text:
Q: Chronologically longest chapter in ASOIAF? According to George R R Martin:

A Song of Ice and Fire is told through the eyes of characters who are sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles apart from one another. Some chapters cover a day, some only an hour; others might span a fortnight, a month, half a year. With such a structure, the narrative cannot be strictly sequential; sometimes important things are happening simultaneously, a thousand leagues apart.

Which chapter in the series covers the longest amount of time?

A: Bran III, A Dance with Dragons
Length: Seven weeks (a full moon's turn, plus three-quarters of another)
The following are exerpts from this chapter.  On the first page:

The moon was fat and full.  Stars wheeled across a black sky.  Rain fell and froze, and tree limbs snapped from the weight of the ice.  Bran and Meera made up names for those who sang the song of earth: Ash and Leaf and Scales, Black Knife and Snowylocks and Coals.  Their true names were too long for human tongues, said Leaf.  Only she could speak the Common Tongue, so what the others thought of their new names Bran never learned.

Later in the same chapter:

The moon was a black hole in the sky.  Wolves howled in the wood, sniffing through the snowdrifts after dead things.  A murder of ravens erupted from the hillside, screaming their sharp cries, black wings beating above a white world.  A red sun rose and set and rose again, painting the snows in shades of rose and pink.  Under the hill, Jojen brooded, Meera fretted, and Hodor wandered through dark tunnels with a sword in his right hand and a torch in his left.  Or was it Bran wandering?

Later:

The moon was fat and full.  Summer prowled through the silent woods, a long grey shadow that grew more gaunt with every hunt, for living game could not be found.  The ward upon the cave mouth still held; the dead men could not enter.  The snows had buried most of them again, but they were still there, hidden, frozen, waiting.  Other dead things came to join them, things that had once been men and women, even children.  Dead ravens sat on bare brown branches, wings crusted with ice.  A snow bear crashed through the brush, huge and skeletal, half its head sloughed away to reveal the skull beneath.  Summer and his pack fell upon it and tore it into pieces.  Afterward they gorged, though the meat was rotted and half-frozen, and moved even as they ate it.

Later:

The moon was a black hole in the sky.  Outside the cave the world went on.  Outside the cave the sun rose and set, the moon turned, the cold winds howled.  Under the hill, Jojen Reed grew ever more sullen and solitary, to his sister's distress.  She would often sit with Bran beside their little fire, talking of everything and nothing, petting Summer where he slept between them, whilst her brother wandered the caverns by himself.  Jojen had even taken to climbing up to the cave's mouth when the day was bright.  He would stand there for hours, looking out over the forest, wrapped in furs yet shivering all the same.

Later:

The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife.  The days marched past, one after the other, each shorter than the one before.  The nights grew longer.  No sunlight ever reached the caves beneath the hill.  No moonlight ever touched those stony halls.  Even the stars were strangers there.  Those things belonged to the world above, where time ran in its iron circles, day to night to day to night to day.

(The intervening quarter-moons are mentioned as well, but they aren't needed here.)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


It is said that cooking lemon rice is easy especially when you are in a hurry. You have a way to see if they're right or wrong playing the lemon rice cooking game. First of all read carefully the recipe, then go to the grocery store and get all the ingredients you need. Here is your list: rice, oil, mustard, chili, peanuts, cilantro, salt, ginger, curry, turmeric and lemon juice. Now that you have all the ingredients you can start cooking. Follow the instructions provided in the game and learn how to prepare and serve this delicious and traditional feast! As far as I'm concerned I think they were right, cooking lemon rice is really easy, what do you think?


Welcome to Your Exchange, the official blog of State Department Federal Credit Union (SDFCU). As the perfect companion to the SDFCU.org website, Your Exchange is the place where members and non members alike can go for tips on purchasing a new car, buying a home, keeping their financial information secure, staying up-to-date on financial news, and more.
Whether you're just starting out, well established financially, or about to retire, you will find everything that you need to succeed financially at Your Exchange.
Please join the conversation and chime in with any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions for future topics. Always remember, we are your credit union. Created by you, to serve you.


text:
-30°F Scattered Clouds
Maine and Alaska insurance companies bring 'bait and switch' complaint to Supreme Court Justices
By Peter Zampa |
Posted: Tue 1:18 PM, Dec 10, 2019 |
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) -- Billions of dollars are on the table at the Supreme Court Tuesday for Alaska and Maine health insurance companies. Moda Health Plan and Maine Community Health Options argue the government is going back on a deal made under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when it became law. The government says that deal was subject to change.
Health insurance companies are looking to be paid billions to help cover losses under the Affordable Care Act. (Source: Gray DC)
"The insurance companies in many ways sort of relied on these payments coming through," said Katie Keith, a health insurance legal expert at Georgetown University.
The legal team for the companies began arguments saying they are victims of a "bait and switch". Keith says that is because when the ACA became law in 2010 it included incentives for companies like Maine Community and Moda to sell insurance in the new, unknown marketplace. The government said the Department of Health and Human Services would cover financial losses. The losses came, but the money did not. A Congressional funding decision nixed the payment agreement, sending the companies into a tailspin and forcing Moda to stop selling insurance to Alaskans.
"The Chief Justice said were the insurance companies seduced into doing this and should they have been more cautious?" said Keith.
Chief Justice Roberts questioned whether companies would agree to join the risky market if they knew the rug could be pulled out from under them. Other justices noted going back on a promise like this sends a message to other private businesses.
"The Chamber of Commerce would probably say that's bad for business to not be able to take the federal government at its word," said Keith.
The deputy US solicitor general was firm in his arguments, saying the government cannot be forced to pay out this money.
"The Department of Justice is sort of saying we're trying to protect Congress' power of the purse," said Keith.
Edwin Kneedler appealing to the justices that the Affordable Care Act did not bind the government in a contract with insurance companies. The government argues some laws intentionally leave out contractual language because they are subject to funding changes.
"They say there's nothing to breach, the insurance companies aren't entitled to this money and they should not really have ever thought that they were," said Keith.
The court has until the end of June to make a decision.
Copyright 2019 Gray DC. All rights reserved.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Aluminum die cast, Zincalloy die cast, Valve Body, Cylinder CertificationISO 9001; Made in Aluminum alloy castings, aluminum die casting parts, antique.
Reducing Costs. On Small And. Medium Runs. With Investment. Castings largest future market for investment castings. .. This aircraft valve body is now.
KSM Castings Group. Front axle subframe. Cylinder head cover. Transmission housing. Steering gear box. Knuckle. Pump housing. Valve body. Cross member.
of a valve for a nuclear power station produced using investment casting. Investment casting is an industrial process based on lostwax casting, one of the oldest known . and a lower chamber—the upper chamber, or melting chamber, housing the crucible, and the lower casting chamber housing the investment mould.
The casting, machining and finishing of valve components is one of NovaCast's core activities. Automotive Valve Body Fully machined Die Cast Aluminium.
USA Made Valve Body and Hydrostatic Transmission Component Aluminum Castings.
Using a series of process improvements, a foundry in the UK has produced defectfree castings without weld repairs in Inconel 625.
die casting machines were developed, aluminum die castings continued their successful penetration of the automotive industry. Intricate valve bodies.


text:
Q: Tensorflow not being deterministic, where it should I have a small network. Trained [many hours] and saved to a checkpoint.
Now, I want to restore from checkpoint, in a different script, and use it.
I recreate the session: build the entire network, s.t. all ops are created again, using the exact same code I did before training. This code sets the random seed for TF, using time.time() [which is different every run].
I then restore from a checkpoint. I run the network, and get different numbers [small but meaningful differences] every time I run the restored network. Crucially, the input is fixed.
If I fixate the random seed to some value, the non deterministic behavior goes away.
I am puzzled because I thought that a restore [no Variables were given to save, so I presume all graph was checkpointed] eliminates all random behavior from this flow. Initializations etc. are overridden by the restored checkpoint, this is only a forward run.
Is this possible? make sense? Is there a way to find out what variables or factors in my graph are not set by the restored checkpoint?

A: It seems as if this question was already answered in the comments but no-one has written down the answer explicitly yet, so here it is:
You were expecting the computation graph to return always the same values even with different random seeds because you thought that there should not be any Op in your graph which depends on the random seed.
You forgot about the dropout.
In any case, I would always keep the random seed fixed anyway. Then also this and any other random ops are deterministic, and your whole training can be as well. If you are wondering at some point how much variance you get by different random seeds, you can explicitly try other random seeds.


