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A rich and lively student-teacher interaction is at the heart of SPJIMR's success. Our faculty members are known to be great teachers, who can bring alive the subject, encourage critical thinking and offer a wider, holistic perspective that is critical in today's complex business environment.
Our faculty members are drawn from academia, industry, government sector and non-profits. Collectively, they bring in a wide range of experience in building and delivering knowledge and skills to prepare participants for leadership roles.
The teaching-learning process at SPJIMR is vastly enriched by a series of non-classroom initiatives through which our faculty help build among participants the right attitudes to enable them lead with purpose, meaning and with an idea of service to society.
We have more than 53 full time faculty members, of which 36 are PhDs. The average experience of the core faculty is over 18 years, with several who have come to academics after years of experience as practitioners. In addition, we have around 20 adjunct faculty and several more visiting faculty who engage with participants of various courses.
R. Jayaraman
R. Sesha Iyer
Raghu Iyer
Rajiv Agarwal
Rakhi Thakur
Ranjan Banerjee
Ranjit Kumar Pattnaik
Ratika Gore
Renuka Kamath
Rukaiya Joshi
Ruppal W Sharma
Prof. Ratika Gore
Dy Chairperson: Industry Integration
Head of Career Development Programme
Head - Alumni Relations.
ratika.gore@spjimr.org
Ratika Gore has over 20+ years of diverse global experience in education and running businesses in USA, Europe, Philippines, Singapore and India. Currently a core faculty and Deputy Chairperson for Industry Integration, she is also a consultant, a certified coach, a doctoral scholar, and an erstwhile business owner, apart from being an MBA. She has real-life experiences and insights from working in different cultures, which she brings into her sessions. Along with her certifications and her passion for teaching, it creates a unique and compelling combination for her participants and clients. As a faculty, she teaches four courses, which include Critical Thinking, Design Thinking, Business Communication and Content Marketing. These courses are across various programmes, some of which are the 2-years programme, the executive programme and an industry-partnered online programme. A Femina Super Achiever Award winner, she has also presented her thoughts as a panel member in industry events and is on advisory committee for a few organizations, including an NGO. In her professional life she has successfully re-invented herself twice and firmly believes that passion, belief and compassion can take one far in the path towards success. She enjoys long road trips with her 2 teenaged children and her husband who she met on the MBA campus.


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Daniel Flynn
Thankyou Founder and Managing Director
Driven, resourceful and determined, Daniel Flynn is one of Australia's most successful entrepreneurs under the age of 30. He is the founder and managing director of the social enterprise Thankyou, which has given more than $5.5 million to help end global poverty. Thankyou's 50 products are stocked by major retailers in Australia and 100 per cent of profits go to funding water, sanitation, food and child and maternal health projects around the world. In nine short years, Thankyou has directly impacted the lives of 755, 338 people in 20 countries, including Australia. Daniel is also the author of best-selling book Chapter One – a book that tells the raw and real start-up story of Thankyou and is sold using an unorthodox 'pay-what-you-want' method. In a challenging publishing landscape, the book defied all odds by generating over $1.4 million in sales and selling over 55,000 copies in its launch month.
Daniel is the recipient of EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Southern Region) and Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs.
His big picture thinking is behind Thankyou's disruptive marketing campaigns that have led to Thankyou products being stocked by Australia's biggest retailers. Daniel has also received widespread media coverage for his unconventional approach to business and marketing. Daniel is an engaging and thought-provoking speaker who leaves his audience challenged to take on the impossible. His talks offer a blueprint for challenging the status quo and how to turn ideas into reality.
Hear Daniel speak at The Commonwealth – Business Advantages and Opportunities on 4 April at Commonwealth House.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


About 40 percent of adults said that if faced with a $400 unexpected expense, they would either not be able to pay it or would do so by selling something or borrowing money. This number has improved over time, mirroring the country's economic expansion over the five years the Fed has been tracking the data.
Individuals of all education levels, races, and ethnicities have shared in the economic expansion over the past five years.
Most workers are satisfied with the wages and benefits from their current job and are optimistic about their future job opportunities.
75 percent of adults have something saved for retirement. And preparedness for retirement increases with age.
But there are nuances – in either the Fed's data or in data or insights I've collected through my work with the Center for the New Middle Class – that paint a more holistic picture.
Though it's great to see improvement in how many can cover a $400 expense, is that even the right number to track? In market research sessions, many individuals share why they became non-prime, and why they need immediate influxes of cash. Common issues include car repair costs and hospital bills. While $400 may cover a minor car repair, AAA dataindicates that the average auto repair bill is between $500 and $600.
The Fed study also found that one in four people skipped medical treatment for financial reasons. That $400 metric may cover a few diagnostic tests and the copay at the hospital, but a 2013 National Institute of Health study put the median emergency room visit cost at $1,233. Our CNMC research finds that for those with credit scores below 700, a bill becomes a crisis at $1,400. For those with good credit, that bar rises to $2,900.
Economic improvement among all socioeconomic groups is great, though the Fed itself clarifies that reported well-being is lower for racial and ethnic minorities and those who've attained less education. The CNMC's study of African Americans' financial wellness mirrored these results, and in fact found that even when African Americans had prime credit scores – or scores of 700 or above – their financial wellness resembles the broader non-prime community.
Though most workers report being satisfied with their wages and, and optimistic about their future job prospects, challenges including irregular job scheduling remain. According to the Fed, one in six workers have irregular work schedules that they did not request, and one in ten receive their work schedule less than a week in advance. As the Fed notes, the gig economy is growing unabated, which can be a positive thing in that it means more opportunity. But it also means more fragility, since these jobs offer fewer benefits and less consistent work. Per CNMC research, half of non-prime Americans have an income that fluctuates month to month. This can make budgeting, planning and long-term saving far more difficult.
Lastly, though it's great that three out of four adults have started saving for retirement, the Fed adds that 40% of those savers don't feel they are on track. When we broke down CNMC data by age demographics, we found that Baby Boomers, those nearing retirement, were the most stable generational group. However, 7 in 10 non-prime Boomers report running out of money at least once in a year. If that data point feels irrelevant because it's limited to non-prime individuals, consider this: 66% of Americans fall into that non-prime category, with credit scores below 700 or no credit score at all.
And speaking of generational trends, the Fed report found that 25% of young adults receive financial support from someone outside their home. Our CNMC data further found that millennials are more likely than other generational groups to experience unexpected car repairs or non-routine medical expenses. And 41% of them report that they run out of money every other month, or more often.
So, it's the best of times, and I am super pleased that we are at a 5-year low of people who say they are "finding it difficult to get by." But these numbers don't necessarily show the fragility of the economy, nor the stories of the individuals – and especially those who are non-prime – hidden in these numbers. On a positive side, people continue to do better, that much we can be pleased with.


A man says three armed men took his backpack and cash on Monday on Munjoy Hill.
Portland police are investigating a report of a noontime armed robbery Monday near 116 Mountfort St. in the city's Munjoy Hill neighborhood.
A man in his 20s told police he was robbed of his backpack, containing personal items, and cash by three black men armed with handguns.
One suspect is described as 6 feet 3 inches, in his 20s, wearing dark clothes and with long dreadlocks and a black fitted baseball cap. The second man is 5 feet 9 inches and wore black clothing. The third man is described as wearing black clothing. The robbers all wore bandanas over their faces.
They ran off toward the southeast.


Crown Prince of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum wore a Special Olympics bracelet while attending the 49th World Economic Forum to express his support for the Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019.
HH Sheikh Hamdan is the head of the UAE delegation taking part in this year's World Economic Forum being held from 22-25 January in Davos, Switzerland.
The Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019 will be held in March under the patronage of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum Professor Klaus Schwab; Minister of Cabinet Affairs and The Future HE Mohammad Abdulla Al Gergawi; and Minister of Community Development HE Hessa bint Eisa BuHumaid also wore the red bracelet to express their support for the international event that is set to attract 7,500 participants and 3,000 coaches representing 192 countries.


We begin our outdoor education programme with incursions during Prep and Year 1. As they move into Year 2, students have the chance to participate in their first on-campus sleepover, taking their first steps towards independence, building confidence and deepening classroom friendships.
In Years 3 and 4 our students participate in one and two-night trips to the Alpine Ash resort cabins in Toolangi National Park. These are opportunities to take on new challenges including navigating through the bush, setting up tents, lighting a fire with twigs and leaves and preparing a billy meal. Along with boosting their confidence in approaching new experiences, these camps further develop students' independence, resilience and ability to communicate with others.
In Years 5 and 6, Grimwade House students participate in longer stays at the School's Robert Knox Camp near Woodend including, in Year 6, a five-day trip that offers snorkelling, surfing, canoeing, camping and bushwalking.
Year 6 students travel to the Nation's capital, Canberra, to gain an understanding of how our government works.
Students also participate in a Great City Adventure excursion to explore Melbourne and improve their capacity for undertaking urban travel in a safe manner.
These end-of-primary excursions are opportunities to strengthen relationships with peers and teachers and to refine abilities to negotiate, make decisions, work as part of a team and take on leadership roles.


