card issuers.

The extensive inventory of the evidence seized from Lanza's home and the car he drove to carry out the massacre provided glimpses into the world of the reclusive gunman.Online shopping for solarpanelcells. Prosecutors until now had made few details available, despite pressure to do so from the governor, who criticized leaks to the press and lawmakers who clamored for more details as they craft legislation on mental health and gun control.

At the house,A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. investigators found books about autism and Asperger's syndrome as well as an NRA guide to pistol shooting.

Police said they found a smashed computer hard drive, a gaming console and a gun safe in Lanza's bedroom. An unnamed source told investigators that Lanza was an avid gamer who played "Call of Duty" and other games and rarely left his home.

The interaction with a credit card terminal or Point of Sale device is a uniquely Econet innovation. A team of software developers, working at the London offices of another Econet company called TPS,The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. developed the software.

Econet has already started rolling out 10 000 terminals across the country that will not only accept the EcoCash Debit Card, but also any of the traditional credit cards such as American Express, Visa, MasterCard, including those issued by local banks, Mr Mandivenga said.

The announcement by Econet Wireless that it has implemented this service for its EcoCash users means that Zimbabwe now has the most advanced cashless system in Africa per head of population when compared with countries such as South Africa, which has one of Africas highest mobile phone penetration rates. It also eases the need for United States dollar banknotes in the country.

Mr Mandivenga said Econet plans to have every store in the country, including rural areas, installed with an EcoCash Terminal. The company will not sell the terminals but will lease them to participating stores and merchants.

The terminals work on the Econet network and are completely wireless and more advanced than those used in many European countries.

At point of sale, the customer initiates a pay merchant transaction from their EcoCash wallet on their phone. The customer will then enter the merchant number and amount, and the EcoCash terminal will print out a merchant copy to be signed by the customer and to keep for their records.

The company contends that it has managed to complete a process of developing a payment system that would have taken at least five years to accomplish.

With Zimbabwe also hosting with neighbours Zambia, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation General Assembly in August this year, it means Zimbabwe will be able to demonstrate that it has the capacity to accommodate even the most sophisticated tourists and visitors, who in their countries would only pay with plastic credit cards.

2013年3月26日 星期二

The East of England's world class chessmeister

The announcement that Warren East will leave his post as CEO of ARM Holdings at the end of June will bring to a close one of the most successful episodes in Cambridges corporate history.

Cut to 2013 and ARM Holdings is Cambridges first $20bn company and far and away the UKs most successful technology firm, having shipped 8.A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp.7 billion chips in 2012 on turnover of 577m C up 17 per cent C with profits for the year standing at 277m, up 20 per cent from 2011.

Mr East has steered the company so successfully that he must qualify as one of the most successful executives ever to do the boardroom walk.

Funnily enough, when I went along to interview him earlier this month his decision hadnt been announced, but it quickly became apparent that East was in a generous and reflective frame of mind.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. Indeed, the first question I asked was what has been his proudest achievement at ARM has been.

I suppose weve matured into a pretty sizeable business, he replied. We were a very successful start-up, however we were only a start-up, because we could only do one processor at a time. So to answer your question its the maturity and sustainability of the business.

Mr East C Ill try and get my head round calling him Warren in a minute C describes his background as half Welsh, half Australian, I was born in Aberdeen and grew up in Wales, so a bit of a mongrel really. He studied engineering at Oxford. From there he went to Texas Instruments (TI) in Bedford and moved over to ARM in 1994 when it was still Advanced RISC Machines (it became ARM Holdings in 1998). I started off running business operations in 1998 when we went public and started doing this job in 2001.

Ive no idea whether ARMs business model guaranteed its success in the last 15 years, but it seems to me that as well as having evolved a game-changing blueprint for chip designs, Lady Luck has not just smiled at the Fulbourn-based firm, shes actually handed over the keys to her inheritance. So how big a part does luck play in business?

Any business that tells you its all hard work and no luck is completely lying to you, is the reply. You do need some luck, and I always preach to the guys working here about making your own luck. In snakes and ladders luck is a good thing but its not something you can build a sustainable business on. Chess on the other hand is a game where you make your own luck, by taking advantage of your position and using it to build for the future. Were playing chess not snakes and ladders.

But of course there are no animal spirits in chess and the whims that the markets are in thrall to are difficult to insure against. Apples last-quarter 2012 results C record turnover at $54.5bn and record profits at $13.1bn C were greeted with a thrashing by the markets that wiped $50bn off its share value. How can you deal with such unpredictability? You cant really, he answers. Its really about managing expectations: if you say the train is due at 10 past 10 but it arrives at 10.20, its late, but if you say itll arrive at 10.30 everybodys happy but really its about being open and transparent with the market about the way people can estimate our business. Since April 1998 to 2013 C 60 quarters C we did a profit warning once. You cant get it right every time.

ARM is currently involved in some great projects, including graphics chips brand Mali and the Internet of Things, plus all sorts of others I guess Warren cant talk in detail about but which probably include Windows 8 and Googles glasses.

The Mali brand was the product of a link that started in 2005 with Kings Langley-based Imagination, which has the same business model as ARM but with a graphics processor, but in 2005 we werent sure that graphics processors would catch on. We thought then the sensible approach was to form a partnership C Imagination came from a dying graphics card company just like we came from a dying computer company (Acorn), so we were quite similar, but in 2006 we decided to go our own way. So Lever has Persil, we have Mali, and its odd in some ways that the two leading firms in this area are both from the UK and its a great achievement.We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. Clearly Imagination are ahead of us because we gave them a great start.