Our apartment is about a 20 minute walk into Holmfirth centre. Buses and taxis are plentiful and cost around £3 each way in a taxi. Holmfirth has an abundance of pubs and restaurant and the famous Picturedrome live music venue.


text:
Indian Design Exports Pvt Ltd implements Sage Software Solutions
1st Oct, 2016. Bangalore, India.
Indian Designs Exports Pvt. Ltd started in the year 1993 and today it is one of the largest vendors for apparels in India. There are 16 modern, self-contained manufacturing units with state-of-the-art sewing facilities owned by IDE along with 6,000+ machines to handle all types of sewing operations and a Workforce of 10,000+ and growing. Today, the Production Capacity for IDE is more than 1.8 million pcs per month.
With growing transactions, IDE felt that they would outrun their present system soon and wanted an application which will only help them do their tasks efficiently but also be a catalyst in their growth. "Before selecting Sage ERP, we were using standalone solutions like Tally / Fastreact. But we were steadily outgrowing of them as these solutions were not integrated to our other solutions and hence, a lot of duplicity of work was happened. This ultimately led to an impact on decision making and forecasting", says Mr. Kotresh, CFO – IDE, "Sage X3 was considered as it takes care of order based merchandising, procurement, production and its related EXIM management in a professional way, along with bringing all our facilities on the same platform. The report generation was easy and all other modules like finance, purchase, inventory, etc. can be managed from a single window. From the management and employees' front, there is a lot of time which is saved and papers, invoices and communication is moved much faster."
"Today a total of 125 users in IDE use Sage X3 on a daily basis to manage everything from supply, vendor to customers and we couldn't be happier to see one of the biggest apparel manufacturers and exporters in India using our software", says Mr. Jitendra Somani, CEO – Sage Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Sage X3 is a comprehensive suite of advanced accounting software, business intelligence and reporting, purchase / sale tracking tools etc. designed to serve businesses across diverse industry verticals with a strong emphasis on SMEs and manufacturing companies. Watch, in the video below, Mr. Kotresh, CFO for IDE explain how Sage Software has enabled IDE's growth and expansion at the same time.
Mr. Kotresh, CEO – IDE talks about Sage Software implementation
For more information on how can Sage Software enhance your processes to give you the maximum benefits, SMS SAGE to 56767 or write to Sage Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd at sales@sagesoftware.co.in
About Sage Software Solutions Pvt Ltd.:
Sage Software Solutions Pvt Ltd is a distributor of Sage Asia Pte Ltd in India and a leading provider of ERP, CRM and HCM solutions in India. Sage Software is also a distributor of Pocket HCM with offices across India. Headquartered in Mumbai, Sage Software Solutions boasts of a PAN-India presence with offices and development centres in Chennai, Delhi and Bengaluru as well for serving businesses in every nook and corner of the country.
Neetu Singh,
neetu.singh@sagesoftware.co.in
Sage Software Solutions Pvt Ltd
IFRS accounting reporting using Sage 300cloud report writer
Everything you need to know about Production Scheduling within ERP Software
Role of AI & Data Analytics in Finance
Automating In-Transit Inventory Management with Sage 300cloud Goods in Transit module
6 inventory management tips for the food production industry
Reading Time: 6 minutes What is IFRS? IFRS stands for international financial reporting standards. It's a set of accounting rules and standards that determine how accounting events should be reported in your business's financial
Reading Time: 4 minutes Summary: People complain that they don't get enough time to spend with their loved ones because of the amount of work they need to finish within tight deadlines. Long meetings,
Reading Time: 5 minutes Summary: The role of AI & data analytics in Finance is increasing by leaps and bounds. Every other day we get to read a new research paper about a machine
Reading Time: 3 minutes In this blog, we are going to discuss about "Inventory Control" Module and specifically about "I/C Transfers." (can be accessed from I/C Transactions). The Inventory Module has different type of
Reading Time: 5 minutes Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Food & Beverage industry supply chains across the globe. Incessant lockdowns caused customer demands to fluctuate. As a result, consumers displayed higher interest levels
Role of technology innovation in improving customer service
Reading Time: 4 minutes Summary: In the human world, the role of technology innovation has always been playing a crucial role in bringing ingenious transformations. This in turn delivers improvised customer service. Let us
The secret sauce for effective food traceability – Food & Beverage ERP
Reading Time: 5 minutes Summary: The Food & Beverage (F&B) industry is recovering from the challenges raised by the covid-19 pandemic by upgrading its supply chain & logistics. IDC reports that 96% of F&B
Meet chemical regulations through integrated traceability data
Reading Time: 4 minutes Summary: The chemical manufacturing industry has recently come under immense pressure due to various factors, including fluctuating markets, product commoditization, harsh chemical regulations, and the recent coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, companies
5 most common budgeting methods and their benefits & drawbacks
Reading Time: 5 minutes Summary: Choosing a suitable budgeting method for your business can be challenging. Finding what fits best to your business model and needs requires paying attention to numerous factors — operational,
Automatic Barcode Solution in Sage 300Cloud
Reading Time: 6 minutes What is in a barcode? Barcode is a machine-readable code in the form of numbers and a pattern of parallel lines of varying widths, printed on a commodity. Barcode contains


text:
Q: RecyclerView itemView.setOnClick Listener Not Working I have a recycler view and I want to return the position in the list that was clicked. I have tried to set an OnClickListener on the itemView, but this doesn't seem to get triggered upon it being clicked
I have tried to set the OnClickListener inside the ViewHolder method but this did not work either
    @Override
public void onBindViewHolder(HomeAdapter.HomeViewHolder holder, final int position) {
    holder.evacName.setText(evacNames.get(position).toString());
    holder.editTextView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View view) {

        }
    });

    holder.deleteTextView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View view) {

        }
    });

    holder.itemView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View view) {
            System.out.println("CLICKED ROW " + position);
        }
    });
}

@Override
public int getItemCount() {
    return evacNames.size();
}

class HomeViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder{

    TextView evacName;
    TextView editTextView;
    TextView deleteTextView;

    public HomeViewHolder(View itemView) {
        super(itemView);

        evacName = itemView.findViewById(R.id.evacProcedureTextView);
        editTextView = itemView.findViewById(R.id.editTextView);
        deleteTextView = itemView.findViewById(R.id.deleteTextView);

        swipeLayout = (SwipeLayout) itemView.findViewById(R.id.swipeLayout);

        swipeLayout.setShowMode(SwipeLayout.ShowMode.LayDown);

        swipeLayout.addDrag(SwipeLayout.DragEdge.Left, itemView.findViewById(R.id.bottom_wrapper));

        swipeLayout.addSwipeListener(new SwipeLayout.SwipeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClose(SwipeLayout layout) {
                //when the SurfaceView totally cover the BottomView.
            }

            @Override
            public void onUpdate(SwipeLayout layout, int leftOffset, int topOffset) {
                //you are swiping.
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartOpen(SwipeLayout layout) {

            }

            @Override
            public void onOpen(SwipeLayout layout) {
                //when the BottomView totally show.
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartClose(SwipeLayout layout) {

            }

            @Override
            public void onHandRelease(SwipeLayout layout, float xvel, float yvel) {
                //when user's hand released.
            }
        });
    }
}

Upon clicking the row I am expecting to see the position of the row clicked via System.out

A: Use Log and see output in Android Studio LogCat:
holder.itemView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View view) {
            Log.v("Your Filter", "CLICKED ROW " + position);
        }
    });

Check this for more information about Log and System.out in Android

A: i have read your question and i have implement in my project. i have find a problem and its solution. in recyclerview onclick listener is work on only on item means that you try onclick listener on itemveiw as well as view click its not work because its both are similar. in this situation onclick  work only for first view(editTextView) , if you print postion in edittextview onclicklistener its print because its implement on first .
please see this code and screenshot.
@Override
public void onBindViewHolder(@NonNull Myholder myholder, final int i) {

    myholder.text.setText(name[i]);

     myholder.text.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            System.out.println("check click: "+i);
            Log.e(TAG+"check_clcik_view:",""+i);

        }
    });
    myholder.itemView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            System.out.println("check item view click:"+i);
            Log.e(TAG+"check_clcik_item:",""+i);
        }
    });

}

A: Try Below code it should work.
  class HomeViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder implements View.OnClickListener{  // implementing  View.OnClickListener will handle all click event's inside the holder and will keep your code also clean

      TextView evacName;
      TextView editTextView;
      TextView deleteTextView;

      public HomeViewHolder(View itemView) {
          super(itemView);

          evacName = itemView.findViewById(R.id.evacProcedureTextView);
          editTextView = itemView.findViewById(R.id.editTextView);
          deleteTextView = itemView.findViewById(R.id.deleteTextView);

          swipeLayout = (SwipeLayout) itemView.findViewById(R.id.swipeLayout);

          swipeLayout.setShowMode(SwipeLayout.ShowMode.LayDown);

          swipeLayout.addDrag(SwipeLayout.DragEdge.Left, itemView.findViewById(R.id.bottom_wrapper));

          swipeLayout.addSwipeListener(new SwipeLayout.SwipeListener() {
              @Override
              public void onClose(SwipeLayout layout) {
                  //when the SurfaceView totally cover the BottomView.
              }

              @Override
              public void onUpdate(SwipeLayout layout, int leftOffset, int topOffset) {
                  //you are swiping.
              }

              @Override
              public void onStartOpen(SwipeLayout layout) {

              }

              @Override
              public void onOpen(SwipeLayout layout) {
                  //when the BottomView totally show.
              }

              @Override
              public void onStartClose(SwipeLayout layout) {

              }

              @Override
              public void onHandRelease(SwipeLayout layout, float xvel, float yvel) {
                  //when user's hand released.
              }
          });
      }

    @Override
    public void onClick(final View view) {
       //you can handle any type of even specifically for `deleteTextView` or itemView`
       Log.v("Your Filter", "CLICKED ROW " + getAdapterPosition());
    }
  }

Note: According to your requirement you want to add listener to the holder not the the deleteTextView or itemView .Setting two ClickListener are actually overComplicating your logic which can be easily handled inside HomeViewHolder
holder.deleteTextView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(View view) {

    }
});

holder.itemView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(View view) {
     Log.v("Your Filter", "CLICKED ROW " + getAdapterPosition());
    }
});

A: you can intialize whatever your layout parent and use onclick method , i`ll give you an example.:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
          xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
          android:layout_width="match_parent"
          android:layout_height="wrap_content"
          android:layout_marginLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
          android:layout_marginStart="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
          android:layout_marginBottom="10dp"
          android:orientation="vertical"
android:id="@+id/mMessagelayout">