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ILO in Pakistan
Labour market governance and working conditions
Workers and Employers Organizations
Decent work in Pakistan
Library / information centre
The ILO Country Office for Pakistan publishes a wide range of books, reports and working papers relevant to Pakistan. Some of these can be downloaded directly. Others can be requested in hard copy from the ILO Library in Islamabad.
Search in: Publications
Pakistan employment trends 2007
Reviews the labour market in Pakistan during the period 1999-2000 to 2005-2006, using best practice in statistical analysis and presentation, including an explanation of all classifications and definitions used.
Reaching behind closed doors: A survey of legal and policy responses to child domestic labour in South Asia together with recommendations for reform
This paper frames the international standard of protection in the context of child domestic labour and reviews by comparison the extent of legal and policy measures relating to this sector across South Asia.
Guidelines for creating a work environment free from discrimination and harassment
Women face a number of challenges in accessing work in general and the environment is often unsupportive. This guideline provides information on measures that can be applied to reduce disciminatory practices.
Migrant workers and human rights: Out-migration from South Asia
This publication is in line with ILO mandate in support of migrant workers. The studies covering five countries in South Asia - Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were undertaken from August to November 2003. It presents an overview of out-migration from South Asia and is intended to be utilized as background material for the General Discussion on Migrant Workers at June 2004 Session of the International Labour Conference.
INDIA: A Decade of ILO-India Partnerships: Towards a Future without Child Labour- (1992: 2002)
A publication highlighting the joint efforts of the ILO and its constituents to combat child labour in India.
Update Sialkot - Issue 3
Combating child labour - IPEC in Pakistan
This brochure reflects upon IPEC Pakistan's past, present and future efforts towards elimination of child labour in Pakistan.
Flyer on Combating Child Labour in Pakistan
A part of the IPEC Pakistan information kit.
Combating child labour in Pakistan - 1997
Combating Child Labour IPEC Action Programmes 1996
IPEC Newsletter - 1995
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by area of work
Equality and discrimination (52) Child labour (18) Employment promotion (16) Labour migration (13) Labour market governance and working conditions (9) International Labour Standards (9) Social security (8) Labour administration and inspection (4) Tripartism and social dialogue (4)
Working conditions (3) Green jobs (3) Skills, knowledge and employability (2) Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining (2) Youth employment (1) Domestic workers (1) Workers´ Organizations (1) Informal economy (1)
by region/country
Pakistan (157) Asia (28) India (14) Sri Lanka (10) Nepal (10) Bangladesh (10) United Arab Emirates (6) Global (5) Viet Nam (4)
Indonesia (4) Thailand (4) Saudi Arabia (4) Cambodia (4) Qatar (3) Kuwait (3) Myanmar (3) Bhutan (2) Afghanistan (2) Malaysia (2) Maldives (2) Philippines (2) Singapore (1) China (1) Madagascar (1) Brunei Darussalam (1) Korea, Republic of (1) Lao People's Democratic Republic (1) Timor-Leste, Dem. Rep. of (1) Guatemala (1) Fiji (1) Japan (1) Mongolia (1) Mexico (1)


All too often, we look to coffee as that hot drink that wakes us up in the morning, and gets us through the afternoon. Few stop to think about where it comes from.
I still remember the first time I walked into a Starbucks and saw their diagram about how the coffee bean begins as half of the seed of a coffee cherry, before it's harvested and roasted. I couldn't get my head around it. At the time, all ll I knew is that you could either buy it in dark brown beans, or pre-ground.
The first step to truly understanding coffee is understanding where it comes from.
Take five minutes to read about the people behind the coffee.
Check out the new Coffee Sustainability page. It is a work in progress, and meant as a quick overview of two things. First, the problem today with poverty in coffee-growing countries. And second, the solutions that are in place and what little things you can do to make a difference.
As a coffee drinker, you'll have an even greater appreciation of it after you learn about the people who make it possible for us. Check out the new Coffee Sustainability page.