The fact that the graphics processor has no backstory C large-screen TVs are a new phenomenon C is an opportunity not a handicap to ARM. ARM is nothing if not a fast learner: 50 million Mali chips were sold in 2011 via 75 separate licenses to 54 companies, with sales of 240 million predicted for this year. Warren is wary about sounding over-enthusiastic but Mali chips are in more than 50% of all Android tablets, more than 20% of all Android smartphones and more than 70% of graphics-enabled digital TVs. Its particularly interesting because theres nowhere for a graphics processor to hide in a 50-inch TV, he adds, and I figure being a master of low-key insights is an entirely sensible strategy for a company which provides the chips for three-quarters of the worlds nine billion devices connected to the internet.He saw the bracelet at a realtimelocationsystem store while we were on a trip. I mean,Here's a complete list of glassbottles for the beginning oil painter. the next step is world domination, which is impolite.

The Internet of Things Mr East describes as putting intelligence into everyday objects and allowing them to talk to each other. ARM recently joined the Weightless Special Interest Group which is opening up more radio channels to allow the Internet of Things to involve more, um, things to be connected, via a lightweight protocol of just a few bytes. The example he gives is Cambridge-based Enecsys solar panels: the panels he has had installed on the roof of his Norfolk home have enough intelligence to check online to see if theyre all working optimally. If Im a solar farm thats jolly handy. ARM is building the low-power technology to make the Internet of Things work, and its efficacy has already been proven in projects from street lighting to washing machine gadgetry. Were doing it because without communications the Internet of Things isnt real, Warren says, adding that ARMs contribution is to develop a universal software platform. Our engineering teams can re-use the software from one place to another.

Dont have to plug in

With games like hide-and-seek and hopscotch becoming things of the past as children turn to video games and computers, one group has begun a tour to remind kids that it doesnt have to have a plug to be fun.

Video games and smart phones may give kids thumbs a workout, but ParticipACTION wants to bring back unstructured play as a way of improving the all-around health of children.

Kids just arent active enough these days,We provide payment solutions in the USA as well as lasercutter. said Zachary Nash, who is helping promote the program. They dont get a chance to develop that physical literacy.

The 2012 Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card found that 46 per cent of Canadian kids get three hours a week or less of active play each week, including weekends. Unstructured play is seen as an important part of childhood development by many,We printers print with traceable indoortracking to optimize supply chain management. and not only for physical health. Games help kids develop problem-solving, decision-making and social skills and encourage creativity.

This type of play has been in decline in recent decades, with distractions like television and games consoles occupying the free time of children.

ParticipACTION, in partnership with the B.C. Ministry of Health and Healthy Families B.C., aims to reverse that trend with its Bring Back Play Funmobile by encouraging kids to get out and play.

The Funmobile, a brightly-coloured truck laden with balls, hoops, chalk and the like, is coming to the North Island to promote old-fashioned games like Tag and California Kickball as part of its B.C.-wide tour.

Lets bring back play and give kids the unstructured active time that used to be part of every childhood, said Kelly Murumets, President and CEO of ParticipACTION. Lets offer them options besides computers and TV, and work with our neighbours to address safety concerns,Here's a complete list of glassbottles for the beginning oil painter. so that our kids have the chance to run around freely, let loose and direct their own activities. Theyll be happier, healthier and stronger for it!

The Funmobile will be in Port McNeill at Sunset Elementary and Chesalakees Elementary on April 4, moving to Robinson Park after school. The team will visit Alert Bay Elementary the next day before going to Port Hardys Rec. Centre and Carrot Park on April 6.

Such gizmos are meant to reduce overcrowding and help manage the spiraling costs of incarceration by allowing offenders to serve their sentences at home. Thanks to the almighty smartphone, offenders can be under the constant gaze of case managers, who will monitor their activities in real time. Welcome to the Panopticon for couch potatoes.

Deloittes proposal also taps a favorite Silicon Valley trick C a tactic known as gamification C to award the participating offenders with points for not being late for their appointments or never leaving their assigned zone. A sufficient number of points, the authors say,Shop the best selection of owonsmart for Men. would earn the offender tangible benefits such as additional freedom or extended curfews.

That smartphones allow us to imprison twice the number of people at half the cost is the kind of cutting-edge innovation that only management consultants and tech entrepreneurs would be excited about. Such breakthroughs would be worth celebrating if they didnt distract us from the more radical (and simpler) solution to the problem of overcrowded prisons: incarcerating fewer people.

Intelling publishes Smart Insights Reports, complete studies on the secure transaction industry. Smart Insights Reports are off-the-shelf research reports providing key facts and figures as well as strategic insights about a technology, a geographical area or a major issue in the secure transaction industry.

Thierry Spanjaard, CEO of Smart Insights will give a conference titled Nano-SIM adopted. Embedded SIM announced. What's next for SIM Integration in Mobile Handsets? The conference will refer to the recent Smart Insights Report eUICC, a disruption in the SIM market, which delivers a thorough analysis of the eUICC (embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card) technology and its potential in the consumer handset market. The eUICC concept consists in replacing the detachable SIM that has been present since the inception of mobile communication by a chip soldered on the handset motherboard performing the same functions. Such a technology evolution will trigger changes in the whole mobile communication ecosystem, as the customer relationship management may shift from the mobile network operator to the handset vendor.

Thierry Spanjaard conference Nano-SIM adopted. Embedded SIM announced. What's next for SIM Integration in Mobile Handsets? will take place on Wednesday 27 March, 4.00 pm. Thierry Spanjaard is also a member of the jury for the Asian Sesames Awards that will be announced during the event.

Artur Khakimov, analyst with Smart Insights will give a conference titled BYOD: The Secure Transactions Industry brings Solutions! the conference will refer to the latest Smart Insights Report Smart authentication to tackle BYOD issues. The report provides its readers with a comprehensive analysis of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) market, authentication solutions, their future adoption scenarios and impact on the smart authentication solutions market.The world with high-performance solar roadway and solarlamp solutions. Smart mobile authentication devices ensure that only the right person with right information access privileges gets his hand on the corporate data. Traditional smart solutions used for logical access include smart cards, One-Time-Password (OTP) generators and USB tokens. Today, we can state as a fact that software solutions in some way cannibalize smart authentication solutions.

