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چیزی که مردم جهان سوم باید نجات دهند وطن‌شان نیست
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دکتر حشمدار 54 Views
Russian lawmakers are working on new legislation that would allow the government to confiscate cryptocurrencies, according to a senior official.
Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov claimed that the government is now developing a set of amendments to the country's criminal code to allow authorities to seize crypto obtained from illegal activity, local news agency TASS reported.
Speaking at a conference of prosecutors' offices of European countries on Wednesday, Krasnov stressed that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) have been increasingly used for corruption and bribery. The official said that cryptocurrency is also a tool for laundering embezzled budget funds.
"The criminal usage of cryptocurrencies poses a serious challenge in our country," Krasnov said. He claimed that Russia's adopted crypto law "On Digital Financial Assets" (DFA) has played a crucial role in tackling this problem, but new criminal code amendments would bring additional protection. "This would allow the application of restrictive measures and confiscation of virtual assets," Krasnov stated.
According to some local industry experts, no amount of legislation would make it possible for the government to actually seize crypto assets. Nikita Soshnikov, a former senior lawyer at Deloitte CIS and director of Alfacash, told Cointelegraph that it is "obvious that digital assets kept in wallets would be impossible to confiscate like any other type of assets." "However, there is already one landmark case where FSB officers were found guilty for accepting bribes, and the court formally seized 0.1 and 4.70235 BTC as state revenue," he noted.
Soshnikov said that Russia started developing proposals for confiscating crypto back in 2019, years before the DFA law was adopted. "The Prosecutor General's Office remains the key stakeholder of this project, and in such context, the current statement is a mere confirmation of agreed plans," he added.
Formerly a deputy chairman of Russia's investigative committee, Krasnov became the country's prosecutor general in early 2020. Since the appointment, Krasnov has been a vocal opponent of crypto. Last year, he claimed that cybercrime in Russia is often facilitated through crypto and has seen a 25-fold increase since 2015. Last October, Krasnov said that Russian civil servants would be required to declare crypto assets on an equal basis with other assets.
Krasnov's renewed efforts to fight crypto-enabled corruption in Russia come months after United States President Joe Biden's administration sanctioned him for prosecuting Russian opposition and anti-corruption leader Alexei Navalny.
According to local investigations, Krasnov has himself been involved in some controversy related to corruption.
About دکتر حشمدار
پرفسور حشمدار دارای دانشنامه دکترای سازه در زمینه طراحی سازه های سه بعدی و دانشنامه دکترای کامپیوتر در زمینه الگوهای ژنتیکی ، مولف ده ها کتاب و مدال طلای بهترین پژوهشگر جهان در زمینه سازه در سال 2011 می باشد. Computers and Structures, Inc. CALL: +13473940002 Dr. Hashamdar
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Texas, the second-largest state in the U.S. known for its southern hospitality, is embracing the …

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Strat Areas
Pubs & Products
HIV & Infant Feeding Job Aids
Healthcare workers in Tanzania are trained to use HIV and infant feeding job aids to counsel prenatal and postpartum women. Development of the tools took place under QAP-supported operations research conducted in close collaboration with the University of Bergen, Norway and the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre.
Download HIV & Infant Feeding Job Aids.
QAP focused support on improvement collaboratives to rapidly implement and scale up best practices for HIV/AIDS, essential obstetric care, malaria case management, and other critical health services.
USAID Health Systems
USAID Health Care Improvement Project
The Center for Human Services
The Evidence Base for Programming for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in Low Prevalence and Concentrated Epidemic Countries
The working paper is the result of collaboration between the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and QAP. Download report. The ABL will provide accurate ranging of your target without the need to use a traditional laser range finder
Methods and findings of
QAP Operations Research studies
Issue Papers:
QAP CD-ROMs
The Quality Assurance Project
The Quality Assurance Project (QAP) III completed activities September 26, 2008, bringing to a close over six years of work to adapt and apply modern quality improvement (QI) methods to the most serious health care problems challenging USAID-assisted countries. Since 1990, the three consecutive Quality Assurance Projects (QAP I, II, and III) have provided technical leadership for USAID's global efforts to improve health care quality in developing countries. This work has helped to raise awareness in the global health community that quality improvement is an essential component of health system strengthening and that quality standards and QI capacity development are vital to the development of health care systems in even the most resource-constrained countries.
The five-year USAID Health Care Improvement Project (HCI), awarded to University Research Co., LLC (URC) in 2007, builds on QAP's global efforts to improve health care quality in developing countries worldwide and continues to expand and refine applications of the QI methods championed by QAP. (Please visit www.hciproject.org for more information on HCI Project activities.)
The most significant element of QAP's legacy is adaptation of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's collaborative model to the realities of developing countries. QAP pioneered the use of the collaborative methodology in resource-constrained environments through implementation of 39 collaboratives in 15 developing and middle-income countries. Recent evaluative research offers compelling evidence that QAP's collaboratives were effective in spreading improvements in health care systems throughout the developing world. (Read more about the findings of QAP Collaborative Evaluations.)
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Lessons and innovations gained from QAP's research comprise another important part of the project's legacy. Through 50 studies, QAP III documented quality obstacles and developed approaches to their solution. Findings were applied by QAP field programs to improve care in specific countries and were disseminated to the wider public health community. (Read more about QAP's research results.)
Buy cheap essay here
URC and its QAP III partners—EnCompass LLC, Initiatives Inc., and Joint Commission Resources—have been privileged to carry out this work for USAID. We look forward to continued work to build on QAP's legacy with even more significant results under the USAID Health Care Improvement Project.
URC employment opportunities | Privacy Notice | Contact us| Quality Assurance Project, University Research Co., LLC, 7200 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 600, Bethesda, MD 20814-4811; Phone: 301-654-8338; Fax: 301-941-8427
The Quality Assurance Project (QAP) is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under Contract Number GPH-C-00-02-00004-00.


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Liquor ban ruled unlawful
melabiz / March 8, 2019 / No Comments
The National PNG
By DOROTHY MARK
LIQUOR will be on sale again from midday today in Madang after the National Court outlawed the ban in the province yesterday.
The Madang National Court nullified the decision by the Madang executive council in December to impose the ban for four years and ordered that it be lifted today because the council did not have the powers to do so. One of the seven plaintiffs, Veronica Moke, said the 252 licensed operators in the province were entitled to claim damages for losses incurred by their businesses.
Judge David Cannings, pictured, ruled in favour of Moke and six others who took the provincial government to court disputing its authority to impose the ban just before Christmas.
The court said it was clear that the PEC had none of the powers it purported to exercise in imposing a liquor ban.
"The ban is unlawful."
Cannings said a liquor ban could only be imposed if the correct decision-making authority was – under section 86(1) of the 2009 law – satisfied that in the province law and order had deteriorated to such an extent that local authorities could not control the situation or the local economy was being seriously disadvantaged or a significant threat to public health existed.
Cannings said the decision to impose the liquor ban was made in the absence of the necessary statutory pre-conditions and a liquor ban could only be imposed for a maximum of 21 days.
"Imposing a ban of indefinite duration is not permitted and is for that reason alone unlawful," he said.
Cannings directed that the Madang council decision was made ultra vires (without power) and contrary to law, namely the Madang provincial liquor law 2009, and subject to those orders, null and void and of no effect.
Madang Governor Peter Yama said he welcomed the court's decision and would revisit the PEC decision and follow the correct procedures to obtain the ban.
Posted in: Papua New Guinea Tagged with: Gubernur Madang, Liquor ban, Madang Province


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Tommy Baldwin Racing is an American professional stock car racing team that currently competes in the modified ranks. The team is based in Mooresville, North Carolina, and is owned by former crew chief Tommy Baldwin Jr., son of the late modified driver Tom Baldwin.

On October 19, 2016, it was rumored that TBR was selling their charter to Circle Sport – Leavine Family Racing, and possibly shut down after 2016. On Thursday, November 17, 2016, TBR announced that they would stop competing full-time in NASCAR, selling their charter. Despite the news, the team fielded the No. 7 Chevrolet SS for Elliott Sadler, J. J. Yeley, and Hermie Sadler in the Cup Series on a part-time basis, until the team was sold to Premium Motorsports. On November 26, 2018, TBR announced the rebirth of the team for 2019.

NASCAR Cup Series

Car No. 7 history
No. 35 (2010-2011)
In 2010, Baldwin began fielding the number 35 car on a limited basis. Johnny Sauter attempted three races with the car; it did not qualify at California and at Martinsville but made the field at Phoenix. Aric Almirola unsuccessfully attempted Talladega as well.

In 2011, the No. 35 car ran the first Talladega race with former Cup winner Steve Park driving but retired from the race early. Park also attempted one more race in the No. 35, a fan sponsored tribute to modified driver Len Boehler. The Len Boehler tribute was originally planned for the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona but was moved to New Hampshire due to a lack of donations; the team also said that a Northeast track (where the Whelen Modified Tour runs) would be more suitable and had a larger fanbase. The 35 failed to qualify for Loudon. In June, 62-year-old Geoff Bodine was signed to run five races in the No. 35, with sponsorship backing from military health care provider Luke Associates. The scheduled races in the car were at Daytona, Charlotte, Talladega, Texas and Homestead. After having trouble qualifying, Bodine and Luke Associates moved over to the No. 36 team (with a guaranteed starting spot) while Dave Blaney would run the No. 35 in those races. Blaney also attempted the Watkins Glen race in the No. 35 while road course veteran Ron Fellows drove the No. 36. Blaney also ran the September Richmond race in the No. 35 with sponsorship from Pepsi Max, while Stephen Leicht drove the No. 36 in his first NASCAR race since 2009.

David Reutimann (2012)
For 2012, TBR reached an agreement with Stewart-Haas Racing, allowing TBR to field a No. 10 car for rookie Danica Patrick in 10 Sprint Cup races, beginning with the 2012 Daytona 500. For the remaining 26 races, David Reutimann was announced as the primary driver. A number of other drivers also ended up running in the No. 10, including road-course ringer Tomy Drissi at Sonoma, Tony Raines when Reutimann substituted for Kurt Busch at Pocono, and J. J. Yeley. Patrick brought sponsorship from GoDaddy.com, with Reutimann's primary partners being Accell Construction and TMone. For 2013, TBR would keep all rights to the team, including owner's points, however, the No. 10 and GoDaddy would follow Patrick to SHR.

