On this episode of Build, host Maggie Crowley dives deep into conversation design with Google's Head of Conversation Design Outreach, Cathy Pearl.
So what is conversation design exactly? Think teaching computers to communicate like humans (not robots) across voice interfaces and via typing, swiping and tapping. Cathy shares why now is the time to invest in conversation design and where and how to get started. Tune in for more from Maggie and Cathy.
Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Maggie and Cathy on Twitter @maggiecrowley @cpearl42.
3:23 – What is conversation design?
10:40 – How should people use conversation design?
16:13 – What does the future look like?
Maggie Crowley: So we're back. Welcome to Build. This is Maggie. Today I'm really excited selfishly because I have Cathy Pearl. The Head of Conversation Design Outreach at Google. Cathy has a deep background in user experience. She was even a software engineer at NASA and I'm super excited to get her take on the emerging space of Conversation Design as someone who works in that space as well. So Cathy, welcome.
Maggie: So I just wanted to start by, take us through how you got into Conversation Design and how you figured out that that was even a career that you could have.
Cathy: Conversation Design was definitely not a thing when I was young or even when I was in college. I was very interested in computers when I was young and we got our first family computer and I learned how to program. And I was always really interested in trying to get the computer to talk back to me. In college, I majored in cognitive science, which I didn't know it at the time, but that turned out to be a great background for our Voice User Interface Designer because fundamentally, cognitive science is about studying how humans work, had psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence and all those things really play into being a good Conversation Designer. In graduate school, I majored in computer science and I took my first HCI class, Human Computer Interaction, which really opened my eyes to the idea that rather than just focusing on like what cool technology can we build and then, well, if the person has to read a 50 page manual to use it, well, so be it. It was more about, how can we create technologies that already work in a way that somebody might naturally expect?
Maggie: Smart speakers being Amazon Alexa?
Cathy: That was the first one. Right. Yeah.
Maggie: One thing that I think is really interesting is that when I think about the phone-based ones, we think about those awful airline things that you call into and you just find yourself saying operator 100 times until someone finally picks up the phone, or I always just press zero until someone actually talks to me because I feel like they're so frustrating to work with.
Cathy: Yeah. And that was absolutely true for a lot of them. That being said, there were a few that I worked on that I still feel really proud of. My favorite was one in the San Francisco Bay Area called 511 where you could call 511 to get traffic information and public transit information. And this came out before smartphones. So if you were on the road, you had no way of looking at traffic and things like that. So it was offering something that you couldn't do in another way. It was more of a value add and that's something that still gets millions of calls and I'm a very proud of.
Maggie: Right. So then things like Amazon Alexa came around and that was sort of reinvigorated your interest in this space and what we could do with it?
Maggie: Okay. So then what is Conversation Design and sort of what does that industry even really look like? I think I'm familiar with the side of making bots and making conversation flows in that manner, but when you think about Conversation Design in general, sort of what are the principles of that?
Cathy: Conversation Design, I mean, the key component is really teaching computers how to communicate like humans and not the other way around. And communication by the way, we often talk about Voice User Interfaces, but it includes typing and even includes potentially swiping and tapping because all those things are part of this back and forth turn-taking you might be having with the computer, and Conversation Design is the design practice for this. Just like at Google, we have material design, building visual technology, and just I like to think about when websites first came out and anyone could create a geocities website and have flashing construction signs and all that kind of stuff. Nowadays, if you're a company and you want to have a great website, you're going to hire a professional web designer. And just like that in this relatively new space of building Conversation Designs, people really need to invest in hiring a conversation designer or training someone to have that skillset because it really is a skill and what's happening right now is that everyone's very excited about this technology and kind of going crazy with building things, but a lot of times, you just throw a couple of developers at it, try and get something out the door and people don't use it or it's frustrating.
And often this is because of best practices with design were not followed and it becomes frustrating or unsatisfying experience for the user.
Maggie: Right. Because I think it sounds like one of those things that, because like you mentioned earlier, we all know how to talk, most people do. You think that you would be able if you sat down and you said to yourself, "Okay, I need to design this Conversation." You might not even think about it from a design perspective, you might just say, "Oh, I need to figure out what my boss going to say from our side." And then of course you should be able to do that because you're a human and you talk to other humans all the time. So how hard could it be?
Cathy: Exactly. And there's this great myth that's always been the case with designing these conversational experiences where you think, "Well, I know how to conversation, so how hard can it be?" But just the other day, I was playing a game on my Google Home, an adventure game and it's a pretty popular one. And it asked me a "yes, no" question. And I said sure. And it didn't understand me. And it surprises me that we're still encountering things like that. And again, I think it's because of this fundamental issue where design, as in many cases is often brushed past, and like, "Oh, we'll fix the words later", which Conversation Design isn't just about sprinkling in some words, it's about the whole flow and construction and how do we build it so that people know what to say.
For example, when you think about, you were talking about human communication, we think a lot about how humans communicate when we build these things, we think about things like Grice's maxims, so Paul Grice came up with this cooperative principle. This was in the '70s, this was about human conversations, but typically in general, when I'm having a conversation with somebody, I'm trying to be cooperative. That is, I'm trying to understand what they're saying and I'm trying to speak in a way that makes sense to them. He has maxims like the maximum quantity, meaning don't say too much, don't say too little, but the thing about human conversation is that we have so many nuances that the computer doesn't have. For example, we have body language, eye gaze, pauses, and in the current technology, we have a much narrower channel of signal from the person who's speaking.
Thinking about something as simple as positive, so we're having a conversation. The pause between our turns is super short. It's like the blink of an eye, like 200 milliseconds. If I ask you a question and you pause for longer than a second, that's a signal to me. So for example, if I said, "Hey, can you give me a ride tomorrow?" And more than a second ticks by which isn't that much time. I'm like I don't think they want to give me a ride. That's the kind of signal that we can't necessarily capture and in today's current technology. So therefore, we have to be even more careful about how we guide it. For example, every time the computers turn finishes, we need to have a call to action by either giving an instruction to the user or a question. So saying, tell me your favorite color, or what's your favorite color?
And then it's really clear to the user, oh, it's my turn to talk. And one of the things I see people do all the time on Voice User Interfaces is they'll ask a question and then give some examples. So they might say, "What's your favorite color?" You can say yellow, red, or green, and that messes people up because they start to answer the question and then the computer keeps talking and they stop talking and it's this messy back and forth. So again, these are the kinds of things that a Conversation Designer thinks about and those are going to be issues that they have to worry about when creating these designs.
Maggie: Right. And I think one of the things that I've come across that I was really surprised by when I first started seeing this industry was how frustrated customers and just people in general can be when their expectations aren't properly set at the start of one of these conversations. Right? So if you don't know that you're talking to a bot or you expect that whatever it is that you're talking to works in a certain way and it doesn't, especially if there's no visual component, I'm sure it's probably maddening to try to communicate.
Cathy: Yeah. That is one of the most challenging things as well. So as you said, one of the things that's really important, whether you're doing like a text bot or a Voice Interface, is to set the stage that the expectations because if you're building an action or a chat bot or something, it will only be able to do a limited set of things and that's okay as long as you're able to communicate that to the user. So if you start with some open-ended prompt like, I'm the such and such bot, how can I help you? You're in for a world of hurt because people have no idea what they can and can't say. So you have to really set the stage and kind of outline these are the types of things that can help you with.
And another thing I always tell people is that one of the most important things for people when we're talking to one another is to feel understood and acknowledged. And so if you say, let's say you built a hotel chatbot for booking hotel rooms. And a lot of people are saying, "Well, I want to book a car." If you just say, "Well, I don't understand", that's like super frustrating to people, but you could say, "Oh sorry, I can't book cars yet. I can book hotels." People like that a lot better than just being like, you don't understand. I don't understand. If you really want to feel like you're at least being understood even if you can't have your problem solved right at that moment.
Cathy: Exactly. Yeah. I was at the gas station yesterday. This was not a chatbot, but I accidentally hit the wrong button and it wanted me to enter an amount and there was no way I could cancel or get out of it and I was so frustrated and just like you said, with chatbots, the same thing. You get into this place and you don't let the user extract themselves gracefully to move on with things.
Maggie: Right. So another question I want to ask is, I think this probably applies to lots of these sort of new shiny technologies that are coming out and everyone kind of like AI, they want to use AI, they want to put it on their website that they have it. How do you think people should use Conversation Design and where they should put conversations versus where it's not helpful?
Cathy: You bring up a really good point. I think right now in that AI is this buzzword and everyone thinks you have to have AI to have a successful Conversational system, which it's certainly something to strive for and if we want to have truly generalized chat situations, of course you'll need that. But I think some people forget that you can have very effective, important conversational systems without a lot of AI. And the way you do that is you just decide on your goals very carefully and you pick a particular domain or a particular task and you just make sure that that particular task is done really well. And one way we like to advise people is if you're thinking about should I build a conversational system or voice system for what I'm trying to do? One thing to think about is, is this something people naturally have conversations about already? Like do I call a concierge or a bank clerk or could I have a conversation about it with another person? That's probably a good fit.
