Want to say a big Congratulations to OB'S Customs on the coverage in the new Hot VWS this month. Nice to see another Volksrodder in the magazine.
Last edited by Timbo; December 27th, 2018 at 08:07 AM.
Re: Congrats to OB'S Customs.
Haven't seen an HVWs mag in a while, but will have to go try and find this one. OB's ride is for sure feature quality !
Cool. Mines still in the wrapper. Got it today. Can't wait to check it out.
Great, now I'll have to hang out in the cold by the mailbox tomorrow. Congrats' I really enjoy the magazine.
Hey Thanks guys! I was super excited about this! Then out of nowhere I had a hot rod guy make a crazy offer and I couldn't say no. As of 2 weeks ago it went to a new home. The hunt has started for the next project...69 or earlier Notch or maybe a fastback to volksrod.
Good to hear that you got a crazy offer, HVW's can do that, I sold mine within a month of HVW's and got a crazy offer as well. Now looking forward to seeing your next project.
Congratulations on your well deserved fame and fortune!
I always thought that a Ghia morphed into a Merc sled would be cool.
Makes perfect sense to me as well. Thought about trying it myself. Ghia bodies are kinda high priced for me to experiment on like that... the roof line is already the right shape (or very close) so most of it will be the nose and the tail and the body lines down each side.
Now I guess I'll hafta get myself a copy of the magazine, can't seem to find it anywhere around here.


Named after the German geologist Julius von Haast, the first European to explore the Franz Josef Glacier. Haast New Zealand is made up of several small settlements spread over a 50 km radius and include Haast Junction, Haast Beach and Haast.
Haast is a bird watcher's paradise, with fantail, tui, bellbird, pigeon, silvereye, grey warbler, parakeet, falcon, kaka, kiwi and morepork all located in the abundant lowland forests. Other wildlife include the fur seal, blue penguin and the Fiordland crested penguin.
The Haast area has a range of accommodation providers, friendly hotels, cafes & restaurants. The Haast Visitor Centre provides excellent interpretation and information about the area. Local services include a general store, and service station for motoring needs.
Haast is situated alongside Mount Aspiring National Park, in the heart of the Te Wähipounamu South West New Zealand World Heritage Area A place declared by UNESCO to stand alongside the Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Mount Everest and other significant natural treasures around the world.
Lake Moeraki is located 25 minutes north of Haast in the heart of some of the West Coast's untouched lowland and wetland rainforest. It is adjacent to remote beaches that are home to a variety of marine fauna, including seals and penguins.
Makarora is located on the Wanaka/Haast Highway (SH6) in one of New Zealand's most idyllic mountain settings, on the edge of the Mount Aspiring National Park. Only 45 minutes drive from Wanaka and one hour from West Coast, its valley location offers countless opportunities for exploration.
Haast is located in the heart of the Te Wähipounamu South-West New Zealand World Heritage Area. This incredible scenic landscape takes in Westland Tai Poutini National Park, Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park to the east, and Fiordland National Park and Mt Aspiring National Parks further south.
The geology, flora and fauna of the area surrounding the Haast River, a glacial valley, is an interesting find. Take a Haast river boat safari on the waterways to experience a lush part of the World Heritage area, complete with seasonal bonus opportunities to see penguins, dolphins and seals.
Jackson Bay is a small, remote fishing village, 50km south of Haast. The road to Jackson Bay is often rated as one of the West Coast's 'best kept secrets' by visitors. If you don't want to travel the full journey, try stopping off at Okuru Beach, a small coastal settlement located approximately 15 minutes south of Haast.


"To be or not to be" is the question first asked by Hamlet as the play opens with flashes of light and thundering electricity. Director Eleanor Holdridge's stark staging opens with Hamlet facing his mortality; the play performed is the last days of the prince's life flashing before his eyes.
Staged with minimal props and simple, tailored costumes, "Hamlet" offers no distractions from the superb work by the small ensemble cast. The set is bare and black, with only inventive lighting and the actors creating a setting. Music is used well to enhance the atmosphere, but at times other sound effects are jarring and overwhelming.
Dennis Krausnick's Polonius shines a light on humor often overlooked in this play, and garners big laughs for his verbose manner and misguided assesment of Hamlet's motivation. Jason Asprey as Hamlet is mournful, introspective, and hot-tempered, but also playful and even warm. Amid his cerebral wrangling with the self, the prince of Denmark shows believeable tenderness towards those he loves, and plays at madness with humor and sharp timing. The surprising levity of some scenes enhances the poignancy of others, reserving the highest intensity for moments where it belongs. At times, Asprey turns up the volume where subtlety would work best, but overall his performance is textured and human.
Claudius, the murderous king, is slick and cocky in the hands of Nigel Gore, sporting a pinstripe suit and an earring. He struts with confidence and without conscience, and given the opportunity shows such relish at his own villainy that even he is horrified. In a brilliant twist of staging "Hamlet's" play within a play, the king and queen are coaxed into acting out their parts in the previous king's death with unintentional gusto.
Johnny Lee Davenport steals the show in a chilling turn as the ghost, and equally hilarious moments as a traveling actor and gravedigger. Elizabeth Raetz is a simple but haunting Ophelia.
This swift-paced no-frills production underscores the power and complexity of "Hamlet." Each actor is outstanding and delivers a performance that is visceral, accessible, and timeless - Shakespeare at his best.


