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Negative urgency partially accounts for the relationship between major depressive disorder and marijuana problems
Rachel L. Gunn1,
Kristina M. Jackson1,
Brian Borsari2,3 &
Jane Metrik1,4
To goal of this study was to better understand mechanisms underlying associations between Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and marijuana use and problems. Specifically, it was hypothesized that negative urgency (NU), the tendency to act rashly while experiencing negative mood states, would uniquely (compared to other impulsivity traits: positive urgency, sensation seeking, premeditation, and perseverance) account for the relationship between MDD and marijuana use and problems.
Data were collected from a sample (N = 357) of veterans (M age = 33.63) recruited from a Veterans Affairs hospital who used marijuana at least once in their lifetime. Participants completed the SCID-NP to assess MDD, a marijuana problems scale, a Time-Line Follow-back to assess six-month marijuana use, and the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale for impulsivity.
Path analysis was conducted using bootstrapped (k = 20,000) and bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to estimate mediation (indirect) effects, controlling for age, sex, and race. Analyses revealed a significant direct effect of MDD on NU and NU on marijuana problems. Regarding mediational analyses, there was a significant indirect effect of MDD on marijuana problems via NU. The direct effect of MDD on marijuana problems was reduced, but remained significant, suggesting partial mediation. No other impulsivity scales accounted for the relationship between MDD and marijuana problems. In predicting marijuana use, there were no significant indirect effects for any impulsivity traits, including NU, despite significant bivariate associations between use and NU and MDD.
Results suggest that high levels of NU may partially explain associations between MDD and marijuana problems, but not marijuana use. No other facets of impulsivity accounted for the relationship between MDD and marijuana use or problems, underscoring the specificity of NU as a putative mechanism and the importance of assessing NU in treatment settings.
Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug world-wide [1], with the majority of US states having legalized it for either recreational and/or medicinal use within the past decade. In the wake of these rapid social and legal changes, epidemiological research reveals that past-year cannabis use disorder (CUD) rates have increased in the general population [2] and have also more than doubled in the past decade among military veterans [3]. Among individuals with CUD (and other substance use disorders), rates of comorbid mood disorders are higher relative to those without CUD [2, 4, 5]. Comorbidity between mood disorders and SUDs including CUD is particularly common in veterans [6, 7], particularly post-deployment [8], calling for more research investigating potential mechanisms to explain this comorbidity.
Major depressive disorder and marijuana use
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is one psychiatric disorder shown to be strongly associated with both CUD and marijuana problems in general populations [4, 9,10,11,12,13] and among veterans [5, 14]. Affective-motivational theory emphasizes the central role of negative affect in motivating drug use, including marijuana use specifically [15, 16]. Recent cross-sectional data suggest that marijuana users who experience MDD are more likely to have CUD than marijuana users without MDD [12]. Cross-sectional between-subject [5, 17] and prospective within-subject [18] empirical research in support of this theory suggests that greater intensity of negative affect associated with MDD leads to increased marijuana use to in order to cope with negative emotions. Yet, coping-oriented use of substances has also been shown to worsen affective symptoms of depression and to increase substance misuse [19, 20].
Evidence for the directionality of the association between MDD and CUD is mixed. Some longitudinal studies have provided evidence that cannabis use predicted increased symptoms of depression; whereas depressive symptoms did not predict increased cannabis use [21, 22]. However, this directionality was only found among adolescent girls in one study, limiting generalizability [22]. One meta-analysis of longitudinal studies found that heavy cannabis use may be associated with increased depressive symptoms, but did not explore the opposite direction (depressive symptoms to CUD [23]). In contrast, large epidemiological studies have also revealed MDD was prospectively associated with CUD and contributed to its etiology [24, 25]. Additional longitudinal work has suggested a bidirectional relationship between depressive symptoms and cannabis use from adolescence to young adulthood across five years of assessment in men [26].
Impulsivity and marijuana use and problems
Impulsive personality traits have long been a hallmark characteristic for substance misuse and substance use disorders in general [27,28,29]. Certain facets of impulsivity, such as delay discounting, have been associated with greater marijuana use [30] and marijuana dependence [31]. Composite scores of attentional, motor, and nonplanning impulsivity have also been associated with marijuana problems [32, 33]. Importantly, the UPPS-P Impulsive Behaviors Scale [34] classifies impulsivity as multi-faceted construct [35, 36], in which certain traits are uniquely related to specific risky behaviors [37,38,39,40]. Each of these five impulsivity-like traits (negative urgency, positive urgency, sensation seeking, lack of premeditation, and lack of perseverance) have been found to be associated with marijuana use and related consequences [15, 41,42,43].
Impulsivity, major depressive disorder, and marijuana use and problems
Impulsive personality traits may partially explain the association between MDD and marijuana use and problems. Specifically, negative urgency (NU), one facet of impulsivity characterized by rash action when experiencing emotional distress [36], may be of particular relevance to this comorbidity. When considering all facets of the UPPS-P model, NU and lack of perseverance specifically have been shown to relate to symptoms of MDD [44, 45]. NU has also been associated with marijuana use and problems in general populations [42, 46]. Relatedly, NU has been associated with alcohol use problems, particularly among those with higher levels of MDD [44, 47]. It may be that MDD places individuals at risk for marijuana problems via a similar mechanism. Thus, marijuana users with MDD may be more likely to act without thinking when upset or distressed. This in turn may lead to heavier use and a greater number of negative consequences related to marijuana use.
The present study
In order to clarify the mechanisms linking MDD and problematic marijuana use, this study sought to examine whether NU would uniquely (compared to other impulsivity traits) explain the relationship between MDD and marijuana use and problems. Two specific questions are examined: 1) The extent to which higher NU accounts for the relationship between MDD and marijuana use and problems; and 2) Whether this effect is unique to NU, or if other impulsive personality traits also partially account for the relationship between MDD and marijuana use and problems.
Data were drawn from a larger prospective study examining marijuana use and affective disorders in returning Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) veterans who were deployed post 9/11/2001 and who used marijuana at least once in his/her lifetime. Participants were recruited from a VHA facility in the Northeast US by utilizing the VHA OEF/OIF/OND Roster, an accruing database of combat veterans who have recently returned from military service in Iraq and Afghanistan and enrolled in VHA (see Metrik et al., 2016, for details of recruitment procedures). Veterans were screened for eligibility by telephone and were invited for a baseline visit, at which time they signed informed consent and completed a battery of interview and self-report assessments (including all measures analyzed in the current study). The study was approved by the university and local VHA Institutional Review Boards. Participants were compensated $50 upon completion of the study session. The original sample included 361 participants, from which four subjects were removed for missing data, resulting in a final N = 357.
Structured clinical interview for DSM, non-patient edition (SCID-NP)
Was used to determine DSM-5 [48] diagnosis of current (past month) Major Depressive Disorder [49]. All SCID interviews were administered by research assistants, who were trained by the PI and required to demonstrate adherence and competence to the interview. All SCIDs were audiotaped and a random selection of the recordings (n = 72, 20%) were later rated by an independent doctorate-level clinician, resulting in excellent inter-rater reliability (ICC = .98–.99, 95%, CIs [.96–.99]). Any discrepancies were resolved in discussion with the PIs (BB and JM).
Marijuana problems
Marijuana-related problems were assessed with the Marijuana Problems Scale (MPS; [50]), a self-report 22-item questionnaire that evaluates problems experienced in the past 90 days related to marijuana use. A total count of combined minor and serious problems was used rather than a severity score. The MPS has strong internal consistency in previous studies [50, 51] and in this sample (α = .91).
Marijuana use
The Time-Line Follow-Back Interview (TLFB; [52, 53]) was used to record percent days of marijuana use over the six months prior to the visit.
Impulsive personality traits
Facets of impulsivity were assessed using the Short UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale [54]. The UPPS-P is a 20-item self-report inventory which uses a 4-point likert scale to assesses five subscales of impulsive personality (negative urgency [NU], positive urgency [PU], sensation seeking [SS], lack of premeditation [PM], and lack of perseverance [PS]), each demonstrating high levels of internal consistency in previous studies [54]. These subscales demonstrated acceptable (PS α = .69, SS α = .62) to good (NU α = .77, PU α = .83, PM α = .82) internal consistency.
Data analytic strategy
Descriptive statistics and bivariate (point biseral for dichotomous variables) correlations were first examined. Next, hypothesized mediational models were examined. MDD was specified as the predictor, or independent variable; marijuana use and problems were specified as the outcomes, and impulsivity measures were specified as the mediators of interest. Several studies show that the several facets of the UPPS-P model of impulsivity are highly intercorrelated [40, 55]. Including all five traits in a single model can create statistical suppression and make it difficult to interpret each unique effect [56]. In order to address this issue, we first examined the correlations between each trait to guide decisions for which traits to examine for mediation. Specifically, we examined Negative Urgency [NU], Positive Urgency [PU], and Lack of Perseverance [PS] because, as reported below, they were significantly associated with both MDD and marijuana outcomes in this sample. A total of eight mediational models were tested. First, we tested separate models for each of the marijuana outcomes (marijuana problems and percent marijuana use days from the TLFB), for each of the mediators (NU, PU, and PS), which resulted in a total of six models. Then, we tested two models with all mediators entered simultaneously in order to examine whether any significant associations remained. Finally, given the cross-sectional nature of the data, follow-up mediation analyses with reverse directionality were tested, where marijuana use and problems were specified as the predictor, or independent variable; MDD was specified as the outcome, with impulsivity measures remaining as mediators of interest.
The primary data analyses were a structural equation model (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation to using AMOS 24.0 [57]. All models regressed the dependent variable (marijuana problems or use) onto covariates (age [continuous], sex [binary], and race [binary, non-Hispanic Caucasian]). Covariates were allowed to correlate with each other in single and multiple mediator models. In order to estimate mediation effects, bootstrapped (k = 20,000) and bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated for the indirect effects [58]. Mediation is tested by examining the direct, indirect, and total effects. Significant mediation effects are apparent when indirect effects are significant and total effects are reduced in the presence of the mediator. To assess the degree to which the structural models fit the sample variance-covariance data, two criteria of model fit were relied upon: the Comparative Fit Index (CFI: [59]), and the root-mean- square error of residual approximation (RMSEA: [60]). Although guidelines for good fit vary, values above .90 for CFI and below .05 for RMSEA are considered acceptable [61].
Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations
Table 1 presents sample demographics and substance use descriptive statistics. Table 2 presents bivariate correlations. As expected, MDD was positively associated with marijuana use and marijuana problems. Also as expected, MDD was positively associated with NU. Additionally, MDD was associated with PU, and PS, and PM. In this sample, marijuana problems were positively associated with NU, PU, and PS. Marijuana use was also associated with NU, PU, PS, as well as PM.
Table 1 Descriptive Statistics
Table 2 Bivariate Correlations
Mediation models
A set of mediation models for each of the two outcomes were first tested. We did not examine mediation by SS or PM due to lack of association with MDD (SS) and marijuana use (SS) and problems (SS and PM). Results are presented in Table 3, the top portion of which presents effects for single mediator models and the bottom portion for multiple mediator models.
Table 3 Results of Path models: Indirect and Direct effects of MDD on Marijuana Use and Problems, via Impulsive Personality Traits
In predicting marijuana use frequency, single mediator models did not return significant indirect effects for NU, PU or PS, indicating they did not account for the association between MDD and marijuana use. In the multiple mediator model, there was a significant indirect effect of MDD on marijuana use (β = .03, p < .05, 95% CI [.01, .09]), however none of the proposed mediators accounted for this indirect effect (see Table 3). Age was the only variable with a significant direct effect on marijuana use (β = −.16, p < .001), while NU, PU, and PS remained non-significant (see bottom panel of Table 3). Results were consistent in the mediation model with reverse directionality, as there were no indirect effects of MDD on marijuana use.
