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Showing posts with label While the City Slept. Show all posts
"The Witch" and The Week in Reviews
[I review the new movie "The Witch" as well as DVDs "99 Homes" and "I Smile Back." The book of the week is the incredibly moving Seattle true crime story "While the City Slept." - which is a MUST READ. I also bring you up-to-date with "My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" with "Aliens."]
The Witch: A New-England Folktale
In 1630s New England, I guess there really were witches.
This is the time of year when it's slim pickins' for good films. The Oscars are over and the summer blockbusters and Oscar worthy films are yet to come. I'm not interested in animation like "Kung Fu Panda 3," sappy movies that are supposed to inspire like "Eddie the Eagle," Ryan Reynolds in a mask in "Deadpool" or historical epics like "Gods of Egypt." But I like comedies and the occasional horror film, so that's how I found myself sitting alone in the theatre watching "Zoolander 2" last week and this week "The Witch," a movie I probably would not have gone to the theatre to see.
It's 1630 and, for a reason that is unclear, a very religious family is cast out of the walled "plantation" and forced to live alone out on a farm near some very scary looking woods. There's the father, William (Ralph Inneson) a joyless religious zealot and his equally zealous wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie), both of whom you might recognize from "Game of Thrones", Thomasin, the oldest daughter (a lovely Anya Taylor-Joy), Caleb, the oldest son (Harvey Scrimshaw) and the twins, Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson), who are obnoxious to the point that I wouldn't have minded a witch throwing them in an oven, "Hansel and Gretel" style.
A little baby, Sam, has just been born and while Thomasin is watching him and playing peek-a-boo, as in closing her eyes and then opening them and saying "Boo" to the baby, one of those times when she opens her eyes, little Sam is gone. We see a shadowy figure in a red cape walking away into the woods and the sound of a crying baby, followed by an unpleasant scene of a naked woman doing bad things to the baby and rolling around in his blood. So there really is a witch living in them there woods.
Through a series of unfortunate events, such as Thomasin scaring obnoxious little Mercy by saying she really is a witch and if Mercy doesn't clean up her act she is going to "witch her (but, hey, she was kidding)," the family starts thinking that Thomasin really is a witch. It didn't help that she was the last one to see Sam or the last one to see Caleb before he got lost in the woods and came home naked, sick and ranting or that the mother doesn't seem to really like her. But what about Mercy, talking to the goat, Black Phillip? Isn't that a bit suspicious? It all goes downhill from there for the family as the forces of evil and paranoia take over. No amount of praying seems to keep the devil at bay.
This is no Salem witch trials film, though Director Robert Eggers sets the stage for the kind of superstition and suspicion that lead people to accuse women of being witches. But early on, Eggers shows us a witch, so I guess we are supposed to believe there really are witches out there and evil forces swirling around.
The film, written and directed by Eggers creates a real sense of ominousness, especially Mark Korven's music. The costumes are on point and the acting is excellent. This is not a gory horror film in the classic sense, but rather a psychological thriller that casts a sense of dread throughout. But there is nothing to make you jump out of your seat. I found it slow moving, I got tired of the characters saying a lot of "thee's" and "thou's," there were unexplained holes in the plot and the ending was dumb.
Rosy the Reviewer says...If you liketh your horror moody and historical, with a bit of the devil thrown in, you might liketh this, otherwise, methinks thou shouldst skip this one or waiteth until it cometh out on DVD.
99 Homes (2014)
An unemployed single Dad, Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), finds his Florida home in foreclosure and ends up working for the very guy who kicked him out of his house.
Caught in the housing bubble, Dennis Nash finds himself unemployed and losing his Orlando, Florida home in foreclosure. His young son and his mother (Laura Dern), who runs a beauty salon out of the house, live with him.
Speak of the devil (see review above) Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) is foreclosure guy extraordinaire. He is a real estate broker making a killing repossessing homes for the banks. He seems to actually enjoy his job - kicking old ladies out of their homes.
The film begins with a body in a bathroom. A man facing foreclosure has blown his brains out rather than face eviction. This film starts out early showing the harsh reality of what a forced eviction looks like. The cops and the eviction guys show up and give you 20 minutes to collect your things before everything you own is brought out and placed in the street.
This happens to unemployed single Dad, Dennis Nash, his mother and his young son. Carver shows up at their house and evicts them. They end up in a motel with a bunch of sketchy types. But as fate would have it, Dennis, desperate to do anything to provide for his family, ends up working for Carver and doing his dirty work. The Evictee becomes the Evictor, thus illustrating beautifully the human condition - you will do anything to survive. He does this so he can get his old house back, but he also is making a deal with the devil. However, where Carver is seemingly cold-hearted, Nash has a conscience and therein lies the drama.
There is a scene giving some insight into Carver. He is a cold hearted devil during the day as he evicts peple but at home with his little girls he is a happy family man. Carver has also figured out how to rip off the government. He sends his goons into empty homes that have been foreclosed on, steals the air conditioning or the appliances and then overcharges FANNIE MAE for their replacements. But as the film progresses, we also learn how Carver ended up in this racket.
The film is full of scenes where people are losing their homes. One particularly poignant scene features an old man in his bathrobe being evicted and he can't understand why. He is clearly confused and protests that he has a reverse mortgage, his wife had taken care of it and he was supposed to be able to live in his house until he died.
Andrew Garfield is always good, though I never bought him as Spider Man. Laura Dern seems too young to play Garfield's mother but brings her usual jittery sensitive kind of performance. But it is Shannon, with his craggy looks, who stands out. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for this believable and scary performance.
Directed by Ramin Bahrani, the film has some problems, such as why Carver would take Nash under his wing in the first place, but it's still an important film that should make you mad.
Rosy the Reviewer says...if you really want to get mad, watch "The Big Short" and then this one to see how the collapse of the real estate market affected the little guys.
I Smile Back (2015)
Laney Brooks has issues...she is a wife and Mom but she also takes a lot of drugs and sleeps around.
Sarah Silverman is a strange choice for this seemingly modern version of "Diary of a Mad Housewife" but they always say that comedians have a deep dark side (think Robin Williams).
Laney Brooks is a woman who seemingly has it all: a husband, children, a beautiful home but she has to self medicate to ameliorate her self loathing.
Every day she makes her childrens' lunches and decorates their lunch bags. She leaves her perfect home to drop her perfect children off at their perfect school and then she lives the rest of the day drinking, drugging and having sex with her friend's husband.
Silverman certainly goes for it in this film. There is nudity and a very unpleasant sex scene but she does a good job of showing a woman going down the rabbit hole. Is this what happens when a woman stays home to care for the children and when they no longer need her, she can't cope?
We've seen this story before, but Silverman gives it an unsentimental edge that probably comes from years as an edgy female comic in a male dominated world. But some of the scenes are so degrading, such as masturbating with a teddy bear on the floor of her son's room, that one wonders if this is what an actress has to do to get dramatic acting cred. Think of Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball" and Charlize Theron in "Monster."
Laney has a breakdown and overdoses. She goes to rehab and wants to come clean with her husband about everything but he doesn't want to hear. It's almost as if he prefers the status quo and for her to stay medicated. She goes to see her errant Dad who won't acknowledge that he abandoned her. He has a new little girl and Laney says angrily "Make it work this time." She relapses and as these things do, it all goes to hell. So is drug abuse all about Daddy issues?
Directed by Adam Salky and scripted by Paige Dylan and Amy Koppelman, from her own book, this is a harrowing look at the life of a suburban housewife, but, other than that, I'm not sure exactly what this movie was trying to tell us. It's a bit over the top, and I could have done without the ending. But Silverman is as edgy dramatically here as she is edgy as a comedian. I wouldn't expect anything less.
Rosy the Reviewer says...Silverman's performance is a revelation but brace yourself for some harrowing scenes.
This film picks up where "Alien" left off. The planet from the first film has been colonized, but something has happened to the people living there so Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) leads a rescue team to find out what happened.
A salvage space craft encounters Ripley in her spacecraft where she has been in hyper sleep for 57 years with her cat Jonesy since leaving the planet, LB 426, where she encountered those aliens in the first movie. She is taken to a space station where she is horrified to learn that the planet she left has since been colonized and how contact from the colonists has been lost. There is a suspicion that it must be aliens. What? Again? Even though Ripley appeared to have ridded the planet of the aliens, somehow those pesky aliens must have laid their eggs on the planet. Sigh.
Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a representative of the company that paid millions to set up that colony, wants Ripley to go back and investigate. Ripley says no way. It took her 57 years to get out of that damn place. But Burke says he will reinstate her as a flight officer if she will go back to the planet as an advisor. She decides to go if they promise to get it right and finally annihilate those aliens once and for all. So Ripley, Burke and a team of space marines head back to the planet to get those damn aliens.
When they get to the planet, the only survivor appears to be a little girl, Newt (Carrie Henn). The colonists appear to have been encased in alien gel AKA "secreted resin." Yuck. The little girl awakens Ripley's maternal instinct and when that old maternal instinct kicks in, the aliens better watch out.
The first movie was directed by Ridley Scott, who is still going strong with his latest hit "The Martian," but this one is scripted and directed by James Cameron, post "Terminator" and pre "Titanic" with music by the late, great James Horner, who just died this last year.
Sigourney Weaver reprises her role as Ripley, one of the first really badass women characters. Weaver was an interesting choice for that character with her patrician looks and pedigree (her father was Pat Weaver, who had been the head of NBC).
Paul Reiser, who got his start as a comic and was probably most famous for the TV show "Mad About You," gets to exercise his dramatic chops.
The film was surprisingly slow to get started. It was almost an hour before any aliens were encountered, but once that happened, it was a non-stop, intense, shoot-em-up war between the aliens and the humans.
Not sure why I didn't see this film when it first came out. It must have been that I never got over that alien spurting out of John Hurt's chest in the first one. Just thinking about that now gives me the willies.
I was surprised at how stilted and bad the dialogue was. I expect that to be the case when I am watching some of the old films from the 30's and 40's but the 80's? One wouldn't expect dialogue that doesn't hold up well. I would expect the visual effects to be primitive in a pre-CGI world but not the dialogue. And then there's Weaver's 80's hair!
Why it's a Must See: "One of cinema's greatest sequels...If 'Alien' was a haunted-house-in-space frightener, Cameron's relentless, furiously intense thrill-ride (winning the franchise's second effects Oscar) is the fort under siege in space..."
---1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Rosy the Reviewer says...not sure about one of the greatest sequels ever...and you know how I feel about sequels, but the last hour is exciting and I love films with badass women stars. If you liked the first one, you will like this one.
While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man's Descent into Madness by Eli Sanders (2016)
The true crime account of a violent murder in Seattle in 2009.
I like true crime books, not because I enjoy the descriptions of the crime or even the trial that follows, but rather I appreciate shining a light on the lives of the victims, that we see them as real people rather than reduced to mere crime statistics.
Author Sanders has done a wonderful job of telling the stories of Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, two women who found each other and were planning to get married until their lives tragically intersected one night with Isaiah Kalebu, a young man whose life was so rife with mental illness that he didn't stand a chance. As his life spun out of control and descended into madness, the mental health system let chance after chance slip away and when he encountered Butz and Hopper in their home in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle that fateful night, they didn't stand a chance either.
Sanders lays out his book in the usual true crime fashion. It begins with the aftermath of the crime and then does a flashback telling each person's story: Teresa's, Jennifer's and Isaiah's. Then we fast forward to the arrest and trial and then finally, we find out the extent of the crime. But as lurid as this crime was, Sanders must be applauded for not exploiting it. The facts are given but it's over in a few pages. What he dwells on, as he should, are the stories of the people involved and how they happened to collide in such a terrible way that terrible night.
The world of true crime writing lost the highly successful and readable Ann Rule last year. She made a name for herself with her first book, "The Stranger Beside Me," about Ted Bundy, which had a personal slant, because she had worked side-by-side with him at a Seattle Suicide Line. She went on to write such classics as "Small Sacrifices," the story of Diane Downs who killed her children and "Green River, Running Red," about the Green River Killer. Most of her books detailed crimes that took place in the Pacific Northwest.
This book is an expansion of the newspaper article Sanders wrote about the South Park crime and for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. I predict that Sanders will pick up Rule's mantel and run with it. This book is gripping but sensitive in its portrayal of the crime and he gives the victims' lives the respect they deserved. But he also shares the killer's story and describes a life that went terribly wrong and how the system let him down, because he never got the help he needed, despite warning sign after warning sign after warning sign.
Isaiah Kalebu was born to an authoritarian Ugandan refugee father and a mother with a history of mental issues, both who were too busy fighting each other to care for the needs of Isaiah and as he grew and displayed more and more psychotic tendencies, he fell through the mental health care cracks. All of the signs were there that Isaiah was disappearing into mental illness, and yet, the system let him down.
This book is not just a true crime story but an indictment of the mental health care industry, not just in Washington State but in the whole country. It's also a sad commentary on how the mental health care system and the legal system are not working in tandem. There are all of these agencies in the mix and none of them seems to know what the other is doing and that is how Isaiah fell through the cracks and collided one horrible night with Teresa and Jennifer.
This is truly a sad story of two innocent victims and their assailant who himself was a victim of sorts: a victim of our broken mental health system.
But it's a story of forgiveness. As the surviving victim, Jennifer Hopper said,
"I heard somebody describe forgiveness as restoring what there was before. And that forgiveness didn't mean that it was okay, or that there's no responsibility, or that, like, 'I forgive you, it's okay that you did that to me.' It's more like you're restoring the relationship to what it was before. And with him, the relationship that we would have had before is that we would have been strangers. And I would wish him what I would wish any stranger, which is pretty much that I hope they have a good life."
Sanders uses the polluted Duwamish River, which runs through South Park, the area where the attacks took place, as a metaphor of sorts for the flawed mental health system. Cuts to the system are prevalent and without money, little can be done to help and treat the many people who need care. And yet the river has its champions, a citizens group that is trying to clean up the river and make it a wildlife habitat.
Who will champion the broken mental health care system in this country?
"In this city [Seattle] in the distance, one of the most liberal and educated populations in the nation...The educated people of Seattle would regard it as insane to tell their polluted river to clean itself. They would not ask it to pay for the accident of its birth in a beautiful location that ended up not supporting its health. Still, in their state capital, their city's abundant tax revenues continue to be used in a manner that disproportionately hurts their city's homeless, deranged, untreated, and impoverished citizens, a shortsighted strategy that creates the certainty of more pain that seems to arrive with sudden brutality from an unknowable beyond, but does not."
Rosy the Reviewer says...Ann Rule has a successor. Sanders is right up there with the best of the true crime writers but he also is a crusader. Even if you don't usually read true crime, this is a powerful book with a powerful message for all of us. A must read, even if you don't live in the Seattle area.
"How To Be An Interesting Person"
Labels: While the City Slept


