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Tag: bungee
Days 670-675: I'm on Bali
01.11.10-06.11.10:
Many moons ago, when I was a wee nipper running around the playground in shorts annoying the hell out of people (not much has changed, the playground has just got bigger…) we used to have a game of 'tick' that involved giving people THE MANGE. The rules were simple: you ticked somebody, thus giving them THE MANGE, and then they had to tick someone else to get rid of it. You see, marvellously enough, like something out of an episode of The Outer Limits, the 'mange' only infected one person at a time, so by giving your best friend THE MANGE, you were miraculously cured from it.
I think it's the way most African leaders believe HIV works.
This game is nothing new, in America they call it Cooties, and, according to Wikipedia:
For ages 5 onwards, Cooties are known in Denmark as "fnat," or "pigelus" (literally "girl lice") and "drengelus" ("boy lice"), and in Norway "jentelus" ("girl lice") and "guttelus" ("boy lice"). In Sweden and Finland it usually refers to girls, where they are known as tjejbaciller" (literally "girl bacillus") and "tyttöbakteeri" ("girl bacteria") respectively.
Anyway, there was one way to insure yourself against THE MANGE in my Liverpool school folklore; and that was by crossing your fingers and declaring yourself to be "on Barley". I was never made clear weather this meant you had stacked up an invisible mound of barley and were standing on it, or did it mean you were metaphorically on an island immune from THE MANGE that happened to be called Barley?
Well, whatever it meant, I was now ON BALI, so there's absolutely no chance of me catching THE MANGE. However, with all these mangy dogs running about the island, there was a good chance of catching Rabies, which I hear you can't get rid of by ticking the person next to you and hoping they haven't got their fingers crossed.
A short coach journey later I was in Denpasar, the capital city of Bali. Then it was a short taxi trip to the town Sanur and the Watering Hole hotel to meet the delectable Anna, my good friend from Liverpool who runs the biggest pole and aerial dance studio in the north west (and possibly the UK – I'll have to check on that). She's been in Indonesia for a week now, pottering about in Java and Borneo, but now our plans converge on the little Hindu island of Bali – an island whose reputation precedes her.
Anna and The Ging
After a marvellously tasty breakle-fast, we headed over to Seminyak, just up the coast from Kuta beach. Anna checked into a backpackers hotel there, but I had somewhere else to stay – at a friend of my mum's friend's gaff. His name was Neil – a hilarious and good-natured ex-pat hailing from Port Glasgow. With several years working on and with superyachts under his belt, he would be my unofficial CouchSurf host for the next week or so.
You see, I was planning to leave on Friday (November the 5th) on the monthly Pelni ferry to Kupang in West Timor (East Timor being the 183rd nation of The Odyssey Expedition). But my laptop (Sony Jim) had other ideas. Yes, it was a few months ago when I cracked the screen, but the creeping darkness spreading itself like Venom over my liquid crystal display wasn't too much of a mare until I got to Bali. Something about the climate, maybe, but the percentage of viewable screen reduced itself from (let's say) 85% to less than 10% overnight. This meant I had to get it fixed asap. But first I had 25 hours worth of footage from Shanghai to Bali to upload onto the damn thing. Lucky that Neil had a spare stand-alone screen for me to abuse.
Thanks to a combination of lousy batteries and lousier advice from the fix-it people, it would be Thursday before I took the laptop to get fixed. They told me that they would order the part and that I should come back the next day with the laptop. I told them I was getting the ferry to Kupang tomorrow and it needed to be done today. But it was no way – I could either press on and hope to get my laptop fixed for a reasonable price in East Timor or Papua New Guinea (good luck with that!) or I could miss the boat (literally) and get it done here. No fear, I thought – with a bit of luck I could island hop down to Timor the conventional way using local ferries and it may only cost me a week.
It may.
Then again, what might happen is… oh, I'll get to that later…
Anyway, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum; that afternoon, Anna and I went for a amble along Kuta beach and after beating off the advances of hundreds of old massage and bead-hawking women, eventually found ourselves enjoying a drink at the little bar at the base of the AJ Hackett Bungy (yes, that's how they spell it) jump platform at the northern end of the beach.
Sunset on Bali Beach
Now the day before, Neil had been at a comedy night, and there he had got chatting with Paul, a young scouse guy who had been living in Bali for a few years now. Neil told him that he had the mad ging off that Nat Geo telly show staying with him, and Paul asked if we could meet up after work tomorrow.
So I called this Paul fella and told him we were at the AJ Hackett Bungy jump place and we waited for him to show up, which he duly did (eventually!), but while we were waiting I explained to the nice girl behind the bar that there really should be a dedicated AJ Hackett bungy jump place in the UK – specifically in Liverpool. Anyone with half a brain could scan the scouse skyline and hazard a guess where I've got in mind. She then dropped a piece of information that may (you never know!) make this pipe-dream a reality – Mr. AJ Hackett himself was here, in Bali, on a surfing holiday.
Could I meet up with him?
The girl humoured me, but I took it as a no. When this Paul chap arrived I told him the mad plan – and as if the planets aligned at that very moment, he explained that his mate Justin – who we were going out for drinkies with later – used to be the manager of the Double-Six club, part of the AJ Hackett Bungy complex.
Mr. Burns; Fingers tapping together; Ex-cellent…
Later that night, we met up with Justin. A real top bloke, he knew AJ personally and would have no problem arranging a meeting. Better still, he had a spare complimentary bungy jump (worth $100!!) that was up for grabs to anyone nutty enough to go for it.
I know someone!
That night descended (like pretty much every night I spent in Bali) into chaos, with Anna doing an incredible routine on the nightclub poles (the official dancers just had to wait their turn) and much utter jibber-jabberish being bandied about back and forth. It was lucky that Anna was with me, because otherwise I would have never found my way home.
On the Friday, it was Anna's last day, so I asked Neil's driver Madi to drop my laptop off at the fix-it place – I really didn't want to have to waste half of my last day with Anna doing it myself (the congestion in Bali is epic). I thought that the screen would be sorted for the next day, I could do the bungee and meet AJ on Sunday and leave this burg next Monday.
Ha! That didn't happen.
It was with a heavy heart that I said my fond farewells to Anna, but I was happy that over the last few months I've seen Hugh, Chris, Debbie, Stan, Helen, Thro and now Anna along the way: I just wish Mand had been able to meet me at some point too, but the fates… aye, the fates…
On the Saturday I fought through the traffic to the fix-it place, only for them to tell me that they couldn't fix the laptop, so Neil's driver Madi had kept hold of it. Would have been nice for him to tell us, nicer still if he had let us know that this weekend was some kind of Balinese festival which meant he would be unreachable until Monday. No laptop, no ferry, no escape, no fat cigar. What a frickin' nightmare.
But this was only the start of my trauma. That night, I went out on the lash with Neil and we met with an Aussie called Ian who I (foolishly) tried to impress with my card tricks with the old Bicycle Deck. Turns out he's a professional card magician and he saw right through my amateurish fumbles, but did give me one or two pointers as to how to up my game. By the witching hour, Neil was knackered and elected to return home. I stayed out with Ian and we headed into Kuta looking for Bintang and hilarity.
At around godknow o'clock I set off back to Neil's gaff on the back of one of Bali's ubiquitous motorbikes.
Only my hat didn't.
My. Hat. Didn't.
We went back, I searched and I search, but to no avail: Hat 5 was gone. Gone to join his brothers in the great milliners in the sky.
Hat 1: Lost at The V Festival in August 2003 after Ana Matronic from The Scissor Sisters got me so drunk that I passed out during The Pixies set.
Hat 2: Lost in February 2006 during the Half Moon Party in the jungle of Ko Pha Ngan thanks to Stan and copious amounts of beer and buckets of joy.
Hat 3: Disappeared in time and space some time between 2007 and 2008. May well have been destroyed by Mandy in a fit of peak (she no love Mr. Hat).
Hat 4: Retired in Feb 2010 after having shrunk in the wash. Kudos for having survived 142 countries on my bonze.
Hat 5: Lost in Bali, Nov 2010, after night out on the lash.
Without my hat I feel like half a man, the sun will bake my face and my ears will glow red like the Ready-Brek man. People won't recognise me, I won't be able to cover my bad hair days (which is pretty much every day – I'm a GING for Christ's sake) I will have to dig out my sunglasses even though I think they make me look like a proper weirdo, I will have to invest in some sunscreen even though I HATE sunscreen with a passion. I will have nothing to use as a pillow against the window of the bus, nothing to cover my face when I sleep under the glare of the tropical sun, nothing to keep my hair dry when it rains and nothing to use as a fan on a dog day afternoon.
The Last Photo of Me Wearing Hat 5 ;-(
Without my hat, the expedition will go on, but with a heavy heart. I've lost my daemon. Hat 5, from country 143 (Libya) to country 182 (Indonesia): you may be gone, but you'll never be forgotten.
But let's look on the Mr. Brightside: the girls in the Champagne Bar here dress like THIS:
WOO WOO WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Author GrahamPosted on 20/11/2010 25/05/2011 Categories Indonesia, The Odyssey ExpeditionTags adventure, ajhackett, backpacking, Bali, barley, blogsherpa, bungee, bungy, every country, everycountry, expedition, fortune and glory, Graham, graham hughes, graham's world, hughes, Indonesia, Lonely Planet, nat geo adventure, national geographic, odyssey, overland, television, the mange, the odyssey, travel, WorldLeave a comment on Days 670-675: I'm on Bali
Days 676-677: BUNGEEEEEEEEE!!
On Sunday I met up with Justin for my bungee jump at AJ's, but sadly, no AJ. He was there earlier, but not now. However, we did get him on the phone and he agreed to let me break ALL THE RULES and do a jump with my camera, much to the astonishment of the bungy staff. Hee hee – it's not WHAT you know…
First Justin's girlfriend Natalie gaffered my camera to my hand…
Okay then, Parcel Tape...
(If you look in the background of this shot, you'll see a bungy menu that includes one called 'THE FIRE BALL'. Yes – they set you on fire before you jump. Seriously. 'MOTO MADNESS' has you going over on a motorbike. I kid you not.)
And then I jumped…
BUNGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Here's the video of it:
As I had my camcorder attached to my hand and my glasses attached to my head with tape, I look doubly ridiculous. This was so I could film a line for the trailer for the second series of the TV show – yes, I still have to convince the Vogons at Nat Geo that it'll be a good idea to commission another series. YGADS! Anyone want to commission a TV show for a fiver?
Funnily enough, you can quite clearly hear me swear that I would 'never' do a bungee jump again after this jump in New Zealand back in 2002…
…so you can gauge my commitment to the cause of Series 2, even if most of you Brits and Yanks haven't seen Series 1 yet (hold on, it's coming!).
Taking of Series 1, that night Justin and I headed around to scouse Paul's gaff for some beers and telly – specifically, my TV show which was being screened here in Indonesia. Narcissistic, I know, but I've only seen half of the episodes, and I was hoping it was one I hadn't seen before (it wasn't, it was the first episode, bah!).
Look Mum, I'm on the Telly!!
After that Paul (who, obviously from being out of The Pool for too long, is a red) wanted to watch Chelsea kick Liverpool's arse. Strangely enough, Liverpool won 2-0, but then stranger things have happened – I mean, Stephen Hawking has had, what, three wives?
It was a good night, and the next morning I was up bright and breezy to claim my computer back off Madi and head off on my errands. First up, I headed over to AJ's to meet with Justin and a guy from the UK called Simon who Justin reckoned was 'the guy' to fix my laptop. Simon took down the serial number and said he'd give me a call tomorrow.
Justin and I grabbed some breakfast with a Scottish guy called Dennis who was pretty hilarious and (like me) a huge fan of the Viz. I thought it might be an idea to introduce him the OH SO WRONG joys of K— and the Gang. Woo haha. Ha. Then we headed back to the Bungy place: AJ was going back to France this afternoon, this would be my last chance to bend his ear…
Thankfully, the man himself appeared soon afterwards and I got to sit down and have a good chat with him. AJ Hackett is one of the guys who put bungee jumping into the global subconscious – mostly by his audacious (and illegal) jump off the Eiffel Tower back in the eighties. After over three million jumps (and no fatalities – yet!) his bungee platforms have spread out from his home of New Zealand to Australia, Malaysia, Germany, France, Las Vegas and beyond. His jump in Macau, China is the highest fixed commercial bungee in the world according to Guinness Book of Records.
AJ HACKETT: This man has terrified more people than Attila The Hun.
Having done hundreds of jumps himself, he's only had one close call, and that was when he plummeted off a helicopter at the wrong height for his length of cord: he smashed into the sea way, way too fast and did himself a proper mischief: breaking a bunch of bones and leaving him with some pretty nifty scars.
Oh, and 'bungy' is the Kiwi spelling, apparently – don't blame me!!
I snagged myself a great interview for the TV show and afterwards, I put forward my proposition: a 400ft AJ Hackett bungy jump in Liverpool – with my Anna as His Girl Friday to run the show. AJ's eyes lit up on seeing where I had in mind. He had been looking for a suitable site in the UK for years, but never found anywhere…
So yes, my funky little city, if bungee comes to Liverpool, you know who to thank 😉
I said my thanks and my farewells and headed off to the nearby Benoa port and marina to scope out another way of getting to Timor – nah – all the ferries leave from Padangbai a good few hours up the coast of Bali, and you have to island-hop your way there: via Lombok, Sumbawa and Flores. Well, at least I'd get to see a bit more of jolly old Indonesia AND WHATEVER COULD BE WRONG WITH THAT?
In fact, Indonesia has really really grown on me during this trip. I have to confess, when I was here a few years ago, I didn't really warm to the place. I was on my own (as per usual) Bali just rained every day and compared with Thailand the beaches are blurgh (I'm not a surfer I guess), Java was dull and overcast, the memories I have of Sumatra involved copious amounts of mud and rather large and scary spiders and the LOCAL FOOD here is so damn awful it makes me *SHUDDER* just to think about it.
Brrrrrrrrr…….
This time, with friends old and new, good cheer, hilarious escapades and copious amounts of alcoholic lubrication, I have had an utter utter blast: and I'm only a week into this little layover. However, the local food is still so lousy it makes me cry – if you like luke warm steamed rice and cold fish heads (no, seriously) then Indonesia will be your culinary delight. Then again, if you honestly like luke warm steamed rice and cold fish heads you're a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. I think the food here is what goes on in the head of a rabid Anglophobe French food critic when he lies back and thinks of England.
Other countries where the local food is AWFUL include:
All of the Caribbean except Jamaica
Most of Africa
The vast majority of The Middle East (with the notable exceptions of Lebanon and Turkey).
Wales.
But naff nosh aside, all I can say is this: don't think for a SECOND that I'm not having the time of my life doing this adventure. Yes, there are lows: not seeing Mandy for a year, being chucked in jail in The Congo for no good reason, losing my hat, the depressing lack of w00t from the TV show, the crazy bus drivers, the deadly air-conditioning etc. but compared with the highs, the fun, the excitement, the randomness, the sheer joy of having a clear and defined mission to do and a blast to be had, I really cannot complain: ordinary life just doesn't compare.
Justin picked me up from the port and together with his girlfriend Natalie (she who sellotaped my glasses to my head yesterday), we headed out to find THE LOST CROCODILES OF BALI!!