In separate single mediator models examining the association between MDD and marijuana problems, there was a significant indirect effect of NU, as hypothesized (see top panel of Table 3). This model suggested that NU significantly accounted for the relationship between MDD and marijuana problems (see Fig. 1). As can be seen in Fig. 1, a significant direct effect of MDD on marijuana problems remained when NU was in the model, suggesting partial mediation. As can also be seen in the model, there was a significant direct effect of MDD on NU and NU on marijuana problems. This model fit adequately, χ2 (6) = 11.84, p = .07, CFI = .91, NFI = .85, RMSEA = .05. As expected, neither PU nor PS accounted for the relationship between MDD and marijuana problems in single mediator models (see top panel, Table 3). In the mediation model with reverse directionality, examining the association between marijuana problems and MDD, there were significant total effects (β = .22, p = .001), direct effects (β = .16, p = .01), and indirect effects (β = .05, p < .01, 95% CI [.02, .09]) of MDD on marijuana problems, providing comparable evidence for partial mediation.
NU partially accounts for the association between MDD and Marijuana Problems Note. Parameter estimates are from the single mediator model. Mediational path model of the association between MDD, NU, and marijuana problems. Single directional arrows represent standard regression weights. The direct effect of MDD on marijuana problems before NU was included in the model is presented in parentheses. Models controlled for age, sex, and race. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05
In the multiple mediator model, the indirect effect of NU remained significant when PU and PS were still in the model, suggesting it significantly accounted for the association between MDD and marijuana problems (see bottom panel of Table 3). This model fit adequately, χ2 (12) = 38.53, p < .001, CFI = .88, NFI = .85, RMSEA = .08, and revealed significant total effects, direct effects, and indirect effects of MDD on marijuana problems providing evidence for partial mediation (see bottom panel of Table 3). Consistent with the single mediator model, the reverse multiple mediator model also found significant total effects (β = .22, p = .001), direct effects (β = .16, p = .01), and indirect effects (β = .06, p < .01, 95% CI [.02, .11]) of MDD on marijuana problems providing comparable evidence for partial mediation.
The goal of the present study was to better understand mechanisms associated with high rates of co-occurring MDD and problematic marijuana use by examining the role of specific facets of the UPPS-P model of impulsive personality [35, 36] in this comorbidity. To our knowledge, the current study is the first to systematically examine the role of these personality traits between MDD and marijuana use and problems. As hypothesized, we found that NU partially accounted for the relationship between MDD and marijuana problems, but this was not true of the other impulsivity traits.
Consistent with previous research [5, 9], we found that MDD was associated with marijuana use and problems. Although this is not the first study to examine the relationship between MDD and marijuana use and problems, it is the first to examine how individual dispositions to impulsive/rash action may help explain the association between these two clinical problems. We were also able to replicate previous research suggesting an association between MDD and NU [44, 45]. The current study expands this literature by suggesting that individuals with MDD and high levels of NU are in turn more likely to have greater number of marijuana problems. Importantly, our results also suggest that NU is the only trait in the UPPS model that accounted for the association between MDD and marijuana problems. This is consistent with theory suggesting the increased negative affect experienced by those with mood disorder, such as MDD, may lead to increased substance-related problems [15]. This high rate of negative affect may be particularly problematic for individuals also high in NU, who may in turn be more likely to act impulsively when experiencing negative mood states, and thus be more likely to experience problems related to substance use. Although results in support of this mediational pathway are compelling, remaining variance in our models suggest alternative pathways may exist to explain this comorbidity. For example, marijuana coping motives have also been shown to mediate the relationship between MDD or other affective vulnerabilities, such as anxiety and distress tolerance, and marijuana use and problems in general and veteran populations [5, 13, 62,63,64].
Contrary to our hypothesis, this mediational pathway was not present for marijuana use, indicating that NU is specifically implicated in the experience of problematic marijuana use. This is consistent with work suggesting that NU is a robust predictor of both marijuana problems [41, 65] and alcohol problems [66,67,68], although the relationship between NU and marijuana problems has received far less attention. Previous studies have used similar methods to explain the relationship between MDD and alcohol use and problems. In one study of young adult drinkers, NU significantly mediated the relationship between depressive symptoms and alcohol problems when controlling for alcohol use [47]. Similarly, King and colleagues [67] examined which of the UPPS-P model traits might moderate the relationship between depressive symptoms and alcohol problems among college student drinkers. They found that although NU was the strongest predictor of alcohol problems, lack of premeditation was the only moderator of depressive symptoms and alcohol problems. Although this study examined impulsivity traits as moderators, it is important to mention as they found unique associations between NU and depressive symptoms when examining alcohol problems, which is consistent with our findings with marijuana problems.
The present study expands this knowledge by not only showing that the relationship between MDD and marijuana problems may be partially explained by NU, but also in a population of military veterans. Veterans often have higher rates of MDD and substance use disorders including CUD compared to the general population [69, 70], and thus an important target population for intervention. The present research has important treatment and prevention implications for individuals with MDD and marijuana problems. Given the emerging evidence of an association between NU and marijuana problems in a number of different populations, it may be important for clinicians to assess for NU to be aware of the additional risk for those with MDD and high levels of NU. Although we focused on the directional pathway of MDD predicting marijuana-related behvaiors, it is also important to acknowledge that longitudinal evidence also exists to suggest that marijuana use is prospectively associated with depressive symptoms and other mood disorders [see review: 16]. Therefore, individuals at risk for depression and those with MDD should consider avoiding using marijuana, as it could in turn exacerbate the severity of depressive symptoms.
Limitations and conclusions
A few limitations should be considered when interpreting the results of this study. First, our data are cross-sectional and cannot provide a test of the model that MDD leads to higher levels of NU, and in turn increased marijuana problems. It is possible that greater predisposition to NU precedes the development of both MDD and marijuana problems. There also appears to be support for bi-directionality in the effects, such that marijuana problems and use could also lead to or exacerbate symptoms of MDD. In fact, we tested both directional pathways with the mediation analyses and found consistent results, suggesting this is likely a bidirectional relationship, and that NU may be a consistent mediator for both pathways to comorbidity. Future prospective modeling is needed to directly empirically evaluate the extent to which depression may further maintain problematic patterns of marijuana use and to clarify the role of NU. Second, the timeframes by which the measures are assessed vary. MDD was assessed over the past month, and marijuana use and problems over longer timeframes (six and three months, respectively), further limiting any conclusions about directionality. However, regardless of the inability of the present study to resolve directionality, we believe it still sheds important light on the mechanisms linking MDD and problematic marijuana use.
Third, the use of a veteran population meant there was a very small number of women in the sample, (although the proportion in this study was representative of the 5–10% of women among U.S. military veterans). This limits the generalizability to women in non-veteran populations. Fourth, the use of frequency over quantity of marijuana use in the TLFB may have reduced the likelihood of finding an association with NU, as quantity may me a more sensitive test of problematic use compared to frequency. Additionally, relevant to the TLFB, is the length of the assessment window (6 months), which may be increasingly subject to retrospective recall bias when compared to shorter time periods. Although research suggests that TLFB reports underestimate frequency and quantity, this recall is not temporally biased. In other words, reports do not change significantly across time period (from 30 to 60 to 366 days [71]; 30 and 180-day intervals [72]).
Despite these limitations, the findings presented here provide important information about the risk for problematic marijuana use among individuals with co-occurring depressive symptoms, and the role of high levels of NU. Moreover, they suggest that relative to other common impulsive personality traits, individuals high in NU are at particular risk for problems related to their marijuana use. Future studies would benefit from studying these associations longitudinally and with a more diverse sample of both men and women in order to determine possible causality between MDD, NU, and problematic marijuana use.
MDD:
NU:
negative urgency
lack of premeditation
lack of perseverance
positive urgency
sensation seeking
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Coskunpinar A, Dir AL, Cyders MA. Multidimensionality in impulsivity and alcohol use: a meta-analysis using the UPPS model of impulsivity. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2013;37:1441–50.
Arbuckle JL. Amos (Version 24.0). 2016.
Preacher KJ, Rucker DD, Hayes AF. Addressing moderated mediation hypotheses: theory, methods, and prescriptions. Multivariate Behav Res. 2007;42:185–227.
Bentler PM. Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychol Bull. 1990;107:238–46.
Browne MW, Cudeck R. Alternative ways of assessing model fit. Sociol Methods Res. 1992;21:230–58.
Kline RB. Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. 2011.
Johnson KA, Bonn-Miller MO, Leyro TM, Zvolensky MJ. Anxious arousal and Anhedonic depression symptoms and the frequency of current marijuana use: testing the mediating role of marijuana-use coping motives among active users. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2009;70:543–50.
Buckner JD, Zvolensky MJ. Cannabis and related impairment: the unique roles of Cannabis use to cope with social anxiety and social avoidance. Am J Addict. 2014;23:598–603.
Bujarski SJ, Norberg MM, Copeland J. The association between distress tolerance and cannabis use-related problems: the mediating and moderating roles of coping motives and gender. Addict Behav. 2012;37:1181–4.
Wardell JD, Strang NM, Hendershot CS. Negative urgency mediates the relationship between childhood maltreatment and problems with alcohol and cannabis in late adolescence. Addict Behav. 2016;56:1–7.
Fischer S, Smith GT. Binge eating, problem drinking, and pathological gambling: linking behavior to shared traits and social learning. Pers Individ Dif. 2008;44:789–800.
King KM, Karyadi KA, Luk JW, Patock-Peckham JA. Dispositions to rash action moderate the associations between concurrent drinking, depressive symptoms, and alcohol problems during emerging adulthood. Psychol Addict Behav. 2011;25:446–54.
Magid V, Colder CR. The UPPS impulsive behavior scale: factor structure and associations with college drinking. Pers Individ Dif. 2007;43:1927–37.
Kessler RC, Chiu WT, Demler O, Walters EE. Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62:617–27.
Kessler RC, Heeringa SG, Stein MB, Colpe LJ, Fullerton CS, Hwang I, et al. Thirty-day prevalence of DSM-IV mental disorders among nondeployed soldiers in the US Army. JAMA Psychiatry. 2014;71:504.
Searles JS, Helzer JE, Rose GL, Badger GJ. Concurrent and retrospective reports of alcohol consumption across 30, 90 and 366 days: interactive voice response compared with the timeline follow back. J Stud Alcohol. 2002;63:352–62.
Carey KB. Reliability and validity of the time-line follow-back interview among psychiatric outpatients: a preliminary report. Psychol Addict Behav. 1997;11:26–33.
The authors gratefully acknowledge Cassandra Delapaix, Rebecca Swagger, Madeline Benz, Hannah Wheeler, Suzanne Sales, and Julie Evon for their contribution to the project.
National Institute on Drug Abuse grant (R01 DA033425), awarded to Jane Metrik and Brian Borsari; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Training Grant to Rachel Gunn (T32 AA007459, PI: Monti), and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism K02 AA13938 (PI: Jackson).
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not yet publicly available due to the main outcomes of the parent study still in the process of data analysis and preparation for publication. Data will be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request upon the dissemination of primary outcome findings from the parent grant.
Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, RI, 02903, USA
Rachel L. Gunn, Kristina M. Jackson & Jane Metrik
San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, California, 94121, USA
Brian Borsari
University of California, San Francisco, 94143, USA
Providence VA Medical Center, Providence, RI, 02908, USA
Jane Metrik
Rachel L. Gunn
Kristina M. Jackson
JM and BB designed the project that collected the data for the current study. RG conducted literature search and analyzed and interpreted the data with guidance from JM and KJ. RG wrote the first draft of the manuscript with significant contribution from all authors, who have approved the final manuscript.
Correspondence to Jane Metrik.
This research was conducted following the ethical guidelines set forth in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the project has been reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Boards at the Providence VA Medical Center and at Brown University. All subjects provided informed consent.
Gunn, R.L., Jackson, K.M., Borsari, B. et al. Negative urgency partially accounts for the relationship between major depressive disorder and marijuana problems. bord personal disord emot dysregul 5, 10 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-018-0087-7
UPPS-P