Thinking about efficiency. If I do this through voice, is it actually faster than say picking up my phone and tapping on things. If it's not faster, why would people want to do it? Another thing I think people often forget about is the complexities surrounding getting to the use case. By that I mean let's say you want to help them with banking or would their car or something like that, but they have to log in somehow. You have to spend time thinking about how can we make that a seamless experience for the user because if the logging in portion is so complicated, it doesn't matter how great your action or whatever is because it'll be too hard for people to get to. So a lot of different aspects like that go into it.
Maggie: Right. So then, okay, we've figured out the right place to put this conversation or used conversations in a product and this is something we were kind of talking about before. How do you know what makes it good conversation? How do you sort of measure that? I think when we first started talking about it, way is to think, well, you reached the end, like that's a good conversation because you've got to the end of the conversation, but I think the more I learn about, the more nuanced I think this is. And so what's your take on what the characteristics of a good conversation are?
Cathy: I think that's a great question. That's not been 100% decided, but there are certainly things we can think about specifically when looking at successes and failures of Conversational systems. One of course is, did the user achieve their intended goal? And the goal is such a variety of things. It could be a one off like turn on the light, play a song. It could be a more complex back and forth about looking for a hotel room in New Orleans or something. It could even be Chitchat. That could be a goal. Like I want to have a short little pleasant conversation with the system. So truly understanding the goal and not being too vague about the goals is very important. But of course in addition, did they achieve their goal? Was the process pleasant and efficient? So maybe I booked my hotel, but boy I was pulling my hair out. That's not great.
Another thing I want to caution people is not to be fooled by number of turns. Back in the phone system world we often looked at like what was the amount of time someone's spend in the system? But number of turns does not necessarily reflect a good or a bad experience. A lot of people I think are focused on, we have to keep it as short as possible and that's the best. And that's not necessarily true. Sometimes breaking down a complicated question into two questions is actually a better experience. And what we've found is that as long as people feel like they're getting somewhere towards their goal and that the questions are not relevant or repetitive, people are happy to have longer conversations. And so again, just looking at number of turns is not necessarily the right way to go, but in terms of like really specific metrics, two things we absolutely look at are no matches and no input.
So no matches or when we get unexpected user responses, it's something we couldn't handle and it's really important to see, well, how many of those are you having and where in the conversation are those occurring? It could be because your grammar coverage isn't good enough. Like the example I gave earlier when I said, sure instead of yes, that's a very obvious one, but it could be just even thinking about how many different ways people can set an alarm. I might say set a timer for 8:00 AM tomorrow morning. I didn't even say alarm, right? But should be able to understand that. So really spending time looking at all those matches and figuring out is it grammar coverage, is the prompt confusing, is the flow confusing, all that kind of things. And similarly no inputs, which is when someone doesn't say anything. If you have a particular place where there's a lot of no inputs, you're probably asking maybe a confusing question, like maybe you're asking them about information they don't have easy access to or something like that. So it's a good place to look at.
There's also the dropout funnel. Like let's say you're building a conversational experience like a symptom checker. You expect to be 15 questions and people are dropping out often at like question eight or nine. Obviously you've got to dig in there and figure out what's going on. Why is there a dropout rate? And then retention, although again, I caution people retention. Is retention relevant to your particular thing? It could be something that someone only does once and that was a success or are you building something where you expect people to come back? And so that could be another thing to look at.
Maggie: Yeah, I think there's really interesting parallels between what you're mentioning and the way that people have started to approach onboarding flows and activation flows into products because I think there was that original hypothesis that was the faster, the shorter the better, but then similar to the conversation, if you break it down into smaller pieces and you show progress, I've seen those examples where you actually get more people through your flow because you've made it simple. They sort of get invested and they move further down that flow.
Cathy: Yeah, that makes sense.
Maggie: Yeah, so then what does the future look like as someone who's in the center of Conversation and Conversation Design? Obviously there's lots of new interfaces coming out. There's the Google Home, there's Amazon Alexa, so where are we going? What's going to be the next big thing that comes out in Conversations?
Cathy: Of course, this is just my personal speculation, but I just read this really great report that came out from AnswerLab. They did a diary study for people who have smart speakers. And one of the things they mentioned is that users as they have these digital assistance over time, they want more fun and engaging conversation. So I think we started out very utilitarian, like set a timer and play music. That's all we do and more and more things have been added, but I think as time goes on, people are going to be looking to have longer and more engaging conversations about a variety of topics and look at something like showers, which is the very popular chatbot in China and some people have 20 minute conversations with that thing. So I think that speaks to a need that we want to have a little bit more fun and engaging experiences.
Another thing I think will happen is conversations in more places. So a lot of people have smart speakers sitting in their kitchen or in their home, but I think there'll be more places where maybe you're at the grocery store or I'm at the mall and you're talking to a kiosk or the shelf to ask questions and things like that. So there'll be more places available to you to have these conversations. But as part of that, one of the technologies that I'm really interested right now as this idea of silence speech, which is where you can speak, but no sound was coming out of your mouth. You're kind of making the movements without actually vocalizing.
Cathy: There's some places like MIT Media Lab and NASA are working on this technology. Basically it uses sensors along your job onto to get the bone conduction to understand what you're saying. And it's still in early stages, but I think this will be critical for voice to become ubiquitous because a lot of us don't want to be talking out loud to our computers, we're out about it. But not even, I mean, sometimes because we feel silly, sometimes it's because it's private information like my health information, but it's also just practical if I'm in the office in a shared space and we're all talking to our computers, that's really annoying.
Maggie: So I'm just imagining the example you brought up of the grocery aisle just sort of late at night, walking down an aisle, sort of talking to a shelf and having some sort of like existential crisis.
Cathy: Exactly. So I think technologies like that will come about that make it more natural. People will be more likely to use a speech in public, things like that happen. And one more thing I'll say is I think there'll be more personalization. So for example, right now, if I asked to play the song Last Christmas, I want to know that I want the wham version and not the Carly Rae Jepsen version. It should know a few things with my permission, it should know a few things about me like that that will just make it a little even more frictionless and more enjoyable.
Maggie: Right. Awesome. Well, this has been super interesting. I really appreciate you coming on and taking some time, but before I let you go, I have a couple more questions. Just curious about over your career, you've gone from being a software engineer to being in design and now you're sort of focused on this Conversational Design Outreach. What are some lessons that you learned sort of over the arc of your career and where you are right now that you think might be helpful to people who are just getting started in product?
Cathy: Oh gosh, that is a big question. I tried to steal the secrets from everyone I've talked to you to see what I can get for myself. I think for me … Gosh, I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but at a personal level, for me, I kind of hit this crisis point in my career where I had taken some time off when my son was born and I was in my 40s and I felt that I was kind of done with my interesting career and I thought, well, no one's going to … I had worked full time and like seven years and I just thought, no one's going to hire me again. I'm not going to have an interesting career again. And I was so wrong, but I really felt like I was in that pit, I couldn't see out of it.
And I think maybe being able to recognize that nowadays, I think people's careers often go through many changes. I started out as a software engineer and I kind of after a few years realized that I was really more interested, I love programming, but I was more interested in the design side of things and realizing that that could be a career. I think what's happened for me is that a lot of times I haven't even realized what is going to be up there in the future in terms of interesting things to do and just sort of keeping an open mind and trying some things that really scared me or I thought … like writing my book, when that was happening, I just thought, I don't know, I can't do that. That's like I'm working full time at a startup and I'm a parent and there's no way I can do that. Um, but I said yes anyway. And it was hard for sure, but I got through it and again, everyone's circumstances are different and there's reasons you can't always say yes to things, but for me I'm saying yes to a bunch of stuff that kind of scared me. I ended up really being beneficial and opening doors that I didn't even know were there and resulted for me in some really nice opportunities in my career.
Maggie: Awesome. Yeah, I love that advice. I think I had a conversation with someone who's probably six months out of Undergrad today and he was asking, how do I set better goals for my career? How do I know where I should be in the next however many years? And I think what I'm hearing over and over from people is that it's really hard to plan that out. And what you have to do is be open and like you're saying, say yes and sort of just be open to new opportunities and take risks, especially when they scare you, because that's usually a good sign that it's going to challenge you and help you grow and learn.
Cathy: Yeah. And on top of that I would say, and again, totally, I know different people have different circumstances and not everyone can change jobs and things like that. But I think sometimes people and you're in a particular role or something and you think, this is where I have to be, it's like safe or whatever and maybe you're happy. I don't see another opportunity. And so sometimes being willing to maybe take the leap and try a different job, which may or may not be better than the job you have, but being willing to maybe try something because nothing is permanent these days. It's nice to experience different things that kind of help you come to realize what are the things you enjoy most about a job, and if you have the opportunity to be choosy, it's nice.
Maggie: Awesome. Well, thank you Cathy. I really appreciate you coming on this episode. Everyone who's listening, please give Cathy a shout-out in the reviews. Obviously five stars only, and thanks for coming on the show.
Cathy: Thanks so much for having me.