<ImageView
    android:id="@+id/photoImageView"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:adjustViewBounds="true" />

<LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:background="@drawable/chat_style"
    android:backgroundTint="#f3e5f5"
    android:layout_gravity="start"
    android:padding="20dp"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    >
    <TextView

        android:id="@+id/messageTextView"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginEnd="10dp"
        android:layout_marginRight="10dp"
        android:layout_weight="0"
        android:textColor="#000"
        android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge"
        tools:text="Message" />

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/nameTextView"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="0"

        android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceSmall"
        tools:text="Name" />
</LinearLayout>

That was my xml layout for each item in recyclerview and
there is my Adapter Code:
public static class SentMessages extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder{
    TextView text,name;
    LinearLayout mParent;
    public SentMessages(View itemView) {
        super(itemView);
        text= (TextView) itemView.findViewById(R.id.messageTextView);
        name= (TextView) itemView.findViewById(R.id.nameTextView);
        mParent= (LinearLayout) itemView.findViewById(R.id.mMessagelayout);
    }

 public void onBindViewHolder(RecyclerView.ViewHolder holder, int position) {
    final FriendlyMessage friendlyMessage=messages.get(position);
    switch (friendlyMessage.getType()){
        case FriendlyMessage.CHAT_TYPE_SENT:
            ((SentMessages)holder).name.setText(friendlyMessage.getName());
            ((SentMessages)holder).text.setText(friendlyMessage.getText());
            ((SentMessages)holder).mParent.setOnLongClickListener(new View.OnLongClickListener() {
                @Override
                public boolean onLongClick(View v) {

                    Toast.makeText(context,"Message :"+friendlyMessage.getText(),Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                    return false;
                }
            });
            break;
    }
}

Ihope you get it.


When "peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room" after then-press secretary Robert Gibbs floated the "most transparent administration" line at an April 2010 presser, the administration should have taken the hint. But it's one soundbite they just can't quit. Gibbs' successor Jay Carney repeated it just last week, as did the president himself in a Google Hangout last year: "This is the most transparent administration in history …. I can document that this is the case."
Actually, any number of journalists and open government advocates have documented that it's not. As the Associated Press reported last month: "More often than ever, the administration censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act."


text:
Berkeley College Brings Virtual Resources to Further Manhattan Chamber of Commerce's "Pivot to Win" Campaign
Contact: Angela Harrington
Vice President,
Angela-Harringt@BerkeleyCollege.edu
BERKELEY COLLEGE BRINGS VIRTUAL RESOURCES TO FURTHER MANHATTAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE'S 'PIVOT TO WIN' CAMPAIGN
September Webinars Focus on Virtual Employment, Innovative Company Practices, and Women in the Workplace
Share the News: @BerkeleyCollege @ManhattanCofC
As Berkeley College embarks on its 90th academic year as a career-focused institution of higher learning, the need to support businesses and provide well-prepared professionals for today's demanding workforce has never been greater. Continuing to support a collaborative approach, Berkeley College will offer three free virtual workshops in collaboration with the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce in support of its "Pivot to Win" campaign in September. Announced in June 2020, the "Pivot to Win" campaign offers resources, networking, and other support to ensure that small and mid-sized businesses can thrive in the COVID-19 era. The initiative is part of the Chamber's work to support businesses facing unprecedented disruption, offering new resources to help businesses survive and thrive.
"Unprecedented times call for unprecedented effort, and we all must do our part," said Michael J. Smith, President of Berkeley College.
"We are always pleased to work with Berkeley College and we are really excited about these events and how they will help our community," said Jessica Walker, CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce.
Representatives from the College have been conducting virtual workshops for members of various chambers in New York and New Jersey to help business and community organizational leaders learn how to boost productivity, begin to pivot and once again, succeed. "Berkeley College is engrained into the fabric of New York City. We are here to help," Smith added.
Topics for the September programs include "Working with Virtual Interns and Best Virtual Hiring Practices," on September 4, 2020; "Developing a Culture of Innovation in The Work Place," on September 15, 2020; and "Women in Leadership: Creating a Diverse Online Presence to Thrive in the New Normal," on September 29, 2020. All of these will be held from 12 noon to 1 p.m. To see the entire schedule and to register click here.
@BerkeleyCollege @ManhattanCofC
About Berkeley College
Berkeley College, founded in 1931, is a career-focused institution accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that offers students Master's, Bachelor's, and Associate's degree and Certificate programs in more than 20 career fields. The College has campuses in Midtown Manhattan and White Plains, NY, as well as in Newark, Paramus, Woodbridge and Woodland Park, NJ, with more than 4,900 students enrolled. In addition, Berkeley College Online® serves a global population. U.S. News & World Report has named Berkeley College among the Best Colleges for Online Bachelor's Programs and among the Best Online Bachelor's Programs for Veterans, for seven consecutive years. The website address is www.BerkeleyCollege.edu
The mission of Berkeley College is to empower students to achieve lifelong success in dynamic careers.


text:
Stratiomys vittipennis är en tvåvingeart som först beskrevs av Lindner 1937.  Stratiomys vittipennis ingår i släktet Stratiomys och familjen vapenflugor.

Artens utbredningsområde är Iran. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Vapenflugor
vittipennis

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
← Winter Birthdays and AP Headlines
The Purpose of Life is to Enjoy Every Moment–and Other Annoying Platitudes →
BOGO Babies, Bogus Research, and BOGO Rulings
Posted on March 27, 2014 by Kate Christie
As some of you know, Kris and I jokingly refer to the twins as our BOGO babies. We actually weren't the first to bestow this title. Many years ago, one of my very straight grad school friends asked us if we planned to have children. We were at a baby shower, so this question was being bandied about among most of the room's occupants. When I said that yes, in fact, we were planning to start a family quite soon, our friends asked who would carry the baby, how many kids we wanted, and how we were planning to proceed—adoption, fostering, artificial insemination, IVF?
Artificial with an anonymous donor, we told them; and if that didn't work, then IVF or adoption, in that order. Kris wanted to be pregnant, and I supported her wish to have that experience.
"IVF?" one of my friends repeated. "Look out—you may end up with a BOGO baby."
"BOGO?" another friend questioned.
"You know—buy one get one free."
Everyone laughed, and Kris joked, "I can just hear one of them saying, 'You were the free one. At least Moms paid for me.'"
At eleven and a half months, the twins are unable to form actual words, let alone sentences, so we haven't heard that one yet. They do squabble in their own mysterious language, but they also hold hands occasionally at meal times, pat each other on the back, and smile widely and often at each other. Among other things:
We've been told that one of the wonderful things about twins is their bond, and at almost a year, we're definitely starting to see signs of an "us-against-the-world" approach. It's lovely, and I'm glad they have each other and their big sister, who they both watch raptly whenever she slows down long enough to inhabit their space. Kris and I planned on two children and ended up with three, and though the numbers can be overwhelming at times (they outnumber us, literally), we adore each of them. They are such different people, each her own and simultaneously not her own. Our daughters are ours and their selves and each other's, a multitude of steadily expanding identities I am forced to acknowledge almost daily.
Our children's identities aren't the only things changing rapidly, of course. This morning over my second cup of tea, I came across a Slate.com article about the recent federal court ruling in Michigan, my home state and, coincidentally, the place where Kris's brother and sister-in-law (the famous G) and our nephews currently reside. In the most recent blow against American anti-gay marriage policies, a federal judge declared last week that Michigan's voter-enacted ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. But the judge didn't just strike a blow in favor of LGBT rights. He also took the opportunity to expose and discredit an insidious tactic that anti-gay activists have used in their attempts to block forward movement on same-sex marriage in the U.S.—namely, the invention of biased research that purports to prove that children are disadvantaged by being raised by gay or lesbian parents.
In my last blog post, I ranted about the attorneys who argue that same-sex marriage should be illegal because of the "damage" done to children of gay parents. Yet even worse are the pseudo-intellectuals like Dr. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin, who purposely interpret data to make their research results align with religious-based bias against gay marriage.
In a 2012 study funded by religious conservatives and published by the journal Social Science Research, Regnerus claimed falsely that children of same-sex parents fared worse than those of straight parents. The main problem with this claim? The children he references in the study were actually raised in traditional heterosexual marriages that broke up over one parent's extra-marital affair(s) with a member of the same sex. Regnerus's "children of gay parents" are, in fact, children of failed heterosexual marriages.
Yet despite having his study condemned by oh, say, a couple of hundred scholarly peers, disavowed by his own department, and found in an internal audit by SSR to have "serious flaws and distortions," Regnerus continues to insist that his findings should be used to prevent the legalization of gay marriage.
Bill Schuette, the Attorney General of Michigan, agrees, and recently put Regnerus, along with a handful of similar "scholars," on the stand to defend Michigan's ban on gay marriage. Once again, the anti-gay side argued that gays shouldn't be allowed to legally marry because we shouldn't be allowed to legally parent.
The Girls' Legally Married Moms
Even though we already are married; even though we already are parenting; even though the consensus from scholars across a variety of disciplines is that the "the adjustment, development and psychological well-being of children are unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish." (Source: http://bit.ly/1rCmjtg)
According to Dr. Nathaniel Frank, an Ivy League-educated scholar, Regnerus's research is part of an intentional strategy to prevent change in the currently anti-gay marriage status quo in the majority of American states:
As the New York Times recently reported, in 2010 the conservative Heritage Foundation gathered social conservatives consisting of Catholic intellectuals, researchers, activists and funders at a Washington meeting to plot their approach. The idea was for conservative scholars to generate research claiming that gay marriage harms children by placing them in unstable gay homes and by upending marital norms for straights. A solid consensus of actual scholarship—not the fixed kind being ginned up at Heritage—has consistently found that gay parenting does not disadvantage kids, and no research has shown gay marriage having any impact on straight marriage rates. But trafficking in truth was not the plan. The plan was to tap into a sordid history of linking gay people with threatening kids, and to produce skewed research that could be used as talking points to demagogue the public. (Source: http://slate.me/1mvA78a)
The beauty of the Michigan ruling last week is that the LGBT community got a BOGO decision—not only did U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman determine that Michigan's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, he also struck a blow against the false prophet/profiteering of researchers like Regnerus and the other "academics" who recently testified on behalf of the State of Michigan that gay parents damage children. As Dr. Frank writes:
Judge Friedman didn't fall for any of it. "The Court finds Regnerus's testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration," he wrote in what must be one of the most stinging and decisive repudiations of an expert witness in memory. He cited evidence that the conservative research was "hastily concocted at the behest of a third-party funder" which clearly expressed its wish for skewed results. Dismissing the defense's other witnesses just as strongly, the judge wrote that "The Court was unable to accord the testimony of Marks, Price, and Allen any significant weight." He concluded that "The most that can be said of these witnesses' testimony is that the 'no differences' consensus has not been proven with scientific certainty, not that there is any credible evidence showing that children raised by same-sex couples fare worse than those raised by heterosexual couples." (Source: http://slate.me/1mvA78)
I won't pretend that same-sex parents have some sort of corner on excellent parenting. I don't claim that we make better parents than our straight peers, even though recent studies may or may not have said something along those lines. So much goes into parenting, and so many of us are clueless when we start out, that I honestly believe it's difficult to come up with quantitative data on something that is impacted by a multitude of factors—age, race, socioeconomic class, family of origin, education level, personality type, sexual orientation, cultural/ethnic background. But at the same time, I absolutely reject the notion that same-sex parents disadvantage our children. And so does the research, Mark Regnerus and his discredited ilk notwithstanding.
Different children respond to the same parenting style in widely divergent ways, not to mention to social situations, classrooms, teachers, peer groups, standardized tests, and so on and so forth. To someone like me, largely untrained in statistics and the social sciences, comparing straight parents to gay parents seems like comparing apples to oranges. Or like comparing Alex to Ellie or Ellie to Sydney.
The Girls & their Mars Rover
All three of our children share the same DNA, the same parents, the same household, potentially the same inherited traits. And yet where Alex and Sydney are cautious and observant, Ellie launches herself into the world with seemingly no fear (or easily discernible judgment). While Alex and Ellie wrestle and giggle together, Sydney is content to play on her own or snuggle with one of her moms. While Ellie and Alex run through the house, Ellie clinging to a wall for support on her still wobbly legs, Sydney paces slowly and deliberately down the center of the long hall, bowed legs wide for maximum stability. While Alex and Sydney seem happiest reading a book or dancing to a tune, Ellie appears to crave motion and discovery.
Our three girls—they are all themselves, and ours, and each other's. And we are lucky to have them. Whether they're lucky to have us, only they can decide in due time, and despite all their similarities—Ellie and Sydney have shared almost everything so far, and will continue to do so because that is the way of twindom, for better or worse—our daughters might not even agree on that. Which is okay, because no matter what, Kris and I love them, and we always will.
And speaking of love, I hope you'll join Kris and me in offering your prayers and condolences to the people of nearby Oso, Washington, who have seen their community so devastated by last Saturday's catastrophic mudslide. If you can, I hope you'll join us in giving to the Red Cross. Call 800-733-2767 to donate or text "RedCross" to 90999 to have $10 charged to your phone bill. Or visit the Washington state Combined Fund Drive's special campaign to help victims: http://www.cfd.wa.gov/cfd/Mudslide-Relief-Campaign.aspx. Thank you in advance for your support.
This entry was posted in Family, gay marriage, LGBT rights, Parenting, Twins and tagged Michigan gay marriage, Regnerus. Bookmark the permalink.