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The HDV 820 has a very low key profile but the power and the quality is amazing. It has been paired with the HD 800s headsets which makes everything sound....well...as you would expect in this price range. The only downsize for the moment is the lack of USB drivers for the latest Windows 10 versions. It was a bit frustrating to have everything ready (~ 5000 EUR of equipment) and when turned on Windows to report that the drivers are not properly signed. Sennheiser support was supportive and they said they will have everything ready in couple of days - we will have to wait and see.


text:
Home > News > Complacent Defra not ready for Brexit - PAC
Complacent Defra not ready for Brexit - PAC
'Complacent' Defra faces enormous challenges in the lead-up to Brexit and, with the March 29, 2019, deadline looming, still does not know which scenario it is preparing for, a Parliamentary committee has warned.
In a new report, the Public Accounts Committee said there was a high level of risk in the Department's portfolio, with many of its plans dependent on co-operation from other departments, the devolved administrations and agencies and the goodwill of EU member states.
The Department is too complacent about the levels of disruption or interruption to trade that may be faced. Fundamental issues for food, chemical and animal importers and exporters are yet to be resolved.
Many businesses have not been given detailed advice on what is required by Brexit, as Defra has had very limited engagement with stakeholders until recently, the report said.
In the six months since the PAC's last report in May 2018, the situation for Defra's stakeholders has changed very little, as the Department's preparation for EU Exit continues to be complicated by its need to work on a range of solutions for different scenarios, the report said.
It has now established a new directorate for business readiness and engagement but its focus has been on industry and representative groups which means that individual businesses and organisations, in particular SMEs remain unaware and ill-prepared.
'This is all too little, too late and it is particularly concerning that the Department's ability to impart specific information has been hampered by excessive secrecy at the centre of government and continuing uncertainty over the outcome of the negotiations," the report said.
"It has made good progress in drafting the 86 statutory instruments it must prepare, with three-quarters of them either fully drafted or near completion. But in its efforts to rush through the drafting, we remain concerned about risks to quality."
The amount of parliamentary time that these, and those of other departments, will require is daunting, it added. Cabinet Office needs to ensure that those of the highest significance across government receive greatest priority but that all receive adequate parliamentary scrutiny ahead of EU Exit.
"With the pace at which new legislation will have to be agreed we are seriously concerned about the level of scrutiny," the committee said.
"We need the Department to be clear about the impact of not being able to make the necessary legal changes in time. Muddling through in the hope of goodwill is highly risky and means many businesses are left not knowing what the future will bring."
PAC chair Meg Hillier said: "Brexit looms but the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs is a long way from being ready.
"In the continued uncertainty about the UK's future relationship with the EU, Defra's civil servants must prepare for multiple and in some cases ill-defined scenarios.
"Anyone working in the dark is prone to stumble but in Defra's case I am concerned that the Department has lost sight of its priorities.
"The risks associated with 'no-deal' in particular are severe, and it is alarming how little specific information Defra has provided to enable individual businesses and organisations to prepare.
"Brexit border planning is not sufficiently developed, six critical IT systems are still to be tested and there is a risk that in the Department's rush to prepare necessary legislation, the quality of that legislation will suffer.
"Defra is up against it but there is more it must do to assure Parliament, businesses and the wider public that it has a firm grip on its responsibilities."
Defra response
A Defra spokesperson said: "We do not accept the PAC's conclusions which fail to accurately reflect Defra's preparations for leaving the EU.
"The PAC have ignored key findings from the National Audit Office, which found that 'Defra has achieved a great deal and to a very demanding timescale'.
"In producing this one-sided report, the PAC have failed to acknowledge the substantial progress we have made in replacing EU functions, hiring key staff and building new IT systems."