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Archive for the 'Banking' Category
Service of Cashless Restaurants
Photo: time.com
A recent Facebook conversation I followed was about coins. The writer said coins drove him nuts and suggested they should be canned. Most of the respondents disagreed for reasons ranging from saved coins helped pay for vacations to fondness for them. I pay for less and less with cash but am nevertheless on the side of saving coins if only for nostalgic reasons.
As I use my credit card a lot I'm fine with paying for food or anything else with mine. But plenty of folks are paid in cash or don't have one for whatever reason. They also might not own a smartphone to access digital payment via Apple Pay for example.
Photo: infobarrel
Ritchie J. Torres, a New York City Council Member, says "the [cashless] business model is classist and racist," according to Chris Fuhrmeister on eater.com. Torres said he sees the trend "as a way to gentrify the marketplace."
Some 22 million Americans don't have a bank account Furhmeister reported. An early adopter whose restaurant is now closed told him that if customers didn't even have a debit card they most likely didn't have a bank account and shouldn't expect to eat in his [now defunct] restaurant.
Photo: shakeshack.com
Celebrity restaurateur Danny Meyer gave up the model in his Shake Shack burger chain because of customer complaints according to Fuhrmeister. His pricey Union Square Hospitality Group restaurants such as Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern remain cash-free.
The impact goes beyond the poor. Furhmeister wrote: "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter and critic, and former Eater NY editor, Melissa McCart made a salient point in her report on the topic earlier this year: '[I]n an era when an increasing number of restaurants no longer accept legal tender, it's useful to think about who this system benefits most: the businesses and banks, at the expense of consumers.' Do businesses and banks really need more power? It's a question more local governments may want to consider."
Photo: freecreditreport.com
There are other issues to consider, good and bad. A cashless retail business won't be robbed. Also, many people pay the restaurant bill by credit card and leave tips in cash so that the right person gets the money. Would this continue or would the restaurant owner continue to control the tips? [Meyer, mentioned above, runs tipless restaurants as well.] The government must love the concept as there's no revenue to hide from the tax man.
Do you pay for things mostly in cash, credit card or digitally? Do you like coins? Would you miss cash if it no longer existed? Do you agree with McCart that big time beneficiaries of the credit card/debit card only model are businesses and banks–Uncle Sam too–with consumers the losers? Will the cashless trend spread to other retail industries if it's not stopped? Should the cashless retail model be outlawed?
Photo: freepik.com
Service of Cart Before the Horse: Corporations Collaborate When Foolproof Locks on Internet Security Don't Exist
Photo: edgarstewart.com
Thank goodness all giant corporations aren't leaping into bed together to share respective expertise and information although some are inching in that direction and others are raring to go. It won't be long.
But first a digression: In arriving at the topic for this post I counted seven fuzzy attributions in one newspaper article. Isn't that a lot? Laced throughout a recent front page article in The Wall Street Journal I read: "According to people familiar with the conversations; the people said; a person familiar with the discussions said; some of the people said; said people familiar with the matter; some of the people said and people familiar with the matter said."
Photo: clckinmoms.com
Nevertheless I believe the topic is valid and am troubled by its implications. The title and subtitle: "Facebook to Banks: Give Us Your Data, We'll Give You Our Users. Facebook has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about customers as it seeks to boost user engagement data."
Reporters Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and AnnaMaria Andriotis wrote that Facebook had spoken with people at JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and U.S. Bancorp "to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger." Facebook Messenger is a messaging app and platform.
What did "people say" about the conversations? "Facebook has talked about a feature that would show its users their checking-account balances, the people said. It has also pitched fraud alerts." In addition, "Facebook asked banks for information about where their users are shopping with their debit and credit cards outside of purchases they make using Facebook Messenger." Messenger has 1.3 billion active monthly users according to the reporters.
Photo: pinterest.com
Timing could be better for this outreach. The reporters reminded readers about current investigations in which Cambridge Analytica accessed data on some 87 million Facebook users without user OK. "'We don't use purchase data from banks or credit-card companies for ads,' [Facebook] spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana said. 'We also don't have special relationships, partnerships or contracts with banks or credit-card companies to use their customers' purchase data for ads.'"
Banks are tempted by the digital reach and doing business with online platforms with healthy and growing businesses. Even though Facebook has introduced what it says are safety features, "Bank executives are worried about the breadth of information being sought, even if it means their bank might not being available on certain platforms their customers use."
While PayPal and Square have beaten banks to the punch in the world of mobile commerce many customers continue to be comfortable with traditional ways of paying such as credit and debit cards, cash and checks.
Photo: timeanddate.com
Some deals between big players are already struck though I question their purpose: American Express members can reach a rep through Facebook. [Why would you need to do that?] Paypal users can send money through Facebook Messenger and Mastercard's Masterpass digital wallet lets customers place online orders with some merchants.
Before all these mergers of communications, customers and data happen, shouldn't there first be a firm grasp on digital customer privacy? Why are we becoming so lazy: Is it so onerous to check a balance on your bank's website that you need Facebook do it for you? Can you believe that AmEx members can't reach out to a company rep but instead need Facebook to do it for them? These "benefits" appear to potentially favor everyone but the consumer—do you agree? Do you pay for things via mobile wallet, credit or debit cards, cash or checks? And last, does an article with more than a few generic attributions disturb you?
Photo: canyourelate.org
Service of Pushing the Envelope: What Does it Take for a Bank to Get the Message?
Photo: whats-thesayinganswers.com
Parents expect their kids to test them daily but is it natural for a bank, caught red-handed in one scandal, to again test a federal regulator with another cheat just a year later? I'm referring to Wells Fargo, once a stalwart bank with stellar reputation and the third largest in the US.
Last year staff, to gain bonuses, created as many as 3.5 million accounts, some fictitious, others without customer approval. In addition to the chink in its standing, this cost the bank a $35 million penalty, restitution to some customers and a freeze on executive golden parachutes. Plus the chairman was forced to resign.
What now? "A federal regulator has advised Wells Fargo & Co.'s board of directors that it is weighing a formal enforcement action against the bank over improprieties in its auto-insurance and mortgage operations," according to Gretchen Morgenson and Emily Glazer in their Wall Street Journal article, "Wells Fargo Gets New Warning." The regulator is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [OCC].
Photo: dialforloan.com
The reporters wrote: "This summer, the bank conceded in a news release that for years it had forced nearly 600,000 customers who financed their car purchases with Wells Fargo to pay for collision coverage they didn't need. The bank said about 20,000 customers had their cars wrongly repossessed. Those customers failed to pay the improper insurance charges."
Photo: fhmtg.com
In addition they reported: "The bank has also said it charged some customers improper fees to extend the interest-rate commitments they received from Wells Fargo on their mortgage applications. In October the bank said it is reaching out to around 110,000 customers who paid a total of $98 million in such fees, and expects refunds to be lower than that total because, the bank said, it 'believes a substantial number of those fees were appropriately charged under its policy.'"
The OCC "gave the bank credit for identifying the irregularities in its insurance operations but characterized Wells Fargo's management of compliance risk as 'weak.' The report also said the bank had underestimated the amount of restitution it owed to wronged customers."
Does today's business atmosphere, inspired by Washington, give signals to businesses to push the envelope and hope for the best? Recent indicators include loosening of climate regulations, and the appointment by the president of Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when Mulvaney doesn't believe in restrictions. Do the small fries in this country feel sufficiently threatened yet? Why would a bank allow its reputation to take such a beating?
Photo: cardtrak.com
Service of Keeping a Lid on Grievances: Cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Consumer Complaint Database
Monday, July 31st, 2017
Photo: funusualsuspects.com
You may want to take a quick look at the Consumer Complaint Database maintained by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB] before it joins rolled-back EPA regulations and watchdogs that once protected American consumers that are severely relaxed or gone. The goals are the same: Make it easier and cheaper to conduct [big] business, in this case, for banks.
You'd read on the website: "Each week we send thousands of consumers' complaints about financial products and services to companies for response. Those complaints are published here after the company responds or after 15 days, whichever comes first. By adding their voice, consumers help improve the financial marketplace."
Photo: consumerfinance.gov
Copy on the home page continues: "By submitting a complaint, consumers can be heard by financial companies, get help with their own issues, and help others avoid similar ones. Every complaint provides insight into problems that people are experiencing, helping us identify inappropriate practices and allowing us to stop them before they become major issues. The result: better outcomes for consumers, and a better financial marketplace for everyone."
Yuka Hayashi addressed the issue in her Wall Street Journal article, "Battle Is On Over Government's Version of Yelp for Banks -White House says government complaint database is unfair to banks, but consumers say it can spur action."
Photo: techsgig.com
She wrote, "Responding to calls from industry groups, the Treasury Department in June recommended restricting access to the data to federal and state regulators." She reported that since it was founded in 2011, consumers have filed 800,000 complaints the public can see, 1.2 million in all.
"The dispute highlights areas of friction as the Trump administration and other Republicans consider rolling back rules put in place after the financial crisis," she wrote. "Those pushing for loosened rules say removing onerous and costly requirements would encourage more lending and economic growth. Opponents say such changes would bring back reckless behavior that caused the financial crisis."
Photo: salon.com
A St. Paul social worker asked his student loan company to lower his monthly payments and after four to five tries, the temporary solution increased his monthly bill Hayashi reported. Two days after he posted a complaint on the CFPB complaint database, they sent him "several repayment options." The social worker credits the CFPB.
Hayashi wrote that the Treasury Department felt the site "subjects companies to unwarranted reputational risk." However, she continued, "Consumer advocates and some financial-services experts… say that the portal's public nature is what gives it teeth.
What do banks think? "The bureau has failed to address the significant problems in the accuracy, integrity and usefulness of the information reported in the database," Virginia O'Neill, senior vice president at the Center for Regulatory Compliance at the American Bankers Association told Hayashi.
Did you know you could post complaints about dealings gone south with a financial institution? Have you had a nasty banking issue? Do you believe that the complaints on the Consumer Complaint Database should be hidden from the public or allowed to be seen, as they have been for six years?
Addendum: In The Wall Street Journal's August 7th issue, Andrew Ackerman wrote "A Republican-backed effort to overturn a rule making it easier for consumers to sue banks has hit a snag: the Senate.
"At issue is a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule approved in July barring fine-print requirements that consumers use arbitration to resolve disputes over financial services. The rule makes it easier for consumers to join class-action lawsuits against banks and credit-card companies. Though fiercely fought by the financial industry, it is set to go into effect in March."
In addition: " However, support in the Senate is uncertain. No Democrats are likely to back the effort, and Republicans, with their slim majority, can't afford to lose more than two GOP votes. Several Republican senators have expressed reservations about voting to overturn the regulation, worried they may be portrayed as siding with banks and against consumers."
This is something so easily lost among all the distractions for consumers to keep an eye out for.
Photo: survivalkit.com
Service of Unexpected Outcomes: Shout-out to Chase Bank & Morton Williams & a Dud
Thursday, June 2nd, 2016
There's a surprise associated with an unexpected outcome, mostly happy, but not always.
I am grateful when a grocery store cashier gives me the discount when I buy only one in a promotion offering a fantastic price if I buy two. It happened when I bought a giant Tropicana OJ at Morton Williams this week. I didn't want, nor could I use, two. Her decision put me in a good mood and the store on my "I'll be back" list.
I put a stop-payment on a check when I learned that a hefty May payment never arrived. The USPS let me down. I went nuts. When I arrived at Chase Bank in Pleasant Valley, N.Y. the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, I was rattled. I saw my stellar credit rating going up in smoke.
Stacia Zimmerman, bank manager, greeted me pleasantly and was sympathetic. She made a copy of the new check and late notice for my records and gave me an extra copy of the stop-payment confirmation to include with the check. She even gave me an envelope so I could go immediately to the nearby post office to zip the replacement check by Priority Mail! To my astonishment, she waived the $30 stop payment fee as well.