I follow the "customProDB" tutorial for prepare annotation files and use "PGA package" PrepareAnnotationRefseq2 function. But I got an error message and fail to generate depentent RData.
Does anyone can help me to solve this error.


Sideshow has opened up pre-orders for their exclusive Star Wars Blackhole Stormtrooper Premium Format Figure. The piece stands about 19.5 inches tall and includes a body suit, leather holster, and just pure awesome blackness.
She was one of the hits at Sideshow's Comic-Con booth this past summer and now's your chance to place your pre-order for the amazing Premium Format Shaak-Ti!
Sideshow has opened up the pre-order for their hihly anticipated Premium Format Figures C-3PO and R2-D2 EXCLUSIVE set. The Sideshow exclusive set includes a "clean" paint app and Yavin themed base while the regular version comes in a Tatooine base.
Sideshow give us a sneak peek of their upcoming C-3PO and R2-D2 Premium Format figures on their May The 4th splash page and both look absolutely amazing!
Sideshow has posted a great preview shot of the upcoming Premium Format Captain Rex. More photos will be revealed on their Production Blog on April 10th with hopefully some pre-order information posted at that time as well.
Sideshow has posted up a teaser production video of their Premium Format Captain Rex!
Pre-orders for the Premium Format Aayla Secura is up now! Click here to order either the regular the exclusive version that comes with a severed Clone head as a base. Aayla retails for $349.99 and is scheduled for delivery in Q3 2012.
Sideshow has posted a production blog and gallery for their stunning Premium Format Aayla Secura prior to tomorrow's pre-order event. The exclusive version will include a severed Clone head base accessory for customizable detail and the retail price is $349.99.
Sideshow offers a nice preview of their next Star Wars Premium Format figure, Aayla Secura. A full product reveal will be posted on their blog on January 31st with pre-orders being taken on February 2nd.