Free to Spend, Dont Spend Freely

Lance Berkman does not wear his championship ring from the 2011 World Series. It is too gaudy, he said, and he would rather not draw attention to himself.The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important.

But that should not imply he is shy about the achievement. Berkman earned the ring with the St. Louis Cardinals by hitting .423 against his new team, the Texas Rangers. In the 10th inning of Game 6, when the Rangers were one strike from their first title, Berkman denied them with a game-tying single off Scott Feldman.

The Cardinals won that night, and the next, and now Berkman is here, at 37, with a chance to make amends. He gladly reminds teammates that he has what they wanted. Its fun to dig these guys on occasion about it, Berkman said. Those are bragging rights that will last for a long time.

Berkman considered retirement after last season, when he played only 32 games and had two operations on his right knee. He was not a priority for the Rangers, who had hoped for much bigger moves after losing the American League West to Oakland on the final day of the regular season and dropping the wild-card game to Baltimore.

The Rangers tried to retain the star outfielder Josh Hamilton. They negotiated with the free-agent starter Zack Greinke. They explored trades for starter James Shields and outfielder Justin Upton. The off-season seemed full of possibility.

We all know that you dont win by making announcements in the winter but theyre fun, General Manager Jon Daniels said. We all like doing them. We all want to put the big gift under the tree.

Berkman was not exactly coal in the stocking. Two years ago, he hit .301 with 31 homers and 94 runs batted in. Mickey Mantle is the only switch-hitter in major league history with a better career on-base percentage than Berkmans .409 (minimum 3,000 plate appearances).

But with last seasons injury, and his own ambivalence, Berkman was not in high demand. When all their targets wound up elsewhere, the Rangers had to overwhelm him with a one-year, $11 million offer.

I was O.We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs.K. with not playing, Berkman said, and they made it tough to turn it down.A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case.

The Rangers made other short-term commitments, signing catcher A. J. Pierzynski to replace Mike Napoli and the setup man Joakim Soria to replace Mike Adams. They also traded Michael Young, the teams career leader in hits, to Philadelphia for reliever Josh Lindblom and a prospect.

It was an off-season without sizzle. But it was consistent with the Rangers sensible approach under Daniels, who was promoted this month to president for baseball operations but still reports to the chief executive, Nolan Ryan.

The Rangers have made high-impact moves, signing third baseman Adrian Beltre after their appearance in the 2010 World Series and starter Yu Darvish before last season. But they have avoided the kinds of debilitating long-term deals that have handcuffed so many of their peers.

Boston,You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. Philadelphia, Detroit, the Chicago Cubs, the New York teams, the Los Angeles teams, even Seattle and Cincinnati have absorbed significant risk in keeping their stars or chasing free agents. The Rangers, hardened by the lessons from Alex Rodriguezs first free agency in 2000, never act out of desperation.

Its almost like were a big-market club with big-market resources, but you try to have a little bit more of that smaller-market mind-set and discipline, Daniels said.

Because, really, thats why we were good in the first place, he said. We had a $65-70 million payroll in 2010. It was making good baseball decisions. We just dont want to do anything thats going to short-circuit our ability to win long-term.

The Rangers seem to have a sharper understanding of value than most of their rivals. Consider that they paid Hamilton a little more than $28 million for the last five seasons, during which he made five All-Star teams and won a Most Valuable Player award. The Angels will pay him $125 million for the next five years. Which five-year period is likely to be more productive?

The Dodgers will pay Greinke $147 million for the next six years, even though he has only once ranked among his leagues top five in innings or earned run average. Greinke has been slowed by elbow trouble this spring, raising more questions about his durability.

Of course, the Rangers pursued both players, and flirted with the idea of blockbuster trades. But the contracts for Hamilton and Greinke, and the price in prospects for Shields and Upton, did not seem responsible to Daniels.

Had we wanted to sign Josh to the kind of deal he got, or more, we could have done it, he said. We knew what the prices were on Shields and Upton; we werent willing to do it. Greinke was probably the one we were closest to, but he gave us a price, at one point, that was more than he ultimately got with the Dodgers, and we chose not to do that. Id love to have those guys.

Instead, he has a team without anyone making more than $16 million, including three starters Darvish, Matt Harrison and Derek Holland signed through at least 2016. The bullpen might be thin, with Alexi Ogando joining the rotation and Soria still recovering from elbow surgery,How cheaply can I build a solarpanel? but the Rangers should contend.

The winning is the No. 1 thing, said Pierzynski, the longtime White Sox catcher, explaining why Texas appealed to him. I know from playing against them, it always seemed like it was fun. They always seemed like they were having a good time and they always had good players. They want to win, they expect to win, and thats a good, fun thing to walk into.

The Rangers have enough depth in young position players Leonys Martin, Mike Olt, Jurickson Profar to expect to stay competitive this season and beyond. Daniels has a track record of acquiring talent in midseason, and believes the players will trust him to do so, if needed.

Yet he knows, deep down, that the fans and the core of the team probably expected more this off-season. Smart shopping and careful long-term planning feel only so satisfying in a competitive industry.

2013年3月24日 星期日

Pill mill bill good first step

The bill, approved in the Senate Thursday, would license and regulate pain management clinics, and require the owner to be a doctor. The law would stop short of requiring doctors or pharmacists to use a state registry to track how much of a painkiller a person is receiving, which some neighboring states have done. The bill, which already passed the House, now goes to Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. A spokesman declined to say whether the governor would sign it.

For Bartow-Cartersville Drug Task Force Commander Capt. Mark Mayton, whose agency was lead in busting a pill mill operating at 16 Collins Drive,Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap. Cartersville, in 2011, said the law, if signed by Deal, would be the beginning of what needs to be tougher legislation targeting such operations.

Honestly, I dont think its enough. We need to be tracking the amount thats being dispensed, who its being dispensed to, he said. Its a good first step. I believe having the doctors own the clinics is a good first step because theres ... a higher accountability level for the physicians. They stand to lose a lot more than just what they have in their pocket. They lose their licenses, their livelihoods, so the accountability will be better there. I do believe they need to get the tracking system up and running.