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Home » One-shots » Tome: On The Green » Tome: On The Green
Tome: On The Green
By Vaal April 30, 2014 April 29, 2014 Tome: On The Green, One-shots, Story
It was raining again.
It felt like eight days in a week, the damn sky opened up and the rain came down. Misting, pouring, driving, in tiny, stinging nettles of cold, in warm, fat drops—they got the sampler pack.
Charles 'Chuck' Wheatley had learned to prefer it rainy. When the sky was clear, it was obvious that he wasn't on Earth anymore. The blue sky was a darker blue, like the bruised color the sky back home took on when it was storming nearby. To the west, there was always that green… thing, looking like a huge moon that never rose or set. Caufield checked it out with his scope one day—said it looked to be made of green clouds and thorny vines the size of office buildings.
He didn't want to look for himself. Didn't want to think about that too closely. They had enough with the damn plants on the mudhole of an island they were on without them being big enough to see from the opposite horizon.
Speaking of plants, he looked to his right in time to watch a fallen tree trunk get crushed into the mud by the Hippo's treads. The A-104 Hippopotamus was a materiel carrier, modified with wider tracks and a more robust engine specifically to operate in the blasted and withered track of rainforest they called a 'road' out here.
Tome, hadn't been willing to risk getting caught shipping actual battle tanks and APCs out to the fake oil rig that housed the portal to Faerie, so the Hippo was accompanied by a column of modified Humvees with spinal weapon mounts.
Faerie. He felt stupid just thinking the name, but at the same time had to acknowledge it was fitting. He'd seen the little winged bastards and while they were more like bugs shaped like little people, no one would argue that they were goddamn fairies.
Chuck, along with seven others, were currently on outrider duty, driving around and head of the column on ATVs with mudding tires. He hated outrider duty; steering meant he couldn't carry his weapon at the ready. Everyone learned very quickly that one always wanted their weapons at the ready on Faerie.
He scanned the treeline, about thirty feet away, watching for movement. The 'road' had been bombed with defoliant to create a swathe of devastation a hundred feet across from base camp to the mining complex on the island's central mountain, an extinct volcano. Crews rolled up it on every clear day to reapply the poison because the local plants meant to reclaim it.
Whether they 'meant' it in the same way a lion meant to eat your face, or a serial killer 'meant' to stab you was up for debate every morning and every night in the mess. Chuck was on the side of the serial killer meaning. His first week 'on the Green' as the higher ups called it, he'd seen a damned thorny creeper avoid two mercs with flamethrowers and another carrying a defoliant sprayer to grab a man with a regular machine gun and drag him over the wall.
Something about the high sugar composition of the more mobile plants made them flame like marshmallows. The defoliant was some next-level Agent Orange-type crap that made the things wither and melt like salted slugs and made it so the mercenaries had to wear masks whenever they were outside.
The plants knew that. They could pick out folks that could hurt 'em and knew to go after the ones that couldn't defend themselves.
It was either that, or the other natives controlling them.
During the first debrief, Chuck called bullshit on the idea that magic was a real thing right to the instructor's face. The class agreed with him too. That was, until the instructor took them on a little 'field trip'. Tome had spent some time getting quite a collection of freaks for their zoo and didn't mind showing them off.
The mercs took to calling the natives, which the suits said were called 'daoine', elves because damned if they didn't look like them. Almost human until you got close enough to see the pointed ears, and sharp teeth. The ones they'd seen on the field trip were even less human; they had all-black eyes.
Whatever you called them, they were the most dangerous things the island had thrown at them. Magic was real, and Chuck had seen it stop bullets, flip hummers, and sink defoliant deployment trucks so deep in the mud they had to be abandoned. Command wouldn't even send anything that flew through the portal anymore because the buggers shot every last drone down within an hour.
They hadn't seen any elves in the past two weeks or so. Maybe they're killed enough of them to scare them off. Maybe they'd killed them all. Or maybe they were regrouping for an onslaught.
As they topped the next rise, base camp came into view—or at least the walls and guard towers. The walls were six feet of reinforced concrete with plate steel bolted onto the outer face. A lot of the locals were allergic to the touch of iron, so anything that could be clad in steel was.
Chuck touched the controls to his goggle and toggle on range-finding. They were just a litle under two klicks from 'home'. It wasn't much, but the small, crowded command complex almost felt like a luxury when a man could take off his mask and sodden body armor. The scrubbed air was a good as a lake breeze after spending the better part of the day breathing what the mask's filters spat into his face.
They still werent' close enough to home for it to be a foregone conclusion though. Even when the natives weren't laying in ambush, the local wildlife got curious about the base once in a while, and like everything else on Faerie, the animals were deadly.
Sometimes the higher-ups back home would find something they wanted in their menagerie back home on the video they sent back and offer big bonuses to anyone who joined a team to capture it.
Even at nine million for a three month tour of duty, just the Hippo escorts and day to day base defense against the hellish magic and monsters was only just worth it. Neither Chuck, nor any of the other merc who'd been on the Green for more than a month signed up for that. Sometimes not even bodies came back from those hunts.
His comm crackled. Something about the island interfered with them just enough to make every transmission sound like it was coming out of a kid's walkie talkie set instead of the high-end comms they wore.
It was Hutch, the senior merc there. He was certifiably insane from what Chuck knew of him; he'd stayed on for a second tour on the Green and seemed to take everything the damn death world threw at him in stride. Not just in stride, the crazy bastard laughed at it.
"Movement at our two o'clock." said Hutch. He was on the lead humvee's spinal gun, a plasma lance with an underslung grenade launcher which he swung around toward the movement he'd spotted.
"No visual here." Veronica White, riding shotgun in the hippo had the highest forward vantage point in the column. "Eyes open. If it's elves or butterflies, the attack gonna come from both sides at once."
'Butterfly' was the reporting name for faeries to set them apart from the name of the world and following with the higher-ups insisting that they were pixies. Like it mattered when the damn things were trying to kill you.
Something shifted off to Chuck's left, just inside the surviving tree line. He hit his comm "Movement on our nine. Good call, White."
The comm crackled and the squad leader, Hendrix, came on. "We're a klick and a half from base camp. No point in getting into a prolonged firefight. Lipsky, Gough: light 'em up and we'll make a run for it."
Leon Lipsky and Shane Gough were crewing the flamethrowers on the second and penultimate humvees respectively and they didn't need to be told twice. Lipsky too the right, Gough took the left and both rained liquid fire across the intervening woodland.
Vines, leaves and trunks caught quickly and from some of them came the high pitched whistle-scream the predatory plants made when they burned. They weren't the ones hunting the column though—those started up their war cry.
"Butterflies! Move! Move!" shouted someone, their voice so garbled that Chuck had no idea who. They were right: the elves sounded human when they yelled. Faeries or pixies or whatever sounded like giant bumblebees trapped in tin cans and that was the sound rising up from behind the burning treeline.
Shapes, the size and shapes of men appeared and soldered through the flames. They weren't walking so much as floating forward, their arms extended straight out to their sides. The fire swirled around them, but the worst they did was to peel and burn away the bright paint covering their bodies of clay and treated wood.
As if everything else about Faerie wasn't humiliating enough for grown-ass mercenaries to talk about, the higher-ups had told them that those things were called 'battle dolls'. Like reverse voodoo dolls, the things could be driven remotely by a pixie, mimicking its actions right down to casting larger scale versions of the spells the pixie cast.
"Go, go, go!" Hendrix ordered before the first doll even cleared the fires. The humvees kicked up mud in sheets, skidding briefly before getting traction. The Hippo was too heavy for that and its engine roared as the driver floored it. The motor pool was going to earn its pay if they made it back to base.
A doll broke out of the tree line. Six feet tall, it looked like a heavy-duty scarecrow. Where paint hadn't been scorched off, it wore a drawn-on manic grin and eyes that were black circles filled with white. Its arms were little more than featureless flippers with deep carvings around the ends.
It oriented on the nearest humvee, but before it could do anything, a beam of deadly red plasma took it in the chest, burning a holes straight through before sweeping left to right to saw it in half.
Another doll appeared not far away from the first. A pair of misty globes of green light flared into being in front of the hands before hurling across the road toward the column. The first impacted the Hippo, making the armored carrier rock on its wheels, but the thick mud kept it from going too far over. The other it the ground between the Hippo and the humvee behind it, throwing up a shower of mud and rotten vegetation when it detonated.
The other gunners opened up, sending ruby beams of plasma sizzling through the pouring rain and high caliber rounds into the trees. With the mud, running wasn't much faster than their normal speed.
Chuck checked his shooting rig. It was a powered frame worn over his body armor that covered one arm, a shoulder and anchored around his torso. Green lights on the back of the glove told him the battery was fully charged, so get pulled his shotgun from the holster bolted to the side of the ATV. With the rig, it could be fired one handed without breaking a shoulder and making the shooter drop the gun.
The ATV's wheel tried to twist out of his other hand as he bounced along the muddy road, looking for any sign of more enemies ahead. It didn't take long: three battle dolls rose up from the mud less than a klick from base camp, the green witchfire already burning at the ends of their stubby arms.
Chuck gunned his engine and leveled his weapon. Like a knight of old, he faced down his foe in a joust. Only this joust came at range and faster than the speed of sound. The place where the doll's left arm met its shoulder exploded, leaving too little support for the arm to do anything but crumble off. White and green fire burst out of the wound and the other ball of light guttered out, leaving the doll flaming and inert.
Behind him, more explosions, both the deafening booms from witchfire and the deceptively quiet thumps of grenades going off in the trees sounded. There was a wrenching sound, like sheet metal being physically ripped apart, followed by the fwoosh of flames igniting. Chuck tried to ignore the death behind him in favor of the death in front of him.
While Chuck worked the pump action on his gun, the face of another of the dolls exploded, sending painted wood spraying forward into the mud. Instead of burning, this one simply tipped over, its deadly witchfire snuffed in the moist earth. From the exit wound, Chuck knew the kill shot had come from the wall around base camp; they'd come into weapons range of the guard towers.
Two of the other outriders took down the third doll and held position along with Chuck to let the rest of the column catch up.
The ambush seemed to have been broken. Two of the humvees bore the scorch marks and deep dents of direct impacts, but the new armor upgrades and redistributed weights the motor pool fixed them up with had kept them from flipping. The Hippo had been beat all to hell, but that was what it was built for.
From where Chuck sat, one of the ATVs was missing, and Gough's spot atop the penultimate humvee was gone, bereft of man and flamethrower. Part of the roof had been peeled away when whatever hit him and it tore them from their perch.
No one was mentioning a medic in the comm chatter, so it was unlikely they'd survived. Out of twenty-five mercs sent up the mountain to collect what the robots at the mine collected that week, twenty-three were coming back. One less death than the average native ambush. Hendrix ordering the plasma lances and mounted heavy machine guns had been a god choice. The higher ups seemed to think fire and defoliant were enough, but then they hadn't known about the battle dolls until the pixies had already wiped out a thirty-one people and almost breeched the wall with their damn scarecrows.
Another reason to be glad they were on an island, Chuck thought. The made the variety of threats Faerie could throw at them finite. If Tome wanted to branch out to the rest of the world… they were going to need way better firepower.
« Volume 2 Retrospective Part 1
Volume 2 Retrospective Part 2 »
Mazzon
"…men appeared and soldered through…"
Soldiered.
FeebleKazoo
"Tome, hadn't been…"
Unnecessary comma.
"…driving around and head of…"
"…fully charged, so get pulled his shotgun…"
"…machine guns had been a god choice."
"…almost breeched the wall…"
"…The made the variety of threats…"
It made
Incidentally, this was just generally an unexpectedly awesome tone and plot detour; nice work!
Thanks! Also, welcome to the comments!
notabotipromise
"…wiped out a thirty-one people…"
wiped out thirty-one people

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


After a troop election for the Order of the Arrow (OA) several weeks ago, two of the elected members headed to Camp Lumpkin in LaGrange, Georgia on Friday night to participate in an "ordeal" that would seal their membership into the OA. Everett and Louie, accompanied by Committee Chairman and OA Arrowman Rob Stanford spent the weekend in cheerful service with other members of the Chattahoochee Lodge.
The scouts participated in an ordeal which tested their strength, discipline, and character while they learned many significant values. The weather was magnificent for the weekend which made the ordeal and the entire weekend a good experience.
The OA is a brotherhood of cheerful service and serves as an organization of those who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law in their daily lives. Members are voted in by their troop peers and are official members after attending the ordeal weekend, which Everett and Louie have.
OA members have the opportunity to attend chapter meetings each month with other OA members in the Auburn-Opelika area. In addition, there are several other events that they can participate in that help maintain our council's camp property and promote leadership and camping skills. There is no doubt that others will follow in their footsteps as we have future troop elections for the OA.