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Podcast 121: How to Grow a Niche Site Once It's Making a Few Hundred Dollars a Month
Today I have another guest interview to review their niche site. I was able to record an interview with Dee Bryant and discuss her site, TheDogEffect.com.
Dee started her site near the beginning of Niche Site Project 3 and has been able to grow it to $300 per month in revenue! She's done a great job with her site so far by following the steps I've laid out. However, she wanted to hop on a call to discuss how she could take the site to the next level.
In particular, we discuss how to do more link building and outreach. In addition, we review what her ongoing content strategy should be in terms of schedule and types of articles she should be focusing on.
Overall, I hope you enjoy the discussion!
Read the Full Transcript Here
Spencer:Hey everyone! Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. I'm your host Spencer Haws from nichepursuits.com. Before we dive into the interview, I wanted just to share some quick business or personal updates.
First, recently Amazon came out with a change to its commission structure. It's gone from paying a variable rate based on the amount of product that you sell or the amount of revenue that you generate to now fix commission rates based on certain categories that you sell your product in. Some people are calling this change huge and a game changer, other people are saying that it really won't impact their business very much, only time will tell.
I think the key to this is that yes, Amazon is a huge and great source for affiliate revenue but it's important to think long term about your business so I would still and still will create Amazon associate sites but I think long term what products can I create on my own to eventually replace that affiliate revenue so that I can get a bigger piece of the pie. Maybe that's just a word of advice for today is always be thinking how you can generate more revenue from your existing traffic. One way to do that is to create your own products especially if you are an Amazon affiliate.
As far as a quick personal update, I am still training for a marathon. I still got a little bit of time before I run my target race at the end of April. However, things are going well. Training is going well, I'm feeling good. For all you runners out there, you know what it's like to be in the middle of a training program so a lot of days I put in quite a few miles, trying to eat healthy and do that sort of thing.
I'm hoping that I would be able to hit my goal of qualifying for Boston at the end of April and it would be great to check that off the bucket list and be done with that. I'll provide you an update once the race is closer and once I actually run the race. We'll see how it goes, I just wanted to provide an update to keep myself accountable and to let anybody know that is interested what's going on.
Today, I have a guest interview. Her name is Dee Bryant. She's the owner of thedogeffect.com and we're gonna dive into that website. It's a newer website, only about eight or nine months old. She started the site right around when we started niche site project three. In fact, that is how she started the site. She followed along. She decided that the steps were clear enough for her to follow and so she dove in and built her first site ever which is thedogeffect.com.
She's doing really well, traffic is increasing and she's making couple hundred dollars a month. In fact, she think she'll make $300 by the end of this month and so we dive in to of course what's working but then I have a few tips as well based on the questions that she has for how to take the site to the next level. If you're interested in hearing from an entrepreneur that hasn't quite been extremely successful yet, this interview with Dee would be a great one. I think she's doing a great job but she's still several months down the road from starting to see those bigger pay days. With that, I hope you enjoy the interview.
Hey Dee! Welcome to the Niche Pursuits Podcast.
Dee:Hey Spencer, thank you. Good to be here.
Spencer:Thank you for joining me here all the way from Australia, right?
Dee:Yep that's the one at Wild Western Australia. I'm a bit early out here but it's all good.
Spencer:Thanks for getting up early to do the interview. Hopefully the audience listening will appreciate that. Let's give people a little bit of an idea who you are, your background, either what you do now professionally or what you did previously professionally before building websites.
Dee:I'm still currently working at West. We have a lot of [00:00:46] industry and mining so I've been working in the mining resources for probably the last 15 years. Currently, still doing that, been working away from home. We have a FIFO type role here where we fly away for work for a couple weeks and then come home for a couple of weeks. It's been long days but it's nice to have that time off when we get home. Then, wanting to start building websites to get away from that kind of work really, long days.
Spencer:What type of work specifically are you doing?
Dee:I have been doing all sorts of roles from operations out in the field to a corporate role in the office, that just about killed me, I think. Working 7:00 to 7:00 in the office and having to get up early everyday to go to work. That was more around the health and safety role but I've also been in operations and projects and all sorts of stuff. At the moment, operations is kind of a safety role looking at time, permitting, allowing our work to go ahead and making sure that everyone's safe to go out there and go crazy.
Spencer:Makes sense. Give us a little bit of an idea then where you are at now. Why did you decide to jump into building a niche website? What led you there?
Dee:About a year ago, I was on holidays from the corporate role. We were crazy busy, we had a massive project that we were working on. It was really crazy and I went to Bali for a holiday and I was sitting next to some girl having a cocktail. I said, "I'm just going to run off to my room and answer my emails. We're in the middle of this massive mobilization." She was shaking her head at me. When I got back, she just looked at me and said, "What are you doing? You're on holidays. I've got to introduce you to someone."
Anyway, she did, she introduced me to this girl that was building websites. She had a site for a couple of years and it was doing really well. She kind of introduced me to the building website world. It's something that I had always in my mind wanted to work with flexibility, I wanted to be able to work on my schedule I guess. It's something I've always had in my mind. When I spoke to this girl, it all just fell into place which is really cool and I just started looking into different podcasts and different people with courses of how to do it. I didn't actually know exactly what it meant, what it meant to build websites and niche sites.
There's a few sites I got onto, one was yours, Pat Flynn, etc. I went through all of those then it was when I was looking at yours, I saw the Niche Site Project 3.0 come up and it was being very tactical that could give me the 1,2,3 step by step of how to do it. A lot of them are a little bit in theory rather than exactly what to do. That's what really made sense to me and I started following that project.
Spencer:Yup, that makes sense. That's kind of cool how you discovered niche pursuits. Obviously, there's a lot of great podcasts and people are doing great things but I'm glad you came. I hear you're following along with project three, I appreciate that.
We are going to talk about specifically one of your website that you have. The website we're going to talk about, is that the first website you built or have you done others previously?
Dee:No, that is the first website that I built along with the project. It's actually kind of still primarily my only website, I'm playing around with a few other domains. It is my first and my only at the moment.
Spencer:Why don't you tell people what the website is and why you decided to go with that niche?
Dee:My website is thedogeffect.com, it's about dogs. When I was going through the project, we were was talking about interest and what you thought you could build the project on, what would interest you, what you could write articles about. I chose that niche because I guess for that very reason, I had a dog, he was a little mate where we do a lot of things together and it just makes sense. I started with that, I think there's a lot of diversity. There's a lot different avenues to go. I probably haven't niched it down enough, I'm still quite high level dogs but it is working alright.
Spencer:Well, how good is that working? Can you give an idea of maybe traffic, earnings, or anything you're willing to share there?
Dee:It took a few months before anything happened, as I think is quite normal. It has been progressively going up and up since. I'm probably only still at I think 3,500 visitors a month. Income wise, that probably didn't start until November and it was a couple of might have been $50. That's progressively gone up to about $200 to $300 a month. You know, not a fortune but I think every month it's getting better and better and this month already is my best month, and I still got ten days to go.
Spencer:Traffic you said was about 3,500 per month, so roughly 120 a day.
Dee:Yeah, that's correct.
Spencer:Awesome and you were able to pull in you said about $250 or so last month and this month is looking better so that's good. It's a good sign, it's growing. When did it start? When was your first published article?
Dee:First article would have been, probably that August or July.
Spencer:So it's six or seven months old?
Dee:Yeah, that's right. Six or seven months. That's when I started planning, planned it a year a ago with a project, I was planning it out. It's probably eight months because I was building it with you guys and then once I published it, got it all going, it's been traffic and income and traffic about six to eight months.
Spencer:What do you think the site will end up with this month? What do you expect?
Dee:Probably about $300 and then up from there, hopefully.
Spencer:Yeah, hopefully so. Let's dive into it and see if there's any tips that I can share, I obviously looked at the site but before I just share what I see, do you have any questions? What are you struggling with right now? What questions do you have for me?
Dee:Probably, what I'm struggling with once I get the article up is probably around planning. My planning of the articles and the outreach is not so great. I sort of need a bit of a checklist of when you get your article up, you do this, this and this. Contacting the [00:09:03] that I've used, contacting sites that potentially might be able to use the article, putting on social, a few things like that. I'm sort of putting an article. I'm not very good with the answer and I'm not very good with outreach and things like that. I need to probably just plan that out.
Also, probably just what to do next. Do I grow doing the same thing or am I supposed to be diversifying a bit more? I have thought about getting products or ebooks, I'm halfway through doing both. Do I just keep that niche using content marketing and just keep writing articles, or do I diversify in multiple sites? I'm sort of that stage where I might need something next but I'm not sure what to do.
Spencer:Right and there's so many ideas and options. It feels like you're not quite sure where to put your energy probably. You got 10 different ideas and which one or two do you pursue? I think we've all been there so that's good to share because I'm sure a lot of people listening have felt the same way and do feel the same way. When they're looking at a newer site, they're not quite sure what strategy to pursue.
Let's dive into both of those questions. The first one was essentially should you be doing more with each of your articles that you published? Right, should you be doing more outreach, that sort of thing. Sounds like with your articles, you're doing a pretty good job so you're following the strategy. If you link to anybody within the article, go ahead and reach out to them, give them a heads up, let them know, "Hey, I mentioned you in this article." That might lead to sharing it on social media and that type of thing. Sounds like you're kind of doing that.
Dee:I think I know it but I'm not doing it well. I think I'll just give myself a little checkbox to do that more, I think.
Spencer:That's actually a really great thing, especially to think about even when you're writing your articles. Linking out to people is not a bad thing, so even if you link out, mention five to ten or sometimes even more other people, that gives you ten people that you can reach out to and you say, "Hey, I just wrote a great article and mentioned you. Would you mind sharing it on social media?" Or it might just start a conversation that can lead to you doing a guest post on their site or something like that.
It's a good outreach tool, just say, "Hey, I think you're awesome basically and I mentioned you." Share it on social media like you're saying. The other thing I would say is that not every single article is deserving of a large outreach campaign.
There are some articles that you're gonna write that are just sort of standard, they're targeting specific keywords that could have good content but maybe they're not fantastic content, they're sort of like average content, probably you're not going to be doing a lot of outreach. I don't for my articles.
However, for those really fantastic articles, you should be doing a lot of outreach and you should probably be planning specifically to write these really epic killer posts, fantastic articles, whatever you want to call them. Maybe that's 1 out of every 10 or one out of every 15 articles that you do is an article that's really in depth, or it's this really pillar post that after it's done, you then go out and reach out to lots of people.
Dee:Yes, spend the effort on that.
Spencer:Right,. Some of your articles, like I said, it's only a percentage of them you write specifically for outreach. Maybe it's not even targeting a low competition keyword, maybe it's just a really great idea that seems rally shareable, you write a great post or you do an infographic or you create some sort of resource that is linkable, that is worth to mention to other people and that's how you do the outreach. You reach out to 100 people and point them all towards this one great article you wrote.
Dee:I think that's a good point. I haven't been doing that enough. I was running articles and they've got quite a lot of affiliate links in them. I'm realizing no one wants to see that because that's selling my stuff on their page. I did start writing a couple of articles where I have very few, if any, affiliate links at all for that reason. That's probably what I can expand on those and send them out.
Spencer:Yeah, absolutely. You have to figure out a schedule that's right for you. Maybe it's once a month that you're able to do a more pillar type post, or maybe it's only once every other month. You spend two months doing outreach. It kind of depends on the work that you're able put into that but that is an important thing because not every article that you write is gonna be something that people are going to want to link to but if you can kind of think outside the box or do something unique. Or with pets, there's probably a lot of interesting sort of infographic ideas that you can come up with that other people would be willing to link to, that's something you probably need to fit into your schedule.
Dee:Yeah, that sounds good.
Spencer:I'm not sure if this ties into your 2nd question but since I was mentioning schedule, something that can keep you focused is determine what your schedule is. You're kind of at the point now where you've got a core set of article. I think you said maybe 50 articles or something?
Dee:Yeah, 50 or 60 now.
Spencer:You've got a great core set of articles. Now you just need to figure out what's gonna your ongoing schedule? Is that two articles a week that you can do? Is that one article a week? Figure out whatever you feel like is a workload that you can produce and set that schedule, set that expectation for yourself. Let's say I'm gonna do two keyword focused articles a week and I'm gonna do one really linkable, shareable article every month. Whatever that schedule is for you and try to stick to that. I think by teaming up with a schedule and planning that content, you'll be able to stick to your plan a little bit better.
Dee:Would you just recommend to continue writing so you've got 200 or 500 or 1,000 articles or would you cap it at something and say that that's enough?
Spencer:Boy, that's the golden question. I would keep producing content as long as the site continues to grow and make money, so that could be for years. If you are just able to expand it into a huge site. But on the other hand, if the site plateaus out, you may decide that well, just leave it at that and move on to another project.
Dee:I guess the one thing I'm thinking about with my massive $300 a month, thinking in the future, also thinking about diversifying that Amazon income because it is from just one place and one site. If something goes wrong, then that's all gone. I kind of think, do I still build a couple sites or do I diversify in making it more of an authority site. I've got some sales on there, I've got ebooks, products or something. Do you look at that diversification?
Spencer:Yeah, you know, I do. I think that's important to think about once your site hits a certain level. Maybe it's not even a certain level but once you get to the point where you feel like can take on a new project because it is. I don't mean a new site, but for thedogeffect.com, you might finally decide, okay I've got this content piece figured out. I feel like I have a little bit of time and energy to now develop my own physical product or write my own ebook or whatever that may be.
For this particular site, there are a lot of physical products for dogs that you could come up with or contact manufactures on Alibaba and sell directly through your own site. There's immense opportunity in this niche. Absolutely, I would keep that sort of in the forefront of your mind thinking what's a unique product that I can come up with and sell on my site because that will increase your earnings probably significantly if you can come up with a great product and sell it right on your own site.
Dee:The thing I found interesting with that, looking at what is selling, I have a couple of products. I think that's a really interesting way to think maybe that's a product that you could make as a physical product, that's probably a way to find those as well.
Spencer:Yes, absolutely. That's very smart of you to look at that. That's exactly what I do on some of my sites. It just makes sense because you're referring sales to Amazon and you've got one or two products that are making up the bulk of that. If you were just sending them to your own listing of that product, you go from making 8% percent commission on Amazon, whatever it is, to making probably 75%. That would be a great place to start. If a couple of those top products that you're selling as an affiliate is something that you can go out and produce your own sort of generic version of on Alibaba, that's definitely worth looking at.
Dee:I might.
Spencer:To make it easy, you can still sell it on Amazon. People don't even necessarily know that it's your own product per se, but they're going from TheDogEffect to Amazon and they're still buying TheDogEffect product, they may or may not know that, they just know they're buying through Amazon, that they know and trust, and it's a product they like.
Dee:Yeah, exactly. Good.
Spencer:I don't know if I fully answered your second question, you had two questions. One was sort of using content, or I guess you're saying is there more that you should be doing, you've got lots of ideas. I guess we kind of tackled that, right?
Dee:Yeah, we did and that was answered.
Spencer:Good. Any other questions that you might have? Just sort of takes the site to the next level?
Dee:Nope, not so much of a question but a comment mostly. When I first started following the project and we were really focusing on keyword research, my articles that are doing very well from that period of very good keyword research and I found I kind of went away from them a little bit. One, because I had a few problems with the program, but that's all fixed now. I was trying to diversify my content, not have so much on one product, diversify the articles I guess. I wasn't focusing enough on keyword research.
I found that the articles that I did are ranking really well. I'm gonna go back to that and focus more on keyword research. The other part of that is I think a lot of my low competitions keywords we're quite low volume, I'm still getting traffic, I'm still getting sales, but they're not next level of traffic and sales. I'm gonna go back and do some research, still keep it low but probably not as low, in the 30s but I was focusing in the 20s, about 30 but with a higher volume so I'm getting more people, probably a little bit harder to rank but more volume through. I think that's maybe another way to boost that traffic a little bit.
Spencer:Yeah, I think so. For people listening, obviously we're talking about Long Tail Pro, the keyword competitiveness score, we're talking about 30 or less and that's that case you scored there. I think that's a great idea. Really, the majority of your articles should be keyword focused and certainly keeping them more competition is key. The ideal situation is to find a really low competition keyword that is also high traffic but sometimes it's hard to find that. Sometimes it's easy to find the low competition and low traffic but not the other way around.
Dee:I think it's easy to veer off from that and think I need an article on this, I need an article on that. Really at the end of the day, unless you're doing that research, you're not going to get what you need.
Spencer:Yeah. Absolutely, that's a great reminder. Another good tip or reminder that I did share on the product as a way to find additional keywords rather than just starting at Long Tail Pro and thinking what seed keyword should I type in now? Is using a tool like SEMRush, looking at your competitors and what they're already ranking for in Google? You probably already got a list of lots of your competitors but that's something that you can dive back into, maybe find some additional competitors, see what they're ranking for and trying to cherry pick some of their best keywords that maybe they're getting some good volume and adding your own article, making your articles better than what they produced on their website. You can make them a little bit longer, a little more in depth, that might help Google rank you a little bit better than they are.
Dee:Actually, I haven't probably done that enough, I'll put that back on my list.
Spencer:I would definitely do that. Now that you do have 50 articles or 60 or whatever, you've really got a lot of internal linking opportunities. If you have not been doing a good job, I didn't go through the site to really make a determination but if you haven't been doing a good job of linking to your previous articles within your own site, it might be worth going back and trying to do some of that interlinking to try and give your pages more link juice, for lack of a better term.
Let's say tomorrow you go out and you find a keyword that's still low competition but a little bit more competitive and you feel like it needs some links, you can go back to half a dozen or a dozen articles that are on your own website and update them to include a link to your brand new article. That's gonna provide a nice little bump or notification to Goggle, "Hey, this article might be important." Internal links do help. Now that you've got 50 or 60 pages, you can start doing a little bit more interlinking with your articles. That's something to be thinking about.
Dee:I do that but not enough probably. I don't go back enough so that's another reminder to put that on my checklist as well.
Spencer:Unfortunately, there can be a lot of things on the checklist, right? That can help. Like I said, in particular if you're targeting something that's maybe a little more competitive, you might want to dive deep into your articles and see what makes sense to link to that new article.
We've kind of talked about content, I think you're doing the right things. Targeting keyword focused articles, but then thinking about every month or so doing a really in depth sort of linkable asset that can produce a lot of links for you, that can be important. There can be cool ideas. If you want to start thinking outside the box, you can certainly do something that is almost purely created to generate links.
For example, the other day I saw an article, anything that ties sort of one popular topic with a separate popular topic can be interesting. What do I mean by that? There was an article written about SuperMario Brothers, the old video game, and they tried to estimate how many miles he ran, Mario runs in the game if you complete the whole game, right? It's just a really sort of dumb thing but all of a sudden what it did is it tied video games to runners. With that one article, this website was able to reach out to everybody in the video game space and everybody in the runner space. Tons of people linked to it because it is just a funny little infographic, it takes an angle you never though about before.
If you can do that with dogs somehow, I don't know what that is, but if you can tie a market that's outside of dogs so you can reach to these people that are in the video games space or whatever to link to your dog site, it's a great way to get fresh links.
Dee:Actually, it's interesting. I did one early on because I take my dog stand-up padde boarding. I found it a little bit hard at the time to reach out to other dog sites because I was thinking like, "Is this competition?" I linked out to external sites, some paddle boarding sites. I wrote a guest part on paddle boarding with your dog and that worked really, really well. That might be something for me to do again. I wrote another one recently, we have mountain biking with your dog. Maybe now I can outreach to a mountain biking fraternity. I think it works really well. It's easies for me to talk and outreach to a different niche than my own, I don't know why.one of a kind.
Spencer:A lot of times it can be because if you're reaching out to other dog sites, a lot of times you can feel that they're your competitor, right? Maybe you feel like why would they even respond to me? If you're reaching out to mountain bikers or somebody else that has nothing to do with pets, they'll be like sure, that's cool, I can link to this guy, he's not competition at all. That's a good reminder, even for me, to be honest I don't always do this as well as I should so that's one of the things I know that I should. If you're thinking about linkable assets, that's a great avenue to go with, think about what other markets could I target to get those thresh links?
Dee:I think that's probably the stage I'm at. I'm at that stage where I need to tie them together. I'm doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We just need to tie them together and move forward on what we're getting at.
Spencer:Yes, try not to let it be overwhelming. Obviously, set a schedule. Like I said, maybe once a month, try to think of a certain unique angle like that. Once you've written the article, you spend the entire month doing that outreach and you don't have to worry about your next one until next month.
Dee:Yeah, that's a good plan. Just do it and then concentrate on the outreach. I think that's what I need to do.
Spencer:Yup, absolutely. I think that will help hopefully move the sites to the next level and that really is what it comes down to. Once you've targeted the keywords, really the only thing that left outside of the on page optimization is the link building.
The last note that I have on here was monetization which we actually did talk about a little bit. I haven't looked at all of your articles but I can see you're doing essentially product reviews and you're linking to those products via Amazon affiliate, are you doing any product comparison charts?
Dee:No, I'm not. Actually, no.
Spencer:There are a couple of articles I had looked at, it didn't look like you were. I've seen that those can improve your conversion rate. That might be something you want to consider maybe on future articles, maybe try putting in some comparison charts that just makes it very easy for people to see the Top 5 or 10 products in whatever category you're reviewing in that article. That can really help, that's something that I do on all of my sites and I've seen it work very well.
Dee:I'll look at that, that's good.
Spencer:Do you have any additional questions for me? I mean honestly, when I look at the site, you're doing a lot of things really well. You've got the site laid out I think in a user friendly way. You're building an email subscriber list, you forgot the side bars sort of opt-in form, you've got a pop up that comes up. You're doing a lot of things that are right and for a site that is only maybe nine months old, you're doing well and you're on a great trajectory. I would just continue to encourage you to do what you're doing and implement some of the things that we've talked about. I think the future would be good for the site. Any additional questions or thoughts before we sort of wrap up?
Dee:No, it's actually been great. Probably the nine months that have been on my mind lately is the planning and direction a little bit, what to do with the site, we covered that. Really just taking those points that you mentioned and putting them into a bit of a checklist so that consistency of outreach, consistency of publishing and that consistency of what to do with those articles when they're published, that's probably been my latest hurdle. I think you covered that pretty well.
If anyone that is doing this, I think for me it's a great way to start. It's following that project, doing it step by step and probably the biggest thing, I can see why a lot of people try this and don't continue because it's not easy, it's not quick, it's not five mins. You really need to continue and just do it even if you don't see a lot happening and in the beginning you don't see a lot of growth, you don't see any income but it does happen, six months in or four months in. Suddenly, you start seeing people coming. To everyone that wants to give it a try, I really think you just need to stick to it because it does work.
Spencer:Great tips, sort of motivation there. I agree. Especially when you're just starting out, it does, it takes several months before you see any traffic and earnings of note. It is important to stick with it, have some patience and hopefully the money will start to roll in after that.
Like I said, you sort of hit the inflection point of the curve now. You're starting to make more and more money every month. $300 like you said, it's not like you can retire but it is something tangible, right? $300 is $300 and I think that's gonna keep growing. I think you've done great, Dee, and I think the future is good. I would love it if everyone once in a while I can just check back in with you to see how the site is doing and you can keep us up to date in the future months. Sound good?
Dee:Yeah, for sure, I'd like that. That would be really good to keep me on track as well, but thank you. I'm happy with the site and I will continue to build that and hopefully I get some more income. My plan is one day to not be working while I do this so there's motivation there to continue.
Spencer:Absolutely, we'd love it if you got there.
Dee:Me too.
Spencer:It is great to work on your own schedule and not have a boss so I hope that you can get there. I hope a lot of people listening can get there too. That really is the whole point of doing the podcast, doing the blog post, not just to hear myself talk. I really do hope that people can take the advice, implement it. It is real earnings. It takes time like you said but it really is a small business that you're running that you can run from anywhere. A lot of people have been able to work full time at it. Having said all that Dee, once again thank you for being on the podcast and thank you everybody for listening.
Date Published 2019-09-24 12:02
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Spencer, do you still have over 200 websites? if not why not? I searched your site and can't find out what happen since you made a new LLC to get back on with adsense.
No, I had 200ish websites back in 2011 or so, that was a LONG time ago in internet years. For the past several years, I've focused on fewer, but larger sites. Google panda and penguin (from several years ago) wiped out lots of those 200.
So I just came up with some ideas for her on how she can improve the site and make more money.
In your articles do not put links in the title and add the model # to the title. Replace the "Check out the price here:" with a Buy/Shop Button. I use MaxButtons pro if you are using WordPress.
Best cars for dog owners (article)
Ten best dog t-shirts (create 10 designs, upload to a POD site and link them out to your shirts)
Make sure to use actual people or mock ups of people wearing the shirts.
Bandana's custom printed or made for dogs (Maybe POD site again?) (Funny sayings, I eat my own Poop, I like to sniff my butt, etc etc)
More content for each product review/update
Google Plus page for links/brand
Integrate YouTube videos into your blog posts
Those are just some ideas so feel free to use what you like and wish you the best of luck!
Oh ya forgot, email opt-in on your site. You need to start collecting some email addresses.
Wow, you've done so well in such little time. Congrats and hope you're income really starts to grow now.
I just wanted to ask how much traffic did Facebook, Pinterest, etc bring to the site and how do think these converted into buyers?
OMG!! I started the exact same website during niche site project 3. I'm not going to put the name here but it's all about dogs. Same articles, topics and everything as The Dog Effect. My site is making around $800 a month. I have been slacking on it lately and it doesn't have as many articles as The Dog Effect but, yep, it's like a duplicate of Dee's website (obviously, a different logo, WP theme and name). I have articles on the best dog beds, the best dog crates, top 10 dog toys for small dogs, why dogs bark, how to stop dogs from barking, why dogs chase their tails, do dogs dream, how to entertain a bored dog, etc. Anyways, I haven't listened to the podcast yet but I will. I also need help growing my dog website.
nganga mutura
The lady seriously challenged me. I started my site at the same time and haven't done that much. I need to work and stop joking.
David Tran
I am really enjoying these recent podcasts where you interview entrepreneurs who are closer to the beginning of their journeys. It is great to hear about hugely successful people but I believe there is great value in seeing the humble beginnings as well.
These episodes have provided numerous advice that I can go and apply to my own sites. More importantly, they serve as great inspiration in showing that our goals are definitely attainable with hard work.
On a side note, I have only recently begun listening to your podcast but I am fully caught up now. Thank you so much for the hard work and dedication you put into each episode. I am looking forward to learning from your and guests in future episodes!
Thanks for the comment, David! Great to hear that you are getting so much value out of the podcasts! I'll keep looking for these kinds of more "beginner" entrepreneurs. I enjoy doing them as well.