Many people wonder whether or not using Methadone during pregnancy is safe. This is mostly because pregnant mothers do not want to harm their babies or themselves while they are carrying. The answer is that although Methadone is safer to use than other drugs such as heroin, it can still cause harmful effects to both the unborn child and to the mother. Babies born on Methadone often have many issues. This article will cover the dangers of using this drug during pregnancy. If you are pregnant or are thinking about becoming pregnant, then this information can be beneficial for you to know.
Is There a Safe Limit to Use Methadone During Pregnancy?
How To Stay Away From Methadone While Pregnant?
In many cases, pregnant mothers who are addicted to heroin or other opioids will be advised to take Methadone because it is a better alternative and because there are fewer risks of severe withdrawal symptoms or needle-caused infections. So, for serious heroin addicts, it is often safer to use Methadone during pregnancy than to keep using heroin or to suddenly stop using opioids.
However, the drug can still have harmful effects on fetuses. For example, babies addicted to Methadone when they are born can have all of the following withdrawal symptoms: restlessness, not eating or sleeping well, fever, vomiting, trembling, and more. There are often other negative effects of Methadone on the fetus as well. For example, vision problems have been reported in some cases. It is far safer to be clean when you are pregnant than it is to be on the medication. However, it is safer to be on Methadone than on heroin or other dangerous opioids.
Studies have shown that there is no safe amount of the drug that you can use while you are pregnant. In fact, your baby has a good chance of experiencing harmful effects if you use this narcotic and can get strong withdrawal symptoms whether you are taking a small or a large dose while you are pregnant. Pregnancy and Methadone do not mix very well. In fact, if you are pregnant on Methadone, then you are putting your baby at risk for congenital disabilities and severe withdrawal symptoms shortly after it is born. Withdrawal symptoms will begin anywhere from a day or two after birth to several weeks after birth.
Many women are aware that using this narcotic during pregnancy causes health problems for their babies. However, many do not realize that it is also dangerous for them as well.
So, in addition to Methadone side effects on babies, the medication effects on pregnant women can also be dangerous. If high doses are taken, overdoses can also occur.
The best way to avoid taking methadone while pregnant is to beat addiction before you get pregnant. If you can overcome addiction before you get pregnant, then you can be clean for your pregnancy and have the greatest possible chance of having a healthy baby. Pregnancy on Methadone is very undesirable medically. Pregnant women on Methadone are at an increased risk of creating health problems for their baby, so it is essential to find suitable rehab program before.
If you are thinking about getting pregnant and if you are addicted to opioids or Methadone, then you should be aware that being pregnant while on these drugs can cause harm to your child. Before you get pregnant, you should strongly consider getting treated for these addictions at a medical facility. If you can beat these addictions, then you will most likely have a healthier baby and a safer pregnancy.
If you would like to beat your addiction before you get pregnant, then you should go to a treatment center and get professional help. Please feel free to call us at (888)-459-5511 to speak to one of our professional representatives today. Help is just one phone call away. Beat your addiction to give your child the best chance of being born healthy.


text: Q: Copy and Paste Contents of Unix File I am trying to figure out how to copy the contents of a file after accessing it from a server via SSH. The format for the file is a single line of text that looks like a generated password but I dont know how to copy the password without downloading it. I also want to be able to paste it when I try to login to the server with that password instead of typing it out. Is it possible to do so?

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We've just finished a Christmas four page story. Like all Xmas tales, it includes Father Christmas (yep, we're brits), reindeer and guests from earlier in the series. This is the "cover" to the three page tale.
Merry Christmas from Hetero Milk!
Who is this Sorcerer? Can we trust him? I doubt it!
My very first comic attempt! Manga style read from right to left and 100% hand-drawn!
This SHOULD have been in my latest update, and it is on non-CF places where I post it. But for technical reasons, I had to put the unanimated version in the CF version.
Also, like omg damatris I love the ginger hair so much. It pains me that your comic is in a genre I'm not into.
And Spearhafoc - I love the character design of the female there too. She's really pleasing to watch. I wanna be herrrr.
Hi I'm new! Just recently set up the first few pages of my comic and here's the latest of them (cover actually). Hope you like.
This is still my favorite page to date.
I like this thread. It's nice to see a big variety of comic samples all in one place.