SPD-Secretary-General Lars Klingbeil wants to develop visions of the future, his party will be more attractive again. What could this be, he explains in the Interview.
Zeit ONLINE: Mr Klingbeil, in recent polls, the SPD is at the Federal level with the AfD. How do you get as SPD Secretary-General of such Numbers?
Lars Klingbeil: That inspires me. I am firmly convinced that the SPD can be more attractive if it is clear and new ideas developed. The SPD is a lack of visibility and clear priorities. We need to change now.
since December last year, Secretary-General of the SPD. So far, the low axis assisted in the Bundestag, the Digital and defence policy.
TIME ONLINE: What are the new ideas could be?
Klingbeil: We deal mainly with the upcoming upheavals on the labour market. The digitisation will be lifted in the future, Jobs, careers, change, or completely new. At the same time, many people experience their work life as very stressful. You want more self-determination, a longing for a time out and the possibility of a new orientation to or to qualify. Many just want to get out for a long time. One way to address this Situation, may be, for example, the introduction of a basic income year.
Zeit ONLINE: What do you mean?
Klingbeil: A basic income for the year would give back to workers the time for things that do not create it besides working. With each year that you work, saves you a basic monthly income. So you could expose, after six years of work for half a year and after twelve years of work, a whole. In the model that I propose, would get the employees in this time, every month 1,000 Euro net. No taxes would have to be paid and the health insurance contributions would take over the state.
TIME ONLINE: you Can lie during the base income year, on top of the Sofa and look series?
Klingbeil: Everyone decides for himself, what is he doing in the year. But I am firmly convinced that most people would use the year to engage, for example, to volunteer or to do things you wanted to do. The whole of society would benefit. It is important that the basic income remains in the employment coupled. Who does not work, you could also take a sabbatical.
TIME ONLINE: So the reason that income year is, in principle, a Sabbatical.
Klingbeil: A Sabbatical leave must alone, savings of the workers by wages, the share of income of the year the state finances. In addition, there is the possibility of Sabbaticals, not all companies and businesses. The basic income of the year is a simple, unbureaucratic way to enable time-outs.
TIME ONLINE: Who do you want to help?
Klingbeil: in Principle, the basic income of the year can be used by all employees in different occupational groups and life situations. It would help, for example, people who work in social Professions. Also people from the creative sector would benefit. It is not a model for the Rich.
Zeit ONLINE: But of 1,000 euros a month you can live as a standalone. It's not a deal for people who can draw on Savings?
Klingbeil: All earning good and their standard of living want to keep, can prepare for them and in addition money saving. The basic income of the year is financially, especially for people with low income interesting because of the distance to the previous wage is smaller than in the case of high-earners.
TIME ONLINE: they assume that only two to three percent of the workers would make per year. How did you arrive at that number?
Klingbeil: In Belgium it is a very similar model, in which part-time work and early retirement models are chosen. This offer is about three per cent of the workforce. A complete break even takes just under one per cent of the Beneficiaries. We therefore expect similar Numbers. That would cost seven to nine billion euros in the year. People who are on the verge of retirement, we would exclude from the model to avoid that the basic income of the year would be used as an early retirement model.


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Cervinia is a ski resort in Italy, which is located on the Italian side of Monte Cervino (Matterhorn). That the resort is at an altitude of more than 2000 meters, the season here lasts from November to May. In the "summer" time, snow on the peaks is enough to ride on a glacier.
The length of the trails is 150 kilometers, the longest of which connects Cervinia with Zermatt. Blue runs pass through all the slopes, so the resort is popular with skiers of all levels of training.
You can get to the ski resort from Turin and Milan. Comfortable way is from the last city. If you are going to ski or just have a great time in a 5* hotel in Cervinia, you need to know: how to get from Milan to Cervinia. The distance between city and resort is 189 kilometers. Below you can find out the ways of transportation by registered and public transport. From the airport to the city Aeroexpress XP1 runs every 30 minutes from the station Malpensa Aeroporto T.1. Travel time is only 37 minutes. Then follow the following routes.
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For decades researchers have recorded sounds from whales and other marine mammals, using a variety of methods including passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) to better understand how these animals use sound to interact with each other and with the environment. Now, for the first time, researchers report using this technology to record spawning cod in the wild.
Acoustic behavior in cod has been of interest for several decades, but few studies have observed their use of sound as part of reproductive behavior. Although both sexes produce low frequency "grunts", only male Atlantic cod make this sound during spawning season.
Researchers from NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and their colleagues from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS), School of Marine Science & Technology at UMass Dartmouth (SMAST), and Cornell University's Bioacoustics Research Program recently reported their findings, online, in the ICES Journal of Marine Science.
"Few current coastal cod spawning sites are known, especially given historical data that indicate many cod spawning sites once existed along the New England coast. Passive acoustics makes locating potential sites much easier." said study co-author Sofie Van Parijs, who heads the passive acoustics group at NOAA Fisheries' Woods Hole Laboratory.
The findings have implications for conservation and management of this iconic species and possibly for other recreational and commercial fish species. Species in more than 100 families of fish are known to produce sounds. The cod family contains several sound-producing species, including haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), pollock (Pollachius virens) and Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua).
The researchers report on a 2011 pilot study in northern Massachusetts Bay. A single marine autonomous recording unit (MARU) was deployed at a depth of 51 meters (168 feet) within a seasonal fishery closure area established to protect a coastal cod spawning aggregation.
The MARU recorded continuously for 75 days during the spring spawning season, with the acoustic sounds confirmed as cod grunts. Cod were also captured in the vicinity of the MARU as part of a tagging study being conducted concurrenty at that time by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) confirming that cod were present.
"We acoustically captured the start of the 2011 spawning period but not the end," said Van Parijs. "Future deployments of multiple MARUs over larger areas and in conjunction with tagging studies could help determine movement patterns of cod in the spring, and give a better picture of how cod are distributed within the spawning protection area. In addition, underwater cameras could provide insight into the structure of the spawning aggregation."
Atlantic cod are known to gather in high concentrations in very small areas to spawn, sometimes forming vertical columns or "haystacks". They often return to the same location to spawn, a behavior known as spawning site fidelity.
In the spring of 2012, the researchers deployed an array of nine MARUs in the same area as the 2011 pilot study to record cod acoustics through an entire spawning season and over a larger area.
Lead study author Keith Hernandez, formerly a researcher in Van Parijs' group at NEFSC and now a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, says human-produced sounds might mask cod grunts in coastal areas with high human activity, an issue of concern since grunts and other sounds can be used to advertise for females and warn off competitors.
The next steps for passive acoustic monitoring are to explore the size and extent of known cod aggregations, and to locate other spawning aggregations in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank region. Researchers also need to determine if the grunt data can be used to develop an index of relative cod abundance.
"We're already looking at the acoustic data we've collected from other projects in the region, including the Ocean Noise Budget in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and other offshore monitoring studies," said Van Parijs. "We continue to work with colleagues at the Mass DMF, whose cod tagging studies contribute core information and complement federal efforts."
Impaired recovery of Atlantic cod -- forage fish or other factors?


Every stranger who knocks at our door is an opportunity for an encounter with Jesus Christ, who identifies with the welcomed and rejected strangers of every age (Matthew 25:35-43).
Our community at St. Ignatius and the Bay Area thrives through the presence and activities of a diverse group of people — including many immigrants and refugees. The Solidarity Network at St. Ignatius Parish aims to raise awareness around the issues immigrant and refugee members of our community face, explore how society can better respond to those issues, and provide support to immigrants and refugees needing assistance.
Ways we do this include accompanying individuals and families as they work through the process of becoming documented residents; directly supporting families seeking asylum and refuge; learning about and participating in political efforts to bring a Gospel-centered approach to aiding people who find themselves immigrants or refugees; and by establishing relationships with other congregations.
In February and March 2017, interested parishioners met to discern whether or not God might be calling forth from St. Ignatius Parish some communal response to the issue of refugees and immigration. Our prayerful reflections led us to adopt a position of openness toward providing sanctuary for those who may have left their countries of origin and are seeking some form of security in our country. (Accompaniment is one of the three legs of the "sanctuary" stool; the other two are Advocacy and Shelter.) Out of that discernment was formed the Solidarity Network at St. Ignatius Parish, a ministry committee actively working to address this issue.
Sign up to receive updates and get involved in the Solidarity Network at St. Ignatius Parish by sending an email to immigrationSIP@gmail.com.
Campaign for Hospitality invites the Jesuit and broader Catholic network in the United States and Canada to get to know people in our countries with recent stories of migration. Together, we will reflect on our common human dignity and values to create more welcoming communities and nations.
Faith in Action Bay Area is a network of faith communities committed to ensuring that the dignity of all members of our community is upheld. Through leadership development, civic engagement, and lifting up of our faith values we strive to make sure that every person receives the respect, justice, and opportunity they deserve.
Ignatian Solidarity Network The mission of the ISN is to network, educate, and form advocates for social justice animated by the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola and the witness of the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador and their companions.
Jesuit Refugee Service The mission of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA is to accompany, serve and advocate for the rights of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. Founded by Jesuit Fr. Pedro Arrupe in 1980, in direct response to the humanitarian crisis of the Vietnamese boat people, JRS today works in 47 countries worldwide to meet the educational, health, and social needs of more than 750,000 refugees.
Share the Journey Campaign Pope Francis has just launched the new Share the Journey campaign by Caritas Internationalis to assist families forced to migrate and promote Catholic social teaching on refugees and migrants. There are 65.6 million forcibly displaced people in the world today, according to a United Nations agency, the most since just after World War II. Overall, there are 244 million migrants in the world, according to Caritas.
The Las Vecinas de El Salvador Ministry at St. Ignatius Parish offers an opportunity to provide financial and spiritual support to our Sister Parish, Paroquia San Antonio in Soyapango, El Salvador.


text:
package spark

import org.scalatest.FunSuite
import org.scalatest.BeforeAndAfter

import scala.collection.mutable.ArrayBuffer

import SparkContext._

class PartitioningSuite extends FunSuite with BeforeAndAfter {

  var sc: SparkContext = _

  after {
    if(sc != null) {
      sc.stop()
      sc = null
    }
    // To avoid Akka rebinding to the same port, since it doesn't unbind immediately on shutdown
    System.clearProperty("spark.master.port")
  }

  test("HashPartitioner equality") {
    val p2 = new HashPartitioner(2)
    val p4 = new HashPartitioner(4)
    val anotherP4 = new HashPartitioner(4)
    assert(p2 === p2)
    assert(p4 === p4)
    assert(p2 != p4)
    assert(p4 != p2)
    assert(p4 === anotherP4)
    assert(anotherP4 === p4)
  }

  test("RangePartitioner equality") {
    sc = new SparkContext("local", "test")

