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School grading practices are inaccurate and inequitable to some children
October 23, 2018 thetimesweekly Leave a Comment
The battle for equity in our schools is not only a fight to guarantee access to great teaching and high-quality learning environments, programs, and materials. The battle for equity also includes the practices and policies that teachers use to describe students' success or failure in school. An issue often overlooked, grading, is of critical importance. Grades determine so many decisions made about our children: whether they are promoted, qualify to play on the athletic field, graduate, receive scholarships, and get accepted to college. Unfortunately, in too many schools and classrooms, teachers often unwittingly assign grades in ways that are unfair and make success more difficult for black and other underserved children. Teachers go to great lengths to identify what percentage quizzes, homework, tests, extra credit, and class participation count towards the overall grade, but the seemingly objective way educators determine grades are often inaccurate, hide student achievement, … [Read more...] about School grading practices are inaccurate and inequitable to some children
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School Grading Practices Are Inaccurate and Inequitable to Black Children
October 22, 2018 charlestonchronicle Leave a Comment
Teachers go to great lengths to identify what percentage quizzes, homework, tests, extra credit, and class participation count towards the overall grade, but the seemingly objective way educators determine grades are often inaccurate, hide student achievement, and actually perpetuate achievement gaps. (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA) By Joe Feldman The battle for equity in our schools is not only a fight to guarantee access to great teaching and high-quality learning environments, programs, and materials. The battle for equity also includes the practices and policies that teachers use to describe students' success or failure in school. An issue often overlooked, grading, is of critical importance. Grades determine so many decisions made about our children: whether they are promoted, qualify to play on the athletic field, graduate, receive scholarships, and get accepted to college. Unfortunately, in too many schools and classrooms, teachers often unwittingly assign grades in ways that … [Read more...] about School Grading Practices Are Inaccurate and Inequitable to Black Children
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PED: Las Cruces charter school grades ranged from C to F in 2018
August 22, 2018 lcsun-news Leave a Comment
Algernon D'Ammassa Las Cruces Sun-News Published 2:00 p.m. UTC Aug 22, 2018 LAS CRUCES - Five Las Cruces charter schools received grades from the Public Education Department ranging from C to F in 2018, according to PED data released on August 17. Charter schools are tuition-free public schools managed independently of local school districts by their own governing bodies. In New Mexico, charter schools operate under authorization with the Public Education Department or a local school district. The largest change among Las Cruces charter schools was at Las Montañas Charter High School, which jumped from an F last year to a C in 2018. The leap came in a year when PED announced that requirements for A and B grades had tightened. Caz Martinez, beginning his third school year as director and principal at Las Montañas, said the pressure was on charter schools to show results because, he said, "we have a contract that can get either revoked or not … [Read more...] about PED: Las Cruces charter school grades ranged from C to F in 2018
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School grades in Gadsden and Hatch Valley districts generally flat
Algernon D'Ammassa Las Cruces Sun-News Published 10:48 p.m. UTC Aug 20, 2018 LAS CRUCES - With the release by the Public Education Department last Friday of New Mexico public school grades, education secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski issued a statement as to why school grades matter. "They help us celebrate what's working for students, replicate and scale best practices, highlight innovation, and intervene in our lowest-performing schools," Ruszkowski said. As New Mexico raised standards for academic proficiency and growth, graduation requirements, and preparedness for college and careers, Ruszkowski added, "It's harder to earn an A than ever before and our students and schools are rising to the challenge." Despite higher standards, the 23 schools in the Gadsden Independent School District and five Hatch Valley public schools generally held their ground compared to last year's grades. In the Gadsden district, elementary school … [Read more...] about School grades in Gadsden and Hatch Valley districts generally flat
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Breaking: NM school grades are out, APS 'positive' movement
August 17, 2018 abqjournal Leave a Comment
.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........AlertMeCopyright © 2018 Albuquerque JournalSchool grades are out, and both As and Fs are up statewide since the Public Education Department first rolled out the school report cards six years ago.ADVERTISEMENTNew Mexico's 2018 public school grades, officially released Friday, showed 12.9 percent of schools in the state received an A — an increase from the 4.8 percent in 2012 but down from 14.5 percent in 2017.And 14.6 percent of schools in the state received Fs, higher than 2012's 7.7. percent and about on par with last year's 15.7.Schools that received a B this year are up by about two percentage points to 25.9 percent from the previous year. Cs and Ds followed behind at 24.2 percent and 22.4 percent respectively.The grades — primarily grounded on student … [Read more...] about Breaking: NM school grades are out, APS 'positive' movement
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MINOR EMPIRE
Its debut album, Second Nature, earned it a Canadian Folk Music Award for World Group of the Year, an Indie Music Award for Favourite World Artist of the Year, a nomination for the About.com World Music Readers Choice Award and number one spot on the Canadian World music radio charts.
Minor Empire's sound is defined by the dreamy vocals of Ozgu Ozman which soar above a bed of pulsating grooves and organic instrumentation to create the airy psychedelic vibe. Exclaim praised the group for its "slinky, duby, knotty Turkish rhythms". Le Devoir called their sound "refined" and said "Ozman weaves a most beautiful music from her Turkish roots". Songlines UK praised "Ozman's pure and sinuous vocals" and the "percussion that simmers with delicious intensity". CBC Radio said, Minor Empire has "marked an important way forward for Turkish and world music".

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Newton Running Opens Flagship Store on Pearl Street
Mar 07, 2015 by BoulderRunner	in News
Newton Running has opened its flagship store on at 1222 Pearl Street. Photo by Todd Straka
The bright iconic colors of Newton Running shoes will fit right into the equally colorful tulips of Downtown Boulder's Pearl Street Mall this Spring it has now opened its flagship store at 1222 Pearl Street, bringing with it a unique culture and engaging consumer experience to Pearl Street. Extremely proud of its Boulder roots it only makes sense to take a place right in the heart of it all.
"We are so excited to be a permanent feature on Pearl Street; an iconic street in a town that inspires our brand and the products we make each day," said Jennifer Abshire, Director of Retail, for Newton Running.
The 3,300 square-foot store will complement Newton Running's new brand campaign FEEL; inspired by the emotional feeling running evokes and the feel of having a natural running form that is unique to Newton's shoes.
The store maintains the building's early 1900's original features, including original floor boards and exposed brick walls, to showcase the Newton brand and product offering while staying true to Pearl Street's history and unique charm. Texturized environmentally friendly wall panels made from plant fiber and displays with visual and textual appeal help incorporate the idea of FEEL into its aesthetic.
Grand Opening Celebrations
To celebrate its new home Newton Running is inviting the public to join them at the new store on March 14 for a fun-filled morning with the Newton Tribe. Starting at 9:00 a.m., the first 100 people to enter the store will receive a scratch-off card that will unveil store discounts from $5-10, with 25 of these cards unveiling a grand prize of $100 to redeem in-store.
"The Grand Opening event is the perfect way to celebrate this new step in our brand's history with Newtonites, old and new, so I urge everyone to lace up their running shoes and head down to the store for a morning of running-related fun!"
Join Team Newton sponsored athletes at 10:00 a.m. on a fun run from the store location. Or attend one of two running form mini-clinics hosted by Newton Running co-founder, running coach and author, Danny Abshire, at 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.
Team Newton athletes Kara Henry, Tyler McCandless, Melody Fairchild and Kristin Arendt will be available throughout the day for meet and greets.
Check out Newton's facebook event for more information on the Grand Opening.
All photos © Todd Straka
Tagged with: #FeelNewton, Danny Abshire, Downtown Boulder, Newton Elite, Newton Running, Pearl Street Mall


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Legislative & Regulatory
FIRE > Statement > Policies on Tolerance, Respect, and Civility
Policies on Tolerance, Respect, and Civility
FIRE Staff | July 1, 2002
Policy Statement on Respect, Sensitivity, Tolerance, or Hate/Hate Speech
The Environment: Austin College Student Handbook Student Conduct STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES Regarding Community Standards and Operation by the Austin College Board of Trustees This Statement of Principles is intended to communicate to the entire College community the fundamental convictions on which the life of Austin College is based. These convictions may be stated as follows:... Read more Read more
FIRE Staff | June 27, 2002
Working at Princeton: A Handbook for Administrative and Support Staff
In May of 1994 Princeton approved the following statement of our goals and aspiration in the important areas of diversity and community. Princeton University is a community devoted to learning. We actively seek students, faculty, and staff of exceptional ability and promise who share in our commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarship, and who... Read more Read more
Equal Opportunity Policy Princeton University subscribes to a policy of equal opportunity. The University believes that commitment to principles of fairness and respect for all helps create a climate that is favorable to the free and open exchange of ideas, and the University seecks to reach out as widely as possible in order to attract... Read more Read more
Princeton University Ombuds Office – Responding to Racial and Ethnic Harassment
Princeton University is committed to ensuring that students, faculty, and staff are able to pursue their academic and employment goals in an environment that is free from all forms of discrimination and harassment, including racial and ethnic harassment. Racial and ethnic harassment are prohibited by University policy as well as by State and Federal law.... Read more Read more
Princeton University subscribes to a policy of equal opportunity. The University believes that commitment to principles of fairness and respect for all helps create a climate that is favorable to the free and open exchange of ideas, and the University seeks to reach out as widely as possible in order to attract the ablest individuals... Read more Read more
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I wanted to share a quick thought that came to my mind as I was reading in Exodus 14. When I read the stories recorded in scripture, it is very common for me to imagine I am a part of the story. I can see myself actually there in that moment experiencing the very situation I am reading about. That is what happens when you have the mind of a 10-year old (smiley face).
Exodus chronicles one of the most popular events in the Old Testament of the Israelites miraculously crossing the Red Sea. I was imagining what it must have felt like to be an Israelite, a member of God's very own people, enslaved by Egypt with no apparent hope of freedom. Then one day, you are released and granted a freedom that was nothing more than a dream the day before. You are overwhelmed with joy and feelings of possibility as you face a new future of promise and excitement. As you are happily leaving Egypt and all those horrifying and difficult experiences, you come to the edge of the Red Sea. At that same time, you see the Egyptian army bearing down on you and it is clear they are not coming to say goodbye. You cannot turn back and you cannot go forward. You are trapped in an impossible situation with imminent defeat.
Exodus 14:13 records Moses' response to the situation.
As Christ followers, we define "impossible" differently than those who do not know Christ. Yet, over and over I find myself unconsciously gravitating toward the common understanding of impossible. When that happens, I am unable to see the possibilities because all my eyes can see is the inevitability of defeat.
What is your "red sea"? What situation are you in that has you feeling trapped with no means of escape? What obstacles are you facing in your life that seem insurmountable?
You and I may cognitively acknowledge that "nothing is too big for God," but too many times our private thoughts, emotions and actions do not mirror the "correct" answer that we feel obligated to say with our lips.
Whatever "red sea" you are facing this week, remember the words of Exodus 14:13.
Let those words be a source of joy and hope today as you fulfill your calling and commission. It is not our job to have all the answers and God does not expect us to carry the weight of the world. That is His job.