Other tablets in the wings may help develop the category, but iPad looks to dominate.
Recent rumors suggest Hewlett Packard may be killing its Windows 7-based tablet device slated for release later this year. Instead, HP may look to build a one-panel slate computer based on the Palm Web OS, according to a report by TechCrunch. HP, the world's largest computer manufacturer, announced on Wednesday plans to purchase Palm for $US1.2 billion.
Despite Windows 7's touch-based capabilities, HP was reportedly unhappy with how Windows performed as a tablet OS, according to TechCrunch. While HP's decision to kill the Windows 7 tablet is still rumor at this point, it's not surprising considering statements made earlier this week when HP announced the Palm acquisition. "Palm's unparalleled webOS platform will enhance HP's ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets," HP said in a statement.
One category of tablet devices that may stand the best chance to do serious battle with the iPad, at least before the end of the year anyway, is the planned slate of Google Android-based tablets from manufacturers like Dell, Notion Ink and possibly even Google itself.


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Tagged as art, border town, cities, design, liminal, Niagara Falls, studio, urban planning
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Border Town Design Studio: Growing up in Niagara Falls
There's a great Toronto-based independent design studio run by Emily Horne and Tim Maly called Border Town that I gave a guest talk in a little while ago. I also helped guide them and their participants through the Niagara Fallses, Canadian and American. I'm sure you don't write the plural of Niagara Falls like that but I don't care. I like the idea of Fallses.
They asked me to write something to coincide with their upcoming exhibit in Detroit. Here's my little essay on growing up in Niagara Falls
I wrote this in 2011 I think.
My story of growing up near the "second greatest disappointment in American married life"…Niagara Falls.
Niagara Falls.
"People live there?" Forget living. I grew up there. Like an accident at the side of the road, it's a place everyone knows about but no one can imagine staying put in.
Most border towns are known as afterthoughts; only a place because there's been so much passing through. Niagara Falls the town has Niagara Falls the spectacle. It has natural beauty and power which were famous when natural beauty and power were celebrity. Then it was the 'honeymoon capital of the world" when your honeymoon was the first time you were officially allowed to have sex. Then it became a place to be sure you got a souvenir from. It went from check list box on the 'to do' list of the very cultured and moneyed, to coital, to consumptive. To live beside all this, within the man behind the curtain is to watch us make a place up. You can see the audience see and make the show. Because all tourism and spectacle is brought to the place by the people who visit it.
Meanwhile, The water never changed.
I was the kind of kid who couldn't wait to get out of my small town. And it was both inspiring and extra cruel that the whole world came to visit where I lived. But they got to leave and no one would take me with them.
They'd ask questions like, "What time do they turn off the Falls?" and "How do you say 'Mother' in Canadian?"
It's not that the tourists were all that sophisticated. They were just from somewhere else, whether that was Ohio or Japan, and that was enough for me.
Growing up in Niagara Falls, I sometime worked in my grandparents' variety store on Clifton Hill. Clifton Hill was a steep, near the Falls themselves and lined with The Guinness Book of World Records, The Criminals Hall of Fame and Houdini's, arcades, fudge shops and Rumors, the one dance club in town.
It was also the place for Cabbage Night partying (the place to get wasted before and after pulling pranks on the night before Hallowe'en) and the place for the annual initiation night for the high schools' fraternities and sororities. They'd all drink a bunch, wear crazy outfits and have to do things like put their hands in a toilet while blindfolded and squish up what they weren't told was actually a banana.
On Clifton Hill anyone could see lights and tourists and the border. For me, there was also Richard, the guy who sold tours from a ramshackle wooden stand outside the store in which I worked. Richard was scrawny and had a mustache that was scrawny too. It went out to the sides and then tried to make it down to his chin. He wore dirty white pants, a little white Captain's hat and a hook for a hand. He'd come in to buy cigarettes and always ask me to light the first one for him.
To me, Niagara Falls is Richard, italian bakeries and a big guy in the high school hall cornering you to buy tickets to his cousin Louie's Semi. Semi-Formal dances that happened at Polish Halls or Club Italia and ended, supposedly, at one of the plethora of cheesy, out-of-the-way motels. At least that's what I heard. It was all very risky and seedy to me back then, immersed in good girl rule noticing and nerd-hiding at home with a book.
It was a grimy time and place and I felt that most when I recently returned to give a tour to the Border Town project. Everything I remembered most was gone. Where was Cyanamid, the giant chemical plant with the coloured smoke that my Uncle played softball in front of? What about the Shreddies cereal plant? Where was the resentment of small town life you used to be able to smell in the air? Where was the barber who drove a Ferrari and all the other Mafia legends? Where were all the prostitutes at the corner of Bridge and Erie streets? Where were the head shops full of bongs and black and white Rush concert baseball shirts? Where were the .38 Special tunes coming out of someone's Camaro?
And what happened to downtown? It used to have a department store and lots of shops, many run by merchants in our miniscule Jewish community. But even after the mall on the edge of town took care of most of that, there were at least strippers. Where did they go? They used to be near the train station and the downtown and the river and the border. Now there are casinos and high-rise hotels just down the river road and I guessed they've zoned it all away.
*You see it all around you / Good lovin' going bad / And usually it's too late when you / realize what you had
When I got my driver's license I would go "over the river" as we called it, but not to drink like everyone else; I went to an even shabbier Niagara Falls to buy the Sunday New York Times.
I would pore through the Arts section. And the Book Review. I wanted to be in bigger world. A more sophisticated one. And I found it. I left and lived in New York, Chicago, LA and mostly San Francisco. I was part of the scene when the web really got going. I travelled. But when I returned to Niagara I was surprised to see that I missed the grime and pollution and seedier stuff the most. Even the legends of mafia look corporate now. It doesn't seem like the place anymore when you could find out who stole the tires off your car when you went to a local park and then had to buy them back, which happened to us when we went tobogganning at Firemans' Park with my cousins.
The world has plenty of spectacle. The biggest gift Niagara Falls gave me moves with me. I'm still liminal: Canadian and now American too. I'm not really great at being any one thing. My look, what I do, how I see the world, it all sits on the border with my favourite word: both.
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Hey there my name is Lisa, I'm 25 years old and i just moved into my own place i am struggling and needing help physically and mentally due to my past. I am a hardworking person and really like to socialise when i have the chance. I have 2 dogs called meg and pip but for my little place i would like a pet bird, a cockatiel or two for a companion so i am not on my own! I love animals and have always wanted a pet!
I would keep trying and push myself.
anything is possiblle no matter how stressful it is!
i struggle with alittle of everything in my day to day life physically and mentally.


31 August 2016, at 12:00a.m.
BRAZIL - Broiler and pig production cost indices have fallen in Brazil, after three consecutive months of increases, and record scores in June.
The indices, released by Brazilian agricultural research organisation Embrapa, recorded falls of 2.32 per cent for pig production and 7.05 per cent for broiler production in July.
Animal feed forms a big part of production costs and there was a decrease in spending on corn and soybeans in that month, which was largely responsible for the decline in the indices.
In the case of pigs, nutrition costs fell 2.24 per cent in July from the previous month, whereas for broilers the decrease was 6.72 per cent in the same period.


Graham L a écrit un avis le 3 avr.
I am planning a 7 days vacation for a family of 5. 2 Adults and 3 children. Do you have a 2 rooms in one that will be suitable and at what cost for the 7 nights? Pls cost should be in Naira.
Please call the hotel directly or send them a message on Facebook.
Hello, think it's best to contact the restaurant at the hotel. I'm certain they can plan everything for you.
Apologies for the late response. Hope this finds you well. Unfortunately we do not have sleeping accommodations on the balcony of the deluxe rooms. We however have duplex rooms that can accommodate 4 people.