What what? Yes, any naturalists amongst you will swear that there are no native crocs on Bali, and you'd be right. But these snappers aren't locals. In the 1990s a Balinese theme park was opened – a mini Alton Towers – with Balinese sculptures, a music hall, an artificial volcano(!) and a rollercoaster or two. Unfortunately, ten years ago the owner went bankrupt (or done a runner) and the bank left the theme park to go to rack and ruin. It has since been slowly – and magnificently – taken back by the jungle: a lost city which will hopefully bamboozle and confound future archaeologists… they made their sculptures out of concrete?
Ruins, sir, ruins...
But there was the question of what to do with the crocodiles that had been shipped in and put in a crocodile pit for the thrill and amusement of the discerning public (knowing the Balinese, a daily live goat feeding show wouldn't be out of the question). Well, this being Indonesia, the answer was simple: they just left them there to die.
But die they did not; fed for years by kindly locals throwing roadkill into the pit (and turning to cannibalism when the locals forgot about them), we felt it was high time to give these poor reptilian castaways a break. So we bought them some KFC.
Now in pretty much every country in the world (apart from the UK) you can choose between two types of KFC coating: original and spicy. I'm quite partial to original myself, but I was quite interested in seeing what these starving crocs preferred. So with a bucket of the Colonel's finest (and some local cooked chicken as a control) Justin, Natalie and I joined forces to conduct an essencial scientific experiment – original or spicy – what will the crocs prefer?
Kentucky Fried Crocs...
Sadly, our expedition came to nowt. The crocs had been saved and taken to the zoo a few months ago (presumably as a result of the same magazine article that peaked our interest) and so I was left with a croc-less pit, a bucketful of fried chicken and egg all over my face. Well, at least the chicken didn't go to waste 😉
Author GrahamPosted on 20/11/2010 25/05/2011 Categories Indonesia, The Odyssey ExpeditionTags adventure, ajhackett, backpacking, Bali, blogsherpa, bungee, bungy, crocs, every country, everycountry, expedition, fortune and glory, Graham, graham hughes, graham's world, hat, hughes, Indonesia, jump, kuta, Lonely Planet, nat geo adventure, national geographic, odyssey, overland, television, the odyssey, travel, WorldLeave a comment on Days 676-677: BUNGEEEEEEEEE!!
Days 678-682: The Exquisite Clutches of Calypso
By Tuesday afternoon I still hadn't heard back from Simon about whether or not my laptop could be fixed in Bali. At this point I was kinda raring get on with the adventure (if things had gone to plan, I'd be in East Timor today), but there was something holding me back: I can't say really what it was, but it definitely had something to do with the sheer awesomeness of everyone I've met here in Bali.
For instance, the other day I met up with Neil in a place called KuDeTa, the swankiest bar on the island. I was just meeting Neil and then we were going on somewhere else – this place was way, way out of my price range (if it's not a pound a pint I can't help you). Just as Neil is finished off his bottle of Bintang, a lovely Japanese girl comes over to us, asks me if my name is Graham (which it is), explains that she's the DJ here and says she'd really like to buy me a drink.
"That would be amazing", I said, going bright red.
"Does this happen to you a lot?" asks Neil.
"Not really, but it seems to be happening a lot in Bali."
So what if my laptop wasn't fixed yet? I was having a great time. Although I have to say that Neil was a real trooper for putting up with me (and my mess) for so long. I hoped to remedy this by having a new screen fitted tomorrow so I could be out of here on Thursday.
But, as I said, I was in no great hurry. It looks like after my amazing 11 country romp through October, November would yield just one new nation, and that's if I was lucky. My visa authorisation for East Timor STILL hadn't come through. This was getting ridiculous. I had visions of me waiting like a noob on the border for two weeks while they got their shit together. Anytime before Christmas, lads, thanks…
Simon called me in the evening to say that there was no chance of getting the laptop repaired.
I'd have to buy a new one.
However, all new small laptops do not come with a firewire port and I don't have any other means of backing up my video tapes.
Fuggeration.
Well, if the blogs are to continue I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet. And so that's what I did. On the Wednesday I met up with Simon and we spent the ENTIRE DAY (seriously!) looking for a new laptop. It wasn't like there was a lot of choice, it was more to do with the eternal gridlock that typifies Denpasar, the capital of Bali. In the end I opted for a little HP which, at less than 180 quid new, was a better deal than getting my other laptop fixed would have been in China.
I haggled and haggled, but the price wouldn't go any lower. Done.
Simon the utterly ace chap that he is, took my new lappy to fix it up with the latest bits and bobs – he would return it tomorrow (Thursday). Fair enough – I'd leave for East Timor on Friday morning.
HOWEVER, my new Bali friends Paul and Justin had other ideas: tomorrow night there was a beach party at an exclusive resort – free booze and free food – and I was on the guest list. Hip-Hip Hooray! After missing out on the Ko Pha Ngan Full Moon party, I was well up for a piss-up on the sand, and so my departure date got pushed back to Saturday. Sorry, Neil!!
By the time I rucked up at the party, everyone was already utterly wasted: they had started drinking at 4pm and by now it was dark. I tried my best to play catch up, but I didn't stand a chance: before I could fully enjoy the ruinous effects of Bacchus' finest I was told that the free bar had come to an end. Bah!
Oh well, I nursed my last free bottle of Bintang on the beach watching the dark tide roll in. I chatted to a Russian girl who was there but I had to leave the conversation as I was suffering from a giggle fit brought on by just how amazingly miserable this Russian chick was. I don't remember her exact words, but they were something along the lines of,
"I hate this place… it's all beaches and sunsets and parties… I wish I was in Moscow."
Now we all get homesick, sure, but c'mon – this girl had just been tanked up for free in the swankiest resort in the whole of Indonesia. I guess what they say is true: there is no misery quite like Russian misery. That's probably why I found it so hard to keep a straight face. Sorry, whatever your name was, I guess I may have come across as a tad insensitive. Poor girl, having to go to parties all the time in a tropical paradise and drink free booze…
The resort, I have to say, was quite exquisite: like something out of the brochures of other people's holidays: luxury apartments overlooking a cliff, a funicular to take you down to an exclusive beach and an 'infinity pool' (a swimming pool which continuously pours a thin film of water over a ledge, creating the illusion that the pool has no wall on the far side) that catches the sunset each night like some kind of toothless yokel catching the moon in a bucket.
There was a large stylised 'K' drawn in the sand and lit with candles. It looked really cool from the top of the cliff. It looked even cooler after I rearranged the candles into a large comedy knob. I hope the honeymooning couples who had paid $1000 a night for a room overlooking the beach thought it was as funny as I did.
As I had caused enough trouble in paradise, Paul and I sped off back to Seminyak for a few more beers. However, considering how utterly plastered he and his mate were, it was a little like herding cats. We managed (just) to get something to eat from a burger kiosk and, well after that it all gets a little sketchy. I woke up in Neil's the next day: FRIDAY… DAY OF ACTION!!
By 6pm on the Friday, I had got a good 5% of the things done that I wanted to get done before I left. That was the point at which Neil asked if I fancied coming out for a swift half. When I returned at dawn the next day it registered that I wouldn't be leaving until Sunday. BUT ALL WAS NOT LOST! Last night I met a bloke called Tim who might be able to help me get to Palau next month from Sorong in West Papua. Yes yes there are some who may cock a snook at my partiality for socialising during this adventure, but a friendly chat over a cold frothy one has gained me (amongset other things) my passages to Cuba, my visa for Saudi and my escape from Dubai.
This journey is not about what you know, because unless you've already been there recently, 'what you know' is taken from the Lonely Planet or internet travel forums, and is, nine times out of ten, wrong. Maybe I should have had a scout to go on ahead and facilitate my course for me, then again, maybe I should have had two jeeps following me a la Ewan MacGregor and a helicopter on standby in case of emergencies.
But no folks, your hapless adventurer here has been flying solo without a support crew, safety harness or parachute (or landing gear for that matter) for the best part of two years now. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. But one thing is for sure: I'm going to wiggle out of the alluring siren-like clutches of Bali and GET ON WITH THE SHOW.
Keeping this in mind, I resolved to stay in on Saturday night, ensure that everything was ship-shape and Bristol fashion. Amazingly, I kept my promise to myself.
Neil had gone out to some kind of dinner party (I only get invited to chimp's tea parties) and left me in the house on my own. As I gathered my stuff together, a storm broke and the tropical rain began to cascade down in large spherical blobs. I changed into my swimming shorts and plunged into Neil's swimming pool. There are few things in life that are better than ending a hot sticky day by nightswimming and feeling the cool refreshing rain on your face whilst emulating Andy's victory pose from The Shawshank Redemption.
I have to get out of here. Calypso has me firmly in her clutches. I need to break free and continue my journey home to Ithaca. I leave in the morning NO MATTER WHAT.
Author GrahamPosted on 30/11/2010 25/05/2011 Categories Indonesia, The Odyssey ExpeditionTags ajhackett, backpacking, Bali, baliadventure, blogsherpa, bungee, bungy, crocs, every country, everycountry, expedition, fortune and glory, Graham, graham hughes, graham's world, hat, hughes, Indonesia, jump, kuta, Lonely Planet, nat geo adventure, national geographic, odyssey, overland, television, the odyssey, travel, WorldLeave a comment on Days 678-682: The Exquisite Clutches of Calypso
Day 683: The Long Goodbye
It was too early to fathom what was going on, but I seem to have found my way into a taxi and it seems to be heading to the bus station. These are good signs. I think I know where I have to go and I think that it takes three hours to get there. The guy is telling me I can buy a 'through ticket' which will include the ferry to the neighbouring island of Lombok as well. Okay, sure.
I woke up on the bus having dreamt that I had just been driven onto the ferry to Lombok. I looked around. I had been driven onto the ferry to Lombok. Excellent. It would seem I've been doing this kind of thing so long I can now do it in my sleep.
Goodbye Bali. Goodbye Neil, Paul, Justin, Simon and all the brilliant, brilliant people I've met over the last couple of weeks. I can see why people find it hard to leave Bali, I did.
Arriving in Lombok, I wanted to get taken to the other side of the island, popped on another ferry and taken to the island of Sumbawa. Luckily, that's what the bus driver also wanted to do and I was happy to let him. So another short ferry trip and I was in Maluk on the western tip of Sumbawa wanting to go east. There was a bus leaving in less than an hour that was going where I wanted it to go. This was like shooting fish in a barrel.
What's more, the helpful tout dude offered me a through ticket for the 'fast boat' to Labaunbajo, Flores – the place from where I can get another ferry to Indonesian West Timor (East Timor hopefully being country 183 of The Odyssey Expedition). I settled into my seat on the bus as it sped off into the night. Tomorrow I would be in THE LAND OF THE HOBBITS. No, really.
Author GrahamPosted on 30/11/2010 25/05/2011 Categories Indonesia, The Odyssey ExpeditionTags adventure, backpacking, Bali, blogsherpa, bungee, bungy, crocs, every country, everycountry, expedition, fortune and glory, Graham, graham hughes, graham's world, hat, hughes, Indonesia, jump, kuta, Lombok, Lonely Planet, nat geo adventure, national geographic, odyssey, overland, Sumbawa, television, the odyssey, travel, WorldLeave a comment on Day 683: The Long Goodbye
Day 684: The Slow Fast Boat
The bus drove through the night, arriving in the eastern port town of Sape at 8am, just in time for the ferry to Labuanbajo in Flores. The helpful tout dude from Maluk yesterday ripped me off good an' proper. I paid 150,000 Indonesian Rupiah for a ferry ticket that was worth 40,000. 150,000 is about US$17: enough for three nights accommodation in a Indonesian flea pit hotel. I may have to return to Maluk and kill him.
He also lied about the speed of the boat: this was NO 'fast boat', it was slower than a West African internet connection and didn't get me to Labuanbajo until it was almost dark. This a merry man did me not make. I checked into the cheapest joint in town and headed out to find out the times of the ferries leaving Flores for Kupang in West Timor. Easier said than done. According to the Lonely Planet there was a boat leaving Larantuka on Wednesday which sounded good, but nobody could give me confirmation and Larantuka is one the far, far east of the long skinny island of Flores – two days drive from here. It was doubtful I could make it in time without spending a ridiculous amount ($200!!) on a taxi. Like in Splash.
Arse.
Unfortunately for me there was no confirmation, timetable, inkling nor educated guess on offer with regards to if, when and where the next ferry to Timor would be leaving FROM ANYWHERE ON THE ISLAND. I would have to visit the port first thing in the morning and see if they could help me.
I settled in for the night in a great little bar called The Lounge which (if I had arrived earlier) would have been a great place to watch the sun set.
Author GrahamPosted on 30/11/2010 25/05/2011 Categories Indonesia, The Odyssey ExpeditionTags adventure, backpacking, Bali, blogsherpa, bungee, bungy, crocs, every country, everycountry, expedition, Flores, fortune and glory, Graham, graham hughes, graham's world, hat, how do you get to every country in the world without flying?, hughes, Indonesia, jump, kuta, Labuanbajo, Lonely Planet, nat geo adventure, national geographic, odyssey, overland, Sumbawa, television, the odyssey, travelLeave a comment on Day 684: The Slow Fast Boat
Day 685: A Bunch of Flores
The next boat that would sensibly get me to the island of Timor is leaving the southern port town of Aimere on Friday morning. It'll take me all of Thursday to get there, but hey-ho LET'S GO. I also found out that the Wednesday ferry from Larantuka may well be a myth. I had found this all out by about 8am after a bunch of phone calls and frantic arm-waving.
My work here done, I went to the Lounge Bar for breakfast and ended up staying there all day, abusing the Wi-Fi, updating my website, researching the South Pacific and working on this damn promo video for series 2 of 'Graham's World'. With over 100 hours of video to sift through, we could be here for some time… I kind of wish that the first season was good enough to sell the second one, I think that the problem is that this year things have gone spectacularly wrong, but not in a particularly sensational way – ie. me getting chucked in a jail cell in Africa. You'll notice (if you've seen the show), my utterly successful jaunt around Europe (45 countries in three weeks) was reduced to a one-minute montage.
You see, since Michael Palin shat his pants on the dhow to India, it's all been about the hardship hasn't it? You sick little puppies.
Anyway, if you live in the UK you could really help my cause by writing to the Head of Program Acquisition at the BBC (try [email protected] ) and asking her when "Graham's World aka Lonely Planet's The Odyssey" will be shown on British TV – the imdb link is http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1669770/. Say you saw an episode on holiday in the Middle East, India, SE Asia or South America on Nat Geo Adventure. And don't the BBC own Lonely Planet anyway? Yeah, say that too.
Okay, stop nodding and GO DO IT.
Go on.
C'mon, I'm not going to write anything more until you do it.
I'm serious.
Now yesterday (all my troubles seemed so far away) on the way to Flores from the island of Sumbawa I passed two islands: Rinca and Komodo. And you know what's on Komodo don't you? DRAGONS! Komodo Dragons, to be precise – the world's largest monitor lizard (and the world's largest venomous creature). I booked myself on a trip to go and see 'em tomorrow.
Author GrahamPosted on 30/11/2010 25/05/2011 Categories Indonesia, The Odyssey ExpeditionTags adventure, backpacking, Bali, blogsherpa, bungee, bungy, crocs, every country, everycountry, expedition, Flores, fortune and glory, Graham, graham hughes, graham's world, hat, how do you get to every country in the world without flying?, hughes, Indonesia, jump, kuta, Lonely Planet, nat geo adventure, national geographic, odyssey, overland, television, the odyssey, travelLeave a comment on Day 685: A Bunch of Flores