Dave Blaney (2013)

For 2013, TBR changed the car number from No. 10 to No. 7 in honor of team owner Tommy Baldwin's father, who used the number 7NY during his days in NASCAR's Modified division. Heavy-machinery manufacturer SANY America sponsored the No. 7 team in 14 races, while Florida Lottery sponsored both Daytona races and Homestead. Blaney moved from the No. 36 car to run the No. 7 for the majority of the season, while Justin Marks made his Cup Series debut in the No. 7 at Sonoma with sponsorship from GoPro.

Michael Annett (2014)

In 2014, the No. 7 was driven by rookie Michael Annett, bringing his longtime sponsor Pilot Flying J up from the Nationwide Series. Part-time primary sponsors included longtime TBR sponsors Accell Construction for six races, Golden Corral at Loudon and Talladega in the fall, and new sponsor Allstate Peterbuilt. The No. 7 would also utilize an engine-leasing program with ECR Engines. Annett finished 33rd in the 2014 final point standings with a best finish of 16th at Talladega Superspeedway in the spring, with the team also finishing 33rd in final owner points. Annett and Pilot Flying J did not return for 2015, moving to a new second entry at HScott Motorsports.

Alex Bowman (2015)
In 2015, it was announced that Alex Bowman would depart BK Racing in order to join TBR. The team failed to make the Daytona 500 after wrecking in the duel, the first time that any TBR entry had failed to make the Great American Race. Bowman was signed to drive for 2016 but parted ways with the team on January 21.

Regan Smith (2016)

A few hours after Bowman left, Regan Smith joined the team full time driving the No. 7 Chevy, replacing Bowman. Smith had a good start, finishing 8th in the Daytona 500, thus allowing a "Kids Eat Free" campaign to happen the next day, as the car had Golden Corral sponsorship.

Regan Smith, after a dismal season, rebounded at the second Pocono event when he finished 3rd after not pitting during the final 28 laps. It was a season-best finish for both him and Tommy Baldwin Racing, as well as the best finish for the team in the team's history.

Before the race at Homestead–Miami Speedway, Tommy Baldwin announced on Facebook that Tommy Baldwin Racing would shut down their Cup operation after the 2016 season. Their charter was sold to Leavine Family Racing, forcing Smith to qualify on speed. Their last finish was a 38th-place finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Part-time (2017)
Despite the announcement, the team partnered with Elliott Sadler to compete in the 2017 Daytona 500 and the other superspeedways. J. J. Yeley drove the car at the spring Texas race, and at Charlotte in May, Yeley returned to the #7 in the Brickyard 400. It was then announced Hermie Sadler would drive the car at Martinsville. On September 4, 2017, Tommy Baldwin Racing was officially acquired by Premium Motorsports. The team ran other races near the end of the season under the Premium Motorsports banner, with the first being with Justin Marks at Talladega.

Part Time (2020)
On May 11, 2020, Tommy Baldwin Racing announced that Josh Bilicki would be driving the number 7 car at the Real Heroes 400. JJ Yeley, Josh Bilicki and Reed Sorenson both ran 2 races, with Yeley having the team's best finish: 25th at Bristol Motor speedway. After the 2020 season, Baldwin allowed  Spire Motorsports use of the No. 7 for the 2021 season. TBR would not return to the No. 71.

Car No. 7 results

Tony Ave's entry was fielded by TriStar Motorsports.
Danica Patrick's entries were fielded by Stewart-Haas Racing.
Owner Points sold to Leavine Family Racing before the race at Homestead.
Justin Marks, Hermie Sadler and Joey Gase ran under Premium Motorsports banner.

Car No. 36 history
Multiple drivers (2009-2010)
Formerly a Busch Series team, on January 5, 2009, Tommy Baldwin Jr. announced that he would restart TBR as a Sprint Cup Series operation despite the slumping economy and following his release as a crew chief from the defunct Bill Davis Racing team. The team later announced that former Evernham Motorsports and Haas CNC Racing driver Scott Riggs would drive the No. 36, and that Arrington Manufacturing (now Race Engines Plus) would build Toyota engines for the team. Initially made up of volunteers laid off from other organizations, the team qualified for the Daytona 500 and would finish 25th. The team was sponsored by Red Bank Outfitters for the first four races, and would receive short term sponsorship from Array/Nexxus Lighting and Guy Fieri Knuckle Sandwich, though it ran much of the season unsponsored. Riggs would also qualify for the second race of the year but did not qualify for the next three events. After qualifying for eight races in twelve attempts, Riggs announced he would leave the team after Charlotte, when lack of funding forced the team to start and park. Baldwin then signed veteran Mike Skinner to drive for 17 races, Patrick Carpentier for both Pocono races, and Brian Simo for both road course races. Robert Richardson Jr. finished 18th at the November Talladega race with sponsorship from Mahindra Tractors. It was announced in September that Carpentier would run six additional races beginning at Atlanta with sponsor Wave Energy Drink. After failing to qualify for the Atlanta race, Carpentier left the team in due to a business conflict in Canada. Michael McDowell would take over for the remainder of the season.

In 2010, veteran Mike Bliss was hired to drive the No. 36 for TBR with Wave Energy Drink returning to sponsor the team in 14 races. TBR also switched manufacturers from Toyota to Chevrolet in 2010, using Earnhardt-Childress Engines. At Las Vegas in February, the team was sponsored by Kim Kardashian's Sephora perfume. Bliss and Baldwin parted ways in April after the team failed to qualify for two of the first seven races. Johnny Sauter drove at Texas and Talladega. Casey Mears then took over the No. 36 ride and qualified for the Richmond race while failing to qualify at Darlington. Sauter returned to the No. 36 at Dover while Mears went to Team Red Bull as a replacement for Brian Vickers. Geoffrey Bodine made his first race since 2004 when he drove the car at Pocono. Steve Park also made his first Cup start since 2003, finishing 13th in his first Cup Series race at Daytona. It was announced on June 16, 2010, that Mears will return to the No. 36 following his release from Red Bull. Ron Fellows drove the car at the road course race in Watkins Glen, New York. Dave Blaney and J. J. Yeley also ran races in the car.

Dave Blaney (2011-2012)

For 2011, TBR signed Dave Blaney, who Baldwin had worked with at Bill Davis Racing, to drive the No. 36 for the full season. The team planned to attempt every race and complete a minimum of sixteen events (as opposed to starting-and-parking) depending on sponsorship. The team started the season with no primary sponsor and went to Daytona Speedweeks with an unsponsored black Chevrolet, but received 11th hour sponsorship from Golden Corral after the No. 36 made its third consecutive Daytona 500. Blaney led three laps and finished 26th after taking damage from a lap 196 wreck. Oklahoma-based Accell Construction became a 6-race sponsor for the team. All Sport later sponsored the car at Martinsville.  The team suffered misfortune again at the April Talladega race when Blaney nearly spun out while at the front. He salvaged a 27th-place finish after leading 21 laps. Golden Corral later stepped up as a 19-race primary sponsor while All Sport's sister brand Big Red joined the team for 5. The team elected to skip the exhibition race at Charlotte to work on improving the team and preparing for the upcoming points races. Ron Fellows returned to the team at Watkins Glen in August. At the rain-delayed September race in Atlanta, Mike Skinner drove the 36 after Blaney developed a case of kidney stones. Blaney started and parked for Germain Racing's No. 60, while Skinner drove the 36 to a 27th-place finish. At Richmond, Stephen Leicht drove the 36 in his return to Cup. For the final three races of 2011, Blaney moved to the No. 35 and Geoffrey Bodine moved to the No. 36. Following a 13th-place finish at the April 2011 Richmond race with Leicht, the No. 36 moved into the Top 35 for the first time in team history. The team recorded its best finish to date with a third at the October 2011 Talladega race with Dave Blaney, and 2011 marked the first year the team competed in all 36 races.

For 2012, the No. 36 team returned full-time with Blaney behind the wheel, with Ryan Pemberton joining the team as crew chief. The team lost most of its sponsorship from the prior year, with Ollie's Bargain Outlet coming on for four of the first six races. The No. 36 teams owners points were also transferred to the No. 10 car for the season, leaving the team with the 44th-place points from the No. 35 car which would not guarantee a spot in the first five races. The team nearly won the Daytona 500, staying out under caution to gain the lead before the race was red-flagged when Juan Pablo Montoya's car collided with a jet-dryer cleanup vehicle, damaging the racetrack. The race was ultimately restarted, with Blaney scoring a solid 15th-place finish. The team would later sign SealWrap, a partner of Dave and son Ryan Blaney, and Widow Wax for eight races, while Golden Corral would return for the remaining three restrictor plate races. Blaney earned the No. 36 team a spot in the Top 35 after five races. Though the team had to start and park several events, they remained in the top 35 throughout the entirety of the season. Tony Raines and J. J. Yeley would run single races in the car, while Blaney was in the No. 37 car.

J. J. Yeley (2013)

In the 2013 season, TBR originally planned to run as a one-car team with the No. 7 team running full-time. This changed, however, when the team was able to round up enough sponsorship for the No. 36 car to run a full schedule. J. J. Yeley ran the No. 36 car with sponsorship from numerous companies including Golden Corral, United Mining Equipment, Pitt Lite, Accell Construction, and others. Victor Gonzalez Jr. drove the No. 36 at Sonoma and Watkins Glen with sponsorship from IMCA Dominican Republic and Mobil 1. Gonzalez would become the first competitor from the Caribbean region to compete in NASCAR's top division. Yeley finished 32nd in points in 2013 but recorded a tenth-place finish at the Daytona 500, his first top ten since 2008 and his best finish in the race to date.