    // Make an RDD where all the elements are the same so that the partition range bounds
    // are deterministically all the same.
    val rdd = sc.parallelize(Seq(1, 1, 1, 1)).map(x => (x, x))

    val p2 = new RangePartitioner(2, rdd)
    val p4 = new RangePartitioner(4, rdd)
    val anotherP4 = new RangePartitioner(4, rdd)
    val descendingP2 = new RangePartitioner(2, rdd, false)
    val descendingP4 = new RangePartitioner(4, rdd, false)

    assert(p2 === p2)
    assert(p4 === p4)
    assert(p2 != p4)
    assert(p4 != p2)
    assert(p4 === anotherP4)
    assert(anotherP4 === p4)
    assert(descendingP2 === descendingP2)
    assert(descendingP4 === descendingP4)
    assert(descendingP2 != descendingP4)
    assert(descendingP4 != descendingP2)
    assert(p2 != descendingP2)
    assert(p4 != descendingP4)
    assert(descendingP2 != p2)
    assert(descendingP4 != p4)
  }

  test("HashPartitioner not equal to RangePartitioner") {
    sc = new SparkContext("local", "test")
    val rdd = sc.parallelize(1 to 10).map(x => (x, x))
    val rangeP2 = new RangePartitioner(2, rdd)
    val hashP2 = new HashPartitioner(2)
    assert(rangeP2 === rangeP2)
    assert(hashP2 === hashP2)
    assert(hashP2 != rangeP2)
    assert(rangeP2 != hashP2)
  }

  test("partitioner preservation") {
    sc = new SparkContext("local", "test")

    val rdd = sc.parallelize(1 to 10, 4).map(x => (x, x))

    val grouped2 = rdd.groupByKey(2)
    val grouped4 = rdd.groupByKey(4)
    val reduced2 = rdd.reduceByKey(_ + _, 2)
    val reduced4 = rdd.reduceByKey(_ + _, 4)

    assert(rdd.partitioner === None)

    assert(grouped2.partitioner === Some(new HashPartitioner(2)))
    assert(grouped4.partitioner === Some(new HashPartitioner(4)))
    assert(reduced2.partitioner === Some(new HashPartitioner(2)))
    assert(reduced4.partitioner === Some(new HashPartitioner(4)))

    assert(grouped2.groupByKey().partitioner  === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.groupByKey(3).partitioner !=  grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.groupByKey(2).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped4.groupByKey().partitioner  === grouped4.partitioner)
    assert(grouped4.groupByKey(3).partitioner !=  grouped4.partitioner)
    assert(grouped4.groupByKey(4).partitioner === grouped4.partitioner)

    assert(grouped2.join(grouped4).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.leftOuterJoin(grouped4).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.rightOuterJoin(grouped4).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.cogroup(grouped4).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)

    assert(grouped2.join(reduced2).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.leftOuterJoin(reduced2).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.rightOuterJoin(reduced2).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
    assert(grouped2.cogroup(reduced2).partitioner === grouped2.partitioner)
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Vue - render a component in one of the multiple places inside parent template I'm building a responsive navbar - component that uses child component, and I need to show that component differently for mobile and desktop versions - markup doesn't allow me to do that easily. Currently I duplicated one element in 2 places, and hide one of them at a time (depending on window size), which is fine as long as user doesn't change window size (if sHe does it gets ugly - eg popup that was visible for desktop-width will disappear if window was reduced to width of a mobile).
Edit
+now I'm displaying component (search field) in 2 places inside Navbar, seeing that I need to display it both for desktop version (on navbar panel), and mobile version (hamburger dropdown, which is hidden for desktop). Here is code sample explaining what I mean, child component's name is search-records (css framework is Bulma). The idea is to display only one of  "< search-records >" at a time - but I cannot use media queries or v-if approach, because I'll have to sync those 2 components, and I'm curious if there's some simple way to handle this issue:

            Logo placeholder

                <search-records></search-records>

                <search-records></search-records>

A: Try this approach. Here is how the template may look like.
<template>

Desktop

Mobile

</template>

Your component script should look something like this.
export default {
  data() {
    isMobile: false,
  },

  methods: {
    onResize() {
      this.isMobile = window.innerWidth < 720
    },
  },

  mounted() {
    this.onResize()
    window.addEventListener('resize', this.onResize)
  },

  beforeDestroy() {
    window.removeEventListener('resize', this.onResize)
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Postcolonial ecocriticism : literature, animals, environment (Second edition)
By: Huggan, Graham (University of Leeds, UK), Tiffin, Helen
Usually dispatched within 2 weeks
22 cm x, 294 pages
Professional & Vocational Learn More Undergraduate
This second edition of Postcolonial Ecocriticism, a book foundational for its field, has been updated to consider recent developments in the area such as environmental humanities and animal studies.
Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin examine transverse relations between humans, animals and the environment across a wide range of postcolonial literary texts and also address key issues such as global warming, food security, human over-population in the context of animal extinction, queer ecology, and the connections between postcolonial and disability theory.
Considering the postcolonial first from an environmental and then a zoocritical perspective, the book looks at:Narratives of development in postcolonial writingEntitlement, belonging and the pastoralColonial 'asset stripping' and the Christian missionThe politics of eating and the representation of cannibalismAnimality and spiritualitySentimentality and anthropomorphismThe changing place of humans and animals in a 'posthuman' world.
With a new preface written specifically for this edition and an annotated list of suggestions for further reading, Postcolonial Ecocriticism offers a comprehensive and fully up-to-date introduction to a rapidly expanding field.
DSA Literary theory, DSBH5 Literary studies: post-colonial literature
Our price£32.99
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text:
Topics » Migraine and Headache
Publish Date November 8, 2018
IV Fluid Use Up, Narcotics Use Down in Patients With Migraine Admitted to ED
Brandon May
Follow @@brandonmilesmay
IV fluid use has increased and narcotics and discharge prescriptions for narcotics have decreased in ED-admitted migraine patients since 1999-2000.
The use of intravenous fluids, ketorolac, dexamethasone, and the dopamine receptor antagonists (DRAs) prochlorperazine/metoclopramide has increased from 2000 to 2014 in the treatment of patients with migraine admitted to the emergency department (ED), according to a study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. During this same time period, the use of narcotics and discharge prescriptions for narcotics have decreased in this patient population, likely because of the increased use of nonnarcotic medications.
A total of 2,824,710 consecutive patients who were admitted to the ED between 1999 and 2014 were included in the analysis. Of these patients, 8046 (0.28%) were admitted to the ED for migraine. The investigators reviewed 290 medical charts of patients at the beginning (1999-2000) and end (2014) of the study period to compare the use rates of various treatment modalities in patients with migraines admitted to the ED. Medication groups included antihistamines and DRAs prochlorperazine/metoclopramide, parenteral narcotics, and oral narcotics. Additionally, the investigators reviewed differences in annual return rates in those who returned to the same ED within a 72-hour period between 1999 and 2000 and 2014.
The researchers reviewed 147 and 143 medical charts of patients with migraine admitted to the ED between 1999 and 2000 and 2014, respectively. From 1999 and 2000 to 2014, there was a significant increase in the use of DRAs (24% vs 83%, respectively; difference, 58%; 95% CI, 48%-66%), intravenous fluids (14% vs 88%, respectively; difference, 74%; 95% CI, 65%-81%), and ketorolac (5% vs 38%, respectively; difference, 34%; 95% CI, 25%-42%) and dexamethasone (0% vs 22%, respectively; difference, 22%; 95% CI, 15%-29%) in patients with migraine admitted to the ED. During the same time period, there was a decrease in narcotic use (80% vs 24%; difference, -56%; 95% CI, -45% to -64%) and discharge prescriptions (30% vs 8%; difference, -22%; 95% CI, -30% to -13%). Additionally, there was a decrease of 12% to 4% in the return rate from 1999 to 2000 to 2014, respectively (difference, 8%; 95% CI, 5%-11%).
Galcanezumab Effective at Decreasing Monthly Headache Days in Migraine
Guidelines on the Use of OnabotulinumtoxinA for Chronic Migraine
Consensus Statement: Estrogen and Progestogen Treatment for Migraines
Limitations of the analysis include its retrospective design as well as the inclusion of only 4 hospitals in the Northeast, which may reduce generalizability.
"Because this was a retrospective study, we cannot claim that change in treatments caused the decrease in revisit rates," the investigators concluded. "Changes in other factors, such as access to primary care, could have also contributed."
Ruzek M, Richman P, Eskin B, Allegra JR. ED treatment of migraine patients has changed [published online August 20, 2018]. Am J Emerg Med. doi: 10.1016/j.ajem.2018.08.051
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text:
Michael Massing is an American writer based in  New York City. He is a former executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and a master's degree from the London School of Economics. He often writes for the New York Review of Books on the media, politics, and foreign affairs. He has also written for The American Prospect, The New York Times, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Politico, and The Atlantic. His book The Fix offers a critique of the U.S. war on drugs. Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq is a collection of articles which first appeared in The New York Review of Books and analyzes the press coverage of the Iraq war. A later book, Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, concerns the rivalry between those two men and the movements they represented—Christian humanism and evangelical Christianity; The New York Times named it a Notable Book of 2018. Massing is co-founder of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and currently sits on its board. He is also a board member of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. In 1992, he was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2011 he was a fellow at the Leon Levy Biography Center at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Raised in Baltimore, Massing attended the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

Awards
 Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship (1989)
 MacArthur Fellow (1992)
 Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting (2005)

Selected articles
 "The Storm over the Israel Lobby," New York Review of Books – June 8, 2006
 "Deal Breakers," The American Prospect – Mar. 11, 2002
 "Digital Journalism: How Good Is It?" New York Review of Books, June 4, 2015
 "Digital Journalism: The Next Generation," June 25, 2015
 "Reimagining Journalism; The Story of the One Percent," New York Review of Books, December 17, 2015
 "How to Cover the One Percent," New York Review of Books, January 14, 2016
 "How Martin Luther Paved the Way for Donald Trump," April 19, 2018
 "Journalism in the Age of Trump: What's Missing and What Matters," July 19, 2018

Books
 The Fix. Simon & Schuster, 1998 (paperback: University of California Press, 2000).
 Now They Tell Us: the American Press and Iraq.  New York Review Books, 2004 (introduction by Orville Schell).
 Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind. Harper, 2018.