text:
Worship Composers Who Piggyback on Classic Hymns Create Copyright Confusion
Filed under: Christianity, Church, music, worship — Tags: CCM, choosing worship songs, Christian music publishing, Christian radio, church music, modern hymns, modern worship, music ministry, worship leading, worship music publishing — paulthinkingoutloud @ 9:23 am
My wife uploaded a church service video which included her congregation singing, "It Is Well with My Soul." Although the song wasn't annotated, the YouTube bots scanned the video and recognize the lyrics and tune and immediately informed her that the entire video would be banned in one European country, which raises the specter of more blocking to follow.
While she was staring at her screen in disbelief, I went to Wikipedia on my screen; a source I find offering increased reliability at a time when general search results can be misleading.
True enough, the song pretty much has to be in public domain, considering it is listed as first published in 1876.
But the page also noted a 2011 edition "with a new added bridge composed by Reuben Morgan and Ben Fielding." I am willing to bet that is part of the problem. The new bridge would qualify them to claim a copyright, even though my wife has never heard it and didn't use it at all.
You and I and she understand that. YouTube does not. When she went to file a 'dispute' on the blocking, the dispute itself was blocked by YouTube. The company acts as sheriff, judge and jury…
…Piggybacking on existing hymns is nothing new. I wrote about this in April, 2017:
The first time I heard a bridge added to a traditional hymn was the addition of Wonderful Cross to When I Survey. I don't know if I took to it the very first day, but I certainly grew to like it quickly, and as a worship leader, I've since used the Wonderful Cross section with the hymn Lead Me To Calvary, where it also works well.
Modern worship music has been greatly influenced by popular songs. Whereas a hymn generally just has either stanzas, or follows a verse-and-chorus format; modern worship will use introductions, bridges, codas, etc., and is often more prone to key changes.
Amazing Grace is another example. My Chains are Gone is certainly a suitable addition, I don't challenge the musical or lyrical integrity of it by itself, or its fit with the time-honored verses that precede it.
To make the bridge stand out — or I prefer to say break out — musically, some of the chord changes in When I Survey or Amazing Grace are made more minimalist so that the declaration in the bridge introduces a powerful, triumphant transition. "Oh, the Wonderful Cross!" "My chains are gone, I've been set free!"
If I had a similar idea a few years ago, I would have positioned my finished work as a medley, not a new arrangement, but the chord changes necessitate the piece to be considered a re-write. And the original composers aren't around to protest.
So it was only a couple years back when someone more cynical than me — yes, it's possible — suggested that perhaps the motivation for doing this was financial. Then it was more than one person. Freshly re-minted songs that were formerly public domain can be performed with mechanical royalties (album and print music sales) and performance royalties (concerts, radio, television and even CCLI playlists your church submits) flowing to the composer. Nice work if you can get it…
…But I was reminded of this in a new way on the weekend, when I encountered a song with a very unique title — No One Every Cared for Me Like Jesus — a title I would have considered hands-off, since the original is so iconic, but had none the less been assumed by former Bethel Worship leader Steffany Gretzinger. I can't be convinced that this title similarity is a coincidence.
You're allowed to be skeptical of my conclusion, but truly the title is somewhat unique. Clearly, the composers had this in the back of their minds. It's the question of how much of this was intentional where we're allowed to disagree.
I found myself experiencing an emotional response to this title borrowing that I was not expecting. These guys are creative types; couldn't they have found something else to act as their motif? No, I think they wanted to catch a ride with the original hymn.
For that reason I hesitated to include it here, but for those of you who want to do an After-and-Before comparison here it is. The similarity of the mood and tone of this and the original.
For those with a sacred music memory longer than the last 12 months, I want to leave you with the original, in a tasteful arrangement by Sandy Patti. In my view, this version will always have the last word.
Postscript: In searching for a hymnbook image of "No One Ever Cared…" I found one which indicated the song as public domain, and one that indicated it as ©1932 by The Rodeheaver Company; the same company that filed a copyright claim against another song my wife uploaded, In The Garden. That hymn was well past its sell-by date in terms of legalities, but Rodeheaver apparently renewed the copyright. Why not? There's gold in them there hills.
A Cynic Looks at Modern Church Music
Filed under: Christianity, Church, music, worship — Tags: CCM, choosing worship songs, Christian music publishing, Christian radio, church music, modern hymns, modern worship, music ministry, worship leading, worship music publishing — paulthinkingoutloud @ 1:15 pm
So it was only a couple years back when someone more cynical than me — yes, it's possible — suggested that perhaps the motivation for doing this was financial. Then it was more than one person. Freshly re-minted songs that were formerly public domain can be performed with mechanical royalties (album and print music sales) and performance royalties (concerts, radio, television and even CCLI playlists your church submits) flowing to the composer. Nice work if you can get it.
I remembered something from years ago when I was working in Christian television. Unlike radio which used random station logs as representative samples, TV royalties were based on all logs from all stations all the time. When the ministry organization in question received some rather meager royalty checks for some tunes they had written, a situation emerged where (and this is a fairly direct quote from someone close to the process), "People who had never written a song in their entire lives suddenly found songs pouring out of them on a regular basis." He was highly skeptical.
So economics can indeed be a wonderful motivator. I'm sure that the person who decides to modify an existing hymn or do a fresh arrangement takes time to study the lyrics and I'm not saying that some of these people don't do this prayerfully, both before and after the process.
Yes, I'm a cynic when it comes to such things. But you have to admire the ingenuity of finding a way to get royalties from songs heretofore part of Public Domain. A combination of total disdain and 'Why didn't I think of it?'
Occasionally these improvements to existing hymns simply don't work. They involve a change in lyrical theme or rhythm or melody so as to constitute an unwelcome intruder. Like the guy who brings his accordion to worship team practice. Or the guy who wears a Hawaiian shirt to a funeral.
Other times I fear that a generation of church musicians is being raised up to assume that this is how it's done, and that adding bridges to existing hymn literature is the modus operandi of worship song composition.
But honestly, sometimes these new hymn versions can be the gift that keeps on giving. If the revenue is being plowed back into ministry, that's great. Scripture tells us that we shouldn't "judge the servant of another," though honestly, I now find the cynicism was, in my case, somewhat contagious. But I'll continue to "believe the best" that the starting place for adding a bridge or changing the chord structure of a song isn't motivated by economics.
I hope you'll do the same.
HCSB Prov 16:2 All a man's ways seem right to him,
but the Lord evaluates the motives.
How to Get Royalties for Songs in the Public Domain
Filed under: Christianity — Tags: CCM, choosing worship songs, Christian music publishing, Christian radio, church music, modern hymns, modern worship, music ministry, worship leading, worship music publishing — paulthinkingoutloud @ 9:42 am
The Homogenization of Ideas
Filed under: blogging, media, music, writing — Tags: CCM, Christian blogs, Christian internet, Christian music publishing, church music, contemporary Christian music, creative spirit, homogenized music — paulthinkingoutloud @ 7:19 am
Many years ago, when my life was more about music than about books, I met a girl — name truly forgotten — who had written a children's musical that she hoped I could help her get published. Despite the fact that I worked in the broadest sectors of the Christian music industry, my interest lay more in breaking new territory for contemporary Christian music, not in the choral music product market.
But then I listened to the tape she gave me.
Without any formal musical training, this girl had conceived an entire cantata for children — theme unfortunately forgotten also — that was truly awesome.
I made an exception and got to work on collecting contact names for choral publishing companies I was already in working relationship with, and some expressed interest in pursuing this talented young woman further.
Provided she was willing to relocate to Nashville.
This is the part of the story that amazed me, and one which I fought tooth and nail at the time. "What good does it do," I asked, "If everyone in the industry is waking up in the same town, driving on the same freeways, shopping at the same malls, walking in the same parks, going to the same churches, and dare I say listening to the same music? Isn't this going to lead to music that all sounds the same?"
Nobody listened. In the end she decided it was too big a move that was not guaranteed to offer sure returns. Your loss. My loss. Kids who would have learned and performed her musical; their loss. Don't know what happened to her.
The other night we were listening to overseas radio stations online. Norway. The Netherlands. England (but not the BBC which is geo-blocked in Canada). The one thing we noticed was the decisive absence of the telltale Nashville influence. The American guitar-based country sound — that permeates rock and other genres here whether we admit or not — was replaced by the Euro music sound of keyboards. It was a nice change.
The more southern U.S. the sound — apologies, Third Day — the less I like it. In a shrinking world, we still get to hear too little of what is a staple musical diet for audiences in Europe. Geo-blocking of internet radio and YouTube music videos is not helping. I'd like to know how much of that blocking is European-driven, and how much of it originates with the American offices of multi-national record companies.
The Christian internet of which I am a part is no different. Justin Taylor or Kevin DeYoung writes something and Tim Challies and Zach Nielsen link to it, and then all the Challies wannabes link to it on their blogs. Sixty gazillion Christian blogs all carrying the one story of the day and the same blog referrer advertisement for the $1.99 eBook download of the day.
Yes, people exist on the fringes, and bloggers like this one who try "marching to the beat of a different drummer," but ultimately, we witness the homogenization of creativity and the homogenization of thought on a daily basis; people striving to carve out an individual identity, but essentially all waking up in the same town, driving on the same roads, eating in the same restaurants, and playing the same four chords. So to speak.