A slip ring test? What does this have to do with PoKeys?
Well, we needed a cheap slip ring for one of our test projects and we got some from China. Slip rings are devices that transfer electrical signal from stator (non-rotating part of the device) to the rotor (rotating part of the device) using mechanical contacts (usually some sort of brushes). It is therefore of outmost importance that the device does not loose electrical contact between the two moving parts. Questioning the quality of the device, we wanted to see how much of contact bouncing there really is.
Our slip ring has 6 separate contacts going from the stator to rotor. We wanted to count how many times we loose contact on any of those contacts as we rotate the slip ring rotor.
We used PoKeys56U device for this purpose – it supports counting very fast events using digital counters on selected pins. Therefore, we selected one of the contacts and connected it to the GND, while others were connected to separate digital counter inputs (we selected pins 5, 6, 9, 11 and 15). We setup the PoKeys device to count rising and falling edge events on each of those inputs.
All rotor wires were then bundled together and soldered to make a contact between them, as shown on the picture below.
This works due to the fact that all PoKeys input pins already have a built-in pull-up resistor that pulls the signal high (to +3.3 V). These are usually used to aid in connecting switches – one has to connect a switch between the ground (GND) pin and the PoKeys input pin. The pull-up resistor will pull the input pin to a logic level 1 if the switch contacts are open. If switch is pressed, there is a short between the PoKeys pin and GND, resulting in PoKeys device registering a logic level of 0. In case of switches, one can invert the input pin status to correctly represent the switch state. However, in the case of this test, we don't really care about the actual state of the pin, but more of the changes.
The ground signal goes through the slip ring to the rotor, where it is connected to other 5 signals that go back to PoKeys device through the slip ring. If any of those connections is broken, we will see an event (or multiple events if ground signal is interrupted).
Now, all we had to do is to connect PoKeys device to a PC and open PoKeys application. As we rotate the slip ring rotor, PoKeys will register signal bounces if they happen.
In order to make sure that the presented method works at all, we disconnected one of the wires. The act of unscrewing the terminal and swiftly removing the wire made PoKeys device register a whooping 9547 events!!
As noted, we were not able to make the cheap slip ring to produce any signal bouncing at all. We also demonstrated that Digital counters as a very useful feature of the PoKeys device that can be used to count very fast events if needed.


text:
<datatable-demos></datatable-demos>

        DataTable
        Columns can be reordered using drag drop by setting the reorderableColumns to true. onColReorder is a callback that is invoked when a column is reordered.

export class DataTableColReorderDemo implements OnInit {

    cars: Car[];

    constructor(private carService: CarService) { }

    ngOnInit() {
        this.carService.getCarsSmall().then(cars => this.cars = cars);
    }
}

<p-dataTable [value]="cars" reorderableColumns="true">
    <p-column field="vin" header="Vin"></p-column>
    <p-column field="year" header="Year"></p-column>
    <p-column field="brand" header="Brand"></p-column>
    <p-column field="color" header="Color"></p-column>
</p-dataTable>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This is a daily devotional and bible study linked to the Methodist Prayer Handbook.
This site is part of the U.S. based 'Back to the Bible' worldwide service ministry which is seeking to lead people into a dynamic relationship with God. They do this through Christian radio programmes, television, literature, videos, and now via the Internet.
Bible Pathway Ministries offers Bible Pathway a through-the-Bible devotional commentary reading plan that makes it possible to read every word of the Bible in one year by reading as little as 15 minutes a day. It is available online in 10 languages. They also offer some printed versions. Anything produced in any media maybe duplicated without royalty or fees of any kind. Please mention OSCAR when you request these resources.
CWR offer a number of pastoral resources through their website including online complimentary material for their publications Every Day with Jesus, Cover to cover, God's People, YP's, Topz etc. There are also discussion forums for Cover to cover & God's People, and Every Day with Jesus can now be received daily by email.
This daily bible reading guide from Scripture Union launched on 1st January 2003. The website has a sample of the notes and a place where you can order a subscription. If you look under PDA, all the notes are available free of charge for a limited trial period.
This US website is a fairly comprehensive list of on-line Christian devotionals, publications and broadcasts.
This is an online version of the popular US devotional magazine.
This online resource, produced by Scripture Union, is a multi-media Bible reading experience. It offers a range of creative approaches you can follow to engage with God's Word. WordLive is designed to be intuitive and simple. Each day when you log on you will be prompted to pray and then read the Bible, then there are a range of other things to help you engage with the topic of the day.