References

External links
 Michael Massing's articles in The Nation
 Articles in The New York Review of Books
 Articles in the Columbia Journalism Review
 Articles in The American Prospect

Living people
American essayists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American male journalists
American political writers
American investigative journalists
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Harvard University alumni
MacArthur Fellows
Year of birth missing (living people)
American male essayists

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Learn more about day treatment for adults (IDP/IOP), day treatment for adolescents (IDP/IOP), outpatient treatment for adults, and outpatient treatment for adolescents.
Ample free parking is available in the lot around our building. The Emily Program is located on the 2nd floor.
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Our comfortable and secure lodging options were specifically designed for adult clients (18+) recovering in our day eating disorder treatment programs in Minnesota.
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Top business news impacting branding.
Top business moves and promotional partnerships this week, with a correction.
The latest business and financial news to impact the licensing industry.
Business moves, merges, rebrandings, and new partnerships.


Before your new employee starts his or her first day, there's a lot to do. Most of the HR work will have been completed – contract signed, background check, files updated, etc. Now it's time to focus on payroll. As we've mentioned in other payroll guides, there is more to payroll than just paying your staff. Payroll includes hiring and firing, salary, leave dates, benefits, bonuses, and other topics.
It's also directly linked to taxes and tax accounting meaning that it's covered by legislation. So if you don't follow the law exactly, you could get penalized.
And it's not just tax law. From completing the right forms to making the correct overtime payments, payroll is covered by laws other than tax every step of the way.
In this guide, we'll look into what payroll agreement involves. That way you and your new hire will be able to hit the ground running.
Whether you're hiring your 1st employee or your fortieth, compliance consequences. But how does one guarantee you're cooperative with all payroll laws and follow industry-wide best practices? We will help you make the right choices.
SG Inc CPA provides an outsourced solution that helps to enable businesses to better manage the sensitive and time-consuming task of commercial employment and income verification as well as social service, immigration, and Workers' Compensation verification. Versifiers can obtain qualifying employee income and employment information securely in seconds via the Internet or telephone. This automated process helps reduce costs for your organization and helps provide faster responses for your employees.


text:
In on the Conversation: Two San Francisco Court Cases Reveal How NSA Paradoxes Stymie the Law
Rachel Swan • 03/26/2014 4:00 am
To attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The AT&T facility at 611 Folsom St. is so stark and blocky that it makes a row of trees outside look shockingly iridescent in contrast. But inside, the facility buzzes with chatter — or vestigial traces of chatter — from millions of phone calls, instant messages, and e-mails that AT&T subscribers send over the wires each day.
Behind the facility's concrete walls is a warren of rooms and corridors, each lined with cables and optic fibers and electronic routers, each named for its discrete purpose. The "4ESS Switch Room" routes long-distance calls that course through the network machinery; the "WorldNet Internet Room" is piled high with routers, modems, and other telecom equipment, through which electronic missives are transmitted. The most perplexing addition, a secret cubby called the SG3 Secure Room, is accessible only to approved AT&T employees. According to court documents, it contains several types of advanced computing gadgetry, including a device known as a Narus Semantic Traffic Analyzer (the "Narus STA"), which analyzes massive amounts of telecom data at unimaginable speeds.
The Narus STA is just one tool that AT&T allegedly uses to pipe consumer data over to the National Security Agency, the federal arm that designed and built AT&T's SG3 Secure Room in 2003. It turns out the government has long collected and sorted through the phone data of regular telecom customers, via a process that privacy advocates say is unconstitutional. Lawyers from the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation are fighting two cases against the NSA for its data-sweep operations with phone carriers, many of which are just coming to light.
These lawsuits — one filed on behalf of ordinary AT&T subscribers, the other on behalf of organizations whose phone records and metadata are "bulk-collected" by various telecom carriers — have turned San Francisco's federal courthouse into a battlefront where an improbable coalition of gun enthusiasts, Unitarian churches, charity organizations, and regular cellphone users has coalesced to fight a bogeyman it can't see, even though it feels its presence everywhere. Because of the nature of the enemy — a government specter whose whole purpose is to hoard and withhold information — these cases might be unwinnable. The secret room might not exist.
Still, the plaintiffs fight on.
Among them is Calguns Foundation co-founder Gene Hoffman, who says that fear of metadata collection has a chilling effect on his group.
"Look, gun owners are a paranoid bunch," Hoffman says. "You can imagine our members who want to ask questions that were always safer to ask over the phone than over e-mail. Questions like, 'I've built my AR-15 this way — is that a problem?' And now with metadata, they're worried that what they inquired could be used against them."
He pauses a beat. "And those are the rational ones."
EFF lawyers took on both cases — Jewel v. NSA and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA — in the hope of obtaining a court injunction that might curb bulk-data collection altogether. In the meantime, though, they've been stonewalled by government lawyers who won't disgorge enough evidence for the cases to be tried.
Jewel and First Unitarian are being heard together, for efficiency purposes. Nonetheless, the litigation has dithered on for years — long enough for one plaintiff to die and bequeath the case to his widow, and for famed whistleblower Edward Snowden to make NSA surveillance an international cause célèbre. Public pressure has only made the NSA more secretive and more protective of its data cache.
In a filing March 17, its legal team suggested that the particular data EFF is looking for might no longer exist. Department of Justice attorneys claim that they have a legal obligation to destroy all phone records after five years, whether or not they're germane to the plaintiffs' complaints.
That put the EFF's lead attorney, Cindy Cohn, in an awkward position. At an emergency court hearing last Wednesday, she exhorted the federal agency with a paradox: to preserve data she thinks it never should have obtained in the first place.
"It's somewhat ironic for me," Cohn told District Court Judge Jeffrey White during the hearing. "But I think there's a little irony on the other side, as well."
Government lawyer James Gilligan argued, to the contrary, that it's an undue burden for NSA officials to retain data beyond the five-year mark. After all, they're already overwhelmed by all the data they collect on a day-to-day basis.
But there's the rub, Cohn says. The agency has told plaintiffs that if they want to sue for inappropriate bulk-collection of phone records, they have to produce those records. And the NSA has made producing them impossible.
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who became an NSA whistleblower after leaving the company in 2004, says the agency often uses these types of red herrings to derail litigation.
"I know their usual tack is to claim you can't prove you've been harmed," Klein says. "So you just go around in this tautology." To him, Gilligan's argument that the agency can't retain relevant data to prove that it collects data — because it's already overtaxed by data collection — seems uncannily similar. Klein recalls a joke going around in the '70s, that the letters "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency," because agency workers were so quick to deny their office's existence.
A year before retiring, Klein says he was assigned to work in an Internet room in AT&T's Folsom Street facility that sat right above the SG3 Secure Room. The Internet Room had a cabinet, he recalls, that contained a powerful prismatic device.
That device — called a splitter — sliced through every data-rich Internet laser beam that traversed AT&T's servers, creating an exact duplicate.
"Each half carried the same information," Klein says. "Except that one went to its normal destination, and one went to the secret room. So basically, they were copying all the data that went across the Internet."
In 2006, Klein helped the EFF sue AT&T over the secret room. The suit was ultimately dismissed when the government invoked its "state secret" privilege, which would turn out to be a typical Catch-22-style defense: We can't show it to you, so you can't prove it's there. Battling the phone service-security complex meant fighting a series of paradoxes.
Unwavering in his crusade, Klein says he tried appealing to Sen. Dianne Feinstein — who chairs the Intelligence Committee. But she wouldn't grant him an audience. In 2008, Feinstein and then-Sen. Barack Obama helped Congress pass legislation that granted legal immunity to any phone service carrier that cooperates with NSA wiretapping programs. It wasn't until this month, when Feinstein realized that her own staff was being spied on, that the senator openly chastened the executive branch.
Still, the court battles slog on. By the time last week's two-hour hearing recessed, it seemed doubtful that Cohn would ever gather the evidence to bolster her clients' complaints. Judge White had offhandedly described Snowden and other whistleblowers as "treasonous," suggesting he didn't sympathize with EFF's political line.
But evidently, he wasn't persuaded by government lawyer Gilligan's argument, either. Issuing a tentative order from the bench, White said he's inclined to compel preservation of any phone record that could serve as evidence. He also extended a restraining order to prevent the government from purging phone records that are more than five years old. The two parties will continue debating over the next several weeks.
Meanwhile, more data will course through the routers and fiber-optic cables of AT&T and other service providers, providing the NSA with bigger oceans to paddle through. If the Folsom Street facility seems lifeless, rest assured that millions of conversations are happening within its walls.
Tags: AT&T Inc., Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mark Klein, National Security Agency, News
By Nick Veronin
Remembering Gay Activist Ken Jones
What Happens to SF Rents After the Vaccine?
By Sheila Tran


Create a modern appearance with these high rise, tapered leg Mom jeans in authentic black rigid denim with gold side buckle detailing. Why not embrace the drama of denim and double up? 100% Cotton. Machine wash.