text:
Plant a Tree for Barbara
Barbara Wrenn Shields
December 25, 1944 ~ September 20, 2020 (age 75)
Barb passed away peacefully at home on September 28, 2020 after a long and courageous battle with lung cancer with her husband and best friend of 51 years, Art Shields by her side. Barb was born December 25, 1944, in Waterbury, CT, the daughter of the late Raymond and Margaret Wrenn. She attended parochial schools there and graduated from Sacred Heart High School in June of 1962. Barb received her B.S. degree in 1966 from Trinity College in Burlington. After graduation, she worked as a medical technologist at DeGoesbriand Hospital prior to its merger with Fletcher Allen. Several years after the merger, she worked for the Vermont State Health Department working on infectious diseases.
At an early age, Barb was taught how to sew and her passion for sewing continued throughout her life. What started out as a hobby of making quilts and pillows for friends and relatives turned into a successful home business, Calico Expression, employing as many as four seamstresses. Barb and Art traveled throughout the US to many of the largest wholesale trade shows where she sold to retail stores, gift shops, museums, and television outlets. Among her many clients were, the Smithsonian Museum Gift Shop, the Shelburne Museum, Dollywood, and QVC. When the business grew to the point where she became more of a business manager than a quilt designer, she sold it and went back to sewing for pleasure. She was a talented artist with a great sense of color and design and won numerous ribbons at the Vermont Quilt Festival. Barb was a long-time member of Vermont Hand Crafters and the PFAFF Club of Middlebury.
Barb is survived by her husband Art; her brother in-law and wife, Hamilton and Sarah Shields of Beaconsfield, England; her niece, Elinor Shields and partner Adrian Brendel and their two sons Nico and Lukey of London, England; her niece Laura Shields and husband Peter Rowland and their son William of Brussels, Belgium; her cousin Ellen Eastwood and husband Richard Chursciel of Marlborough, CT; and her cousin Lewis Eastwood and wife Ellen of Wethersfield, CT.
The family would like to thank Dr. Farrah Kahn, her oncologist for her friendship, compassion, kindness and great sense of humor throughout Barb's treatment. They would also like to thank the many wonderful and caring nurses at the University of Vermont Medical Center's hematology and oncology laboratory for the love and warm and tender care they had for Barb and all their patients. They are a special and remarkable group of individuals. Lastly, they would like to thank the nurses and staff on Miller 5 for the wonderful care and compassion shown to Barb. And finally, they would like to thank nurse Brittany Mann from UVM's Home Health and Hospice for her wonderful and caring treatment she provided to Barb over many months of treatments.
Due to the COVID-19, Barb requested there be no service or celebration of her life at this time which could put the health of those in attendance at risk. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions in her memory can be made to the American Cancer Society, P.O. Box 397, Montpelier, VT 05601-0937; the American Heart Association, 110 Main Street, Suite 203, Burlington, VT 05401, and the Humane Society of Chittenden County, 142 Kindness Court, So. Burlington, VT 05403.
To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Barbara Wrenn Shields, please visit our floral store.
You can still show your support by sending flowers directly to the family, or by planting a memorial tree in the memory of Barbara Wrenn Shields