Birdman is getting called on the carpet by the guy who discovered Drake, and the guy thinks Baby has a M.O. Jas Prince filed new legal docs demanding that Cash Money open the books on the millions of dollars Drake has generated for the label.
Jas is pissed because he's gotten a grand total of $2 million for his find, even though he was promised a huge chunk of the profits. And there are reports Cash Money has made $40 million from Drake. So Jas — whose dad is J. Prince — wants to shine a light on Birdman's money practices. Jas isn't alone — Cash Money has already been sued by Lil Wayne and Young Turk, both of whom think Birdman has been shorting them.


The teenager turned, walked back to the pool, slipped off his shirt and slid beneath the cool waters. Maybe his curiosity had been satisfied. Maybe he knew that Edward Yeates, head of Father's Child Ministry, takes a no-nonsense approach to mentoring children who lack, and crave, a father's presence. He gives them freedom, and he reins them in. Mostly, he loves them.


text:
Pakistan Freedom of Expression Monitor
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Home » Featured » Political leaders: arrest to weaken democracy
Political leaders: arrest to weaken democracy
Posted on March 13, 2020 by Web Desk
ISLAMABAD: The political leadership of the country has condemned the arrest of Jang/Geo Group Editor-in-Chief Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman by the NAB Lahore in a 34-year-old case pertaining to private property and termed it an attack on freedom of expression.
Former president and the PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari condemned the arrest and said that the NAB after destroying theeconomy of the country is trying to crush the freedom of expression. Asif Ali Zardari said that selected rulers are liars and people of small brain and they do not have courage to face criticism.
He said the attack on media is an effort to weaken democracy. "The NAB has become a tool of political engineering," he said. The PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari condemned the arrest of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman and termed arrest an attack on the independence of media.
"The PPP from the day one is saying that NAB is being used for victimisation. Imran Khan has been using NAB against the people he does not like," said Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, the spokesman for Bilawal.
Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar said Imran Khan wants to crush freedom of opinion with such kinds of arrests. He demanded release of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman immediately. Parliamentary leader of the PPP in the Senate Senator Sherry Rehman said this is open harassment of media. "First Dawn, and now News," she said.
Sherry Rehman said the government just wants megaphones that sings its praises. "The message is don't be telling any truths to power, we will dig up old cases and put NAB on your trail," she said.
The PPP Secretary General Syed Nayyer Hussain Bokhari also condemned the arrest of the Editor-in-Chief of Geo and Jang Group and said the NAB-Niazi nexus has been proved. "It was not arrest of the Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman but attack on freedom of expression," he said.
Nayyer Bokhari said the all knows that the strings of the NAB were in the hands of government and cronies of Imran Khan. Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif condemned Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman's arrest and said allegations against the Jang Group Editor-in-Chief is related to a property he allegedly bought illegally from a government entity more than 34 years ago. The property, in fact, was bought from a private party and all evidence of this was provided to NAB including the legal requirements that were fulfilled such as the payment of duty and taxes. Shahbaz Sharif said media was the fourth pillar of the state which "fascist rulers" were trying to destroy. "We can smell revenge from Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman's arrest," he said.
Shahbaz said media was being suppressed over the past 18 months. He said that a government which was going down always attacked the media and political opponents. The PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz, while speaking to reporters in Islamabad, said that Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman's arrest "shows how scared they (government) are of the media".
"This crackdown on the media is not new, it's an old [tactic]. Honest news anchors were targeted and sidelined and today you have arrested the head of a media house. This might block the news but it will not block the truth," she said. Former premier Shahid Khaqan Abbasi also condemned the arrest and said that it was a "black day for press freedom".
"I have always spoken about NAB and have said that it has become a tool for political engineering, suppressing opposition and media," he said. "I ask you today, why is it that you arrest people? Islamabad High Court asks the same question but you don't have an answer. What questions did you have for Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman that you had to arrest him? What is the reason behind the arrest of a man who is one of the most renowned personalities of this country, who lives abroad but visits, has a presence in the country? It is only to show that whoever speaks will be arrested."
The ANP leaders Asfandyar Wali Khan and Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the arrest made in an over 34-year-old case was an attempt by the government to stifle the freedom of expression.
They said the government had now targeted the media after hunting political opponents. Both said NAB was being used to control the media. The ANP leaders said the government could not tolerate criticism of its incompetence and had started targeting the press for unveiling the truth. They said the ANP would stands by the Jang Media Group in it struggle for the independence of the media. The ANP leaders asked the government to stop what they termed revengeful policies against the media as the move would not succeed.
Religious leaders also condemned the arrest of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman terming it an open attack on media that showed the government had become totally confused in the face of its bad governance and failure of its policies over the 20-month rule.
Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Senator Sirajul Haq said the arrest of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman was the worst kind of attack on freedom of expression and victimisation of media, yet another one among the numerous political victimisations by the PTI government so far to suppress the voice of dissent and opponents.
Talking to The News, he said though the institutions like the NAB and courts had always been used by the governments to victimise opponents, yet the present NAB had been acting like a petty policeman to punish everyone who dared to disagree and oppose. He said he had always been an ardent supporter of accountability to clean the country of the mess it had been in, but he always wanted across the board and transparent accountability, in line with the rules and regulations, and not what had been displayed by the PTI government.
Jamiat Ahle Hadith Pakistan (JAHP) president Senator Prof Sajid Mir said the arrest of Jang Group's Editor-in-Chief on a flimsy looking case was nothing but a blatant attack on media freedom and showed utter confusion in the ranks of the PTI government. Talking to The News, he said the PTI had lost patience to face criticism of the total failure of its policies and governance, and had stooped too low to media bashing of those who had been criticising its performance. He warned that misusing the NAB against political opponents and media to such a nasty extent would lead to complete doing away with the anti-graft body forever in the country.
Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP) President Pir Ijaz Hashmi said arresting the editor-in-chief of the largest media group of the country suggested that government seemed to have lost its senses and patience to bear the criticism. He termed it worst kind of media victimisation, saying such ill-planned moves would bring bad name for the PTI as the suppressor of freedom of expression that would go down in history as scar on its face.
Former information minister and president of National Kashmir Alliance (NKA) Muhammad Ali Durrani termed the arrest of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman as bad example of media victimisation and a blunder by the PTI government. He said the move suggested Prime Minister Imran Khan was trying to become martial law administrator or dictator, which he must not do.
All Pakistan Ulema Council Chairman Allama Tahir Ashrafi also condemned the arrest of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman and demanded his immediate release.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


GENEVE (Issued as received) — Today I met with the Commissioners of the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict who handed over a letter requesting a deferral to June 2015 of the submission and presentation of their report due to be presented to the Human Rights Council on 23 March.
The Commissioners informed me that they needed this extension in order to weigh the additional information they have received in recent weeks.
I have conveyed this request to the concerned parties and informed the Council Bureau. Following the explanation by the Commissioners, I support the request for additional time vis-à-vis the Human Rights Council, in order to allow them to finalise a comprehensive report as mandated.


The most common measure of quality sleep is duration, or, colloquially, how many hours you get each night. Restoring the circadian cycle, however, requires a broader definition of a good night's rest, so a team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh created one: the acronym RU-SATED.
"The acronym lets us look at the individual dimensions of sleep, and also allows us to consider them in the aggregate," says professor of sleep medicine Daniel Buysse, MD. Each letter stands for a critical component of healthy sleep.
RU is for regularity, or going to bed and waking up at about the same times every day.
S is for sleep quality. Do you make it into deep sleep or toss and turn all night?
A is for alertness, or how rested and alert you feel after a night's sleep.
T is for timing. "Most studies of adults find that the midpoint of their sleep should be somewhere between 2 and 4 a.m., so if your timing is different than that, that may lead to increased health risks," says Buysse.
E is for efficiency, the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep for a consolidated period, and not waking up multiple times in the middle of the night. Many experts now believe that even waking up to go to the bathroom might have nothing to do with our bladders: It can happen when our cortisol spikes at the wrong time, or because our circadian clocks are out of sync.
D is for duration, or how many consecutive hours of sleep you get during the night.
Buysse says we can measure our sleep-related health risks by how much success or trouble we have with each of the above. How hard is it for you to keep a regular sleep-and-wake time? Do you sleep deeply or restlessly? Are you alert or groggy when you first get up? Buysse suggests you add up the categories in which you have issues. The greater the number of problem areas, the greater the risks for sleep-related health problems compared with someone who has issues in only one or two.
This originally appeared in "Get in Sync" in the January/February 2017 issue of Experience Life.