Orbital is responsible for some of the most exciting and intriguing music to emerge from the electronica movement. Comprised of brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll, the British duo's singular brand of melodic and evocative compositions have enabled it to survive and thrive in the flavor-of-the-second techno environment that saw multitudes of acts appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.
Orbital first hit the scene with the addictive 1990 single "Chime." The track became an unlikely U.K. hit and served as a formative moment in the history of what became known as the "Intelligent Dance Movement." Orbital's music is unique in that it feels equally at home on the dancefloor and in the easy chair. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Hartnolls are unafraid to use their music as genuine storytelling vehicles. Whether reflected through mood, sound effects, vocal samples, or lyrics, Orbital explores beauty, benevolence, excess, and ethics across its output. The approach is best epitomized on career high water marks such as 1994's Snivilisation and 1999's Middle of Nowhere.
The duo's impact also extends into the realm of performance. While the majority of techno acts cling to pre-programmed agendas in concert, Orbital incorporates improvisation into its gigs. The Hartnolls use their banks of computers and keyboards to add, subtract and extend passages in direct response to the audience's reaction. They also incorporate spectacular, stadium-rock visual effects into their shows. It's a potent combination that has propelled the act to lofty heights, including regular headline slots at famed music festivals such as Glastonbury, Roskilde and Lollapalooza.
Orbital's influence is felt in other realms as well. Acts as diverse as Kraftwerk, Madonna, Queen Latifah, and Yellow Magic Orchestra have commissioned remixes from them. Film directors have also approached the pair to contribute music to scores for Event Horizon, The Saint, Spawn, and Octane. The act has been responsible for their own high-profile visual works too, with groundbreaking videos such as 1996's "The Box" having been screened at film festivals worldwide.
The Blue Album, the duo's ninth record, served as a series of audio snapshots chronicling the many styles and themes they've embraced during their career to date. Minimalist musings, cinematic soundscapes, full-on techno stomp, and percolating pop all have a home on the disc. Its moods are equally diverse as it shifts between the dark and desolate to the heights of joy and celebration.
Phil Hartnoll began this conversation by discussing the compositional instincts that inform the duo's work.
Describe Orbital's creative process for me.
There are all sorts of ways a track can start. It's almost option paralysis sometimes. The process can be fast and simple or long and drawn out. There are so many different choices and exciting ways of doing it. For instance, for the track "Style" on Middle of Nowhere, Paul came down to the studio one Friday and wanted to carry on with a different mood than what we explored the day before, so he quickly whipped something up by sampling a Stylophone which is a pocket, electronic buzzing fad machine that was quite big in the '70s. So, he restricted himself to the Stylophone, fiddled about with it and that was "Style." But on other tracks, you can spend bloody months on it if it's not doing it for you. It's got to touch you somewhere within. I think that's the key point really.
Is "composition" an appropriate word for Orbital's approach?
Not really, but it is the best one available. I wouldn't call myself a musician really. I couldn't get onto a piano and play you a tune at any high standard that you'd think somebody with a career in music might be able to. I had 10 lessons with the vicar's son when I was 11 and that's it. [laughs] Paul was sort of self-taught at guitar. I can read music and have a basic understanding of musical notation and technology. So, it's definitely more of a layering and construction kind of composition. We have these huge sampled riffs and we play other things one hand at a time and build them up. It's not intellectual in terms of musical theory. We have a basic knowledge of keys, but we don't follow it. It's all done by ear. It's what sounds right and it doesn't matter if it's musically correct or not.
I'd say that even though I'm not a musician, I do play the stuff. A fundamental way of talking about it is to say the computer replaces the 24-track tape machine. If I'm playing the guitar, I'll play it until I get it right on one track. I'll play the part over and over again until I do. On a computer, you play a part on a keyboard and you can use the computer to record your movements, including velocity. So, I can't see the difference between putting something down on a traditional tape machine as opposed to the computer. There's no distinction between the two.
Bill Laswell said "Notation exists to respect or fulfill memory, but tape can fulfill memory too." It sounds like you're extending that to say a sequencer can do the same.
That's exactly it. The problem is people look at things in traditional terms. But people shouldn't be comparing things in this way. Working with a synth is a different way of producing a sound. I think synthesizers made a bad name for themselves when people started using them to try and imitate real instruments. That shouldn't have happened because people went "Oh God. That doesn't sound like a piano. That doesn't sound like this or that." But people can accept a sound source on its own. The frequencies you can get out of a synth are things you could never get out of an acoustic instrument. So, it should be championed for what it can do in those terms. This also gets into what the emotional connection to music is and asking "What is sound?" or "What is music?" It's a real can of worms.
When people look at electronic music and say it's not emotional or very sterile, I can agree in some cases. Some techno music is very sterile and you can almost see the stainless steel glimmer on the sounds, but that's what's good about it too. [laughs] The penny just hasn't dropped with a lot of skeptics. There's nothing to be skeptical about. Some people think "Oh, let's suppress the new music. The old music is the greatest." They feel threatened or challenged by it. There's a lot of misunderstanding going on. I've listened to pots and pans being crashed and smashed and if it produces a response from me, who's to say that's not music? Where's the defining line? Who gets to say what is worthy and what isn't? So, either you take the whole thing seriously or you don't. Music shouldn't be taken so seriously. There should just be a natural acceptance of music, period.
Orbital defied expectations by incorporating more and more live instrumentation into its albums as it went along. Tell me about that shift.
It's just what turned up very casually. There was no conscious decision. We have a friend who's a drummer and we would just go over to a big recording studio across the road to record him doing loads of drumming to things we've done—bits and bobs and playing to a metronome. We'd use his stuff as breakbeats or chop them up and use just one note. You've got a whole source of drums when you do that. Another example is when we were writing the first track on Middle of Nowhere called "Way Out." We felt it needed a trumpet in there, but I don't want to get a trumpet sound on my synthesizer. It would sound awful in my opinion. We wanted to hear a real trumpet. So, we knew a friend of a friend who's a trumpet player and asked him if he wanted to pop in. That's when we got our notators out and used them to see what we've written as a musical score so he could read it for his trumpet playing. We also wrote his part with a sound that was similar to a trumpet and he popped in and re-did it for us. It was great fun.
Describe the working relationship you share with your brother.
We just sit in a little room and just lock into the work. Sometimes we don't say anything to each other for a good hour or so and just tweak around and fiddle about. It depends at what stage you're at in the work. It's a very different process from beginning to end. Sometimes we just sit there talking about what we're doing and how to form things. That's obviously got some benefit because we know each other and have very similar musical tastes. We give each other a lot of space musically. If Paul's working on something and I don't like it, I say it. But if he genuinely likes something he's done, who am I to say something's wrong? So, we talk about things in little bits and pieces, rather than whole songs or tracks.
Snivilisation is the darkest, least dance-oriented and most political album Orbital made. How do you look back at it?
It came from us being fed up with the way the world is and having the weight of it on your shoulders. It was a time when we wanted to incorporate the irony of it all. It kept popping up as a theme running through it. It's a mood, not a concept. It was a reflective record. That's why we ended up calling it Snivilisation and putting a sort of grey cover on it. Snivilisation came out around the time of political bickering with the Poll Tax. It was an awful tax imposed on British people that caused a riot. It also caused a revolt in the early U.K. when they tried to introduce it in 1381. Basically, the Poll Tax was a political carve-up. It was also around the time of the U.K. Criminal Justice Bill. Those were grey times.
The "Criminal Justice Bill" Snivilisation b-side was a particularly strong statement in that it was four minutes of pure silence.
Yeah, the Criminal Justice Bill was ridiculous! It's very Orwellian. Bloody burn your books? Fascist! They tried to put a bill in law to actually point the finger at repetitive beat music as a dangerous influence! Repetitive beats? [laughs] That holds to rock too, doesn't it? Most songs have a repetitive beat, don't they? The fact they did it was outrageous really. There's justice for you. I was outraged by it. It was a civil liberty thing. Rather than look at the broader spectrum, they were picking on the music, trying to outlaw it. It's the sort of thing they did in America down in the South. Rock and roll was devil music at one time. It's the same sort of thinking.
Orbital always struck me as being more related to Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre than it did to the house and techno movements. Do you agree?
Yeah, that's exactly it. We got sort of lumped into the acid house movement. We're obviously influenced by it and like it, but I couldn't understand it when people said "Listen to this new music! It's called 'house' from America!" It's all the same sequenced stuff I've heard in tons of other stuff before. It reminded me of '70s disco because of the constant snare, bass drum and hi-hat thing going on. There was high energy music before that. So, I have enthusiasm for the movement, and I'm glad it made a stir, but the idea that it was new is confusing. Kraftwerk was very much a big influence. My elder brother had Kraftwerk's Autobahn and that was the first record I had heard that had all these strange noises and sounds. It was like, "Wow!"—the whole idea of it being a conceptual piece broken up into five perfect songs that were essentially instrumental. I'd say that was a major influence. It all started from there.
There's Rick Wakeman too. That was one of the first concerts I went to see. I got my brother to take me to his show because I was too young. Blimey, it was the tour for Journey to the Center of the Earth. That was sort of soundtrack music and that's a heavy influence more than dance music is really. But you have all aspects. The Dead Kennedys and the punk idea is there too. We have a wide range of musical influences and you've got these things called samplers and electronics that let you bundle it all in. That's how we express ourselves. It's about whatever's going on.
Describe the creative process behind The Blue Album.
Unlike most of the LPs we've done, apart from the first one, we went into it with lots of bits and pieces to start tracks with. It ended up being a more celebratory record. I haven't had so much fun making music with Paul in years. It's not that it was all grim before, but this one was much more upbeat. We both felt a greater sense of freedom when making the record. In many ways, it reminds me of the earlier days in spirit. It has some film soundtrack-sounding stuff like "Lost" and "Transient" that could have been on In Sides. "One Perfect Sunrise" could have come off The Brown Album and "Acid Pants" could be from Snivilisation. I don't know if there's been any musical progression, but I've never taken much notice of that, even for bands I follow. It's just music to us, but it does feel like things have gone full circle with this album.
Does the track "You Lot" on The Blue Album sum up Orbital's worldview?
Yeah. I was really pleased to be able to include the speech we've got in that track. It sums up a lot of things for me about the state of the world. It came from a British TV drama called The Second Coming. Typically, Christians believe in Jesus coming back down to earth and taking all the believers up to heaven while the rest of us burn in hell. But in this drama, Jesus came down and he ended up being a very working class guy from Manchester. He was a normal beer-drinking geezer who realized he was Jesus. During his speech to the masses, he said God doesn't really exist anymore and chose to leave matters in the hands of the people. He also said you have to look inside yourself for direction and banished all religion. To me, that's a good thing. I don't believe in banishing religion or spirituality, but I do believe people should look inwardly for their God rather than outwardly.
We are very, very immature as people who consider themselves civilized. Since we made Snivilisation, that's been on my mind. Nothing's really changed for humanity in thousands and thousands of years in terms of how people get on with each other. We don't really know what we're doing or understand the consequences. Mad Cow Disease is a fine one in terms of looking at what happens when you mess with the food chain. The Iraq War is another example. Saying "Look how civilized we are" is just a load of rubbish. But my tendency is to put an opinion across, rather than preach. People have to make up their own minds. There's some silly, comedy tracks on the album as well. We've also got "One Perfect Sunrise" which is an emotive track that has a looking out from a hilltop vibe. It's not all doom and gloom.
How would you describe the influence Orbital has had on the electronic music scene?
That's difficult to say. You hear tracks by other acts and think "That's a bit like us" and then we'd make tracks and think "Well, that's a bit like them." But we really never fit in with the rest, musically speaking. We draw lots of influences from lots of different styles and not just from electronic music. I can certainly put my hand up and say we've encouraged a lot of electronic bands to play live and meet their audience, rather than just being bedroom producers. I think influencing a single person at a time can also be the most fantastic thing. When somebody comes up to you and says they've made a connection with your music and proceeds to tell you a story about their first acid trip, it's great. [laughs] I've been there, done that and worn the t-shirt with other bands. It's amazing to think that people have had similar experiences with your music. You know, it was never about fame or fortune for us. It's about making those connections. That's the root of what Orbital is about.