Think back upon all the Leafs games you've attended over the years. Which was your favourite?
Five years ago today, I wrote about My Game. This game took place over twenty years ago, but it remains my personal fave.
There were 16,382 of us there that night, but nobody left Maple Leaf Gardens happier than I. I had just witnessed a miracle that I'd never forget.
Wendel Clark? Did she play with the Leafs?
Nose bleed...stub......I have a few. Only for rock concerts!
Nice. I think I remember this game. If it's the same one, Kordic threw around his body some in the second period, which behaviour was hailed after the game by all the commentators.


Legalising cannabis could raise hundreds of millions of pounds for the treasury, according to a new government report.
LONDON — Legalising cannabis could raise hundreds of millions of pounds in tax, and also cut policing and prison costs, according to a new government study.
A report leaked to BBC Newsnight says that a legal and regulated market would "generate notable tax revenue" and "lead to overall savings to the criminal justice system."
The Treasury study was commissioned by Nick Clegg ahead of May's general election to help inform Liberal Democrats thinking on drugs policy if they remained in office.
MPs debated the issue of legalising cannabis on Monday, after a petition online surpassed the 100,000 votes needed to push the issue for consideration. In fact, the "Make the production, sale and use of cannabis legal" petition has garnered some 223,000 signatures.
However, the Home Office has said it still has "no plans" to change the law and insists that cannabis use is falling.
"The government has no plans to legalise or decriminalise cannabis," they said in a statement. "There is clear scientific and medical evidence that cannabis is a harmful drug which can damage people's mental and physical health, and harms individuals and communities."
According to the study, 2.2 million aged 16 to 59 have used cannabis last year, smoking 216 tonnes between them.
Analysts working on the research reviewed the Institute for Social and Economic Research's findings, which says that legalisation could reduce the UK budget deficit by up to £1.25 billion ($1.9 billion) per year. They concluded this sum is probably an overestimate but said that regulation could save up to £200 million in police and court costs annual.
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb told Newsnight a regulated market "makes a lot of sense."
Lib Dem health spokesman @normanlamb tells @nickhopkinsnews "a legalised regulated market makes a lot of sense".
The Lib Dems are setting up an expert panel to investigate the feasibility of legalising cannabis, which will examine evidence from Colorado and Washington state in the U.S., where cannabis has been legalised since 2012, as well as from Uruguay. Successful legal markets abroad shift the onus onto prohibitionists, they argue, who must make a case for keeping it illegal.
"We must end the hypocrisy of senior politicians admitting to using cannabis in younger years – and describing it as 'youthful indiscretions' – whilst condemning tens of thousands of their less fortunate fellow countrymen and women to criminal records for precisely the same thing, blighting their careers," Lamb said.


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News: Remains of ancient civilisation discovered on the bottom of a lake
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20071227/94372640.html
Stonehenge Builders' Village Found
Atlantis Online > Forum > the Ancient World > Stonehenge & the Druids > Stonehenge Builders' Village Found
Author Topic: Stonehenge Builders' Village Found (Read 138 times)
A prehistoric village has been discovered in southern England that was likely home to the builders of Stonehenge, archaeologists announced in January 30, 2007.
The village, located 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from the famous stone circle, includes eight wooden houses dated back to around 2500 B.C.
The remains of a cluster of homes include the outlines of floors, beds, and cupboards. Tools, jewelry, pottery, and human and animal bones were also found.
The excavated houses formed part of a much bigger settlement dating back to the Late Stone Age, according to project leader Mike Parker Pearson of England's Sheffield University.
"We could have many hundreds of houses here," Parker Pearson added. "Our dates for the building of Stonehenge are identical to the dates for this very large settlement."
The village stood next to a newly revealed stone avenue, partly visible in the excavation ditch at top right, which once led from a large timber circle to the nearby River Avon.
The site was excavated in 2006 as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/photogalleries/stonehenge/index.html
Re: Stonehenge Builders' Village Found
Two of the eight Stone Age buildings uncovered near Stonehenge were set apart from the main settlement, surrounded by a timber fence and a substantial ditch.
The sites of the two houses—one of which is pictured above—were discovered by Julian Thomas of Manchester University, who says there is evidence for three or four other, similar structures nearby.
The excavation team speculates that these imposing buildings may have been the dwellings of chiefs or priests who lived separately from the rest of the community. Another theory is that the buildings were uninhabited and used only for rituals, because the dig team found no traces of household items inside them.
"They may have been more like shrines or cult houses" where people went to invoke the spirits of ancestors, Thomas said, "or to conduct negotiations of some kind or to have out-of-body or trance experiences."
A reconstruction made in 2005 depicts one of two timber circles first discovered 40 years ago near Stonehenge.
The timber circles were uncovered at Durrington Walls, the prehistoric earthwork that is the site of the newly discovered Stone Age village.
The dig revealed that two timber circles once stood within Durrington Walls around 2500 B.C., the same period in which Stonehenge was built.
At the south of the Durrington site, archaeologists found evidence of five concentric rings measuring 130 feet (40 meters) across and a smaller circle with two timber rings to the north.
Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project believes Durrington Walls and nearby Stonehenge were intimately connected.
Parker Pearson believes that the wooden and stone circles represented the domains of the living and the dead, respectively.
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in southern England, is perhaps the world's best known prehistoric monument, attracting nearly a million visitors a year.
The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a joint initiative run by six English universities with the aim of understanding how the iconic structure relates to the broader landscape and surrounding Stone Age sites.
Recent excavations suggest Durrington Walls closely mirrored Stonehenge, having its own impressive standing circle made of timber and an avenue that linked it to the River Avon.
Stonehenge is aligned with the sunset on the winter solstice, whereas Durrington Walls' large timber circle was aligned with the sunrise on the same day, scientists say.
"Stonehenge isn't a monument in isolation. It is actually one of a pair—one in stone, one in timber, with this shared relationship with the river, each with their solstice-aligned avenues and circles," said archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the project.
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—Photograph by Chris Steele Perkins/Magnum for National Geographic
This map shows the location of Durrington Walls and its position in relation to Stonehenge.
The latest excavations in the area suggest Stonehenge formed part of a much larger ritual complex that was spread across the surrounding landscape.
The newly found avenue at Durrington Walls connects the monument to the River Avon, which in turn links to another avenue downstream, which leads to Stonehenge.
Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project argues that the course of the river between the two ancient monuments symbolized the passage to the afterlife.
Durrington Walls was used for feasts and rituals that celebrated life, while Stonehenge was both a memorial and final resting place for the dead, the archaeologist speculates.
for National Geographic News
Recent excavations of Salisbury Plain in southern England have revealed at least two other large stone formations close by the world-famous prehistoric monument.
One of the megalithic finds is a sandstone formation that marked a ritual burial mound; the other, a group of stones at the site of an ancient timber circle.
The new discoveries suggest that many similar monuments may have been erected in the shadow of Stonehenge, possibly forming part of a much larger complex, experts say.
Cremation Mound
The first monument—a 9.2-foot-long (2.8-meter-long) sarsen stone—was found lying in a field next to the River Avon, 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) east of Stonehenge, which is located near the modern-day city of Salisbury (United Kingdom map).
The riverside sarsen—large sandstone blocks that occur naturally in southern England—had been stood upright, archaeologists say, like the blocks that form the main structure of Stonehenge.
A team lead by Colin Richards of Manchester University and Joshua Pollard of Bristol University found the hole that originally held the stone, dug between 2500 and 2000 B.C., as well as human remains and artifacts that date to the same period.
The partially cremated remains of two people were buried next to the stone, Pollard said. One was a large male whose unburned vertebrae suggest he was at least 6 feet (182 centimeters) tall.
"Seemingly he was so big they weren't able to cremate him properly," the archaeologist noted. "The unburnt bone is the product of that poor process of cremation."
Stone knives and arrowheads, a piece of limestone carved into the shape of a megalith, two pottery bowls, and a rare rock crystal were also unearthed near the burial site.
The rock crystal find is the earliest known example from Britain and possibly came from as far away as the Alps, Pollard said.
Archaeologists have suggested that other prehistoric burials in the area were connected to mainland Europe, Pollard added.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/2897981.html
« Last Edit: May 05, 2007, 05:24:03 am by Corissa » Report Spam Logged
Such a connection ties in with theories that Stonehenge was an important pilgrimage destination or a place where people traveled in the hope of miracle cures. (Related: "Pagans Get Support in Battle Over Stonehenge" [October 31, 2002].)
The megalithic burial site could also support theories that link Stonehenge and other standing stones to ancestor worship and commemorating the dead, Pollard added.
Circle of Stone
Pollard's team also found new evidence for stone settings at Woodhenge, a site 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) northeast of Stonehenge where a timber circle was constructed in about 2200 B.C.
Pollard said excavations in the 1920s hinted a stone monument may once have been present at the site.
"We were able to confirm last summer that there had been standing stones—some very considerable stones—at Woodhenge," he said.
While only fragments of the formation were found, the holes the stones were set in suggest the blocks stood up to 3 meters (9.8 feet) tall, Pollard said.
The team also found evidence for two phases of stone settings that probably came after the timber circle had rotted, he added.
"Four smaller stones were replaced by two much bigger sarsen settings," he said. "So it goes from a timber monument to being a megalithic monument, albeit not on the same scale as Stonehenge."
What happened to the stones at Woodhenge remains a mystery, Pollard added, though one possibility is that they were added to Stonehenge.
Network of Monuments
The research team says there is evidence from old maps and ancient sources for other similar monuments near Stonehenge.
"There may have been many smaller megalithic settings across this landscape," Pollard said.
"I think it's extremely likely there would have been other standing stones," particularly to the east, added Julian Thomas, professor of archaeology at Manchester University.
Such monuments would have had an important connection to Stonehenge, Thomas said. The stones and artifacts buried alongside the satellite monuments may have also played a symbolic role in spreading the authority of Stonehenge into the wider landscape.
"It was a way of referring to its powerfulness and to the importance and significance of the activities that are taking place at the henge and the people who are officiating," Thomas said.
He added that these latest finds show that Stonehenge shouldn't be seen in isolation.
"There's an overarching scheme of things which links Stonehenge to the broader landscape."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070112-stonehenge_2.html