There he was in the stands of the Montreal Forum that June day, twenty years ago, seated with all these teenagers who were about to become heroes. Duncan MacPherson didn't expect to get called in the first round of the 1984 NHL draft, so he settled deep in his seat and took it all in. He watched Mario Lemieux go first. Kirk Muller came second, followed by Eddie Olczyk and Al Iafrate. Shayne Corson went eighth, four spots ahead of Gary Roberts and nine before Kevin Hatcher. Then MacPherson heard his own name. He was the 23rd pick, headed for Long Island. He hopped up from his seat and hustled up to the dais as kids with the names Patrick Roy, Brett Hull and Tom Glavine waited. Perhaps they saw Duncan MacPherson and silently wished for a moment they were him.
The Islanders, hoping to shore up their teetering dynasty with a stay-at-home defenseman, saw something rare in MacPherson. Here was a 6-foot-1, 195-pound teenager raised in the Canadian prairie town of Saskatoon, a guy who owned the corners and patrolled the open ice with a scowl and a ready shoulder. He was not afraid of the hardest puncher in Canada, nor the shiftiest forward in junior hockey, nor the saltiest coach on earth. Duncan MacPherson seemed perfect for hockey. And he turned out to be strong-minded, as expected. Fearless, as expected. A leader, as expected. But what became of Duncan MacPherson? No one could have ever expected that.
He made his name in a place called The Arena, right there on 19th Street in the heart of Saskatoon. The rink had asbestos dangling from the ceilings, orange insulation peeling from the walls, and rats as big as cats scurrying between locker rooms. The place had the feel of impending doom. The flimsy front doors barely contained the haze of cigarette smoke and the dull drone of the old Zamboni making one last turn. The Arena filled with 3,000 edgy fans who only fell silent in the moment after the Blades' big defenseman saw a forward skating up ice with his head down. Duncan MacPherson could line up an open-ice hit like no one else in the Western Hockey League. It was like slow motion, with both benches staring and the crowd standing and Duncan lowering his stick like a bull lowering his horns. Then a crunch of flesh and an explosion of sound. Fans paid for hockey, but Duncan gave them what they really wanted.
That was Duncan -- the fan favorite, the hockey player's hockey player. He got that rep the night the hated Regina Pats put a football player on skates. Duncan's teammates heard the news and looked at each other with that little hint of concern in their eyes. Duncan shrugged. Then the puck dropped, and Duncan drifted over to the goon and that was the last time the skating football player visited The Arena.
"He was old-style, play-for-keeps all the time," says teammate Randy Smith, who now coaches the Swift Current Broncos. "He'd make sure it's a tough battle -- a guy that if you tried to take the easy way out, he'd make you pay. And if you did a drill at half-speed, he'd run right over you. He wanted everyone to be accountable for everything the team wanted done."
MacPherson was born brave. When he was three years old, he insisted on taking the bus to the doctor's office all by himself. He knew to take the "down" bus to the doctor, and take the "up" bus home. When hours went by and Duncan didn't come back, his folks worried. But Duncan showed up before dark, saying the "down" bus wouldn't pick up a little kid so he took the "up" bus until it turned into the "down" bus. Then there was the time when Duncan, age 4, got lost at the fair. His parents turned all Saskatoon on its ear, only to find Duncan waiting at the house. He asked a police officer for a ride home. Then he raided his piggy bank and went out into the night to get some bubble gum.
In fact, no MacPherson thought twice about straying. Duncan's mother, Lynda, left Saskatoon as a teenager to find work as a schoolteacher in the Northwest Territories, only a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. That's where she met Bob MacPherson, who had grown up in Nova Scotia and worked for an oil company before getting his pilot's license so he could go anywhere and everywhere.
So no one raised an eyebrow when Bob and Lynda's first born son took off by himself on a mountain bike or a whitewater raft or any vehicle not designed for pavement. No one frowned when Duncan refused to blend into the hockey fraternity, choosing some hike over another night at the bar with the boys. Duncan loved hockey -- gave it everything. But the sport was just part of the journey. Just part of life. Duncan, you see, was born to roam.
But he was too slow for the NHL. Duncan was a throwback at a time when hockey didn't really want throwbacks. A severe leg injury, suffered while playing in the minors, sealed his hockey fate. "The league was in transition," says Bob Strumm, who scouted MacPherson for the Islanders and now works for the Columbus Blue Jackets. "There was a renewed importance on quickness. He didn't have the quickness." Duncan never played a single NHL game.
MacPherson accepted reality, brutal as it was. That was the other thing about Duncan. He seeked truth as eagerly as he looked for adventure. Maybe the two things were really one. But in both cases, he knew it when he saw it. Duncan wasn't going to make it in the bigs. So he quickly and quietly hung up his skates. Islanders fans clucked, but Duncan wasn't afraid of being a bust anymore than he was afraid of being hit. "He didn't necessarily live and breathe the sport," says Smith. "If you told him there would be no hockey, he would've moved on to something else." In 1989, he did.
Duncan didn't have the speed, but he never lost the fearlessness scouts loved. In that sense, he was every bit the player the Islanders imagined. Duncan was brave as a can't-miss prospect, brave as a failed draft pick. Brave until the day he died.
He took a coaching job in Scotland. That was vintage Duncan -- a little hockey and a lot of travel. So on his way from visiting friends in Germany, he detoured to a mountain in Austria to teach himself this brand new sport known as snowboarding.
The reaction when Duncan stopped calling home from Europe was not dread. His friends thought he was off on some safari with a board in one arm and an exotic European girl in the other. Some back in Saskatoon pictured him on a cruiseliner, laughing. He couldn't have been kidnapped; only a townful of thugs could have brought Duncan down. And even if there was some accident, well, Duncan would have figured his way out of it. Duncan never panicked.
And Lynda did not collapse when the sports agent called to say, "Mrs. MacPherson, Duncan never made it to Scotland." Fear wasn't Duncan's way, and it wasn't hers. No tears for Duncan. Not on the frigid days on the outdoor rink behind his school, when pucks felt like bullets. Not on the rare occasion when the burly defenseman got beat by a lucky forward. Not when he played his last pro game with the Indianapolis Ice only a few months before. And not now, when he wasn't coming home. She could almost hear Duncan telling her, "You going to sit there and feel sorry for yourself, or are you going to do something?" When Duncan's NHL dream died, he did something. So Lynda MacPherson would not be afraid. She would do something.
She went to Austria to look for her son. The poor woman had never been to Europe, but remember, this is a MacPherson. So she and Bob searched -- searched the way Duncan did, except with something in mind. They visited every TV station, every embassy. They plastered 2,500 missing persons posters in three different languages in four different countries. That's the way they are, she would explain over and over. The MacPhersons are not afraid of reality. They do not accept easy answers. They want facts.
Fact: Duncan took a snowboarding lesson at Stubai glacier on the afternoon of August 9, 1989. Fact: No one saw him since. Fact: Duncan's car sat in the ski resort parking lot for weeks on end. Question: why didn't anyone report the abandoned car? Question: why didn't anyone consult the snowboard instructor -- the last man to see Duncan alive? Question: why didn't the absence of a rented snowboard and pair of boots spur a days-on-end manhunt?
Your son is over 18, authorities told Lynda. He has a right to get lost.
But Duncan had not withdrawn any money. He hadn't cashed any checks. These people at the resort, they didn't understand. Duncan always made it home.
Weeks passed, then months, then years. Time didn't heal. The MacPhersons gave those Austrians hell until every person in that village knew Duncan's name and his parents' mission. Bob and Lynda spent their life savings on 10 trips to Austria. They refused to change their phone number. They refused to move. What if their son came wandering home one day and knocked on the front door to find strangers?
Birthdays stung. Duncan would have been 24, 25, 26. Then in 1994, around Duncan's 28th birthday, the phone rang. A German TV station had broadcast a report: an amnesiac had surfaced in Austria. His name was Mark Shoeffman -- a name the man made up after wandering out of the woods in, yes, 1989. This man's disappearance came only days after Duncan's. He wore jeans. He spoke English perfectly. Same height as Duncan. Around the same age, too. The guy even said he remembered spending time in New York. This had to be it. Had to be Duncan. The MacPhersons waited for the mail every day. Finally, Mr. Shoeffman's photo came.
Oh no. This man was gaunt, with a narrow nose and blond hair. He looked European. Duncan had that square jaw and prominent forehead with dark hair. A Canadian, from the prairie. They stared and stared, hoping the features would morph into the son they remembered and imagined every night. How they stared at the last best hope of seeing Duncan again.
Then they got back to work. They continued to collect every news clip, file every business card, organize everything. They continued to question the authorities in Austria, especially after finding out Duncan's rental equipment had in fact not been returned. Was this some sort of cover-up? Did some lazy grooming machine operator seal Duncan's fate by not looking for crevasses? Could Duncan have been saved? Duncan's parents were relentless, not even realizing their photos of a ski resort began to outnumber their photos of the boy who disappeared there.
Meanwhile, at the '90s came and went, the rest of the world took new photos. Lemieux, Roy, and Hull found their place in hockey lore. Glavine had a Hall of Fame resume in a different sport, baseball. Duncan's younger brother, Derrick, got married and started a family. Bob decided to build a log cabin up in the hinterlands of Saskatchewan, where Duncan loved to visit during the summers. Many of Duncan's old friends started having little hockey players of their own. Four named their children after Duncan. After the milennium hit, Lynda mentioned quietly to Bob that maybe they would never find out what happened to Duncan. They were exhausted, and nearly bankrupt.
At 11:15 am on July 18, 2003, the phone rang in the MacPherson home. A body had been found on Stubai glacier.
Suddenly it was 1989 again. The hockey fans in Saskatoon shed fresh tears. Former teammates, now with minivans and receding hairlines, cried for Duncan as if he had died only the day before. The hockey stories came alive again. Remember the old arena? The rats? The smoke so thick you couldn't see the fans across the rink? The smell of fried onions? Remember the jokes Duncan told? The time he first wore parachute pants? Oh, and those hits! Duncan, man, he always had your back.
Lynda and Bob boarded their final flight to Austria. Waiting for them was a well-meaning pathologist with a ready explanation of what happens to the human body after death. Many skiers, the man said, fall into crevasses and surface dozens or hundreds of years later. Duncan made it to sunlight in only 14. Lynda nodded slowly and realized a complete stranger was explaining to her what her own son had been through. But she would see for herself. She would do it. Brave, she was, to the very end.
The pathologist walked to a gurney and carefully peeled back a sheet. The body's limbs had decayed away. Its flesh had hardened and grayed to the color of putty. But the face ... Duncan's face. The pathologist looked up at Lynda. She nodded, and cried.
The MacPhersons had their son cremated. They put Duncan's ashes in an urn and stowed it in a backpack for the last trip home. Back in Saskatoon, Lynda put the urn in a wall unit with some of Duncan's favorite outdoor adventure books, a shred of his jacket, and a blue Ocean Pacific wallet with a Massachusetts driver's license and a torn calling card.
Now Lynda MacPherson sits at her dining room table in front of mounds of photos and sympathy cards. Here's a letter from a doctor who became penpals with Duncan back when the man was an 8-year-old boy learning to skate. Here's a picture, from several years ago, of Lynda standing on the Austrian glacier, propping herself up with a ski pole. Eerily, she's standing directly above where Duncan's body was found. It's not far from the chairlift. In fact, it's much closer to the main skiing strip than those at the resort always said. What actually happened on that mountain? Did Duncan go exploring? Get lost? Or just build up some speed and then take a bad fall, invisible to the few other skiiers nearby in the late-day August sun?
"In this day and age, he would be into rock-climbing or ice-climbing," says friend and former teammate Dave Chartier. "Something with a little risk. I'm thinking if he's skiing alone there, he's so curious, if there's a hole there, he's the kind of guy that would look in. I could truly see him looking in and wondering 'What is down there?'"
Maybe no one will ever know what really happened on that mountain. Because Duncan died as he lived: off the beaten path, in motion, never a loner but always on his own. Duncan had the charisma to convince anyone to go snowboarding with him that day, but that wasn't like him. He had too much imagination to hang only with a hockey crowd, and he had too much wanderlust to stay away from the unknown.
His mother, her face now creased with worry lines, blames herself. If only she had been with him somehow. If only she had let herself mourn instead of pushing herself to keep on. If only she could make sense of one tragic day and 14 unbearable years. "We're just starting to deal with the pain of his death," she says softly. "I didn't give myself permission to grieve. I thought if we worked hard and long enough we would find the answer and know what it is we're grieving. I see all that as wrong now. It was all a big mistake."
A mistake? No. That MacPherson fearlessness served and then betrayed Duncan, so it would serve and then betray his family. Lynda MacPherson blocked her grief for 14 years the same way her son fought back any concern about getting into a fight or giving up the game he loved or swiveling down that mountain slope without an eye on him. To wish Duncan's loved ones had accepted loss, or to wish Duncan had driven right past that mountain, is to wish the man had skated away from every oncoming forward, and from life itself.
Twenty years later, Mario Lemieux is remembered as the greatest player of his generation. Patrick Roy is known as the best goalie ever. Brett Hull is a legend's son with hundreds of goals and one unmatched one-timer. Duncan MacPherson? Just a name on a board. But to those who recognize that name, MacPherson will always be remembered as a man blessed and cursed with a rare courage not even a hockey rink could contain.