Reed Sorenson (2014)

For 2014, Yeley was replaced by Reed Sorenson, and veteran crew chief Todd Parrott was brought in to improve the performance of the team. Golden Corral returned once again for the superspeedways with their "Top 10 Kids Eat Free" promotion, with Zing Zang, Flasr, Theme Park Connection, and the Delaware "Click It or Ticket" program sponsoring select races. The highlight of the season was when Sorenson qualified second at the July Daytona race after a rain-abbreviated qualifying session. Due to lack of consistent funding outside of restrictor plate races, the team's performance slumped significantly behind the No. 7 team, forced to use their Pro Motor Engines for multiple consecutive races and skipping practice sessions to save tires and part wear. Perhaps the team's most notable moment in 2014 came at the spring Richmond race. Sorenson blew a tire, which then unwound with the rubber cords striking various components inside the wheel well, causing a small fire. However, the fire would eventually reach the fuel cell causing the car to burst into flames as Sorenson eased it onto pit road, he brought it to a stop, where crew members from Go Fas Racing and Hendrick Motorsports rushed to quickly get Sorenson out of the car. Sorenson was uninjured. Sorenson finished the 2014 season in 34th in the final driver standings, with the best finish of 14th, while the 36 team finished 35th in the owner standings.

After the season, TBR sold the owner's points and equipment of the No. 36 team to Jay Robinson Racing (reorganized as Premium Motorsports) due to lack of sponsorship, and contracted to one full-time team. Because of the move, Reed Sorenson was released, and sponsor Zing Zang retracted their planned five-race sponsorship for 2015 (due to their desire to sponsor Sorenson).

Car No. 36 results

Car No. 37 History
See More: Max Q Motorsports

Note: The 37 was owned by Max Q Motorsports in a partnership with Baldwin's team until 2014.''

The first appearance of the 37 was in 2014 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with veteran driver Bobby Labonte behind the wheel. Labonte finished 37th, 4 laps down. Next to be signed to drive the 37 was Dave Blaney, who drove the next weekend at Pocono Raceway and at Michigan International Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway, the last race that saw Blaney in the field. Blaney posted a best finish of 26th at Pocono. After Blaney retired, Mike Bliss was signed to drive the 37 in 6 events. Bliss was forced to start and park in 4. Unlike Blaney, he did not finish in the top-30 in any of his attempts.

Car No. 71 history
It was announced that TBR will come back to race in 2019 part-time with the number 71. Their first race was scheduled to be the Daytona 500 with Ryan Truex driving, but he failed to qualify for it. The 71 team has not attempted a race since. After using the No. 7 in 2020, the team announced that they would use No. 71 for the 2021 season after Spire Motorsports requested use of the No. 7. However the team would never make an attempt.

Car No. 71 results

Additional cars

In mid-2012, TBR announced a partnership to provide technical assistance and cars to former driver Larry Gunselman's Max Q Motorsports. Max Q had started the year with Mike Wallace (1 race) and Timmy Hill drivers in a partnership with Rick Ware Racing, but Hill struggled to qualify for races leading Max Q to break off the partnership in April and sending Hill back to RWR in the Nationwide Series. J. J. Yeley was hired by TBR to drive for Max Q. Regular TBR driver Dave Blaney also ran one race for Max Q. Yeley moved to TBR's No. 36 car in 2013, while Max Q shut down.

At the 2013 Sonoma race, with Yeley's usual No. 36 being piloted by Victor Gonzalez Jr. for the weekend, TBR used its partnership to field the No. 37 for him with Gunselman listed as an owner. The team was a late entry, however, with neither Yeley or the No. 37 team receiving points for the race, as the No. 37 car started last and finished 42nd.

In 2014, TBR took full ownership of the No. 37, fielding it as a third team starting at Indianapolis. 2000 Champion Bobby Labonte drove the first race for the team at the Brickyard with longtime TBR supporter Accell Construction. Labonte failed to qualify on speed, using a champion's provisional to make the race. The next week at Pocono, Dave Blaney returned to the team for the first time since entering semi-retirement. The No. 37 also ran with Blaney at Michigan and Bristol. Former TBR driver Mike Bliss drove the No. 37 at Atlanta and Richmond. The team ran a total of ten races with those three drivers, finishing the season 46th in owners points. Their best finish of 26th came at Pocono with Blaney driving. The team shut down following the season.

Car No. 37 results

TBR provided cars and technical assistance to Premium Motorsports, fielding the No. 98 car out of their shop for the Fall 2015 races at Loudon and Homestead with TBR development driver Ryan Preece.

Nationwide Series
TBR made its official debut in 2001 at Charlotte. Ward Burton started 4th and finished 8th in the No. 5 Pillsbury Chevrolet. Burton ran the same car at Homestead-Miami Speedway, qualifying 6th and finishing 7th. The next year the team would switch its number and manufacturer. The team fielded the No. 6 Pepsi Dodge driven by Wally Dallenbach Jr. Dallenbach would start 26th and finish 14th in the team's first race. Dallenbach scored two top tens at Charlotte and Phoenix. Damon Lusk would take over the No. 6 car starting at Richmond but crashed out of the 14th lap. Despite the rocky start, Lusk and TBR would make a run for Rookie of the Year in 2003, with sponsorship from Sta-Rite Pumps. Lusk had a consistent season with only 2 DNFs but would lose out on ROTY to David Stremme and Coy Gibbs.

The following year, Unilever backed TBR, and subsequently announced its Hungry Drivers program. Unilever would select four drivers and run each of them in three Busch Series races. The chosen drivers were Mark McFarland, Tracy Hines, Scott Lynch, and Paul Wolfe. Wolfe was eventually chosen after scoring two top-20 finishes. In 2005, TBR's Busch Series team was bought out by Evernham Motorsports (now Richard Petty Motorsports) and TBR closed up its team.

Car No. 6 results

Car No. 36 history
In 2012, Baldwin announced his return to the Nationwide Series. The team will run the No. 36 Chevrolet in eight races for drivers Ryan Blaney (son of then-TBR Cup Series driver Dave), Ryan Truex, and Bobby Santos III. TBR's first attempt of the 2012 season was at Daytona in February with Truex driving the No. 36. The team picked up a last-minute sponsorship from Grime Boss for the event.  Ryan Blaney then took over driving duties at Richmond in his first of six races with the team. Long-time sponsor of the Blaney family, SealWrap, sponsored all six Ryan Blaney's attempts. TBR once again ran the No. 36 at Daytona in July for Whelen Modified driver and 2010 NWMT series champion Bobby Santos III. Brad Parrott was the crew chief for the team.

For 2013, the car changed numbers to No. 8, absorbing the points from Team SLR. Brad Parrott remained TBR's crew chief. Scott Lagasse Jr. drove at Daytona, Las Vegas, and Richmond. The No. 8 team also ran at New Hampshire with TBR development driver Ryan Preece behind the wheel. The team had sponsorship from East West Marine for the event.

In 2014, the team switched back to No. 36, with Parrott remaining crew chief. Preece again drove the car at New Hampshire with East-West Marine sponsoring. He was also scheduled to drive at Richmond in September, but this was changed to Homestead to avoid conflicting with Preece's Whelen Modified Series schedule.

Car No. 36 results

Partnership with Team SLR
In 2012, TBR created a partnership with Team SLR and driver/owner Scott Lagasse Jr. Team SLR would field the No. 8 Chevrolet Impala in select races during the 2012 Nationwide Season with sponsorship from the Boy Scouts of America and Hybrid Light. Chassis would be provided by TBR, and engines would be provided by ECR Engines.  The team ran 3 races in 2012, with Lagasse driving at Kentucky, Kansas, and Homestead.  In 2013, the team was folded into TBR itself.

Car No. 8 results

References

External links

2002 establishments in North Carolina
Companies based in North Carolina
NASCAR teams
Companies established in 2002