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Polish PM says Hitler's Germany responsible for Holocaust, not Nazis
Former prisoners attended the ceremony marking the 74th anniversary of the liberation of former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau AFP
Oswiecim (Poland) (AFP)
Hitler's Germany was responsible for the Holocaust, not the Nazis, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Sunday, as Poland marked 74 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
"Hitler's Germany fed on fascist ideology... But all the evil came from this (German) state and we cannot forget that, because otherwise we relativise evil," said Morawiecki at an official ceremony at Auschwitz.
"The Polish state acts as the guardian of the truth, which must not be relativised in any way," he said.
"I want to make a promise here to (preserve) the complete truth about that era," he added, in a speech in the southern city of Oswiecim to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
Sunday's ceremony at Auschwitz was attended by a number of former prisoners at the camp.
Morawiecki's speech comes after last year's row over a Polish law that made it illegal to accuse the Polish nation or state of complicity in Nazi German crimes.
After protests from Israel and the US, Poland amended the law to remove the possibility of fines or a prison sentence.
Morawiecki appeared to be responding to an idea often mentioned in Poland, which claims that historians try to attribute responsibility for the genocide of Jews exclusively to the Nazis, without recalling the role played by the German state and Germans as a nation.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. With one million Jews killed there between 1940 to 1945, the camp has become a symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of the European Jews.
More than 100,000 other people including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters also perished there.
Last February, Morawiecki had to defend himself against criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who denounced "unacceptable" comments he made about the Holocaust.
Morawiecki's office insisted that he has repeatedly opposed Holocaust denial and anti-semitism in all its forms.


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DutchCulture
DutchCulture and a number of Dutch cultural expertise institutions have an international visitors programme. This programme is an excellent means of inviting people from key cultural organisations abroad to come to the Netherlands, meet Dutch cultural organisations and see Dutch cultural activities.
Museumgids Nederland
Museumgids Nederland lists the details of all museums in the Netherlands, such as visiting addresses and opening hours (as far as known). We want to make finding a museum as easy as possible for you. Up to 1,301 museums have been divided into seven categories: visual arts, archaeology, cultural history, natural history, transport and technology, ethnology and maritime.
Dutch National Opera and Ballet
Dutch National Opera & Ballet creates, produces and presents both traditional and innovative opera and ballet productions of the highest quality. As one of the largest cultural organisations in the Netherlands, Dutch National Opera & Ballet brings all aspects of the ballet and opera world's artistry, technique and craftsmanship together in its own specialised workshops and rehearsal rooms.
Het Nationale Theater
Nederlands Dans Theater
Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) is one of the world's leading contemporary dance companies. The group is based in The Hague, but performs for an international audience of 115,000 visitors in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.
Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest
Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg
As a city theater for Brussels, the Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS) chooses to be a platform for a range of voices and stories from the multilingual and extremely diverse capital of Belgium and Europe
Museums of Belgium
Opera and Ballet Belgium


MMA Architects won the inaugural Curry Stone Design Prize for their ingenious solution to the Design Indaba 10x10 Low-cost Housing project.
MMA Architects's principals, Luyanda Mpahlwa and Mphethi Morojele, received the $100 000 prize, administered by the University of Kentucky College of Design. The annual international prize, which comes with no strings attached, recognises breakthrough design solutions with the power and potential to improve our lives and the world we live in.
"MMA's ideas are exactly the kind that the Curry Stone Design Prize hopes to promote and encourage in the broader field of design – because now, more than ever, the world needs them," said David Mohney, prize secretary and Curry Stone Chair in Design at the University of Kentucky.
Initiated by Design Indaba, The 10x10 Housing Project's aim falls in line with the organisation's fundamental mission to "create a better future, by design". The project seeks to stimulate wider debate and creative thought around the delivery of low-income housing, a very pressing issue internationally, while at the same time benefiting some of Cape Town's most impoverished families directly.
Design Indaba's 10x10 Housing Project challenged 10 architectural teams, composed of handpicked South Africans paired with international alumni of previous Design Indaba conferences, to provide dynamic design solutions for the low cost housing sector on a completely probono basis. The objective was to come up with affordable, attractive, innovative responses to the urgent need for housing for the urban poor. Sustainable design, construction and operation principles were to be incorporated.
The first solution to the Design Indaba 10x10 challenge, MMA's design for a single-family home leveraged the modest budget by borrowing elements from indigenous mud-and-wattle building techniques. The design forgoes traditional brick-and-mortar foundations in favour of a two-storey frame of timber and sandbag infill construction, which is both energy-efficient and requires little to no electricity or skilled labour to construct. By the end of the year, Design Indaba will oversee the completion of 10 such houses in Freedom Park, a township in greater Cape Town, with volunteer help from local women in the community.
Jurors commended MMA, one of the few black-owned architecture firms in South Africa, for creating an easily scalable prototype that can be built with unskilled labour from the local community. These elements are especially pertinent given the need for an additional 350 000 new homes for greater Cape Town's swelling population over the next few years.
Juror Michael Speaks, dean of the University of Kentucky's College of Design, said the winning project is "a symbol for the way a family can develop a future". Other jurors included journalist John Hockenberry, architect David Adjaye, designer Renny Ramakers and prize founder Clifford Curry.
"It means a lot to us to be recognised for what we thought was a small project, which means that the decision we took to embark on a humanitarian project was a right one," says Mpahlwa. MMA Architects will be using the award to research more alternative design solutions and to expand its scholarship program.


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Jayson Williams To Serve 18 Months for 2002 Killing
By Net Income Nov 19, 2009, 12:53pm EST
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Jayson Williams has agreed to plead guilty to aggravated assault in the 2002 shooting death of his chauffeur and serve 18 months in a state prison, reports the Star-Ledger. Gus Christofi died at Williams' mansion in Hunterdon County. The former Net always claimed the killing was accidental. A jury failed to reach a verdict on a manslaughter charge in 2004. Williams was conviced of a cover-up but was appealing.
Jayson Williams is expected to serve 18 months in prison for 2002 death - Jennifer Golson - Star-Ledger