I also noticed that Ms. Zimmerman called almost every person who entered the bank by name. She merged a charming, small town feeling with the benefits of a very big bank.
Dining Disaster
Then there was the dinner that we'd happily anticipated at a restaurant we'd visited for brunch and lunch, marveling at the food and cheery service. When we arrived the place looked fairly full but not jammed, however there were only two waitresses in view. We were seated promptly by a pleasant server—the older of the two–and then ignored. We waited and waited. Eventually, after perhaps half an hour, the other waitress took our order. Then we waited again.
An hour after we had arrived, having asked three times for two glasses of white wine, only one arrived half full in a diminutive Champagne glass and the second, 10 minutes later. Meanwhile, staff was handing out beer and wine to those waiting for a table.
Did I mention that the AC wasn't on and it was 80+ degrees outside? People tend to eat–and order more–when not roasting.
Our main course and one of two appetizers arrived together half an hour after the wine. They tasted fine, but still. We never saw the bread; no spoon came to capture the sauce in one dish. We'd given up by then.
The course we didn't get remained on the check. My husband had to send it back a second time so the tax reflected the reduced total. He's a generous man, but he was irritated.
At the next table when food arrived for a graduate and five celebrants, there was nothing for one in that party. She slapped her head in exasperation. Once they'd eaten the grandmother said, "The food was good but the management severely lacking."
What had happened? The restaurant didn't realize that it was graduation weekend for a local college, [a waitress admitted], and wasn't prepared. By not turning away the unexpected customers to handle only the number they could manage, they ruined the evening for everyone.
Can you share unexpected outcomes, both good and bad? What else might the restaurant have done to salvage its disaster?
Service of Last to Know
There's a child passenger safety commercial featuring competitive parents in a playground who repeatedly say, "I know that," after a string of kid-related factoids such as "did you know that friendly kids have more friends?" or "did you know that boys who play with dolls make better husbands?" The last mother to speak asks: "did you know that parents think that they are using the right car seat for their kids but they are not?" This the assembled men and women didn't know.
There are times that I think I've discovered something that it turns out everyone else already knows. Here are three instances:
I recently heard about funeral homes that play a tape of the deceased talking to those assembled at the funeral. The tape was [obviously] made before the grim reaper arrived. The practice was new to me.
I pay for groceries by credit card. I'd changed handbags and realized, at the grocery checkout, that I had none with me. On the belt was a large pile of groceries I'd selected so I paid by check–which I haven't done in decades. The cashier handed me back my check, marked void all over it, with my receipt. Printed on the receipt was: "When you provide a check as payment, you authorize us to use information from your check to process a one-time Electronic Funds Transaction {EFT} or draft drawn from your account, or process the payment as a check transaction. You also authorize us to process credit adjustments, if applicable……." This instant paperwork and getting back the check from the cashier was all new to me!
I watched Beau Biden's funeral on C-SPAN and was impressed when Rev. Leo J. O'Donovan, who gave the homily and officiated, [photo, right], told the assembly that they are all invited to approach the alter during communion. The emeritus president of Georgetown University advised those unable to receive communion [because they are not Catholic or didn't want to partake], to cross their arms over their chests so that they would instead receive a blessing. Seems this welcome practice has been going on, especially at weddings and funerals, for 20 years. My friends knew about it. I've been to Catholic funerals and ceremonies in two decades yet it was new to me.
Small fireworks are now legal in New York State. I saw them for sale on Sunday at the A&P. The brother of a college boyfriend had blown off three fingers in a fireworks accident in high school so beyond sparklers, while I love watching them, going near them makes me nervous.
I sometimes ask myself, "Where have you been?" Do you? Have you recently "discovered" something everyone else already knows about?
Service of Finance: Seven of 11 Wall Street Journal Business Features in One Day Address Cheating
Thursday, August 1st, 2013
Yesterday morning NY metro area talk show host John Gambling directed the audience's attention to The Wall Street Journal's "Money & Investing" pages. His distress was over the sheer number of articles about banks given paltry penalties for cheating and stealing—and no punishment for the executives.
Not counting coverage in the "Heard on the Street" or "The Property Report" subsections, I counted 11 major articles, of which seven were about bank or hedge fund crime.
To a bank a fine becomes a cost of doing business noted Gambling on WOR 710 Radio. He added that it's passed on to investors while executives sit securely in their chairs. "There's no culpability for individuals who dip into shareholder's pocketbooks," said his guest, author William D. Cohan, whose most recent best-selling book was "Money & Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World," [Doubleday, 2011]. Cohan underscored the "Symbiotic codependency between Washington and Wall Street."
In case you missed and wanted to read them here are five of the 11 headlines:
"Banks Sued Anew on Swaps Trading" by Katie Burne
"J.P. Morgan Settles Electricity-Market Case Bank to Pay $410 Million Over Allegations of Manipulating Prices" by Ryan Tracy and Dan Fitzpatrick
"Ex-Analyst Is Charged for Tipping Off SAC" by Michael Rothfeld and Jenny Strasburg
"UBS to Pay Fine Over Mortgage-Bond Deal UBS Has Agreed to Pay Less Than $60 Million to Settle SEC Allegations" by Jean Eaglesham
"Senate Panel Opens Probe of Banks' Commodities Businesses Information Requested From J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley" by Christian Berthelsen, Jamila Trindle and Dan Fitzpatrick
If you were whisking through the Journal on a tablet or smartphone I wonder whether you'd miss the quantity and impact of all these stories that become vividly evident on the print pages. Gambling, whose stand is pro-business, said he didn't know what to do to stop this cheating other than to shed a spotlight on it. I'm glad he did. Do you have any suggestions? Is it worse than before or more of the same?
Service of Do-it-Yourself Service
Here's one more notch in the belt of "if you want service, this is what you must do yourself."
Credit on Hold
My husband's credit card account was closed. He found out when he tried to charge some meds and food and the charges didn't go through in either store. To find out what was going on, he called the credit card provider.
Had he thought to look at his account online before leaving the apartment, he would have seen that there was a notice that the bank had closed it. So we don't have to learn the news at the cash register, perhaps we should add checking online to the morning routine, after we brush our teeth or before we check that we have our keys.
He learned that a travel agency in the UK tried to charge something to his card which the credit card company determined to be suspicious. American Express telephones–at least it did when I had a similar problem.
Servers that Don't
Meanwhile I was given the bum's rush by my email host. I spent three weeks in email hell, unable to send any at times for no reason. People sending emails to me received bouncebacks and we couldn't figure out why.
After doing everything possible to solve the problems and several calls to the company I spoke with one honest fellow late one night who told me "We've been working on the server for the last week," and "the problem is beyond our systems." He admitted they didn't know how to fix it yet, wanted me to know the real story so I didn't blame my high speed connection, my computer, anything or anyone else–all of which I had. I asked when he thought it would be repaired and he said "24 to 48 hours."
Two days later I called again and spoke with the first obnoxious person I'd confronted at this company in the many years it had been my vendor. I kept asking him if they'd repaired the server and he'd respond with "I need to see a copy of the original bouncedbacked email." I would say, "I sent you the bounceback notification. How can I send you the original that I never got? Please answer my question: 'Are your servers up and running'?"
I gave up and now have a new email host.
In addition to lost time, frustration and goodness knows how many emails I never received because they were bounced back and the senders didn't let me know [it's not their job], I also spent a tidy sum on the wonderful IT person who was trying to figure out what was what on my end.
So why didn't this vendor inform its millions of customers? I fished around online for clues and there were none. This is a company that communicates like crazy when it wants to. I get emails almost daily about what other services I should buy from them yet not a peep about email server issues. They have the money: They ran a [extremely distasteful] commercial during the Super Bowl.
I anticipate problems when a company spends more money on marketing than on its product. For years these people were terrific–they had the balance right.
Do you have examples of do-it-yourself service or businesses that spend more on marketing than on their product or service?
Service of What's the Question?
With $67 billion of student loans in default it appears that some of the borrowers aren't asking the right questions. Janet Lorin wrote: "Almost two-thirds of U.S. student-loan borrowers misunderstood or were surprised by aspects of their loans or the student-loan process, a study shows."
She continued, in "Student Borrowers Lack Understanding of Loan Terms," on Bloomberg.com: "About 20 percent of the respondents in an online survey said the amount of their monthly payments was unexpected, according to the study released today by Young Invicibles, a nonprofit group in Washington that represents the interests of 18-to-34 year-olds. The respondents had an average of $76,000 in student debt."
In addition, borrowers probably didn't calculate what their potential salary might be in their chosen field, what the job opportunities are and what the added value would be to attend a private school with its $60,000/year tuition, room and board–taking Georgetown as an example–vs. a state or community college where they can live with relatives. Undergraduate tuition at the City University of New York is $5,130.
How do you Feel?
Meanwhile, the Justices of the Supreme Court are looking at the legality of Obamacare. What they are considering is if there are limits to Congressional intervention in people's lives. Talk show pundits refer to this question as "Can Congress make you eat your broccoli?" Wonder what the answer will be.
I heard an articulate spokesperson make her case about tanning beds in a radio interview. She wanted the legislation in her state to follow California where it's against the law for teens under 18 to use them. Emma Jones on Limelife.com reported on these findings by the Skin Cancer Foundation: "…indoor tanners are 74 percent more likely to develop melanoma than those who have never tanned indoors. What's more, across the US each year, 2.3 million of tanning bed users are teens."
Jones also reported: "California had previously banned minors under the age of 14 from using tanning beds, but allowed those between 14 and 18 years of age to use tanning beds with parental consent. Texas has also banned the use of tanning beds for children under 16, but California's new bill has made them the first state to set a higher age limit."
When the MC asked this spokesperson: "How many tanning bed businesses are there in the US and how big a business is it?" she had no clue. Within a minute of hanging up, his producer had the answers. The takeaway: When you are a spokesperson, think of the obvious questions you'll be asked about the topic you're covering and keep the answers at hand. It's so easy to do these days!
How Taxing
On his radio show about money, Ric Edelman was trying to make losers feel better about the outcome of the Mega Millions lottery. He told the audience about a winner of $10 million who divided her winnings: 49 percent for herself, 51 percent for her mother and siblings.
She lost a court case in which she fought the tax man, ending up paying 90 percent of her winnings to gift taxes.
Before picking up her winnings, she should have asked a whole bunch of questions. She'd have learned that the maximum amount of money she can gift someone without paying a gift tax is $13 thousand a year. She'd have been better off to have picked up the winnings with family members as a group. Ric was being funny when he said she should have hired an accountant and lawyer even before buying the winning ticket.
Have you landed in a spot because you didn't ask the right question or weren't prepared with the answers?
Service of Let Bygones be Bygones
In a discussion about the Wall Street protestors during a radio interview Friday morning, Mayor Bloomberg said, [I am translating what I remember and think I heard, this is not a direct quote], that for the economy to get back on track we should stop looking for blame and quit looking backwards to the cause of the economic downturn and no longer distract these bankers and other corporate types: Let them get back to work.
I disagree with the Mayor. Maybe it's because I've been burned as have countless others. Call me a sore looser.
I fully believe in forgiveness, hard as it might be to achieve, and bad as my track record is. This is business, not friendship. It doesn't set well with me that having weaseled millions out of millions the heads of banks and corporations should sit on their yachts and in their mansions without so much as a knuckle tap to warn others who plan to follow their lead.
Call me Pollyanna, but at the least, they should propose sets of restrictions on themselves. Other industries do it because they don't want the government telling them what to do. Smart. Guess these folks feel safe, with elections coming up next year. Who dares bother them right now?
And why would we want to leave in charge of the fix the same folks who helped get us where we are with their "Let them eat cake" mentalities? Should we let them get more bonuses, personally profiting twice from flimflammery?
I think we make a bigger fuss over sports figures who break records by taking steroids.
Is forgiveness the issue here? Should we let Wall Street bankers go about their business as usual, make no restrictions that might help avoid our falling into similar pits now and in future, and take none of them to task?