I hope that you enjoyed the summer. I look forward to working with the HCCO over the next year, as we work together to address issues important to the residents of Hunt Club.
Crews were on site last week to resurface a portion of Hunt Club Road from Prince of Wales Drive to Paul Anka Drive. Construction on the resurfacing of Uplands Drive from Hunt Club Road to south of Breadner Boulevard is almost complete. Construction is scheduled to be completed by the end of September.
Council approved the Zoning By-law Amendment Proposal for 300 Hunt Club Road, located on the southeast corner of the intersection with Riverside Drive, at its meeting on September 2, 2009. The purpose of the application was to add "medical facility" as a permitted use on the property.
On Friday, September 11, 2009, staff confirmed that the expansion of the Hunt Club/Riverside Community Center is progressing on schedule, with occupancy of the expansion area by December 2009.
On Tuesday, June 23, 2009,1 hosted the first Open House for the Environmental Assessment for a pathway connection between the Hunt Club community and the South Keys Transit station. I was pleased to see such a great turnout and we received a great deal of positive feedback about the project. City staff and the consulting company are now gathering preliminary data and have undertaken a needs assessment and a detailed review of alternatives.
I will host another Public Meeting once the results and comments are compiled.
The results of the Hunt Club Road In-Service Safety Review are scheduled to be presented at the October 7, 2009 Transportation Committee meeting. The staff report will be available to the public 10 days before this meeting.
On June 26, 2009,1 attended the funding announcement for the $1.8-million renewal and expansion of the Rideau Canoe Club (RCC). After working hard for many months with RCC volunteers, City of Ottawa staff and federal and provincial government representatives, I am thrilled the Rideau Canoe Club will see this much-needed facelift. The joint federal, provincial and municipal funding was announced under the Recreational Infrastructure Canada program in Ontario (RInC Ontario) and Recreation Ontario (Ontario REC).
The RCC is recognized as one of Canada's best training centres for paddle sports and this expansion will attract even more national and international paddling events to our beautiful city. Through this expansion, the RCC will also become the first fully-accessible canoe/kayak club in Canada. The RCC was built on a foundation of volunteers and I would like to extend my sincere congratulations and thanks to all RCC members for their tremendous work in making this expansion a reality.
As Chair of the City's Transportation Committee, I would like to invite residents of all ages to participate in the City's 4th annual Fall Cleaning the Capital Campaign between Tuesday, September 15 and Thursday, October 15, 2009.
Fall Cleaning the Capital is a great opportunity for high school students to get a head start on their Community Involvement Program volunteer hours, and for families, friends, schools, neighbourhood groups or organizations and businesses to band together on a community cleanup project to help keep Ottawa clean, green, graffiti-free and litter-free.
I officially launched the fourth annual Fall Cleaning the Capital Campaign today at the Old Town Hall on March Road. Ward 4 (Kanata North) was recognized for having the highest participation rates in the City for the spring and fall campaigns in 2008 and the spring 2009 campaign where more than 14 percent of residents took part in cleaning, greening, litter pickup and graffiti-removal projects.
This fall let's put River Ward on the map! For more information and to register, visit ottawa.ca/clean or call 3-1 -1.
As Chair of the Transportation Committee, on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 I was pleased to unveil some of the current "green" technologies that are part of the municipal fleet as well as potential acquisitions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the City become a leading-edge municipality in the area of environmentally responsible management. Hybrid vehicles and other technologies that reduce pollution are key components of the City's new Municipal Green Fleet Plan.
The City's original reduction target for green house gas was 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2007, which was met corporately in 2004. In September 2009 the Environmental Sustainability Branch will present a revised corporate target, which will commit the City to an emissions reduction of 30 per cent by 2012 based on 1990 levels. The transportation sector is a major emitter of air pollutants, producing nearly three quarters of carbon monoxide emissions, more than half of nitrogen oxide emissions and more than one-quarter of the volatile organic compounds affecting air quality. The Green Municipal Fleet Plan specifically targets the transportation activities of the City and aims to reduce the City's footprint in this major green house gas emission sector.
Ottawa firefighters from all 27 urban fire stations will be starting a month-long, door-to-door campaign on September 5 to ensure residents have working smoke alarms.
People have a greater chance of surviving a home fire if they are protected with working smoke alarms on each level of their dwelling and have a practiced home escape plan. While firefighters are visiting door-to-door, they will also answer any fire safety questions. Since 2005, The Wake Up, Get a Working Smoke Alarm program has visited 65,132 homes and this months Ottawa Fire Services will add 10,000 homes to that total.
Children under the age of 10 are particularly vulnerable to fire. By having working smoke alarms and teaching children proper safety behaviours, we can help to increase their chances of surviving a fire.
Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009 Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Residents are reminded that only household waste will be accepted (maximum 100 litres) at the depot. No commercial waste accepted. For a complete listing of acceptable household hazardous waste, visit the City's website at ottawa.ca/hhw.