U-Spatial provides access to a number of spatial data resources for research and learning. These include recent National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery, imagery from Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, and MetroGIS historical parcel data for the seven Twin Cities metropolitan counties. Students, faculty, and staff can access the data from campus by connecting to \\files.umn.edu\us\gis\U-Spatial\UMN_Users\Data and signing in with the UMN Internet ID (X.500).
Contact the U-Spatial Help Desk for assistance.
UMN users can access 2006-2015 Twin Cities seven county metropolitan area parcel data by contacting the U-Spatial Help Desk.
Last Modified: October 31, 2018 - 11:02am.


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There is no denying that a wildlife holiday is always a popular choice for so many of us. Almost everyone loves animals and has their favourite animal. For some it could be watching those birds in their natural habitat for hours and for others it could be to watch tigress playing with her cubs. It is indeed a great feeling to escape into the wilderness away from the everyday life of the cities. It is a joy to see those animals feeding and playing within their natural surroundings.
Today, thanks to the ever-growing popularity of wildlife vacations, there are so many fabulous locations to pick from. There are well-planned tours that one can browse to where they want to go or what species to see. You are sure to find a wildlife vacation that suits you and your interests. Go ahead and book cost-effective wildlife holidays right away and look forward to a life-changing experience. Make sure to keep the group sizes small and let an expert naturalist guide you on your wildlife tour.
Here are some of the best spots you can go through for wildlife holiday destinations.
One of the best places to spot or watch bears is in Kuhmo, Finland. About a thousand bears live in the vast boreal forests along the Russian border. Stay at the Petola Nature Centre to look at these charismatic creatures. The best time to go is from June to August, and those wild boreal forests are also home to wolverine, wolves, and lynx.
As sightings can be unpredictable, you should spend at least a couple of nights out in the vast forests of Finland. In several localities, the sightings are almost guaranteed, but bears usually try avoiding people. Spending the night out in the forest near a bear can be an unforgettable experience for any nature-lover.
The Azores is one of the best places to watch whales. In fact, you will find the archipelago surrounded by many species of whales and dolphins. Spring and early summer is the best time to watch the whales while the peak season is April to September. You will love the sight of Baleen Whales, Blue, Sei, Fin and Humpback Whales on their annual migration in the North Atlantic. Other abundant gatherings of marine life include dolphin, manta rays, sea turtles and sea bird's species. Azoreans are friendly and work in fisheries, agriculture and dairy farming.
It is only in South Africa where you can enjoy big five game drives and rich safari experience. You enjoy the balance of wildlife conservation and game viewing. Follow a well-designed safari itinerary where you get plenty of time for relaxation as well as an understanding of wildlife conservation. One can ask for exclusively tailored safari itineraries that meet their personal preferences. It can be really exciting to set out early on a Big 5 safari game drive and enjoy diverse experiences and adventures. Don't forget to carry a pair of good binoculars for gawking at these majestic beasts.
Go deep inside the forest with expert guides to spot wolves as well as elk, grouse, bison, beaver, and even white-tailed eagles and black storks. The best time to spot those animals is early in the morning or at dusk when they are the most active. The wolves are nocturnal, swift and shy and thus are elusive subjects. You can enjoy the true wilderness here as you get to spot other animals like elk, beaver, wolf, bison and many other species.
It is common to hear the wolves cry out to each other and one can learn a lot from their tracks and about animals themselves. The wolves howl to locate different packs, and it is hard to miss out their impressive howling. You can explore the wilderness under an expert guide who has a very good knowledge of the area and wolves. You will come across wild river valleys and marshlands and the primaeval habitats of lynxes and wolves.
Head to Canada to get a fantastic opportunity to see those magnificent polar bears. You can navigate the Arctic in specialized tundra buggies and keep your eyes peeled for those white bears on icy landscape. Polar Bears await the seal hunting season, and if you stay on the tundra for a couple of days, you are sure to spot these curious animals.
The sight of a huge polar bear across the vast expanse of tundra is indeed most thrilling. At the time, you may see him rise on his haunches to peer at you and sniff, because of his curious ways. In Canada, you enjoy the greatest concentration of polar bears. Along the Hudson Bay, why wait patiently for the winter seal-hunting season to begin as the ice forms.
Amazon's Yasuni National Park and Galapagos Islands combine to create the world's most wildlife-rich regions. Coastal plains, tropical rainforest and Andean paramo create the different ecological zones that support the hugely diverse wildlife. Explore the jungles with professional naturalists and guides. You can enjoy whale-watching and snorkel with playful sea lions.
Along with top-notch wildlife viewing, you can hike to lava tunnels on Santa Cruz Island and learn about the history and culture of the region. Explore the natural paradises and learn about the geology, animals, birds on these fascinating islands. Seek out the piranhas, jungle birds, caimans and the dusky titi monkey under expert guides. Sailing Galapagos offers so much wildlife beneath the water, and you come across the clearest waters that are just perfect for snorkelling and swimming.
Wow! I never saw the wild animal living in their natural place. It will be a great experience when coming to the places on the list.


Stereotypes. We all have been there. Because we are tall or too short, chubby or thin; because we wear glasses or have blond hair. At least once in your life you have been labeled under some concept that does not even scratch the truth. The same goes for nationalities: Russian and their vodka, Japanese and their brains, Canadians and their hockey, Indians and their gold. Stereotypes come for good and evil. They may say something about a people and their culture, but we have to bear in mind they are not the ultimate nor the most adequate definition. As Brazilians, some of us have faced some of these generalizations ourselves and they all involve Carnaval, samba, soccer, and the Amazon forest. But we are way more than that.
It is common opinion abroad that Brazilians are very passionate, happy, and kind people. That may be our Latin blood screaming, but we certainly like to have a good time. Some of the most famous images of Brazil and its people – which have been spread by the media and also by ourselves – divide opinions when broadcast as "the truth" about us: not everyone loves Carnaval and some of us look rather ridiculous trying to samba; not everyone has a gift for soccer (honestly, a good number of us are born with two left feet); and yeah, it may be hard to remember that we are the only country in Latin America which speaks Portuguese. Brazil is such an immense, richly diverse country that it is hard to define whatever we are under one single image. It is interesting to point out, though, that due to Brazil's recent emergency in the international scenario some of these stereotypes tend to be deconstructed as the world gets to know us a little better.
Case in point is that foreigners seem to agree that we are very gentle and helpful towards them. Our friendliness apparently impresses visitors, and most of them think that this is a natural feature of our personalities. That, added to the fact that Brazil has been thriving in times of worldwide economic crisis, attracts foreigners to live here. Interestingly enough, according to a research led by Ipsos Mori*, 41% of the Brazilian interviewees think that there are too many immigrants here. It is quite controversial, tough, that 49% of the interviewees also think that Brazil becomes a more interesting place with immigrants around.
Despite this love and hate relationship, it is the Brazilian love for new and fresh things that keeps us going. The world may be getting to know us, and soon they will learn that yes, we have Carnaval, but we also have Bumba-meu-boi, Parintins, and our own version of Oktoberfest; we have samba, but we also have forró, frevo, and chula; we may have great soccer players, but we also play peteca, footvolley, and capoeira. We are not made of only one story, and neither is anyone. It is very likely that the known stereotypes about Brazil are indeed our own fault, for several reasons, but above all is the underdog syndrome from which we suffer. We may wear a brave and laidback front, but we are dying to fit in and to be taken seriously. Maybe it is time for Brazil to leave its inferiority complex behind and focus on all the great things we have to offer the world, much beyond reductionist images and labels.


Karma Lounge is located at the north side of the hotel lobby, the sofa seats face to Water Cube are beautiful and comfortable, in addition to all kinds of coffee, tea, and elegant live music. Selected afternoon tea is served every day. Choose a cup of Darjeeling black tea or milled coffee with Wedgwood porcelain which is famous for its fine bone porcelain. Three layers of basket tea are exquisite and delicious. Taste them from light to rich, shrimp sandwich, salmon sandwich, abalone crisp, raisin scones, red velvet cake, chocolate mousse and seasonal fresh fruit and so on, accompany you through the afternoon good time.
From Wednesday to Saturday from 15: 00 to 17: 45, there will be a wonderful harp performance. Every Friday and Saturday, violin performances will be added to bring you audio-visual enjoyment.


WoundClot is a new-generation hemostatic agent released in 2016 and gaining rapid adoption around the world. The key benefit is its effectiveness using only initial placement pressure, without a requirement for holding direct pressure for minutes after application.
The product is a single-use, sterile hemostatic gauze made from regenerated cellulose. It effectively stops moderate to severe bleeding, by promoting rapid coagulation.
Upon contact with blood, the product's molecular structure changes to form a gelatinous membrane, which adheres to the wound creating a mechanical barrier to immediately reduce blood flow. The stronger the bleeding pressures in the wound, the stronger the attraction, able to withstand severe arterial and venous blood flow for hours.
WoundClot can be easily removed, if desired, as one piece without disrupting the clot already formed.