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La 5.ª edición de la Winston-Salem Cycling Classic Women se celebró el 28 de mayo de 2018 sobre un recorrido de 109,4 km con inicio y fin en la ciudad de Winston-Salem en el estado de Carolina del Norte en Estados Unidos.

La carrera hizo parte del Calendario UCI Femenino 2018 como competencia de categoría 1.1 y fue ganada por la ciclista estadounidense Lily Williams del equipo Hagens Berman-Supermint. El podio lo completaron la ciclista cubana Arlenis Sierra del equipo Astana y la ciclista colombiana Diana Peñuela del equipo Unitedhealthcare.

Equipos
Tomaron parte en la carrera 21 equipos, de los cuales 6 fueron equipos femeninos de categoría profesional y 16 de categoría amateur. Los equipos participantes fueron:

Clasificaciones finales
Las clasificaciones finalizaron de la siguiente forma:

Clasificación general

UCI World Ranking Femenino
La Winston-Salem Cycling Classic Women otorga puntos para el UCI World Ranking Femenino, el cual incluye las carreras del UCI WorldTour Femenino y del Calendario UCI Femenino. Las siguientes tablas muestran el baremo de puntuación y las 10 corredoras que obtuvieron más puntos:

Véase también
 Winston-Salem Cycling Classic 2018

Referencias

Enlaces externos
 Sitio Oficial

Winston-Salem Cycling Classic
Calendario UCI femenino 2018
Ciclismo en Estados Unidos en 2018

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Category Archives: Books of the Month
by Christina @ The Bookshelf Corner	Leave a comment
[January 2022] Book of the Month: Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston
It's the first Book of the Month post of 2022! I chose Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston. I chose this first of a series because it was an incredible fantasy story with a likable and relatable main characters, a bunch of supernatural beings, and unique world building. I was so captivated by this story. It was one of my top top favorite reads of 2021. I can't wait to read what is sure to be a thrilling sequel, Amari and the Great Game.
Image via Goodreads
Author: B.B. Alston
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Recommended?: Yes
ABOUT: Quinton Peters was the golden boy of the Rosewood low-income housing projects, receiving full scholarship offers to two different Ivy League schools. When he mysteriously goes missing, his little sister, 13-year-old Amari Peters, can't understand why it's not a bigger deal. Why isn't his story all over the news? And why do the police automatically assume he was into something illegal?
Then Amari discovers a ticking briefcase in her brother's old closet. A briefcase meant for her eyes only. There was far more to Quinton, it seems, than she ever knew. He's left her a nomination for a summer tryout at the secretive Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. Amari is certain the answer to finding out what happened to him lies somewhere inside, if only she can get her head around the idea of mermaids, dwarves, yetis and magicians all being real things, something she has to instantly confront when she is given a weredragon as a roommate.
Amari must compete against some of the nation's wealthiest kids—who've known about the supernatural world their whole lives and are able to easily answer questions like which two Great Beasts reside in the Atlantic Ocean and how old is Merlin? Just getting around the Bureau is a lesson alone for Amari with signs like 'Department of Hidden Places this way, or is it?' If that all wasn't enough, every Bureau trainee has a talent enhanced to supernatural levels to help them do their jobs – but Amari is given an illegal ability. As if she needed something else to make her stand out.
With an evil magician threatening the whole supernatural world, and her own classmates thinking she is an enemy, Amari has never felt more alone. But if she doesn't pass the three tryouts, she may never find out what happened to Quinton.
AS ALWAYS, HAPPY READING!!!
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Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: Amari and the Night Brothers, B. B. Alston, book of the month, fantasy, January 2022, middle grade books, supernatural creatures, Supernatural Investigations | Permalink.
[December 2021] Book of the Month: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
For my final Book of the Month of 2021, I'm spotlighting Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. Perhaps an odd choice for this time of year, but let me tell you, this book shocked me to the core in the most amazing of ways. It may be a book about death and thereafter but it is so much more than that. Funny, tumultuous, heartbreaking, and loving. I was crying by the end, it was so good! It easily became one of my top favorite reads of 2021. So I'm recommending this amazing book today, tomorrow, and forevermore.
Image via NetGalley
Title: Under the Whispering Door
Author: TJ Klune
Genre: LGBTQIA+ Romance, Contemporary Fantasy
Publisher: Tor
NetGalley Summary: When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.
And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he's definitely dead.
But even in death he's not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: book of the month, contemporary fantasy, December 2021, LGBTQIAP+ romance, TJ Klune, Under the Whispering Door | Permalink.
[November 2021] Book of the Month: The Right Side of Reckless by Whitney D. Grandison
For November's Book of the Month, I wanted to choose a book that resonated with me. I chose The Right Side of Reckless by Whitney D. Grandison for its realness and the complexity of its characters. I really loved Regan and Guillermo's characters and how throughout the story they prove they are more than what others perceive them to be. It's a genuine and amazing story that's all heart. Without a doubt a must read story.
Title: The Right Side of Reckless
Author: Whitney D. Grandison
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance, #OwnVoices
Publisher: Inkyard Press
NetGalley Summary: They were supposed to ignore each other and respect that fine line between them…
Guillermo Lozano is getting a fresh start. New town, new school, and no more reckless behavior. He's done his time, and now he needs to right his wrongs. But when his work at the local community center throws him into the path of the one girl who is off-limits, friendship sparks…and maybe more.
Regan London needs a fresh perspective. The pressure to stay in her "perfect" relationship and be the good girl all the time has worn her down. But when the walls start to cave in and she finds unexpected understanding from the boy her parents warned about, she can't ignore her feelings anymore.
The disapproval is instant. Being together might just get Guillermo sent away. But when it comes to the heart, sometimes you have to break the rules and be a little bit reckless…
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: #OwnVoices, book of the month, November 2021, The Right Side of Reckless, Whitney D. Grandison, young adult contemporary romance | Permalink.
[October 2021] Book of the Month: A Pack of Blood and Lies by Olivia Wildenstein
For October's Book of the Month, I'm spotlighting the first book of a captivating paranormal romance series called A Pack of Blood and Lies by Olivia Wildenstein.
I think this was the first book of the author's I read and it was off the charts good. Ness is a remarkable main character you'll be excited to root for. I loved this story a lot and the events that follows in the subsequent books were thrilling. Also, they are werewolves, which is always my cup of paranormal/supernatural tea. There's mature content, so I'd recommend this to upper YA ages and older.
This also started out as a trilogy but the author is adding onto the series. I haven't read book 4 yet, which came out earlier this year, but hopefully before the end of 2021.
The entirety of The Boulder Wolves series is available on kindle unlimited.
Title: A Pack of Blood and Lies
Series: The Boulder Wolves #1
Author: Olivia Wildenstein
Publisher: Twig Publishing
Goodreads Summary: The primal rule of winning: don't fall in love with the contender.
Three months shy of her eighteenth birthday, Ness is forced to return to Colorado. Even though it's been six years, and the wolves of her all-male pack don't recognize her, she recognizes them. People who shun others because of their gender are hard to forget.
Especially Liam Kolane—son of Heath, the crudest and cruelest Alpha to have ruled the Boulder Pack. Liam is as handsome as he is infuriating, as kind as he is punishing, and he makes Ness's traitorous heart race, which isn't good. After all, he's a Kolane. Like father like son, right?
When Heath dies, Liam vies to become the new Alpha and no one dares to challenge him.
Except Ness.
Thus begins a treacherous game.
The rules: winner takes all…including loser's life.
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: book of the month, October 2021, Olivia Wildenstein, paranormal romance, The Boulder Wolves, werewolves | Permalink.
by Christina @ The Bookshelf Corner	3 Comments
[September 2021] Book of the Month: The Queen's Rising by Rebecca Ross
For September's Book of the Month, I chose to spotlight The Queen's Rising by Rebecca Ross because it's an incredible duology but also it kind of fits the back to school vibes I'm feeling right now. I highly recommend this story!
Title: The Queen's Rising
Series: The Queen's Rising #1
Author: Rebecca Ross
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Publisher: HarperTeen
Goodreads Summary: When her seventeenth summer solstice arrives, Brienna desires only two things: to master her passion and to be chosen by a patron.
Growing up in the southern kingdom of Valenia at the renowned Magnalia House should have prepared her. While some are born with a talent for one of the five passions—art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge—Brienna struggled to find hers until she chose knowledge. However, despite all her preparations, Brienna's greatest fear comes true: she is left without a patron.
Months later, her life takes an unexpected turn when a disgraced lord offers her patronage. Suspicious of his intent, she reluctantly accepts. But there is much more to his story, for there is a dangerous plot to overthrow the king of Maevana—the rival kingdom of Valenia—and restore the rightful queen, and her magic, to the northern throne. And others are involved, some closer to Brienna than she realizes.
With war brewing, Brienna must choose whose side she will remain loyal to—passion or blood. Because a queen is destined to rise and lead the battle to reclaim the crown. Who will be that queen?
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: book of the month, Rebecca Ross, September 2021, young adult books, young adult fantasy | Permalink.
[August 2021] Book of the Month: Set Fire to the Gods by Sara Raasch & Kristen Simmons
Title: Set Fire to the Gods
Series: Set Fire to the Gods #1
Authors: Sara Raasch & Kristen Simmons
Goodreads Summary: Ash is descended from a long line of gladiators, and she knows the brutal nature of war firsthand. But after her mother dies in an arena, she vows to avenge her by overthrowing her fire god, whose temper has stripped her country of its resources.
Madoc grew up fighting on the streets to pay his family's taxes. But he hides a dangerous secret: he doesn't have the earth god's powers like his opponents. His elemental gift is something else—something that hasn't been seen in centuries.
When an attempted revenge plot goes dangerously wrong, Ash inadvertently throws the fire and earth gods into a conflict that can only be settled by deadly, lavish gladiator games. The fights put Madoc in Ash's path, and she realizes that his powers are the weapon her rebellion needs—but Madoc won't jeopardize his family, regardless of how intrigued he is by the beautiful warrior.
But when the gods force Madoc's hand, he and Ash uncover an ancient war that will threaten more than one immortal—it will unravel the world.
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: August 2021, book of the month, Kristen Simmons, Sara Raasch, Set Fire to the Gods, young adult fantasy | Permalink.
[July 2021] Book of the Month: Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
Title: Poison Study
Series: Study #1
Author: Maria V. Snyder
Publisher: Mira
Goodreads Summary: Choose: A quick death… or slow poison…
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: book of the month, July 2021, Maria V. Snyder, young adult books, young adult fantasy | Permalink.
[May 2021] Book of the Month: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Title: Turtles All the Way Down
Author: John Green
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Mental Health
Goodreads Summary: It all begins with a fugitive billionaire and the promise of a cash reward. Turtles All the Way Down is about lifelong friendship, the intimacy of an unexpected reunion, Star Wars fan fiction, and tuatara. But at its heart is Aza Holmes, a young woman navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
In his long-awaited return, John Green shares Aza's story with shattering, unflinching clarity.
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: anxiety disorders, book of the month, John Green, May 2021, mental health, Mental Health Awareness, young adult contemporary | Permalink.
[April 2021] Book of the Month: Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Title: Graceling
Series: Graceling Realm #1
Author: Kristin Cashore
Publisher: Graphia
Goodreads Summary: Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she's a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king's thug.
She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po.
She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.
With elegant, evocative prose and a cast of unforgettable characters, debut author Kristin Cashore creates a mesmerizing world, a death-defying adventure, and a heart-racing romance that will consume you, hold you captive, and leave you wanting more.
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: April 2021, book of the month, Graceling, Kristin Cashore, young adult fantasy | Permalink.
[March 2021] Book of the Month: The Unteachables by Gordon Korman
Title: The Unteachables
Author: Gordon Korman
Genre: Middle Grade
Goodreads Summary: The Unteachables are a notorious class of misfits, delinquents, and academic train wrecks. Like Aldo, with anger management issues; Parker, who can't read; Kiana, who doesn't even belong in the class—or any class; and Elaine (rhymes with pain). The Unteachables have been removed from the student body and isolated in room 117.
Their teacher is Mr. Zachary Kermit, the most burned-out teacher in all of Greenwich. He was once a rising star, but his career was shattered by a cheating scandal that still haunts him. After years of phoning it in, he is finally one year away from early retirement. But the superintendent has his own plans to torpedo that idea—and it involves assigning Mr. Kermit to the Unteachables.
The Unteachables never thought they'd find a teacher who had a worse attitude than they did. And Mr. Kermit never thought he would actually care about teaching again. Over the course of a school year, though, room 117 will experience mayhem, destruction—and maybe even a shot at redemption.
Categories: Books of the Month | Tags: book of the month, Gordon Korman, March 2021, middle grade books | Permalink.


