Thank you for visiting us. At TIZA Skincare we are all about balance. Balancing our bodies, our lives, our mindset and our skin is essential. However essential, we also know that it can be a difficult task to achieve. We are here to help you achieve balance by simplifying your skincare regimen.
Tiza skincare's products are formulated with all genders, age and skin type in mind. Our cleanser is an all-in-one cleanser that is strong enough to remove make-up yet gentle enough for even the most sensitive skin. Our face mist is also formulated for all genders, age and skin types. It hydrates instantly and can be sprayed over make-up for an instant pick-me-up! Safe enough for teens!
Our goal at tiza skincare is to make shopping for skincare a little bit simpler by offering skincare that is safe enough for every age.
My name is Amina Baig Rajput. I am the founder of TIZA Skincare, a start up skincare company, a wife, a mother of two amazing girls, and an Anthropologist. I love to cook, travel, garden, entertain, and snuggle with my girls. I have worked in the high end skincare industry at prestigious retailers for over twenty years. While the skincare business continues to expand so do their products and the push to buy more. I admit I was of those who had drawers full of skincare and body products that simply did not work, or worse had four different eye creams targeting various needs. I was frustrated, as are many consumers. I began asking other women and men how they felt about their unnecessary skincare purchases and the results were not surprising, there was widespread dissatisfaction. That is when I decided to offer a "simple skincare" line consisting of products that targeted a specific area with all the latest components. For example our Eye Gel lifts sagging skin, increases circulation to eliminate dark circles, plumps fine lines with hyaluronic acid, collagen, and a combination of hexa peptides and reduces puffiness with marine algae. TIZA Skincare eliminates the need to purchase multiple products for one area. We are proud of our products and therefore offer a 100% guarantee, if you are not satisfied with any of our products you will receive a full refund. Our Face Oils, Body Oils, and Body Products are Organic. We always have a complete list of our ingredients on our website. Please feel free to contact me, we look forward to getting to know you.


text:
UNHCR on Japan's UN Human Rights Review, June 30, 2008
Posted on July 16, 2008 by Debito Arudou Ph.D.
(Latest UN report. Lots on trafficking, some on child rights and corporal punishment, very little to nothing on racial discrimination in general. Anyway, baby steps. Data of note to Debito.org italicized. Debito)
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Summary of the State under Review
Interactive dialogue and responses by the State under Review
Courtesy of Eric Kalmus
Conclusions and/or Recommendations
On 28 February 2008, the Human Rights Council selected the following group
of rapporteurs (troika) to facilitate the review of Japan: Djibouti, France
and Indonesia. The delegation of Japan was headed by H.E. Mr Yoshitaka
Akimoto, Ambassador in charge of United Nations Affairs, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.
(i) Summary of the State under Review
– Japan stated that it regards the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of
International Child Abduction and the Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable
Law, Recognition, and Cooperation in respect of Parental Responsibility and
Measures for the Protection of Children as effective tools for children's
rights and welfare, and will continue to study the possible conclusion of
the two conventions by giving due consideration to, inter alia, the current
social system, and the cultural situation of Japan.
[NB: Even though PM Fukuda has recently made it clear he sees no need for legislation to back up aspects of the treaty, so one wonders how the Convention will be enforced.]
– On the question of the marriageable age in Japan, it was explained that in
February 1996, the Legislative Council of the Minister of Justice submitted
an outline of a Bill to Revise Part of the Civil Code suggesting that the
marriageable age should be 18 years for both men and women. Japan stated
that this issue constitutes an important subject involving the marriage
system and the concept of a family and since there were various opinions
across all levels of civil society, close attention was being paid to trends
in public opinion.
(ii) Interactive Dialogue with the State under Review
– Algeria recommended that Japan implement the calls by, inter alia, the
Committee on the Rights of the Child to establish human rights institutions
in accordance with the Paris Principles as soon as possible.
– Algeria also asked for information on how Japan proposes to address the
issue of violence against women and girls.
– Philippines encouraged Japan to further develop appropriate strategies and
programmes to counter the negative effects of 'ijime' or bullying in
schools.
– China welcomed the implementation of comprehensive legal support and
awareness activities, including on child abuse and child pornography.
– Referring to reports indicating, inter alia, a high prevalence of
gender-based violence and child abuse, Canada recommended that Japan
continue to take measures to reduce the incidence of violence against women
and children, inter alia, by ensuring that law enforcement officials receive
human rights training, and funding recovery and counselling centres for
victims of violence.
– Canada referred to studies showing that an increase in international
marriages has resulted in an increase in complex divorce and custody cases
and noted that there is no formal mechanism to deal with international child
custody cases. It recommended that Japan develop a mechanism to ensure the
prompt return of children who have been wrongfully removed from or prevented
from returning to their habitual place of residence, and also examine the
possibility of acceding to the 1980 Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of
International Child Abduction.
– While recognizing measures already taken by Japan, Canada recommended that
it continue its efforts to combat trafficking in persons with a special
emphasis on women and children.
– With regard to measures to prevent trafficking in persons, Japan provided
information, inter alia, on special provisions enabling victims of
trafficking to stabilise their legal status, and that they are provided with
medical treatment. An anonymous reporting line was established in 2007 to
assist victims, and leaflets with information are published in nine
languages. If victims wish to return to their home countries, Japan closely
coordinates with interested agencies to support this and with other
countries on these issues.
– The Ministry of Justice has developed protection systems to address the
issue of bullying in schools, including the establishment of the Children's
Rights Hotline and the circulation of Children's Rights SOS lettercards to
all elementary and secondary schools. The Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology is promoting the activities of the local
schools and the boards of education through such activities as the provision
of guidance and seminars, organizing model programmes to solve problems of
bullying and violence at school, and supporting the school counselling
– Japan noted that various foreigners' schools, including Korean schools,
are accepted as miscellaneous schools by the prefectures and that there is
no discrimination between other miscellaneous schools and Korean schools.
– With respect to the international standards concerning the rights of the
child and women, Mexico would appreciate information on measures that may
currently be applied concerning civil rights and protection against violence
and trafficking and the necessary support for these victims.
– The Netherlands recommended that Japan adhere to the 1980 Hague Convention
of Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
– Brazil thanked Japan for its full support and participation in the Third
World Congress Against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, to
be held in Rio de Janeiro in November 2008. While recognizing measures taken
by Japan in various other fields of human rights, it asked Japan about the
main concrete steps taken in the promotion and the fulfilment of the rights
of the child and of women.
– Turkey noted the high legal standards in Japan for the protection of
vulnerable groups, in particular children, elderly and the people with
disabilities. It noted that there are specific legal provisions aimed to
protect the children from abuse, prostitution and child pornography and
encouraged Japan to take further steps related to recovery and counselling
services for victims.
– Regarding corporal punishment of children, it noted that the existing law
does not cover punishment at home and wished to learn whether there is any
plan to extend the scope of the concerned legislation.
– Ukraine noted with satisfaction the measures regarding the rights of the
child and encouraged Japan to continue its efforts in this area.
– Azerbaijan asked for Japan's views on implementing the recommendation of
the Committee on the Rights of the Child to amend its legislation to
eliminate any discrimination against children born out of wedlock.
– Following the interventions, Japan noted significant changes including in
the social environment, and that child prostitution, child pornography and
child abuse are becoming more serious and referred to measures taken in
order to address such changes, inter alia, to recent legislation passed on
these issues.
– Jordan commended Japan on the effort to establish a legal and
institutional framework for the promotion of human rights and asked about
the challenges that it faces in protecting the victims of trafficking.
– Italy noted that corporal punishment, although legally prohibited in
schools, continues to be widely practiced and asked what measures had been
taken to address the concerns expressed by the Committee on the Rights of
the Child in this regard and recommended that Japan expressly prohibit all
forms of corporal punishment of children and promote positive and
non-violent forms of discipline.
– Japan informed that corporal punishment by teachers and principals is
prohibited in the School Education Law and also that it promotes non-violent
measures based on trust between the teachers and students. In the case that
corporal punishment is actually carried out by school teachers, they are
reprimanded through the appropriate procedures.
(iii) Conclusions and/or Recommendations
In the course of the discussion, the following recommendations were made to
– Consider ratifying/Ratify the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of
International Child Abduction, 1980 (Canada, Netherlands);
– Encourage the continued taking of measures relating to discrimination
against women in particular to raise the age of marriage to 18 for women as
for men (France);
– Continue to take measures to reduce the incidence of violence against
women and children, inter alia, by ensuring that law enforcement officials
receive human rights training, and to fund recovery and counselling centres
for victims of violence (Canada);
– Continue the efforts to combat trafficking in persons with a special
emphasis on women and children (Canada);
– Develop a mechanism to ensure the prompt return of children who have been
wrongly removed from or prevented from returning to their habitual place of
residence (Canada);
– Prohibit expressly all forms of corporal punishment of children and
promote positive and non-violent forms of discipline (Italy);
Organisation Contact Details:
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Human Rights, Japanese Government, United Nations