Hey everyone!!!! I feel like this is a long time coming. Alex and I have discussed starting a blog when we first started our adoption journey 8 months ago. We knew it would be a great way for everyone to follow along our road to becoming parents. However, life, work, and laziness got in the way and this little project just kept getting put on the back burner. As you all know we were expecting to take the VERY LONG road to adoption and instead we got thrown onto the rocket ship and blasted straight through adoption. So why not start a blog when we are in the middle of a move, new jobs and an infant at home who is going for imminent heart surgery? GREAT IDEA!!
This will be a great avenue to keep everyone updated with Jaxson's heart surgery and recovery next week. Instead of making those long, drawn out Facebook statuses you all can just come here for updates (if you want them of course). Also check out the links above if you're interested in reading about our adoption journey, Jaxson's story or why we chose to adopt a child with Down Syndrome.
I will do my best at keeping this blog up to date and recent, and I will be sure to send out notifications when new things are added. Don't expect much, I ain't no writer (that was intentional, I'm really not THAT uneducated :P).
So for now I just want to say "WELCOME" and hope you enjoy following along our crazy, fun life!
OMG – I am ridiculously happy for you two! It's been 12 years since my first baby and sometimes it still feels surreal – I'M A MOM!! Is Jax going to the Stollery for his surgery? Dr Reybeka was Zen's surgeon twice and is AWESOME! Well, everyone there is awesome actually. It's a tough road but love and faith will get you through it!
Wow!!!! Just found your blog after our local DS society shared the link from CBC. I too have adopted a little boy with DS (being a single mom!). I live in Alberta too and he also had heart surgery at the Stollery. I would love to chat with you more about your story and share more of mine if your willing please contact me. If not I will continue to follow your story!
Megan, that is amazing! I would LOVE to chat with you!! Find me on fb under Holly Graham (I'll look for you as well). Can't wait to hear your story!!
Loved your happy, feel-good, inspiring story this A.M. on CBC. Great attitude Alex and Holly – love your positive, go-for-it feel. Happy times with Jax!


text:
Landsdelsserien is a former division in Norwegian football and from 1951 to 1962, it was the second tier division in the Norwegian football league system. Following the creation of the new 1. divisjon in 1963, the division folded and its district groups were replaced by national groups in the new second tier; 2. divisjon.

History
Landsdelsserien consisted of seven district groups of seven or eight team in each group. The two winners of the groups from Eastern Norway were promoted directly to the following season's top division, at the time named Hovedserien (English: The Main League). The remaining five winner qualified for promotion play-offs to compete for two spots in the following season's top division. In the 1961–62 season, only two teams promoted. Teams from Northern Norway did not participate in the national league system until 1972 and thus did not participate in Landsdelsserien.

Competition format

Landsdelsserien winners

Winners from districts east/south and east/north were promoted to the top division. The remaining five winner qualified for promotion play-offs to compete for two spots in the following season's top division. In the 1961–62 season, only two teams promoted. Promoted teams are shown in bold.

References

External links

Nor

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text:
InvestigationsTopicsStoriesČesky
Ján Kuciak
Investigations: Influence and Impact
Home Homepage Investigations
Category: Investigations
July 18, 2020August 25, 2020In Investigations
Flesh of a Tiger
It is relatively common for animals that rank high on the list of the world's most protected species to change hands in Central Europe. Illegal wildlife trade has become one of the most profitable branches of organized crime. Where is the red line that divides the world of big cats' enthusiasts and those involved in...
May 6, 2020August 25, 2020In Investigations
Online Crooks: Catch Us If You Can
Ladislav Vydra is a pensioner from Prague. After an eye surgery, his retina fell apart and he all but lost his eyesight. Doctors gave him no prospects for improvement. Andrzej, a man from Poland, has his hearing impaired but does not want to use hearing aid yet. Both of them trusted ads for miraculous products,...
April 28, 2020June 30, 2020In Investigations
Lex Babiš. What is the Czech Prime Minister´s Interest in EU Subsidies
"She's a little deranged. She doesn't understand how subsidies work at all," Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said of MEP Monika Hohlmeier following the European Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee's early March fact-finding mission to the Czech Republic. Led by Hohlmeier, the objective of the mission was to gain insights into the distribution of EU funds...
April 22, 2020August 25, 2020In Investigations
Subsidised and defrauded. Visegrad EU funds under the eye of OLAF
For over twenty years, the European Anti-Fraud Office (commonly known as OLAF, from the French: Office européen de lutte antifraude) has been protecting the EU's financial interests, investigating fraud, corruption, and serious misconduct within the Union's budget and institutions. The office has also developed an anti-fraud policy for the European Commission. But while OLAF looks...
Coronavirus: Enough with Democracy
"Over the past weeks, several EU governments took emergency measures to address the health crisis caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus. We are living in extraordinary times, and governments, in principle, need to have the necessary tools to act rapidly and effectively to protect the public health of our citizens," European Commission President Ursula...
April 8, 2020June 30, 2020In Investigations
Big Brother in Times of Plague
To effectively fight the coronavirus pandemic, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland are introducing various smartphone apps that promise to increase the safety of citizens and eventually loosen lockdown measures. But in practice, enforcing this kind of digital leash raises many privacy and data security concerns. A project that purports to be a "way to quickly...
Website investice.eu is operated by a non-profit organization Czech Centre for Investigative Journalism.
Czech Centre for Investigative Journalism
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Email: info@investigace.cz
Use Our Work
Investigace.eu © 2020


Most manufacturers subcontract services to Waterjet Cutting business due to the specialized nature of the work. Competitive success is largely contingent upon an industry operator's ability to produce cost estimates for jobs in an accurate and timely manner. Furthermore, industry operators compete based on price. Businesses survive and thrive based on the competitiveness of quotes. To maintain their competitive edge, industry operators must continually find ways to machine parts better, faster and less expensive. The potential for growth through additional advertising and targeted marketing to local manufacturers gives this business significant opportunities. Potential to add a second shift as sales grow.


May 13, 2015 by Steven Neuner Esq.
Many parents in financial difficulty still place a priority on helping their children with tuition and other college expenses. While this is entirely understandable, parents who pay colleges for their adult children could be creating problems for both their children and the colleges if they later file for bankruptcy protection.
Recent reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere have exposed a growing trend: bankruptcy trustees are suing colleges to "claw back" money paid by parents in bankruptcy. This has led the colleges to seek payment from the students, or to withhold transcripts until the money is repaid. It has even spawn a proposed bill in Congress to prevent bankruptcy trustees from filing such suits.
The underlying legal theory for such "claw-back" suits is not that novel. Trustees have the right and indeed the obligation to pursue getting back money or property that a debtor in bankruptcy has "fraudulently" transferred, so the money can be made available to pay creditors (and to pay the trustee and his attorneys). The payment need not have been done with actual intent to defraud creditors. It is sufficient if it was made without the parent/debtor getting "reasonably equivalent value" in return for what is paid, and if the payment was made at a time the parent was insolvent or unable to pay current or anticipated debts.
In essence, the trustees argue, the parents paying the college education expenses of an adult child are making a gift to that child. Gifts are by definition not made for "reasonably equivalent value". They take away money that could have been used to pay the parent's creditors. Love and affection are not considered "reasonably equivalent value".
If the parent takes out a loan or co-signs a student loan for the child but all the money goes to the child or her college, the effect is the same. It is still an avoidable gift.
Ironically, if the parent making the payment is required to do so under a divorce settlement incorporated into a divorce decree, the problem disappears. Why? Because the parent has a legal duty to pay that is enforceable by the divorcing spouse, and by making the payment the parent is relieved of part of that obligation. This is no different than when one pays a debt that is owed. The corresponding reduction in debt creates reasonable value in exchange.
Generally, in New Jersey, parents do not have a legal obligation (absent a divorce situation) to support their children after they achieve the age of majority or become "emancipated".
There are ways around this problem for parents in financial difficulty. One option is to file bankruptcy first, then pay the college expenses out of future income or assets that are protected in bankruptcy (such as pensions or profit sharing plans), after the bankruptcy is over. But for most people in this situation, they and their children need to have a sober and honest discussion about what is practical and in every one's best interests in the long run.
Careful planning and advice of qualified professionals is a must. These are difficult decisions and should be thought through carefully as part of a broad based plan for getting a "fresh start". With years of trustee and bankruptcy experience, we have the ability to help distressed parents sort it all out.