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Perfect size as a gift or travel companion.


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Futures of Digital Studies 2010
full name / name of organization:
Digital Assembly - University of Florida
digitala@grove.ufl.edu
5th Annual Digital Assembly Conference
University of Florida, February 25-27
http://www.english.ufl.edu/fds/home.html
As a disciplinary field still in search of its own institutional role and its specific methodologies, new media studies cannot but proceed by means of constantly updating its scholarly agenda. Rather than being concerned with issues of reconnection, however, this process seems to be characterized by a tendency to (re)articulate the field in a series of "refreshes" of its cultural page.
As Wendy Chun has observed, the term "new media", unlike its predecessor "multi-media," is not accommodating: it proposes that prior media are "old" or even "dead". Similarly, in addressing the consequences of the media shift from the "mechanical" to the "electronic" to the "digital" of the last decades, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker claim for digital studies a new style of thought appropriate to an unprecedented complexity of critical practice. Such complexity is seen as "the essence" of digital technology and, as a consequence, as a specific feature of critical digital studies.
In response to the institutional need to frame such complexity, most anthologies conceive of their content as the nth collective scholarly effort to grasp at least a temporary snapshot of the ever-moving field. Characterized by a stroboscopic nomenclature (media, multimedia, new media, hypermedia, digital media, intermedia, transmedia, emerging media studies--with some scholars rejecting both the "digital" and "media" by identifying themselves with "cyberstudies"), this self-modifying academic field has taken repeated turns by defining the foundational issue at stake in each particular moment.
The conference will focus on the dialogue between forms of digital literacy connected with recent technological developments in networked and programmable media in relation to human expression and forms of representation. We seek to put in conversation digital artists and digital critics in order to examine the "state of the art" of digitally mediated practices and to envision possible futures for the current overlapping platforms, software, formats, hardware and artistic processes through which we experience digital culture. The two-day conference's thematic focus on the 'literary' in the digital age is integrated with a fundamental attention to visual art, music and sound, computer science, and other aspects of digital culture through an art exhibit and a concluding roundtable videoconference session with an international group of participants.
We encourage participation in terms of papers presentations and creative works exhibition/presentations.
Keynote Speakers:
Joseph Tabbi (UIC)
John Cayley (Brown University)
Guest Speakers:
Fox Harrell (Georgia Tech)
Gregory Ulmer (UF)
Terry Harpold (UF)
Jane Yellowlees Douglas (UF)
Session 1: Beyond Literary
N. Katherine Hayles (Duke), Nick Montfort (MIT), Matthew Kirschenbaum (UM), Jerome McGann (UVA)
Session 2: Perspectives of Machinic Expression.
Rita Raley (UC Santa Barbara), Arthur Kroker (U of Victoria), Lev Manovich (UCSD)
More speakers TBA.
John Cayley, Imposition (2009), real-time networked performance
Nick Montfort, ppg256-4 (2009), 256 character perl poetry generator
More works TBA.
We invite papers submissions in the form of 300-word abstracts including (but not limited to) the following proposed sessions:
1. Machinic Subjects, Posthuman Objects
Presentations may explore human-computer interaction and the ways in which texts negotiate the tangled relations between human and machinic intelligence, human and cybernetic bodies.
2. Writing Digital Art, Exhibiting Digital Literature
Presentations may envision the interconnected modalities of literary and artistic production/reception which intersect in emerging electronic practice and theory.
3. Re-freshing Virtual Reality, Re-processing A.I.
Presentations inventively rethinking immersive digital environments, simulated subject-based inter-exhanges, and the utopian rhetorics surrounding these practices are welcome.
4. Institutional Connectionism
Presentations imagining the restructuring and reorganization of academic institutions connected to the increasing centrality of the digital in various disciplinary approaches are invited.
5. Digital Theory Reconfigurations
Presentations can focus on any aspect of the various possible relations among (but not limited to) literary studies, neuro-cognitive sciences, philosophy of information, visual studies, narrative intelligence, cultural studies and any humanist and/or scientific field exploring human experience of the digital.
6. Coding the Futures
We seek papers from the emerging fields of software and platform studies. Where will scholarship go when it moves beyond the screen to the level of code and to the physical materiality of hardware itself? Papers should address how these various layers of interaction will shape the work and culture produced in digital environments.
CALL FOR WORKS
We are seeking submissions for artworks that engage or address digital media and other emergent technologies. We are interested in all kinds of art including (but not limited to) work featuring image, sound, video, film, sculpture, networks, databases, code, games, performance, transmedia, and works that explore the hybrid intersections between digital and analogue forms.
Artists will be responsible for providing the materials necessary and for transporting their work. Please submit an artist statement, CV, and documentation/proof of concept by Tuesday, December 20th 2009 to digitala@grove.ufl.edu. Artists are encouraged to submit electronically via email. Links to online project proposals are preferred. Any email attachments should be less than 10MB. If necessary, hard copies can be sent to:
Patrick LeMieux
c/o School of Art and Art History, College of Fine Arts
Fine Arts Building C - 101
300-word abstracts must be received by Tuesday, December 20th, 2009. Please send your abstract as a word/rtf attachment to the following address: digitala@grove.ufl.edu.
Papers should highlight a specific innovative statement in your present research, or consider the wider implications of future innovations in digital arts and humanities research.
Notification of accepted abstracts for paper presentations will be sent by January 5th, 2010. Presentations should be between 15-20 minutes long.
Full papers must be received by February 20th and will be published in .pdf format on the Futures of Digital Studies 2010 website ( http://www.english.ufl.edu/da/ ).
Scholars interested in participating in the Videoconference Session 1 and 2 must submit full papers by the abstract deadline to qualify for admission to limited available seats in the REVE room at the Digital Worlds Institute ( http://www.digitalworlds.ufl.edu/ ). Please indicate session preference for the final round table discussion with your paper submission.
For more information please visit the Digital Assembly Website at: http://www.english.ufl.edu/da/
and the Futures of Digital Studies Conference website at: http://www.english.ufl.edu/fds/home.html
Mauro Carassai at: mcarassai@ufl.edu
This CFP has been viewed 563 times.