Georgia passed legislation in 2011 to create a program to track prescription drugs dispensed here, but it isn't expected to start operating until May, in part because of a delay in funding.

A pain clinic is defined in the bill as a medical enterprise where at least half of the patient population is being treated for chronic pain. Affected businesses would have to get a state license beginning in July. Licenses would have to be renewed every two years.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors.

The proposal would also require new pain clinics to be owned by physicians licensed in Georgia. Existing clinics where non-physicians have ownership with doctors would be allowed to remain open.

As with the Collins Drive facility, the dozens of pain clinics across Georgia that authorities believe are illegally prescribing or dispensing the drugs often have parking lots full of out-of-state license plates, evidence that people are coming from hundreds of miles to seize on an unregulated industry.

There are legitimate pain clinics out there. People have chronic pain, but when we have people traveling to these pain clinics and none of them live in the state of Georgia, that is a clue,We printers print with traceable indoortracking to optimize supply chain management. Mayton said. Thats a red flag to us that it is not a legitimate medical facility rendering legitimate medical care to people who have chronic pain.

Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi have all passed laws targeting such pain clinics, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"We're one of the few states in the Southeast that hasn't touched it, so we're the place that all these out-of-towners come," said Attorney General Sam Olens. "It's a huge problem that's killing our kids, and we need to be going after the bad actors and protecting the professionals."

Sometimes and I stress sometimes what happens is you get people who have legitimate injuries that take these pain medications to relieve the pain and they become addicted to them, Mayton said. But, the back side of that is, there are people out there who will exploit their weaknesses dealers, you know, Ive got all you need. ... They will actually send multiple people to multiple clinics, pay them to go, pay their bill, give them a little bit of the pills to bring back the bulk of the pills to them so they can distribute them and sell them.

The most common pills dealers and addicts want are oxycodone and hydrocodone, which are highly addictive. Some shop around the state, gathering prescriptions from numerous clinics before returning home to sell the drugs.

We call it the slang term, hillbilly heroin, because it has the same properties as heroin, Mayton said. You get the same physiological effects from oxycodone and hydrocodone as you would from heroin. Probably the best way to describe it is, its a downer. It depresses all your senses, your central nervous system. You get a stuporing, drunken, lethargic effect from it.

According to estimates from the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency, there were fewer than 10 pill mills in the state in 2010, while the number has exploded since then, fluctuating between 90 and 140 over the last year.

Because some pain clinics are legitimate, prosecuting those that aren't can be difficult, said Barbara Heath, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's diversion program in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. If the prescriber is a doctor and not someone forging prescriptions prosecutors must prove the pills aren't for a medical need.

Currently, the Georgia Medical Board oversees the guidelines for how physicians prescribe medication to patients.

When we first initiated this pill mill case, we consulted with several physicians, some of whom were on the medical board. And one of the statements that was made to us was the amount of drugs that they were ... prescribing at the pain clinic they would give to a stage IIWI cancer patient.The term 'cableties control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. So, you know, youve got a stage III cancer patient whos getting less than a person whos going in here to buy these drugs to sell on the street. Wheres the justice in that? Mayton said.

Other red flags include clinics with a large percentage of out-of-state patients, patients receiving the same large amount of the same drug and clinics with a bouncer at the door.

Certainly, we do not want to deprive anybody who has legitimate medical conditions, but by the same token, we dont want to be putting drugs on the street, increasing the addiction, the crime rate, so there needs to be some intervention there, Mayton said. I was a proponent for it early on to do some legislation,The Motorola drycabinets Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. but I said that, in that legislation, there needs to be some teeth in that gives us ... authority to deal with those pill mills other than administratively dealing with them. There needs to be criminal consequences or penalties for running an illegitimate pill mill.

Mayton said the tough stance on the Collins Drive clinic has sent a message to such operations about the countys position on pill mills.

I honestly dont believe we will see any pain clinics here in the near future, referring to our current case that we have going on with the pill mill, without going into any details because the case hasnt been adjudicated yet totally, he said. There has been some pleas entered in the case, some guilty pleas, and we are waiting for the rest of the case to come to a close so we can get full adjudication on the case.

Horan happy but more work to do

The biting cold of the tunnel under the stand in McHale Park was the venue for James Horan's latest debriefing with the press pack following Mayo's sixth game in this years national league. In a freezing cold wind that wouldn't be out of place at the start of the FBD League, things were kept short and to the point. Asked about his initial thoughts on the game the Ballintubber man said, We showed a lot of character and hard work and honest endeavor today, so I'm delighted with that. We made hard enough work of it from a scoring point of view. We turned over a huge amount of their ball, we won a huge number of turn overs today, so that's ultimately what won it for us today. I'm delighted with the two points and we can look forward now.

Mayo ran up another double digit total of wides over the seventy minutes and that's something that he knows has to be improved on. We should have won it by a lot more, but we didn't and we lacked maybe a bit of confidence and panicking on the shot. But we kept going and kept plugging away so that's far more rewarding and beneficial for the team, we got the two points and we're delighted. In all the games we've played, we've played a lot of good football at times, but we've been way to inconsistent for division one football. We kept it going today and that was our first aim.Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap.

Mayo also managed to grab themselves a goal from a forward for the first time in a long time. But it was only a matter of time before it happened Horan said, It's the first goal by a forward this year I think, but we've been creating some chances of late, so it was only a matter of time before one or two of them go in.

Where to play Aidan O'Shea has become a water cooler topic around the county, with the big Breaffy man posted at centre half forward again on Sunday. James was happy with Aidan's overall play and that of the midfield duo he selected behind him. Aidan played very well today,Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. he's a very, very smart player and he did very well. He covered a lot defensively, and he got's got some streaking power going forward as well. Look at it, Barry and Seamie were excellent in the middle of the field as well, so that's working for us.