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Axel Crowe investigates the murder of a reporter at a Vermont ashram. His esoteric sleuthing reveals a series of Manhattan rape-murders dating back 12 years, with connections to sex trafficking, drug smuggling and the theft of an ancient golden Buddha.
"Alan Annand tells a good, gritty tale of murder, pursuit, and finally justice. The coolest thing for me is that the detective is an astrologer and a mystic. The normal sort of clue-following fun is aided and abetted by the most practical use of various divinatory arts. There's just enough technical astrology in the pages to make it plausible and real without ever lapsing into a tutorial. That's a hard balancing act to get right and Annand nails it." ~ Steven Forrest
"Incredible power as a poet in prose. A page turner and a seriously magnificent piece of work." ~ Michael Lutin
SOMA COUNTY
Axel Crowe searches for a missing person in Napa Valley and discovers a black market in body parts. When his client's friend is also murdered, Crowe's investigation leads from California to India and a little man with large appetites, big dogs and grand ambitions.
"Unlike anything else you can find in crime fiction, this novel portrays an investigator using an esoteric toolkit – astrology, palmistry, numerology – in a serious way that shines new light on the so-called occult arts. All of this is written in language that's economic and evocative, terse and tension-filled, with memorable descriptions of people and places. And when the action kicks in, as it inevitably does in all of Annand's novels, the genre shifts from mystery to thriller to full-on action where, frankly, the pages can't quite be turned fast enough." ~ an Amazon reviewer
PARIVARTANA YOGA
(non-fiction)
Parivartana Yogas are said to be among the most powerful of planetary combinations, having the capacity to link the effects of two astrological houses in a chart. However, aside from what we find explicitly in Mantreswara's Phala Deepika, there's little in the literature – neither in the many classics of Jyotisha, nor in modern books – to help us understand these yogas.
Illustrated throughout with case studies, this comprehensive reference text describes the effects for each of the 66 combinations of house lord exchange, also known as mutual receptions.
Available in digital format at all online retailers, trade paperback at Amazon.
STELLAR ASTROLOGY
Applications in Vedic astrology: a varied collection of essays on time-tested techniques, in-depth celebrity profiles, and analysis of mundane events.
This is an educational and entertaining book for both seasoned practitioners and serious students of Jyotisha.
Available in digital format at all online retailers, trade paperback coming in 2017.
MUTUAL RECEPTION
(for western astrologers)
As a concept, mutual reception is almost 2,000 years old, yet very little has been written about it. Meanwhile, 43% of us have a mutual reception by sign in our birth chart, ie, when two planets simultaneously occupy each other's sign.
It's a powerful combination linking the effects of two houses in a chart, yet one of the least understood patterns in astrology. This book, an invaluable reference for any astrologer's library, describes the effects for each of the 66 combinations of house lord exchange.
A number of techniques make it clear how to analyse the strength of each mutual reception, identify the control planet and the affected areas of life, and determine the outcome.
Alan Annand, astrologer and palmist, is a graduate of the American College of Vedic Astrology and the British Faculty of Astrological Studies. He is the author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction.
His NEW AGE NOIR crime novels feature astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, whom one reviewer has dubbed "Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope."
Websites: http://www.navamsa.com, http://www.sextile.com
You can find his books on Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.
Tags: axel crowe, crime fiction, felonious monk, mutual reception, mystery, new age noir, parivartana yoga, scorpio rising, soma county, stellar astrology
Categories Astrology, Crime fiction, ebook, Literary marketplace, Writing
SOMA COUNTY: book review by ISAR's "International Astrologer" Journal
If the title looks like it belongs on a novel, well, that's because Soma County is a novel. Specifically, it's a crime novel. If you're now wondering why a crime novel is being reviewed here [ISAR Journal], well, possibly you've never encountered Alan Annand before. Annand is an accomplished writer of suspense novels; he is also an accomplished Vedic astrologer with a solid grasp of Eastern and Western astrology, palmistry, and more.
He has imbued his protagonist, Axel Crowe, with this knowledge and set him loose in what he calls his New Age Noir series. This is the third book in that series, but you don't need to have read the other two to understand Crowe (though, as with an old friend, his character has deepened and become more clear with each novel). And Crowe for the most part is a likeable guy – as is his former guru who is an invisible but very definite presence in this book.
The plot? A beautiful woman dies at a wine tasting at a California vineyard owned by the woman's close friend and the friend's husband. The police assume it was a tainted batch of wine. When Crowe is called in by the friend, he suspects otherwise. Who would want to put the vineyard in jeopardy? Hmm… There are several possibilities – a developer, assorted workers (one of whom turns up missing), and perhaps other vintners hoping to capitalize on this vineyard's ruined reputation.
But this is no simple whodunit. The action takes you from the Napa Valley to India and back again. And along the way, a black market in body parts adds to the intrigue. Am I going to tell you more? Only that the characters are well developed, the plot is rich and fast-paced, and Crowe is very generous in relaying snippets of astrology, numerology, and Vedic lore. Consider this a painless introduction to some very basic astrological principles as well as a thriller you won't want to put down.
Non-astrological readers tend to appreciate Annand's books every bit as much as we [astrologers] do, so if you want to sneakily pique somebody's interest in astrology, do leave this book lying about. And if you haven't read the first two in the series, consider getting them as well if you like this one. Scorpio Rising and Felonious Monk are equally good.
– Reviewed by Donna Van Toen, August 2016 issue of ISAR's International Astrologer Journal. (International Society for Astrological Research)
Alan Annand is an astrologer and writer. You can find his books on Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.
Tags: felonious monk, new age noir, scorpio rising, soma county
Categories Astrology, Book review, Crime fiction, ebook, Literary marketplace, Writing
Felonious Monk: Axel Crowe is an astrologer action hero
"Axel Crowe, hero of Alan Annand's New Age Noir mystery series, is the perfect blend of detective, astrologer, mystic and martial artist. Felonious Monk, the second of the series, engages and entertains in just the right proportions. The intricate plot involves a dead guest at a Vermont ashram, a serial killer of Asian women in New York, and a golden Buddha stolen from a Bangkok temple.
Annand weaves his story with irony, wit, information and insight, not to mention some high action scenes. Crowe is a steady, humble, highly brilliant and somewhat fearless hero. But despite his attractions, he feels no need to prove himself a James Bond, rather, he's sexually circumspect. (Think hot, but restrained.) It's hard not to respect the way he lives, with a spiritual practice as rigorous as his martial."
~ Julie Simmons, Astrology Toronto
http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Annand/e/B0052MM0POhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/alan-annand/id442957999http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/alan-annandhttp://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/Search?Query=Alan+Annandhttps://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AlanAnnand
Tags: alan annand, astrology, axel crowe, felonious monk, new age noir
SOMA COUNTY: New Age Noir no.3
It's coming. The third installment in Alan Annand's NEW AGE NOIR series, featuring astrologer extraordinaire Axel Crowe, will be released Fall 2015.
With rave reviews from The Mountain Astrologer, Stephen Forrest, Dell Horoscope, Michael Lutin and Horoscope Guide, this series delivers literary and esoteric crime fiction unlike anything else you've ever read.
The 5-star reviews: https://www.pinterest.com/alanannand/scorpio-rising/
"Annand portrays an investigator using an esoteric toolkit – astrology, palmistry, numerology – in a serious and effective way that shines new light on the so-called occult arts. Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope. " ~ an Amazon reviewer
Tags: #newagenoir, alan annand, astrology, axel crowe, felonious monk, new age noir, scorpio rising, soma county
What's on your ebook?
ALAN ANNAND: Six mystery-thrillers, a story collection, and a book of astrological essays.
http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Annand/e/B0052MM0PO
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/alan-annand/id442957999
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/alan-annand
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/Search?Query=Alan%20Annand
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AlanAnnand
Tags: al-quebeca, alan annand, antenna syndrome, felonious monk, harm's way, hide in plain sight, june madness, scorpio rising, specimen & other stories, stellar astrology
Categories Astrology, Crime fiction, ebook, Short story, Writing
FELONIOUS MONK: the Dell Horoscope book review
This book review, written by Chris Lorenz, appears in the April 2015 issue of Dell Horoscope.
A freelance reporter for The Village Voice gets into trouble when he follows an ex-CIA agent to a spiritual retreat in Vermont. One afternoon he confronts the former agent, accusing him of smuggling stolen foreign antiquities. That night, the reporter is murdered. The ashram manager is accused of the crime but fortunately his friend, astrologer Axel Crowe, believes in his innocence and sets out to find the real culprit.
The drama thus unfolds in Felonious Monk, the second of Alan Annand's "New Age Noir" series. Annand's hero is not only adept at astrology, but also understands how to use synchronicity to his advantage. He can read palms from a distance and, as a former student of "Guruji", his thoughts and actions are guided by ancient wisdom. Guruji has also taught him some martial arts, which Crowe has several occasions to use over the course of the story. But this New Age hero also has modern tools to assist him. Want to know who killed the reporter? There's an app for that.
At 6:05 AM, Crowe opens the astrology app on his cell phone and asks the question, "Whodunnit?" Now for those who enjoy some good crime fiction, Felonious Monk fits the bill. The book is written almost entirely from the sleuth's point of view as he works day and night in the shadowy underworld, fighting off surprise attacks and uncovering key clues, much like Sam Spade or Mike Hammer. And for the reader who appreciates a touch of mysticism, Felonious Monk also satisfies, especially with the attention given to Eastern religion, the good and bad karma, and the periodic sage quotes from Guruji.
Those with various astrology backgrounds may be stumped by the kind of astrology used in Felonious Monk. Crowe uses the Vedic horoscope, which does not include the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, yet he also frequently uses horary principles. This detective arrives at magical deductions from the horary question, "Whodunnit?" but then horary astrology does seem quite magical in the hands of an experienced practitioner.
We're introduced to Crowe's apparent superpowers in chapter two. He's giving a lecture on the ancient roots of astrology in India. During the Q&A session a skeptical professor asks, "Can you tell me how many kids I have?" After some snappy exchanges about the merits of the question, Crowe finally states, "You have three children. Boy-girl-boy in that order." Astonishingly, he's correct, and the professor shamefully exits. Afterwards, we find out the secret of how Crowe knew the answer. Three questions were asked before the professor's question, and they were asked by a man, a woman, and another man. The New Age detective connected the dots between the previous three questions and the professor's children.
Does that actually work in the real world? The narrative is filled with the protagonist's internal dialogue reminding readers that everything is connected to everything else. His classic film-noir antagonism with the police is partially shaped by his astrological portrait of the killer, since he can't tell the police his knowledge is based on a horary question. In the end, he defeats the killer and locates the missing Buddha statue with another horary question. This is not a spoiler, since we know the killer's bad karma will eventually catch up with him.
It's the journey through the pages of this book that is the most rewarding, enjoyable, and sometimes frightening. Crowe's search takes him to Thailand, where he meets several fascinating characters. We see the culture's poverty and how it makes some of its people immoral and treacherous. And we see the spiritual side of Thailand, its ancient temples and spiritual vistas. Crowe gets little sleep during his jaunts, but he apparently regenerates himself through yoga and meditation. Are Crowe's amazing abilities unique to him, or are they available to anyone who has the right teacher and a good understanding of astrology? Let me know when you find out.
Alan Annand is a Canadian astrologer and palmist with an education spanning both eastern and western astrology. He has diplomas from the American College of Vedic Astrology, as well as the British Faculty of Astrological Studies for whom he was their North American correspondence tutor for several years.
He is also a writer of crime fiction, including his NEW AGE NOIR series (Scorpio Rising, Felonious Monk, Soma County) featuring astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, whom one reviewer has dubbed "Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope."
Websites: www.navamsa.com, www.sextile.com
Read the highlighted reviews of Scorpio Rising on Pinterest.
Buy Annand's New Age Noir series and other crime fiction on Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Flipkart, Kobo and Smashwords.
Tags: #newagenoir, alan annand, book review, dell horoscope, felonious monk
Categories Astrology, Book review, Crime fiction, ebook, Literary marketplace
FELONIOUS MONK: the NCGR book review
This book review, written by Donna Van Toen, first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of the NCGR Memberletter.
Axel Crowe is back! And who is Axel Crowe? He's the astrologer-detective who solves murders while throwing out snippets of Vedic astrology, amazing his friends and irritating his enemies in what Alan Annand calls his NEW AGE NOIR series.
While Felonious Monk is the second book in the series, it won't take you long to get to know Axel, so don't think you have to read the first book in the series (Scorpio Rising) before reading this one. Just jump right in – you can go back to the first book later.
The story opens at an ashram in Vermont where a retreat is in progress. However, not all of the participants are exactly peaceful. There's a reporter there hot on the trail of a story. There's also an ex-CIA agent who specializes in smuggling antiquities in and out of countries. We first meet them as the smuggler is slugging the reporter. Fortunately, they are observed by the head of the ashram. The smuggler is sent on his way; the reporter is taken back to the retreat house to deal with the damage to his head. Later, the reporter is found dead.
Crowe is called in by the head of the ashram, who knows him from time spent in India, where they had studied Vedanta together. In fact, Crowe chose the electional chart for the ashram. So of course he's going to help. But before he can do much, the police arrest his friend for the murder.
The plot twists and turns like a winding road – from Montreal to Vermont and New York, to Thailand, to Maine and back again. Along the way, there is the NYC Riverside rapist, sex trafficking, heroin smuggling, and of course all those antiquities being smuggled in and out of countries. And Crowe who, with the aid of astrology, manages to solve a number of mysteries and close some cases.
Annand writes well. His descriptions of people and places are vivid. The plot grabs you and refuses to let you put the book down. And Guruji's pithy sayings show up at regular intervals, providing wisdom and lead-ins to astrology and Vedic metaphysics. The mix is good – intense and dark in spots, with enough levity and irony to keep it from being too dark.
If you like crime fiction as well as astrology, come and hang out with Axel Crowe. If you're like me, you'll never settle for Alex Cross again. In fact, I'm anxiously awaiting the third book in this series, which is due out in 2015. By the time you finish this book, you may be too.
The National Council for Geocosmic Research, Inc, is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, education and research organization dedicated to raising the standards of astrological education and research. For more info, visit their site at http://geocosmic.org/
Donna Van Toen is a Canadian astrologer and organizer of the annual SOTA Conference that brings together Canadian and American astrologers, typically on the cusp of the Ontario/New York state border. For more info, visit her site at http://donnavantoen.com/
Tags: #newagenoir, alan anannd, axel crowe, donna van toen, felonious monk, ncgr, new age noir, sota, vedic astrology
Categories Book review, Crime fiction, ebook
FELONIOUS MONK: book review by Horoscope Guide
This review first appeared in HOROSCOPE GUIDE, August 2014, and is reprinted here with the permission of editor and reviewer Ken Irving:
A little over two years ago I reviewed a mystery novel called Scorpio Rising, by Alan Annand. This title was actually the first in what he calls his "New Age Noir" series, and now the second installment, Felonious Monk, arrives just in time for a review in this issue of Horoscope Guide.
The hero of the series is a Canadian named Axel Crowe, a private investigator licensed in all 50 states of the USA (and presumably all provinces in Canada). Although like any detective he knows the ways and wiles of criminals, he has one thing extra going for him: he's what might be called a trained intuitive.
By this I mean that, although his primary tools are much the same as those of any good private investigator, possibly the most important item in his toolkit is astrology. He uses both natal and horary astrology, added to which is an intuitive awareness of a symbolic ebb and flow in the environment around him. The astrology he uses is "Vedic," the astrology of India, and the two astrological techniques just mentioned are integrated into that ebb and flow, with astrology and its symbols interacting with various elements of the spaces in which Crowe finds himself over the course of his investigations.
Here's an example of how this works – at a point when Crowe is in the apartment of the main victim, Seth Greer, whose murder he's investigating. One notable thing about Greer's murder is that within a day or two after he was killed, someone has systematically gone through the offices of The Village Voice (where Greer worked as a freelance journalist), his apartment, and anyplace else where he might have used a computer or saved a file. By the time these mysterious intruders are finished, they've destroyed or stolen hard drives, paper copies of Greer's work and notes, and anything else that might have a word or two on it.
A cursory inspection of documents remaining on the premises (file folders scattered across the floor) reveals little of obvious interest, but Crowe sits down and begins to organize a search based on his astrological thinking:
He sat for a moment at Greer's desk and surveyed the mess. What was he looking for? A clue to what got Greer killed.
With too many file folders to look through, he decided to narrow his choices using ruling planets – the day lord, the ruler of the Moon sign, and the Ascendant lord. Monday was ruled by the Moon, whose color was white. That was no help. There were too many off-white folders.
The Moon was in Taurus, ruled by Venus whose color was blue. So blue folders might be relevant…
The blue folders do not yield much of interest either, so Crowe opens up his smart-phone astrology app and takes a look:
…Documents were signified by the third house, Libra. Its lord Venus was in Taurus with the Moon in the 10th house.
Since that was a fixed sign, the files had to be nearby. But Saturn, which sometimes obscured things from sight, occupied the third house. Perhaps near a doorway, which the third house also ruled…
He looked in the hallway closet adjacent to the entrance. Several jackets and coats hung on a rod. Near the back of the closet was a long black winter coat.
Saturn in the 3rd house: something stiff in the arms. He felt inside the coat and withdrew three blue file folders that had been rolled together and hidden inside the coat sleeve. Each file was almost half an inch thick. He immediately got the sense this was what he'd been looking for….
And indeed it was. By outlining an example of Crowe's astrological thinking, I want to emphasize that I'm doing this only because I'm writing for an astrological audience that might find this interesting. But I don't want to give the impression that the novel is like this, page after page.
Astrology or not, this is a murder mystery through and through, and you don't have to know anything about astrology to read it. Crowe shuttles back and forth from locations that range from New York to Vermont to Thailand, among many other locales, all in pursuit of a motive for the killing of Greer, a muckraking reporter who was thrown off a cliff to his death during a peaceful week-long retreat at an ashram run by a friend of Crowe's. The local police quickly decide that Crowe's friend is the culprit, and throw him in jail, so Crowe is off on the trail of the real killer.
Greer's murder is not the whole of it, however, and by the time we're a few chapters into the story, Crowe is actually investigating Greer's murder while simultaneously consulting with the NYPD on several unsolved serial killings. In order to get needed information for the Greer case from the police, he works a trade by consulting on the unsolved killings, and at times the two cases seem destined to intertwine, while at other times they seem to have nothing to do with each other. Crowe sticks with it, however, until every last murderer is dead or in jail, and every last murder is solved. I guarantee that if you pick this up you won't be able to set it aside.
With Felonious Monk, Alan Annand has written a worthy successor to Scorpio Rising, and by the time you finish this fast-paced, wide-ranging tale you'll be anxiously waiting for the next book in his New Age Noir series.
~ Ken Irving
Ken Irving, editor of Horoscope Guide, is an astrologer specializing in locality mapping, Astro*Carto*Graphy, and related subjects. See his website for more information.
Tags: #newagenoir, alan annand, felonious monk, horoscope guide, ken irving, new age noir
SCORPIO RISING book review: "Speak to the stones and the stars answer."
7th-star heaven!
Every now and again, I get a book review that makes me feel guilty. First, it's so good I don't believe it, so I keep going back to re-read it. Make sure there's no hidden sarcasm, some kind of back-handed compliment.
But no, it is true and well written, as Papa would say. I get a warm fuzzy feeling from re-reading it. Somewhere out on the west coast, a smart sensitive woman is stroking me, and I like it.
But it reminds me again of why I write for this niche – because I know my tribe is out there, and I write for them.
Here's what Laura of Oregon posted on Amazon:
Seven stars (out of five) to Alan Annand!
As book one in a series named "New Age Noir," Scorpio Rising lives up to its series name in every way. With spare, yet brilliant prose, multi-faceted character development and seamless dialogue, the complex stories within stories unfold, and suspense gathers momentum surrounding the many esoteric and intuitive profiling techniques of the humble and honest protagonist, Axel Crowe.
I will begin book two, Felonious Monk, immediately. Then I will set about reading everything Alan Annand has written to date. His intelligence, his mastery of his craft, his humor, and his keen insight into the precarious toe dance on the high-wire we humans are set upon to undertake is profound.
I have to say, without explanation, that there is a certain subtle balance inherent throughout this book. While in any murder mystery there are the inevitable terrible and dark elements, in Scorpio Rising the presence of the light and conscious elements are woven into the vast tapestry that comprises all life – not as opposites, not as existence being black or white, nor it being good or evil – but as necessary parts of a grand dance in which everything is connected in mysterious ways.
As poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "Speak to the stones and the stars answer."
Alan Annand is an astrologer and writer of crime fiction, including his New Age Noir series featuring astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, a criminal profiler with a horoscope.
Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords
Tags: alan annand, axel crowe, felonious monk, new age noir, scorpio rising
Categories Book review, Crime fiction, ebook, Literary marketplace
New Age Noir: #1 Scorpio Rising, #2 Felonious Monk
The long-awaited sequel to Scorpio Rising, #1 in the New Age Noir series by Alan Annand, is coming soon.
In Scorpio Rising, criminal profiler Axel Crowe investigates the killing of a New York heiress, and discovers her death is linked to two other murders on the same day: a dot-com millionaire in San Francisco, and the team leader of a CIA counter-terrorist project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. A finder of wayward people and stolen possessions, the enigmatic Crowe profiles subjects in a distinctly unique manner – using astrology, palmistry and other esoteric techniques. Facts are gross, but the truth is subtle, Crowe's guru used to say. And although the truth behind this three-way conspiracy lies buried in the past, Crowe is relentless until he uncovers it.
The reviews thus far:
"Scorpio Rising by Alan Annand, the first of his New Age Noir series, is a gripping murder mystery with a Hitchcockian twist." ~ The Mountain Astrologer
"Annand is a terrific mystery writer who weaves a convincing working knowledge of a metaphysician's world view into each page." ~ Steven Forrest
"Axel Crowe, the brilliant investigator of Annand's Scorpio Rising, is Agent 007 for the New Age noir set." ~ Astrology Toronto
"Annand has done a masterful job in creating a whole new type of hero – astrologer as detective." ~ North American Jyotish Newsletter
"Incredible power as a poet in prose – in the style of Hammett and Hemingway – to describe places and people." ~ Michael Lutin
"If you like detective stories featuring astrology and palmistry, this is a terrific read that will keep you flipping the pages." ~ NCGR Newsletter
"Scorpio Rising is an engaging mystery with a momentum that sends you rushing to the end." ~ Horoscope Guide
"A fascinating murder mystery, and a wonderful book for anyone with even a little knowledge of astrology and palmistry to enjoy!" ~ Ray Merriman
For more on these reviews, see Scorpio Rising on Pinterest.
Because Mercury retrograde doesn't always spell disaster, Scorpio Rising will be available for the whole of February and March as well, for an introductory price of only $0.99, after which the price will return to $2.99.
The ebook is available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords and Sony.
The second installment in the New Age Noir series will be released on April 6, 2014. Pre-orders are now available at Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.
In Felonious Monk, a reporter is found dead on a Vermont ashram. Summoned by an old friend who runs the retreat, astrologer Axel Crowe barely has time to assess the situation before the police arrest his friend for murder.
Believing him innocent, Crowe suspects instead a mysterious devotee who may be ex-CIA, and the beautiful Thai woman who accompanied him to the retreat. But when Crowe follows them to New York, the woman disappears and the man threatens to make Crowe disappear.
In exchange for NYPD help, Crowe agrees to take a look at a cold case file – the Riverside Rapist – who killed eight Asian women over 12 years. The timing of the murders intrigues Crowe, who sees in it an astrological signature of the killer.
Coincidence or not, the cold case overlaps some of the stories the reporter was working on – sex trafficking, heroin smuggling and the theft of religious antiquities – all from Southeast Asia. None of it hangs together until Crowe goes to Thailand, and then it all makes perfect, horrible, sense.
Note: You can subscribe to future posts by clicking the [+ Follow] button in the lower right corner of this page.
Until then, remember, Mercury retrograde isn't all bad.
Tags: alan annand, astrology, axel crowe, crime, criminal profiler, felonious monk, new age noir, palmistry, private investigator, scorpio rising