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Apps and Partners
Central IdM of Cloud to Minimize Risks with Users and Structures
Kevin Dominik Korte
Apps and Partners, From Practice, Univention Blog
When administrators think about user management (IdM), they often only keep an eye on traditional IT systems. But even in the cloud, where you can buy new services with just a few clicks, it's extremely important for companies to keep control over their users if they do not want to lose control over who has rights and access in the organization. Otherwise, a dissatisfied or dismissed employee can quickly become a real threat to the entire corporate IT. Or the failure of subsystems can mean that the entire IT can no longer be accessed and all processes in the company are stopped.
With a centralized user management it is possible to effectively enforce password policies and prevent a single external service from simultaneously compromising a large number of passwords without allowing the administrator to take remedial action. But also for the users a central user management offers a noticeable advantage, because single sign-on allows them to securely log on to different services with a central password.
Therefore, let us first explore the benefits of running your own central user management before stepping into the technologies used to connect some of the favorite cloud services.
Why an Open IdM is Better for Your Cloud Services
Today many identity management systems are offered to big and small companies. Some are based on open source software while others are based on proprietary software. However, many of them have in common that you cannot easily migrate your identities to a different service, for example, if you are not anymore happy with it.
Only if you have access to the backend, as you have with UCS or other Open Source Solutions, in addition to the shiny interface, can you truly choose where you want to store your identities. Having access to the backend and platform and being able to determine where your IdM runs, gives you distinct advantages over a closed management system that only provides you with a frontend and some connectors.
These advantages are:
An open platform and a directory allow you to connect your identities to the services of your choice instead of connecting them to the services approved by your IdM vendor. While in many cases all will use the same underlying open protocols to facilitate the connection, it is all too easy for a provider to block connections if a competing offer gives a considerable incentive to do it. Just imagine, you successfully migrated all your emails to a new email provider and suddenly your IdM provider decides not to support this provider anymore. You then have to choose whether to migrate your emails and identities or to accept and deal with the management overhead of having two separate systems.
If you are in control of the backend, it becomes possible to support further protocols by combining different open source projects. As an example, UCS currently offers, among other things, connectors to quickly provision and manage identities used within Office 365 and G-Suite. As the backend is well documented and accessible to anyone running a UCS instance, it only will take a few lines of Python code to provision Dropbox with the same information already in use. Without access to the backend, it becomes impossible to do these changes.
Technologies for a Connected Cloud
After looking at the reasons why you would like an open Linux-based identity management system, let us focus on the technology used to create a central user identity management system.
Traditional Authentication and Authorization Stack
Traditional authentication and authorization protocols, such as LDAP and Kerberos, have been designed to work over both unreliable and untrusted connections. Thus, they can be used for authentication in the cloud, too. And often you find them when connecting your services, sometimes under the name AD services. LDAP connections can offer both authentication and authorization protocols. Or it can only provide the authorization and user management part, leaving the user authentication to Kerberos.
The reason to use the combination of LDAP and Kerberos is the following:
An LDAP connection, on the one hand, is established only between the authentication source and the service. The user enters his credentials with the service and the service is then using the LDAP connection to authenticate the user. This process thus allows any service to phish the credentials of your users.
Using Kerberos, on the other hand, offers you the possibility that passwords never leave the own terminal, i.e. they are neither sent over the network to the service nor to the user management system. Kerberos thus offers a secure and trusted way to verify the password. It has, however, the disadvantage that the user needs to be able to reach the KDC on a protocol and ports that public networks most often block.
This is why both protocols are more commonly used together in on-premises scenarios where the IT department is in control of both the systems and the network. Of course, both offer an excellent choice as a backend for the more purpose-built protocols, a scenario which can also be found in UCS.
Purpose-Built Authentication Protocols
Alternatives to the traditional protocols are purpose-built languages that utilize many of the design ideas behind Kerberos but are working with HTTP connections and cookies for the communication between user, authentication source, and service. The three most popular ones are the Security Assertion Markup Language, commonly known as SAML, the Central Authentication Service, in short CAS, and OpenID.
OpenID has its origin in a more web-like approach. Many independent notes trust each other to authenticate their users and provide parts of their user identities without releasing their passwords. What differentiates OpenID from the other two protocols is that there is no needed trust between the identity provider and the service provider. The basic idea was that you provide a unique URL from your identity provider to authenticate yourself and any service provider will accept your identity.
SAML and CAS, in contrast, rely on a controlled federation of service providers and identity sources. Usually, the administrator of the identity provider has to establish a trust relationship to a particular service before the user can authenticate with his account at that specific service.
The authentication itself is similar in most cases. The user goes to the website of the service and enters his ID, in most cases an email address. Afterwards, the service redirects the user to the particular identity provider that was identified to belong to the address or domain. The user enters his credentials at the identity provider website and gets a token that authenticates him at the services. This description is only a general overview. There are numerous minor differences and possible enhancements that set the different languages apart from each other, but all identify the user and authorize him to use a particular service, often by using only one password per single sign-on.
User Defining Attributes
Identifying users is an essential but only small part of managing your users. However, it is the better defined and standardized part. The more significant challenge often is to provision the users in a particular service and to provide well-known attributes associated with an account such as the name of the user or his email address.
Just think about the following scenario:
The company uses the first letter of your first name, the first letter of your last name and a random identifier, e.g., KK987654@idp.univention.com as the identifier for authenticating the users. G-Suite will at least need your email and name to create a professionally looking sender in every email. Dropbox, on the other hand, might need your group memberships to add you to a specified folder but might also want your email to be able to notify you when one of your folders changes.
Unfortunately, most services provide their custom API, making connectors, such as our G-Suite connector, necessary for provisioning users within the respective applications. Of course, most services offer their toolkits for the integration. However, there is still little standardization between these APIs, thus the need to use many different connectors remains.
For some time it seemed that OAuth appeared to gain traction in overcoming this particular issue. OAuth thereby represents a standardized set of APIs that allow a user to share its identity and attributes without sharing the actual login. It is still common today, whenever you hit a button "Log in to Google" or "Log in to LinkedIn", there is an OAuth data transfer happening in the background. However, this convenience does not extend beyond the handful of providers in the customer space.
Providing centralized identities in the cloud to your users, enables you to manage your users in one convenient location and provision them to different cloud services. The same applies for changing or deleting a user. This not only saves you a great deal of time, but prevent you from gradually losing control of the users in your IT environment, thus opening dangerous gates for conscious or unconscious damage to the system itself, the processes and data.
Most importantly, however, it increases the comfort of your users who only need a single username and password without needing to worry that one hacked service would compromise all other logins.
Accordingly, a central identity management system, such as UCS on Amazon, which encompasses your cloud services, should be a fundamental part of any IT department.
Kevin Dominik Korte studied computer sciences at the Jacobs University in Bremen. He graduated as a Master of Science in 2011. Afterwards, he worked in the Professional Services Team at Univention for two years. Since 2013 he is President of Univention North America Inc. and responsible for the business development in the USA.
How to administrate users with UCS
Setup of a Collaborative Workspace for a Globally Operating Team with UCS as the Central IDM System
Brief Introduction: Identity and Access Management
Easier than you may expect – How you gradually implement an IDM for larger organizations


text:
package fr.sii.ogham.sms.sender.impl.cloudhopper.session;

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

import com.cloudhopper.smpp.SmppClient;
import com.cloudhopper.smpp.SmppSession;
import com.cloudhopper.smpp.pdu.EnquireLink;
import com.cloudhopper.smpp.type.RecoverablePduException;
import com.cloudhopper.smpp.type.SmppChannelException;
import com.cloudhopper.smpp.type.SmppTimeoutException;
import com.cloudhopper.smpp.type.UnrecoverablePduException;

import fr.sii.ogham.core.exception.MessageException;
import fr.sii.ogham.core.retry.RetryExecutor;
import fr.sii.ogham.sms.builder.cloudhopper.SmppClientSupplier;
import fr.sii.ogham.sms.builder.cloudhopper.SmppSessionHandlerSupplier;
import fr.sii.ogham.sms.message.Sms;
import fr.sii.ogham.sms.sender.impl.cloudhopper.ExtendedSmppSessionConfiguration;
import fr.sii.ogham.sms.sender.impl.cloudhopper.exception.SmppException;

/**
 * Strategy that attempts to reuse the previous session if possible.
 *
 *

 * When sending the first message, a new session is created. Later, when sending
 * the next message, if the session is still alive, this session is reused. As
 * the connection is not actively maintained, the session may be killed by the
 * server. Therefore to check if the session is still alive, an
 * {@link EnquireLink} request is sent. If a response is received from the
 * server, then the session is still alive and the message can be sent using the
 * same session. If a failure response or no response is received after some
 * time from the server, then a new session must be created.
 *
 *

 * To check if the session is still alive, the {@link EnquireLink} request is
 * sent just before sending the real message. In order to prevent sending an
 * {@link EnquireLink} request before every message, the date
 * of the last sent message or {@link EnquireLink} is kept. This date is
 * compared to a delay to ensure that no {@link EnquireLink} is sent during this
 * delay.
 *
 * @author Aurélien Baudet
 *
 */
public class MayReuseSessionStrategy extends BaseSessionHandlingStrategy implements ErrorHandler {
	private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(MayReuseSessionStrategy.class);

	private final ErrorAnalyzer errorAnalyzer;
	private long lastSentOrSession;

	public MayReuseSessionStrategy(ExtendedSmppSessionConfiguration configuration, SmppClientSupplier clientSupplier, SmppSessionHandlerSupplier smppSessionHandlerSupplier, RetryExecutor retry,
			ErrorAnalyzer errorAnalyzer) {
		super(LOG, configuration, clientSupplier, smppSessionHandlerSupplier, retry);
		this.errorAnalyzer = errorAnalyzer;
	}

	@Override
	public SmppSession getSession() throws SmppException {
		initClient();
		initSession();
		if (!isSessionStillAlive()) {
			LOG.debug("Current session seems to be broken. Trying to reconnect...");
			reconnect();
		}
		return currentSession;
	}

	@Override
	public void messageSent(Sms sms) throws MessageException {
		updateLastSentOrSession();
	}