With Cork left in the league in a fortnights time it's all about picking the win up there and not looking past it for Horan. It's the same as it was before, it's a game we've got to go down and win. You wan't competitive games and you want as many competitive games as you can. If you can get to the semi-finals all the better, but if not it's not the end of the world either.

With Congress passing the 'black card' motion yesterday, the Mayo manager was asked his view on the the decision and how it thought it would effect the game. I don't know if it will bed in that seamlessly.Choose from the largest selection of plasticmoulds in the world. It's hard to know how it will work. I know if you looked at last nights game, I saw on Twitter that there would have been 12 or 14 black cards out there. I'm not sure of the full rules but it will be interesting to see. I think the refs have a difficult job, I think there's a lot of inconsistency in referring and this might add to the confusion. If it improves the game, we've no choice to go with it at this stage and lets see what it does.

After all, Akufo-Addo is fighting to be Ghanas President and we all know how the leadership crisis facing our country has negatively affected its development efforts. We must know what sort of leader he might beand character counts a lot, doesnt it?

I begin with this observation, which is my main beef: Despite all that he is suffering from his detractors, Akufo-Addo hasnt been bold to sue anybody defaming his character all these years. Why?

That he is happy to be constantly defamed by all manner of people? That he is a peace-lover and, therefore, wont take action against those defaming his character? Or simply that he is not interested in litigation on that score, even though the allegations continue to paint him black and damage his political interests? My inference is simple: he is a victim of his own miscalculation.

You see, when the outcome of Election 2012 was announced and Akufo-Addo felt politically hurt, he didnt leave anything to chance. He dashed to the Supreme Court to seek redress, pursuing his petition with an unprecedented alacrity. He did so because he felt something wrong had been done to him and wont relent, even when some voices in his own political camp have questioned the justification for the lawsuit.

We see a different aspect of Akufo-Addo when it comes to the tarnishing of his image by detractors. Does he not feel that something bad is being done to him to warrant his being concerned enough to seek redress? We recall that he retreated instead of attacking,How cheaply can I build a bobbleheads?Find a great selection of customkeychain deals. except on one occasion when he made a half-hearted attempt to sue those making the allegations that ended in smoke; that threat to sue those making the allegations didnt lead anywhere nor did the allegations stop being made.

When Kofi Coomson (Ghanaian Chronicle) said before the 2008 elections that he couldnt sleep with his eyes shut if Akufo-Addo became Ghanas President, he raised many eyebrows. Akufo-Addo didnt challenge Coomson on that score, leaving Ghanaians wondering if he didnt think that utterance was damaging to his reputation.

Akufo-Addo had the best chance in his life to take prompt legal action over those allegations when the Wikileaks wire taps on happenings in Ghana (courtesy the US Embassy) were published, one of which revealed Kwesi Pratts damning allegations of wee-smoking against him.

What did he do, even when he had documentary evidence to act decisively to end the spate of allegations? He glossed over such damning revelations with a mere shrug of the shoulders and sought refuge in Ehuru a ebe dwo (The boiling or blustering will eventually simmer down). Silence is golden!

Why it's insulting to suggest that women vote along gender lines

On Saturday I had breakfast with a friend I have known most of my life. We went to school and university together and she is now a scientist turned public servant living in Canberra.

We discussed the ongoing drama of the Labor Party. My friend lamented the inevitability of a change of government. Although my friend is a smart, strong woman who would undoubtedly define herself as a feminist, she didn't vote for the government in the last election just because the party leader is a woman. Like many women I know who voted Labor in the last election, the gender card had very little to do with it.

It wasn't even about misogyny, and it won't be again when we vote this year. It's insulting for political commentators to suggest women are that simplistic in our judgment.Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host besticcard platforms.

Also, there are not just two types of women, as suggested by Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine yesterday. Women who would rather speak with men are not necessarily men's women. It's not that black and white. Women are not either flirtatious with men or supportive of women. Miranda was clearly making a point to skewer PM Gillard as a man's woman. I have no idea how our PM conducts herself in mixed company but why should she have to prefer the company of women because she is a woman?

At the odd dinner party, I have been known to slip into the kitchen with my husband and the rest of the men to discuss politics and the economy. Does that make me a man's woman? I would argue not. I love the company of my girlfriends. I have made a career of supporting women. But I prefer to ignore the gender divide if there is a better discussion to be had. I manage a business during my working week and so have things in common with some of the men.Shop for rtls dolls from the official NBC Universal Store and build a fun collection for your home or office. Our Prime Minister may be a woman but as she is running a country with a majority male leadership team then perhaps it seems reasonable that she would spend time consulting some men. When her time in office comes to an end I will be keen to see if the women in the Cabinet and Outer Ministry accuse Gillard of excluding them. The strong public support that she receives from women like Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong and Kate Lundy would suggest the opposite.

When we head to the polls this year my friends and I will be voting for the party we believe will do the best job of leading this country.The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. We care less about gender and more about character, smarts and policies. Which is why my friend had her head in her hands at what she saw as the inevitability of a change of government following the 'leadership challenge that wasn't' debacle.

The Liberal Party policies on industrial relations, climate change, women's health and asylum seekers have characterized Tony Abbott during his political career. My friend cares less that he may or may not be a misogynist and more that he is extremely politically conservative. She doesn't care that he's not a woman but is concerned that his own party appears to have advised him to keep his mouth shut lest he stick his foot in it by saying what he really means.

Almost three decades after the first subway train rumbled beneath Main Street, Buffalo's Metro Rail system is about to assume the role that was intended and transport thousands of city residents to homes, work and play.

The catalyst is the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, where 17,500 people are expected to be working soon, and they will depend more than ever on the oft-maligned train to nowhere.

As a result, at least $91 million has or is soon to be invested in real estate projects C primarily lofts and apartments C near the subway stations. The city hopes to approve 800 to 900 new housing units along the Main Street subway spine by 2016, with as many as 2,000 to 3,000 more in later years, according to Brendan R. Mehaffy, the Brown administration's executive director of strategic planning.