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Finance ·Fortune 500
Activist investors love spin-offs. Here's why you should, too
BYJen Wieczner
June 29, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC
A screen displays the share price for pharmaceutical maker AbbVie on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange July 18, 2014. Shire said on July 18 that it had accepted an offer of 32 billion pounds ($54.7 billion) from AbbVie. The U.S. pharmaceutical company will pay 24.44 pounds in cash and 0.8960 of a new AbbVie share for each Shire share. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS) - RTR3Z9A3
Photograph by Brendan McDermid—Reuters
In early 2013, when Abbott Laboratories (ABT) spun off its pharmaceutical division as a new company, AbbVie (ABBV), investors initially shunned it. Some saw AbbVie's products as dead weight, begging to be jettisoned so that Abbott's faster-growing diagnostics and nutrition businesses could soar.
Within a few months, though, AbbVie picked up steam. Its new arthritis drug, Humira, took off to become a global bestseller, and as that and other hits boosted sales, they had an outsize impact on the bottom line—and share price—of the tightly focused new company. AbbVie has returned 117% since its launch, nearly double Abbott's 64%. And Brian Gillott, who helps manage the $4.1 billion Opportunistic Equity portfolio for Prudential's (PRU) Jennison Associates and bought AbbVie this spring, says its arc shows the potential of a smart spin-off. "Companies are better able to manage their business when their life depends on it," says Gillott. It's preferable, he adds, to "being the unloved stepchild."
Plenty of emancipated stepchildren will be seeking investors' affection this year. Parent companies worth a combined $1.5 trillion will execute spin-offs in 2015, more than twice the value of those that broke up in 2014, according to the Edge Consulting Group and Deloitte. Cases like AbbVie's show why some investors see spin-offs as buying opportunities. What's more, they're often bargain stocks. Splitsville scenarios, often pushed by activist investors, typically feature arguments that incompatible business units are holding a company back. Perceived as underachievers after such trash talk and unfamiliar to many analysts, spin-off stocks often sell at a discount for their first several months on the market. "That, frankly, is the hallmark of a lot of spins—low expectations," says David Hoffman, a portfolio manager of the Columbia Mid Cap Value Fund.
But over the longer term, those expectations are often wrong, especially when the spin-offs are themselves big businesses. The Bloomberg U.S. Spin-Off Index includes spin-offs with a market value of at least $1 billion at birth, tracking them for the first three years of their lives. It has returned 118% over the past three years, compared with 61% for the S&P 500. Since its 2002 inception, its returns have been 4.4 times the broader market's. Some of that outperformance is due to takeovers of newly bite-size spin-offs. But the benefits of splitting from a bureaucratic parent—including more accountable management and a separate bank account—can also fuel growth.
Recent big breakups have given investors a crowded field of large spin-offs to choose from. And 2015's pending splits include tectonic fractures of behemoths including HP (HPQ) (spinning off its personal computer and printer segments) and eBay (EBAY) (shedding PayPal). But some investing pros say that lower-profile breakups offer more value because the stocks are typically cheaper at the time of the split.
Laton Spahr, who manages the Oppenheimer Value Fund, says his sweet spot for spin-offs is a market cap between $5 billion and $10 billion—not gigantic, but big enough to draw mainstream investor interest that bolsters the stock. He recently invested in student-loan giant Sallie Mae, entitling him to ground-floor shares when Sallie Mae spun off loan-servicing unit Navient (NAVI) in May 2014. Navient, now worth $7.6 billion, has returned 20% since then (and made its debut at No. 463 on the Fortune 500). Its shares retreated recently, as loan reforms reduced the amount it gets for collecting on overdue payments. Still, Spahr thinks Navient should benefit as a healthier economy spurs more kids to go to college and drives down default rates.
Tom Bastian, portfolio manager of the $14.3 billion Invesco Equity and Income Fund, buys spin-offs after they start trading independently but before analysts start covering them. During one such window he bought Voya Financial (VOYA), the 2013 spin-off of the former U.S. insurance and retirement arms of Dutch financial giant ING. Shares of Voya (another Fortune 500 newcomer, at No. 268) have more than doubled since, but still trade at less than 14 times expected 2015 earnings, below the market average. Already one of the larger 401(k) plan providers, overseeing $486 billion in assets, Voya is "ramping up" and improving its margins, says Bastian.
Parent companies also tend to beat the market after breakups, though not as dramatically as spin-offs do, and some investors buy companies that announce separation plans, aiming to own both parent and stepchild. Oppenheimer's Spahr owns conglomerate Danaher (DHR), which announced in May that it will spin off its industrial divisions, leaving the original Danaher to focus on life-science and water-quality businesses. Spahr invokes the Hydra legend: "Split the worm in half, and it grows two new heads. Now we've got two great companies."
Stephen Goddard, who oversees $10.1 billion as chief investment officer of the London Co., likes Energizer (ENR), which is about to spin off its namesake battery business. Energizer will retain its personal-care business (including Schick razors), which is growing fast, particularly in emerging markets. But investors who own it pre-split are "basically getting the battery business almost for free," Goddard says, and when "the sum of the parts is worth more than the whole, that's where the opportunity comes."
Clarification, June 30, 2015: This article has been updated to more completely describe the role of Brian Gillott of Jennison Associates.
A version of this article appears in the July 1, 2015 issue of Fortune magazine with the headline "Picking Up the Pieces After a Breakup."