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Mystics
There are several steps necessary for a franchise or organization to take to win a league title. The Washington Mystics were no different when they 'Ran it Back' to their first WNBA Championship in 2019.
Many of those steps and priceless memories were documented in the Mystics' documentary Run it Back: Journey to a Championship. A name that rings home with Washington's 2019 team slogan when they took a 2018 WNBA Finals loss and used their momentum to win it all in 2019.
The documentary was released by Monumental Sports and Entertainment with exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage of key moments in the franchise's history. It's an ideal way to encapsulate all the storylines surrounding the 2019 season and highlight decisions made years prior that led to the team winning their first championship.
Moments include inside the board room during head coach Mike Thibault's first draft in Washington to inside the locker room once the team popped the champagne.
Run it Back: Journey to a Championship can be watched in its entirety on Monumental Sports Network's Facebook Page.
1. Mike Thibault's first draft in Washington got the ball rolling
While at the time it may have not been significant, Thibault's first draft as head coach of the Mystics got him one of the biggest pieces of the 2019 championship team.
With their second-round pick, Mystics found a 19-year-old Belgian - Emma Meesseman. A move that in the documentary you could feel took some convincing from Thibault to the others in the room. Nevertheless, Thibault was committed to Meesseman and making her work in Washington.
"If we draft this kid, despite whatever else, we're going to keep her as our eleventh player," Thibault said on draft night. "She's your fifth post," he directed at his coaching staff.
For their third pick during the draft that is very high praise for a new coach. In a way, he also took a risk by making a statement that bold.
Already it is a tall task for any draft pick to make a WNBA roster. A spot is typically reserved for first-rounders, but difficult for those deeper in the draft. Despite that, Thibault was there on draft night, without even seeing her at a team's practice, promising the staff that she gets a spot.
In 2013, the Mystics were thought of the odd team out with the 'Big Three' of that year's class being Brittany Griner, Elena Delle Donne and Skylar Diggins. Washington selected fourth and went with Tayler Hill. Now that it's all wrapped up, the Mystics definitely got at least the fourth-best player in the draft.
"We knew about Emma because she had already won some awards when she was 16 as the best young player in Europe. We just felt this was a player worth taking a chance because if she is what we think she might be, we'll have a gem," Thibault said in reflection.
2. Meesseman was intimidated by the WNBA
Meesseman admitted that she was hesitant to make the trek to the United States. In her eyes, the WNBA was not in the cards and didn't even know she was drafted until she woke up the next morning and read some text messages.
Her idea of Washington was Washington state, not the capital on the East Coast.
When she found out she was drafted, Meesseman was only 19-years-old. Most draft picks are typically 21 or 22 after completing four years of college. Going and competing at that level was intimidating.
"The scariest part for me was that, you always hear it's the best competition in the world and the players are so strong, so athletic, so physical and that was much pretty much everything I was not," Meesseman
What eventually convinced her was Thibault and how she could tell he had confidence in her.
"I just heard (Thibault's) voice and I was sure he was going to take care of me."
3. The championship-intensity Delle Donne and Toliver brought to DC
Associate head coach Eric Thibault said that ownership gave them the freedom to build the team they wanted to build early on. Then they were presented the opportunity to get Delle Donne.
Things obviously drastically changed for Washington when they orchestrated the trade for EDD. Washington brought the former MVP to their team and Kristi Toliver who had recent championship experience.
"I came to DC to stretch myself," Toliver noted in the documentary. "I wanted to see where I could grow as a leader, how I can grow as an individual player."
Toliver's leadership was instrumental to a young team with little to no playoff, let alone championship experience.
Meesseman said that her and Delle Donne brought the championship mentality to D.C.
"Elena Delle Donne together with Kristi Toliver changed how we acted because they have been in the Finals," Meesseman said. "They kind of passed that on to us."
4. EDD breaking her nose, created a new beast
One of the biggest speed bumps throughout the Mystics' championship season was the injuries to Delle Donne. The first was when she suffered a nasal fracture early in the year.
Once she was able to return from the injury - donning her face mask - there was a new level of confidence noted by her coach and teammates.
"When she came back, it was almost like she had an extra layer of toughness added to her that she basically said 'I can get through anything,'" Thibault said.
"Getting her nose broken and putting a mask on and playing through it, she's like a superhero," Natasha Cloud said. "Elena just became a different beast."
Her season was the best of her career in nearly every statistical category. Delle Donne was named the MVP for a second time and joined the exclusive 50-40-90 club. A trophy at the end just was a perfect way to wrap her season.
"We're going to beg Elena to keep the mask on for the rest of her career, probably," Thibault added.
5. Game 3 loss to Aces was their wakeup call
Dominating as the Mystics did in 2019 could lead to some complacency among a team that at times blew teams out by 20, 30 or more points on a regular basis.
There was no complacency after Washington's Game 3 loss in the Semifinals to the Las Vegas Aces. A loss that came with several headlines surrounding the matchup.
Liz Cambage's comments toward LaToya Sanders surely lighted a fire to the Mystics. But Delle Donne notes that it was more than her comments that got the Mystics' attention. The Aces dominated Game 3 of that series.
"I think that Game 3 of getting blown out was definitely a bit of wake up call, but we didn't freak out and that's why our team was so great," Delle Donne said.
Instead, the team got angry, as many know, and sealed the series in the next game. None were more public in their angst toward Cambage than Cloud.
"I felt like somebody attacked my family member and when you attack my family member, I'm going to attack you," Cloud said. "I can make myself look like an ass but I can also get you hype in the process."
MORE MYSTICS NEWS:
Picks Waived: Mystics release draft picks
New Threats: Moves that could hurt Mystics
Called Out: Cloud roasts denier on Twitter