The demand is there, he said. On a fairly regular basis, we have housing builders come to start taking advantage of what's happening.

And while they now see Metro Rail finally fulfilling its transit and development potential, transit officials, real estate developers, city officials and those guiding the city's burgeoning medical industry all agree the development will spawn an urban lifestyle. It is also possible many Buffalonians may choose not to own cars, they say.

When it comes to ruggedized smartphones, there's not much that can be said for style, but the Torque manages to keep a respectable profile despite the additional padding. Folks will know you mean business, but they won't wonder why you've stumbled out of a construction zone with an industrial walkie-talkie. However, when you want to keep it out of sight you'll find it slips comfortably in and out of jean pockets. In general, extracting a portly smartphone from your pocket can be a challenge, especially if it has a rubberized shell, but the Torque's plastic exterior is minimally gummy, which makes the whole affair an easy process.

Rather than relying on a specialized coating to make the device withstand the elements (see: the Xperia Z or Liquipel), the Torque uses seals and flaps to keep out dust and water.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. For example, the battery cover packs a rubber lining that locks up vital components and keeps the handset from being breached. The backside also sports a metal lock mechanism to keep the entire cover in place. Fortunately, it's easy enough to turn with your nail or the tip of a finger, but it's not so loose that it's likely to open accidentally. A 3.5mm headphone jack sits atop the headset, also hidden beneath a flap, and it's flanked by a pair of buttons: one for switching power on and off, and another to toggle speaker mode for Sprint's Direct Connect feature. The speaker mode button on one of our test units appeared to be somewhat stuck and didn't depress as it should have,The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. but on another, it felt considerably more tactile. We suspect the damage might have been sustained during one of our drop tests.

2013年3月21日 星期四

'The Burgess Boys,' By Elizabeth Strout

The colors of Central Park were quietly fall-like: the grass a faded green and the red oaks bronzed, the lindens changing to gentle yellow, the sugar maples losing their orangey leaves, one ?oating here, another fall-ing there, but the sky was very blue and the air warm enough that the windows of the Boathouse were still open at this late afternoon hour, the striped awnings extending over the water. Pam Carlson, seated at the bar, gazed out at the few boats being rowed, everything slow- motion- seeming, even the bartenders, who worked with unhurried steadiness, washing glasses, shaking martinis, sliding their wet hands over their black aprons.

And then like that the place ?lled up. Through the door they came, businessmen shedding their jackets, women ?ipping back their hair, tourists moving forward with slightly stunned looks,Here's a complete list of miningtruck for the beginning oil painter. the men hold-ing backpacks that carried a bottle of water in a netted pocket on the side, as though they had hiked a mountain all day, their wives holding a map, a camera, the conferring of their confusion.

"No, my husband's sitting there," Pam said when a German couple started to move the tall chair beside her. She put her handbag on the chair. "Sorry," she added. Years of living in New York had taught her many things: how to parallel park, for example, or intimidate a taxi driver who claimed to be off-duty, how to return merchandise that was suppos-edly nonreturnable, or to say without apology "This is the line" when someone tried to cut ahead at the post of?ce. In fact, living in New York, Pam thought, poking through her bag for her cell phone to check the time, was a perfect example of what great generals had understood throughout history: that the person who cared the most won. "A Jack Daniel's on the rocks with lemon," she told the bartender, tapping the counter next to her untouched glass of wine. "For my husband. Thanks."

Pam had come straight from the hospital where she worked twice a week as an intake assessor, and she'd have liked to go and wash her hands now but if she got up the Germans would take her seat.You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. Her friend Janice Bernstein who had dropped out of medical school years ago said Pam should wash her hands the minute she left work; hospi-tals were just petri dishes of bacteria, and Pam agreed completely. In spite of her frequent use of hand- sanitizing lotion (which dried the skin), the thought of this vast array of waiting germs made Pam very anxious. Janice said that Pam was very anxious about too many things, she really should try to control it, not just to be more comfortable but because her anxiety caused her to appear socially eager,We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. and that was not cool. Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that's one reason it was always nice to see Bobby, who was so uncool as to inhabit in Pam's mind his own private condominium of coolness.

Years ago when she was married to Bob Pam had worked as a re-search assistant to a parasitologist whose specialty was tropical diseases. Pam had spent her days in a lab looking through an electron microscope at the cells of Schistosoma, and because she loved facts the way an art-ist would love color, because she experienced a quiet thrill at the preci-sion science aimed for, she had loved the days she'd spent in that lab. When she heard on the television about the incident in Shirley Falls, saw the imam walking away from the storefront mosque on a downtown street that looked terribly deserted, all sorts of feelings ?ooded her, not the least being an almost out-of-body nostalgia for a town that had once been familiar to her, but also and almost immediately a concern for the Somalis. She'd right away looked into it: Yes, those refugees who came from the southern regions of Somalia had showed Schistosoma haematobium eggs in their urine, but the bigger problem was not sur-prisingly to Pam malaria, and before they were allowed to come to the United States they were given a single dose of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine for malaria parasitemia, and also albendazole for intestinal parasite ther-apy. What concerned Pam more, though, was learning that the Somali Bantu a darker- skinned group,The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. apparently shunned in Somalia,An bestrtls is a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. having come there as slaves from Tanzania and Mozambique a couple of cen-turies before showed a much higher rate of schistosomiasis and, ac-cording to what Pam had read from the International Organization for Migration, also serious mental health problems of trauma and depres-sion. The Somali Bantu, the Organization said, had certain supersti-tions: They might burn the skin of areas affected by disease, or pull out the baby teeth of a small child with diarrhea.

Part of what Pam felt when she read that was what she felt now re-membering it: I am living the wrong life. It was a thought that made no sense. It's true she missed the smells of a lab: acetone, paraf?n, alcohol, formaldehyde. She missed the swoosh of a Bunsen burner, the glass slides and pipettes, the particular and deep concentration of those around her. But she had twin boys now with white skin, perfect teeth, no burn marks anywhere and lab work was a life of the past. Still, the variety of problems, parasitological and psychological, of this refugee population made Pam feel homesick for whatever life she was not hav-ing, a life that would not feel so oddly wrong.