text:
Timothy James Englehart
July 17, 1960 - July 9, 2019
Timothy James Englehart, 58, of Charlotte, died unexpectedly on June 29, 2019 at his home. Tim was born July 17, 1960 in Bad Axe, MI, the son of Robert and Anita Englehart. Growing up in Bad Axe, Tim enjoyed happy times with his many high school friends. Throughout his life, he enjoyed returning to the shoreline in Caseville, a place he held close to his heart. Tim and his wife, Patricia, moved to the Lansing area in 1981, where they started their family, and later moved to Charlotte in 1992. He worked over 20 years at Michigan Packaging Company, and briefly for Spartan Motors and 21st Century Plastics. Despite many personal struggles throughout his life, Tim's friends and family will remember his happy times, when he exemplified his kind-hearted nature, and his love for family. Timothy is survived by his two sons, Adam (Jennifer) Englehart and Ryan Englehart; step-mother, Elaine Englehart; brothers, Robert Englehart, Jr. and Thomas Englehart; sisters, Cindy Cook and Deborah Gunsell; a niece and a nephew; and his former wife, Patricia Englehart. He was predeceased by his father, Robert Englehart, Sr. A private family memorial service will be held. If desired, the family suggests memorial contributions to the charity of one's choice. Friends and family are asked to share memories of Tim on his Tribute Page at www.PrayFuneral.com. The family is in the care of Pray Funeral Home, Charlotte.
Timothy James Englehart, 58, of Charlotte, died unexpectedly on June 29, 2019 at his home. Tim was born July 17, 1960 in Bad Axe, MI, the son of Robert and Anita Englehart. Growing up in Bad Axe, Tim enjoyed happy times with his many high... View Obituary & Service Information
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Bob Martin Home Flea Fogger Plus is the simple and convenient way to combat flea infestation in your home in one easy treatment. Its unique triple action formula kills fleas and ticks on contact and goes on killing fleas, ticks and larvae for up to 3 months, whilst also preventing any flea eggs from developing for up to 7 months. Clinically proven, the Bob Martin Home Flea Fogger Plus will treat carpets, rugs, soft furnishings and pet bedding and leaves no sticky odour or residue.