text:
Alisphaera quadrilatera Kleijne, Jordan, Heimdal, Samtleben, Chamberlain & Cros, 2002
Chromista (Kingdom)
Hacrobia (Subkingdom)
Haptophyta (Phylum)
Haptophyta incertae sedis (Class)
Alisphaeraceae (Family)
Alisphaera (Genus)
Alisphaera quadrilatera (Species)
Alisphaera Heimdal, 1973
Kleijne, A., Jordan, R.W., Heimdal, B.R., Samtleben, C., Chamberlain, A.H.L. & Cros, L. (2002). Five new species of the coccolithophorid genus Alisphaera (Haptophyta), with notes on their distribution, coccolith structure and taxonomy. Phycologia 40: 583-601. [details]
Descriptive notes
LSID urn:lsid:algaebase.org:taxname:37435
LSID urn:lsid:algaebase.org:taxname:37435 [details]
Guiry, M.D. & Guiry, G.M. (2023). AlgaeBase. World-wide electronic publication, National University of Ireland, Galway (taxonomic information republished from AlgaeBase with permission of M.D. Guiry). Alisphaera quadrilatera Kleijne, Jordan, Heimdal, Samtleben, Chamberlain & Cros, 2002. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=387986 on 2023-01-27
Guiry, Michael D.
Copyright notice: the information originating from AlgaeBase may not be downloaded or replicated by any means, without the written permission of the copyright owner (generally AlgaeBase). Fair usage of data in scientific publications is permitted.
original description Kleijne, A., Jordan, R.W., Heimdal, B.R., Samtleben, C., Chamberlain, A.H.L. & Cros, L. (2002). Five new species of the coccolithophorid genus Alisphaera (Haptophyta), with notes on their distribution, coccolith structure and taxonomy. Phycologia 40: 583-601. [details]
basis of record Guiry, M.D. & Guiry, G.M. (2022). AlgaeBase. World-wide electronic publication, National University of Ireland, Galway. searched on YYYY-MM-DD., available online at http://www.algaebase.org [details]
From editor or global species database
Published in AlgaeBase