These days life was her townhouse, her boys and their private school, her husband, Ted, who ran the New Jersey of?ce of a large pharmaceu-tical company and so had a reverse commute, her part- time job at the hospital, and a social life that required seemingly endless deliveries from the dry cleaners. But Pam was often homesick. For what? She could not have said, and it made her ashamed. Pam drank more wine, looked behind her, and there stepping through the foyer of the Boat-house bar was dear Bob, like a big St. Bernard dog. He could have been wearing a wooden cask of whiskey around his neck, ready to paw through the autumn leaves to get someone out. Oh, Bobby!

Bob opened his hand upward. "I don't know. The problem could be with the civil rights woman in the state AG's of?ce. I did a little research today. Her name's Diane Dodge. She joined the AG's of?ce a couple years ago after doing civil rights work in all the right places, and she's probably gung ho. If she decides to go ahead with a civil rights violation and Zach's found guilty of it, screws up on any of the conditions, then he could go to jail for up to a year. It's not impossible, is what I'm saying. And who knows what the Feds will do. I mean, it's nuts."

Eddie Huang Rejects Model Minority Label

An incident in the school cafeteria when he was nine clarified things for him.

This kid Edgar pulled me by my shirt, threw me to the ground in the lunch line and said Chinks get to the back. And it wasnt that I realized, people made me realize what I was, Huang told Here & Nows Robin Young.

Eddie Huangs outsider status made him identify more with hip-hop artists like Tupac Shakur, rather than the model minority Asian stereotype. Through high school and college he got into fights, as well as scrapes with the law.

My mom always wanted to send food back. Everything on the side, some things hot, some things cold, no MSG, less oil, more chilis, oh, and some vinegar please. Black vinegar with green chilis if you have it, if not, red vinegar with ginger, and if you dont have that, then just white vinegar by itself and a can of Coke, not diet because diet causes cancer.

Microwaves cause cancer, too, so she buys a Foreman grill and wears a SARS mask because oil fumes can ruin lungs, says the woman who smokes Capri cigarettes and drives an SUV wearing a visor. Thats my mom.

I couldnt eat with my mom; she drove me crazy. But she never bothered my grandfather. He was always above the trees.A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. Like 3 Stacks said, Whats cooler than cool? Ice cold. That was Grandpa: a six- foot- tall, long faced, droopy- eyed Chinaman who subsisted on a cocktail of KFC, boiled peanuts, and cigarettes. Thinking back on it, my grandfather created the ultimate recipe for pancreatic cancer. At the time we had that lunch, hed been battling it for a while,Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. but we tried not to talk about it. That day, we just ate soup dumplings.

Xiang wei is the character a good dish has when its robust, flavorful, and balanced but still maintains a certain light quality. That flavor comes, lingers on your tongue, stays long enough to make you crave it, but just when you think you have it figured out, its gone. Timing is everything. Soup dumplings, sitcoms, one- night stands good ones leave you wanting more.

The perfect soup dumpling has eighteen folds. Taipeis Din Tai Fung restaurant fi gured this out in the mid- eighties. While Americans had Pyrex visions, Taiwan was focused on soup dumplings. My grandparents on my fathers side lived right on Yong Kang Jie, where Din Tai Fung was founded. To this day, it is the single most famous restaurant in Taipei, the crown jewel of the pound-for-pound greatest eating island in the world. Din Tai Fung started off as an oil retailer, but business took a dive in the early eighties and they did what any Taiwanese- Chinese person does when they need to get buckets. You break out the family recipe and go hammer. Din Tai Fung was like the Genco Olive Oil of Taipei. Undefeated.

The dough is where Din Tai Fung stays the hood champ. Its just strong enough to hold the soup once the gelatin melts, but if you pick it up by the knob and look closely at the skin, its almost translucent. They create a light, airy texture for the skin that no one else has been able to duplicate. I remember going back to Din Tai Fung when I was twenty-seven and saying to myself, Theyre off ! Its just not as satisfying as I remember it to be! But two hours later, walking around Taipei, all I could think about was their f****** soup dumplings. Across the street from Din Tai Fung was another restaurant that served soup dumplings and made a business of catching the spillover when people didnt want to wait an hour for a table. They were really close to the real deal. Like the first year Reebok had AI and you thought that maybe, just maybe, the Questions with the honeycomb would outsell Jordans. A false alarm.

Grandpa Huang put on for Yong Kang Jie and never cheated on the original. On the other hand,An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. Grandpa Chiao, my mothers father, had money on his mind and really didnt have time for things like soup dumplings. He was the type of guy who would go across the street without thinking twice. He would be fully aware Din Tai Fung was better, but he was a businessman.The world with high-performance solar roadway and solarlamp solutions. He had things to do and never lost sight of them. Everything was calculated with my grandfather. On his desk, there was always this gold- plated abacus. Whenever something needed to be calculated, the other employees would use calculators, but Grandpa beat them to the punch every time. With his fingers on the abacus, he looked as slick as a three- card monte hustler. I loved hearing the sound: tat, tat, tat, rap, tat, tat, tat. After tapping the beads, hed always reset them all with one downward stroke, whap, and out came the answer. Hed much rather save an hour, eat some perfectly fine soup dumplings, and go on his way.

Mom had other plans. She was my grandpas youngest and loudest child. Mom claims she was his favorite, and I cant say I dont believe her. Grandpa loved her because she was entertaining and full of energy. As a kid, she took the Taiwanese national academic exam and got into all the best schools in Taipei. After she came to America as a seventeen-year-old, she managed to graduate as the salutatorian of her high school, even though she barely spoke English. On top of that, shes still the best cook in the family. My cousins love talking about things they dont know about and everyone claims their parents are the best, but even the aunts admit my mom goes hard in the paint.