Have a unique climbing experience in Bergen, the city between seven mountains, with rock climbing along the coast and Norways fastest zipline at Mount Ulriken.
In addition to good outdoor and indoor climbing areas, Bergen has some unique offers in climbing experiences. Climbing parks, ziplines and via ferrata are activities that allow everyone to take part in the climbing experience regardless of climbing skills. Feel the adrenaline in a safe environment with good supervision and really test your skills. Feel your pulse rise as you climb up steep ladders and rappel down to the ground from tall platforms. See how much speed you can get in the zipline and maneuver yourself along trees and obstacles. Security is always number one priority and allows you to both challenge yourself and feel safe.
The Via ferrata at Herdla takes you along the unique coastline in western Norway with climbing along the costs, in nets, ziplines and other challenges that give you both a spectacular view and a good climbing experience. Herdla is a bird sanctuary and is a good place to see rare and beautiful birds. There are also a number of ruins from the second world war that you can stop by along the way. The tour includes equipment, training and even lunch.
Klatreparken Høyt & Lavt offers challenging climbing in the tree tops for everybody with its 115 different obstacles ranging from 1 meter above the ground to 22 meters above the ground. The routes are adapted to all ages and skill levels with 8 different levels so that both the youngest and those who want a real challenge will have a great experience. After a day of climbing, you have the opportunity to buy lunch in the park where healthy food is in focus.
Zipline is also a great way to test your own limits and have fun at the same time. Take the zipline on mount Ulriken, the highest city mountain in Bergen, 634 meters above sea level. The zip line itself is 300 meters long and you get good speed heading down. Or go to Mount Fløyen and Fløyenkids Ziplinepark and have fun in the zipline that runs between the trees. It goes in a loop from one tree to the next and is a good idea as an activity for the whole family.
Take the challenge and get up in the heights. Join an exciting and unique experience that challenges you while experiencing Norwegian nature.
The ropes courses offer an active day in the tree tops. The courses contain exciting elements and zip-lines and suits both old and young.


If you are on the prowl for some tomato based dishes to pair with Chianti, you have hit the jackpot! Chianti is a very dry wine that is medium bodied. When paired with a tomato based dish the flavors in the wine really shine! Some would say Chianti has the aroma of cherries. I can't wait to tell you about all these fantastic recipes that will go nicely with Chianti.
We've got plenty more tips, tricks and recipes to share for when you're planning your next wine tasting party.
Each of these dishes is loaded with flavors that you can't get enough of!
This rich, flavorful tomato soup is a classic dish that you are going to love. I would omit the optional cayenne pepper because spicy food doesn't go well with Chianti.
Indian inspired dish that is full of tasty flavors. Nothing tastes better than juicy meatballs in a tomato based sauce! Yum!
This dish is gluten-free, vegan and tastes fantastic! It also gives a gorgeous presentation, so it is perfect for serving at a dinner party.
Stuffed shells in a bed of tomato based sauce with fresh herbs is a hearty meal that will rock your world! Every bite leaves you yearning for the next.
This Italian recipe is so good that your friends are going to beg you for the recipe. Serve with Chianti, garden salad and garlic bread.
Linguine with fresh tomatoes, zucchini, cannellini beans, and balsamic vinegar combine to give you an explosion of deliciousness!
Serve the chutney over a bed of fluffy cooked rice for a yummy meal idea. Serve with some warm bread.
This decadent dish goes well with Chianti, looks fabulous and has an unforgettable flavor. This recipe is all around a winner.
My only warning is that you shouldn't make this unless you want to fall in love and add it to your recipe rotation! So good!
Comfort food at its finest! This crowd-pleasing dish will get gobbled up as soon as it is served. Don't plan on leftovers! The creamy tomato will go lovely with Chianti too.
This dish will make you feel like a kid again, only much more elegant. Serve with a fresh veggie salad and some breadsticks.
Scrumptious tomatoes are the star of the show in this hearty dish. It is super easy to throw together too!
Shells overflowing with creamy ricotta cheese, spinach in an amazing tomato sauce. Your taste buds are going to thank you!
This skillet meal is delectable! Every creamy bite will make you fall deeper in love with all the delicious flavors. Serve with your favorite Chianti!
This recipe is so incredible! It's savory, colorful and tastes terrific. Serve this at a dinner party and your guests will rave!
This appetizer is fantastic if you want something flavorful to start your dinner. This is so elegant looking, and you can even make these ahead of time.
Holy taste bud heaven! This Italian dish is loaded with fresh cherry tomatoes, eggs, and crispy potatoes. Who says you only have to eat it for breakfast? Plus, who says you can't have some Chianti with your breakfast anyway?!
All you need is a few easy ingredients and 30 minutes to make this crowd-pleasing soup! Prepare yourself because this is going to become a household favorite.
Why is it that pasta is so darn amazing? Let me tell you; I love everything about this dish. It is full of linguine, tomatoes, and spices. Add a side salad to complete the meal.
You aren't living until you taste homemade Shakshuka! Every single bite makes you want more and more. Serve this with bread to eat all the juices with. Yum!
I hope you are as excited as I am about these tasty tomato based dishes to pair with Chianti! There is nothing more delicious and elegant than a recipe that fits perfectly with wine. Time to start cooking then you can get some relaxation in a while devouring your newest creation!