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Tag Archives: local legends
How To Tell A Good Scary Story
Did you ever go to sleepovers as a child? Or did you ever go camping away from your parents? If so, then you'll likely recall that, along with your pyjamas, your toothbrush and an extra pair of undies, the key thing you needed to bring with you was a stonkin' good scary story. There was always one kid who was the best storyteller, the one who'd seen horror movies they were way too young to watch, the one who had the cousin's girlfriend's sister's friend who was almost killed by a poltergeist. If you were a weird kid like me, that storyteller was probably you. I swear to you, I once nearly made a girl piss herself. That's not an exaggeration.
The fun doesn't have to end there. Get your friends over for a horror movie or organise a camping trip, relive those golden days and wow them with the best scary story they've ever heard, one which will chill them even now.
Here's how to do it.
Firstly, the set-up.
The standard is lights off, torches on, which is obviously a classic combination. Holding the torch up under your chin to give yourself that Tales from the Crypt lewk is a must if you go for this option. However, a lot can be achieved by having all the lights off except for a lamp (or two). Throw something over the lamp – a thin t-shirt will do – to make it dimmer and, voila, you've got ambient mood lighting.
If you choose to tell your scary story on a camping trip, huddling together with torches around a roaring campfire (although health and safety comes first!) is the way to go.
Next, the story.
One of the most important things that really sell a scary story is a believable background. You need to open your story well. It's up to you whether you leave it enigmatic and open-ended – say, by starting your story with something along the lines of "I heard this a few years ago…"/"I read on the internet that…" and going from there, never quite disclosing your source. I'm quite fond of the "vague familial connection" trick (you might have noticed I used it in my introduction) in which the person who experienced the paranormal encounter or freaky incident is linked to you, the storyteller, by mutual friends or relatives: "Apparently, the freakiest thing happened to my older sister's best friend's cousin…"
Once you've laid out where your story originated, it's time to find some inspiration. It may be that someone you know has had a scary experience, or you may have even had one yourself. If so, feel free to dress that up and present it. If you're not lucky enough to have a plethora of personal paranormal adventures at your disposal, never fear! You could retell an urban legend but apply it to an abandoned house or creepy park near where you live, or you could even borrow a generic horror movie plot and use that. No-one will mind if you repurpose an existing legend like the babysitter and the man upstairs, Bloody Mary, the vanishing hitchhiker or Slender Man. Nobody needs to know as long as you can convincingly embellish it and make it your own.
The very first scary story I ever told was a fairly bog-standard ghost story. The basic plotline was that a girl was babysitting her neighbours' children. She cooked their tea, watched television with them for an hour or two and then put them to bed. She went back downstairs to relax until the parents came home, but kept hearing noises like footsteps running up and down the stairs and across the upstairs landing. She checked, thinking the children had woken up and were misbehaving, but she found the children were sound asleep in their beds.
I can't really remember how it ended – I think the gist of it was that the house had been an orphanage or some bullshit, which obviously would never fly as a plot twist in a real horror story – but the plotline rarely matters on occasions such as these. My story was not particularly complicated, but it didn't need to be to unsettle the room full of prepubescent girls. Instead, it was my performance of it that was of greatest importance. We were sitting in the dark and I deliberately positioned myself next to the wooden coffee table and punctuated the footsteps part of the story by tapping quickly on the table. What can I say, even as a little girl I had a flair for the dramatic.
Finally, go for the jugular.
If it fits into your story, leave your ending as ambiguous as possible. Leave your audience wondering what the monster really was or whether the protagonist got out alive.
Even better, a skilled storyteller will draw their audience into the story. Let them know that no-one is safe and they could be next. As I said, I can't remember the ending of my ghost story, but I vividly recall the mother of the girl who was hosting the sleepover opening the living-room door to check on us, just as I mentioned that the orphans still haunted the house which used to be their home. That was just sheer good fortune, but it did the trick. Everyone was in bits.
Drop your own ideas and your favourite experiences of telling or hearing scary stories in the comments section below! Thanks for reading.
April 24, 2018 by Jude and the Obscure	Leave a comment
Author's notes: I talk quite a bit about racism – specifically anti-black racism – in this article. I am a white person, so naturally I do not have first-hand experiences of discrimination and cultural appropriation. With all that in mind, I still think this is an important topic to discuss and I welcome feedback, both positive and critical.
Furthermore, I use the term "Native American" in this article. Where it's relevant, I've referred to a specific tribe. I know terminology is a sensitive issue but I'm a Brit, so, again, comment if you have more expertise in this area.
There are a few central issues I want to discuss in this post. Firstly, I want to reflect on the racism inherent in the history of cryptozoology. Secondly: for quite some time, I've taken issue with how and why we choose to apply the label "cryptid". The dictionary definition makes it seem simple, but this is deceptive. Then finally, I'd like to broaden out from cryptozoology and look at race issues in paranormal encounters generally.
This is not an easy or fun post to write, but it's something I've considered for a long while and I think it's a topic worth delving into.
It's an unfortunate fact that racism dug its ugly claws into the field of cryptozoology early on and it has been hanging on ever since. An important part of cryptozoological investigation is figuring out how and why a cryptid might have evolved. We ask ourselves: where did it come from? Is it related to any known animals? Analysis of this type is crucial, for obvious reasons, but in the late 19th and early 20th century, it played a role in the deeply disturbing rise of so-called "scientific racism". Scientific racism has been an unfortunate aspect of our society's advances since the 1600s, with some of history's best-known thinkers, Voltaire among them, believing that people of different races evolved from separate origins. In the 1920s, this idea of distinct origins, called "polygeny" or "polygenism", made its way into the academic movement that would later become cryptozoology.
The herald of this worrying development was the De Loys' Ape, now widely regarded as a hoax. Swiss geologist François de Loys "discovered" (I use this term very loosely) a creature at the Colombia-Venezuela border in 1920. It was larger than the average spider monkey and had no tail. After shooting it, de Loys and co. propped the creature up on a crate, photographed it and skinned it. He told no-one about the encounter until 1929 when his friend, anthropologist George Montandon, found the photograph in his files. Montandon took a great deal of interest in the case, largely because it provided a platform for his theories about polygeny/polygenism: this unknown creature was a suitable origin point for the indigenous people of South America. Loren Coleman, a prominent American cryptozoologist, stated in a 2009 article on Cryptomundo: "George Montandon, who was the first initial force behind de Loys' ape, was actually a racist and anti-semetic [sic], who also thought that "Whites" derived from Cro-Magnon man, "Blacks" from gorillas, and "Orientals" from orangs and gibbons."
The modern scientific community has rejected both De Loys' Ape – generally considered to be a white-bellied spider monkey – and the idea of polygeny. But that underlying racist ideology has never truly gone away. The article I cited earlier from Loren Coleman was written because he had received an email from a man who wanted to posit a "theory" (damn, am I using some terms loosely today!) about Bigfoot: "Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, Orangutan man and the Skunk Ape… are half man and half Gorilla and half man and half Orangutan. …The Gorilla has black hair and skin. When those men bred out the hair the Black man's skin remained black… The creature that Roger Patterson filmed in 1967 was half man and half Gorilla." Coleman was understandably shocked not only by the racist content of the email but the absolute seriousness with which it had been written. He concluded the article by writing: "Let us look closely at what we do in cryptozoology, and be careful, whether it develops in the talk of Bigfoot being "primitive Indians" or the supposed origin theories regarding Yetis. Let us look deeply at the biases influencing such thoughts and conjectures."
It's that final point about looking deeply at our biases which I want to pick up on now. For a while, I've been thinking about the relationship we have to the mythology which is indigenous to the land we come from. It doesn't present much of an issue for me as an English woman (ancient British mythology and our modern folklore are in no way off-limits to me) but it's a different story for white Americans engaging with Native American folklore, mythology and religion – or religions, to put it more accurately. Whether it's appropriate or not, they are engaging with those traditions: I've seen a lot of paranormal and unexplained encounters online in recent years which focus on malevolent entities from Native American mythology, particularly the Skinwalker (part of the Navajo/Diné belief system) and the Wendigo (from the belief system of several Algonquian tribes). There is nothing wrong with this, but 9 times out of 10 the person who experienced the encounter is white (and occasionally not even a white American – explain to me how some guy in Yorkshire is seeing a creature from Native American folklore in his back garden). There's even a whole subreddit, r/skinwalkers, devoted to incidents.
That's not to say this trend is powering on with no criticism whatsoever: Indian Country Today published a report last year covering the widespread critical response of the Navajo/Diné people towards an episode of Ghost Adventures which was filmed at Skinwalker Canyon. The Ghost Adventures crew had come to "investigate" stories about supernatural goings-on at the canyon and claimed to have been invited onto the Navajo Nation. "Misinformed", "exploitative", "ridiculous" and "appropriative" were all adjectives applied by Navajo critics to the content of the episode. Ghost Adventures is just one of a slew of paranormal documentaries which have overstepped the line in this field. The series Lost Tapes has not one but two episodes dealing with Native American mythology, one with the Skinwalker and the other with the Wendigo. If you haven't seen Lost Tapes, the basic format of each episode is a fictional encounter with a supernatural creature, based upon real anecdotes and eyewitness accounts. Who are the people being attacked by these creatures in both Lost Tapes stories? White people. I'm not suggesting we should exclude mythological creatures from cryptozoological investigation; I'm just saying we should do so sensitively and with the consent and approval of the people to whom that mythology belongs. Bigfoot is a cryptid with its roots in a number of First Nations mythologies, including that of the Nlaka'pamux people, the Sts'ailes people and several other tribes in British Columbia. This is something which is rarely acknowledged, so I think a good step would be to start listening to criticism from Native Americans and First Nations people when they take issue with how their tribe and their ancestral knowledge are being represented. Ghost Adventures did not pay attention to criticism and nor did Lost Tapes, which is what made their depictions so insensitive, problematic and, to an extent, offensive.
By coincidence, while I was in the process of writing this article, one of my favourite YouTubers Caitlin Doughty posted a video of her visit to the "Apache Death Cave" in Arizona. She made some really interesting points regarding the concept in American popular culture of Native American "curses". The history of the Apache Death Cave, being the site of a massacre of Apache villagers, was exploited by white settlers as a tourist attraction from the 1920s until well into the 1970s. Doughty states that the American fixation on "Indian burial grounds" and "Indian curses" is born of "guilt, obsession and avoidance" and this stereotyping is actively harmful to Native Americans. A 2015 article from Atlas Obscura (which you can read here) explains the trope of the "Indian burial ground" thus: "The idea that one could disrespect American Indians, that theirs was a history on which we had trampled, was, embarrassingly but truthfully, sort of new to much of the American public in the 1970s." From horror movies to real-life paranormal encounters in the US, the historically inaccurate idea of the "Indian burial ground" is pervasive and indicative of mainstream white America's inability to come to terms with its bloody past.
If we work to eradicate racism from our research (professional and amateur), our fieldwork and our academic community, cryptozoology can be a real force for good. In a 1993 article for The Scientist, Paul McCarthy interviewed a number of cryptozoologists, one of whom was physical anthropologist Frank Poirier: "Poirier has done fieldwork in Africa and Asia and has found reports of animals by indigenous peoples to be of great value in his conventional research. He feels that the dismissal of indigenous reports of undescribed animals "is nothing other than racism–you know, comments like 'What would this native know?'" He points out that when gorillas were first reported in Africa, Europeans "just totally dismissed those reports." And this keeps him looking." I believe we need more of that attitude. Cryptozoology is all about keeping a platform available for these stories and anecdotes, and treating people's eyewitness testimonies with respect.
Loren Coleman put it succinctly and perfectly in his Cryptomundo article: "There's no place in cryptozoology, hominology, and Bigfoot studies for racism."
Further Reading and Information
Loren Coleman, Racism in Cryptozoology (Cryptomundo)
Mark Baard, America Goes Cryptozoology Crazy (Wired) – Loren Coleman argues that mainstream zoology's dismissal of global cryptid reports as local superstition is "a form of racism".
Darren Naish, De Loys' Ape and what to do with it (Scientific American)
Morgan-Is-Mothman, Something that's been on my mind for a while… (Blog post about racism in the cryptozoology community, Tumblr)
Vincent Schilling, Many Outraged at Ghost Adventures' Navajo "Skinwalker" Episode (Indian Country Today)
Caitlin Doughty/Ask A Mortician, I Visit the "Apache Death Cave"
Dan Nosowitz, Why Every Horror Film of the 1980s Was Built On "Indian Burial Grounds" (Atlas Obscura)
TV Tropes, Indian Burial Ground
Colin Dickey, The Suburban Horror of the Indian Burial Ground (New Republic)
April 17, 2018 by Jude and the Obscure	1 Comment
Lunar Files #4: The Beast of Bray Road
This is the fourth installment of The Lunar Files, a series of articles based upon my research of werewolf (or wolf-like creature) cases.
The woods around the city of Elkhorn, like those throughout much of Wisconsin, are dense and teeming with wildlife. But since 1936, eyewitnesses have been reporting something unexpected and inexplicable out there in the rural Midwest. The creature has been spotted sprinting across roads and darting into the forest and most witnesses only get a split-second glance at it before it vanishes.
The story of the Beast of Bray Road became a matter of public interest in the early 1990s. Journalist Linda Godfrey published an article for the local newspaper in Delavan, Wisconsin, on 29th December 1991. She believed it – the tale of an unknown canid kneeling by the side of the road – to be "sort of a throwaway story for a slow news week" and initially thought little of it. Upon releasing the article, she began to receive hundreds of messages, full of strange accounts about wolfmen and canids which stood on two legs. You can see Godfrey's original sketches here and here (I want to avoid posting them here for copyright purposes – they are Godfrey's intellectual property, after all). She has gone on to write over 16 books about unexplained encounters and, although the peak of the sightings was between 1990 and 1992, the Beast of Bray Road has remained a prominent part of local culture.
On Godfrey's blog, she suggests that what she calls "the Manwolf" is most frequently seen between 10:30pm and 5am, with most sightings occurring between August and October. This is when the cornfields are at their highest, allowing almost anything to lurk out there. The creature earned its epithet from the many sightings along Bray Road, a short stretch of rural road outside Elkhorn, although Godfrey and others believe this particular "beast" to be one of many inhabiting the Midwest and possibly the wider United States.
You can get a feel for what Bray Road is like from this video, a 5-minute tour of the route by Donna Fink:
Even in daylight, the road seems isolated and eerie, sparsely lined with farmhouses. It's not hard to see why a creature aiming to stay hidden would select such a spot to settle down. According to the sightings, the Beast of Bray Road appears to live off roadkill, small animals and whatever it can find in people's backyards. It has never harmed anyone – in fact, the beast does its best to avoid contact with humans – but its size makes it a formidable sight.