text:
Auction Catalogs (1)
History (Dynastic) (1)
Any Price (15)	 Under $100 (15)
Additional Subjects (9)	 China (4)	 India (1)	 Japan (1)
Jain Cosmology
Caillat, Collette & Kumar, Ravi
Art Media Resources, Inc. 10.5 x 12", 196 pp., color frontispiece, 108 color plates, bibliography, index of names and words, list of plates, cloth, d.j., Chicago, 2004. Cosmology is one of the subjects that are dealt with already in the old Jaina treatises composed in Middle Indian languages. Transmitted by... More about Jain Cosmology
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拍卖年鉴: 骨董 2018: 2017.1.1 - 2017.12.31 Chinese Arts Auction Records: 2018 Antiques 1/1/17 - 12/31/17
华艺文化
Chinese Arts Auction Records
Chinese Art Auction Records, 2018. 6.75 x 9.25", approx. 500 pp., more than 500 color illustrations, text in English and Chinese, paper, Taipei, 2018. This volume compiles year 2017 auction results from auction houses around the world, including Christie's (worldwide), Sotheby's (worldwide), China Guardian, Bonhams & Butterfield, among others. Divided... More about 拍卖年鉴: 骨董 2018: 2017.1.1 - 2017.12.31
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A Short History of the French Revolution
E.D. Bradby
Endeavour. When picturing the infamous French Revolution most of us think of the guillotine, the mass execution, the terror. E.D. Bradby shows us the other side to the rebellion: the grand ideas. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Bradby's portrayal of figures like Robespierre, who had come to be viewed as a butcher..... More about A Short History of the French Revolution
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Isabella Alston
Bellagio Press, 2014. Eugène Delacroix was highly influential in the 19th century Romanticism art movement and is considered by many art historians to be the most important of the Romantic painters. Delacroix is often attributed with refining Romanticism, not only aesthetically but philosophically, as his work influenced not only art..... More about Delacroix
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Mourning Glory: The Will of the French Revolution (Critical Authors and Issues)
Marie-Hélène Huet
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Mourning Glory sheds light on troubled times as it shows how passion and prejudice, grief and denial all contributed to the continuing creation of a revolutionary legacy that still affects our understanding of the nature of language and history.	More about Mourning Glory: The Will of the French Revolution (Critical Authors and Issues
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Japanese Prints During the Allied Occupation 1945-1952: Onchi Koshiro, Ernst Hacker and the First Thursday Society
Smith, Lawrence
Art Media Resources, Inc. Hardcover. 9 x 11", 128 pp., 40 color and 75 b/w illustrations, cloth, d.j., Chicago, 2002. In 1945 much of urban Japan lay in ruins, the land occupied by foreign powers for the first time in the country's history. To many Japanese it seemed that everything... More about Japanese Prints During the Allied Occupation 1945-1952: Onchi Koshiro, Ernst Hacker and the First...
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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
University of California Press, 2009. Second Edition. Dictée is the best-known work of the versatile and important Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. A classic work of autobiography that transcends the self, Dictée is the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter..... More about Dictée
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The Sympathizer
Grove Press. The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as seven other awards, The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a.... More about The Sympathizer
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中国绘画中的"女性空间" Feminine Space in Chinese Painting
Wu Hung
Art Media Resources, Inc., 2019. Essays in Chinese on feminine space. According to Wu Hung, feminine space denotes an actual or imaginary space, which is perceived and represented as a woman. A feminine space is a spatial entity — an artificial world comprised of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, color... More about 中国绘画中的"女性空间"
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On Chinese Art: Cases and Concepts (Volume 1: Methodological Reflections)
Art Media Resources, Inc., 2016. Cloth. About this Series Consisting of three volumes, On Chinese Art features 56 essays (presented as chapters) written by the art historian Wu Hung after he moved to the United States in the 1980s. Selected by the author himself, these essays have been organized in... More about On Chinese Art: Cases and Concepts (Volume 1: Methodological Reflections
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On Chinese Art: Cases and Concepts Vol.II Prehistoric to Han
2018. About this Series: Consisting of three volumes, On Chinese Art features 56 essays (presented as chapters) written by the art historian Wu Hung after he moved to the United States in the 1980s. Selected by the author himself, these essays have been organized in a format that emphasizes... More about On Chinese Art: Cases and Concepts Vol.II Prehistoric to Han
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An Invisible Flower
Chronicle Books. Yoko Ono created An Invisible Flower when she was just nineteen years old, at the very start of her artistic career. Recently rediscovered in her archive by her son, Sean Lennon, who also provides a foreword, this jewel of a book tells the heartwarming story of the invisible... More about An Invisible Flower
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China's Dragon Robes
Art Media Resources, Inc. Softcover. 6 x 9", reprint of the 1952 edition, frontispiece, 230 pp., 20 b/w plates, paper, Chicago, 2001. This is a long-awaited reprint of the major work first published in 1952. China's Dragon Robes is a scholarly survey of the dragon-patterned robes worn by nobles and... More about China's Dragon Robes
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Coromandel Lacquer Screens
De Kesel, Wilfred & Dhont, Greet
Privately Printed. 11.6 x 11.6", 107 pp.,83 color illustrations, notes, bibliography, hardcover, Brussels, 2002. Coromandel is an area of the east coast of India between the Godava River and Nagapatnam. Contrary to what its name implies, Coromandel lacquer does not come from this region but from China. Although almost all... More about Coromandel Lacquer Screens
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The Mystique of Opium
Wigal, Donald
Parkstone Press Ltd. 6 x 9", 95 pp., fully illustrated in color, index, references, illustrated boards, d.j., Ho Chi Minh City, 2004. Opium was as important to world trade and politics as petrol is today. The Opium Wars forced China to give trading rights to Western companies, allowing opium to... More about The Mystique of Opium
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About 1.6 million people with felony convictions in Florida just got the vote back, thanks to the passage of Constitutional Amendment 4. Those convicted of murder and sexually-related offenses are excluded, but the rest will see their rights restored after completing their prison sentence.
Of all the efforts to combat voter suppression and gerrymandering appearing on statewide ballots this year, Florida's Amendment 4 has perhaps received the most attention. That's because the initiative would automatically restore voting rights for an estimated 1.6 million people. Nationwide, 6.1 million people have lost their right to vote due to a prior felony conviction — including 1 out of 13 would-be Black voters, according to the Sentencing Project.
Florida accounts for roughly 25 percent of those who have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions. Rules in Florida and 11 other states make it extremely difficult to get voting rights restored, even after serving a sentence and probation or parole. If approved, Amendment 4 would automatically restore voting rights for people with prior felony convictions upon completion of their sentences, except those convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense.
A significant victory for social justice that strikes a blow against the molecular-level racism of the penal system. More voters is always a good thing. Always.