Our guests are welcomed to a great 30-seat restaurant "Green Рark" with the European cuisine.
the unique Spanish Josper meat, fish, and vegetable dishes are prepared incredibly tasty and flavourful, retaining their healthy qualities and hale.
Room-service is also available for our quests — food and beverage delivery directly to your room.


text:
Q: Get Userrule by email in asp.net mvc 5 when try to login (when user is not logged in) public async Task<ActionResult> Login(LoginViewModel model, string returnUrl)
    {
        if (!ModelState.IsValid)
        {
            return View(model);
        }

        var result = await SignInManager.PasswordSignInAsync(model.Email,    model.Password,model.RememberMe, shouldLockout: false);

        ApplicationDbContext db = new ApplicationDbContext();

        var UserID= from u in db.Users
                    where u.Email == model.Email
                    select u.Id;
 var RolesForUser = await UserManager.GetRolesAsync(UserID);

    }

"Attention=>User is not logged in. i want user id by email when user try to login.I do query and get UserID bur Exception came as UserID is null"


text:
February in Books: Small Press New Releases from the Shortest Month
written by Entropy February 28, 2015
Welcome to the second installment of Entropy's "Month in Books" feature, where we highlight small press new releases at the end of every month. If you're a press and don't see your books here, email dennis@entropymag.org and we'll get you involved in the March post.
Michael Sweet's Coney Island by Michael Ernest Sweet
140 pages – BAP/Amazon
"The digital revolution has changed photography forever. As tempting as it is to regard it as an egalitarian, popular revolution of the form, the democratization of the photographic image, with its casual emphasis on verisimilitude and documentation, runs the risk of erasing classical distinctions of authorship and craft to the point of diminishing the role of the artist altogether. Not everyone is an artist, nor should everyone aspire to be one. Not everyone "has an eye," as the classic synecdoche has it, and not everyone has the sensitivity or intuitiveness, or perhaps even the perverse will and intention, to pursue a pure vision as an artist or photographer. So when someone like Michael Ernest Sweet makes a visual statement of such admirable consistency and acute perverseness, attention must be paid…" —From the Foreword by Bruce LaBruce
Dead Horse by Niina Pollari
Birds, LLC
83pages – Birds, LLC /Amazon
"These poems are so rhythmic you can almost ride them. Moving through the daily deaths of the earth, the questions of what to hold together and what to let, Niina Pollari writes from a place where emotion meets bone, exploring what it means to be a blood container. You will see your own skull." —Melissa Broder
A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us by Caleb Curtiss
Back Lawrence Press
37 pages – Black Lawrence / SPD
"My sister / is not a woman, a girl, or even / a real someone or something. / Not anymore." The poems in A TAXONOMY OF THE SPACE BETWEEN US by Caleb Curtiss impress fifteen assertions, attempts, and urges toward order on the cavernous and impossible expanse that remains after the speaker's sister "drove past a stop sign and then, / didn't do anything ever again." Curtiss sits right down in the abyss and dwells with the loss, the space where "not wanting a new emergency, / but also, not wanting another old emergency to return," we are forced to live with the aching present and the people who continue to exist within it. Probing earnestly at familial and human connection through the smudged and banged-up lens of loss and loss's aftermath, these poems rebuild the schemas that erode under the weight of untimely death. Through a taxonomy which risks both beauty and longing in the face of irrevocable loss, Curtiss's poems seek to reorient the world after its nature is revealed to be arbitrary and its motives unknowable. —From Small Press Distribution
Art & Understanding: The Anthology edited by Chael Needle and Dianne Goettel
Black Lawrence Press
288 pages – Black Lawrence /Amazon
Art & Understanding: The Anthology includes work from emerging, celebrated, and forgotten writers who have contributed work to A & U Magazine over the past twenty years. In fact, the occasion for the anthology's publication is the celebration of the magazine's twentieth anniversary of publishing thoughtful and artistic responses to AIDS. —From the Black Lawrence Press website
Empty Pockets: New and Selected Stories by Dale Herd
Coffee House Press
228 pages – Coffee House /Amazon
From high school love notes to a drug runner's day; from a motel room abortion to a cross-country breakup, Dale Herd's stories travel the backroads of America to present us with postcard revelations of life as it is lived. —From the Coffee House website
Jillian by Halle Butler
Curbside Splendor
240 pages – Curbside Splendor /Amazon
Megan, recently out of college and working a meaningless job as a gastroenterologist's secretary, openly hates all of her friends for being happy and successful. She makes herself feel better by obsessively critiquing the behavior of her coworker, Jillian, a rapid cycling, grotesque optimist, whose downfall is precipitated by the purchase of a dog. —From the Curbside Splendor website
Exercises in Criticism: The Theory and Practice of Literary Constraint by Louis Bury
Dalkey Archive Press
290 pages – Dalkey Archive /Amazon
Exercises in Criticism is an experiment in applied poetics in which critic and poet Louis Bury utilizes constraint-based methods in order to write about constraint-based literature. By tracing the lineage and enduring influence of early Oulipian classics, he argues that contemporary American writers have, in their adoption of constraint-based methods, transformed such methods from apolitical literary laboratory exercises into a form of cultural critique, whose usage is surprisingly widespread, particularly among poets and "experimental" novelists. More, Bury's own use of critical constraints functions as a commentary on how and why we write and talk about books, culture, and ideas. —From the Dalkey Archive website
Fancy by Jeremy M. Davies
248 pages – Ellipsis Press /Amazon
An elderly shut-in delivers a series of pet-sitting instructions to a young couple who've come to watch over his many, many cats. A story (or series of stories) about the ways that methodical, abstract systems interface with messy, personal obsessions, Fancy is a kissing cousin to the work of both the late Henry James and the early Thomas Bernhard: an object lesson in how our need to make sense of the world winds up devouring it whole. —From the Ellipsis Press website
Discomfort by Evelyn Hampton
"[A] beautifully constructed collection of stories—slim, spare, and mysterious… a subtly assured voice … The overall feeling is one of microscopy—as if Hampton has us looking so close, has us rooted so deeply into the grit of her characters' experiences, that the edges and the context get lost … The stories feel real, feel like they get at some essential, mundane ill-ease, even if we could not say precisely how their odd, looping logic reflects our experience, except in so far as we all live within the closed loops of our bodies and minds." —Heavy Feather Review
On Immunity by Eula Biss
Graywolf Press (US) / Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK)
216pages – Graywolf / Fitzcarraldo /Amazon
On becoming a new mother, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear—fear of the government, the medical establishment, what is in your child's air, food, mattress, medicine, and vaccines. She finds that you cannot immunize your child, or yourself, from the world.
In this bold, fascinating book, Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding our conception of immunity and its implications for the individual and the social body. As she hears more and more fears about vaccines, Biss researches what they mean for her own child, her immediate community, America and the world, historically and in the present moment. She extends a conversation with other mothers to meditations on Voltaire's Candide, Bram Stoker'sDracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond.On Immunity is a moving account of how we are all interconnected—our bodies and our fates. —From the Graywolf website
Letter to a Future Lover: Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries by Ander Monson
Graywolf Press
176 pages – Graywolf /Amazon
Readers of physical books leave traces: marginalia, slips of paper, fingerprints, highlighting, inscriptions. All books have histories, and libraries are not just collections of books and databases, but a medium of long-distance communication with other writers and readers.
Letter to a Future Lover collects several dozen brief pieces written in response to library ephemera—with "library" defined broadly, ranging from university institutions to friends' shelves, from a seed library to a KGB prison library—and addressed to readers past, present, and future.
Through these witty, idiosyncratic essays, Ander Monson reflects on the human need to catalog, preserve, and annotate; the private and public pleasures of reading; the nature of libraries; and how the self can be formed through reading and writing. —From the Graywolf website
The Infernal: A Novel by Mark Doten
440 pages – Graywolf Press /Amazon
In the early years of the Iraq war, a severely burned boy appears on a remote rock formation in the Akkad valley. A shadowy, powerful group within the US government speculates: Who is he? Where did he come from? And, crucially, what does he know? In pursuit of that information, an interrogator is summoned from his prison cell, and a hideous and forgotten apparatus of torture, which extracts "perfect confessions," is retrieved from the vaults. Over the course of four days, a cavalcade of voices rises up from the Akkad boy, each one striving to tell his or her own story. Some of these voices are familiar: Osama Bin Laden, L. Paul Bremer, Condoleezza Rice, Mark Zuckerberg. Others are less so. But each one has a role in the world shaped by the war on terror. Each wants to tell us: this is the world as it exists in our innermost selves. This is what has been and what might be. This is The Infernal. —From the Graywolf website
The Bicycle Year by Caroline Cabrera
H_NGM_N Books
104 pages – H_NGM_N /Amazon