Although we are no closer to understanding what kind of beast makes its home near Bray Road, public interest has not died down. Just last month, I saw a Facebook post by the National Cryptid Society about a strange sighting of a wolf walking on its hind legs on Townline Road, Elkhorn: "A wolf that "ran across the street almost like a man." That's what Danny Morgan said was the "craziest thing I've ever seen" in an e-mail to WTMJ sister station TODAY'S TMJ4." Wolves may walk on their hind legs if they have sustained significant injuries to their front legs, but the photo included with the article is bizarre. Lon Strickler, a spokesperson for Phantoms and Monsters, elaborated with further details from the witness: "He noticed the wolf in the cornfield… His camera was handy, because he had never seen a wolf in the wild. He slowed… and when the wolf approached the road it stood up on 2 legs and walked quickly across the road. He said it walked just like any human would… [it] didn't stumble or look awkward. The wolf was also swinging its front legs, like a human walking." Take a look at the original post here and at a full analysis by the National Cryptid Society here. Hoax or not, the interest in this case demonstrates that Dogman or Wolfman sightings are still a hot topic in the Midwest.
Let me conclude by saying I have no evidence to prove or disprove the existence of the Beast of Bray Road, or, for that matter, the existence of any of the creatures I write about in this series. But it's a story I've casually followed for a few years and I look forward to reading about new sightings and studying the latest pieces of photographic evidence.
No-one ever knows quite what they'll see when they're driving along Bray Road at night.
Real Wolfmen, Beast of Bray Road, Werewolves, Dogmen and Other Upright Canids, Linda Godfrey's Blog
The Bray Road Beast, Prairie Ghosts
The Cryptid Zoo: Beast of Bray Road, newanimal.org
Monster Quest: Beast of Bray Road – documentary, which includes interviews with eyewitnesses and Linda Godfrey herself.
Lost Tapes: Beast of Bray Road – dramatisation of events. Not a documentary, but it includes short interviews with Linda Godfrey, cryptozoologist Loren Coleman and author Rosemary Ellen Guiley.
February 3, 2018 by Jude and the Obscure	4 Comments
The Hidden Files #2: Bigfoot
This is the second installment of The Hidden Files, a series of articles based upon my research of cryptids.
Bigfoot is, undoubtedly, the most famous cryptid in Western culture. It is an iconic and instantly recognisable legendary figure – a primate measuring more than 7 feet and making its home in the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest.
But how did Bigfoot make its way into the popular imagination? Why do we pore over every blurry photograph and shaky piece of footage?
In the 1920s, the accounts of J.W. Burns were compiled and published. These detailed his interviews with the indigenous people of Chehalis, British Columbia, and recorded their belief in giant "wild men". Burns used the term sásq'ets to describe this race of hairy hominids, a word he borrowed from the Halkomelem language. Sásq'ets would later be Anglicised and become Sasquatch, a synonym of Bigfoot still used today. For many white Canadians and Americans, Burns' compilation was their first brush with Bigfoot.* "Wild men" commonly feature in Native American and First Nations mythology, and the white settlers who liaised with indigenous North Americans often found that the tribes had very clear ideas of where "Bigfoot territory" was – whether that was in the mountains or in a certain section of the forest.
According to Doubtful News, there were 3,313 sightings of Bigfoot between 1921 and 2013. This data was compiled by Josh Stevens, a PhD candidate, into an infographic which you can see here. The sightings span America, with a particular density of sightings along the West coast. However, the most famous piece of Bigfoot evidence is probably the Patterson-Gimlin film. Even if you don't recognise the names, you'll likely recognise this iconic still from the footage:
Frame 352, Patterson-Gimlin film (1967)
For many people, this is the image that springs to mind when you think of Bigfoot. Filmed in 1967 in Humboldt County, California, by Roger Patterson and his friend Bob Gimlin, the footage is alleged to show a female Bigfoot. Since it was released to the public, the film has been stabilised and analysed. Despite extensive investigation, the Patterson-Gimlin film has never been definitively proven to be a hoax, unlike other Bigfoot "evidence".
Although no Bigfoot specimens, living or dead, have ever been found, sightings persist and the numbers keep growing. The towns and counties said to harbour Bigfoot populations encourage this. In Skamania County, Washington, it has been illegal to kill a Bigfoot since 1984. To do so would incur a $1,000 fine or a prison sentence of up to a year. Although the Skamania authorities neither confirm nor deny the existence of the creature, they believe the law promotes other types of conservation via public awareness. Furthermore, the town of Willow Creek in Humboldt County – on the border of the Six Rivers Forest, where the Patterson-Gimlin footage was filmed – has built a roaring tourist trade with more than a little help from Bigfoot. The town is known as "the Bigfoot capital of the world" – it is home to a Bigfoot museum and even a Bigfoot restaurant. If you wanted to be cynical, you could argue that this is obviously big (pun fully intended) business, but it's also a testament to Bigfoot's legacy. The creature has become part of the fabric of American society. Bigfoot is as All-American as any cryptid could be.
On a personal level, I think Bigfoot is the most likely of all recorded cryptids to exist. Maybe that's the result of growing up in the UK rather than within the culture that fostered the Bigfoot mythos. However, the standard Bigfoot description – that of a large primate – seems plausible to me, a layman (or laywoman, as it happens).
*Note: we could have a much longer discussion about how Native and indigenous mythology is appropriated, misinterpreted and downright falsified by some cryptid enthusiasts, but I'll save that for another article. The current Bigfoot "mythos" (for want of a better word) owes a lot to indigenous tribes who are rarely credited for much of the information.
The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organisation, founded in 1995
You Can't Kill Bigfoot In Washington, Liz Langley for National Geographic
The Evidence For Bigfoot, Animal Planet
If Bigfoot Were Real, Darren Naish for Scientific American
T.A. Wilson Bigfoot Research (data analysis)
September 13, 2017 by Jude and the Obscure	1 Comment
Haunted Files #1: The Bell Witch
This is the first installment of The Haunted Files, a series of articles based upon my research of alleged ghosts and hauntings.
It was during a blistering Tennessee summer in 1817 that John Bell first witnessed the unusual phenomena which would plague his household for the next four years. Outside his home, an apparition of a dog with a rabbit's head materialised. Bell took his shotgun and fired at the creature, but it disappeared.
The Bell homestead, Authenticated History of the Bell witch (1894)
So begins the legend of the Bell Witch, a folktale native to the town of Adams in Robertson County, TN. First told in its entirety in the book Authenticated History of the Bell Witch (1894) by Martin Van Buren Ingram, it is the strange tale of how the Bell family fell victim to a powerful entity which invaded their home and farm. It bore many characteristics of a poltergeist – the witch allegedly knocked on walls and pulled sheets off beds, even going so far as to pull hair, scratch skin and stick pins in its human cohabitants. There was particular emphasis on John's daughter Betsy. The witch taunted her and her fiance so relentlessly that Betsy eventually broke off her engagement. According to some accounts, the entity was especially violent towards her; in others, the witch seemed to be fond of the young woman and wanted to protect her. The witch's behaviour was at the extreme ends of the spectrum. She could be kind, calling John Bell's wife Lucy "the most perfect woman to walk the earth", but she also expressed a desire to kill John, who she referred to as "Old Jack". In 1820, she succeeded. John Bell passed into a coma, having consumed an unidentified liquid which the family found in a vial beneath his bed. His son fed a little to the cat, which died instantly, and then threw it onto the fire where it burst into bright blue flames. The witch declared that she had given John "a big dose" of it and "fixed him".
In Ingram's account, the poltergeist claims to be "Old Kate Batts" and Kate seems to be the title that stuck, as the entity appeared to respond positively to being referred to by that name. According to the Guidebook for Tennessee (1933), Kate Batts was a deceased neighbour of John Bell who felt he had cheated her out of land. The witch would converse articulately and often included details only the person asking would have known. One visitor, John Johnston, asked the ghost to tell him what his Dutch grandmother would say to her slaves if she thought they had done something wrong. The witch replied in his grandmother's accent: "Hut tut, what has happened here?", then went on to imitate his mother and father in England. She is also reported to have once recited verbatim a sermon being delivered thirteen miles away.
In 1821, Kate left the Bell homestead, but vowed to return in seven years' time. As promised, she did resurface briefly in 1828, but, after the family ignored her, she appeared to vanish entirely.
The Bell witch has inspired many adaptations, most notably The Blair Witch Project (1999). Although not a direct retelling of the legend, The Blair Witch Project features its own fictional myth which was explored in a mockumentary Curse of the Blair Witch. Many academics have questioned whether the tale of the Bell witch, as recounted by Ingram, truly reflected the beliefs of Robertson County's residents in the nineteenth century or whether it too was largely historical fiction. Fiction or not, the legend continues to evoke fear today.
In 1934, Charles Bailey Bell, John's grandson, published an account of his family's experiences. He reported a prophecy given by the witch that she would return in 1935. In 1937, the new owner of the Bell farm began to hear something rubbing against the walls of the house and faint music. Speaking in 1977, Bonnie Haneline stated that she used to explore the caves on the property as a child, with the permission of the owners. She recalled one occasion in 1944 when she went down alone with a lantern. The lantern was blown out, so she lit it again. After she crawled further, the lantern was extinguished once more and, terrified, she fled. Police later found two fugitives concealed in the cave, and Haneline credited the witch with saving her life by keeping her away from the criminals.
The entrance to the cave, (c) The Historic Bell Witch Cave Incorporated, 2010
The strangest tale by far was first reported in The Clarion-Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper, in 1987. The owner of a nearby gas station, H.C. Sanders, ran out of petrol at night, not far from the entrance to the Bell witch cave. As he started walking back to town, he saw a rabbit emerge from the forest. He walked faster, but the rabbit managed to keep pace. After a mile, he sat down on a log and the rabbit seated itself beside him, saying: "Hell of a race we had there, wasn't it?"
Regardless of the truth behind the unexplained phenomena, the Bell witch legend is widely held to be "America's Greatest Ghost Story", and for good reason.
For more on the Bell witch:
The Bell Witch Story, Pat Fitzhugh
John Bell Family Genealogy, Pat Fitzhugh
The Bell Witch Cave: Official Website
The H.C. Sanders story was published in Volume 151 of The Clarion-Ledger on 27th October 1987, in an article entitled "Thar's gold in them thar witch's chills" by John Maines.
Lunar Files #2: The Cannock Chase Werewolf
This is the second installment of The Lunar Files, a series of articles based upon my research of werewolf (or wolf-like creature) cases.
Cannock Chase is an area of dense woodland and countryside in Staffordshire, England. A designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it encompasses 26 square miles of land.
I've visited on several occasions and I can testify to its beauty. However, if local folklore is to be believed, Cannock Chase is home to more than just flora and fauna.
Stories of a werewolf lurking in the vast expanse of forest have circulated since at least the 1970s. In 1975, a group of paranormal investigators witnessed a "snarling beast" rearing up on its hind legs before heading into the bushes out of sight. According to a supernatural survey, the Fringe Weird report, the Chase has been the setting for 20 encounters with an unknown wolf-like creature.
Over three decades later, the Stafford Post published an article in April 2007 with the input of the West Midlands Ghost Club. WM Ghost Club stated that they had received dozens of calls from people with strange stories and spooky sightings of the beast. An early report was that of a local postman, who saw what he believed to be a werewolf near the German War Cemetery on the site. At first, he assumed it was a large dog, but as he got closer, it stood up on its hind legs and fled. A second report from a scout master detailed a similar incident. He also witnessed some sort of canid prowling near the bushes; he too thought it was a peculiarly big dog. When he got into his car and slammed the door, the creature rose to its full height on two legs and ran into the trees: "It just looked like a huge dog… it must have been about six to seven feet tall. I know it sounds absolutely mad, but I know what I saw."
According to the Stoke Sentinel, in June 2006, a lupine creature was seen dodging traffic on the M6, a main motorway here in England. More chilling is a tale related by the unnamed journalist: a 17-year-old in Eccleshall allegedly sold his soul to the Devil via a ouija board in order to gain the ability to transform into a werewolf. He later committed suicide by stabbing himself to death. This was in 1975, coinciding with the first werewolf sighting. Unfortunately, the reporter did not disclose a source.
Among the reports from residents in the vicinity of Cannock Chase, the war cemetery is a recurring location of sightings, leading some investigators to suggest a supernatural connection. On the other hand, there are multiple proponents of an alternative theory, based on the geography of the Chase and past cases of animal mutilations, that the so-called werewolves are a subterranean species emerging from the old and disused mines in the area and surviving by hunting deer and small wildlife.
Whatever you believe about the alleged werewolf of Cannock Chase, you might join me in vowing not to go wandering through the woods alone, under a full moon.
Do Werewolves Roam The Woods of England?, Nick Redfern
Odd Staffordshire, BBC
20 sightings of a werewolf at Cannock Chase, Stoke Sentinel
Paranormal investigator takes on the Werewolf of Cannock Chase, Stoke Sentinel
March 22, 2017 by Jude and the Obscure	1 Comment
Lunar Files #1: The Michigan Dogman
This is the first installment of The Lunar Files, a series of articles based upon my research of reported werewolf (or wolf-like creature) cases.
Wexford County in Northern Michigan has a population of around 35,000 people, but it seems that one inhabitant – the focus of a legend which dates back at least 130 years – is more sinister than you might expect. Said to tower at seven feet tall, the creature is a terrifying combination of man and canine. It has the head and claws of a canid but the torso of a man. It gazes upon its prey through amber eyes and howls a piercing human scream. According to the myth, which is said by some to date back to early Odawa settlements in the Manistee area, the Dogman is a creature of habit that hunts in ten year cycles.
The first recorded Dogman sighting took place in 1887, when lumberjacks working in rural Wexford County caught sight of a bizarre creature with the body of a man and the head of a dog. In the following decades, more and more witnesses reported seeing something unnatural out in the woods along the Manistee River. In 1938, in the township of Paris, a young man called Robert Fortney was attacked by five wild dogs while fishing. The horrific part of his testimony was that one of the dogs stood up on two legs to maul him. The creature – or creatures – was seen by witnesses throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
It is easy to get caught up and carried away with these sinister sightings, but it's worth noting that much of the publicity and continued media interest the Dogman receives today should be attributed to The Legend, a song recorded by local DJ Steve Cook of WTCM Radio in 1987 – the centenary of that first account. It was intended as an April Fools' prank, a treat for his loyal listeners, and he has stated that the beast in the song "was kind of an amalgamation of all these creatures I'd heard as a kid and heard stories about." However, what began as a joke became a sensation. The radio station received dozens of calls from people claiming to have encountered a creature like the one described in the song. It was then that Cook decided to investigate further and realised just how far back into history the stories went.
In 2007, a film, widely referred to as The Gable Film, surfaced. Upon first viewing, it appears to be a home movie, featuring clips of a man chopping wood, a dog running in the woods and a child playing. However, the final 20 seconds show a strange lumbering creature on all fours approach the cameraman. The beast appears to collide with the cameraman and a flash of teeth is shown, then the video cuts out.
The film was eventually discovered to be a hoax. On a TV series called Monster Quest, Steve Cook explained how the film was made, adding that the supposed creature was actually an actor in a Ghillie suit.
In a way, the popular image of the Michigan Dogman as it exists today belongs to Steve Cook. Those reports and accounts, spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, might never have been connected without him. He considers himself a sceptic, because he's seen the legend evolve – people have taken the tale inherent in the song and, perhaps, blown it out of proportion. Maybe the fame of the song has caused some bias among alleged witnesses.
Then again, Cook accepts that the legend is "an avenue" for people to explain sightings that they might not otherwise understand. There is still a lingering sense of fear in interviews with witnesses, as seen on documentaries like Monsters and Mysteries in America. The terror that people felt – whether or not they truly faced the Dogman – makes the final line of The Legend especially eerie. What if there is some truth behind Steve Cook's simple tune about a local myth?
And somewhere in the northwoods darkness a creature walks upright
And the best advice you may ever get …
Is don't go out at night.
For more about the Dogman:
Wag the Dogman, Skeptoid
Michigan Monsters: Dogman continues to howl across state, WWMT
The Michigan Dogman: Unresolved Mysteries, Reddit
The Legend of the Michigan Dogman, Absolute Michigan
March 20, 2017 by Jude and the Obscure	Leave a comment