	@Override
	public void messageNotSent(Sms sms, SmppException e) throws MessageException {
		// If message couldn't be sent, re-throw the exception.
		//
		// The cause may be a broken connection because the delay to wait before
		// sending a new EnquireLink is too long compared to the server
		// configuration. But in this case, the developer has to adjust the
		// settings accordingly to the server.
		//
		// If a new connection is required, clean the current session now
		// therefore a new session will be created next time.
		if (errorAnalyzer.requiresNewConnection(e)) {
			clean();
		}
		throw new MessageException("Failed to send SMS", sms, e);
	}

	@Override
	public void handleFailure(Throwable e) {
		// If a new connection is required, clean the current session now
		// therefore a new session will be created next time.
		if (errorAnalyzer.requiresNewConnection(e)) {
			clean();
		}
	}

	@Override
	public void messageProcessed(Sms sms) {
		// nothing to do
	}

	@Override
	public void clean() {
		destroySession();
		destroyClient();
	}

	@Override
	protected synchronized SmppSession connect(SmppClient client) throws SmppException {
		SmppSession session = super.connect(client);
		updateLastSentOrSession();
		return session;
	}

	private boolean isSessionStillAlive() {
		long elapsedTime = now() - lastSentOrSession;
		boolean skipEnquireLink = elapsedTime < configuration.getReuseSession().getLastInteractionExpirationDelay();
		LOG.trace("Skip EnquireLink? {} {} => {}", elapsedTime, configuration.getReuseSession().getLastInteractionExpirationDelay(), skipEnquireLink);
		if (skipEnquireLink) {
			return true;
		}
		try {
			LOG.trace("Sending EnquireLink to check if session is still alive...");
			currentSession.enquireLink(new EnquireLink(), configuration.getReuseSession().getEnquireLinkTimeout());
			LOG.trace("Session is still alive");
			updateLastSentOrSession();
			return true;
		} catch (RecoverablePduException | UnrecoverablePduException | SmppTimeoutException | SmppChannelException e) {
			LOG.trace("Failure while sending EnquireLink", e);
		} catch (InterruptedException e) {
			LOG.trace("Failure while sending EnquireLink (interrupted)", e);
			Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
		}
		return false;
	}

	private void reconnect() throws SmppException {
		destroySession();
		destroyClient();
		initClient();
		initSession();
	}

	private void updateLastSentOrSession() {
		lastSentOrSession = now();
		LOG.trace("lastSentOrSession updated: {}", lastSentOrSession);
	}

	private static long now() {
		return System.currentTimeMillis();
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
/**
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

'use strict';

const dispatcher = require('./dispatcherInstance.es6');
const invariant = require('invariant');
const send = require('../lib/implore.es6');
const debug = require('./debug.es6');
const ActionCreator = require('./ActionCreator.es6');

let defaultOptions = {
	headers: undefined, // no headers by default
	baseURL: undefined // no base URL by default
};

export default class APIActionCreator extends ActionCreator {

	/**
	 * Fallback when no successTest is provided. Given a response, check to
	 * make sure we got a code back in the 200s range
	 *
	 * @param {XMLHTTPResponse} response
	 * @param {number} response.status
	 * @return {boolean}
	 */
	static defaultSuccessTest(response) {
		return response &&
			response.status &&
			response.status >= 200 &&
			response.status < 300 &&
			!response.error;
	}

	/**
	 * Sets default headers that will be used with all subsequent requests
	 * triggered by APIActionCreator instances. Can be cleared by setting
	 * headers to `undefined`. Default headers can be overridden by
	 * individual requests by setting the header to a different value or
	 * to `undefined` (forcing the header not to be sent) for that request.
	 *
	 * @param {object|undefined} headers
	 */
	static setDefaultHeaders(headers) {
		invariant(
			typeof headers === 'undefined' || headers instanceof Object,
			'Cannot set default headers for APIActionCreator to %s.' +
			'`headers` must be `undefined` or a plain object.',
			headers
		);

		defaultOptions.headers = headers;
	}

	/**
	 * Sets the default base URL for all subsequent ajax requests triggered
	 * by APIActionCreator instances. The APIActionCreator method's route
	 * will be appeneded to the base URL. Default base URL can be overridden by
	 * using a fully qualified URL in an APIActionCreator's `route` option.
	 * Default base URL can be cleared by setting to `undefined`.
	 *
	 * @param {string|undefined} url
	 */
	static setDefaultBaseURL(url) {
		invariant(
			typeof url === 'undefined' || typeof url === 'string',
			'Cannot set default base domain to %s. ' +
			'`url` must be a `string` or `undefined`.'
		);

		if (!url || url.endsWith('/')) {
			defaultOptions.baseURL = url;
		} else {
			defaultOptions.baseURL = url + '/';
		}
	}

	constructor(options) {
		super(options, {successTest: 1});
	}

	/**
	 *
	 * @param name
	 * @param {object} options
	 * @param {string} options.route
	 * @param {string} options.method
	 * @param {string} options.success
	 * @param {string} options.failure
	 * @param {string} options.pending
	 * @param {string} options.abort
	 * @param {Function} options.createRequest
	 * @param {Function} options.handleSuccess
	 * @param {Function} options.handleFailure
	 * @param {Function} options.handleAbort
	 * @param {Function} options.successTest
	 */
	createPublicMethod(name, options) {
		const {route, method} = options;
		const {createRequest, handleSuccess, handleFailure, handleAbort} = options;
		const {success: successActionType,
			failure: failureActionType,
			pending: pendingActionType,
			abort: abortActionType} = options;

		// successTest can come from the top level object
		// or each function can use their own successTest.
		// The default is response code 2xx.
		const successTest = options.successTest || this.successTest ||
			APIActionCreator.defaultSuccessTest;

		const payloadType = ActionCreator.PayloadTypes.shape({
			body: ActionCreator.PayloadTypes.any,
			query: ActionCreator.PayloadTypes.object,
			params: ActionCreator.PayloadTypes.object
		}).isRequired;

		const actionSource = this.actionSource || this.displayName;

		invariant(
			successTest instanceof Function,
			'The method `%s` could not be created on `%s`; ' +
			'`successTest` must be a `Function`',
			name,
			this
		);

		invariant(
			handleSuccess === undefined || handleSuccess instanceof Function,
			'The method `%s` could not be created on `%s`; ' +
			'`handleSuccess` must be a `Function`',
			name,
			this
		);

		invariant(
			handleFailure === undefined || handleFailure instanceof Function,
			'The method `%s` could not be created on `%s`; ' +
			'`handleFailure` must be a `Function`',
			name,
			this
		);

		invariant(
			typeof route === 'string',
			'The method `%s` could not be created on `%s`; ' +
			'`route` must be a `string`, like "/example/:example"',
			name,
			this
		);

		invariant(
			typeof method === 'string',
			'The method `%s` could not be created on `%s`; ' +
			'`method` must be a `string`, like "GET"',
			name,
			this
		);

		if (pendingActionType) {
			debug.registerAction(this, {type: pendingActionType, source: actionSource});
		}

		if (successActionType) {
			debug.registerAction(this, {type: successActionType, source: actionSource});
		}

		if (failureActionType) {
			debug.registerAction(this, {type: failureActionType, source: actionSource});
		}

		if (abortActionType) {
			debug.registerAction(this, {type: abortActionType, source: actionSource});
		}

		this[name] = (...args) => {
			invariant(
				createRequest || args.length === 0,
				`${this.toString()}'s ${name} action received ` +
				'arguments without a `createRequest` method. You must ' +
				'provide a `createRequest` method so you can format ' +
				'these arguments in the request.'
			);

			// If the user wants to create their own request with body, query
			// and/or params, then lets do that first.
			let request = createRequest ? createRequest.apply(this, args) : {};

			// If the user has defined default headers, merge them into the
			// request.
			if (defaultOptions.headers) {
				// The || checks aren't strictly necessary here, but reduce
				// some of the "magic."
				request.headers = Object.assign({}, defaultOptions.headers || {}, request.headers || {});
			}

			// If the user has defined a default base URL, append the route to the
			// base URL if, and only if, the route itself is not a fully qualified
			// URL.
			let requestRoute = request.route ? request.route : route;
			if (defaultOptions.baseURL && !requestRoute.startsWith('http') && !requestRoute.startsWith('//')) {
				requestRoute = requestRoute.startsWith('/') ? requestRoute.substr(1) : requestRoute;
				request.route = defaultOptions.baseURL + requestRoute;
			} else {
				request.route = requestRoute;
			}

			request = Object.assign({
				method
			}, request);

			this.validatePayload(name, request, payloadType);

			debug.logActionCreator(this, name, request, ...args);

			// If the user wants to dispatch a pending action
			// then we do that here.
			if (pendingActionType) {
				dispatcher.dispatch({
					source: actionSource,
					type: pendingActionType,
					payload: request
				});
			}

			return send(request, (result) => {
				const {response, request} = result;
				const success = successTest(response);
				const isAborted = !!response.fluxthisAborted;