Bentley created the Continental GT so that luxury and excessive speed could be merged together in a symphonious harmony. We are always in awe of a motoring masterpiece and to make sure even this car is covered, we have created our very own Armytrix system which adopts a brilliant sound and really does compliment that W12 6.0 litre engine.
With 552 BHP under the bonnet, there is simply no reason to have an amazing sound to roll with it. Our system actually increases the overall BHP by 21HP and you'll even get an extra 27NM of torque to boost your take off.
We've also managed to shave 3.1Kg off the overall weight which is a great addition to this setup. You can upgrade your Bentley to this exhaust with a Valvetronic Muffler & Wireless Remote control kit which is another reason to show off this beautifully crafted addition. This system also uses a (L+R) Y pipe with a resonator that really makes a difference.
You will find with all our systems, we supply you with an Armytrix key fob which has the ability to show your car off at high and low RPM. We've also built in, Quiet or Loud modes which are able to change the way the exhaust sounds and is great if you fancy showing off a little bit.
Finance is available on this product and should you wish to discuss this with one of our team then please do not hesitate to contact us on the number displayed.


Expect mixed ice and slush on hiking trails this weekend.
For the last full winter weekend in the Catskills this season it should be relatively warm. Showers and a high of 57 on Friday leading into the weekend will bring extra moisture and slush to trails on Saturday and Sunday.
Trail Conditions and Information: Prepare for some melting snow, slush, and mud on lower elevation trails this weekend, especially during the height of the day, and ice on higher elevation trails. Don't forget good boots and foot traction devices! Micro spikes or trail crampons for most hikes should be enough, however for longer treks on less-traveled trails, snowshoes may be a good idea. Visit the winter hiking section of Catskill Center's Amazon Page for some gear we recommend!
Weekend Weather Forecast (reporting for Hunter, NY): Friday, showers likely (80% chance), high of 57°. Friday evening, a small chance (30%) of showers, low of 31°. Saturday, partly sunny with a high near 38°, some isolated strong wind gusts up to 36 mph. Saturday evening, partly cloudy, with a low of 19°. Sunday, mostly sunny with a high of 32°. Sunday evening, partly cloudy, with a low of 17°.
Winter Hiking Opportunity: The Rip Van Winkle Hikers are hosting a 5-mile moderate hike of North Point in Haines Falls, NY on Sunday, March 24th at 8:30 am. Contact group leader for more information and to sign up.
Mountain-goers of all kinds should have a nice weekend. Warmer temperatures are predicted and some additional snow is expected Saturday night into Sunday. Stay prepared for variable trail and weather conditions with spare layers, microspikes, snowshoes, and rain protection.
Trail Conditions and Information: Trails are icy and very snowy this weekend. Ice can be found on some of the steepest sections of trail, and on trails that see less traffic it will be especially useful to have snowshoes and trekking poles. Locally in the Catskills, snowshoes are available to rent at Kenco in Kingston, Jimmy's Belleayre Ski Shop in Highmount, and the Pine Hill Community Center. Call in advance to reserve a pair!
Weekend Weather Forecast (reporting for Hunter, NY): Friday, partly sunny with a high near 30°, wind chill values as low as -3°. Friday evening, mostly cloudy with a low of 15°. Saturday, mostly sunny with a high near 36°. Saturday night, snow predicted (80% chance), low of about 25°. Sunday, high near 38° , snow and sleet before 10am, changing to rain after 1pm (80% chance of precipitation). Sunday night, a low around 30°, mostly cloudy with a change (40%) of snow showers.
Winter Hiking Opportunities: The Catskill Mountain Club has a hike coming up of Balsam Mountain on Thursday, March 14th . The Catskills 3500' Club will be leading a hike up Kaaterskill High Peak this Sunday, March 10th. You can register for either by e-mailing trip leaders. Both are classified as moderate to difficult hikes and will require good foot traction.
Don't put those snowshoes away yet! Snow fell this week in the Catskills and Hudson Valley and some more snow is possible Saturday through Monday.
Snow on top of ice on trails last weekend.
Trail Conditions and Information: A layer of powder this week with potential for more snow on Saturday and Sunday means soft snow on top of ice on trails. Accumulation was fairly small at lower elevations and the higher elevations saw about 4". With steeper trails you'll find some well-established winter ice, crampons as well as snowshoes are recommended. Visit Catskill Center's winter hiking tips and tricks page for some useful additional information.
Weekend Weather Forecast (reporting for Hunter, NY): Friday, partly sunny with a high of 31°. Friday night low around 23°, mostly cloudy with a small chance (20%) of snow. Saturday, a chance of snow (40%) throughout the day. Cloudy with a high near 31°. Saturday night, a chance of snow showers, mostly cloudy with a low of 24°. Sunday, a chance of snow (40%) in the afternoon. Partly sunny, high near 32°. Sunday night, snow likely, mostly cloudy with a low of 17°.
Expect existing ice and snow near summits in the Catskills this weekend. Some slush is likely at lower elevations.
Wintry mix abound! With warmer temperatures Friday through Sunday, we're expecting some melting snow and slush on Catskills trails. Rain Saturday night into Sunday will also help make things a bit more slippery. As always, hike with care and with appropriate clothing to stay as dry and comfortable as possible.
Trail Conditions and Information: Expect slush, snow, and existing ice at elevation this weekend. Traction devices are great to have, as is a solid rain gear kit from waterproof jacket to pants. Check out Catskill Center's winter hiking tips and tricks page for some useful additional information!
Weekend Weather Forecast (reporting for Hunter, NY): Friday, mostly sunny, high of 34°. Low around 19°. Saturday, partly sunny with a high near 37°. Saturday night, 80% chance of wintry precipitation from snow to sleet. Sunday, rain before 1pm, then scattered showers throughout the afternoon. High near 48°, overnight low of 28° and breezy. West winds coming through ranging from 18-26 mph.
Looking for animal prints in the snow at the CIC last week.
As the Catskills get rain on Friday mixed with freezing temperatures overnight, a new layer of ice is expected this holiday weekend.
Trail Conditions and Information: Hikers tread with caution and err on the side of bringing more equipment. Steel crampons are a safe solution for icy, steep sections of trail and snowshoes are ideal for staying above stretches of snowpack. Staying hydrated, dry, and fueled will help keep concerns like hypothermia at bay. Check out Catskill Center's winter hiking tips and tricks page for some useful additional information!
Weekend Weather Forecast (reporting for Hunter, NY): Friday, rain and snow showers leading to rain after 9 am. High of 42° and a low of 22°. Saturday, scattered snow showers after 10 am. Partly sunny with a high of 32°. Low overnight around 13°. Sunday, mostly sunny with a high near 28°. The overnight will be mostly cloudy with a low of 14°.


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Raoul Blanchard (Orleães,  — Paris, ) foi um geógrafo francês.