Please Note: The Inheritance is a two part play. The Inheritance: Part 2 tickets can be bought separately here.
Matthew Lopez's compelling new two-part play The Inheritance transfers to the West End's Noel Coward Theatre, following a premiere at the Young Vic that garnered acclaim from audiences and critics alike. With the production split over two performances, the play can be seen in one day or across two evenings.
Taking place in New York, The Inheritance follows the generation after the AIDS crisis, examining what life is like for gay men in the 21st century. Presenting the stories of a group of young, ambitious men, the play has been compared to Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America and EM Forster's novel Howards End.
Focusing on the character of Eric, a young man engaged to Toby, the story follows their turbulent, yet often hilarious experiences. As always, relationships are never easy. Love and legacy are both prominent themes in Matthew Lopez's important story.
Many of the original British and American cast transfer with the production, with full casting featuring Hugo Bolton, Robert Boulter, Andrew Burnap, Hubert Burton, John Benjamin Hickey, Paul Hilton, Samuel H. Levine, Syrus Lowe, Michael Marcus, Vanessa Redgrave, Jack Riddiford, Kyle Soller and Michael Walters.
Multi-award-winning Stephen Daldry directs, with credits included Artistic Directorship at the Royal Court and Gate Theatre, as well as productions of An Inspector Calls, The Audience and Billy Elliot. The production features set and costume design by Bob Crowley, lighting by Jon Clark and sound by Paul Arditti and Chris Reid, with music by Paul Englishby.
With the praise for the original run and its appeal to younger audiences, The Inheritance is the thrilling, funny and electrifying new play from the Young Vic. Playing a strictly limited season at London's Noel Coward Theatre, The Inheritance Part 1 plays from 21 September 2018 to 5 January 2019, with a press night on 13 October 2018.
Audiences looking for plays about queer culture, current new writing and epic theatrical events will want to make sure they catch both parts of The Inheritance.
Age Recommendations: Recommended 14+. No under 10's.


Recent research on emotion recognition ability (ERA) suggests that the capacity to process emotional information may differ for disparate emotions. However, little research has examined whether this findings holds for emotional understanding and emotion management, as well as emotion recognition. Moreover, little research has examined whether the abilities to recognize emotions, understand emotions, and manage emotions form a distinct emotional intelligence (EI) construct that is independent from traditional cognitive ability factors. The current study addressed these issues. Participants (N=118) completed two ERA measures, two situational judgment tests assessing emotional understanding and emotion management, and three cognitive ability tests. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of both the understanding and management item parcels showed that a three-factor model relating to fear, sadness, and anger content was a better fit than a one-factor model, supporting an emotion-specific view of EI. In addition, an EI factor composed of emotion recognition, emotional understanding, and emotion management was distinct from a cognitive ability factor composed of a matrices task, general knowledge test, and reading comprehension task. Results are discussed in terms of their potential implications for theory and practice, as well as the integration of EI research with known models of cognitive ability.


This Friday at noon there will be a rally at St. Lawrence College in support of striking faculty (see attached poster for details).
The strike, now in its third week, is about the unsustainable reliance on part-time contract faculty who make up 75% of instructors on college campuses, about collegial governance and about academic freedom for college faculty. The College Employer Council (the administration) walked away from the table before the strike and has shown no signs of resuming negotiations.
Please consider coming out for an hour to show your support for our colleagues and the principles they are struggling to defend, and to urge the College Employer Council back to the bargaining table.
The Kingston District Labour Council has also organized a bus to take people to Toronto this Thursday, Nov. 2, for a midday rally at Queen's Park in support of college faculty across the province. The bus will be leaving Kingston from the McDonald's on Division near the 401, likely leaving around 7:30-8 am, and will returning from Toronto at approximately 2:30pm.


Being strong is love someone in silence. To radiate happiness when we are unhappy. To forgive someone who does not deserve forgiveness. To stay calm in moments of despair. To show joy when we don't feel it. To smile when you want to cry. To make someone happy when our own heart is broken. To be silent when we feel like screaming our anguish. To comfort when we need to be comforted. And to have faith when sometimes we no longer believe.
In order to move on from the past, you need to make the decision to forgive, even if the person is not worthy of your forgiveness. Because no matter the amount of pain they caused you, in order to forget, you need to forgive.