				// These methods allow the user to process
				// the request and modify it how they please
				// or dispatch more actions.
				if (success && handleSuccess) {
					handleSuccess.call(this, request, response);
				} else if (isAborted && handleAbort) {
					handleAbort.call(this, request, response);
				} else if (handleFailure) {
					handleFailure.call(this, request, response);
				}

				let type;
				if (success && successActionType) {
					type = successActionType;
				} else if (isAborted && abortActionType) {
					type = abortActionType;
				} else if (!success && failureActionType) {
					type = failureActionType;
				}

				if (!type) {
					return;
				}

				// If we reach the end and we have an action
				// type, then that means we need to dispatch.
				dispatcher.dispatch({
					source: actionSource,
					type,
					payload: {
						request,
						response: isAborted ? undefined : response
					}
				});
			});
		};
	}

	toString() {
		return `[APIActionCreator ${this.displayName}]`;
	}
}


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John Bald is a former Ofsted inspector and has written two books on the history of writing and spelling. He is Chairman of the Conservative Education Society.
After last Monday's account of my visit to Great Yarmouth showed some of the best of the academies and free schools movement, Panorama the same evening showed the worst. The latest two scandals, from the TBAP and Silver Birch Trusts, showed wholesale abuse of public money and what may be the worst case of cheating on record, destroying the personal integrity of a headteacher, staff and children. TBAP, which runs special units for excluded children – of which more later – was paying its chief executive £220,000 a year while leaving bills unpaid and reducing staffing to levels that threatened safety.
Add these to Perry Beeches, feted at our Party Conference and now shut down, with a professional misconduct finding against its head, the naive error of funding Steiner and bogus Montessori schools – despite private warnings of what they might do – the £400,000 salary and £850,000 pay-off to the knighted head of Durand Academies, and Bronagh Monro's earlier Panorama exposure of the activities of Michael Dwan of Bright Tribe, who collected a Government grant of £566,000 to rebuild a sports hall, and spent around a tenth of that on shoring it up, and we have a collection of disasters that threatens the credibility of the whole academisation policy. "Stop filming," said Dwan at one point in his showing-up by Ms Monro. Some former ministers and advisers will have echoed his request.
Lord Agnew, for the government, said that investigations were not yet concluded. The director at the centre of the Silver Birch scandal had been replaced, and he admitted that early investigations into Silver Birch, (from 2014, before he joined) had not been tough enough. Had this been the only case, the answer might have been adequate. In view of all the others, it is not. Clearly, some people have been put in charge of schools who could not have been trusted with a park bench, and this colossal waste of money, at a time when large areas of the education service were being cut, is too important an issue to be left to muckraking journalists like Warwick Mansell. We need to know how and why this came about, and how the government is going to prevent it from continuing.
The picture is not easy to establish. I learned only recently that the Government had formed the intention, before the 2010 election, to turn every school in the country into an academy, a goal that was only made explicit in the 2016 White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, a title hollow enough to make Blair jealous. The first round of rapid expansion led our opponents to ask if the government intended to run all of schools directly from Whitehall. The argument was answered by establishing a system of regional academy commissioners, to take over many of the functions of local authorities, and possibly of Ofsted as well, as commissioners could send in officials to conduct their own version of inspection, with greater powers than inspectors ever had.
David Cameron's government was characterised by a determination to meet Treasury spending targets, while pursuing radical, but expensive policies such as HS2. The Government has now admitted that, in addition to tight controls on 11-16 school expenditure, it put a tight squeeze on sixth forms and FE colleges, a policy that I didn't understand at the time, but which now makes sense. Covertly cutting this provision, while imposing major new demands on the sector – such as the huge number of compulsory GCSE resits in English and maths – freed money for other priorities. Cui bono? The academies programme, whose consultants were paid large fees, while those of us working on the reform of exams and the curriculum, which to me was always the most important part of the work, did so as volunteers. The cuts to Ofsted, the only independent means of quality control, put several hundred million more into the pot. It is no accident that a good number of schools previously rated outstanding, and allowed to rest on their laurels, are losing this rating now that they are inspected once more.
What, one might ask, would lead a man like Michael Dwan, a venture capitalist by profession, to take an interest in running schools? This piece – from the Daily Mail, not the Guardian – suggests that raw financial inducement is the answer, with little or no regulation to stop people hiring relatives, commissioning "consultancy" from friends and relatives, and even complaining – successfully – about a suspension for taking a kick-back on a contract. Expanding the system at the required rate with almost no regulation was an invitation to corruption, and that is exactly what has occurred. The pioneer of academies who told me, well before the 2010 election, that "we don't have enough good people" was correct, and we have had no shortage of bad ones to fill the gap.
People have noticed. Panorama's film of the special unit run by TBAP gave us a view of education's lower depths, where pupils spend more time wrecking the school than learning, the situation that prevailed at Great Yarmouth before Barry Smith's arrival. Pupils and staff in these places are not safe, and this is not acceptable. Parents who come to me for help with their children's serious reading problems tell me that they get no help from their schools at all, and the notorious school cuts site, is given credibility by programmes such as this and causing us real electoral problems.
The situation has got past the stage at which it can be dealt with by departmental ministers and officials. Damian Hinds has done well to allocate additional funds for special needs provision, and to press for more money for schools. He now needs to take personal control of academy regulation, listen to whistleblowers, cut out the graft, and make sure that the money is spent for the benefit of children.
19 comments for: John Bald: Academy scandals. Hinds now needs to take control to stop them.


text:
Low Company
17 Amhurst Terrace London E8 2BT
All recent arrivals
John Tchicai With Strings
Treader
Outstanding, lyrical accounts of the veteran Danish-Afro-American saxophonist, who cut his teeth at the side of big boys (the biggest) like Coltrane, Ayler, Cherry and Bennink in the mid-60s before striking out on his own idiosyncratic and quietly illustrious path. A chance festival encounter with Treader chiefs John Coxon and Ashley Wales in the early noughts led to this intriguing date, and, we can now pretty confidently say - with our EXPERT knowledge of the contemporary scene, arf - surely one of the most powerful and refined and unannoying jazz records released this century. The sparrow (or whatever it is, as if I know what it is) that appeared on the cover of the original 2005 CD issue couldn't be more bluntly, and accurately, symbolic: sonically this album aspires to, and at its best achieves, bird-like flight, Tchichai's reeds sometimes an ecstatic flutter of small, rapid, but precise movements (somewhere between Dolphy and maybe Harold McNair on Kes?! Or is this all getting a bit BIRDMANIAX?), sometimes opening up into sonorous, weeping, melodic lines that sail the whole thing into the realm of the unabashedly spiritual. Wales and Coxon - formerly IDM-n-bass duo Springheel Jack, of course, but subsequently bastions of outward-looking London improv and, in Wales' case, Spiritualized sideman during the band's imperial phase - bring proper insight and sensitivity to their accompaniments, eschewing obvious electronic treatments in favour of harpsichord, guitar, trumpet, steel bowls, with additional percussions from Mark Sanders. Rest assured, it doesn't sound like it came from the Arve Henriksen Euthanasia Clinic or anything like that. No, it's an emotive yet properly understated record, subverting expectation at every turn, from the sleepy-eyed strings-n-vibes fantasia of the opener - weirdly reminiscent of a Randy Newman arrangement, or some lost Pet Sounds chart, cut with a peculiarly Northern European melancholy - on in. I would go as far as to say that the tremulous, poised, patient, but ultimately rapturous 'Formalism' is everything I wanted from jazz but was afraid to ask, or more accurately everything I thought I would get from ECM but never did. Highest possible recommendation!
About / Location
© Low Company 2020


text:
Shlomo (שְׁלֹמֹה), signifiant paisible, est un nom hébreu masculin. Salomon, roi de l'ancienne Israël selon divers textes religieux, est souvent appelé par le nom Shlomo.

Patronyme juif

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Asia Gensch of Evergreen kicks one during a Division III girls soccer sectional final Saturday. She scored the winning goal in overtime to lift the Vikings to a 3-2 win.
Sydney Woodring of Evergreen controls a ball near midfield Saturday. She scored a goal for the Vikings.
They were told they weren't "old" enough.
They hadn't beaten anyone yet.
And they will crumble under adversity.
Well maybe because they start as many as seven freshmen, Evergreen may not be very old. However down 2-1 in a howling, biting wind at Pifer Field with just over a minute left in regulation, the Vikings found a savior in the form of Paige Radel's goal, then found yet another hero in overtime as Asia Gensch drilled a shot just under the crossbar with 5:12 left as the Vikes beat Ottawa-Glandorf 3-2 to win a Division III sectional championship Saturday.
The title is the first for Evergreen in just their third year of the program.
The game was played in winds that gusted as high as 45 miles per hour and a frigid, stinging rain as the temps dropped from the low 50's to start the game through the 40s.
Playing against the wind in the first half, it was Evergreen that actually took a 1-0 lead when Radel deked out a pair of Titan defenders on the right side and fed Sydney Woodring coming down the middle, and the freshman hammered the back of the net from about 15 yards out.
That lead was short lived, as three minutes later Ottawa-Glandorf's Caitlin Bockrath lofted a shot that carried over goalie Myra Kuszmaul's head and knotted the score, 1-1.
However, Kuszmaul's athleticism kept the net clean the rest of the way as the Titans took 10 shots with the wind in the first 40 minutes.
The first half of the second 40, it looked as if the Titans were still playing with the wind as much of that time was played in the Vikings end, and O-G broke through in minute 60 when Kristin Siefker scored on a knuckball floating free kick, giving the Titans a 2-1 lead.
"Surprisingly I thought we controlled the ball pretty well against the wind in the first half," said Viking coach Joshua D. Radel. "I thought for sure coming out in the second half having the wind at our back we were going to be ready to fire on all cylinders and really possess in their half.
That lead held into the last two minutes as the Vikings peppered shots over and over at the net until Radel took a throw in off a Titan defender left of the net and blasted a rocket into the goal with 1:22 left to bring Evergreen back even.
The Vikings had a couple of chances in the last minute but shots by Emma Bettinger and Radel went just outside the goal, taking the teams to an extra 15 minutes.
Again the Vikings controlled the Titans side of the field and finally in the 10th minute of the extra period, Gensch took the rebound off a Woodring shot that was blocked and rifled a left-foot blast that made the Vikings a winner.
The Vikings, who outshot O-G 22-14, now advance to the district semifinal to play Archbold at Napoleon, Wednesday at approximately 7 p.m.
Evergreen is 10-4-1 on the season.