text:
Watch Live: COVID scams increase in St. Louis as second stimulus checks arrive
JC Penney closing 154 stores in first post-bankruptcy phase
Posted: Jun 4, 2020 / 10:12 PM CDT / Updated: Jun 5, 2020 / 11:41 AM CDT
NEW YORK (AP) — J.C. Penney said Thursday that it will start closing 154 of its stores next week in what it is calling the first phase of its efforts to shrink its footprint.
The Plano, Texas-based retailer said it could take about 10 to 16 weeks to complete the closures. A list of the stores closing was published on Penney's website.
Penney filed for bankruptcy protection last month, making it the biggest retailer to do since the coronavirus pandemic forced non-essential stores to be shut down temporarily. J.Crew and Neiman Marcus sought bankruptcy protection days before J.C. Penney. All three were laden with debt and had trouble connecting with shoppers, who are increasingly skipping the mall and shopping online.
As part of its bankruptcy reorganization, Penney said it planned to permanently close nearly a third of its 846 stores in the next two years. That would leave it with just over 600 locations.


text:
Stephen Graham Jones on My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Scream, and Stephen King
In the latest installment of their On Writers series, the Losers talk to My Heart Is a Chainsaw author Stephen Graham Jones about the book's long road to publication, "likable" characters in fiction, and his own evolving relationship to the slashers of yore. Jones also discusses his favorite Stephen King books and the Skeleton Crew story that helped inspire My Heart is a Chainsaw. He also teases what's to come in the trilogy's next two volumes.
Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Patreon
More from The Losers' Club: A Stephen King Podcast
02:15:28Hollywood King: On The Boogeyman, Holly, and Banned BooksJan 31, 2023
04:20Dark Tower Detour: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (Patreon Clip)Jan 30, 2023
01:07:04Brian Evenson on The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, Body Horror, and Stephen KingJan 27, 2023
03:06:07The Colorado KidJan 20, 2023
02:05:33Season 7 Preview, Stephen King in 2023, and Mike Flanagan's The Dark TowerJan 13, 2023
01:39:05The Dark Tower VII Pt. 2Dec 30, 2022
09:17The Year in Horror 2022 (Patreon Clip)Dec 20, 2022
01:02:42In the Court of the Crimson KingDec 16, 2022
01:12:58Happy Kingmas 2022: A Stephen King Wishlist for Constant ReadersDec 09, 2022