One of the benefits of being an early 80's baby is that I carry the fond memories of my 5-year-old self playing Nintendo with our next door neighbors, repeatedly watching MJ's "Thriller" video (I actually used to think it was a movie b/c it was so long) and enjoying movies such as "Adventures in Baby-sitting", "ET" and of course,"The Goonies". Looking back I realize I was drawn to such story-lines because all three films were about a child's imagination propelling them from the mundaneness of life and into a world where anything could happen.
Mikey, Brand, Andy, Stef, Data, Jake, and Chunk, after the discovery of a pirate treasure map, found themselves in the middle of a treasure hunt , one that only some of the members of the group believed would actually lead to a treasure. The kids were in preparation to move from their hometown as their parents didn't have the funds to keep their home from being knocked down by developers and replaced with a golf course. *Spoiler Alert* But of course the kids find the treasure and save the day even outwitting the bad guys who were on their tail the whole time during their search. I love the obstacles they face and overcome during each stage of the journey and I love how the group bonds together throughout their shared experience. But there is one scene that stands out to me above the rest. The group is stuck at the bottom of a well and their foe Troy offers to lift them up with a bucket, seemingly delivering them from their current fate of being lost. But Mikey, displaying stellar leadership skills mind you, convinces the group to forge ahead in finding the gold after they all want to give up.
In my opinion, Mikey says three key words which changes the goonies' minds: "It's Our Time". They had been through their share of ups and downs during their quest and would go through so much more after making the decision to stick out the journey ahead, but what mattered was that they stuck it out. By sticking it out they were greatly rewarded by not only finding the treasure, but personally growing in various aspects such as leadership, endurance and friendship.
One of my dear friends has been on this journey of living a surrendered life to Christ with me for the last several years. There have been tests, temptations, and various obstacles in our way yet by His grace, we have stayed the course. She has had a heart for the Haitian people ever since her first missionary trip and received a promise from the Lord that she would do evangelism and missionary work. That promise was given six years ago. For six years she struggled and walked out the path that was set before her, which at that time, other than annual missionary stints, did not include Haiti.
But now her time has come.
She will be leaving for Haiti next month for one year. The project she will be given actually enhances her corporate world work experience and makes her an even valuable associate. For 12 months I'm going to miss her like crazy and at the same time my heart will soar each day knowing she is living her dream. Knowing our God is faithful.
My roommate, the faithful teacher who fights for her kids inside and outside of the classroom everyday to choose life over death, will also be rewarded for her obedience. A new job with better pay, more professional support and a plethora of classroom resources awaits her. She'll be starting next month even though a variety of obstacles stood in the way, attempting to keep her from her blessing.
No weapon formed against us shall prosper. It's our time.
It's our time to stay on this journey of faith, to not wallow in discouragement, frustration and fear. The quest we are on can seem overwhelming, long, draining, etc…and we just want the treasure. We just want the breakthrough. And sometimes it seems as if the promises of God were just a figment of our imagination. The thing is, the journey itself is actually of much more value than the reward. The stamina we display while we are in the valley makes our Papa smile with pride. We demonstrate His character and confirm that yes "I am a child of the Most High". So even as the bad guys chase us, we find ourselves in the bottom of a well, and our enemy offers us a way to lift us up out of our current circumstances, we must resist. We resist because we know that though the road we are on looks unpromising, the God we can't see has promised and ALWAYS delivers.


Editor's note: We very rarely repost on The Nordic Web unless we feel that an insight is particularly valuable to our readership. This is one of those occasions, as Kristinn Árni Lár Hróbjartsson, the Founding Editor of Nordurskautid analyses the VC landscape in Iceland.
The post that follows is an edited version, the original can be found on Nordurskautid, the #1 resource for following the Icelandic startup scene, we highly recommend it.
* This discussion doesn't include NSA Ventures or their investments. NSA is an evergreen fund founded with an initial endowment from the government. It's not structured like classic VC funds, which is what the analysis is about.
Two of the three new funds established over the last year or so are now almost fully deployed in regards to fresh investments.
Eyrir only has a couple hundred million ISK available and Frumtak is currently closing two investments and is unsure if they'll make any more. Brunnur, however, is aiming at 10-15 total investments and they've only announced three until now, meaning, in total we're looking at 9-13 fresh investments left from the new funds.
This means that we need a new fund to start raising soon, otherwise we might end up with a period of little or no available capital for new companies. As we saw last year, raising VC funds in Iceland is possible, but it might be tricky.
In a sense that almost all the LP's are pension funds. Changes in pension fund regulation allow the funds to own only 15% of any slhf. Most VC funds use the slhf. corporate form. This means that to raise a fund, a GP needs at least seven participating pension funds (that is, if all the capital comes from pension funds). Banks have been participating as well, but as I said, the pension funds are the main LP's.
Most VC funds operate on a 2/20 model. The numbers are interchangeable, but the model is the same. Funds charge a percentage (2%) in annual management fees, and a carry bonus (20%) on gains made.
Iceland's biggest VC fund, Frumtak, is 5 billion ISK. A 5 billion ISK fund charges 100 million ISK (based on 2%) per year in management fees, a little under 8.5 million ISK per month. The carry bonus comes into play once the fund has returned a profit to its investors, and is therefore not a part of regular operation income or expenses. It's more so the GP's have skin in the game.
A VC fund would want to employ investors, analysts, and operators. They need staff to source and vet investments, market their portfolio and build connections. It's obvious that such operations are hard on a 8.5 million ISK monthly budget. Hence, the three funds all have three or fewer employees.
We also need our funds to be active in collaboration with non-Icelandic funds, building connections and bridges to Silicon Valley and other hubs. That also costs money. We need our VC's to do a lot, with not very much.
Our VC industry is young, and our VC's need to have the resources to build these networks and connections. I'm not saying that our funds aren't doing this, just pointing out that our funds are, well, bootstrapped.
We've had great companies, sure. But we've yet to see a financial success story for a VC backed company. We've had a couple of moderate exits in the last years (Zymetech was <$10, Datamarket $11-14m, Clara <$12m, Modio was undisclosed), but no home-runs. A success story (or a few) would make raising a fund easier.
A total no-brainer. It's essentially illegal to transfer funds out of Iceland without special exemptions. It's a given then, that such measures make growing an industry that allocates capital harder.
Now let's take a break from all the gloom. What's been happening in Iceland in the last years is encouraging. The VC environment isn't perfect, but there was still 12.5 billion ISK announced last year in VC money. That's more than the last ~20 years before (At least I think. I'm not that old so I wouldn't know, and I haven't researched extensively).
If an investor community grows up here, it will happen the same way it did in Silicon Valley: slowly and organically. So I would not bet on having a big investor community in the short term. But fortunately there are three trends that make that less necessary than it used to be. One is that startups are increasingly cheap to start, so you just don't need as much outside money as you used to. The second is that thanks to things like Kickstarter, a startup can get to revenue faster. You can put something on Kickstarter from anywhere. The third is programs like Y Combinator. A startup from anywhere in the world can go to YC for 3 months, pick up funding, and then return home if they want.
I think we can exchange "Pittsburgh" for "Reykjavik" in Paul's text, and much of it still holds true.
We're a young ecosystem, and the most important thing we can do is to show perseverance and tenacity. Grow what we can grow. Make things better, slowly but surely.