With a proportional or flat tax, each individual or household pays a fixed rate. For example, low-income taxpayers would pay 10 percent, middle-income taxpayers would pay 10 percent, and high-income taxpayers would pay 10 percent. The sales tax is an example of a proportional tax because all consumers, regardless of income, pay the same fixed rate.
Although individuals are taxed at the same rate, flat taxes can be considered regressive because a larger portion of income is taken from those with lower incomes. For example, a 6% sales tax on a $1,000 computer ($60) would take a greater portion of a $10,000 income than of a $50,000 income.
Activity 1: Proportional Taxes and You Find out how income is affected in a proportional tax system.
Activity 2: Comparing State and Local Retail Sales Taxes Learn more about state and local sales tax.
Complete the assessment page to check your understanding of Proportional Taxes.
What do all income levels have in common in a proportional tax?
One of the world's oldest tax systems was proportional. In the days of the Old Testament, a "tithe" or tenth of a person's income was collected for religious purposes. The custom of tithing was continued by the Christian church and was the main funding for the many splendid cathedrals that were built in Europe.
Test your tax trivia knowledge by answering the following multiple-choice question. Click on the correct answer. To assess your answer, click the Check My Answers button.
Which of the following statements about tithes in medieval Europe do you think are true?
A. The tithe could be paid in money or its equivalent in crops or livestock.
B. The tithe was used to maintain the clergy and keep churches in repair.
C. The tithe was used to help the needy.


Forecasters are predicting another round of high winds this morning – with gusts of up to 50mph threatening havoc for drivers.
It's set to be a blustery morning across East Anglia, as high winds continue to batter the coastline and sweep inland.
While yesterday's strong gusts died down a little overnight, experts are warning we could see speeds of up to 50mph on the coast and 40mph inland this morning – posing a fresh risk to those hoping to cross the Orwell Bridge.
Yesterday, when speeds were expected to peak at 55mph, the Highways Agency said the situation regarding the bridge was "borderline" – and it was keeping a close eye on Storm Erik.
And while the agency has not issued a formal update this morning, forecaster Chris Bell, from Weatherquest, said the wind speeds were probably "getting back to the top of their limits".
"The problem with the bridge is it is elevated, so it is not receiving the same wind speeds as you get down on the ground," he said.
"If it is not closed at the moment, the winds probably aren't going to get a lot stronger.
"Obviously if it picks up a few miles per hour, there is a threshold there.
He said the winds were "the same sort of area as they were for a time yesterday" – which would imply the risk is similar.
However Mr Bell stressed that he would not be the decision maker in that case, and it is up to the Highways team to determine if the bridge is safe to stay open.
Looking ahead, Mr Bell said the winds are likely to start dying down around lunchtime, and things are looking a lot calmer as the weekend goes on.
A yellow weather warning for wind remains in place for north Suffolk – with forecasters warning of "potential traffic disruption".