text:
Armand Tanzarian
Newly Launched BTMs: Saudi Arabia and Indonesia Get Their First Machines
Cointelegraph has partnered with Coin ATM Radar, which regularly updates a helpful and navigable Bitcoin ATM map, to get the most comprehensive data about new BTMs as they go online.
According to Coin ATM Radar's data as of November 3, there are 290 live BTMs around the world. Below are a few that were installed and began operations last week, which include new machines in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, plus four new Bitcoin ATMs in the United States.
Asia / Middle East
Saudi Arabia's first BTM is a one-way Lamassu at Ticket Computers in Jubail. The operator charges fees between 10 and 15%, and has set buy limits of US$500–600, though the accepted currencies are only Saudi Arabian Riyals, Kuwaiti Dinars and Bahraini Dinars.
The Bali Bitcoin Center in Kuta installed Indonesia's first BTM on Thursday, a one-way Lamassu machine. It charges a 3% commission, and transactions are limited to 1 BTC. The Bali Bitcoin Meetup group invites anyone in the area to stop by on Wednesday nights to check it out.
On October 29, exactly a year after the first ever BTM was installed in Vancouver, Bitcoin Spain held a launch party to commemorate the first two-way BTM in Madrid, a Robocoin machine, that was actually installed in early October at the One Shot Recoletos 04 Hotel.
Speaking of Waves Coffee House, the Richmond, British Columbia, shop got its own two-way Robocoin ATM a year to the date after the first was installed in downtown Vancouver. The Richmond BTM charges 4% for buys and 6% for sells via Cointrader.com, and the limit is 8,000 CAD.
In Denver, Amagi Metals announced the installation of the city's second BTM, a two-way BitAccess machine operated by XBTeller.
In Roseville, California, at the Westfield Galleria mall, Coinucopia installed a one-way Lamassu machine on the second floor. Fees are currently set at 2%, and transactions are limited to US$1,000.
Manchester, New Hampshire, installed the state's first BTM on Halloween, a one-way Skyhook machine at Murphy's Taproom, operated by PYC Bitcoin.
In Miami, tech consultancy Escobar Solutions installed a one-way Skyhook BTM in the company's offices. They set the fees at just 1%, and transactions have a cap of US$9,000.
Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones:
Newly Launched BTMs: The US Gets 7 New Machines
New BTMs: A Bitcoin Embassy, a German Meetup and a Midwestern Arcade Bar
New Bitcoin ATMs: SF gets first BTM as Argentina, Germany and Italy get more locations
#Lamassu
#btm