Publicações selecionadas
La Flandre. Étude de géographie de la plaine flamande, en France, Belgique et Hollande, Armand Colin, Paris, 1906
« L'Habitation en Queyras », La Géographie, 1909
« Sur quelques géants américains », Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris, Paris, 1909.
Grenoble, étude de géographie urbaine, Armand Colin, Paris, 1911
Rapport général de l'exposition internationale de la houille blanche et du tourisme, Grands établissements de l'imprimerie générale, Grenoble, 1925
Les Alpes françaises, Armand Colin, Paris, 1925
« Asie occidentale », Géographie universelle, sous la direction de Paul Vidal de La Blache et de Lucien Gallois), Armand Colin, Paris, 1929
« La presqu'île de Gaspé », Revue de Géographie Alpine, Grenoble, 1930
« Les Problèmes du Canada français », Académie des sciences morales et politiques, Paris, 1932
« L'Amérique du Nord : États-Unis, Canada et Alaska », Fayard, Paris, 1933
« Géographie de l'industrie », 1934
L'Est du Canada français, Province de Québec, 2 vol., Montréal, 1935
Grenoble, étude de géographie urbaine, 3 édition, Librairie Didier & Richard, Grenoble, 1935.
« Géographie de Québec », Bulletin de la Société de Statistique, Grenoble, 1935.
Les Alpes occidentales, 1937 ; 1958
Géographie générale, 1938
Le Centre du Canada français, 1947
Montréal : esquisse de géographie urbaine, 1947.
Le Québec par l'image, 1949
La Mauricie, 1950
Les Alpes et leur destin, Fayard, Paris, 1953
L'Ouest du Canada français, 5 vol., Montréal, 1953-1954.
Réflexions sur les hautes vallées alpestres, Grenoble, 1958
Le Canada français, 1960-1964
Le Canada français, 3 édition mise à jour, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1970

Geógrafos da França


For Sheldon's birthday a couple weeks ago, Elijah drew this beautiful family portrait. We framed it and Eli was quite proud to present it.
Elijah's always been very comfortable drawing on his own. I think his work above a testament to the value of allowing children to experiment on their own. Structured crafts are fun, but I think some of the most productive creative time for children is spent with simply a piece of paper and some crayons.
The drawings below are Fiona's. She's a very focused little artist, practicing shapes over and over until she gets them right. See the circles that have little dots in them? Those are chocolate chip cookies.


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Experienced professional interested in ubiquitous computing, data analysis, algorithms and software engineering.

Moisés Pérez

Software Engineer, MSc.

Tijuana & San Diego Area

 mxpxgx@gmail.com

Projects

Publications

Resumé

Projects

These are some of the projects I've worked on in the past.

ESNM [@colef.mx]

Developed a web system with applications related to population and migration studies as part of a research project (No. 16506) funded by CONACYT and INEGI (institutes of the federal government). Helped in the design and implemention of an algorithm to estimate population and net migration between Mexican states using data from the national census, and administrative registries for births and deaths.

InCense [github]

My master's project at CICESE, InCense, a toolkit to facilitate contextual data gathering from a population of smartphone users. It includes a mobile application, a desktop application and a database. The mobile application was developed using the Android platform. This application stays running the programmed time, sensing and saving data from the accelerometers, GPS, microphone, Wi-Fi, NFC and other "sensors". It also triggers surveys to users based on different events. If you want to know more about this project you can read some of my publications about it or contact me.

Publications and other academic activities

These are some of my academic publications and research-related activities.

M. Perez, L. Castro, J. Favela (2011). InCense: A research kit to facilitate behavioral data gathering from populations of mobile phone users. 5th International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI). Riviera Maya, Mexico. [UCAmI site]

L. Castro, J. Favela, M. Perez, C. Garcia (2011). Work in progress: Opportunistic sensing for behavioral inferences in elder care. IEEE Pervasive Computing. 10(4): 54-55. [Abstract]

M. Perez (2011). InCense: A research kit to facilitate behavioral data gathering from populations of mobile phone users (Poster). 2nd Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing Uniting the Californias. Ensenada, Mexico. [WUC2nd site, PNG file]

Thesis (Spanish only): M. Perez (2012). Herramienta móvil de adquisición de información del comportamiento en poblaciones. Tesis de maestría en ciencias. Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada. 2012. [CICESE library]