That day, my uncle Joe from my dads side was with us at Yi Ping Xiao Guan. I think he actually discovered the spot, because it was in Maryland, where he lived. Earlier that day, Grandpa had asked me where I wanted to go for my sixth birthday. He figured Id say Chuck E. Cheese or McDonalds, but Momma didnt raise no fool. Chuck E. Cheese was for mouth breathers and kids with Velcro shoes. I want to go where they have the best soup dumplings!

I really liked Uncle Joe. He built three of the major bridges in D.C. and wore these big, thick black-rimmed glasses. I was into glasses, especially goggles, because Kareem wore them and he had the ill sky hook.You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents.

After we ate, I was kinda pissed with the s***ty soup dumplings. It was my birthday! Yi Ping Xiao Guan, you cant come harder than this for the kid? Chuck E. Cheese can serve s***ty food cause you get to smash moles and play Skee- Ball after lunch. But all you have are soup dumplings! How could you f*** this up? Yi Ping Xiao Guan was like Adam Morrison: your job is to slap Kobes ass when the Lakers call time out. If you cant do that, shoot yourself. As I sat there, pissed off, I saw a waiter pouring off- brand soy sauce into the Wanjashan Soy Sauce bottles. Corner cutting, bootleg, off- brand- soy- pouring Chinamen!

Surprise successes at terrific Cheltenham

I made no secret of the fact that I wasnt too optimistic about our chances going into the meeting, but by the time Manyriverstocross had finished third in the County Hurdle everyone at Barbury Castle was beaming from ear to ear.

In fact, I dont recall such a good atmosphere around the place as I experienced last Thursday morning, having had a memorable one-two in the Coral Cup thanks to Medinas and Meister Eckhart.

Having watched Balder Succes unseat Wayne [Hutchinson] in the Champion Hurdle on the Tuesday (my only runner) things started much better on Wednesday with a fine third from Godsmejudge in the John Oaksey National Hunt Chase.

It was a solid effort behind Back in Focus and Tofino Bay, who were rated 150 and 149 respectively.We sell 100% hand-painted werkzeugbaus online. To my mind the standard of this race goes up every year and my fellow gave us something to smile about with a typically gutsy run. He has been walking around the estate this week and seems none the worse for his efforts, but I dont think he will be in the Aintree team as the Scottish National looks a better option for him.

Two Rockers was the next out and sadly the ground was a little too lively for him in the Neptune,A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. but his future lies over fences and I am not sure if he will run again this term.

I ran Medinas and Meister Eckhart in the Coral Cup as both were in good form and had to take their chances.

As I said in last weeks column, I knew Meister Eckhart was in very good order but I was concerned that Medinas was up against it with an 8lb rise in his handicap mark. How wrong was I?

Meister Eckhart was up with the pace most of the way and turning for home looked like he could play a serious hand, but I had noticed at the top of the hill that the little horse [Medinas] was making steady headway under a patient ride.

Meister Eckhart has come out of the race very well and we will consider Aintree. Next season he will be sent novice chasing and is an extremely exciting prospect.

Medinas has plenty of options including Aintree and Punchestown, but we will take things one day at a time. He is barely 16hh so it could be that we will keep him hurdling next season and raise him in class. If he improves as much as he has this term then who knows where he will take us.

My only other runner on Wednesday, McVicar, ran okay in the Fred Winter but was not good enough. I feel a step up in trip will help him now.

Driving out of Prestbury Park having bagged a first, second and third was a wonderful feeling and its fair to say we had a drink or two that evening.

Bakbenscher was my first runner on Thursday and he ran well to finish just outside of the money when seventh of 24 in the Pertemps Final. I was worried the ground would be lively enough for him, but Wayne said he handled it well and this was a solid effort.

Smad Place hadnt shown his best form since the 2012 World Hurdle, but I knew he was bouncing ahead of last weeks contest and he ran a cracking race to finish third behind Solwhit. He stayed on pleasingly in the closing stages and assuming he is still pleasing me will head to Aintree. As for next year he could be a very exciting novice chaser.

The ground had dried out on the Thursday, which was not ideal for Walkon in the Byrne Plate. It was a pity it wasnt run a day later, but nevertheless he ran with credit to be fifth. That was over 2m5f, but on good ground he would be more effective over three miles.

The only disappointing effort from one of my 14-runner Cheltenham team came from Bless The Wings, who pulled up in the same race. We will run a few checks on him this week and see if we can explain his performance.

On the final day the outstanding performance of my team, and one of the best of the whole week, was that of Manyriverstocross, who was third in the County Hurdle.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions.

For a horse having only his second run in two and a half years it was a huge effort. He appears to have come out of the race in top form and I may consider upping him to 2m4f next.

Kumbeshwar took a hell of a tumble early on in the Grand Annual and left Wayne a little sore, but thankfully both are fine despite a little bruising. He was ridden out on Monday morning and was as sound as a pound.

We finished the week with a first,When describing the location of the problematic howotipper. second and three thirds, which was well above expectations.You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. If I had been offered that at the start of the week I would have gladly taken it. Every trainer says one winner makes the festival week and I could not agree more.

It was back to the bread and butter on Saturday but we were still among the winners when Salmanazar landed the 2m5f novice hurdle at Kempton.

He had progressed with each run and I wasnt at all surprised to see him open his account here. We will try to win another similar race under a penalty as has been raised 16lb to a mark of 133. He is another who will be among the novice chase team next autumn.

I took great encouragement from The Pirates Queen, who finished a fine second on her debut in the bumper. We were desperate to get a run into her as this was the cut-off point if we were going to run her in the Aintree mares bumper next month.

The disappointment of the day was watching Tante Sissi pull up. She may have fractured her pelvis but we are still in the dark as she is with the vet. She appeared okay when she pulled up but became sore as she cooled down and was sent straight to the surgery.

Looking back on the festival there were several memorable equine performances but sadly the dreadful accident that befell JT McNamara cast a big shadow over the week, and it goes without saying that our thoughts are with him and his family.