Last Week before our 14th annual sale of sport horses!
You are kindly invited to come and participate.
All 32 horses will be at the Club Hípico Argentino as of Tuesday, May 14th, 2013.
We are very pleased with the performance of our stallion Quitender (Quidam's Rubin x Contender), father of many horses at the sale.
At his last participation in Germany, he finished 4th with no faults at 1.40 m.
Our main stallion Milano de Flore will initiate a tour of Europe late May with an Argentinean riding team.
We look forward to seeing you at the Sale next Saturday May 18th!


text:
B A N C O
black autonomy network community organization working for economic and social justice in Benton Harbor, MI ...exposing state and local NAACP corruption
What's really happening to the people of Benton Harbor
Benton Harbor's city commission no longer has a Whirlpool-owned majority. Gov. Granholm is taking desperate measures to carry out a hostile takeover of the city.
The following is an article with Rev. Pinkney's commentary in bold and brackets.
Official: Granholm committed to Benton Harbor
[Gov. is not committed to BH, but to Whirlpool]
Responding to commissioners' criticism of governor, statespokeswoman cites various grants, programs that her administration has pushed
[The Governor has "pushed" only for Whirlpool, it's real estate arm Cornerstone Alliance, and the massive development called Harbor Shores where she will have a Lake Michigan mansion]
By Evan Goodenow - Herald Palladium Sat., Feb. 6, 2010
BENTON HARBOR - When Benton Harbor city commissioners blamed Gov. Jennifer Granholm for Benton Harbor's financial mess, were they throwing rocks at a lame duck or legitimately questioning why the head of a debt-ridden state should order a cash-strapped city around?
[Questioning was legit. because Granholm put on a song and dance about how much she'd help the city, but she's failed to do anything. Her largess has been focused squarely on Whirlpool, Cornerstone, and Harbor Shores]
With Granholm close to deciding on a state financial takeover to deal with the city's $4.1 million overall deficit and what a state review panel last week found was incompetent money management, commissioners lashed out at Granholm at Monday night's commission meeting. Commissioner Duane Seats said $5 million in state taxpayer money that should've gone to the city went to Citizens for Progressive Change, a group of mostly local residents formed in response to the 2003 riot.
[Seats is right on point. BH received no money. "Citizens for Progressive Change" is not made up of BH residents, but people who Granholm assembled for the purrpose of destroying BH so Harbor Shores development could be built.]
"The governor of the state of Michigan has never come to the City Hall, but she comes to churches," Seats said, adding that the city should appeal if Granholm appoints an emergency financial manager to oversee city finances.
[Granholm needs a finacial takeover of the state - she's almost 2billion in the red.]
Commissioner Marcus Muhammad compared a possible takeover to a coup d'etat. At a previous meeting, Commissioner Eddie Marshall, noting the state's $1.8 billion projected shortfall, compared a takeover to alcoholic parents advising their children not to drink.
[Muhammad and Marshall are 100% right.]
Through spokeswoman Liz Boyd, Granholm declined a chance to respond to the criticism.
[How can she respond to truth which she's attempting to hide?]
But Boyd said the criticism was unfounded. Boyd noted that the state is forbidden from running deficits, leading Granholm to make tough choices to balance budgets such as laying off state troopers, reducing Medicaid benefits and increasing employee pension contributions.
[Granholm is worse then Engler, and nobody's worse than Engler.]
Since taking office in 2003, Granholm has had to deal with the collapse of the U.S. auto industry and housing market and the worst recession since 1945. But Boyd said Granholm, whose approval ratings are way down in her last year in office, has steered millions of dollars to Benton Harbor.
[Not to the city, but to Whirlpool and Harbor Shores development.]
In the past two months alone, the state approved the city receiving a $13.9 million federal taxpayer anti-blight grant and $14.3 million in bonding for the water plant upgrade.
"The Granholm administration has been absolutely committed to helping the community lift itself up," Boyd said. "That's always been our goal, and it is surprising that some are questioning our commitment because it's been so strong."
[The residents of BH are worse off now than they have ever been.]
In a 2008 Herald-Palladium op-ed piece, Granholm wrote that Benton Harbor had come a long way since the 2003 riot.
[BH has gone a long way backwards - Granholm has not brought one job.]
She cited state support for summer youth programs, pre-apprenticeship job training, $21 million in tax credits from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority for the Benton Harbor Housing Authority's public housing renovation and MSHDA support for Habitat of Humanity's building of 21 homes.
[The summer "youth program" was designed to help Whirlpool and Harbor Shores clean off their brand new golf course. A lot of picking up of paper, etc. from the ground was what the lucky youths learned how to do.]
Granholm also noted the state Department of Transportation's upgrades in the Arts District and Main Street and the state Economic Development Corporation's support for the Harbor Shores golf, residential and retail development project.
[The art district is all white, no jobs for BH.]
"Although much remains to be done, Benton Harbor is in a far better position today than just five years ago due to a shared vision the community has created for the future," Granholm wrote. [again, worse off than ever because of you
"My goal is to make the state of Michigan the strong and committed partner Benton Harbor needs to transform itself into a place of growth and opportunity."
[Your only goal, guv, is to enrich the corporations and make sure BH gets demolished for your mansion.]
Labels: Benton Harbor, Boycott Whirlpool, Cornerstone Alliance, Gov Granholm, Harbor Shores, Rep. Fred Upton, St. Joseph
PRISON RADIO
Listen to Rev. Pinkney on Prison Radio.
Mr. Kaepernick, You Are My Hero
The River Goes By - Philip Bassett
See the lyrics here
quickly with PayPal
Fundraiser/Publicity T-shirts are white in sizes M, L, XL, and 2X. Donation is $10 and $3 for shipping. Payment can be made at Moratorium-Mi.org or checks can be sent to Moratorium NOW, 5920 2nd Ave., Detroit MI 48202
Central Coordinating Committee
Press Release Issued By Rev. Pinkney
All-white jury convicted - no evidence
#FreePinkney!
HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN FLYER
WHIRLPOOL & SUBSIDIARIES Amana, Estate, Gladiator Garage Works, Insperience, Jenn-Air, KitchenAid, Magic Chef, Maytag, Roper, Acros, Inglis, Bauknecht, Brastemp, Admiral, IKEA appliances and some Kenmore
Funds Needed!
10 Reasons to Donate $10
Send donations as checks made out to "BANCO" to:
Dorothy Pinkney
1940 Union St.
How BANCO Started
Video of Rev. Pinkney
Discussing Local Democracy
(more videos at end of page)
Reporting every month on Benton Harbor's monumental struggle: PeoplesTribune.org
Free Pinkney Poster
Listen to internet radio with Rev. Pinkney
Labels (quick searches)
* Attorneys for Pinkney
* BANCO
* Benton Harbor
* Berrien County
* Boycott Whirlpool
* Commissioner Glenn Yarbough
* Court Case
* Harbor Shores
* Jail
* Jean Klock Park
* Judge Butzbaugh
* Judge Wiley
* Legal Defense Fund
* Media
* Mrs Dorothy Pinkney
* Pinkney for US Congress
* Police
* Police Abuse
* Prison
* Quoting Bible
* Rep. Fred Upton
* Rev Pinkney
* Sheriff
* Whirlpool
Select Speeches and Reports
* February 03, 2007 -- Detroit Greens: Benton Harbor's Rev. Pinkney Hearing: Summary & Report
* January 25, 2007 -- Michigan Peace Network: Justice for Rev. Pinkney! Jan. 25
* January 3, 2007 -- Media Mouse - Grand Rapids Independent Media: Court Support needed in Rev. Pinkney's Struggle against Whirlpool in Benton Harbor
* December 15, 2006 YouTube - Todd Price & Karen Chin OTE productions: Rev Pinkney speaks at a Democracy Conference
* October 01, 2006 Truth of the Matter
* March 12, 2006 Pan-African News Wire: Statewide Meeting Supports Rev. Pinkney in Benton Harbor
* November 30, 2005 Michigan IMC: Reverend Pinkney Speaks in L.A.
* May 31, 2005 Black at Michigan: Back again…
* January 7, 2004 MarkDilley: GENOCIDE IN BENTON HARBOR (more)
(racism)
Taking American jobs away is a Whirlpool Specialty
Whirlpool layoffs in Fort Smith total 850 11/23/2010 Whirlpool Corp. has confirmed that two rounds of recent layoffs have resulted in 850...
Corporate Crime & Benton Harbor
Great article on corporate crime and Benton Harbor Pinkney Interview BENTON HARBOR: THE STOLEN TOWN by Kathy Nathan As consumers of main ...
10 REASONS TO DONATE $10 TO BANCO'S LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
We still need 100 good people to donate $10 each to BANCO's Legal Defense Fund. In December 2014, Rev. Edward Pinkney was sentenced to ...
For profit chain gangs in Michigan?
Reposted from MWRO Blog Having family and friends in prison teaches you a lot about what things are like from "the inside." MWR...
Prosecutor Gerald Vigansky, a monster
Berrien County Commissioners have knowledge of the following, but remain mute Seeing Benton Harbor residents and Berrien County Courthouse ...
Benton Harbor/St. Joseph is the most blatant planned racist divide in the country
Job losses have not affected St. Joe even close to how they've decimated Benton Harbor. In fact, the funds of Whirlpool have been primar...
Does a Broken Country Have a Future? The Criminal Injustice System
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, March 11, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coau...
When they don't like who's running for city commission in Benton Harbor, illegal actions are taken by Berrien County judges, prosecutors, and attorneys
Make sure you're sitting down for this one. Dennis Knowles, a citizen of Benton Harbor who is running for city commission, was recentl...
Julie Swidwa, Herald Palladium "reporter," is expert in making up stories out of nearly nothing
In this case, she's able to draw out and sensationalize the story of a man with a cracked car windshield being chased at high speed by a...
Benton Harbor's Most Wanted
BENTON HARBOR'S MOST WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY CHIEF PROSECUTOR: JIM CROW CHERRY JUDGES: JOHN HAMMOND PAUL MALONEY DENNIS WILEY...
BANCO online archive
BANCO online archive January 2020 (1) December 2019 (2) November 2019 (1) September 2019 (1) July 2019 (2) June 2019 (3) May 2019 (3) April 2019 (2) March 2019 (2) February 2019 (1) January 2019 (3) December 2018 (5) November 2018 (7) September 2018 (1) August 2018 (1) July 2018 (5) June 2018 (3) May 2018 (7) April 2018 (1) March 2018 (6) February 2018 (1) January 2018 (1) December 2017 (7) November 2017 (7) October 2017 (6) September 2017 (2) August 2017 (9) July 2017 (14) June 2017 (10) May 2017 (12) April 2017 (9) March 2017 (4) February 2017 (13) January 2017 (6) December 2016 (10) November 2016 (9) October 2016 (12) September 2016 (14) August 2016 (10) July 2016 (9) June 2016 (11) May 2016 (21) April 2016 (10) March 2016 (17) February 2016 (15) January 2016 (27) December 2015 (31) November 2015 (21) October 2015 (19) September 2015 (23) August 2015 (9) July 2015 (14) June 2015 (12) May 2015 (9) April 2015 (9) March 2015 (8) February 2015 (9) January 2015 (9) December 2014 (11) November 2014 (15) October 2014 (11) September 2014 (4) August 2014 (9) July 2014 (8) June 2014 (9) May 2014 (7) April 2014 (4) March 2014 (4) February 2014 (1) January 2014 (11) December 2013 (4) November 2013 (6) October 2013 (5) September 2013 (3) August 2013 (5) July 2013 (12) June 2013 (3) May 2013 (7) April 2013 (7) March 2013 (8) February 2013 (5) January 2013 (12) December 2012 (6) November 2012 (9) October 2012 (4) September 2012 (8) August 2012 (11) July 2012 (11) June 2012 (15) May 2012 (12) April 2012 (11) March 2012 (5) February 2012 (5) January 2012 (8) December 2011 (11) November 2011 (9) October 2011 (10) September 2011 (14) August 2011 (4) July 2011 (13) June 2011 (9) May 2011 (14) April 2011 (16) March 2011 (5) February 2011 (6) January 2011 (7) December 2010 (10) November 2010 (7) October 2010 (16) September 2010 (15) August 2010 (10) July 2010 (7) June 2010 (5) May 2010 (7) April 2010 (6) March 2010 (17) February 2010 (13) January 2010 (13) December 2009 (10) November 2009 (8) October 2009 (10) September 2009 (11) August 2009 (7) July 2009 (17) June 2009 (18) May 2009 (12) April 2009 (19) March 2009 (25) February 2009 (25) January 2009 (20) December 2008 (18) November 2008 (15) October 2008 (22) September 2008 (20) August 2008 (16) July 2008 (15) June 2008 (22) May 2008 (20) April 2008 (30) March 2008 (16) February 2008 (8) January 2008 (4) December 2007 (13) November 2007 (4) October 2007 (5) September 2007 (5) August 2007 (4) July 2007 (9) June 2007 (8) May 2007 (9) April 2007 (4) March 2007 (12) February 2007 (6) January 2007 (7) December 2006 (2) November 2006 (2) October 2006 (4) September 2006 (4) August 2006 (3) July 2006 (3) June 2006 (7) May 2006 (7) April 2006 (4) March 2006 (5) February 2006 (3) January 2006 (2) December 2005 (3) November 2005 (4) October 2005 (5) September 2005 (5) August 2005 (9) July 2005 (14) June 2005 (19) May 2005 (8) April 2005 (1) January 2004 (1) July 2003 (1)
Rev. Edward Pinkney - How BANCO Started:
"Many years ago I was going about my life believing that the justice system was just that until I started going to the court house to observe all the wrong convictions. There are numerous factors for wrongful convictions in the Berrien County court system. Most of the problems are in the local judicial system."
"It's hard to believe that in the year 2012 we have a county in Michigan with a legal system this antiquated and racist. What's harder to believe is that no one at the State or National level is taking any action to remedy the situation."
"We cannot run society for the privileged and allow a significant proportion of the population to be marginalized. It impacts the quality of life for all of us. If we have throwaway people, a justice system which tolerates injustice is doomed to collapse. I am truly ready for action."
Call or write me anytime about anything!
269-925-0001 banco9342@sbcglobal.net