There are 2 option to add RumbleTalk chat to your Facebook page.
Log in to your RumbleTalk account and click on your chat name.
Click the "Get Chat Code" menu at the top left of the screen.
Choose radio button with the embed code. Copy the code in the "code" box.
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paste the code into the top area.
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text:
Tiny Thai Restaurant
March 05, 2008 News + Opinion » Politics
Is Vermont Disappearing? Yes, and a New Study Says There's Only One Solution
By Brian Wallstin
Published March 5, 2008 at 11:14 a.m.
click to flip through (2)
Susie Willson Road Today
George Plumb grew up in Massachusetts, but he has been a Vermonter since 1963. Some years ago, after settling in Washington, Vermont, he began wondering: Why did every bucolic place he'd ever lived eventually get so crowded?
The answer was obvious, and in 1990, Plumb, who is now 70, formed the Vermont Earth Institute, which became the Vermont Population Alliance, which became Vermonters for a Sustainable Population, which sometime this week will issue a report that, if it doesn't quite answer the author's question, could make population growth a topic of civilized conversation again.
Few people will, in fact, be surprised by the information in Plumb's report, which he titled "Disappearing Vermont." It ranges from the provocative (the average temperature across the state has risen almost five degrees since 1970); to the obvious (the acres of developed land in Grand Isle County grew from 2900 in 1970 to more than 6000 in 2003); to the promising (more than two dozen advocacy groups have formed around a commitment to sustainable living since 2000).
And then there are the facts Vermonters live with every day:
• The state has added, roughly, a city the size of Burlington to its population each decade since 1970;
• Between 1970 and 2003, more than 100,000 acres of open land in Vermont have been developed, a 42 percent increase;
• The number of registered vehicles in the state has more than doubled, to about 716,000, and the number of miles driven in the state has nearly tripled, to 7.7 billion.
At the same time, the solutions to these clear and present dangers have always been difficult to articulate, as both history and a 30-minute chat with the author of "Disappearing Vermont" attests.
"This is not a politically correct thing to talk about," Plumb says. "It gets into issues of politics, religion, abortion and birth control."
Indeed, imagine a nation that makes sex education available through the public school system. Imagine a nation that gives minors access to contraceptives and that has not only de-stigmatized abortion, but requires public and private health insurance plans to cover it. Imagine a nation that makes "improved methods of fertility control" a national research priority.
Those are just a few of the 70 policy recommendations made 36 years ago by the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, which was signed into existence by Richard Nixon. They're also some of the first solutions that come to George Plumb's mind when he talks about population growth.
If Nixon hadn't been busy obstructing justice and being impeached, he might have been able to draw more attention to what he called "one of the most serious challenges to human destiny." The 312-page report, released in 1972 by the Rockefeller Commission, pointed out that since 1900, the U.S population had grown from 76 million to nearly 205 million. The reasons were elementary: More Americans were being born than were dying, and more people were coming into the country than were leaving. In the first decade of the 20th century, one in every four new Americans came here from someplace else; by 1970, 20 million more people had moved into the U.S. than had moved out.
In its opening pages, the commission pointed out the obvious: "At some point in the future, the finite earth will not satisfactorily accommodate more human beings — nor will the United States . . . [N]ow is the time to confront the question: "Why more people?"
Bill Ryerson, a renowned expert on population from Shelburne, was on his way to the inaugural United Nations World Population Conference, in Bucharest, when Nixon resigned in August 1974. A delegate to the conference and founder and president of the Population Media Center in Shelburne, Ryerson believes that if it wasn't for Watergate, Nixon might have made a significant contribution to human affairs. Instead, his obsession with political enemies, culminating in the Watergate prosecution, squandered an opportunity for the world's most prosperous nation to take action on population growth.
"Nixon had bigger concerns," Ryerson recalls. "He shelved the report and gave it no attention."
Subsequent administrations, starting with Gerald Ford's and continuing right up to George W. Bush's, have found their own reasons for ignoring the commission. "Ford was preoccupied by the pardon," Ryerson explains. "Carter just wasn't interested — he ignored it. Reagan bought into the view that population growth should be celebrated, that it stimulated growth and economic development."
Ryerson has been trying to ease population pressure on the planet for decades now. These days, he spends much of his time in Africa and Asia producing television programs that encourage family planning.
So, it's been up to grassroots activists like George Plumb to bear, for the rest of us, the painful and politically incorrect reality that America itself must stop growing.
Plumb admits that neither he nor anyone else knows what a "sustainable" population would be in a state as small as Vermont or a country a large as the United States. He only knows that the nation is well beyond that point and, if Vermonters want to avoid the same fate, they might want to connect population growth to issues such as climate change and the global depletion of energy reserves.
That won't be easy. Two-thirds of the annual U.S. population growth, according to "Disappearing Vermont," is currently attributable to legal and illegal immigration, which Plumb suspects is driving more and more people to less-urbanized states like Vermont.
The Rockefeller Commission, in fact, predicted the immigration battles of today, and even suggested how they might be avoided. It did not, however, call for a 700-mile wall along the southern border or suggest allowing local police and sheriff's deputies to round up undocumented men, women and children. Instead, the commission proposed something along the lines of President Bush's solution to illegal immigration: civil and criminal prosecution of employers.
Plumb has a simpler idea — restricting permanent immigration to the United States to about 250,000 a year, equal to the number of people who leave the country annually. "The U.S. needs a population policy, but it's not easy talking about what the immigration level should be," Plumb says. Nor, he continues, is it easy to talk about "sustainable" population without inducing nightmares among evangelicals, Catholics and civil libertarians. "Population control is a bad term," Plumb emphasizes. "We're not advocating that at all."
Plumb is double-checking his facts this week before scheduling a press conference to announce the release of "Disappearing Vermont." He plans to post the report on the Vermonters for a Sustainable Population's website, www.vspop.org, by March 10.
At one point in the conversation, Plumb takes up a pen and a sheet of paper and writes out, I=PAT, a theorem devised in 1971 by the ecologists John R. Holdren and Paul R. Ehrlich. It states that any population's impact (I) is the factor of its size (P), its affluence (A), and the technological damage brought on by its patterns of consumption (T).
Plumb is clearly impressed by the equation, which simply means that the quality of life in any environment rises as the number of inhabitants of the environment drops. The theory seems to comfort Plumb, who, like most people, is more at ease talking about the past then he is about our ostensible future.
"In 1963, I moved to Susie Wilson Road. It was the country then," Plumb recalls. "You could walk and snowmobile. People used to trap. You'd come home in the evening and there would be cows in your garden.
"I remember thinking," he adds, "'isn't that wonderful?'"
Tags: Politics, politics, local matters, environment, planning and zoning
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text:
Walgreens closing 200 stores -- but opening 200 others
By Ellen Jean Hirst
A closed Walgreen's store at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Place. The store closed in February. (Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune)
Walgreens Boots Alliance said Thursday it will close about 200 less-profitable U.S. Walgreens stores and open the same number of stores in new locations.
A spokesman told the Tribune on Thursday that the stores will close during the next three years, with the last closing no later than the end of 2017. The list of stores slated to close is still being finalized.
The closings, announced along with quarterly earnings on Thursday, will expand a three-year, $1 billion cost-reduction plan announced last August. The company now plans to cut $1.5 billion by the end of 2017 by also reorganizing its corporate operations and streamlining its information technology and other functions.
A spokesman declined to provide details on any job cuts that would be part of the restructuring.
On a call with analysts, Alex Gourlay, executive vice president of Walgreens Boots and president of Walgreen, said the 200 stores that are closing will be replaced by about the same number of new stores.
"This really is (about) getting the right stores in the right places," Gourlay said.
Acting CEO Stefano Pessina said he plans to have the company evaluate whether stores should close more often than Walgreen had in the past, to avoid announcing such a large number all at once.
"In the future, once we have created this new base, I believe we should every year review all the stores and if every year we have to close 10 stores ... we will have to do it," Pessina said. "It's better to do this gradually over time."
The store closings are 2 percent of the 8,232 drugstores Walgreens has in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Walgreens expects pretax charges for the restructuring of between $1.6 billion and $1.8 billion.
Nonetheless, the marrying of the nation's largest drugstore chain, Walgreen, and Europe's largest pharmaceutical wholesaler, Alliance Boots, on Dec. 31, boosted the company's second-quarter earnings across the board. Here's how the quarter played out, and a bit on what's to come:
By the numbers: Walgreens Boots earned $2.04 billion in the second quarter, or $1.93 per share, compared with $716 million a year earlier, or 74 cents per share. Sales were also up 35 percent to $26.57 billion from $19.61 billion a year earlier.
The adjusted earnings per share for the quarter, of $1.18, beat analyst estimates by 23 cents.
Quote you on that: "This quarter marked a solid start for our new company, and I remain as optimistic as ever about our long-term future," said acting CEO Stefano Pessina. "At the same time, we understand the work that is needed to proactively address headwinds such as reimbursement pressure and competition."
2015 guidance: Walgreens Boots Alliance announced a 2015 full-year adjusted estimate for earnings per share between $3.45 and $3.65. Cost savings from the merger for the first half of its fiscal 2015 were $310 million. The company said it remains on track to save $650 million by the end of the year.
What's new: Walgreens Boots Alliance now reports results in three segments: U.S. retail pharmacy, International retail pharmacy and pharmaceutical wholesale.
What's next: Walgreens Boots will finalize the list of stores it will close and which new locations will replace them. The company also reaffirmed its 2016 adjusted earnings per share estimate of $4.25 to $4.60.
The search for a permanent CEO, to replace former CEO Greg Wasson, continues. "We remain confident that in due course, we will find the right person for the board," Pessina said during the call.
Pessina also said the company will be looking for opportunities to grow through mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures. But analysts say it will probably be some time before a deal is completed.
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"In the near term, they'll be constrained ... they've got some items they need to work through as a new company," said Edward Jones, senior analyst Jeff Windau. "They're looking across the supply chain, across the whole field. They're open to a lot of alternatives: Distributors, (pharmacy benefit managers), retail stores. They're open to a lot of alternatives."
A British trader who caused a 'flash crash' that sent the stock market into a trillion-dollar dive 10 years ago avoids more prison time. 'I could never survive that.'
$100 billion served: McDonald's hits sales record in 2019, as delivery drives growth
Grappling with 737 Max crisis, Boeing lost $636 million in 2019 — its first annual loss in more than 20 years
Electric scooters will again descend on Chicago after first polarizing test in the city
Founded by Frank Lloyd Wright, famed Taliesin school is closing
What else?: On Wednesday after the markets closed, Walgreens announced that U.S. Foods CEO John Lederer had been elected to its board to serve on its finance committee. From 2008 to 2010, Lederer was chairman of the board at Duane Reade, a New York-based pharmacy company acquired by Walgreen in 2010. His appointment was part of an agreement with activist investor group Jana Partners.
Walgreens also said Wednesday it will pay a quarterly dividend of 33.75 cents per share June 12 to shareholders of record as of May 21.
ehirst@tribpub.com
Twitter @ellenjeanhirst


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See the best and worst dressed from the Brit Awards
Pics 23/02/2017
See all the red carpet pics and vids from this year's Brit Awards...
Leading first place for WORST dressed is Geordie Shore's Charlotte Crosby. She arrived in a sheer leopard dress, flashing her black knickers.
Coming in at a close second place is Perrie Edwards from Little Mix who arrived in a black feathered gown.
The gown featured a mullet-style hem flashing her toned pins and certainly set her apart from the rest of her Little Mix band mates.
Meanwhile, Ellie Goulding also totally failed to impress in black.
Her floor-length gown featured a deep slit up the front but it was the detail on the chest that steals the attention. The riskily slashed gown is held together by chain detailing.
And then we've got BEST dressed....