text:
// Copyright (c) Microsoft. All rights reserved.
// Licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE file in the project root for full license information.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net.Http;

namespace ODataV4TestService.Handlers
{
    internal class TracingMessageHandler : DelegatingHandler
    {
        public static readonly TraceSource TraceSource = new TraceSource("TracingMessageHandler", SourceLevels.All);

        static TracingMessageHandler()
        {
            TraceSource.Listeners.Clear();
            TraceSource.Listeners.AddRange(Trace.Listeners);
        }

        protected override async System.Threading.Tasks.Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, System.Threading.CancellationToken cancellationToken)
        {
            TraceSource.TraceEvent(TraceEventType.Start, 0,
                @"
>>>REQUEST>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
{0} {1} HTTP/{2}
{3}
{4}
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>",
                request.Method, request.RequestUri, request.Version,
                String.Join("",
                            request.Headers.Select(
                                h =>
                                String.Format("{0}: {1}\r\n", h.Key,
                                              String.Join(", ", h.Value.Select(v => v.ToString()))))),
                request.Content == null ? "" : await request.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());

            var response = await base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);

            TraceSource.TraceEvent(TraceEventType.Stop, 0,
                @"
<<<RESPONSE<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
HTTP/{2} {0} {1}
{3}
{4}
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<",
                (int)response.StatusCode, response.ReasonPhrase, response.Version,
                String.Join("",
                            response.Headers.Select(
                                h =>
                                String.Format("{0}: {1}\r\n", h.Key,
                                              String.Join(", ", h.Value.Select(v => v.ToString()))))),
                response.Content == null ? "" : await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());