text:
Home LeBron James Lakers News: Lonzo Ball, Don Cheadle, Travis Scott Among Guests Joining LeBron James For May 4 Episode Of HBO's 'The Shop'
Lakers News: Lonzo Ball, Don Cheadle, Travis Scott Among Guests Joining LeBron James For May 4 Episode Of HBO's 'The Shop'
Lakers News: Lonzo Ball Plans To Work On 'Everything' In First Healthy Offseason
An all-new episode of "The Shop," is set to air Saturday, May 4, at 10 p.m. PT, with Los Angeles Lakers point guard Lonzo Ball among those joining Maverick Carter and LeBron James on the set of the unscripted series.
In addition to Ball, the episode will also feature actor Don Cheadle, Houston Texans star wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, record producer Jimmy Iovine, entertainment programmer Paul Rivera, actor Seth Rogen and fashion designer/musician/record producer Pharrell Williams.
The 2019 season premiere of "The Shop" aired March 1, when the lineup was headlined by Anthony Davis. During the episode, James defended Davis amid building criticism after his trade request from the New Orleans Pelicans.
Ball's inclusion on the forthcoming episode brings plenty of intrigue. He and James played under a microscope when they did manage to share the court this season, and regularly praised one another.
There's also speculation of Ball potentially joining Nike now that he's seemingly moving on from Big Baller Brand, which James understandably endorsed. In addition to James saying he would welcome Ball to the Nike family, he also spoke glowingly about the 21-year-old taking more control of his off-the-court ventures.
"The Shop" is also available on HBO NOW, HBO GO, HBO On Demand and partners' streaming platforms.
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Will there be MISO SALMON?! An investigation.
Once in awhile, I'll come across someone who has never been to The Cheesecake Factory. My jaw drops slowly, unhinging the same way it does when a plate of their famous Buffalo Blasts™ hit the table. The Cheesecake Factory is one of the most upscale mall chain restaurants America has to offer. But explaining the Factory can be complicated. For instance, in the hundred or so times I've been, I've maybe ordered cheesecake once. No, instead I longed to take this person by the hand a la Jack in Rose's "Everyone's alive!" Titanic flashback, push past the chain's gigantic front doors, and lead them into their amber-lit world of elaborate sconces, spiral-bound menus boasting over 250 items, gravy boats of balsamic vinaigrettes, and of course, "Renee's Special."
But good news, mole people: A Cheesecake Factory is finally joining the big leagues, opening up its first New York City location in the Elmhurst area of Queens today. OK, it's not Times Square, but it's only a 30 minute subway ride away. And last week, I was #blessed enough to be invited to a very special preview dinner at this new location, a sort of pretend service night where the wait staff and chefs would grow comfortable with the high intensity workload. Think Hell's Kitchen, but without Gordon Ramsay shoving his thick English fingers into every single dish before tossing it. Joining me was Bon Appétit's senior web editor Alex Beggs, who has only ever been to the Factory one other time.
And so our Girthright to the C&C Cheesecake Factory (genius nickname, feel free to use it) began. We met outside the pristine doors, in front of which stood a woman holding an important-looking clipboard. The restaurant was not officially open, and only people who won a lottery to come to this special preview meal were being allowed in. "I'm sorry," she would say to the dozens of hungry people who demanded entry, "we're not open yet!" as dads holding Foot Locker bags angrily shook the door handles. So when we were actually allowed past her, and those magical doors opened for us side-by-side, I finally understood what my mother felt like when she got into Studio 54. This was power.
Inside, another hostess explained the process for tonight's preview dinner. She was all business.
Each person would get completely different menus, from which we could pick one appetizer, one entree, and a dessert (CHEESECAKE) to share. This way, the chefs in the kitchen could practice cooking a little bit of everything. A tall gentleman with a thick mustache next to us demanded to know if there would be Miso Salmon on his menu.
Now I've been a patron of The Factory for years, having visited at least 20 locations. My mom, who worked next door to one at our local Miami mall, basically ate dinner there with my Dad every night for 10 years straight. (Yes, they're still living.) And when I'd visit them? "It doesn't pay to cook!" she'd say, as we pushed past throngs of tourists and planted ourselves at one of the Factory's first come first serve high top bar tables, an insider's secret. ALWAYS beeline for the high tops.
Cheesecake's menu is a Yellowpages of Food, page after laminated page of really any dish you could possibly want. There should really be an app where you just shake your phone and your phone picks what it is you wanna eat. (COPYRIGHT, someone make this, call it Magic Ate Ball, you're welcome.) These limited menus were somehow even more overwhelming.
Did I want Chicken Piccata? Marsala? Chicken Bellagio? What's Chicken Bellagio?? Chicken with a butter fountain set to the sounds of Andrea Bocelli? Because clearly I want that!!!
One thing was for sure: We wanted martinis. We also began with two appetizers: Sweet corn tamale cakes and crispy crab wontons. As we waited for our opening course, I soaked up the surroundings. It's hard to describe Cheesecake's decor. It certainly didn't look like a factory, but more like the interior of a rich gay Egyptian guy's house, which is to say, I love it.
Our lovely server for the evening, Pedro, brought over our gigantic martinis along with the signature bread offering of "brown" or "beige." I usually prefer "brown" because I've convinced myself it is somehow healthier as they've topped it off with a smattering of Quaker Oats, even though judging by the way the bread tastes (glazed donut) I might be mistaken. I told myself to only have a bite and save room for my main course. Here I am excitedly posing for a bread selfie before devouring them both, Coneheads-style.
Appetizer time! Two gigantic platters, enough to feed a mom's only Super Bowl party, hit our table. Three sweet corn tamales sat inside a husk gondola, swimming down a tangy salsa creek as each lil corn cake grazed kernels under a thick sour cream and avocado sky.
The Crispy Crab Wontons brought me back to my poor college days but in the best way possible. They were light, flaky, crabby, and if I hadn't been in mixed company, I would have eaten the entire plate myself. Thank God for societal pressure! I left a single one for the chef.
Picking a main course was extremely tough, but I ended up going off the grid with one of the night's specials: Salmon Piccata with Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli. Alex, shocking the world, chose a Turf & Turf platter of Steak Diane and Chicken Madeira, one of the chain's signature dishes. And look at how exciting! They separated each meat with a little mashed potato wall. How de rigueur!
So I'm going to keep things very real in this write-up, because I never want Cheesecake's standards to falter: My salmon wasn't great. I feel a little bad saying this as the wait staff and management could not have been kinder or more attentive, but y'all know when salmon's dry, it's DRY. And given that the evening was all about learning from mistakes, I figure they should know now before Miso Salmon Guy storms out in a dry-fished rage.
Other than that one issue, the lemon butter sauce was divine, and the broc and mashies were reliably tasty. Alex's chicken and steak were cooked perfectly, and I know because I long-forked it across the table and tried both.
It was around this time that my body started Kool-Aid Man-ing out of my "skinny" turtleneck, forcing me to leave about half my meal uneaten. Seeing our bodies slumped over in our booths, Pedro kindly offered to wrap our leftovers up to go and then, milliseconds later, brought over the dessert menu. I couldn't eat another bite, but this was the Cheesecake FACTORY. You are in its home and you will eat it.
We picked two slices off the double-sided menu: Lemon Raspberry and something called the Oreo® Dream Extreme, aka a cream-filled Inception.
The meal was over. We were done. I took my leftovers and beelined to the nearest Sephora, where I contoured my face in the hopes that my neighbors wouldn't know I just consumed the same amount of calories as Michael Phelps on the day he won 17 golds.
And then I got on the subway and went home. Because I was living the dream. Of taking a train to The Cheesecake Factory in the big city. I gave my leftovers to a person who needed a good meal and headed home to plot my next step: Getting engaged and eventually married at a Cheesecake Factory. Because this is New York, and a girl can Oreo dream.


text:
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	var result = [];
	for (var i = 0; i < length; i++) {
		result.push(Math.floor(Math.random() * max) + min);
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	return result;
}

function generateTimeSeriesData (min, max, start, end, interval, interval_type) {
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text:
Q: How to repeat a value in numpy choice probabilities I would like to repeat 0.1 five times as the total number of probabilities required equals to 9. Any suggestions? In R, it can be done by using rep function. Any similar function in python?
import numpy as np
np.random.choice(np.arange(1, 4, 1/3), 3, p=[[0.1]*5, 0, 0.3, 0.2, 0])
#> TypeError: float() argument must be a string or a number, not 'list'
#>
#> The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
#>
#> Traceback (most recent call last):
#>   File "F:\miniconda_pf\envs\tensor\lib\site-packages\reprexlite\code.py", line 69, in evaluate
#>     result = eval(str(self).strip(), scope, scope)
#>   File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
#>   File "mtrand.pyx", line 918, in numpy.random.mtrand.RandomState.choice
#> ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence.

A: You can try this:
probs = [0.1 for _ in range(5)]
probs.extend([0, 0.3, 0.2, 0])
np.random.choice(np.arange(1, 4, 1/3), 3, p=probs)

A: You may simply expand your [0.1]*5 list like:
import numpy as np
np.random.choice(np.arange(1, 4, 1/3), 3, p=[*[0.1]*5, 0, 0.3, 0.2, 0])

* used for the purpose. See here


We have included the interim group management report and the condensed consolidated interim financial statements of KION GROUP AG in this interim report. KION GROUP AG owns all the shares in KION Holding 2 GmbH, which in turn is the sole shareholder of KION Material Handling GmbH.
This interim report should be read in conjunction with the 2012 group management report and consolidated financial statements of KION Holding 1 GmbH (since renamed KION GROUP AG), which are available on our website. The information in this interim report comprises updates and additions to the 2012 group management report and consolidated financial statements.
The condensed consolidated interim financial statements of KION Group AG included in this interim report for the applicable period ended 30 June 2013 have been prepared in line with International Accounting Standard (IAS) 34 "Interim Financial Reporting" and other International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) as adopted by the European Union in accordance with Regulation (EC) No. 1606 / 2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the application of international accounting standards for interim financial statements. The financial information and financial statements in this report are disclosed in euros (€). Certain numbers in this interim report have been rounded up or down. There may therefore be discrepancies between the actual totals of the individual amounts in the tables and the totals shown as well as between the numbers in the tables and the numbers given in the corresponding analyses in the text of the interim report. All percentage changes and key figures were calculated using the underlying data in thousands of euros (€ thousand).
This interim report contains information, data and forecasts concerning our markets and our competitive position. We have not verified the accuracy of the data and forecasts contained in this interim report that were taken from industry publications, publicly available documents of our competitors or other external sources. We believe that the information, data and forecasts in this interim report provide adequate estimates of the size of our markets and essentially provide a true and fair reflection of our competitive position in these markets. However, our internal estimates have not been verified by external experts. We cannot guarantee that a third party applying different methods of collecting, evaluating and calculating market information and data would obtain the same results. In addition, our competitors may define our and their markets differently to how we define them.
This interim report contains forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Certain factors may cause actual results to differ substantially from the results implied in these forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to, changes in business conditions, economic conditions and the competitive situation, regulatory reforms, exchange rate fluctuations, uncertainties surrounding legal disputes and investigations and the availability of funds. These and other risks and uncertainties are set forth in the 2012 group management report, and an update has been provided in the section "Opportunity and risk report" in this interim report. However, other factors could also have an adverse effect on us.
The information in this interim report is given as of the date of the report. KION GROUP AG does not undertake to update the information contained in this interim report.