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NPD Not Needed to Forcast 2011 Game Winners
by MaXfReZa | Dec 11, 2011 | Gaming | 0 comments
It's that time of year when everyone has their 2 cents on who the winners for this year are. NPD puts things into mathematical perspective, to end all uncertainty; and to be unbiased in its opinion. I think everyone can appreciate their thorough investigation, but lets be honest… did anyone really need numerical evidence to know who won in 2011? Nope. lol. Anyone following game releases this year knows who's killing it!
But here's NPD's breakdown [by Destructoid] in case you had any doubts…
Nothing was going to top Call of Duty, of course; improving upon Black Ops' first-month sales by about 7%.
From October 30 through November 26, does have some surprises in store… Total software sales were up 16% over 2010 to $1.74 billion, a new record; the previous high came in November 2008.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda Softworks' expansive and engrossing RPG, came in at number two; NPD analyst Anita Frazier reports that after just one month, it's only about half a million units shy of Oblivion's lifetime sales.
Battlefield 3's performance, while not up to par with MW3, wasn't too shabby: it sold well enough to place in third and become the best-selling game in franchise history.
Frazier points out that two other platform exclusives, Nintendo's Super Mario 3D Land (625,000 units sold) and Microsoft's Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, would have made the top ten if the list included only single-SKU sales. Here's the full list of software sales rankings:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)**
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC)**
Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)**
Assassin's Creed: Revelations (360, PS3, PC)
Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360)
Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2)**
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3)**
Saints Row: The Third (360, PS3, PC)**
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)**
Batman: Arkham City (360, PS3, PC)**
**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)
Hardware sales dropped by 9% to $982.4 million, and accessories came in at $273.8 million, a 34% decline. US retail sales constituted $3 billion, up only 0.4% compared to 2010.
Xbox 360 sales jumping 23% year-over-year to 1.7 million units — Microsoft sold 960,000 Xbox 360s and 750,000 Kinects.
Sony sold 900,000 PlayStation 3's, a 70% leap from a year ago, but the 800,000-unit gap between the 360 and the PS3 was "the largest we've seen since December 2008 when the Nintendo DS was the top selling system," said Frazier.
Nintendo, for its part, enjoyed the 3DS's best month yet: thanks to the 795,000 units that Americans bought in November, Nintendo has now sold more 3DS systems in eight months (almost 2.5 million) than they sold of the original DS in its first year (2.37 million).
Take a look at the month's overall hardware sales:
Xbox 360: 1.7M
PlayStation 3: 900,000
Wii: 860,000
3DS: 795,000
DS: 350,000
According to Frazier, the numbers bump for each system between October and November 2011 was "in line with typical seasonality trends,".


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Beuke on Brazil
Rower returns to Dungeness, reflects on world championships
Wednesday, August 19, 2015 12:54pm
Elise Beuke sits near the beach off Three Crabs Road overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. She returned home to the Sequim-Dungeness Valley for the first time this summer after training for the World Rowing Junior Championships.
World class rower Elise Beuke is back in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley and she's finding it hard to take it easy.
She spent all summer training daily for the World Rowing Junior Championships leading to two weeks in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the competition. She and Isabella Strickler (Grosse Pointe, Mich.) took seventh in the double scull competition on Aug. 8.
On her return trip, Beuke traveled 33 hours and slept for about six of those before spending her first full day in the area on Aug. 12.
"I'm taking a week off," she said. "I don't want to but you have to or you can get burned out. It's hard not to go for a run or a workout."
But Beuke has plenty of summer left in Sequim. She'll move into her dorm room on Sept. 24 as a freshman at the University of Washington focusing on rowing and a degree in art history.
"I'm lucky," she said. "Some of the athletes who went to the world championships have like a week off before they go back to school."
Brazil's water
The rowing championships became part of a bigger story in Rio as reports came out about the pollution levels in the the Rodrigo de Freitas Lake where Beuke competed and the 2016 rowing competition for the Rio Summer Olympics is held.
The Associated Press reported that 13 Team USA junior rowers and four staff became ill with gastrointestinal issues possibly from pollution in the lake.
Beuke said her coach from the Olympic Peninsula Rowing Association, Rodrigo Rodrigues, who co-coached the U.S. team, is from Brazil, and had a different perspective on the reports and encouraged her not to give into the hype. She said some Americans were saying not to drink or eat certain things like fruits, meats and water from restaurants.
"I'm the type of person who will try any weird food or cultural thing," Beuke said. "I ate chicken heart and all the random stuff they had."
Beuke theorizes teammates became ill from a 24-hour bug.
"No other countries got sick except a boy from Germany and we were in a hotel with 14 other countries," she said.
"If it had to do with water, it wouldn't be 24 hours. It would be in everyone and last a really long time."
The common practice to bleach oars was highlighted in Brazil by national media outlets too, Beuke said.
"It's a sanitizing thing," she said. "We do it everywhere. Not just in Brazil."
Usually, she keeps her water bottle in the boat but Beuke opted not to after the first day when she saw lake water splash on it.
But that didn't stop her teammate Strickler from breaking tradition.
"Isabella has a lucky hat," Beuke said. "Her mom sent me one because at a regatta you have to have matching outfits. I usually like to wear a visor. On the days we didn't wear it, she'd put it in the boat and it would get water on it. She didn't want to wash the luck out."
Brazil's people
Along with many rowers feeling ill, races were moved up due to oncoming storms during its last two days.
However, Beuke and Strickler came away with the best time in the double scull (7:22.99) in the B Finals. But Beuke wasn't too impressed with that stat.
"The way the race course is, as you go down there are spots where a huge crosswind will hit you," she said.
"It was a lot windier in the second heat (A Finals). We just didn't have a wind and they had a crosswind."
Regardless of her rowing outcome, Beuke speaks highly of her experience in Brazil and attributes much of it to Rodrigues who took her to see some sights and meet former rowers he coached.
"Rio was really cool," she said. "It was pretty close to what I expected. I didn't expect it to be as dirty but I knew Brazil was a Third World country."
However, she found the people all to be kind and hospitable and their art and culture to be beautiful.
"There is street art everywhere like a mural on a wall or a super cool painting," Beuke said.
Brazil's culture resonated with Beuke who is an artist in many forms. But with so much attention put on rowing, when she was asked to define herself in a word or two, she jokingly replied, "Elise Beuke, human."
"I'm OK with rowing defining me," she said. "I just don't want it to be the sole thing that defines me. I like rowing and whether or not I want it to be my thing, it is and it's how people know me. Once you are a rower you never stop."
She's found people are involved in the rowing community in many ways and that she's now always going to be a part of it.
"It's a really supportive community," she said.
Prior to the world championships, Beuke said she liked keeping rowing quiet and laying low as long as possible.
"It was this random thing no one knew about," she said.
"I wanted to do my training and workouts and have my goals first and see where it takes me."
But in a little over a month, Beuke takes on another journey, college, joining a few of her U.S. teammates.
Beuke said she'd consider trying out for the U-23 national rowing team if asked, but aside from rowing for the Huskies, she's not sure if she'll do more rowing on another team or take the summer off. However, taking some time to figure out those details is a human thing to do.
Random Questions with Elise Beuke:
Question 20: What is your dream job?
Beuke: A museum curator. I like modern art the most.
Question 21: As a child what did you want to be?
Beuke: I always thought it would be fun to be a surfer. I always wanted to learn to surf. I always thought the professional surfers like Bethany Hamilton were so cool.
Question 31: Would you give me a dollar?
Beuke: Yeah. In the big scheme of things a dollar doesn't matter that much to me. It wouldn't affect me that much.
Question 41: Who is one person you'd like to arm wrestle?
Beuke: The first question you ask yourself is do I want to win the arm wrestling match. The second question is who would I want to hang out with. I would say Serena Williams (tennis player) because she's super strong and super bad-ass. Would I want to lose? I would lose to her.
Question 42: What is your best memory of Sequim?
Beuke: I grew up (in Dungeness) playing on the beach and watching the sunset at 3 Crabs and being in the water with my brother and sister (Blaise and Emma) and later having sand fights.
In Random Questions, members of the community each draw five random questions (sometimes more) out of 50 from a bag and he/she will answer these questions for your entertainment. With suggestions for random interviews, e-mail Matthew Nash at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
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Q: Why is CPU use so asymmetric on our 8-cpu SQL Server box? I've noticed that the CPU usage on our 8-CPU database server, running SQL Server 2008, is not balanced at all.
Here are the 1 day averages for a random day a while back, which is typical and consistently asymmetric:
9, 15, 10, 21, 18, 21, 14, 9

(only thumbnail here, because the image is really tall, but click through for the full size image)
Compared with our 4-CPU web servers, which are all almost exactly and perfectly balanced all the time, that struck me as odd.
Now, this is a dedicated server, so the only thing running on it is SQL Server 2008 (and the built-in full text indexing, which we use pretty heavily), so I'm not sure why the CPU usage would be so asymmetric. Thoughts?

A: The scales are different on all of them, other than a spike on 4 of the graphs your averages would all be about 10-25%.

A: How are your files / filegroups set up?
I'll plagiarize myself:
One more thought on IO: we were careful to set up our biggest most often used tables to be on filegroups with multiple files in them. One of the performance enhancements of this is that SQL will thread requests to each file in the filegroup - so if BigOverUsedTable is on FileGroup1 and FileGroup1 has four files in it and your DB has 8 cores, it will actually use four cores to do "select big number crunching nasty query from BigOverUsedTable" - whereas otherwise, it will only use one CPU. We got this idea from this MSDN article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms944351.aspx
From TFA:
"Filegroups use parallel threads to improve data access. When a table is accessed sequentially, the system creates a separate thread for each file in parallel. When the system performs a table scan for a table in a filegroup with four files, it uses four separate threads to read the data in parallel. In general, using multiple files on separate disks improves performance. Too many files in a filegroup can cause too many parallel threads and create bottlenecks."
We have four files in our filegroup on an 8 core machine due to this advice. It's working out well.
Edit: this has another (possibly) better answer now. The graphs were off on scale - if you look closely, each processor is actually about 20% loaded as uzbones points out.
Edit: We can actually tell that using multiple file filegroups helps, because we didn't put all our tables in the filegroup with four files. Big queries on the "single file" filegroup only use one CPU, but queries on the table in the four file filegroup hit 4 CPU's.

A: Check this out:
http://blogs.technet.com/mat_stephen/archive/2005/02/02/365325.aspx
SQL might only be writing to a handful of files and each processor is using each file.

A: The first thing I check for stuff like that is drivers.  I've had a lot of problems with network teaming and iSCSI MPIO drivers sticking on specific cores.  I bet that's not the issue here though since it looks like it's happening across 4 cores - I usually only see that with 2 cores.  I'll ask around to see if anybody's seen it this wide.
I've also seen it with NUMA boxes where there's a memory mismatch - say half the cores are hooked up to 16gb of ram and the others are hooked up to 8.  Google for IBM x460 NUMA if you wanna see some funny info about that.  The 460 and related models let you daisy chain several servers together to create big iron - kinda relevant with the scale up vs out blog entry.  They're awesome machines.

A: Because flushing CPU caches is so incredibly expensive that the kernel tries to avoid it at all costs.
(Note: At least Linux does; I'd be surprised if Windows didn't have the same behaviour)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


country and global studies will provide a comparative examination among countries and regions.
present our findings in many international conferences and to prepare papers for publication in journals.
Concurrently, we will also write several books on the subject.
publications: descriptive and theoretical/relationship. We provide examples of each in the following sections.
between countries and regions, and offer explanations and underlying reasons.
ideas, but these may be just the tip of the iceberg. We group some examples by theme.
ITOC heterogeneous or relatively homogenous across countries)?
 Are there clusters of IT roles that have important differences in ITOC values (developers vs.
system administrators vs. others)? Do they vary by country?
affect more than espoused national culture?
 Do certain national cultures place more importance on disaster recovery planning than others?
importance of IT/Business alignment? Does IT organizational maturity have an influence?
 Does the level of IT job satisfaction differ by IT role and by country?
gender, age, industry, and organizational maturity?
a preliminary paper in a conference on this topic.
and Jacks (2016) have already published a preliminary paper in a conference on this topic.
may even invite others to join in writing research papers.


Grasses - but no mowing.
Did you ever want a lawn in your garden ? No – we started our garden in the spring of 2004 after the build of our house was completed. The existing trees in the land around our house were very important to us and continue to contribute in a very strong way to the garden. We live in the barrocal in the eastern Algarve and have carob, olive and almond trees, we never considered having a lawn.What were your reasons for not having one ? The climate, the need to water any lawn area copiously, and then mow it !
What are your basic intentions for the garden ? To create a garden that looks natural and blends with the surrounding landscape. Overall, the garden is wildlife friendly, we use no pesticides and selectively weed kill only on drives and pathway areas. We aim to encourage all wildlife, including insects, birds and the native wild flowers. Fertilising is done with horse and sheep manure, either used dry or as a liquid feed. I use neem oil for pest control.
We have made extensive use of gravel – sometimes with a weed suppressant textile. The gravel associates particularly well with the bedrock and the rocks left over from our building project – great material for giving impact in the garden.
Do you want low maintenance/drought resistant planting ? Yes, most definitely. We have tried mainly to use plants that will survive with the minimum of watering. We use grey water where possible, for instance, washing up water goes on the garden and the washing machine connects to a hose which also goes to the garden. When plants are established we reduce or remove the irrigation.
Maintenance includes removing dead and dry plant material, and pruning native plants to shape near paths and in the more formal areas of the garden, near the house for example. Early Christmas presents for ourselves were a chain saw and a pick axe !!
What are your future plans for the garden ? To continue to develop drought resistant plantings and maintain what we have. We will continue to make extensive use of ornamental grasses as they work very well in the context of the wider landscape around us. We remove or cut down on irrigation when and where possible. We also "shred and spread" – shredded prunings being used as a mulch to keep burning down to an absolute minimum. Mulching also preserves moisture in the soil. We compost all soft material and use it as a soil improver and for pots and containers.
Was it easy to find good plants for your garden here on the Algarve ? Yes. Approximately half of all our plants have been propagate by us from cuttings and seeds. Other plants have been increased by splitting each year and replanting, for example, the iris used throughout the garden have all come from an original clump found near our local bins ! We aim to increase our stock of the plants that work in this soil and climate, replicating successful plants.
Our neighbour has a small plant nursery which grows tough plants at a good price. Through the garden clubs, we have found many more on the monthly plant sales tables. The MGS Garden Fair in November is an excellent source of a wide range of plants suitable for the Algarve.
It was a great pleasure to find that our garden won the 'Eco Garden of the Year' award in the competition run by local garden clubs. This was awarded for the most environmentally and wildlife friendly garden. We now have different areas linked by meandering paths, with elements of surprise and a sense of fun. The garden is a constant source of interest for us both, an opportunity for artistic expression and enjoyment, we are never bored !
Roses in a Mediterranean climate – pain or gain ?


Lock in a great price for Hotel Lofos - The Hill – rated 8.8 by recent guests!
The people were really nice. We had a really nice staying in lofos hotel in Ios.
Aircon, nice staff, helpful, tv to chill out and watch even tho it was just in Greek haha.
Pool was clean and well looked after. Location was perfect.
Nikos est disponible, accueillant et à l'écoute. Transfert du port jusqu'à l'hôtel et inversement. Bonne situation géographique et superbe vue. Super séjour, merci encore !
Όλα ήταν όπως θα έπρεπε ... Καθαρά, ήσυχα. Οι άνθρωποι του ξενοδοχείου πάντα με ένα χαμόγελο.
Fantastisk hyggelig personal, flott bassengområde (på nabohotellet) og ok priser på mat og drikke.
Hotel Lofos - The Hill This rating is a reflection of how the property compares to the industry standard when it comes to price, facilities and services available. It's based on a self-evaluation by the property. Use this rating to help choose your stay!
The Cycladic-style The Hill is centrally located in Ios Town, within a walking distance from restaurants, bars and shops. It offers free 2-way transfer from the port and air-conditioned rooms with free WiFi and a shared balcony.
The rooms of Hill are fitted with tiled floors and dark-wooden furnishings. Each unit is equipped with a fridge, a TV and a safe. The private bathroom comes with a shower. Most units enjoy views over the old town of Ios.
Ios Port is located within 1.2 mi from the Hill, while the famous Mylopotas Beach is 0.9 mi away. The sandy beach of Agia Theodoti is at 7.5 mi. Free public parking is possible nearby.
When would you like to stay at Hotel Lofos - The Hill?
Air-conditioned room with free WiFi and a shared balcony. It is equipped with a fridge, a TV, a safe and a private bathroom. Most units enjoy views over the old town of Ios.
This quadruple room features air conditioning and free WiFi.
House Rules Hotel Lofos - The Hill takes special requests – add in the next step!
Hotel Lofos - The Hill accepts these cards and reserves the right to temporarily hold an amount prior to arrival.
Staff at times could be rude and entered room without knocking.


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Home » Stuff We Like » American Veterans Center – Tim Holbert Interview
Posted on Sep 18, 2012 in Stuff We Like
American Veterans Center – Tim Holbert Interview
The American Veterans Center's stated mission is "to guard the legacies and honor the sacrifices of all American veterans. Through oral history preservation, educational programs and civic events." It hosts radio shows and podcasts that include "Veterans Chronicles," "Profiles in Valor," "Proudly We Hail," and documentaries. "Home of the Brave" on its Website features stories of veterans, such as that about Fritz Emil Wolf, a fighter pilot who few P-40s over China and Burma and later, the article says, led the first carrier-based bombing attack on targets in Japan. The center also hosts Wounded Warrior Dinners and the recently revived National Memorial Day Parade.
The AVC's Annual Conference and Awards Gala is described as "our nation's premier gathering of heroes," where veterans share their experiences with hundreds of JROTC and ROTC students, West Point and Air Force Academy cadets and Naval Academy midshipmen. This year's conference, the 15th such gathering, will be held October 25–27 at the United States Navy Memorial in Washington, DC. Among a long list of those planning to attend are members of the Doolittle Raiders and Heroes of the Battle of Midway groups, Brigadier General R. Steve Ritchie, the only Air Force "ace" of the Vietnam War. George Klein, a Pointe-du-Hoc Ranger, survivors of the Chosin Reservoir battle, highly decorated veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and George Mendonsa and Greta Friedman, who have been identified as the famed "sailor and nurse" kissing in the VJ Day Times Square photo.
Recently, the Executive Director of the American Veterans Center, Tim Holbert, discussed the organization with Armchair General in an exclusive interview.
Armchair General: How did the American Veterans Center come to be?
Tim Holbert: The origins of the American Veterans Center come from the early 1990s, and the 50th anniversary of World War II. During the anniversary commemorations, Jim Roberts, president of the Radio America network, partnered with the National Archives to create a weekly short documentary series titled World War II Chronicles that looked back on events from that week of the war, 50 years ago.
The program proved so successful that Jim Roberts decided to institutionalize the program as a non-profit organization called the World War II Veterans Committee. The Committee sought to continue the documentary work begun with World War II Chronicles, as well as to connect students to World War II veterans, allowing them to learn directly from the men and women of the Greatest Generation. The highlight event of the year, the Annual Veterans Conference around Veterans Day, was begun in the late 1990s.
Following the conclusion of the 60th anniversary of World War II in 2005, the decision was made to expand the organization's programming to work with veterans of all eras, World War II to today, operating under the title of the American Veterans Center.
ACG: We are coming up on your Annual Veterans Conference, taking place from October 25–27 in Washington, DC. Can you tell us a bit about that?
TH: This is the 15th year for the conference, which has grown into a fantastic event unlike any other in the country. The three-day event will feature distinguished and decorated veterans from World War II to Afghanistan, who will share their lessons and experiences with an audience of several hundred military academy students from West Point, the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy, as well as regional ROTC and JROTC programs. The conference is also open to all who would like to attend.
Several of the highlights of this year's event include the famed Doolittle Raiders from World War II, as well as the Montford Point Marines, recipients of the Medal of Honor, a panel dedicated to the Battle of Midway, and a live conversation with troops on the front lines of Afghanistan via Skype. We will also have a fun conversation with the authors of the new book, The Kissing Sailor, who say that through extensive research they have finally identified the nurse and sailor in the legendary photo "VJ Day in Times Square." The sailor and nurse as identified by the book, George Mendonsa and Greta Friedman, will also be on hand to participate.
The conference will be bookended with two events filmed for television. Opening the conference will be a program titled "The Wounded Warrior Experience." Now in its third year, the program features wounded service members who offer insight and advice to veterans who have suffered both physical wounds and psychological wounds such as PTSD. The conference will close with the American Veterans Center's Annual Awards, honoring heroes from World War II to the present day.
The awards program has taken place for 15 years, but this is the first year we have brought it to television for The Pentagon Channel. We've noticed how popular awards shows are with Americans, but there are currently none that honor those who most deserve it. We are excited to make this into an annual television tradition. Both programs will air on and around Veterans Day, and you can learn more information about tuning in or attending the conference at the American Veterans Center Website.
ACG: Who is eligible to join or become part of the AVC? How would someone go about doing that?
TH: While the AVC is not membership based, our programming is open to all people with an interest in military history, whether they are veterans or not. Our new online program, "Home of the Brave" allows veterans and their families to share their own personal experiences of service. Additionally, all are invited to attend our events, such as the annual conference and the National Memorial Day Parade. More information is available at our website at www.americanveteranscenter.org.
ACG: On your Website "Allies for Honor" says, "Coming Soon." What will this be?
TH: The world is becoming increasingly digital, and "Allies for Honor" is part of the AVC's effort to keep up with this new age. It will be an online program featuring exclusive and original content for AVC supporters, and we're excited to kick it off later in 2012.
ACG: Your site features radio shows about veterans. What are a few of those shows?
TH: As I mentioned at the outset, the AVC's origins are in radio programming, which continues to this day. Over the years, we have produced some fantastic radio documentary programs on military history, including "D-Day: They Were There," "Pearl Harbor: 60 Years of Echoes," and "America Strikes Back: The Story of the Doolittle Raid." Currently, we have two weekly programs airing on Radio America, "Veterans Chronicles" and "Proudly We Hail." "Veterans Chronicles," which features interviews with noteworthy veterans, is also a popular podcast.
ACG: The Center has a publication called American Valor Quarterly. Would you tell us a bit about that publication?
TH: We launched the magazine in 2007 as a means by which to help veterans tell their own stories, in their own words. It grew out of the World War II Veterans Committee's previous newsletter, also called World War II Chronicles. We found that stories by the veterans themselves, telling their own war stories, were always most popular among our readers. This is also our way of helping these veterans to add their stories to the historical record.
ACG: The AVC hosts the National Memorial Day Parade in the nation's capital. What can you tell us at this point about the 2013 parade?
TH: The parade will take place on Monday, May 27, at 2:00 PM along Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. Some of the highlights of the parade are still coming together, but we again expect it to be the largest Memorial Day event in the nation, with some 250,000–300,000 spectators and thousands of participants, including nearly 1,000 active duty personnel. For the first time, we will be syndicating the parade's television broadcast nationally, making it available on broadcast stations in nearly every city across the country, which we are very excited about.
ACG: Thanks for taking time to share this information with us. Is there anything you'd like to add?
TH: Mainly just a reminder that the Annual Veterans Conference will take place from October 25–27 in Washington and is open for all to attend. I hope that many of your readers will be able to join us—it truly is my favorite event of the year, and ends up being quite a memorable weekend. Thank you again.