text:
Q: Prevent multiple instance of a service - best approach? So what do you think is the best way to prevent multiple threads of a C# Windows service running simultaneously (the service is using a timer with the OnElapsed event) ?
Using lock() or mutex ?
I can't seem to grasp the concept of the mutex, but using lock() seems to work fine for my case.
Should I spend the time learning how to use the mutex anyways?

A: Make your timer a one-shot, and re-initialize it in the elapsed event handler. For example, if you're using System.Timers.Timer, you'd initialize it like this:
myTimer.Elapsed = timer1Elapsed;
myTimer.Interval = 1000; // every second
myTimer.AutoReset = false; // makes it fire only once
myTimer.Enabled = true;

And your elapsed event handler:
void timerElapsed(object source, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    // do whatever needs to be done
    myTimer.Start(); // re-enables the timer
}

The drawback to this is that the timer doesn't fire on one second intervals. Rather, it fires one second after the last tick's processing finishes.

A: Instead of lock you can use Monitor.TryEnter() to return if a callback is already being executed by another timer thread:
class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Timer t = new Timer(TimerCallback, null,0,2000);
        Console.ReadKey();
    }

    static object timerLock = new object();

    static void TimerCallback(object state)
    {
        int tid = Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId;
        bool lockTaken = false;
        try
        {
            lockTaken = Monitor.TryEnter(timerLock);
            if (lockTaken)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("[{0:D02}]: Task started", tid);
                Thread.Sleep(3000); // Do the work
                Console.WriteLine("[{0:D02}]: Task finished", tid);
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("[{0:D02}]: Task is already running", tid);
            }
        }
        finally
        {
            if (lockTaken) Monitor.Exit(timerLock);
        }
    }
}

A: I think I know what you're trying to do.  You've got a timer that executes a callback periodically (definition of a timer) and that callback does a bit of work.  that bit of work could actually take more time than the timer period (e.g. the timer period is 500 ms and a given invocation of your callback could take longer that 500 ms).  This means that your callback needs to be re-entrant.
If you can't be re-entrant (and there's various reasons why this might be); what I've done in the past is to turn off the timer at the start of the callback then turn it back on at the end.  For example:
private void timer_Elapsed(object source, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    timer.Enabled = false;
    //... do work
    timer.Enabled = true;
}

If you want to actually want one "thread" to execute immediately after another, I wouldn't suggest using a timer; I would suggest using Task objects.  For example
Task.Factory.StartNew(()=>{
    // do some work
})
.ContinueWith(t=>{
    // do some more work without running at the same time as the previous
});

A: If all you want is to prevent two threads in the same process/app domain from executing concurrently, the lock statement will probably do for you.
But note that lock leaves the other threads, well, locked while they wait for access to the critical section. They are not aborted or redirected or anything; they are sitting there, waiting for the original thread to finish execution of the lock block so they may run.
A mutex would give you greater control; including the ability to have second and subsequent threads just stop altogether, rather than locking, and locking threads across processes.

A: Don't use a timer to spawn threads. Only ever start one thread.  When the thread has finished a work cycle, calculate how long remains before the next cycle should start.  If this interval is 0 or negative,  loop back immediately and start a new cycle, if positive, sleep for that interval before looping back.
This is usually done by taking the int result of an unsigned int subtraction between the finish ticks and start ticks, so giving the elapsed ticks taken by the work.  Subtracting this from the desired interval gives the new time remaining.
No extra timer thread needed, no possibility of two threads running simultaneously, simplified overall design, no continual create/start/terminate/destroy, no mallocs, no new(), no stack allocate/deallocate, no GC.
Other designs using timers, mutexes, semaphores, locks etc. are just over complex.  Why bother trying to stop the extra threads with synchro if it's just plain easier and simpler to not make any extra threads?
Sometimes, using a timer instead of a sleep() loop is just a really bad idea.  This sounds like one of those times.
public void doWorkEvery(int interval)
{
    while (true)
    {
        uint startTicks;
        int workTicks, remainingTicks;
        startTicks = (uint)Environment.TickCount;
        DoSomeWork();
        workTicks=(int)((uint)Environment.TickCount-startTicks);
        remainingTicks = interval - workTicks;
        if (remainingTicks>0) Thread.Sleep(remainingTicks);
    }
}

A: I think that some of these approaches are fantastic, but a bit complicated.
I've created a wrapper class that prevents a timer from overlapping and allows you to choose whether "ELAPSED should be called once every INTERVAL" or "An INTERVAL delay should occur between calls".
If you improve on this code, please post the updates here!
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace AllCommander.Diagnostics {
    public class SafeTimer : IDisposable {

        public enum IntervalStartTime {
            ElapsedStart,
            ElapsedFinish
        }

        private System.Timers.Timer InternalTimer;

        public bool AutoReset { get; set; }

        public bool Enabled {
            get {
                return InternalTimer.Enabled;
            }
            set {
                if (value) {
                    Start();
                } else {
                    Stop();
                }
            }
        }

        private double __Interval;
        public double Interval {
            get {
                return __Interval;
            }
            set {
                __Interval = value;
                InternalTimer.Interval = value;
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Does the internal start ticking at the END of Elapsed or at the Beginning?
        /// </summary>
        public IntervalStartTime IntervalStartsAt { get; set; }

        public event System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler Elapsed;

        public SafeTimer() {
            InternalTimer = new System.Timers.Timer();
            InternalTimer.AutoReset = false;
            InternalTimer.Elapsed += InternalTimer_Elapsed;

            AutoReset = true;
            Enabled = false;
            Interval = 1000;
            IntervalStartsAt = IntervalStartTime.ElapsedStart;
        }

        void InternalTimer_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e) {

            if (Elapsed != null) {
                Elapsed(sender, e);
            }

            var ElapsedTime = DateTime.Now - e.SignalTime;

            if (AutoReset == true) {
                //Our default interval will be INTERVAL ms after Elapsed finished.
                var NewInterval = Interval;
                if (IntervalStartsAt == IntervalStartTime.ElapsedStart) {
                    //If ElapsedStart is set to TRUE, do some fancy math to determine the new interval.
                    //If Interval - Elapsed is Positive, then that amount of time is remaining for the interval
                    //If it is zero or negative, we're behind schedule and should start immediately.
                    NewInterval = Math.Max(1, Interval - ElapsedTime.TotalMilliseconds);
                }