            return response;
        }
    }
}


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text:
Imran Khan: from ladies man to the Taliban -Playboy cricketeer aligns his Tehrik-e- Insaaf party with pro Al Qaeda MMA
Khan pledges support to MMA leader to oust Musharraf
From ladies man to the Taliban:
MIM: Imran Khan's instigation of last years Koran flush rumor riots must have earned him his street creds by the Taliban supporting MMA. Khan's new partnership of his party Tehrik-e- Insaf together with the pro Taliban MMA prove that his transformation from Westernised millionaire playboy crickeer to radical Islamist 'fundi' is now complete. His divorce from UK born billionaire's daughter wife may have to do with the fact that Khan's new cronies believe that women belong in burqas locked up at home, and his ex's Jewish father was considered a political liability.
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=84473
Imran assures support to MMA's anti-Musharraf drive
ISLAMABAD: Chairman Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan and acting president Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Qazi Hussain Ahmed, after agreeing on three basic points for the restoration of democracy, have said that they will cooperate mutually for the supremacy of constitution, restoration of real democracy and in the anti-uniform movement.
Qazi and Imran met Tuesday at the residence of former.
Qazi warmly welcomed Imran Khan at his residence and invited him to participate and address in the public gatherings of expected anti-uniform campaign, which Imran Khan accepted.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_17-2-2005_pg7_26
PTI, MMA and PML-N for unity between opposition parties
* No semblance of law and order in Pakistan, says Imran
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI), the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) have called for unity between opposition parties for the restoration of democracy and the Constitution in the country.
This was agreed in a meeting between the top leadership of the PTI, the MMA, and the PML-N in Islamabad on Wednesday morning.
The meeting was held at the initiative of Imran Khan, PTI chairman, and was attended by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, MMA president and amir Jamaat-e-Islami, and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan of the PML-N. Akbar S Babar, PTI central information secretary, was also present in the meeting.
The three leaders discussed the political situation in the country and decided to launch a decisive public movement against dictatorship and a fake political system in the country.
The leaders said the present parliament had been made redundant as it had no powers to resolve people's problems.
The leaders hoped the MMA and the Alliance for the Restoration for Democracy (ARD) would agree to launch a joint movement against Gen Pervez Musharraf's rule.
Reacting to the increasing acts of violence in various parts of the country including the murder at the Bari Imam shrine in Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon, Imran Khan said the country was being led down a dark alley of uncertainty.
Nobody was safe even in the federal capital, he said, adding that the insurgency was growing with daily acts of sabotage in Balochistan.
Gilgit and Skardu had remained under curfew for extended periods of time. The Tribal Aareas continued to simmer with acts of violence, he said.
Imran Khan thanked the PML-N and MMA leaders for their positive response to his efforts for forging unity between opposition parties.
http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsDec2002/newsbeatdec5.htm
Imran Khan's choice of candidate for prime minister has left many of his ardent fans, especially women, dumbfounded. The cricketer-turned-politician voted for Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal's nominee for premier, against the advise of many liberal and progressive members within his Tehrik-e-Insaaf (TI).
Imran used his solitary vote in parliament in Rehman's favour, forwarding the argument that the MMA is the only political force that is independent and does not take dictation from abroad. He maintained that he found himself ideologically and politically close to the MMA, which denounces President Pervez Musharraf's support to the international coalition in the war against terrorism, especially in neighbouring Afghanistan.
"Khan has more than a soft corner for the ousted Afghan Taliban," a senior leader of his party said on the condition of anonymity. "He thinks that the orthodox religious militia did a great service to Afghanistan and Islam before they became a target of the Americans."
Also, the MMA's firm stand against Musharraf, especially his series of controversial constitutional amendments, won the heart of Pakistan's former speedster, he added.
Imran's protracted bitterness towards the Pakistan Peoples' Party and anger against the Pakistan Muslim League left him with no alternative other than the MMA, which secured 86 votes, including those of the Pakistan Muslim League (N).
Khan's vote for the pro-Taliban cleric has added to the political confusion within his party, which performed poorly in the October 10 elections. "It would have been understandable, had Imran voted for a candidate that was nominated jointly by the opposition," said a senior Tehrik-e-Insaaf leader. "But by voting for the MMA, he most certainly has lost his standing among the liberal, democratic and progressive elements in society."
Human rights groups and the majority of the moderate and liberal Muslims have been extremely critical of the MMA's narrow interpretation of Islam and the conservative views of its leaders on women, education, fine arts, television and sports. By voting for the MMA, the Tehrik-e-Insaaf chief has, in effect, endorsed the religious alliance's stand on these issues as well.
Will the women's wing of the Tehrik-e-Insaaf, led by Jemima, Khan's British-born wife, endorse the Taliban-like interpretation of Islam? That remains a moot point.
Mairaj Mohammed Khan, the Tehrik-e-Insaaf's secretary general who has spent a lifetime advocating socialism and secular politics, finds it hard to defend the somersaults of the party leader, who has drifted from one extreme (of being pro-Musharraf) to the other extreme (of being anti-Musharraf) within a short span of time.
"Even we are finding it difficult to figure out the real Imran," quipped another of his Karachi-based leaders. "He dons the shalwar-kameez and preaches desi and religious values while in Pakistan, but transforms himself completely while rubbing shoulders with the elite in Britain and elsewhere in the west."
Many in the Tehrik-e-Insaaf would have preferred to see Imran abstain from the voting like the veteran Pakhtoonkhawa Milli Awami Party leader Mahmood Khan Achakzai.
"But such political maturity is perhaps too much to ask or expect of Imran," says a Karachi-based Tehrik-e-Insaaf leader and a close aide of Mairaj Mohammed Khan's. "It is understandable why people do not take Imran and his party seriously in politics," he said. "His self-righteousness and high-flying principles fail to explain the contradiction between his strange fondness for the maulanas and his passion for all the good things in life which have come from the west.
Curious Case of Imran Khan December 9, 2004
sepoy » homistan »4 comments
Yesterday I linked to an essay by Imran Khan. Something has bothered me for a while and I think I will hash it out here. Why has Imran Khan failed in Pakistani politics?
Imran Khan, from '85-'95, was Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Joe Montana rolled into one. He retired from Cricket (after winning the World Cup) and started a project to build a free cancer hospital in Lahore. For this project, he solicited donations, did fundraisers, gathered monies from NGOs, all to guarantee that the poor have a world-class facility. I can't even begin to describe the goodwill and cheer he accumulated through his philanthropy.
Then, he decided to enter into politics and established the Tehrik-e Insaf [Movement for Justice] to foster an agenda of anti-corruption and development. He should have been elected PM in under a month. Yet, he has struggled to be taken seriously by our politicians or public. He still makes more news through his personal life than through his political one. He attacked the major parties as being corrupt and exploitative of the public and that not only cut him out of the immense organizational structure required to engage in local politics but also made him a political pariah. The religious parties had no use for this recent playboy with a gori wife. He went through phases of political wranglings and compromises [even doing the mullah bit - for like 5 seconds] which destroyed his reputation of being a non-compromising gentleman among theives.
His party never won any seats to speak of and he has barely managed to get elected in the few chances he has had. After 9/11, he criticized US foreign policy and has been by-and-large anti-US since the Afghanistan war. If you don't have friends in D.C. and you don't have friends in Riyadh than you ain't got a chance in Islamabad. His latest move is to lead a XI-strong against The General. He is trying to emerge as the leader of a unified front - akin to the M.R.D. against Zia in '81. The thing is that MMA is doing the same thing. Chances are that Imran Khan will get sidelined, once again.
So, what does this say about Pakistani political landscape? Why can't an immensely popular and well-liked individual take a populist platform and still fail to gather any support as a leader. Masses are malleable only to the ones in power? Or is this a unique case? In the absence of any desire for change, can Pakistani civil and political society re-allign itself against The General? Don't I have any shot at becoming the Manmohan Singh of Pakistan?
http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/homistan/the_curious_case_of_imran_khan.html


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$17 · Cinderella Clean Is Hiring!
Do you aim high? Do you enjoy working with great people in a fun and rewarding atmosphere? Then you may be a good fit for Cinderella Clean, Victoria's premier cleaning company. We are looking for full time/part time cleaning ladies. You must have a valid drivers license and reliable transportation. You must be bondable. You must have a strong work ethic, you must be able to work and think independently, you must be honest, accountable, and reliable. If this is you we would love to hear from you!
If you like to keep things clean and tidy, take pride in creating a great environment, enjoy cleaning and organizing, are really good at thinking on your feet we want to hear from you!
Email and text only please.


1. How does DARe help businesses?
By providing six different services to support businesses: Support Services, Financing, Training, Space, Market Access, and Promotion.
2. What support services does DARe provide?
DARe has a Business Support Centre that can look up government related processes for businesses that you are unsure of.
DARe's Business Support Centres are located at the Design and Technology Building in Anggerek Desa, Seria and Kuala Belait Municipal Building in Belat district,and Temburong District's Bahagian Sukatan dan Timbangan.
3. Does DARe only support local business?
DARe helps to assist and support businesses that are based in Brunei whether local or foreign owned.
4. Where is DARe located?
1. What financing is available?
Currently, there is a Microcredit Financing Scheme (MFS) offering a maximum financing amount of B$15,000 with an annual profit rate of 4 per cent and a repayment period of up to three years. The MFS is open to businesses wholly owned by locals with less than 100 employees.
2. Where can I apply for this financing?
Enquries and applications can be made at BIBD Serusop Branch or BIBD at Tumasek Plaza Branch.
3. Where can I go if I am looking for financing of more than B$15k?
We advise that businesses go to Bank Usahawan. They can seek for more information at www.bankusahawan.com.bn or visit the Bank located at the old post office in Bandar or D&T Building.
1. What training does DARe provide?
DARe has three training programmes for businesses. Those looking for something short and sweet can join the Industry Business Academy and learn about how to start a business from a beginner to advanced level. Those who feel their product or service has export / global potential should join DARe's Accelerate Bootcamp, while those who are youth (18-40 yrs old) looking to start a business should join DARe's Micro Business Bootcamp.
2. Are there any courses on the weekend?
The Industry Business Academy do hold some classes on Friday, and the Startup Bootcamp usually holds classes after working hours or on weekends.
3. Do you have to pay for the course?
No, all courses are free, unless otherwise stated.
4. Does DARe provide training for students?
Students can either join DARe's Industry Business Academy or DARe's Micro Business Bootcamp. For the Micro Business Bootcamp, preferably the students have graduated as the courses do run on weekdays.
5. Does DARe conduct specific programs for those less fortunate?
Our DARe Industry Business Academy is tailored for any audience at every income level, and it is also free.
6. Are there any courses on bookkeeping?
Yes, there is. This course is available under our Industry Business Academy.
7. Are there any courses on accounting?
8. Are there any courses on packaging?
9. Are there any courses for people who want to start a business?
10. What other courses does Industry Business Academy cover?
It covers on topics surveyed by DARe on what the public has requested for and what will benefit them: Food certification training, Marketing, Human Resource Management and more.
11. When is the next course held?
Updated topics for the Industry Business Academy can be found in our website at www.dare.gov.bn under the Training icon.
12. Are the facilitators in house?
Yes, some of them are, however majority are sourced outside of DARe as we want to be sure specialised topics are carried out by experts.
13. How do I sign up for training programmes under DARe?
Registration can be done at our website www.dare.gov.bn. Be sure to click on the training icon, where you will find all the registration forms at the bottom of each web page.
1. How does DARe grow businesses inside and outside of Brunei?
For those interested to expand their business, DARe's Market Access Unit will help facilitate our local enterprises to enter both local and overseas market, through providing related opportunities, guidance and assistance.
This unit offers free business advisory services to help MSMEs overcome business challenges and acquire information in expanding their businesses overseas.
This unit also organizes trainings, and networking events which cover export related matters as well as overseas expansion.
2. When is the next international expo and how do I join?
3. When is the Made in Brunei Market Fair happening?
Now its called Brunei MSME Festival (previously named the Made in Brunei Market Fair), organized by DARe, happening in March 2019.
4. What is the Brunei MSME Festival?
5. How do businesses join DARe's Made in Brunei initiative?
Registration can be done at our website www.dare.gov.bn. Be sure to click on the Market Access icon and look for out for the Made in Brunei icon. Registration forms can be found at the bottom of the web page.
6. What is the Made in Brunei initiative?
The Made in Brunei initiative showcases local products in supermarkets, national carrier flights, and high traffic areas in premium hotels.
7. Why should I join Made in Brunei initiative?
* By joining the Made in Bunei initiative, it will increase the showcase and promotion of your products in online and offline channels.
* It will also reduce barriers of entry for your business to be able to sell to a wider customer base.
* By joining this initiative, DARe will support the development and growth of your business to reach to an international standard to be export ready.
8. Do the products need to be made in Brunei?
Product or product brand must be locally owned and not necessarily manufactured, produced or processed in Brunei.
9. Will DARe do the applications e.g. halal, pacakaging for the business?
No, the businesses need to handle the approvals on their own as they would be knowledgebale about their own business and product during the application.
If you need further help on this, we do have an e-booklet that can guide you on how to properly brand and package your product.
10. What is the criteria to join the Made in Brunei initiative?
Businesses must be registered under ROCBN / One Village One Product (1K1P), it is also mandatory for businesses to have proper labelling such as ingredients, barcode, expiry and manufacture date and proper packaging as these are requirements set by supermarkets. On top of that products, must be under the category of dry food, household items or health and beauty products.
1. What does Bizbrunei do?
Bizbrunei is an online news platform with the aim to showcase and feature the stories of local entrepreneurs.
2. How can I be featured on Bizbrunei?
As long as the business owner is willing to be interviewed openly about their entrepreneurial journey, Bizbrunei is able to cover. They also prioritize businesses that are locally owned and run.
3. Do I have to pay to be featured?
4. Can Bizbrunei make a video for my business?
Only after Bizbrunei does a feature / write-up about the business. This allows a longer promotional media campaign for the business.
1. What space does DARe provide?
DARe offers co-working space at iCentre and industrial site / parks and ready-built factory.
2. Does DARe have any available office space?
We do but depends on availability & suitability within our industrial areas, however for our iCentre, all our office space is currently full. We do however offer FREE co-working space at iCentre at a first come first serve basis with wifi, 24 hour security and readily available parking.
3. What industrial areas does DARe offer?
DARe offers industrial sites, parks and ready-built factory.
4. What is the difference between the three and how much does it cost?
Industrial park is cleared land with infrastructure such as; electricity, water supply, road access, etc and cost B$7 per square meter per year.
Industrial site is undeveloped land which is basically a forested area but only costs B$3.50 per square metre per year.
Ready-built factory is an existing building with infrastructure: electricity, water supply, telecommunications tower and road access and rent ranges from B$640 to B$15,000.
5. What is the cost of DARe's industrial areas?
Industrial park cost B$7 per square metre per year, Industrial sites cost B$3.50 per square metre per year and ready-built factory (which includes SPARK facility) ranges between B$640 to B$15,000 per month.
6. What is the eligibility criteria to apply for industrial area?
For industrial site or park, companies need to be registered as a Sdn Bhd (Private Limited). For ready-built factory, owners have to be a Yellow IC holder and be a Sdn Bhd. Those who are a sole proprietorship or partnership business can apply, however they do have to convert their business to Sdn Bhd upon approval of their application.
7. How do I apply for industrial site / park or ready-built factory?
Those interested to apply, can go to our website www.dare.gov.bn under the icon space. For new application, companies/owners may apply via InSiteAPS.
8. Does DARe provide warehousing space?
9. Where can I find more information about this?
1. Can we use the meeting rooms / auditorium at DARe or iCentre?
1. How do I apply for an internship under DARe?
Those looking to apply for an internship position can click on the Career tab on the top of our website www.dare.gov.bn and follow the instructions on the webpage.
1. Is it wrong to start a business if it has been done before?
No it isn't but we do advise individuals to really look to see how can your business differentiate from others. A good place to start would be to join any of DARe's courses under the Industry Business Academy.
2. Can a student start a business?
If you have the right mindset and a good framerwork to start, anyone can. We do advise that students should join our courses under the Industry Business Academy to learn some basic businesses skill sets and knowledge.
3. Do students have to pay for the course?
No our courses are free.
4. How do I apply for a space in PPK?
5. How do I start a specific business i.e. tailoring, agriulture, etc?
6. I'm interested to give consultacy services to businesses how do I partner up with DARe?
Those looking to provide training or consultancy to businesses can email iba@dare.gov.bn and have a further discussion with the team.
7. How does DARe support ICT businesses?
We ensure they are equipped with the business background and do hold industry specific courses under our Industry Business Academy programme.
8. Does DARe provide a list of companies for tenders?
No, we don't. Similar to other organisations, DARe tenders are published within our social media channels and newspapers.
9. How can we reach out to DARe to give talks?