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Tag: The Man Whose Left Arm Was a Cat
DP FICTION #47B: "The Man Whose Left Arm Was a Cat" by Jennifer Lee Rossman
Thomas Fitzpatrick McAllister's life was the very essence of boring and uneventful, to the extent that even his goldfish, who up until recently had always been a veritable fountain of excitement, had taken up the hobby of listening to dial tones while staring listlessly at the wall. It wasn't even a particularly interesting wall, though it must be noted that it was painted a rather vibrant shade of ecru, and was quite possibly the most vibrant shade of anything in the entire apartment. Though Tom never entertained guests, whenever a plumber or handyman happened to complement the ecru wall, Tom was quick to point out that it had been that color when he moved in, and that the previous residents had probably been wild, uninhibited hippies who had bought the paint in the middle of a psychedelic trip.
Though his life had consisted of undressed salads, unscented deodorant, and a vast variety of other un-things for as long as he could remember (which was nearly everything since his traumatic fourth birthday, when some well-meaning but ill-informed aunt had attempted to give him a box of crayons), his comfortably dull, quiet life would soon be violently thrust into a world of excitement. And not a moment too soon, or this might have been an incredibly uninteresting story.
The morning began with a sunrise, as mornings tend to do, though Tom remained sound asleep in his matching gray pajamas and his soft (but not too soft) beige comforter, unaware of the beautiful swaths of colors that existed just beyond his window. He awoke at precisely seven o'clock to the unmelodic beeping of his alarm clock. He showered, dressed in a gray suit and grayer tie, and ate a balanced breakfast of plain yogurt and off-brand oat rings, milk on the side.
After thoroughly washing his dishes with unscented dish detergent and taking a plethora of unexciting vitamins, Tom left his apartment at seven forty-five and arrived in the lobby of his building at just the right time to casually bump into a woman who perplexed and intrigued him in equal amounts.
Her name, if her mailbox was to be trusted, was "Wendiie," spelled with two I's and an E in place of the traditional, far less ridiculous Y. A peculiar name with a nonstandard spelling that made Tom wonder about the mental state of her parents. And yet the name fit her so impeccably well that he didn't particularly mind.
The woman must have been a rainbow in a former life, for that was the only explanation for the vivid, haphazard colors she wore with such abandon. Her flowing clothes were so loud that they competed for attention with her jangling bracelets and off-key humming. She never wore the same outfit twice, and often completed the ensemble with a hat embellished with the face of a cartoon character. A different hat with a different character every day. He wondered where she stored them all.
Tom found her enchanting, and he choreographed his day around her schedule in the hopes of catching a fleeting glimpse of the variegated specter. He wasn't attracted to her so much as flummoxed by her very existence. It wasn't very often that one met a person so completely one's opposite, and he sought to know everything about her. What did she eat for breakfast, and was it as intriguing as her knitted shawl with the multicolored pom-poms?
She said nothing as she hurried out the lobby door, carrying a large sequined bag filled with endless mystery. Where was she going? Why was she going there? Did she sort her books by title or by author's name? She probably didn't sort them at all, the wild rebel, and left them scattered about in piles on the floor while her bookshelves were filled with… with what? Tom tried to think of the most outrageous, non-book item that one could put on a bookshelf, and decided upon whimsical sculptures of dolphins wearing hats.
Why they wore hats and how they kept the hats secured on their heads while swimming through the ocean, he did not know. For a moment he entertained the possibility that they might use chin straps, until he came to his senses and remembered that dolphins did not have chins.
His mind full of unsolvable mysteries that would fuel him for the day, Tom left for his uneventful job as a lawn growth analyst, where he would sit for eight hours in a small room lit by ultraviolet lights, not only to watch grass grow but to take exhaustive notes in minute detail about the speed at which it did so. It was a menial job which he thoroughly enjoyed, and on any other day he would have boarded bus number four at precisely seven fifty, sat in his regular aisle seat three rows back on the left, and arrived at the large, brown building exactly sixteen minutes before nine o'clock.
This day was different, and Tom knew this the instant he saw a man with a very large tortoise. Surely tortoises were not allowed on public transportation, and it did not wear an orange vest signifying it as an emotional support tortoise. Tom almost walked right back off the bus again at this cavalier lack of rule following, but then he saw the seat beside his. Instead of the quiet, older gentleman with the large glasses, beside whom Tom had ridden wordlessly for five years and seven months, the window seat three rows back on the left was occupied by a refreshing ray of prismatic light.
Tom sat down and secured his seatbelt as the bus lurched into motion. Wendiie glanced at him with a sort of impersonal pleasantness, and he realized that someone as gray and precise as he would be of little interest to someone as colorful and whimsical as she. He wanted to talk to her, to speak of philosophy and poetry and ask her why she had that purple streak in her hair, but his mouth went dry and his mind went blank, and he could only manage a weak "Hello."
Wendiie smiled, a spark of recognition lighting up her eyes that were the color of something very, incredibly blue that Tom had seen before but could not name at the moment. Possibly a poisonous frog or the sky over a tropical island. "You live in my building, don't you?"
Tom nodded, and anything he was about to say left his mind as Wendiie's oversized bag began to stir. After a moment, a furry little face peeked out and gave an irritated meow. He stared at it for a moment, the looked back to Wendiie. "You have a cat in your bag," he informed her, in case she wasn't aware.
"I do." She put a finger to her painted lips as a laugh escaped them. "She isn't allowed on the bus, but I won't tell it you won't."
In general, Tom felt about cats the way he felt about most animals. That is to say, it was nice that they existed but he wasn't wildly enthusiastic about having them in his home (he made an exception for the goldfish, as it had been his mother's and the dog pound had refused to take it). That being said, for an animal that did its business in a sandbox and probably had a penchant for leaving disemboweled rodents around the house, he supposed this cat looked like a respectable enough cat. It was gray, and Tom liked that.
On a whim, Tom reached out to pet the cat, thus marking both the first time he had pet a cat and the first time he had done anything on a whim. He found it was not an unpleasant experience, and considered the possibility of doing it again at some point in the future.
The irony of planning to do something on a whim was lost on Tom, but it would soon become irrelevant. Neither Tom nor any of the other passengers on the bus—not the mother and child, the peculiar man carrying the rather large tortoise, nor Wendiie herself—had even the slightest hint of a clue that, at that very moment, bus number four was carrying both a bomb and an amoral scientist in need of test subjects.
It all happened incredibly quickly. One moment, Tom was complimenting Wendiie on the uniformity of her cat's toenails, and the very next thing he knew, he was laying in bed and staring up at a fluorescent lighting fixture that he did not recall owning.
He had been dreaming, he decided, though this didn't explain why he had tubes in his nose and arm. What an efficient way to live, he marveled. Why hadn't he thought of this earlier?
A woman appeared in Tom's field of vision, her sour face as unreadable as his mother's handwriting. She seemed to be pleased that he was alive and awake—a sentiment with which Tom wholeheartedly agreed—yet apprehension played in her big, brown eyes. She began to speak several times, but seemed to have forgotten how. Finally, after quite a bit of hemming and hawing and tugging at her left earring, she said in a quiet voice, "I'll get Dr. Polk."
She walked away, leaving Tom alone with his thoughts, the fluorescent light, and a rather irritating itch on his left temple. He raised his hand to scratch it, and discovered that his arm was immobile. Removing the sheet with his other hand, he subsequently discovered a cat lying on his left forearm.
He supposed it was Wendiie's cat, though all cats looked the same to him and he based this supposition purely on its color and the uniform length of its toenails. It wore a rainbow collar bearing a tag that read "Linda", which confirmed his suspicion. Wendiie was most definitely the type of person who would name a cat Linda.
The cat, which had been sleeping soundly draped across Tom's arm and chest, now yawned and opened her eyes, looking at Tom with very much the same confused expression of unrecognition that he had given the fluorescent light a moment earlier. She tried to stand but fell, as if her rear legs had given out. Wondering if her legs had been injured in the accident, Tom further pulled the sheet back and made a most curious discovery.
The cat, he found, had not been laying on his arm at all. In fact, this would have been an impossible feat, as his arm existed to only just below the elbow, having been, he could only assume, dismembered in the accident.
Ordinarily, Tom would have reacted to such a discovery with shock and disgust and an outpouring of words which his mother had instructed him to never say in polite company. Instead, owed no doubt to the calming liquid pumping into his arm, he merely examined the remains of his arm with a curiosity he normally reserved for such intriguing articles as the nutrition facts on his off-brand cereal.
It had been a good arm, and he would miss it dearly, especially when trying to open jars and wash beneath his remaining arm, but in the grand scheme of things it was no great loss and the surgeon had done a remarkable job of attaching the cat.
Tom paused a moment. That certainly didn't sound right. He looked again to be sure, and found that there was, indeed, a cat attached to his forearm. Specifically, the front two-thirds of a cat, sewn onto his arm in such a natural way that made him wonder, if only for a second, if perhaps he had been born with a cat on his arm, though surely he would have noticed such an abnormality before now.
He raised his arm, straining to lift Linda with what remained of his arm muscles, and tried to use her toenails of uniform length to finally scratch the itch on his left temple. The cat declined to cooperate, and he was forced to use his right hand. He then positioned the cat, feeling rather like a fantastic puppeteer, so he could look her in the eyes. They were a bright shade of blue, big and round and innocent like those of her owner, and Tom wondered if Linda felt as confused as he did.
A white-haired man wearing a pristine lab coat and mismatched shoes entered the room, laughing jovially to someone in the hall. His demeanor changed abruptly upon setting his eyes on Tom and Linda. "Ah," he said. "I see you have discovered my handiwork."
Tom knew he should have felt angry. If waking up to find a cat surgically attached to his body didn't make a man want to flip over tables and throw lamps, then what would? After a moment of thought, Tom decided that he was angry. Incredibly, furiously angry. However, much like discovering that one wall in his otherwise ideal apartment had been painted a scandalous shade of ecru, there was nothing he could do about it now. (He had considered painting the wall, of course, but shuddered at the thought of visiting a paint store and all its colors.)
Doctor Polk, as the man in the lab coat introduced himself, launched into a grand speech about how Tom had been in an accident, how his arm had been beyond repair, and how the poor little cat had been so near death. He told of his own research into forbidden medical experiments, of his hobbies of making taxidermy jackalopes and, and of the angels who told him to try the unspeakable.
In all honesty, the part about the angels may have been a hallucination on Tom's part. For all the good it did, the calming liquid pumping through his body did make sounds rather garbled and unintelligible, as well as briefly giving him the ability to taste numbers, but he understood the general idea of what the doctor was saying, and was allowed to go home after several days. The logic of sending home the subjects of an unsanctioned medical experiment confounded Tom, but Dr. Polk was clearly not in his right mind. No one in their right mind would wear mismatched shoes.
Tom discovered rather quickly that living with a left arm which had a mind of its own—and the mind of a cat, no less—was not nearly as enjoyable as he thought it would be, a fact worth mentioning as he had never been under the impression that it would be enjoyable at all.
His left arm would bat pens out of reach and scratch his sofa. She would lick herself and Tom, and later make the most nauseating hacking sounds while regurgitating the hair she had ingested. Showering—any activity in which water was involved—required quite a bit of effort, and his left arm was absolutely terrified of the toilet. He had never had a cat before, but assumed it would be infinitely less unpleasant if he had the ability to be more than eighteen inches from the cat at any point in the day.
As weeks turned to months, however, Tom grew oddly accustomed to his situation. He worked from home, monitoring lawn growth via webcam, and left his apartment once a week to check his mail, wearing an oversized coat and pulling down the sleeve to conceal the cat.
His days were no longer orchestrated around brief Wendiie sightings, though he did see her on rare occasions. She did not hum or dance but walked slowly and with a slight limp. She wore heavy black dresses that skimmed the ground, and could often be found gazing forlornly at the "Missing Cat" posters with which she had wallpapered the lobby.
Tom often wondered whether it would be beneficial for her to know that Linda had survived the accident, or if the knowledge that someone had surgically attached the cat to the forearm of her uninteresting neighbor would only upset her. This debate soon dominated his thoughts, and he could think of nothing but.
He could never come to a conclusion either way, but decided that it wouldn't matter. Someone like Wendiie, intriguing and perplexing and simply lovely, would never give someone as bland and dull as Tom the time it would take to explain how he had come to have her cat affixed to his arm.
Tom languished in these thoughts until the evening came that he happened to serendipitously enter the elevator at precisely the same time as Wendiie. "Sixth floor," he mumbled, pulling the sleeve over Linda and desperately hoping she wouldn't meow. And that was when something, a very wonderful something, occurred to him.
His left arm was a cat. He couldn't be uninteresting if he tried, with a cat for an arm. Even if she thought him being absurd, Wendiie couldn't possibly deny the fact that "My left arm is a Siamese cat named Linda" was quite possibly the most interesting phrase a person could ever hope to assemble in English or any other language.
As the elevator slowly inched upwards, Tom gathered every shred of courage and finally spoke a phrase which, though admittedly not the one he had intended, was assuredly the most interesting sentence he had ever said in his entire life. "One of my walls is painted ecru."
Wendiie looked out in confusion from behind a curtain of black hair which lacked a purple streak. "What?"
"My walls are mostly eggshell, but I have one that's a horribly gaudy shade of ecru, and I wanted to know what color your walls are. Because you fascinate me."
She stared at him curiously and, when the elevator reached her floor, she took him by the hand—the right one, thankfully—and led him to her apartment. She opened the door into a living room flooded with color and wind chimes and, as Tom had suspected, bookshelves that did not contain books but rather statues of dolphins (though they were not wearing hats, and he could never have predicted the little platypi riding the dolphins). The walls were painted with surreal murals of unicorns, the tables ornamented with antique clocks and scented candles, the window treatments opened wide to welcome the sunset.
Perhaps recognizing the familiar surroundings, Linda poked her head out of the sleeve and meowed. Wendiie looked at the cat, and then at Tom, in a mysteriously understanding way, as if she had suspected this all along. She reached out to pet the cat, and her hands trailed upwards and found the seam where cat became arm. After a brief pause, Wendiie rolled up his sleeve and wordlessly examined the sight before her.
She laughed and lifted the hem of her heavy black skirt off the floor. Tom was pleasantly surprised to discover that, from the ankle down, Wendiie's right leg was a tortoise. He knew then that his life would never be unexciting or uneventful again, and that night, in a decision he made on the whimsiest of whims, he and Wendiie and the cat and the tortoise painted every single one of his walls a most scandalous shade of ecru.
© 2018 by Jennifer Lee Rossman
Author's Note: Years ago, I saw a commercial for the animated movie "Barbie and the Three Musketeers." At one point I think the characters were putting their swords together and saying "all for one and one for all," and one of the musketeers had a cat sitting on her arm. To me, it looked like she'd had her arm replaced by a live cat, and that seemed like a much more interesting story.
Jennifer Lee Rossman is a disabled writer, editor, and nerd whose work has been featured in several anthologies. Her time travel novella Anachronism is available from Grimbold Books, and she would like to apologize in advance for the twist ending. Her debut novel, Jack Jetstark's Intergalactic Freakshow, was published by World Weaver Press in December. She blogs at jenniferleerossman.blogspot.com and tweets @JenLRossman
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Posted on January 11, 2019 January 24, 2019 Author David SteffenCategories FictionTags Romance, The Man Whose Left Arm Was a Cat3 Comments on DP FICTION #47B: "The Man Whose Left Arm Was a Cat" by Jennifer Lee Rossman


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Printable 2023 Calendar - Year At A Glance
Download my free 2023 year calendar as a printable PDF with floral design accents and large dates. Print and post a 2023 calendar for reference at your office, home desk, fridge, or wherever.
At Alicia Nagel Creative (a.k.a. me at my desk LOL), I find it a "must" to be able to see dates for the full year at a glance when I do project management. Last year I found myself searching online for a printable 8.5 x 11 calendar that I could post on the wall and not mind staring at for a full year, and not finding one, ended up designing one for myself. Somehow 2023 is upon us, and I'm finding my 2022 wall calendar falling short as it stops at the end of December. So the other week I made one for 2023, and thought I might as well share it in case anyone else wants to print it and use it too!
"Have a bias towards action – let's see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away." – Indira Gandhi
"Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success." – Pablo Picasso
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Five Ways a Company's Holiday Communications Reflect Their Brand
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If you like what you see and are interested in creating something incredible together, I would love to hear from you! Please tell me about your project via the button below and I'll contact you within a few days.
Alicia Nagel Creative
Alicia Nagel Creative is located in Kailua Kona, Hawaii and provides marketing strategy, branding, and design services to brands across the US. Projects include marketing plans, brand strategy, website design, logo design, digital and physical marketing materials.
Email Me | P.O. Box 846, Kailua Kona, Hawaii 96740 | Privacy Policies | © 2022 by Alicia Nagel Creative, LLC


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