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Beautiful one day, perfect the next is the ideal description to describe golf in Queensland. With great weather 365 days of the year Queensland is the ideal location to play your next great golf round.
Toowoomba & Surrounds
Golf in NSW features some of the most picturesque golf course locations throughout all of Australia. Within a few short hours drive you can play by the ocean, in the city or in the mountains on courses that will challenge you and take your breathe away
Sydney Metro
The 'city of churches', Adelaide, is home to some of the most under-rated regions in Australia. From churches, to sporting events and of course the wineries South Australia is a great golf destination featuring challenging, breathtaking golf courses
Golf in Victoria is world renowned with the famous Sandbelt golf courses some of the most sought after in the Southern Hemipshere. With hundreds of courses spread across this great state you'll find your next greatround is not that far away
Melbourne Metro
Melbourne Sandbelt
Phillip Island & Gippsland
Gardiners Run Golf Course
[Edit Menu]
www.gardinersrun.com.au
130-132 Victoria Rd, Lilydale VIC 3140
The Chirnside Park Country Club was built in the 1960's by developers of the original Chirnside Park Estate "Wilmore and Randall". Once the majority of the land was sold, Wilmore and Randall approached the local residents with a proposal to purchase the land known as Chirnside Park Country Club to form a Club. Our original Board of Directors of the Club acted as guarantors for the initial loan to purchase the property.
The Club has been in operation since 1974 and sat on 146 acres of land overlooking the panoramic views of the Yarra Valley. The Club has gone from providing a modest clubhouse, golf course and tennis courts to now offering a complete recreational and social entertainment venue.
With the course fully surrounded by houses and technology reducing the challenge for golfers the Club sought to relocate its golfing arm to new site to meet the demands of the golfing public by selling the golf course section to land developers.
In May 2014 after a number of years lobbying and hard work the club is pleased to announce the opening of 'Gardiners Run' the new home of Chirnside Park Golf. Chirnside Park Country Club has retained eleven acres of land on the original Country Club site comprising of a keno lounge, Tab facilities, bowling greens, tennis courts and a fully licensed bistro and function venue.
Now operating across two sites the future of Chirnside Park Country Club looks bright with a modern newly opened golf course and a soon to be renovated food, beverage and entertainment centre overlooking the Yarra Valley.
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Whether you have been arrested for DUI or have been accused of committing another crime, you need reliable information and guidance that will help you get moving in the right direction. We created this video center to provide you with valuable tips and information – straight from our attorneys to you. Here, you can watch attorney Jeff Paulk explain what advantages you can experience by working with a private attorney as opposed to a public defender. You can learn more about DUI charges in Florida so you know what to expect. If you have questions about another area of our firm's practice, you can watch a video about that.
We also welcome you to call our offices at any time to schedule a confidential consultation. We are always happy to take the time to answer whatever particular questions or concerns you may have. In our experience in Tampa DUI defense, we have found that better informed clients are able to make sound choices about their cases and about working with an attorney in the first place.
Take a moment to review the informative videos we have included below.


Gavin MacDougall is a Toronto artist. After attending the Ontario College of Art, he worked as a graphic artist specializing in sandblasted and painted glass design. Gavin graduated with high honours from the Fine Arts Studio program at Centennial College in 2013. He now devotes himself full-time to painting and drawing.
This new series of acrylic paintings on canvas explores our imprint on the world around us. Shadows both trail and precede us. Only the absence of light separates us from them. They can either obscure or define forms and objects. Shadows provide depth and are a necessary counterpart of light. They are without substance, yet substantial. Our paths overlap and progress from shadow to light.


How Can Your Nonprofit Stay Ahead of Technology in 2019?
If you're looking for some smart ways to spend your surplus, we've got some ideas.
What do Ugly Sweaters and a Tech Show Have in Common?
To Chatbot Or Not: Is Artificial Intelligence For You?
By The HC writer... or am I?
Chatbots are all the rage, but are they right for you?
The newest version of Sitefinity has some features that are worth noting.
Cookies Are Popping Up Everywhere!
Have you been wondering why websites suddenly need your permission to collect cookies? We break it down for you!
Using video in social media can have big returns...but how do you get started?
Is the sudden flood of privacy emails confusing you? Here's what's happening, and why you're getting them.


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PepsiCo Design and Innovation Pepsi Solar Cart Vending Cart Solar Cooler
Home > Design Award Winners > #39712 Pepsi Solar Cart
Pepsi Solar Cart Vending Cart Solar Cooler is Silver Design Award winner in 2014 - 2015 Sustainable Products, Projects and Green Design Award Category.
Pepsi Solar Cart Vending Cart Solar Cooler
The solar powered cart was designed to empower local entrepreneurs in economically disadvantaged areas providing solar powered equipment to bring cold PepsiCo beverages and also food products to remote corners of the world where there is no reliable power grid. Moreover, many of the mobile carts offer light at night and electrical charging stations, all powered by solar energy, encouraging additional community engagement and benefit. In line with PepsiCo's commitment to not only environmental sustainability but also human sustainability, the vending carts were designed to meet local fabrication capabilities using readily available materials and resources with a focus on: usability, safety, functionality and aesthetics.
PepsiCo Design and Innovation
PepsiCo is a global food and beverage leader with net revenues of more than $65 billion and a product portfolio that includes 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in annual retail sales. The main businesses – Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola – make hundreds of enjoyable foods and beverages that are loved throughout the world. PepsiCo's people are united by a unique commitment to sustainable growth by investing in a healthier future for people and the planet, which they believe also means a more successful future for PepsiCo. PepsiCo believes that creating powerful consumer experiences and connections through design is a key lever of growth.
PepsiCo Design & Innovation
PepsiCo is a global food and beverage leader with net revenues of more than $65 billion and a product portfolio that includes 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in annual retail sales. Our main businesses – Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola – make hundreds of enjoyable foods and beverages that are loved throughout the world. PepsiCo's people are united by our unique commitment to sustainable growth by investing in a healthier future for people and our planet, which we believe also means a more successful future for PepsiCo. We call this commitment Performance with Purpose: PepsiCo's promise to provide a wide range of foods and beverages from treats to healthy eats; to find innovative ways to minimize our impact on the environment by conserving energy and water and reducing packaging volume; to provide a great workplace for our associates; and to respect, support and invest in the local communities where we operate. For more information, please visit www.pepsico.com.


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Fall in Love With Jim Parsons' Hilarious 'Big Bang Theory' Bloopers
Jim Parsons is off the market, but that's okay. We know he's still going to be there for us.
The 44-year-old actor got hitched to his longtime boyfriend over the weekend. Parsons is well on his way to becoming a legend on the small screen. That'll happen when you win four Emmys for playing the same character -- something Parsons has indeed done for his portrayal of genius Sheldon Cooper on CBS' long-running Big Bang Theory.
There's no denying that Parsons, a relative unknown when the series premiered back in 2007, is spot on for his depiction of the arrogant and condescending, yet somehow lovable, Sheldon. (He's so good that we're actually kind of nervous for Iain Armitage, the child tasked with portraying Cooper as a child in the upcoming spinoff, Young Sheldon.)
Unlike Sheldon, Parsons is not immune to mistakes. That is, sometimes he -- or his co-stars -- mess up while shooting their scenes. The Big Bang Theory is already plenty funny, but when you watch these outtakes you'll realize it's gone to another plane of funny.
Take a look at some more of Parsons' hilarious bloopers below.
15 TV Co-Stars Who Didn't Get Along in Real Life:
NEXT: THE CELEBRITY WEDDINGS OF 2017
Source: Fall in Love With Jim Parsons' Hilarious 'Big Bang Theory' Bloopers
Categories: Daily Distraction


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Brave Adventures
Brave Network
Brave Collabs
Why girls
BRAVE Girls NYC Festival – A Day of Radical Sisterhood
Being Brave
About BRAVE
BRAVE IMPACT
CREATE GIRL LEADERS
The brave blog
Fly High Angel
Another young woman's life was taken. Stripped from this earth as though she was nothing. I am angry, hurt and most of all I want to Shout, Shout at the people that are supposed to protect us, Shout at the man that felt he had the power to end her life. This is devastating and infuriating, I mean come on now how many marches and times do you want us
Solidarity in Elevating Human Dignity
Ending Violence against Women and Girls
Blinded By Love Yet Scattered In Pieces
Email: info@bravesa.org.za
SA NPO registration: 168-667
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Tamzin Abrahams
A story about assault, bravery and being a survivour.
Miché Williams
A story about role models, resilience and black girl magic.
Ameera Allie
A story about substance use, recovery and the journey to self love.
Amahn Heuvel
A story about inspiration, gratitude, and moving on.
Odwa Bomela
A story about loneliness, reflection and personal growth.
Lee-anne Jenkins
A story about healing, growth, and self-love.
Audery February
A story about gang violence in Cape Town, and a call for peace.
WHY BRAVE
BRAVE is a registered South African NPO and is awaiting approval as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in the United States. BRAVE uses an innovative, unconventional model, taking girls living on the frontlines of some of the most violent and impoverished communities in Africa on life-changing road trips to empower and inspire them to become girl leaders and decision makers. Creating girl leaders who are educated, resilient , safe and empowered leads to lower birth rates, improved reproductive and maternal health and lowered HIV transmission, and increased economic opportunities for girls, and everyone. Your support will help us continue our work and expand our capacity to reach even more girls and their families.
Help us raise funds for:
Supplies, petrol, and equipment need to go on our Road Trips
Training for girls as youth reporters, photographers, and journalists
Equipment to document and record girls' stories, including cameras, phones, printers, and computers
Hiring of full-time social worker to support our girls
Scholarships for girls to pursue tertiary degrees in conservation, law, medicine, design, and business.
SAFE SPACE ART ROOM
The Safe Space Art Room was a collaboration between the learners and faculty of Red River Primary School and Cecile and Boyd Foundation. Rock Girl is proud to be the inaugural recipient of the first grant from the Foundation, that has since set up similar art rooms in schools around South Africa.
In November 2011, the Safe Space Art and Study Room was unveiled by Olympic Champion Elana Meyer and then United States Counsul General to Cape Town, Erica Barks-Ruggles. The room hosted artists including Heath Nash,
Paul du Toit, Tracy Lynch, Sam Scarborough and others, who worked side-by-side with the leaners on some incredible works of art.In 2014, Rock Girl partnered with Cecile and Boyd on their mobile Art Room in a container, which is a World Design Capital project. And in 2016, Cecile and Boyd Foundation sponsored the refurbishment of our first BRAVE mobile studio, located in an overland truck shared with Greenpop. The Rock Girls also created a library, murals, and advocated for bullet-resistent fencing and the demolition of their asbestos-contaminated school building.
In November 2016, as a result of the advocacy efforts of the Rock Girls and their families, the Western Cape Department of Education built and opened a brand new school for Red River Primary, that includes a library, Safe Spaces for girls and boys, and sports fields, all contained within a bullet-resistent fence.
The first 60 girls who joined as Rock Girls in grade 5 all successfully matriculated to grade 8 to start high school, an incredible success given 40% of girls in South Africa drop out after grade 7.
OUR PARTNERS HELP GIRLS LEAD