Watch full The New Tom and Jerry Show 1975 Episode 34 online full HD online. Cartoon video The New Tom and Jerry Show 1975 Episode 34 online for free in HD. The Sorcerer's Apprentices. Sapstone the Sorcerer, dissatisfied with his canine apprentice Manfred, recruits Tom and Jerry to be his new apprentices; upset about being replaced, Manfred challenges the duo to a duel with magic wands.


All year long, the Pocheon Herb Island is welcoming visitors to their Light Festival, also known as the Light & Fairy Tale Story Festival.
This festival is perfect for a romantic date and to take beautiful photos magnified by millions of LED lights on all the buildings and gardens. Besides the illuminations, you will find restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and special shops such as a perfume shop, a flower shop, a candle shop, and a Venice shop.


text:
BAYS Zero Tolerance Policy
All individuals responsible for a team and all spectators shall support the referee. Failure to do so will undermine the referee's authority and has the potential of creating a hostile environment for the players, the referee, and all the other participants and spectators.
Consequently, BAYS has adopted and modified the following rules:
No one, except the players, is to speak to the referee during or after the game. Exceptions: Coaches may ask questions before the game, call for substitutions and point out emergencies during the game, or respond to the referee if addressed.
Absolutely no disputing calls, during or after the game, no remarks to the referee to watch certain players or attend to rough play. NO YELLING at the referee, EVER, and no criticism, sarcasm, harassment, intimidation, or feedback of any kind during or after the game.
Violators may be ejected and are subject to disciplinary action by the BAYS Sportsmanship Review Committee.
If coaches or spectators have questions regarding particular calls, rules, or a referee, or wish to give feedback regarding a referee, please contact the town soccer club referee's coordinator for the game in question, or contact the BAYS Referees Representative at http://www.bays.org.


text:
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var _baidiui,_jsonUrl,N_jsonUrl;
//移动端宽高比
document.write('<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, minimum-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no" />');
//禁止ios监听电话号码
document.write('<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no" />');
//外网
if (_domain.indexOf('com') >= 0) {
	console.log('外网');
	_baidiui = './baidiui_v2.0.1/';
	_jsonUrl = 'http://www.dtvalue.com/';
}
//内网
else {
	console.log('内网');
	_baidiui = './baidiui_v2.0.1/';
	_jsonUrl = _domain+"/cms_module";
//	_jsonUrl ='http://www.coding.mobi:18080/cms_module';
	/*同步刷新*/
	//document.write('<script language="javascript" src="http://127.0.0.1:81/_/js/reloader.js"></script>');
};

//css&js_baidiui
document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' + _baidiui + '/css/baidiui_less.css" />');
document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' + _baidiui + '/css/font-awesome-4.4.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" />');
document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' + _baidiui + '/css/agate.css" />');
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' + _baidiui + '/js/jquery-1.11.2.min.js"></script>');
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' + _baidiui + '/js/jquery.lazyload-1.9.5.min.js"></script>');
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text:
Docente all'università di Mosca, fu uno dei massimi luminari nello studio della diffusione della luce nei cristalli e nel 1928 scoprì, indipendentemente da Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, lo Scattering Raman.

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Sepolti nel cimitero di Novodevičij

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: How to make a sub that stops when it finds a blank cell? I was working on a database in Excell 2010 and found many duplicated names. I tried to make a VBA Script to solve this, but it just ends on a infinite loop. I wanted it to stop when it hits a blank cell. Heres the code I came up with
Sub excluirDuplicatas()

   Dim lngCont As Long
   Dim lngLinhas As Long
   Dim rngNom1 As Range
   Dim rngNom2 As Range

lngCont = 0
lngLinhas = Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row

While lngCont <= lngLinhas

Set rngNom1 = ActiveCell
Set rngNom2 = rngNom1.Offset(1, 0)

While rngNom1.Value = rngNom2.Value And rngNom2 <> lastRow

rngNom2.Select
rngNom2.EntireRow.Delete
Set rngNom2 = ActiveCell
Wend

Set rngNom1 = rngNom2
Set rngNom1 = ActiveCell

Set rngNom1 = rngNom2
rngNom1.Select

lngCont = lngCont + 1

Wend

End Sub

I don't know whats wrong, my guess is the part where I state
rngNom2 <> Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row
Please be aware that I starded VBA Programing today(March 22th). If you could please post not only the answer but also a quick explanation I would appreciate.
PS: The data sheet has over 2000 lines long

A: I would recommend using a For Loop so that you can avoid using .Select You might want to see THIS LINK
So for example your code will look something like this
For i = 1 To lastRow
    If Len(Trim(Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A" & i).Value)) = 0 Then Exit For

    '
    '~~> Rest of your code
    '
Next i

A: I think this command will help you.  Replace Range("a1") with whatever range you want to test.
IsEmpty(Range("a1"))
ie, do while isempty(range("a1"))... or do while not isempty(range("a1"))

A: Well I'm not 100% sure what you're doing, but this would be a start.
Start by declaring a range variable rng taht contains all the cells you want to examine. The way I have set this rng variable automatically stops at the first blank cell in the column.
We will use the counter r to iterate over these cells, from last to first (this is necessary when deleting).
We will use a variable cl as a single cell range, during this iteration.
Sub excluirDuplicatas()