Suicide Silence has launched a benefit for Mitch Lucker's daughter.
Suicide Silence has launched a "memorial fund donation" drive in the wake of frontman Mitch Lucker's death. Proceeds will benefit the education of Lucker's daughter, Kenadee.


The 2012 kia sportage electric vehicle qualifies for a federal tax credit of up to $7,500, effectively reducing the net base price.
The first Kia Sportage was a rugged, but not terribly reliable, compact SUV with a body-on-frame chassis that made it a good low-cost alternative to the Jeep Wrangler. But, while the Jeep Wrangler has grown larger and less fuel-efficient, the 2012 Kia Sportage SUV has transformed into something altogether different. The 2012 Kia Sportage is now a clever compact SUV with a car-like ride, great fuel economy and an impressive level of overall quality and reliability. No longer a rugged off-road vehicle, the 2012 Kia Sportage compact SUV now competes with the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, Chevy Equinox and Ford Escape. Beyond its head-turning styling, feature-laden standard-equipment list and available turbocharged engine, the 2012 Kia Sportage has one of the best standard warranties in the business, covering the powertrain for 10-years/100,000-miles.
Not everyone will be drawn to the 2012 Kia Sportage SUV's polarizing looks. Those looking for a more traditional compact SUV with a large cargo bay should look to the Honda CR-V, Subaru Forster or Toyota RAV4.
The 2012 Kia Sportage SUV has a slight increase in fuel economy for both the 2.4-liter and 2.0-liter turbocharged engines. All models receive improved rear suspension dampers and more sound insulation, while LX trims have new 17-inch wheels and low-rolling-resistance tires. EX trims with cloth seats get a new anti-bacterial, anti-soil fabric that also repels static build-up.
The 2012 Kia Sportage's taut suspension and powerful engine choices put the "sport" in Sport Utility Vehicle. Compared with its nearest competitors, the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4, the 2012 Kia Sportage SUV rides a bit stiffer, but delivers better cornering and recovery from sharp dips in the road. The nicely-weighted steering feels good in your hands and delivers predictable response to rapid inputs and quick adjustments. The 2.4-liter and 2.0-liter 4-cylinder engines both offer ample power in any driving situation, with our favorite being the turbocharged version in the Sportage SX. The 2.4-liter is more than capable in climbing steep hills and handling quick passing maneuvers, but the turbocharged 2.0-liter adds a new level of driving fun. The 2.0-liter turbo also feature gasoline direct injection technology that helps it attain good fuel economy without sacrificing power.
More sun equates to more fun and this dual-section sunroof lets the rear-seat occupants stare at the wonders above.
Found in the 2012 Kia Sportage SX, the 260-hp 2.0-liter turbocharged engine makes the car surprisingly quick and a lot more fun to drive.
The edgy exterior design of the 2012 Kia Sportage SUV carries over into the interior with a wildly (some say over-done) futuristic-looking dash, stylish cloth or leather seating and plenty of features to keep techno-savvy drivers happy. Functionally, there is much to like inside the 2012 Kia Sportage SUV, with a big, roomy rear seat that can be folded flat to make a modestly-roomy 54.6 cubic-foot cargo hold. While useful, the Sportage's cargo bay is not quite as large as those in the Honda CR-V or Toyota RAV4, both of which offer more than 70 cubic feet of cargo space. Cloth seating surfaces are standard and feature a number of colors and patterns to help owners better customize the Sportage. EX trims feature special anti-bacterial cloth that helps eliminate odors and stains that can accumulate over time. We like a number of the 2012 Kia Sportage's interior options, but the panoramic sunroof's manual sunshades don't strike us as very useful and should be power-operated.
The 2012 Kia Sportage SUV's sleek design includes sharp lines, narrow side glass and Kia's signature "tab" front grille. Penned by Kia's Chief Design Officer, Peter Schreyer (the same man responsible for the Audi TT) the 2012 Kia Sportage SUV is a huge departure from previous designs, and even leaves most of its competition looking rather outdated. The clever interplay between the dark lines surrounding the grille, lower air ducts, and painted wheel inserts give the Sportage a keenly sinister appearance. The Sportage's high beltline and big wheel and tire combo make it look a bit like a hopped-up VW GTI. Don't be fooled by the 2012 Kia Sportage's sporty appearance, however, as its available all-wheel drive (AWD) and nearly seven inches of ground clearance make it every bit a compact SUV.
The 2012 Kia Sportage SUV is offered in four front-wheel-drive trim levels: Base, LX, EX and SX, with AWD available on all but the Base. Standard equipment across all trim levels includes air conditioning, power accessories, Bluetooth, steering-wheel-mounted audio controls, a rear under-floor storage compartment and a satellite-radio-equipped audio system with four speakers. Some notable standard features that come with the EX and SX trims include Kia's UVO infotainment system, back-up warning system, push-button start, a cooling glovebox and auto-climate control.
All of the options available for the 2012 Kia Sportage come in the form of packages. Some noteworthy highlights of the Sportage option packages include a navigation system, heated front seats, a cooled driver's seat, a panoramic sunroof and a premium audio system with a subwoofer.
The 2012 Kia Sportage SUV's new 2.4-liter engine is robust and fuel-efficient and should suffice for most drivers' needs. Costing a bit more is the turbocharged 2.0-liter, which provides V6-like power and 4-cylinder fuel economy. Both engines are mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission, which delivers impressive fuel-economy numbers and can be shifted manually. A 6-speed manual transmission is available, but only on the base trim level.
The 2012 Kia Sportage SUV comes with a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) starting around $19,000. Stepping up to the LX trim level adds about $2,300, with the EX trim coming in at just under $25,000. The turbocharged SX trim starts at around $28,000 but, when it's topped with every option, that price can creep past $32,000. A look at the Fair Purchase Price on kbb.com shows what others are paying for the Kia Sportage in your area, so be sure to check it out before you buy. As for residuals, we expect that the Kia Sportage won't hold its value as well as the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 SUVs, but it will be on par with that of the Nissan Rogue and Jeep Compass.
Roomy, Comfy and Fun to Drive.


Nhat Hai Project Technology Joint Stock Company established in 31/03/2003, previously known as Orange Informatic Communication – OIC (established in 13/10/1997). OIC NEW TECHNOLOGY is seperated from the Research and Development Sector of OIC and OIC NEW TECHNOLOGY is a stand alone company.OIC NEW TECHNOLOGY specializes in applied research, technology transfer receipt Nano; Production and Distribution of products Nano Curcumin, Nano Iron, Copper Nano, Nano Silver Nano Calcium, Titanium Dioxide Nano, Nano Silicon Dioxide, Chitosan Nano, and Nano Sensor materials. OIC NEW TECHNOLOGYwill become the first company in Vietnam specializing in producing high quality nano, starting from the production of nano products for industrial, agricultural and then proceed to the production of high-end products for nano medical services.
Area of work: Researching, transferring, receiving and applying nano technology in agricultural, environment, industry and biomedical.
Target: Sales of 1 billion dollars in 2035. Own more than 100 invention certificate about nano technology and more than 100 transferring contract. (Currently own 3 license of invention and 1 transferring contract).
Our professions: Working with all scientists in Vietnam (Mostly the top scientists that retired from Lab and University that dealing with nano technology).
Vision, Mission Values Vision: Inspired by the brilliance of nanotechnology, we deliver cutting-edge solutions that create a cleaner and brighter world for generations.
Mission: We strive to unleash the brilliance of nanotechnology to provide great opportunities and safe environments for our communities. Our success will deliver sustainable and rewarding growth for our people, customers, partners, suppliers and investors.
Our Family Values: Caring Safety is paramount for our family members and the communities. We act with openness and fairness in all our relationships, respect others and value their diversity. We hold ourselves and each other accountable for our actions & performances and have a personal sense of ownership of the business.
Collaborative: We are committed to working together. We believe in clear communication and looking at things from different points of view in order to really understand what you need. This way we can build a leading team to deliver excellence.
Passionate: We are passionate about what we do, going the extra mile to challenge the status quo, and constantly striving to improve. We are never satisfied with mediocrity and are driving the business forward. We lead innovation in nanotechnology solutions by being inquisitive and enterprising.


Trying To Be Trendy: Rutabaga Fries | Food It Yourself!
You all know by now that I am a sucker for a food trend. Well, it seems that the trend of using cauliflower as a substitute for foods you don't want to eat is totally played out. Now, the foodies in the know are using turnips and rutabagas. Yes, these humble root vegetables are now hobnobbing with hoi polloi tres chic.
They are tasty. Turnips remind me of radishes, but with the super power to withstand the heat of cooking. Rutabagas have this sweet/bitter thing that makes them a sophisticated choice among cold weather vegetables.
They are inexpensive. Like many root vegetables, turnips and rutabagas are currently in season. "In season" and "affordable" go hand-in-hand in DIYet land.
Let's be honest- there are no bad vegetables. A a nation, we should all eat more veggies. Make America great again- eat some veggies!
Here is how I made some delicious rutabaga "fries" recently.
Your first priority is to get rid of the wax coating and skin. All it takes is a good vegetable peeler.
Next, break that globe down. Using a sharp knife, slice the round root into "fry" sized bits. Be careful! I wore my cut proof gloves.
Toss the root slices with a couple tablespoons of oil. I used canola. You can season as you like. I used Old Bay seasoning. Go ahead and play around though. I imagine garam masala, Chinese five spice powder, Creole seasoning, or even (don't judge me) pumpkin pie spice would be fun to play with.
Spread the seasoned strips in a single layer on baking sheets and bake at 425F for 15-25 minutes (depending on thickness).
They were delicious, and had a texture very close to a good fried potato. Why does Old Bay go so well with rutabaga? I have no clue, but it does. Mr. Food It Yourself dipped his in ketchup, I ate mine au natural. Mr. Food It Yourself and I enjoyed them as a side dish to a roasted pork loin, along with some pan seared Brussels sprouts.
I love trying food trends. These rutabaga fries are definitely going to appear regular in my DIYet this winter. What trendy foods have you tried lately? Did they live up to the hype? Give us all the details in the comments section!