"What I love about Caroline's "The Bicycle Year" is how it seems casual and breezy, carefree with summer blues and glorious light, while being so frighteningly obsessive in its desire to get it right, to get it down, to say something definitive and lasting about the ephemeral nature of time and our existence in it." —Nate Pritts
Bipolar Cowboy by Noah Cicero
Lazy Fascist Press
124 pages – Amazon
Bipolar Cowboy is "a book of love poems for all those who loved so deeply it crossed into mental illness." If you've ever loved so much you lost your mind, if you've ever felt inclined to wander into the desert to die alone, then take the bipolar cowboy's hand. He's ready to see you through to the end. —From the Lazy Fascist website
Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson
"A nightmarish yet hilarious journey that begins in the ugly world of toxic mortgages and progresses to the slightly uglier world of brain-eating monsters lurking in dark alleys. You're in for an entirely unpredictable ride, the tale spinning ludicrously out of control as the hero uncovers layer after grotesque layer of a vast macabre conspiracy.Skullcrack City is original, utterly insane, and a shitload of fun." —David Wong, author of John Dies at the End
Lazy Fascist Double #1: Messes of Men/Lemon Heart by Michael J. Seidlinger and Matthew Revert
What if your mother was a wedge of lemon? Would you still be a mess? The first Lazy Fascist double features two original works, Messes of Men by Michael J Seidlinger and Lemon Heart by Matthew Revert. —From the Lazy Fascist website
The Scapegoat by Sophia Nokolaidou
Melville House
320 pages – Melville House /Amazon
In 1948, the body of an American journalist is found floating in the bay off Thessaloniki. A Greek journalist is tried and convicted for the murder . . . but when he's released twelve years later, he claims his confession was the result of torture.
Flash forward to modern day Greece, where a young, disaffected high school student is given an assignment for a school project: find the truth. —From the Melville House website
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber
Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And just how much are our lives being ruined by all this nonstop documentation?
To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice. Is the inane, annoying paperwork we confront every day really a cipher for state violence? And is the capitalist promise of salvation-through-technology just a tool for the powerful to exert more control? Graeber provides a forceful, radical answer to these questions, though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy. —From the Melville House website
Crow-Work by Eric Pankey
Milkweed Editions
88 pages – Milkweed /Amazon
"What is a song but a snare to capture the moment?" Eric Pankey asks in his new collection, Crow-Work. This central question drives Pankey's ekphrastic exploration of the moment where emotion and energy flood a work of art. Through subjects as diverse as Brueghel'sProcession to Calvary, Anish Kapoor's Healing of Saint Thomas, Caravaggio's series of severed heads, and James Turrell's experimentation with light and color, the author travels to an impossible past, despite being firmly rooted in the present, to seek out the songbird in every thorn thicket. Short bursts of lyrical beauty burn away "like coils of incense ash." Bodies in the light of a cave flicker, coalesce, and disappear. By capturing the ephemeral beauty of life in these poems, Crow-Workseeks not only to explain great art, but to embody it. —From the Milkweed website
Adventures in Immediate Reality by Max Blecher
128 pages – New Directions /Amazon
Adventures in Immediate Irreality, the masterwork of the Romanian writer Max Blecher, vividly paints the crises of "irreality" that plagued him in his youth: eerie unsettling mirages wherein he would glimpse future events. In gliding chapters that move with a peculiar dream logic of their own, this memoiristic novel sketches the tremulous, frightening, and exhilarating awakenings of a very young man. —From the New Directions website
Love Hotel by Jane Unrue
Working on behalf of a cunning and mysterious couple, a woman embarks on a haunting search for a stranger (a child? somebody's lover? a ghost?), undertaking a perplexing, dangerous, and apparently timeless journey that originates on a secluded country estate and leads deep into the center of the city. Love Hotel explores a heartbreaking and nightmarish world of unrelenting excess, impossible convergences, undeniable urges, and inexorable loss. Jane Unrue's writing, beautifully cunning and mysterious, twists and turns and lures the reader on with an erotic magnetism of its own. —From the New Directions website
Her 37th Year, An Index by Suzanne Scanlon
Noemi Press
Her 37th Year, An Index is the story of a year in one woman's life. Structured as an index, the work is a collage of excerpted conversations, letters, quotations, moments, and dreams. An exploration of longing and desire, the story follows a moment of crisis in a marriage and in the life of a woman who remains haunted by an unassimilable past. Allan Gurganus called an early version of the work a "thoroughly engrossing almanac of desire" when it was published by The Iowa Review. —From the Noemi Press website
The Refusal of Suitors by Ryo Yamaguchi
The Refusal of Suitors draws on Penelope and her loom to engage the landscapes, wants, forms, and ultimately the repetitions and variations of contemporary urban life. Through varying styles, voices, and layouts, these poems move collectively with a sonic force, the "pure acoustics of declaratives," through "a night that begins / with our falling asleep, the wet paragraph that he aspirates," with a visionary amalgam of phenomenon and symbol. From long-lined, romantic odes to tight, pictorial meditations akin to classical Asian poetry—from the jocular to the reposed to the amorous to the despondent—these are poems that are never satisfied, that relish the "sweet chorea of the longest day." —From the Noemi Press website
The Railway by Hamid Ismailov
Restless Books
Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town's alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colorful lives offer a unique and comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tatars, and Gypsies.
At the heart of both the town and the novel stands the railway station—a source of income and influence, and a connection to the greater world beyond the town. Rich and picaresque, The Railway is full of color. Sophisticated yet with a naive delight in storytelling, it chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century. —From the Restless Books website
The Do-Over by Kathleen Ossip
96 pages – Sarabande /Amazon
"How do you stay in heaven?" Ossip asks, "Is it a kind of sophisticated rewind?" Her third collection of poems is haunted by the idea of 'rewind,' and especially by the teasing possibility that we, too—like the moon, like a plant—may be granted cycles of life, death, and rebirth. The book's overarching narrative is the death of the poet's stepmother-in-law, a cherished, loving, eccentric woman who returns to its pages again and again. But in spite of its focused grief and ontological urgency, The Do-Over is a varied collection—short acrostics mourn recently dead cultural icons (Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Donna Summer); there's an ode to an anonymous Chinese factory worker, three "true stories" that read like anecdotes told over drinks, andmore. The Do-Over is an unsentimental elegy to a mother figure, a fragmented portrait of its difficult, much loved subject. It's also a snapshot of our death-obsessed, death-denying cultural moment, which in Ossip's gifted hands turns out to be tremulous, skeptical, unsure of ultimate values and, increasingly, driven to find them. "I am still studying, aren't you?" she begins. Readers will eagerly embrace the surprise, humor, and seriousness of her quest. —From the Sarabande website
Father Brother Keeper by Nathan Poole
144 pages – Sarabande /Amazon
Stories set in rural Georgia investigate small moments that illuminate life-altering struggles: A man slipping into dementia is abandoned at a diner with his granddaughters; a boy descendent of farmers discovers his love of carving wooden birds but buries his creations in shame; bait dogs are left to die, chained in the woods, when they grow too old to fight. —From the Sarabande website
major characters in minor films by Kristy Bowen
140 pages – Sundress
"In Kristy Bowen's major characters in minor films, language moves like a camera, cutting from image to image, leaving impressions that form intriguing fragmented narratives of love, intrigue, mystery and damage. Populated with both the familiar and the strange, with rabbits and birds as well as whiskey and fire, the journey through the scenes these poems create is a wild and rich ride." —Donna Vorreyer, author of A House of Many Windows
The Boatmaker by John Benditt
Tin House Books
400 pages – Tin House /Amazon
A fierce and complicated man wakes from a fever dream compelled to build a boat and sail away from the isolated island where he was born. Encountering the wider world for the first time, the reluctant hero falls into a destructive love affair, is swept up into a fanatical religious movement, and finds himself a witness to racial hatred unlike anything he's ever known. The boatmaker is tempted, beaten, and betrayed: his journey marked by chilling episodes of violence and horror while he struggles to summon the strength to make his own way. The Boatmaker is a fable for our times, a passionate love story, and an odyssey of self-discovery. —From the Tin House website
Pelican by Emily O'Neill
YesYes Books
112 pages – YesYes
Emily O'Neill was born on the bedroom floor in her mother's childhood home and has been making loud messes ever since. She is a writer, artist, and proud Jersey girl, but owes her poetry education to Cambridge's Cantab Lounge, home of the the Boston Poetry Slam. Her first collection, Pelican, won the Pamet River Prize from YesYes Books and her work has been featured inThe Best Indie Lit New England, Sugar House Review, and Whiskey Island. Her poem "de Los Muertos" was selected by Jericho Brown as the winner of Gigantic Sequins' second annual poetry contest. She has a degree in the synaesthesia of storytelling from Hampshire College and lives in Medford, MA. —Emily O'Neill author bio
February in Books: Small Press New Releases from the Shortest Month was last modified: January 15th, 2018 by Entropy
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