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What is your interest in our solutions?
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Q: State update being overridden by another (previous) state update? I know this seems as unusual example, but still I can't seem to explain precisely why do I never see valueB printed on console after I click the div?
Note that since I am calling the two set state calls in a setTimeout, they are not batched.

function App() {
  let [a, setA] = React.useState();
  let [b, setB] = React.useState();

  React.useEffect(() => {
    console.log('Entering useEffect', a, b);

    return () => {
      console.log('Entering cleanup', a, b);

      setA(null);
      setB(null);
    };
  }, [a, b]);

  console.log('Render', a, b);

  return (

 {
        setTimeout(() => {
          setA('valueA');
          setB('valueB');
        }, 100);
      }}
    >

Test App

  );
}

ReactDOM.render(
  <App/>,
  document.getElementById("react")
);

A: Normally useEffect and its cleanup are called asynchronously (on another stack) after render. But if you call setState in a timer and there are useEffect callbacks, they are invoked eagerly but all accumulated state change from cleanup is called after setState that invoked this operation.
So in your example when setTimeout handler is called:

*

*when calling setA: a state is changed and two state changes from cleanup are added to pending state change queue

*when calling setB: first valueB is applied to b and then null from the cleanup (it's kind of batched here)

This tries to imitate the behaviour when state updates are actually batched like in click handlers (first apply state updates from the click handler and then from useEffect).
You can see what's happening more clearly when you use updater functions:

function App() {
  Promise.resolve().then(() => console.log("**** another stack ****"));
  console.log("before useStateA");
  let [a, setA] = React.useState();
    console.log("between useStates");
  let [b, setB] = React.useState();
    console.log("after useStateB");

  React.useEffect(() => {
    console.log('Entering useEffect', a, b);

    return () => {
      console.log('Entering cleanup', a, b);

      setA(() => (console.log("setting a to null from cleanup"), null));
      setB(() => (console.log("setting b to null from cleanup"), null));
    };
  }, [a, b]);

  console.log('Render', a, b);

  return (

 {
        setTimeout(() => {
          console.log("****timer start****");
          setA(() => (console.log("setting a to valueA from timer"), "valueA"));
          console.log("between timer setters");
          setB(() => (console.log("setting b to valueB from timer"), "valueB"));
          console.log("****timer end****");
        }, 100);
      }}
    >

Test App

  );
}

ReactDOM.render(
  <App/>,
  document.getElementById("react")
);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


BlackBerry Bold 9790 mobile phone is a Smartphone that was released on November 2011. It is built with refined touches and uses a combination of a touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard. The phone uses BlackBerry 7 OS.
It provides a fluid high resolution touch screen of 2.45 inch which has a resolution capacity of 480 pixels by 3600 pixels at a PPI of 245 pixels per inch. The Smartphone has a 1GHz Marvel Tavor MG1 processor and also has a RAM capacity of 768MB and 8GB internal memory storage. The BlackBerry Bold 9790 is a single SIM Smartphone that measures 110.00×60.00×11.40 in height, width and thickness respectively and weighs 107.00 grams.
Whatsapp Messenger is a messaging application for android and other Smartphone devices which allows one to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. This application utilizes existing internet data plan for the messaging and is free for the first year after installation and after that first year it charges $0.99 per year. Whatsapp messenger has built an application favorable for BlackBerry users that solves the problems that were initially experienced when installing the Whatsapp Messenger application.
The following is a step to step guide on how to download and install Whatsapp on BlackBerry Bold 9790.
Step1. Go to the Menu. Under Menu there are various options such as messages, contacts, Browser, BlackBerry App World among others. Select BlackBerry App World.
Step2. Under BlackBerry App World, there are various options such as BlackBerry App World, Search App World, Through Featured Apps, Games, Apps, My World and Payment Options. Select Apps from these different options.
Step3. In this stage under the Apps section, there are various applications available such as Facebook, Line, and BlackBerry Messenger among many more. The BlackBerry Bold 9790 user will chose the Apps category of Whatsapp Messenger.
Step4. At this category the name of the application is stated, the developer and the download option. The user will then select the download option for Whatsapp Messenger by Whatsapp Inc. and the phone will automatically begin the download as long as the user has internet data. The internet data required will vary depending on the version of the Whatsapp application.
Step5. This is the final step where the Smartphone user will install the application into the device and it will be ready for using.
The BlackBerry users can also download the application by using their Browsers by searching for the available Whatsapp downloads.


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Quirkily infectious geek-pop from the States. Prediction: they might be giants.
Hometown: Boston, USA.
The lineup: Dave Munro (lead vocals, acoustic and electric guitar), Richie Munro (drums), Steve Scott (keyboards, effects, electric guitar), Casey Sullivan (lead vocals, bass, mandolin), Kiara Ana (viola).
The background: Air Traffic Controller are one of those bands where it's really an outlet for the frontman and the others are just there to realise his grandiose/madcap schemes. They're a solo act in all but name, which isn't to disparage the other musicians involved, because they do a fine job of turning what might have been tedious acoustic ditties from the nerd-megalomaniac in question – Dave Munro – into fully arranged, and sometimes orchestrally overblown (in a good way), paeans to baroque self-absorption.
Munro was a real-life air traffic controller for the US Navy – true story, apparently – only instead of focusing on the job at hand, i.e. making sure the planes didn't go careening into the hull of his ship, he spent long hours poring over the minutiae of his past and present romantic liaisons. And so he wrote an album called Nordo. Now, Nordo refers to aircraft that experience radio failure while flying. And if you can decipher what the meaning behind that little metaphor might be vis a vis interpersonal relations, you're more insightful than us (not difficult, admittedly). Suffice to say we're imagining that crashing and burning are probably involved, unless that's just us casting back to our first marriage, which we do a lot.
Not that Nordo is heavy-going or takes effort to enjoy. Far from it. In fact, it's a delight almost from end to end, and one can't help wondering what a record company push over here might achieve (we're told legions of A&R ladies and gentlemen are already queuing up for their London gig on Tuesday, although it is a tiny venue). Is there a market for upbeat geek-indie-pop with rhythms and melodies so finger-clickingly good you keep Googling that they weren't already hits from 1986 or featured in a Brat Pack movie scene in which Molly Ringwald jitterbugs in an ironic mid-'80s homage to the original rock'n'roll era? Munro might sing "I'm so miserable" but he's no US Morrissey – or rather, he is, which means he's got Hollywood in his blood and he can't resist allying his every solipsistic aphorism and wry miserablism to the jauntiest power pop this side of the Knack's My Sharona, all handclaps and woah-ohs. It's orch-pop for the emotionally challenged, and unashamed with it. Pretty much anywhere you alight on the album you get something good, if you like this sort of thing. "Listen to me: do I sound happy?" Munro sings in his high, keening tenor. To be honest: in your own happy-when-it-rains way, yes. Upbeat despair: yum, our favourite. What can we say? Another One to Watch for 2014. Our shortlist currently contains about 117 names. But hey, that's us. We're picky.
Marcelo Garibotto News Air controller traffic


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Krabbegors, ook wel Duivelseiland genoemd, is een eiland en haven in het zeehavengebied van de stad Dordrecht, in de Nederlandse provincie Zuid-Holland. Krabbegors ligt op de splitsing van de Oude Maas, Dordtse Kil en de Beneden-Merwede.

Op Krabbegors is de Regionale Verkeerscentrale Dordrecht van Rijkswaterstaat gevestigd. Deze centrale verzorgt de begeleiding van het scheepvaartverkeer in het Drechtstedengebied.

Geografie van Dordrecht

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia