text:
A Kinder, Gentler Treasury Procurement Office
The agency has a new IT strategy, but don't underestimate the Treasury Department's steely resolve to keep its contracts equipped with the latest and greatest products
It's business as un-usual at the Treasury Department's various procurement offices these days. A new IT strategy sees procurement officials actually fostering a close "relationship" with vendors with calls for open communication, honesty and trust -- virtues to be sure, but ones generally more closely associated with Oprah Winfrey than, say, the Internal Revenue Service.
"We're trying to break down that old-fashioned, arms-length relationship between vendors and government," says Bob Welch, executive director of procurement at the Treasury Department. "It's kind of like building a house. If you don't trust your contractor and you're going to work off of blueprints and specs and you never talk to that person, you're probably going to be unhappy with the result. But if you're in there every day and the blueprints aren't just right, that's OK because you can simply tell the guy, 'Hey, I'd rather have this wall over there.' It's just a matter of people working together toward a common purpose."
"Quite simply, they're a joy to work with," says Alan Lawrence, vice president of business development for GTSI, which last year won the Treasury Department Acquisition I award, worth $3.9 million.
Things were not always so sunny with this group. Before 1990, the Treasury Department employed a traditional, distant, hard-nosed approach -- a strategy that Welch admits "just doesn't work."
That fact was brought to light with the IRS, in particular. In the 1980s, the agency, which today performs the bulk of the Treasury's infotech procurement activities, including all major telecommunications systems and PC buys, was protested on almost every information technology acquisition and lost about half of those.
Greg Rothwell, assistant commissioner for procurement at the IRS, began to implement changes when he was hired in 1990. After much research and discussion with industry, the IRS instituted the "Full and Open Communications Policy," which included several different goals, including increasing communication with vendors and re-engineering the procurement process to suit the dynamic characteristics of information technology solutions.
Other innovations include flexibility clauses that allow technology refreshment, contracts of shorter duration, intense competition, benchmarking for procurement officials and allowing Treasury employees to use credit cards to buy more quickly and easily from the GSA Schedule.
The Treasury Acquisition Institute, located in Oxon Hill, Md., was established in the early 1990s for the express purpose of training procurement employees in the new culture, including customer service and diversity skills. All procurement chiefs now sign a pledge to do all they can to improve the process. The result of such measures has been dramatic. Since the changes were instituted, for example, the IRS has conducted 58 contracts with just 7 protests (on 4 different procurements) and only one loss. "It's a pretty phenomenal turnaround," Rothwell admits.
"They have a very helpful open-door policy," says Joe Santamaria, vice president and general manager of information technology for Unisys Federal Systems Division, which has won four infotech contracts in the past year, including the $520 million Service Center Support System and Storage Peripheral Replacement on Unisys Computer Equipment worth $106 million. "They'll call you in, discuss requirements with you, ask you for suggestions and debrief you after the award to let you know where you did well, where you could do better. It makes them very easy to work with."
In fact, the Treasury Department invites discussion at all levels of the procurement process, including before a request for proposal is issued, actually releasing that document in draft format several times before the official document is finalized. Once responses are received, the procurement office asks different companies to come in and present their proposals orally. "We don't just want to deal with paper," Rothwell explains. "We want to be able to listen to what they have to say, be able to ask questions and really understand their ideas. This way, we can basically get a jump-start on the evaluation process."
Afterward, procurement officials debrief the companies, including the winning one, on how they did, pointing out strengths and deficiencies and advice for the next try. "I've never been debriefed after a win," states Lawrence. "But it was very helpful since just because you win doesn't mean you can't improve the next time."
Another prong of the new infotech strategy is integrated teams of technical personnel from the program office, procurement specialists, cost and pricing analysts, and attorneys. This innovative approach, based on the GSA Trail Boss model, has not gone unnoticed within the vendor community.
"At some agencies, the program office and the contracting offices seem to pull against each other," says Santamaria. "But at Treasury, that's not the case. They really do a good job of working together toward a common goal, which makes everything go a lot more smoothly."
The cooperation and openness does not end upon contract award, however. Treasury procurement officials keep close tabs on their contracts and are especially responsive when it comes to adding technology refresh equipment, contractors say. One vendor noted that while a simple PC replacement proposal will often take a minimum of 90 days for approval at other agencies, the Treasury Department manages approval times of three to five days -- even when dealing with more complicated deals.
Nonetheless, all of this happy talk should not lull anyone into underestimating the Treasury Department's steely resolve at keeping its contracts equipped with the latest and greatest products. Its reliance on multiple vendors and overlapping contracts definitely puts the heat on infotech companies to keep up with the times, contractors note.
Before 1990, Lawrence states, single vendor awards allowed a company to keep older technology in place for longer periods of time, but not so with the intense competition inherent in multiple vendor environments. "They were one of the first agencies to jump into this mode, and I think it's paid off well for them because all of us really have to fight to make sure we're on the leading edge of technology."
Self-admittedly, though, the Treasury Department procurement policy is not without its kinks. Rothwell notes that his office still struggles with the issue of clarification, or asking questions once best and final offers are received. And, he concedes, the office doesn't know everything and is still striving for improvement. "We just don't have that attitude," he says. "We have as much to learn from the vendors as they do from us about how to improve the relationship and the process."
For vendors, these recent changes at the department mean that the old ways of doing business are unwelcome. Being a good partner is in; creative pricing models are out. And honesty really does count, as does a straightforward contract proposal.
"To be successful at Treasury, you have to be pretty up front with a lot of things that you wouldn't normally talk to your customers about, such as 'Here's our pricing strategy and here's why we're doing it. Here's our competitor's pricing and here's why we're better,'" Lawrence explains. "You have to be willing to throw away a lot of those old ideas and tricks from the old school of contracting. Otherwise, you'll get laughed out of their office."
Treasury Department Infotech ContractsValueStatus
Data Center Network Operations$6,000Awarded to STI on 9/1/95
Data Center Systems Services$5,000Awarded to Q Systems Inc. on 8/31/95
Treasury Enforcement Communication Sys. Maint.$12,000Awarded to KCM Computer on 1/1/96
Data Center Facilities Management$23,000Awarded to Advanced Management Inc.
Telecommunications Services$56,000Awarded to Sprint 5/12/95
Source: Input


Once upon a time I carried a camera with me where ever I went. Starting in 1998 I had my trusty Canon AE 1 SLR with a 50mm lens in my hands a good deal of the time (bought for me by my wife who felt I needed a distraction – boy did she come to regret that). Eventually I added a Nikon F3 HP, a Leica R5, a Rolleicord twin lens reflex and Voigtlander R2 rangefinder to my list of cameras.
I shot a lot of film and depending on my financial status – frequently in the "poor" bracket – or my level of laziness, a lot of that exposed film ended up in the freezer, wrapped in a succession of zip lock bags and tape, waiting for the day when I would get around to having it processed. I never did and the mestastasizing bag of film grew and grew as it travelled from freezer to freezer, apartment to house, to condo, across country to Chicago and back to Los Angeles. That bag split off and became two bags of film. Suggestions were made to chuck the bags since we were having trouble putting food into the freezer. These suggestions were ignored, and domestic strife morphed into the mockery of one spouse (me) by the other (my wife) and said spousal inability to give up on a hopeless cause.
After almost ten years of this, I resolved to deal with the black and white film (it's vastly simpler to process) and set about clearing out at least a half of the 150 plus rolls of film that had been accumulated. Emboldened by this (and a period of employment) I took the color film and had that processed too. In early 2014 I had the final slide film processed, my freezer was emptied of film and a 13 year ordeal had come to an end.
I began to scan the pictures – entire years of my son's life that seemed to have no photographic record were rediscovered – and to think about what to do with all these pictures. How can I inflict them upon an unsuspecting world? Hmmm.
Initially I thought I'd do something called "Los Angeles: Night and Day", you know, because I have a sense of drama. But while a lot of the pictures are taken in Los Angeles during the day (shocking) and a few at night (gasp) that title ignored the fact that I have taken pictures in Chicago, various parts of England and France, and a lot of shots in the Southwest, not to mention pictures of things that are not Los Angeles, nor night or day. Also, there's the fact that while the photographs are of dubious artistic merit, they do have some interest as "found" images – albeit found in my freezer, and forgotten largely because I was too recalcitrant to process them in a timely manner. Finally, these are photographs taken using film. When I started taking pictures digital formats were very much in their infancy (or too expensive for the regular person to afford). There was no cell phone snap-shot-selfie-panorama. There was no Instagram/Tumblr etc etc. Over the course of those 13 years film has faded away (sorry, couldn't resist), while the digital image has become predominant, unavoidable and unarguably convenient — whether the digital image is better than the photochemical process I leave for you to decide, and certainly do not present my unfrozen images as an argument one way or another.
So here on this website I present the photos that were literally frozen in time and are now thawed out: the good, the bad, the indifferent, the "oh not another damn sunset", the WTF, and the "who cares" of it all.
All works on this site (unless otherwise noted) are the property and copyright © of Iain Kennedy, all rights reserved, no use without prior permission.
I reserve all artistic and documentary rights to the work. If you find yourself in an image I'll happily provide a hi res copy or get you a print.


text:
PLL's Troian Bellisario on the No-Makeup Trend: "The Reverse Terrifies Me"
Troian Bellisario
Troian Bellisario Talks About the No-Makeup Trend
December 28, 2016 by Samantha Sutton
Image Source: Getty / Leon Bennett
Whether you've watched every episode of Pretty Little Liars or just two minutes, tops, it won't take long to realize Troian Bellisario — aka Spencer Hastings on the show — is insanely cool. Much like her character, she's a power woman, but with a more laid-back sense of style, a passion for film and fitness, and the ability to throw the boho wedding of our dreams. It makes sense that the natural beauty would partner with Burt's Bees, promoting its earth-friendly products and the #BringBackTheBees campaign.
As Troian toured the brand's headquarters, we chatted with her via phone, asking her opinion on minimal makeup and the no-makeup movement. "We live in a world where the reverse of that is more terrifying to me," she said. "It's not that I have to support the no-makeup look, but we're getting to a point where there's so much insane contouring just for people to go out and get coffee so that they can take a picture of themselves on social media. That terrifies me. I don't want to live in a world where that's the expectation to be beautiful."
Read on for more of Troian's thoughts on the natural look, her skincare routine, and why the makeup you see on TV isn't what it seems.
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On the Minimal Makeup Look
A photo posted by Troian Bellisario (@sleepinthegardn) on Aug 22, 2016 at 4:24pm PDT
"I believe that a minimal makeup look should be seen as beautiful, even if it just a different kind of beauty. If you love bold colors and bold lipsticks, that's awesome if it makes you feel beautiful. But I don't want to live in a world where that's the standard. That's where it crosses the line."
On Being Judged If You Don't Wear a Lot of Makeup
A photo posted by Troian Bellisario (@sleepinthegardn) on Dec 3, 2016 at 10:34am PST
"You feel like someone is going to look at you and say, 'Ah, you didn't really get it together this morning, did you sweetie?' No! Maybe I'm OK like this!"
On Having to Wear a Lot of Makeup on Set
A photo posted by Troian Bellisario (@sleepinthegardn) on Oct 27, 2016 at 9:58am PDT
"There are HD cameras, so you have to wear a lot of makeup. Spencer was generally supposed to look like she wasn't wearing a lot, as opposed to a Hanna or Aria — they had a bolder style. But in order to achieve that on TV, you have to wear quite a bit of makeup. To the point where if I take a picture of myself on social media, people will comment 'I love that you don't wear makeup!' I'm like 'Yo, I'm wearing quite a bit of makeup right now. I worked hard on this one!' It's interesting that we have such a different idea of what no makeup actually looks like."
On the Importance of Skincare
A photo posted by Troian Bellisario (@sleepinthegardn) on Mar 22, 2016 at 3:09pm PDT
"Skincare is so important because I don't want to wear a lot of makeup. So I try to keep my skin as clean, moisturized, and well taken care of as possible. I do a lot of masks and try to be good about taking off any makeup I do wear at the end of the night, to make sure I don't clog pores. I really love eye cream."
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Looking to get more traffic to your website or blog? In this video, I discuss 5 tips for increasing your website traffic. The methods I discuss I am actively using to increase traffic to my websites and have used them to increase traffic to my clients' websites.
Hey it's Jerad, and I have five tips for getting more traffic to your website. So, I've producing a lot of video content lately, especially on this YouTube channel. And, I've also am trying to grow traffic to my blog. So, what I've been doing is actually posting these videos to my blog, and that's one of my goals to get more traffic to the website.
I want to also be blogging more and just doing more to build traffic to that website, because that's kind of my hub for everything. Like if somebody wants to see what I'm up to, or know kind of what's the latest stuff that I'm working on, that's the website that I want them to go to.
So, here are five tips. These are things that I'm doing here and there with this website, and some of my other websites to build traffic to these sites.
Now, video is huge, YouTube is huge. Google's the number one search engine. The number two search engine is YouTube.
People are searching more often on YouTube than they would be searching on Bing, or any of the other search engines. And so, video marketing is super important. And, my goal is to actually embed my videos into my website. Now, I put these videos up on YouTube, and I know that people will come across them from YouTube because, maybe they subscribe to the channel or what not.
But when I'm actually sharing that video with other people through social media, or an email or something like that, I'm drawing that traffic to my website, and the video is embedded at my website. Google will reward a website for having people spend more time there. So, say somebody does a Google search for something, it ends up at my website because of one of my videos and they watch a video.
Google's paying attention to that stuff. How long a person is on a website, how many clicks they click around a few times before leaving the website. All these things are better indicators that a person is finding information on that website and that helps Google rank that website as more relevant than another website that might have similar information.
So when you put a video on a website, you're actually keeping people's attention there longer because they're watching that video in your website. So, for example, if it was a small article, somebody might come to your website and be there for a minute while they read that article really fast or, browse through that article.
But if they're watching a video that might be five or six minutes long, then they might stick around a little bit longer to watch that entire video, which means more time on your website. And then, the links that you provide are also on your website. You can link to other resources from within your website. And also, link out to other locations so that people can find relevant information.
So, you're keeping people at your website longer, and you're also referring them to information that also helps them take the next step or, get more informed about whatever the topic is. So, I embed my videos in my website, in a post for that purpose, and use links to kind of get people to move throughout my website, to other videos or other resources that I mention.
Now, giveaways can be something very small, to something pretty big. I did a giveaway about a month and a half ago on another website of mine that just drove crazy amounts of traffic to the website. Got a lot of people to sign up for email and newsletter and, social media channels and all that stuff.
It doesn't have to be a big giveaway. It could be something small. People get excited about giveaways. We used to do these giveaways where these companies were sending us cases for smart phones and stuff like that. They probably were less than $10 to buy in retail, but we were giving them away.
So, we would do these giveaways, and people would sign up for them. We'd get a bunch of people signing up just to get a free case sent to them. And of course, we had to cover the cost of sending that in the mail to them, which was usually only a couple of bucks. But, it got people signing up for our newsletter, it got people subscribing to our YouTube channel. It got people to come to our website 'cause that's where the giveaway was being hosted, was on our website.
So you can do a giveaway, and make sure that you're getting their email addresses, so that way you can send them out newsletters, or an email every now and then saying hey, here's the latest post to my website from the last month. And it's like, people aren't just sitting around thinking hmm, I wonder what Jared's posted to his website lately.
You have to kind of send them updates an keep them informed. And, doing a giveaway is a great way to get them on your email, to get an email so that you can actually send an email to them, keep them updated. Maybe get them to like or subscribe to your social media channel so that they can see the updates there as well.
So, do a giveaway, they're extremely inexpensive to run depending on what it is that you wanna give away. Obviously, and whether you choose to make that an international giveaway, or just local in the country that you reside in, or like the United States for me. Giveaways are definitely something I'm going to be doing a lot more of this year, because people like free stuff and, it's easy to get stuff to give away to people to where it's not costing me too much more than just my time and organizing this for the people who are coming to my website.
You wanna be useful and not spammy on social media. I see this all day long, people get spammy on social media. You wanna use social media to direct traffic to your website. Whether it be your personal social media channels, or ones that you've set up more for your business or what not.
Like a Facebook page, instead of your personal Facebook profile. Or maybe like an Instagram business profile, or something like that. You wanna direct traffic to your website, but you don't wanna be spammy about it. Using social media, it's very easy to look spammy. You wanna make sure that you're providing value, that you are giving people things that are interesting to see, or to read, or to watch on social media.
Just saying hey, go to my website, check this out, blah, blah, blah. You don't wanna spam people, you don't wanna trick people into getting to your website because when they come to your website, and there's nothing interesting there, they're gonna feel like you tricked them, or tried to scam them, and they're not gonna come back.
So you wanna provide some sort of value. One way to do that is actually to put a little bit of something on your social media, and then have the rest of the resources on your website. For example, Facebook doesn't necessarily like it when you link outside of Facebook to another website. So I tend to try and put a bunch of information in a post, or something like that. Share a much as I can in a post on my Facebook page.
And then, I'll mention that the rest of it is on my website. I want Facebook to organically show that post to other people. And when I'm including links and things like that, trying to send people outside of Facebook, Facebook doesn't seem to show that post to as many people. So I try to provide as much value as I can on social media to basically wet the palette and get people excited about something.
And then, they can get more over on my website, and that's how I drive traffic from social media to my website.
Websites need to be optimized so that the search engines can crawl them, find the content that's on them, and rank them as relevant for whatever keywords people would use to search.
So, say you have a website , like a technology website and you write reviews and post reviews and stuff, and talk about smart phones and what not, just like my website StateofTech.net. I wanna optimize that site so that when Google is crawling and looking for information to show people for maybe say, an iPhone 10.
Somebody wants to know something about an iPhone 10, they're gonna look at all the websites out there, that have information about iPhone 10, and Google is reading all that information, seeing the links that are in that post that are linking to that website, that are linking away from that website.
They're looking at how fast the page loads, how much text and photos, and maybe there's a video on the page. All these things are part of what Google is crawling. So you wanna make sure that the page loads relatively fast when somebody lands on that website. You also wanna make sure that the content is good there, and that you're not cheating with the content by just trying to make sentences longer than they need to be, or what not.
You wanna make sure that you've got links going to other pages on your website. When appropriate, you wanna make sure you're linking to other websites. Optimization also means getting people to link to your website. So, if there is another blog or another website, or maybe you're doing a product review, you would wanna ask the manufacturer of the company that's selling that product to link to your review on your website, so that you have those inbound links.
There's a lot of ways to optimize your website. The term is like search engine optimization, but it's kind of become a lot of different things. Search engine optimization, if you do a Google search for that, you'll find a lot of things that you can do to get started optimizing your website.
The better optimized your website is, the better chance Google's gonna send traffic to it.
There are a ton of communities out there that you can join around the topics of your website, that you can take part in conversations, and drive traffic to your website.
Now, you don't wanna join these communities and spam people in the same way I was talking about spamming and being spammy with social media. You wanna provide value, you want to answer questions, you wanna provide your expertise, and help these people in the community. That way, when they wanna find out more information about you, they can go to your website.
Or, for example, if you have a answer to their question that you may already have on your website in the form of an article, or some photos, or a video, you can link to your website from those communities, and share that information with them. That part is okay. People are fine with you linking to your website from forums, and from Facebook groups, and stuff like that, if you're providing additional value.
When you're just trying to get somebody to leave that community and go to your website, that feels a little spammy. But if you have valid information, stuff that's gonna help them with their problem, or their question, it's totally fine to send them to a link to your website. So that's gonna do it for this video.
I just wanted to give you five tips on how to get more traffic to your website. How to increase that traffic. It's important to get more traffic to your website because without viewers … You want viewers to your website. You wanna build that traffic, you wanna get more people excited about what you're doing. And without traffic, that's kind of hard to do.
So if you have any questions, definitely ask them in the comment section below. I've got a couple of links for you in the description of this video, so make sure to check those out. They'll help you with this process of trying to increase traffic to your website. If this video helped you, share it with a friend, link to it from your website, embed it in a post, write a review about. Whatever you can do to boost it, I would definitely appreciate that.
I'm also trying to grow traffic to my website, so I hope that this video did help you with that process of getting more traffic to your site. Click subscribe on my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos come out. I'm trying to post as many of these as I can, as I have good information to share. So thanks so much for checking it out, and I hope to see you back in the next one.
I worked from home for many years. For over six years, I worked from home growing a couple of businesses. Working from home allowed me the freedom to have a flexible work schedule. I kind of miss it. These home-based business ideas take up a small amount of space and could easily be run from a spare bedroom or even your kitchen table.
Starting a new business is tough, scary, and kind of lonely. It takes a lot of work to turn an idea into something that makes you money. Many new business owners or entrepreneurs think that simply starting something is enough. It really takes networking and exposure of all types to get a product or service known well enough to start making money from it. Over the years I have tried many different methods in an attempt to grow my business. In this video, I discuss what has worked for me as I have grown my business over the years by sharing my top five tips for new entrepreneurs.
If you have any thoughts or tips you would like to share, please post them in the comments section below.
Before I even knew what Freelancing was, I was freelancing. I have always worked on the side. I wanted to build something of my own. Freelancing meant being able to set my own hours. It meant doing work that I wanted to do. That was the life I wanted. When I started freelancing full time, my goal was to have more freedom in my life. Though that has not always meant working fewer hours, it has led to having something that is mine which has resulted in the freedom to choose.
In this video, I talk about how Freelancing changed my life and what it has led to.
YouTube just changed the monetization standards for new and existing YouTube channels. To monetize your YouTube channel you now must have 1000 subscribers and over 4,000 hours of viewed content in the past 365 days. That means 240,000 minutes of your content must be consumed in the past year in order to be elegible to monetize your content with ads. People are seriously freaking out.
To me, this means that we all need to step up our game. People who are not serious are not going to try. I'm ok with that. In today's video, I discuss these new guidelines and give you 5 ways you can take things to the next level with your YouTube channel so you can get 1000 subscribers and the 4,000 watch hours needed to be a YouTube Partner Creator.


A group of friends use an upcoming wedding to take down their friend in a decades long game in the hilarious trailer for Tag.
Ed Helms says that there is a zero percent chance of a fourth installment in The Hangover franchise ever happening.
The actor co-developed this original idea about a team of Navy SEALS who embark on a desperate mission to save the United States.
An accountant enters a world of international espionage after reconnecting with an old friend on Facebook. The director will re-write the original screenplay.
Ed Helms Is the New Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun Reboot!
The Hangover actor replaces the iconic Leslie Nielsen in the role. Reno 911! creators Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant are writing the script.
Alan decides to disband the Wolf Pack in this behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming comedy with Zach Galifianakis and Bradley Cooper.
The Wolf Pack is forced to return to Las Vegas in this final sequel, in theaters Memorial Day weekend.
The Wolf Pack is back and returning to Las Vegas in this anticipated trilogy ending sequel from director Todd Phillips.
Mr. Chow has died in the arms of Stu with this latest look at the trilogy ending sequel that brings the action back to Las Vegas.
Warner Bros. offers a fresh look at this upcoming comedy sequel starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Ken Jeong, and Zach Galifianakis.
Ken Jeong, Justin Bartha, and John Goodman are also featured in these shots posted to director Todd Phillips' new Instagram page.
The Hangover Part III Set Photos with the Wolf Pack!
Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms are back at work on this trilogy-ending sequel.
The actor will play Chevy Chase's on-screen offspring in this continuation of the popular Warner Bros. comedy franchise.
The Office star will also make a cameo appearance in the New Line comedy We're the Millers later this summer.
Comedian Matt Walsh directs this improvised stoner comedy starring Lizzy Caplan, Ed Helms, Rob Riggle, and Joe Lo Truglio.


Pakistani security forces have detained a 35-year-old New Zealander who was trying to enter an al Qaeda and Taliban militant stronghold on the Afghan border.
Pakistani intelligence officials who declined to be identified have said they suspected he might have links with Islamist militants.
The man, identified on his passport as Mark Taylor, was detained at a paramilitary checkpost on the outskirts of Tank town, about 280km southwest of Islamabad, which is the gateway to South Waziristan.
The top government administrator in Tank, Barkatullah Khan, said, the man had told the soldiers who detained him that he was going to South Waziristan to get married.
While some Westerners of Asian descent have been known to travel to Pakistan to join militants, very few Westerners with European roots have been know to have gone there for that purpose.
South Waziristan is one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal regions that have long been off-limits for foreigners without special permission and which in recent years have become plagued by militant violence.
New Zeal I have a Mark Taylor active in leftist politics at Auckland Uni in the mid '90s.
Anyone else know someone who might fit the bill?
A lot of Mark Taylor's out there...I think I know the MT in question.All I can say is he is not European in appearance. Which could explain why he got as far as he did wearing the traditional attire of the area.
We will wait and see...I could be wrong but I doubt it.
What about the Mark Taylor you know makes you think he might be3 the man in question anon?
Associates? beliefs? Patterns of behavior?
The sketchy description fits to the Mark Taylor I know, that is the age, the AU & NZ Passports.
I could still be wrong, and I am trying to contact his family in Christchurch to verify.
This could be it, the big link between Al Qaeda and the Greens.


text:
Electorate split ahead of Peru presidential vote
Peru is set for presidential elections on Sunday. Polls show front-runner Keiko Fujimori is short of the fifty percent of votes needed for an outright win. Keiko is the 40-year-old daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a jail sentence for human rights abuses and for corruption of his administration.
Support has surged in recent weeks for leftist Veronjka Mendoza who has swept up scores of undecided voters with promises of radically transforming the country's economy.
Polls put Mendoza just one point behind her rival 77-year-old Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
Kuczynsk had struggled to gain support from poorer rural voters in the last election. He has ramped up efforts for this vote, portraying Mendoza as a threat to economic growth.
A Fujimori-Kuczynski run-off in June would likely ensure Peru's free market model prevails no matter who emerges as the winner.
Six tourists arrested for vandalism at Peru's Machu Picchu
Peruvian opposition leader Fujimori freed from jail
Watch: Peru's coca farmers encouraged to switch to cacao crop
Peru politics


The first half of 2016 brought mixed fortunes for Russian gold specialist Petropavlovsk PLC (LON:POG).
There was a predicted fall in the gold grades at the Pioneer mine that resulted in a drop in overall gold production. And there was also a long bout of unseasonally heavy rainfall that disrupted operations severely, if only temporarily.
On the other hand, the company managed to keep a good handle on costs, full year production is still likely to come in within the range of previous guidance, and the gold price has strengthened.
Taking all those factors together, Peter Hambro, the company's chairman, expresses satisfaction with the way things have gone since the end of December.
"It was a difficult half year," he concedes.
It's that more than anything else, comments Masovsky, that's led the company to direct the markets to expect a result towards the lower end of this year's 460,000 ounce-to-500,000 ounce production target.
In any case, production will roll on despite these meteorological hiccups. And longer-term, the company's growth plans remain very much on track.
The plans for the joint venture over Petropavlovsk's pressure oxidisation process are in place, and a circular will go round in due course to allow shareholders to vote on that project in the fourth quarter. This means that the POX plant can be finished without Petropavlovsk having to contribute cash or give up a single ounce of its hard-won reserves. The thinking is that deploying POX ought to be able to unlock between four and five million ounces of additional reserves at the Malomir mine.
Meanwhile the proposed acquisition of Amur Zoloto and its 1.8 mln ounce JORC gold resource is also moving forward.
This, says Hambro, is looking more and more attractive as the gold price strength continues. The project has, he says, according to the recently published Competent Person's Report by SRK Consulting a net present value of US$170 mln using a US$1,100 gold price. But with the higher price the modelling can use a lower cut-off grade to make more of the ore economic.
In addition, underground development work at Pioneer is also well on track, and production from that source should commence some time in 2017.
Sitting behind it all of course, remains a large debt pile, and Hambro concedes that, although gross debt declined by $22 million during the period thanks to repayments, he'd have liked to have paid down more. Having said that, term sheets are in place for the Russian banks to extend the maturities on the loans.
The sum of all this activity leads to the conclusion that Petropavlovsk has now emerged from the period of its refinancing to become one of the go-to companies for deal-making in the Russian gold mining sector. With the gold price on the move and global uncertainty on the rise, it's not an unattractive proposition.
Back in the old days the company bought the Pioneer mine for a mere US$150,000, and it then went on to buy Malomir for US$850,000. These mines have both paid for themselves in spades since then.
So will Petropavlovsk repeat the trick? It seems more than conceivable.


Company has been focusing on designing and developing waterproof connectors for specific function use and actively devoted itself to the outdoor application markets.
Статті про сучасні напівпровідникові джерела світла (світлодіоди) та їх застосування.
Presentations of new products CML Microcircuits Company for wireless and wireline systems.
Modern microacoustic and micromechanical technologies and solutions for high reliability devices.
Компания Panduit широко известна, как мировой производитель, разработчик и поставщик решений, которые помогают заказчикам оптимизировать физическую инфраструктуру.
Global market-leading products with technology and capabilities to deliver almost everything that is required in an age focusing on human needs.


Patagonia Women's Spring River Waders Size Full is already a favorite amongst women anglers for their outstanding fit and comfort. The new 2016 Spring River Waders feature newly streamlined gravel guards with drop seat functionality.
Simms Women's G3 Guide Stockingfoot Waders not only feels good on, but also allow the woman angler to wade fish with all the gear she needs. The new Women's G3 Guide waders are lighweight and extremely breathable.
Patagonia Women's Ultralight Wading Boots Sticky are designed specifically for female anglers, these comfortable sticky rubber wading boots are extremely light and flexible while providing excellent stability, durability and foot protection.
Simms new Women's Vapor fishing wading Boot with felt soles comes with free shipping including Simms reviews on Vapor fishing wading Boot and Women's gear.
Simms Women's Riprap Sandal is a low-top, wet wading sandal with stud-capability.
Simms Women's Riprap Sandal is a low-top, wet wading sandal with stud-capable.
New Siren women's Redington fly fishing felt boots are made especially for the female angler. The Redington Siren Women's boots provide great ankle support and are stud compatible.


text:
The Killings at Kingfisher Hill: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery
Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but there is one strange condition attached: he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.
<script src="//lithub.com/b/v1/bookmarks.js?ver=1.3"></script> <div class="bm-reviews" data-isbn="9780062792372" data-width="auto" data-link="true"> </div>
Rave Malcolm Forbes,
The Star Tribune
Once again she ably channels Christie and delivers a deftly plotted, pleasingly intricate and thrillingly executed mystery ... Hannah keeps her readers on their toes through numerous twists and turns, right up until the trademark drawing-room denouement. We sift clues ... We weigh suspects ...'Poirot is the finest detective at work anywhere in the world,' remarks Catchpool at one point. It is good to see that he is still at work, in Hannah's more than capable hands.
Rave Ryan Steck,
Hannah continues her fabulous run of tightly-wound mysteries with yet another compelling adventure starring the world's most beloved detective, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot ... Nothing is quite what it seems in this brilliant novel from Hannah ... it's clear Hannah has settled into the role of keeping Christie's famed detective alive and well. Writing with authority here, she weaves a stunning plot that feels very much comparable to such iconic titles as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Make no mistake about it, this is the same Hercule Poirot fans know and love, but Hannah deserves all the recognition in the world and then some for modernizing the way in which the story's told just enough that the pacing is noticeably quicker, making it that much harder to put it down ... Moreover, the incredible job Hannah's done staying true to Christie's characters, while also developing a mystery worthy of dropping them into, is just as impressive. There certainly was a time when it was hard to imagine anyone else writing Hercule Poirot, but Hannah's emergence as one of the finest writers on the scene today has helped usher in a new era of old school mysteries—and just like before, Poirot is once again leading the way ... A masterfully plotted, mind-bending crime thriller that harkens back to the days when Agatha Christie ruled the genre, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill is hands down the best mystery novel of 2020 so far.
Positive Toni V. Sweeney,
Fans of Agatha Christie will applaud that the Christie Estate has officially assigned author Sophie Hannah to continue the late author's legacy of creating cozy English mysteries ... It might not be a bad idea to read some of the other Poirot novels written by this author to get into the manner of presentation before taking up this one ... the flow of the story is suitably Christie-like ... close enough to Christie's own style that the reader could segue from Murder on the Orient Express into this present novel without a stumble.
Deep Into the Dark: A Mystery
P J Tracy
Dead Lies Dreaming
Picnic in the Ruins
Todd Robert Petersen
What did you think of The Killings at Kingfisher Hill: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery?


text:
Staffing Employment Gains Moderated in Second Quarter of 2015
New Data From Quarterly ASA Staffing Employment and Sales Survey
U.S. staffing companies employed an average of 3.24 million temporary and contract workers per week in the second quarter of 2015, up 2.9% from the same period in 2014, according to data released today by the American Staffing Association. Although the April through June period marks 22 consecutive quarters of year-to-year staffing employment additions, temporary and contract job growth moderated in the second quarter.
"Staffing companies continue to create employment opportunities, even with the slowing of overall job growth," said Richard Wahlquist, ASA president and chief executive officer. "The fact that there are currently nearly six million unfilled job openings in the U.S. is good news for job seekers, whether they are looking for employment flexibility or a permanent position."
Temporary and contract staffing sales totaled $29.93 billion in the second quarter of 2015, 3.7% higher than in the same period last year.
On a quarter-to-quarter basis, staffing employment was up 3.5% from first quarter to second quarter, while temporary and contract staffing sales increased 6.6%.
See the ASA website for more details about the quarterly ASA Staffing Employment and Sales Survey, sponsored by ASA research partner CareerBuilder.
For more information, visit the ASA Newsroom. You can also follow ASA on Twitter.
Interviews with ASA executives are available.
About the American Staffing Association
The American Staffing Association is the voice of the U.S. staffing, recruiting, and workforce solutions industry. ASA and its state affiliates advance the interests of the industry across all sectors through advocacy, research, education, and the promotion of high standards of legal, ethical, and professional practices. For more information about ASA, visit americanstaffing.net.
Michelle R. Snyder Director, Public Relations Email 703-253-1151
ASA Staffing Index Continues at Record High Levels
ASA Staffing Index Monthly Report, August 2018 The ASA Staffing Index for the week of Aug. 6–12 strengthened by 0.7% to a rounded value of 101—the third consecutive week the index has reached record highs for their comparable weeks. This also marks the first time the index has reached a rounded figure of 101 before… More ›
ASA, Staffing Index, ASA research
Topics: Strategic Management
ASA Staffing Index Above 98 in October
ASA Staffing Index Monthly Report, October 2017 Staffing employment for the week of Oct. 9–15 edged up to 98.61, according to the ASA Staffing Index. Temporary and contract staffing employment was 0.09% higher than the prior week, with some survey respondents citing temporary-to-hire conversions as a condition that impeded growth. Staffing employment was 1.32% higher… More ›
ASA Employment & Sales Survey
Staffing Employment Growth Eased in Third Quarter
New Data From Quarterly ASA Staffing Employment and Sales Survey U.S. staffing companies employed an average of 3.24 million temporary and contract workers per week in the third quarter of 2016. Staffing employment growth eased (down 0.6%) compared with the same period in 2015, according to data released today by the American Staffing Association. Temporary… More ›
BLS Monthly
BLS: Staffing Employment Growth Continued in April
Staffing Firms Add 9,300 Jobs in April Temporary help employment showed little change from March to April (0.3%), according to seasonally adjusted data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Staffing employment was 2.3% higher than in April 2015. Year-to-year staffing job growth averaged 3.3% over the past 12 months. Nonseasonally adjusted BLS… More ›
ASA Staffing Index Average Remains Above 100 in December
ASA Staffing Index Monthly Report, December 2015 Staffing employment for the week of Dec. 7–13 was 103.29, according to the ASA Staffing Index—remaining above an average of 100 for the third consecutive month. Temporary and contract staffing employment increased 1.10% from the prior week. Staffing employment was 3.95% lower than the same week last year…. More ›
ASA Skills Gap Index
ASA Skills Gap Index Identifies 181 Hard-to-Fill Jobs
Top 10 List of Occupations Difficult to Fill The American Staffing Association's Skills Gap Index identified 181 hard-to-fill occupations in the U.S. for the 12 months ended March 2015, with the 10 most difficult being Occupational therapists Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers Physical therapists Photographic process workers and processing machine operators Occupational therapy assistants Speech-language… More ›
ASA Staffing Index Hits Record High of 107.54 in December
ASA Staffing Index Monthly Report, December 2014 ASA Staffing Index Continues to Climb Staffing employment for the week of Dec. 8–14 rose to 107.54, according to the ASA Staffing Index—the highest value since the index's inception in June 2006. Temporary and contract staffing employment increased 0.40% from the prior week, and was 4.18% higher than… More ›
Staffing Industry Jobs Hold Steady in July
"Over the year, employment in professional and business services [which includes staffing] has expanded by 648,000," said BLS commissioner Erica L. Groshen, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. More ›
Staffing employment up 7.5%
BLS: Job Growth Remains Steady in May
Seasonally adjusted employment data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that staffing firms added 25,600 new jobs from April to May (up 1.0%). More ›
BLS: Staffing Employment Rose in February
Seasonally adjusted employment data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that staffing firms added 16,000 new jobs from January to February (up More ›
ASA Workforce MonitorMore than three-quarters of employed U.S. adults (79%) are satisfied with their employers' pandemic-related return-to-work plans. Download the infographic »
Get the latest Covid-19 info & resources for staffing companies.


Relations between UK broadband provider TalkTalk and sub-contractor Wipro, which operates their outsourced call centre(s) in India, have been strained after the ISP identified three customer support agents that appeared to be stealing personal data from subscribers and using it in scams.
Customers of TalkTalk are by now no strangers to the risk of scam callers and indeed many have been subjected to exactly that sort of con thanks to several major security breaches of the ISPs systems, with the latest Cyber-Attack occurring in October last year (here).
Immediately prior to last year's breach there was also another significant incident via an attack on the Carphone Warehouse, which indirectly affected TalkTalk's Mobile subscribers (here) and lest we not forget the major breach in 2014 that resulted in masses of fraudulent calls (here); although TalkTalk was significantly slower to admit to that one.
Since then the ISP has been attempting to repair their reputation and as such they've also been conducting an extensive security review. As part of that the ISP appears to have identified that not all of the fraudulent calls to their subscribers were the result of earlier cyber-attacks and some appear to have occurred due to the abuse of Wipro's call centre staff in India.
The related investigation identified three members of Wipro's call centre staff who appeared to have been involved in the abuse of TalkTalk's private customer details and all have now been arrested by Police in Kolkata.
British consumers already have a strong dislike of outsourced call centres, which don't always appear able to deliver the same quality as their UK based counterparts. At the same time such remote services also require that our personal data be shipped outside of the country and managed abroad, which in this case hasn't gone quite according to plan.
The situation has no doubt strained TalkTalk's relationship with Wipro, although it's the relationship with their subscribers that will no doubt be of more concern and that's far harder to repair.
This is a prime example why we should not outsource anything!
It's a prime example of why security should be built in to any systems used, and care always needs to be taken to ensure that when access to personal data is required by anybody that the minimum required amount of data is shared. As well as having effective systems in place to prevent data loss – maybe you require access to personal data to happen via a remote session back to systems that are entirely under your control.
I worked at TicketMaster many moons ago which is the UK's biggest events retailer. We had the same thing happening in their. The Police came in one day and arrested a group and it turns out they had been using customers credit card details for other stuff.
No doubt, but India does not figure very highly (#76) on the the latest corruption perception index. Of course call centres (off-shore or not) are vulnerable to staff misusing information, but well-designed systems really ought not allow this sort of thing to happen on industrial levels. Often its technical support staff who are the weakest point. Government agencies are hardly immune. Recall Edward Snowden?
In any event, still not good publicity for TalkTalk and their reputation for leaking customer data.
There are such thing as dishonest people in the UK!
In this country we can see justice itr is our law over there you never know plus for everyone caught just how many get away with it.
I have even changed banks due to offshore call centers will not deal with any company that uses them.
TalkTalk should just call it a day, how much more bad press do they need?
Not the first time this has happened at an Indian call centre, and with the bribes mentioned last time being more than a years pay, you can see why some are tempted.
You can also see why people DONT LIKE IT when a company they are supposed to trust outsources their private data to a country known for its corruption.
We deal in all type of inbound/Outbound call centre project . We have a talented and qualified Staff. Contact us to get further information.
Why can't we in England support our own people and pay that bit extra for advisers we can trust and understand! We deserve to be scammed in England. we are idiots!


This model was introduced shortly following Exhibit's Iron Claw series of diggers in the early 1930's, and the Art Deco style was quite 'modern' compared to the Victorian style of the Iron Claws.
There were a number of different trim castings used for the front face and delivery chute of the Novelty Merchantman series. This one features script lettering and a pull-down door. The theme of a merchantman steam ship at dock side in the south pacific gives the Merchantman models a wonderful display appearance. Each background was hand painted on paper and, of course, most of them have deteriorated over time. The wood work is walnut and birch for a dramatic contrast creating the deco style. There was also painted trim around the upper front door and down the front corners on some pieces.
This Novelty Merchantman was been carefully restored to perfect original and is now in a private collection in California.


text:
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            Dashboard

            Game Servers

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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
November 7, 2019 at 6:28 pm PST | by John Paul King
Gay YouTuber Tai Couture commits suicide
YouTuber and Influencer Tai Couture (Image credit: YouTube)
Popular gay YouTuber and LGBTQ influencer Tai Couture has passed away from suicide.
Couture, whose real name was Tyree Williams, was primarily known for his work as a hairstylist and makeup artist, but he had also been vocal about his battle with depression. His death was reported on Friday of last week.
When 15-year-old ninth-grader Nigel Shelby took his own life earlier this year after being bullied for being gay, an emotional Couture shared a Facebook post discussing an earlier suicide attempt of his own.
He wrote, "My heart mourns for the pain, torment, and loneliness this baby felt preceding his suicide. My suicide attempt was only a little over a year ago when I cut my wrist with a knife and was hospitalized."
"Although bullying wasn't my trigger I know firsthand how it feels to be desperate for the hurt to end. I pray for Nigel's family, friends, and the LGBTQ community. May the world continue to spread more unconditional love and not hate."
In 2016, Couture said in a video he posted that he was in a near-fatal car crash that may have caused his depression. He also talked about how he made it through that difficult period in his life.
After hearing of his death his social media fans and followers have gone on social media to share their disbelief and sorrow.
One poster on Instagram said, "Here you have a man who seemed to have it all from love, success, and beauty.Who shared a lot of himself publicly with us. Yet, he suffered in silence enough so that his only resolve was to take his own life."
The poster, who goes by the name @celestialhandsatl, went on to add that Couture "was a man that many of us in the LGBTQ community held in high regard" before adding that he "showed us what he wanted us to see. I, like many of us will never understand why he decided to end his life. Only him and God knows that now."
The Williams' family has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover the costs of his funeral. It has raised over $5,500, so far.
depressionsuicideTai CoutureTyree Williamsyoutube


I will even share ideas I had about my story with you, so you can get a grasp of what I intended to do.
Magister Negi Magi/魔法先生ネギま! Crossover and Naruto High School Dx D/ハイスクールDD Crossover sections; they are my favourite sections.
I also do intend to write stories for the Naruto Fairy Tail Crossover, Naruto To Love-Ru Crossover, Pokémon and Harry Potter sections... As for my older stories, I intend to compile them into a single story collection, and will see if I can add more chapters to them.
It's been a while since I have updated a new chapter on the multiple fan fictions I have written so far, the last update being Jun 3, 2014, which is more than one and a half year long. A lot has happened in my life over this long period, the best being my life given a new start of a sort.
It's not something that has changed my misshapen life into something awesome, but it has given me some hope, at least for the present time. Enough of my life; this note is about my fan fiction work, and I am really sorry to say this, but I am no longer continuing the stories I have posted so far.
I have tried writing multiple stories with different ideas over the year, some of which didn't even see a completion of a full chapter, but trying new ideas got me to the idea that I would love to transform in a story.
For the current stories and the ideas that I typed down, I am thinking of making a collection of it all in a single story and from there on I will see where I take those ideas too.
It is with a heavy heart that I admit that my joy in fanfiction has been stifled, stunted, and outright strangled by the vast majority of the fiction being propagated.
Personally, there are things I just don't want to see.
The quality of those tales sparks inspiration in the hearts and minds of those who read, and glimpse not just what the author wanted to say, but a few answers welling up from the hidden recesses of their own souls.


We will send an email to as soon as the product OPS Easy Plate Carrier Multicam is available.
If you are looking for a light-weight plate carrier with cummerbund, the OPS Easy Plate Carrier is definately for you.
Constructed with Official Multicam 500D Cordura fabric.


Activate Marketing Services has been sold to Next Fifteen Communications Group (AIM:NFC), a publicly traded digital media company that offers digital communications, public relations and investor relations services worldwide. This acquisition enables Activate Marketing Services to boost the rapid growth it has experienced in the last five years, by combining buyer insights with content messaging to engage prospects for their B2B technology clients.
Activate Marketing Services, is a B2B demand generation company based in San Francisco and New York. It combines deep buyer insights with a content-led marketing methodology to engage prospects and convert them to customers. Through its unique, tested methodology Activate is able to accelerate the buying process for its clients.
Next 15 is a communications business that employs over 1,800 people across 56 offices in 14 countries, incorporating 17 subsidiary agencies spanning digital content, marketing, PR, consumer, technology, marketing software, market research, public affairs and policy communications.
Activate's current senior management, including Ed Grossman, Co-Founder and CEO, and Martha Schwartz, Co-Founder and President, will remain with the business after the acquisition and Activate will continue to operate as an independent brand as part of the Next 15 network.
One of Oaklins' TMT teams in New York advised Activate Marketing Services in this transaction.


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@interface LZDog: NSObject{
    NSInteger _age;
}

@end

@implementation LZDog

- (instancetype)initWithAge:(NSInteger) age{

    self = [super init];
    if (self) {
        _age = age;
    }
    return self;
}

@end

static int test(int argc, const char * argv[]) {
    @autoreleasepool {
        LZDog *dog1 = [[LZDog alloc] initWithAge:0x123456780a0b0c0d];

        LZDog *dog2 = [[LZDog alloc] initWithAge:0xaabbccdd12345678];
        //get the objec size
        NSInteger objcSize = class_getInstanceSize([LZDog class]);

        //打印对象的内存数据
        NSData *dog1Data = [NSData dataWithBytes:(__bridge void*)dog1 length:objcSize];

        NSData *dog2Data = [NSData dataWithBytes:(__bridge void*)dog2 length:objcSize];

        //查看对象内存
        NSLog(@"dog1: %@", dog1Data);
        NSLog(@"dog2: %@", dog2Data);
        //打印类地址
        NSLog(@"class address:%p", [LZDog class]);

        //查看类内存
        id dogClass = objc_getClass("LZDog");
        NSInteger classSize = class_getInstanceSize([dogClass class]);

        NSData *classData = [NSData dataWithBytes:(__bridge void*)dogClass length:classSize];

        NSLog(@"dogclass: %@", classData);

        //打印父类(NSobject)地址
        NSLog(@"superclass address: %p", [LZDog superclass]);

    }

    return 0;
}


On a winter morning, I climb up a steep hill, away from the familiar part of DC, into a world all its own. It's midterms week..
My love affair with Indonesian coffee began early, while I was new to the coffee industry, and still coming down from the seething iconoclastic urges..
San Francisco's Philz Coffee has raised $15 million dollars in a new round of funding, as reported by TechCrunch. SFist points out that Snoop Dogg..
In the fall of 2013 we reported to you on the debut of Splurty, the plucky, stylish single-cup brewer from our friends and partners at..
After raising $45 million in its latest round of funding, Blue Bottle Coffee is now extending healthcare benefits to its employees' dependents, and plans to offer retirement benefits as well. When I..
What's The Deal With Neil Young's Starbucks GMO Boycott?
"I used to line up and get my latte everyday, but yesterday was my last one." Neil Young, via his amazing time capsule of a..
Gavin Fridell is a Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor in International Development Studies at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Originally from Winnipeg,..
Melbourne and New Zealand-based Coffee Supreme have recently acquired Brisbane-based Cup Coffee. In a move that is reminiscent of Blue Bottle's acquisition of Handsome Coffee..
Seattle software giant Microsoft has launched a new official Instagram account with a hashtag campaign called #DoMore. The account's inaugural post features United States Barista Champion..
Sprudge.com can now report that Cosimo Libardo, president of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe and longtime Director of Sales & Marketing at Nuova Simonelli, has..
Is Latte Art Coming Soon To A Starbucks Near You?
In a post earlier this month on the Starbucks Partners Facebook Group page, an internal document was leaked revealing the company has created a latte..


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Missouri executes 'sociopath' Russell Bucklew despite concern about painful death
October 1, 2019 | 10:00pm
Russell Bucklew AP
Justice Sotomayor blasts 'spree' of deaths amid 13th federal execution
Dustin Higgs becomes 13th and final inmate executed under Trump
Supreme Court authorizes first execution of female inmate in 67 years
Fate of death row 'womb raider' hangs in balance as legal fight continues
ST. LOUIS — A Missouri inmate was executed Tuesday for killing a man in 1996 in a string of violence that included several other crimes, despite concerns that the prisoner's rare medical condition would cause a gruesome lethal injection.
Russell Bucklew was put to death at the state prison in Bonne Terre. It was Missouri's first execution since January 2017.
Bucklew had twice previously been within hours of execution, only to have the U.S. Supreme Court grant last-minute reprieves over concerns that he might suffer during the execution process. He had a condition called cavernous hemangioma and had blood-filled tumors in his head, neck and throat. He breathed with help from a tracheostomy tube.
Bucklew's attorneys said in a clemency request to Gov. Mike Parson that a throat tumor could burst, causing Bucklew to choke and die painfully and in violation of the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.
Bucklew looked around and twitched his feet beneath the sheet as he lay on the gurney just before the lethal injection. He suddenly took a deep breath and all movement stopped. There were no outward signs of distress.
Cheryl Pilate, one of Bucklew's attorney's, said several steps were taken to try to ensure that he didn't suffer, including sedating him prior to the execution and elevating the gurney to help prevent him from choking.
"We believe the significant efforts that went into making this a less horrible process were beneficial," Pilate said.
Adding to the concern was Missouri's secretive execution drug. The state uses a single dose of pentobarbital but refuses to say where it gets it. The source is believed to be a compound pharmacy since large pharmaceutical companies prohibit the use of their drugs in executions.
The Supreme Court stepped in to halt Bucklew's execution in 2014 and again in 2018. But in April, the high court gave the go-ahead for Bucklew to be executed.
Human rights groups and death penalty opponents, including all four Roman Catholic bishops in Missouri and the American Civil Liberties Union, urged Parson to grant clemency and remand Bucklew to life in prison without parole. The ACLU and Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty presented the governor's office on Thursday with petitions that they said included more than 57,000 signatures.
But Parson, a Republican who worked in law enforcement for more than 20 years and a staunch death penalty supporter, decided early Tuesday that the execution could proceed.
Inmates' medical conditions have affected other recent execution attempts.
In 2017, the execution of twice-convicted killer Alva Campbell, who suffered from smoking-related breathing problems, had to be halted in Ohio when a usable vein couldn't be found to administer execution drugs. He died in 2018 at age 69.
Doyle Lee HammAP
In 2018, Alabama halted the lethal injection of Doyle Lee Hamm when the execution team had trouble getting the intravenous line connected. Hamm had damaged veins because of lymphoma, hepatitis and drug use. A doctor hired by Hamm's lawyers wrote in a report that Hamm had at least 11 puncture sites and bled heavily from his groin during the attempts to connect the line.
Bucklew's girlfriend, Stephanie Ray, left him on Valentine's Day 1996. Over the next few weeks, according to court records, he harassed her, cut her with a knife and punched her in the face.
Ray feared for her life and the lives of her children, so she moved into the Cape Girardeau County mobile home that her new boyfriend, Michael Sanders, shared with his children.
On March 21, after stealing his nephew's car and taking two pistols, handcuffs and duct tape from his brother, Bucklew followed Ray to Sanders' home. Sanders confronted Bucklew with a shotgun inside the home. Bucklew fired two shots, one piercing Sanders' lung. He bled to death.
Bucklew then shot at Sanders' 6-year-old son and missed. Court records say he struck Ray in the face with the pistol, handcuffed her and dragged her to his car. He later raped Ray before heading north on Interstate 55.
A trooper spotted Bucklew's car and eventually became engaged in a gunfight near St. Louis. Both men were wounded. Bucklew later escaped from the Cape Girardeau County Jail. He attacked Ray's mother and her boyfriend with a hammer before being recaptured.
Pilate and another attorney for Bucklew, Jeremy Weis, said in a statement that Bucklew was remorseful for his crimes.
Morley Swingle, who was Cape Girardeau County prosecutor when the crimes occurred, said they were among the most heinous of his career.
"He is probably the most pure sociopath I ever prosecuted," Swingle said of Bucklew. "He was relentless in the way he came after his victims."
Filed under death penalty	, executions	, missouri	, murder	, 10/1/19
Peace of history: Trump, Kim autographed pic can be yours ...


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Actors, Films, Interviews
Magic In the Moonlight New Pic And Plot Scoop In EW
Entertainment Weekly has a scoop on Woody Allen's 2014 film Magic In the Moonlight. Along with a new pic featuring Colin Firth and Emma Stone, they have revealed some more about the plot details, as well as new quotes from Woody Allen and Marcia Gay Harden.
The scoop comes part of EW's summer movie guide in their latest issue. Here's the page (click to enlarge), with a transcript below.
Woody Allen Had kicked around the idea of a rom com about an Englishman (Colin Firth) who sets out to expose a phoney mystic (Emma Stone), only to end up falling for her. "I had it on a piece of notepaper in my drawer for ages," Allen says. "I knew it was a good plot, but I kept seeing it as a contemporary thing and something about that just didn't smell right to me. Then when it occured to me it could be set in the south of France in the 1920s, all of a sudden it just felt good."
For Marcia Gay Harden, who plays stone's mother and co-conspirator, shooting a Woody Allen film on the French Riviera certainly sounded good.
"It was a no brainer," she says. "Working with Woody has been on my bucket list for years, and there's nothing I love more than travel." Allen is practically a travel pro; Magic is his eighth film shot overseas in the past decade. "By sheer accident because I was getting European financing," he says. "I've wound up being a foreign filmmaker."
So we finally learn why 'magic' is in the title. Stone plays a phoney mystic, and Harden is her mother. Interestingly, Allen has been sitting on this idea for a while.
The scan is not great, and we will update this article with higher resolution images when we get them. Here's the pic on it's own.
'Magic In the Moonlight' is due out on 25th July 20-14. We expect a whole lot of info between now and then. Fingers crossed this week to see if it will be announced for Cannes.
Colin FirthEmma StoneMagic In the MoonlightMarcia Gay Harden
VOTW: Woody Allen on Stardust Memories
The Story Of Woody Allen Fan Film 'My Annie Hall'
Poll: What Is Your Favourite Emma Stone Film? (And Your Fave Colin Firth Film)
WHERE will it be released on the 25 July??
Sandy Bates says:
Usually its NY and LA first, then it'll open up nationally two weeks later.


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H.E. Khalid al Falih Visits the Baker Institute
Cover photo: Baker Institute director Ambassador Edward Djerejian, right, greets His Excellency Khalid al Falih in front of Baker Hall.
On March 8, the Baker Institute welcomed His Excellency Khalid al Falih, Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia and chairman of Saudi Aramco. The minister met with Secretary James A. Baker, III, and Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian and was briefed by fellows from the Baker Institute's Center for Energy Studies on key energy policy issues such as global energy poverty and the development of effective and sustainable environmental policies. View photos of the visit below.
Kenneth B. Medlock III, the James A. Baker, III, and Susan G. Baker Fellow in Energy and
Resource Economics and senior director of Center for Energy Studies, at the podium, considers new energy
demands that will accompany the continued economic growth of non-OECD countries.
H.E. Khalid al Falih attends a discussion on energy policy issues at the Baker Institute.
To his right is Basil Abul-Hamayel, president of Aramco Services Company.
Pictured from left are H.E. Khalid al Falih, Secretary James A. Baker, III, and
Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian.
Read more about the Baker Institute's Center for Energy Studies.


If you're looking to add an elegant, sculptural presence to your living area, here's a beautiful way to do it. This flower bowl is of French design, handcrafted in America, made to bring tranquility to any room. The bowl is filled with strikingly beautiful white Fuchsia Phalaenopsis Orchids and "Illusion Water" which creates the effect of the flowers floating inside the bowl itself. It is not intended for storing food, but it will make a great decoration. Give it as a gift or put it somewhere you feel it belongs.


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DMZ Diary: Surviving the Future Past Tense
By johneinarsen | May 13, 2014
Having spent my youth visiting local battlefields of the American Revolution and Civil War ("… the snow was red with blood," goes one folk song), I'm not a fan of war zone tourism, much less hanging out near active hostilities. Thus, I never had any intention to visit Korea's DMZ.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that on a recent visit to South Korea my hosts were taking me to Paju City in Gyeonggi-do, location of major south-side tourist sites of the DMZ. ("We're going to THE DMZ? THE DMZ?) I was at a loss for words. They might as well have said we're going to Auschwitz, Ground Zero Hiroshima or New York or even Falujah. What's more, we're going to scope out the site for a peace festival in the fall of 2005.
How does one casually "visit" such an area as a tourist? Should I be afraid of potential for armed attack? Is there a protocol of safe, reverential behavior? Isn't it more a place of pilgrimage? I had 50 kilometers in Seoul traffic to think about it.
Koreans in the South are anything but bashful about their "side" of the DMZ, a strip of earth some 248 kilometers long and between 4 and 14 kilometers in wide. Brochures linking government-sanctioned tours to places of note, including Imjingak, Panmunjom, the Third Tunnel and Dora Observatory, roost next to those for the Kimchi Museum at every hotel and tourism office.
DMZ-bound from Seoul, our car turned onto Tongillo, "Unification Road," the highway paralleling the coast that eventually picks up along the southern side of the Imjin River. The further we traveled, the more frequently we passed solitary armed soldiers on duty walking along dry rice fields or in a sentry box more like a beach "lifeguard" stand. Ribbons of rusty barbed and shiny new razor wires atop chain-link fencing along the road grew increasingly denser, as we neared our destination. Metal and concrete overpasses spaced a few kilometers apart began to straddle the highway. I thought they facilitated safe crossing of the road by pedestrians (none in sight) like those in the city, but I was informed they were built there by the Army to stop tanks from coming down from the North. "It's that close," I remember thinking. My emotions recoiled into silence.
By all accounts, the land within the DMZ is every man's "no-man's land," a UN truce-born hell of holes filled with landmines. According to one friend, there are supposed to be maps and people still alive on both sides who "know" where they are. After 50 years, however, soil erosion and other earth-shifting factors are said to have taken them off point. The space is hallowed ground.
In addition, the DMZ has attracted great international interest for its self-generating biodiversity, born of profound neglect by humans for over 50 years. (See "Healing a Divided land," KJ #53). According to the Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, wild habitats are transforming barren earth. "Fallow land has returned to thick prairie and shrubbery land in the western sector. Rich green forests adorn the magnificent landscape of the eastern mountain ranges, attracting endangered and rare plants and animal species, including Asiatic black bear, leopard, Eurasian lynx, Goral sheep and perhaps Amur tigers, not to mention a large diverse number of endangered migratory birds."
The 38th parallel not only exists in two dimensions on a map, it expands to bisect everything in its path, as author Lee Ho-Chul's description of the Panmunjom of the future past illustrates, the DMZ cuts through the hearts of one in seven families severed as in the process of its creation, as well as challenging the minds of everyone who would hope to live in peace.
My own thoughts and experiences as a fourth-generation American Jew born in 1947 began to flood my mind. The barbed wires along the perimeter of our travel stung my attention: the rusty metal invoking the European Jewish Holocaust, the shiny razor version the modern struggles of the peace-less Middle East. Together, they provided a perfect frame of reference for the path of the Korean peoples for a century.
We stopped en route twice – Paju's "Book City" and Heri Art Valley, each once abandoned and now reclaimed from the past for new industry, culture, commerce and community. Both locations exemplified Korea's foothold, if not leadership, in the international avant-garde art world, being sites of high-concept contemporary architecture. Sentimentality was nowhere to be seen.
The car finally turned off the highway and was parked in a large dirt lot in Paju City's Imjingak national historic landmark. Looking northward across the Imjin River, we saw denuded coastal hills rising in the fading gray winter sunlight. We had arrived at the border of the DMZ. Its claim to fame as the most heavily-armed patch of land on the planet did not seem to be fitting.
To paraphrase the American expat writer Gertrude Stein, there didn't seem to be any "there" there. In truth the DMZ's southern border revealed no lack of peace. No heavily-armed anyone. There was a bizarre emptiness about it, as if the intensity of the phantom conflict was so complete that both sides cancelled each other out to all but those who clung to the literal past.
The first "attraction" I saw was a children's amusement park. "Peace Land," the sign said in Hangul. One of the "rides," a small-scale steam locomotive trailing a few open cars, sat waiting to take passengers on a short, pleasant loop around the family-style fun zone. Nearby, rusting dead on its tracks, its "parent," a full-scale locomotive of the truncated Gyeongui Railway that used to traverse the river, sported a sign, "The train that wants to run." It used to be a busy thoroughfare for people traveling throughout the greater peninsula, but no more. Another area provided a final resting place for two ranks of War vintage tanks, a whirly-bird helicopter and period-sleek fighter plane, all repainted with bright camo pattern, gifts of the US Army to the people of Korea.
The site holds a place for life but doesn't seem to have any vitality of its own. Even the dead are held hostage in the Korean conflict. During Chuseok (Thanksgiving), because they cannot visit their ancestor's graves, Confucian ancestor rites are staged at the Mangbaedan, a large granite and marble altar established by the government for this purpose.
Nearby, every New Year refugees gather at the Imjingak Pavilion for a ceremony that is full of unrequited grief over the events in their lives. There is also a run-down museum showing artifacts of life in even more run-down North Korea.
As we walked to the last possible edge of "free" land, a sentimental tune drooled out of small speakers near a ramshackle souvenir stand. My friends said the song was popular with the refugee generation; the lyrics evoked longing for home and reunification. The little booth sold crackers and bottles of favorite drinks, as well as playing cards, key chains and a few other commemorative gifts emblazoned with the Joint Security Area logo; gifts for the veterans and others in their 60s and 70s who took those popular tours. What attracted my attention most were T-shirts and golf hats sporting a cute cartoon of two smiling child-like "action hero" soldiers. Already the past and present had "split the difference" rather than solved the fundamental problem.
The DMZ is a great place to learn the Korean term for "over there," as in "not here" and "not just there" but "there" as deep distance. Whatever seemed to have formerly spanned the river — a train track, a bridge — no longer exists. The walkway toward the remnant expanse of the concrete Freedom Bridge, now more a pier, passed over a small park, in the center of which was an empty pond in the shape of the unified Korean peninsula. On the southern side, the bridge's roadway was amputated short of mid-river, the end abruptly capped by a chain link fence crowned by barbed wire. The phantom limb extended to the north shore only in the mind's eye by hopping and hoping from one remaining concrete piling to another. The scene was more reminiscent of inner city auto body repair yards than a shield against nuclear war. Tied into the metal netting were dozens of yellow ribbons and even T-shirts with peace messages handwritten in many languages. A posted sign warned that passage beyond was off limits. Another sign sought help in locating a missing relative, with an e-mail address to contact. Maybe the advancement of technology can carry old but good news.
The impulse to conserve the past and going beyond it, the latter seemingly a defiant act, is a basic impulse of linear-minded humankind living on a space-bound planet. I return to my Jewish heritage to better understand Korea's DMZ, the land and its use, the form and function of memory and, perhaps, a way through to the "other side."
In the 21st century religious Jews, like their predecessors for millennia, still offer prayers daily and weekly in appreciation of deliverance from the hands of numerous oppressors, the list of which continues to grow. The modern "holidays" of Yom Ha Shoah (Day of the Holocaust) and Yom Ha Atzmaot (Day of the founding of the modern nation state of Israel) attract secularists. Memorials and museums to the fallen are still being built throughout Europe at the sites of former shtetls, (small villages), concentration camps and battlefields, and in the center of modern cities with a sizeable – if only a remnant of its former self – Jewish community. Some are elegant and stately. Others are poignantly plain, housing simple personal and community keepsakes, artistic renderings of the details and emotions that the events evoke. Tours to these sites, like the DMZ, also are well-promoted and attended.
The Koreans' hope for reunification of the peninsula and the hope for peace in the Middle East have their parallels as well; although, armed conflict in the latter continues seemingly daily. On tour in Israel in the 1970s, I saw rusting tanks stopped dead in their sandy tracks left as monuments to the fallen soldiers. An Israeli friend tells me that they are still there, 30 years later, moved a few yards to accommodate widening of the road. In addition to archeological sites, tourists may see a scale model of Solomon's ancient temple, an attraction of the Holyland Hotel as well as visit the actual remaining "Western" Wall. Hebrew-lettered Coca Cola bottles filled with Jordan River water, holy to some, were once appreciated souvenirs.
It's not just the tangible remnants that require care, it is also the emotions that need conservation. After working for nearly two decades on Holocaust projects, I began to need to keep my mind full of hope … to bridge the chasm between the past and present … for the sake of the future. To this end, I forged a distinction between the words "Remember!" and "Never Forget!"
The latter stood as a monolithic challenge to my birthright of the next life-sustaining breath. "Never Forget" stops chi, vital energy, and causes, in terms of Traditional Oriental Medicine, blockage and then pain. "Never Forget" institutionalizes depression.
"Remember", on the other hand, is more generous, more gracious, allowing for life to go on, reflective, reverent and full of possibility for renewal. It is sustainable because it allows in each generation a personal relevancy
I believe that Han, the signature Korean emotional construct, operates in similar fashion. Much of 20th century Korean literature is thick with this profound broken-heartedness, bitterness, grief, and the abyss of anguish, anger and resentment. Han can implode or explode negatively promoting suicide or murder in revenge. It can also unravel positively to become a creative and constructive energy for positive change and even transformation.
So what to do with this cache of raw energy? The eighth century Buddhist "poem" Sandôkai (Ch. Can tong qi), the name translated variously as "The Agreement of Difference and Unity," and "Identity of Relative and Absolute," offers some directions. The name alone hints at its utility to help us come to terms with impulses that threaten to shatter peaceful coexistence. Composed by the 35th Chinese Buddhist Patriarch Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian), the Sandôkai reads in many English translations like a treasure map to the priceless emptiness alluded to in the Heart Sutra.
Looking northward across the river from the "safe" side, I couldn't help think of the Sandôkai's early lines:
"There is no Northern or Southern ancestor. Here born, we clutch at things and then compound delusion later on by following ideals."
"No more war memorials!" it seems to admonish. Looking around at the attempts to ensure that Koreans and the world would "Never Forget" what happened in that place 50 years ago and is still burning strongly, I switched my mind into "Remember" mode. Then it began to transform into possibility.
"Each sense gate and its object all together enter thus in mutual relations and yet stand apart in a uniqueness of their own."
The Imjingak area will soon support a permanent new "ecozone" making its debut as the site of the peace festival August 1 – September 11 this year (2005). The land will be reclaimed in the name of nonviolence, giving youth from cultures and regions in conflict as well as prosperity a place to see for themselves the possibilities inherent in "Remembering" and learning from the mistakes of the past.
As the Sandôkai seeks to enlighten, so will the peace festival. In this place where even a tiny flashlight beam reflecting in the river can trigger armed – potentially nuclear – response, what can be more provocative than fireworks?
"Light and darkness are a pair.
Like the foot before and the foot behind in walking."
The world-renowned pyrotechnical artist Pierre Alain Hubert will turn the scene into a canvas of brilliant light presented in silence as if to purify the darkness of the past and reveal everything that will encompass the future. Unlike usual thunderous heaven-bound fireworks, Mr. Hubert's palette will include the shades of "silence and illumination". "I paint on darkness," he says. Working on the DMZ is not a literal challenge for the medium, he explains, "because I work with light as energy; light in a kind of religious sense."
The sudden illumination and return to emptiness, whether fireworks or Sandôkai, on this "side" or the other, it can change in a flash.
"As you walk on, distinctions between near and far are lost.
And should you lost become, there will arise obstructing mountains and great rivers."
When the smoke clears (literally) at the end of the festival and the sun rises over Keumgangsan peak in the "north" the next day, the ecozone "peace park" will remain for people to begin to see how the past can offer positive growth to the future. But will the DMZ be then ready to live up to its name? Perhaps the last war memorial will be the 38th Parallel itself, a virtual border housed in a glass building big enough for only two chairs squarely facing each other on the north-south axis, across a table upon which is painted through its middle a simple black line.
"This I offer to the seeker of great Truth: Do not waste time!"
1 Cho, Kay, 'A Korean Theology of Victims,' the Practice of Ministry in Canada (Toronto: Council on Theological Education in Canada, Vol. 9, No. 4, P. 30-39) from the Internet via The First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa, 1999.
2 Soto Shu Shumucho, Tokyo, 1982
Lauren W. Deutsch, a long-standing KJ contributing editor and chajin, is based in Los Angeles. See "Icing on the Cake: A Day in the Life of a Tibetan Sand Mandala" in KJ Selections (KJ #50 – Transience), also "Kim Keum-hwa's Everyday Shamanism," KJ #45; "New Roads to the Old Spirits: Dr. Zo Zayong's 'Old Village' Movement" in KJ #36; "Searching for Sanshin," KJ #25 (Sacred Mountains of Asia) – and numerous reviews including, for example, "Rabbi Wanted, No Exp. Nec." in KJ #45.
For information about the DMZ Peace Festival, see www.peacef.org.
Pierre-Alain Hubert's website is www.pyrohubert.com.
Posted in Encounters and tagged DMZ, Freedom Bridge, Imjingak, Korea, Korean unification, Panmunjom, Sandokai, Unification road


The Eugene Urban Wine Circuit is preparing for its 2nd annual Winter Wine Walk, Saturday, December 13. Each urban tasting room location will be pour 3 artisan small batch wines for tasting, showcase live entertainment, and a local food truck will be on site at each location serving up delectable provisions for purchase. In addition, participating wineries will feature special deals on select wines and offer great holiday gift ideas. Visit each of the 6 urban locations, receive a stamp from that winery and turn in the stamped ticket at the last stop for a chance to win valuable prizes and gift certificates!
· Territorial Vineyards & Winery – 907 West 3rd Ave.
For event updates and for what's happening with the hip Eugene Urban Wine Scene, follow Eugene Urban Wine Circuit on Facebook.


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Q: Get client's request type using RACK middleware I have an api request say "host/something/abc.xml" which doesn't send content_type. Rails still understands that it needs to respond with xml and sends an xml data. If the same client calls with "host/something/abc" rails sends back an HTML. (Both doesn't have CONTENT_TYPE)
I wonder how it happens? I want to check in Rack middleware what the client is requesting? XML OR JSON OR HTML ( I do not have content type). Is there any method in Rack::Request to check it? I know there is a method content_type but it returns me nil. But still rails responds with xml.. How??

A: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields
Content-Type tells you type of the request. Accept tells the server what the client wants as a response.
This should output the accept header to the console.
require 'rack'

class Accepter
  def initialize(app, options={})
    @app, @options = app, options
  end
  def call(env)
    accepts = env["HTTP_ACCEPT"]
    warn "accepts = #{accepts.inspect}"
    @app.call
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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