Dim rng as Range
Dim r as Integer 'row counter.
Dim cl As Range

lngCont = 0
lngLinhas = Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row

set rng = Range(ActiveCell.Address, Range(ActiveCell.Address).End(xlDown))

For r = rng.Rows.Count to 1 Step - 1 'Step backwards when deleting, otherwise you have infinite loop

    'This tests to see if the cell value is the same as the value below it.
     ' and deletes it if it is the same value.
    If cl.Value = cl.Offset(1,0).Value Then
        cl.EntireRow.Delete

    End If
Next

End Sub

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


One level living at it's very best. This charming home has amazing flow for entertaining and family fun. Walk into a large, light filled living space with cathedral ceilings and a working fireplace. The kitchen boasts plenty of storage, a large bar area for entertaining with a breakfast room just through an archway. Wonderful 3 bedroom with an office that can easily convert to another bedroom. This home with it's amazing location and price makes this a deal you do want to miss. Come home to HAPPY today!


text:
Indian Pharma Firm Complains About Documentary; Dutch Council Stands by It
Zembla's on-ground investigation showed Aurobindo Pharma's manufacturing units and alleged damage to the environment nearby.
Still from the documentary showing Jos van Dongen walking along a gushing river, foaming from all the pharmaceutical pollutants being let into it by surrounding drug companies. Credit: Youtube/Zembla
Anoo Bhuyan
New Delhi: "It smells terrible here," says Dutch journalist Jos van Dongen in his documentary on Indian medicines, broadcast in 2018. Red in the face, coughing and sneezing, he narrates what he is experiencing and says, "The stench is unbelievable. It affects your airways as well as your eyes."
The real price of cheap medicines was broadcast in April 2018, by the independent Dutch media organisation BNNVARA on their documentary programme, Zembla. The 36-minute film show's BNNVARA's journalist Jos van Dongen travel to Telangana. He visits a number of sites around the manufacturing unit of the Indian pharmaceutical company Aurobindo.
The early shots of the video show Dongen walking along a gushing river, reportedly foaming from all the pharmaceutical pollutants being let into it by surrounding drug companies.
In 2018, after the documentary was broadcast, Aurobindo Pharma BV and APL Healthcare Limited complained to the Dutch Council for Journalism. Aurobindo's director, V. Muralidharan, travelled to the Netherlands to speak before the journalism council in November 2018.
Now, in a 6,000 word reasoning, the council has said that "Zembla (BNNVARA) has handled journalism carefully," without finding fault in the facts reported by this documentary, on the environment and health impacts of Aurobindo Pharma's manufacturing sites.
Aurobindo in the Netherlands
According to the film, Aurobindo is one of the four largest manufacturers of drugs sold in the Netherlands, after Teva, Sandoz and Mylan. This episode of Zembla focusses on Aurobindo and is one of several episodes done on the global drug industry.
Zembla's on-ground investigation showed Aurobindo's manufacturing units and alleged damage to the environment nearby. It also showed local villagers alleging that they had to give up their land to the company and that the company reneged on its promises of jobs, among other things.
The journalism council has found no merit in Aurobindo's objections to the documentary. This council is an independent and self-regulatory body that passes reasonings on complaints raised about Dutch media coverage. It neither issue sanctions, prohibitions nor imposes damages.
What did the documentary say about Aurobindo?
Zembla had reportedly contacted Aurobindo in February and March 2018, with several questions. They asked the pharmaceutical company why they were refusing permanent contracts to workers, why workers were being paid just Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 per month and why they were not being allowed to unionise.
They also asked Aurobindo about the complaints from local fisher people who said their fishing was suffering due to the polluted water. Aurobindo was also asked why promises of jobs to farmers who gave up their land for the factory in 2007 have not been kept.
Aurobindo replied in April and denied many of the claims made by the documentary.
In general, they said they are a fully compliant company: "Aurobindo produces according to strict legal guidelines as applicable in India, the United States and Europe. The production units are certified and controlled by the regulatory authorities in these markets."
Also read: How Hyderabad's Pharma City is Flouting Environmental Norms
They also said their workers receive health and safety facilities and that their "factories are equipped to neutralise and prevent any harmful discharges."
The company claims it does not discharge its wastewater into the Musi River and that "topographically it is impossible for waste water from Aurobindo to end up in the water in question."
On the question of land rights, Aurobindo says that it was the local government that had acquired the land and the company entered the picture much later, dealing only with the government and not with villagers.
It added that "Zembla has acted carelessly without reporting any factual basis and sufficient research about Aurobindo in the way it has done".
In a reply to The Wire, Aurobindo said "Zembla made a number of untrue allegations in the documentary." The company also said they are considering appealing the council's decision and they have also complained to the Changing Markets Foundation which contributed some of the information in the documentary.
Zembla responded that their reporting was sound and the result of "extensive, lengthy and careful research."
What did the council say about the credibility of the documentary?
The council's reasoning began by saying that there was a social and journalistic responsibility to report on the practices of drug manufacturers.
It also says it "does not share" pharmaceutical company's view that the documentary's "combination of image and text" makes people believe that Aurobindo is guilty of something it is not.
The council noted that Aurobindo's disagreement's were also given adequate space in the documentary and their entire response was also published in full on Zembla's website.
"This leads to the conclusion that Zembla journalism has acted carefully," said the reasoning.
The Wire has reached out to both BNNVARA and will update this report if and when either replies.


text:
VINTAGE BOOK REVIEW: The Brutal Telling – Louise Penny
Chaos is coming, old son. With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. As families prepare to head back to the city and children say goodbye to summer, a stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies,
BOOK REVIEW Melmoth by Sarah Perry
For centuries, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history's darkest waters—and now, in Sarah Perry's breathtaking follow-up to The Essex Serpent, it is heading in our direction. It has been years since Helen Franklin left England.In Prague, working as a translator[...]
BOOK REVIEW: J.M. Barrie & The Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan by Andrew Birkin
J. M. Barrie, Victorian novelist, playwright, and author of Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, led a life almost as magical and interesting as as his famous creation. Childless in his marriage, Barrie grew close to the five young boys of the Llewelyn Davies family, ultimately becoming their guardian and devoted surrogate father when they were orphaned.
BOOK REVIEW: Tolkien & C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez
Both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are literary superstars, known around the world as the creators of Middle-earth and Narnia. But few of their readers and fans know about the important and complex friendship between Tolkien and his fellow Oxford academic C.S. Lewis. Without the persistent encouragement of his friend, Tolkien would never have completed The Lord of the Rings. This great tale, along with the
VINTAGE BOOK REVIEW: Butterfly On A Pin by Alannah Hill
Alannah Hill, one of Australia's most successful fashion designers, created an international fashion brand that defied trends with ornamental, sophisticated elegance, beads, bows and vintage florals. But growing up in a milk bar in Tasmania, Alannah's childhood was one of hardship, fear and abuse. At an early age she ran away from home with eight suitcases of costumes and a fierce determination to succeed,
BOOK REVIEW: The King Must Die by Mary Renault
In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. What the founder-hero might have been in real life is another question, brilliantly explored in The King Must Die. Drawing on modern scholarship and archaeological findings at Knossos, Mary Renault's Theseus is an utterly lifelike figure—a king of immense charisma, whose boundless strivings flow from strength and weakness
BOOK REVIEW: The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan
When DS Cormac Reilly's girlfriend Emma stumbles across the victim of a hit and run early one morning, he is first on the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID, that of Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland's most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university
VINTAGE BOOK REVIEW: The Lost King of France: How DNA Solved he Mystery of the Murdered Son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette – Deborah Cadbury
In 1793, when Marie-Antoinette was beheaded at the guillotine, she left her adored eight-year-old son imprisoned in the Temple Tower. Far from inheriting the throne, the orphaned boy-king had to endure the hostility and abuse of a nation. Two years later, the revolutionary leaders declared the young Louis XVII dead, prompting rumors of murder.
BOOK REVIEW: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
A tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its profound flaws, gave the author the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads,


Please use the form below to enquire about our packages for Destination Wedding in Goa, South India.
The coastal region is known at the Konkan in India. It offers one of the best setup for that dreamy beach wedding in South India. Here are some recommendations of the finest wedding venues in Goa: Zeebop by the Sea, Alila Diwa, The Leela, The Lalit Golf & Spa Resort, The Zuri White Sands.


Lots of motorbikes were spotted amongst traffic in the valley on July 8.
Motorcycle Madness took place in Wayne.
All of the proceeds from the event went towards the breakfast programs at Greentree and St. Anthony's schools.
"It's all about getting together and the most thing is that we have fun doing it, it's really all about the charity that we give to," said Aaron Bryant, one of the organizers with Motorcycle Madness.
Bryant added that he is unsure of how many registrants there were, but predicts that the number will be lower than previous years.
"I'm sure our attendance is down from last year," explained Bryant. "In the past, people really liked to come out and camp and make a weekend out of it."
Events throughout the day included a show and shine, bike games, a pie toss, and a poker run.
"It would be nice to increase those numbers in the future so if anybody is ever interested in joining up or wants to participate as one of the sponsors or volunteers we are always looking for new help," he noted.
Bryant estimates that they have been putting on Mototcycle Madness for 13 years.