An article that cites one of your own articles has a high likelihood of being relevant to your research interests.
The sheer number of online services and social media platforms available to academics makes it possible to receive a constant stream of information about newly published research. However, much of this may serve only as a distraction from your research and staying on top of it all can even come to feel like a burden. Anne-Wil Harzing offers some simple advice to help you streamline your alerts and notifications and keep up to date with the important new publications in your field. Getting the most out of your Google Scholar profile, creating some old-fashioned table of contents alerts, and simply setting aside time to periodically review key journal titles will ensure you rarely miss out on important research.
In the "good old days" when I completed my Bachelors and Masters degrees, information overload wasn't really much of a problem. At a time when assignments were handwritten or typed on a typewriter, keeping up to date with the literature consisted of browsing through the recent issues of journals found on the shelves of the library's reading room. Tracking down the references in these articles involved making numerous trips to the musty cellars of university libraries – sometimes even in other cities – and dragging large stacks of bound volumes to the photocopier.
I still vividly remember the chemical smell of the thermal paper that was used in most photocopiers. I also spent a lot of time waiting while someone else was using the photocopier or cursing in desperation when a previous user had left it broken without alerting technicians. Those were the days of slow science.
Finding out whether a specific article had been cited by others involved going through the paper version of the (Social) Science Citation Index. Even though this publication had paper so thin you could almost see through it, was incredibly heavy. So yes, you would risk a hernia from carrying around heavy stacks of books and I would invariably get queasy from the chemical smell of the photocopiers compounded by the lack of fresh air in the library cellars. But information overload was never much of an issue.
Things had "improved" slightly when I did my PhD. I now had my own personal computer and email started to become more common as a means of communication, thus speeding up access to information. That said, much of my communication with other academics still took place through letters or – if you wanted "instant" communication – faxes. Remember how the thermal paper meant these faxes became illegible after a while? In spite of the use of personal computers, keeping up to date with the literature still required visits to the library. To all intents and purposes the internet didn't really exist. In any case, dial-up modems and connections were so slow that getting the information from a book on the library shelves would usually be much quicker.
Fast-forward 20-odd years and we are seriously at risk of drowning in information. This is certainly true for many people's daily lives. Who would ever have thought that FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) would be the cause of serious mental health issues? Personally, I don't "do" Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or whatever form of social media is flavour of the month. I have no particular desire to broadcast my private life and at the same time help commercial companies collect and sell data about my consumption preferences (and this post was written well before the March 2018 revelations about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica). Nor, for that matter, am I very interested in the personal lives of others, beyond the small group of family and friends that I can easily keep in touch with without social media.
However, the risk of drowning is equally present in our professional lives. You could literally spend all day trying to keep up to date with what is happening in your field. If you have online profiles on services such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare and the like and you have enabled email notifications, you could find your email inbox overflowing every day. One librarian I know joked that ResearchGate would send you an email whenever one of the academics in your network farted. I follow hardly anyone on ResearchGate and have disabled 95% of alerts, including the follower alerts that tell you when someone reads or cites your paper, as well as the gratuitous "you/your paper are/is the best" type of alerts. But even so, I still get several emails a week as they do not have a "digest" function.
An article that cites one of your own articles has a high likelihood of being relevant to your research interests. Personally, I have found Google Scholar the best way to find out about articles citing my work. Despite its limitations, Google Scholar is still the most comprehensive source of citation data. The easiest way to get citation alerts for your work is to set up a Google Scholar citation profile, which is easy and very quick to do. Once you have done this you can create citation alerts for your entire body of work with just one click. This means Google Scholar will send you an email whenever one of your articles is cited, including a brief abstract of the article, allowing you to decide whether it is worth following up on. Most of the time you can even download a copy of the article there and then.
If there are specific authors in your field who are crucial to your work, consider following them on Google Scholar. You can do this by searching for their Google Scholar citation profile and clicking on the "follow" button. In this case, I would suggest you only follow their "new articles" and not their "new citations" as the latter might well flood your mailbox, particularly if you follow several highly-cited authors. Please note that you can achieve similar results by following academics on ResearchGate and Academia.edu, but personally I find the information density is much higher for Google Scholar alerts.
If there is a particular topic you would like to stay up to date with, simply conduct a search in Google Scholar and click on the "create alert" link in the left-hand column. This will send you alerts whenever there is a new result for these particular search terms. I would encourage you to make these searches as specific as possible to avoid being overwhelmed with a flood of barely relevant alerts.
Once you have set up a Google Scholar citation profile, Google Scholar will provide you with "my updates", its assessment of publications that might be of interest to you. These are based on your own publication history, as well any articles you have saved in your Google Scholar library. The more relevant articles you have in these two sources, the more relevant the alerts will be to you. Reviewing the alerts would normally take only 10-15 minutes a month and in general I have found them to be pretty good. I am usually quite interested in one third of the suggestions and most of the remaining updates are of the "nice-to-know" type. I have received very few irrelevant updates.
In the "good old days", librarians would circulate folders with TOCs from relevant journals to academics. I still remember the pale yellow manila folders with stacks of photocopied TOCs. They were often delayed for months because a colleague lost them or went on a long holiday without passing the folder on to the next person on the list. Now you can use the same "old-fashioned" way to keep up to date by getting these TOC alerts by email. I have done this by creating alerts in the Current Contents Connect of Web of Science, which does work well. If you do not have access to Web of Science, you could consider using the free service, JournalTOCs. It seems to be quite useful, but judging from the limited number of people following particular journals it is rarely used. Unfortunately, its website doesn't currently follow normal security protocols and doesn't even allow secure passwords, so at present I cannot really recommend it but it is worth keeping an eye on.
Alerts sometimes come at inconvenient or busy times and you might simply delete them without reading. Moreover, it is quite easy to miss some information even if you do look at the alerts. So several times a year, I take a few hours to manually review the new issues of a list of core journals I am interested in. I do this simply by logging in to my university library, searching for journal titles in the A-Z journal list, and reviewing the latest issues. This means that if an article is of interest, I can immediately download it for later reading.
By following these six steps I find I rarely miss an article that is important to me. As indicated above, you can do much more than this by using social media for academics. But if your main goal is simply to keep up to date with academic publications, I find the added value of these services to be fairly low. Finally, if rather than staying up to date you want to get a quick overview of all research in a particular area in, say, the last 10 or 20 years, I can recommend using Publish or Perish to do a literature review.
This article has been written by Anne-Wil Harzing, Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London.
The original article appeared on LSE Impact Blog.


text:
British Airways could order up to 25 A350-1000 in Le Bourget
IAG could as soon as this week place an order for the new Airbus A350 long-range jetliner for its British Airways unit, according to two people familiar with the talks.
If completed, the deal would be a win for Airbus over rival Boeing which is trying to sell IAG on a proposed update of its 777 model, the 777X.
British Airways has a large fleet of 777s. It currently doesn't fly any Airbus long-range jetliners but is due soon to receive its first Airbus A380 superjumbo.
IAG's talks with Airbus focus on the A350-1000 model according to the people familiar with the talks. The order could also include a smaller, longer-range version, the A350-900, one of these people said.
The exact number of planes in the order and its value are still under negotiation, these people said. Some A350 could also replace old A340s from Iberia. Le Bourget - Paris Air Show in June could be the best date to announce the order.
If IAG orders the A350 for British Airways, the carrier could still order 777Xs, said one of the people familiar with the carrier's plans. But another person said that if IAG orders A350s, it wouldn't receive preferential terms on Boeing orders.
Early buyers of a new jetliner model, known as launch customers, generally receive preferential terms and big discounts, potentially exceeding 50% off catalog prices.
IAG was created in 2011 by the merger of British Airways with Spain's Iberia. Iberia's fleet is all Airbus planes. British Airways' European fleet is all Airbus models.
Based on the article "IAG in Talks to Order Airbus A350 Jets for British Airways" published in The Wall Street Journal


What is Ceva leval used to treat?
Ceva_leval is the local analog (generic) of more famous drug Albendazole that has the same active substance (ingredient) and in result the same therapeutic effect. The main difference is that Ceva_leval is registered by a small local pharmaceutical company. The presence of the same active substance guarantees an identical pharmaceutical (therapeutic) effect on the body.
It is possible to buy Ceva_leval only in the pharmacies of the country where it is produced. With us, you can buy its more famous analog Albendazole, which is approved by the FDA and is sold worldwide. The same active substance guarantees the identity of the drugs and the identity of the pharmaceutical properties (they have only different names and packaging, in which they are sold).


A man who fatally bludgeoned and stabbed his ex-girlfriend in her home was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison yesterday.
Roger Crique "mutilated" and killed Cheyenne Patricio and "left her lying in a pool of her own blood for my mother and sister to find," Patricio's sister, Cristina Matos, told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley.
Crique had blamed his violence on brain damage from a 1995 car accident.
But prosecutor Robert Hettleman said Crique knew exactly what he was doing when he attacked Patricio, 21, in a jealous rage, beating her so savagely with a baseball bat that her skull had pieces of wood in it.
Crique told cops that Patricio had "been fooling with my head and heart" when he attacked her in Inwood in September 2005.


Because the Kundalini is so subtle, it cannot normally be seen with the naked eye. But there are photographs which have captured the vibrations, appearing as lights of different colors coming from Shri Mataji or out of the fontanelle bone area of Sahaja Yogis (persons who practice Sahaja Yoga).
These are all manifestations of the All Pervading Power of Divine Love which does all living work and which is reflected in us as Kundalini. As Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi says, "All work is done by Nature. You cannot even sprout a seed into a flower. Nature does all the living work. Man only does dead work."
After Self Realization, we become connected with this All Pervading Power which we can feel as a cool breeze in our palms (click here to receive your Self Realization through a short meditation in front of your screen). Through specific techniques of Sahaja Yoga meditation, we learn how to use it for the benefit of the individual (by directing it to our chakras) and the society as a whole. For more free information on the practical aspects of how to use this energy, please contact the center nearest you (see the worldwide list of local contacts).


text:
Sixième livre de madrigaux (Carlo Gesualdo)
 Sixième livre de madrigaux (Claudio Monteverdi)

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