                InternalTimer.Interval = NewInterval;

                InternalTimer.Start();
            }

        }

        public void Start() {
            Start(true);
        }
        public void Start(bool Immediately) {
            var TimerInterval = (Immediately ? 1 : Interval);
            InternalTimer.Interval = TimerInterval;
            InternalTimer.Start();
        }

        public void Stop() {
            InternalTimer.Stop();
        }

        #region Dispose Code
        //Copied from https://lostechies.com/chrispatterson/2012/11/29/idisposable-done-right/
        bool _disposed;
        public void Dispose() {
            Dispose(true);
            GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
        }

        ~SafeTimer() {
            Dispose(false);
        }

        protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing) {
            if (!_disposed) {
                if (disposing) {
                    InternalTimer.Dispose();
                }

                // release any unmanaged objects
                // set the object references to null
                _disposed = true;
            }
        }
        #endregion

    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Cuban Americans living in the United States could travel to Cuba more often and visit a broader list of family members under legislation approved by a congressional panel on Tuesday.
A House of Representatives appropriations panel embraced the liberalized travel initiative, which faces several more legislative steps over the next few months and likely would be opposed by the Bush administration.
Under a proposal that funds several federal agencies next year including the Treasury Department, which oversees Cuba travel and trade restrictions, travelers would be able to visit close relatives in Cuba once a year, instead of the current once-every-three-years restriction.
The list of eligible family members US residents could visit in Cuba would grow from immediate relatives to include first-cousins, uncles and aunts.
"This is not a concession to the Cuban government. This is a concession to Cuban Americans who keep asking for it," said Rep. Jose Serrano, the chairman of the appropriations panel that is advancing the legislation.
"There is no reason to place harsh restrictions on those who simply wish to visit close family members," he added, detailing existing impediments for visiting sick relatives in Cuba.
The legislation, which could clear the House next month, also would further normalize U.S. agriculture trade with Cuba by removing an obstacle that forces Cuban importers to prepay all shipments, instead of when the commodities are delivered.
Similar travel and trade measures have been offered in Congress in the past, only to fail in the face of White House opposition.
The United States has imposed strict trade and travel restrictions on Cuba since the 1960s to punish the Communist-run island.
Finally. Someone with some common sense regarding US Cuba policy.
Could be a victory for Barack. He is already in favor of this.
I would love to see Cuba as one of the central issues of this election. McCain is same old "failed Plan A" Embargo crap.
Let's flood Cuba with Cuban Americans. Great start.
Ask USA citizens why we have an embargo against CUBA and the only answer given is their comminists???? Most USA citizens don't even know what a communist is???? Who really has imposed these restrictions on the USA citizens not to trade or travel to CUBA??? Lets have some names, don't just say the US goverment, who is it that really wants these sanctions and other restrictions???? As a citizens of the USA I have never been told, onlt that they are communists??? Strange that we do business with other communist countries?????
Old Cuban exiles is your answer.
They tell Bush what to do. Simple as that.
and if Bush vetoes any lightening of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans, we'll know (as if we dont already) who their triggerman is.
I'm assuming this would not pass? You never know. It appears to me that this bill proposes that we go back to the pre-2004 changes, which were pretty ridiculous.
"This is not a concession to the Cuban government. This is a concession to Cuban Americans who keep asking for it," said Rep. Jose Serrano…" To me, this is a perfect example of the US need to "win." They're like schoolboys in a school yard. That quote is intended to let everybody know the US is still in charge. God forbid they should do something just because it's the right thing to do.
Are you kidding me?? You think this isn't about politics in the end?
If he does veto the bill, it could make headlines because Cuban families should be able to visit their loved ones in Cuba.
Too bad the old exiles run the US Cuba policy and they don't have any loved ones left in Cuba.
I get your point and I'm agreeing with the ".. buy a cup of coffee" part. I will say that GW has always had a black or white approach—i.e. you're either with us or you're against us—and he doesn't change his mind even when advised he is wrong. To my way of thinking, he won't admit that he's wrong or made a mistake, thus I think of him as a school yard bully… it's my way or the highway. He's made horrible mistakes.
There's no doubt in my mind that he'll veto the bill and that may or may not make headlines in the States. I have/had American friends who wouldn't even look at my photos from Cuba. I imagine it'll make headlines elsewhere.
We'll see if the bill passes. If you remember, a few years ago there was a lot of momentum on this issue; i.e. every year there were more and more votes in support of ending the embargo. Then I think it was '06 or 07 and it seemed like they had enough votes and at the last minute a bunch of money was distributed by some of the big anti-Cuba lobbyists including the Ileana faction, and the vote lost. For this reason I try to have low expectations. I think we can all hope that if Obama wins we can get back on the right track.
Right. If there was no Iraq war, Cuba might have been a bigger issue.
The very word "Communist" is enough to send the US leadership into hysterical paranoia. This is the reason that the "economic blockade" has been so rigorously enforced. It has no basis in the realities of intelligent foreign policy.
I would like clarification on the existing US policy for Cubans and americans travelling to Cuba. The right to travel should not be denied to any law abiding individual, surely the right to freely travel is a cornerstone of democracy isn't it?, so, why have the US denied this to so many people?. Also, if this proposal gets passed, the blockade/embargo will be irrelevant as cuban americans will be spending dollars in Cuba.
The best thing for everyone is that Mr Obamah and Mr Castro sit down and talk. Remember Northern Ireland?
Mr. Publisher, If there was no Iraq war, Iran would be the headliner. It is all about OIL! It is in the best interests of this administration and the Miami Mafia, to keep Cuba under the radar. This allows them the opportunity to shift its anti-Cuba support via the Eastern European puppets. Given the recent corruption revelations of the Miami Anti Castro Bloc, disastrous leadership of Radio Marti, the ever increasing call by US business interests to open up access to Cuba, and the grown strength of an INDEPENDENT LATIN AMERICA, makes it extremely difficult for the USA to push its pathetic policies, with the swagger it once enjoyed. Even the European Parliament has thumbed its nose at the USA.
Communist is an old cold war threat.
Muslim is the new Communism when it comes to US paranoia.
I think you're right. I cannot imagine that realtions with Cuba could have been any worse under any other administration. Bush makes Clinton look like a genius. I really do believe that an Obama administration would definitely move us forward. After all, is "Change" not the motto of both rational sides here?
Think the biggest "communist" blunder was Ho Chi Minh and the "north" vietnamese being part of this universal boogyman "the communist" . Hopefully they'll learn in time that muslims don't just come in one flavor - the bad guys.
let's hope things get better between USA and Cuba…. we have a lot to learn from/about that little island including educational and health care systems.
The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) has advised members that Florida Governor Charlie Crist has signed into law SB 1310 which, effective July 1, significantly increases registration fees, security bonds and potential fines for firms selling trips to any nation that has been designated by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Under the new law, if an agent located anywhere in the country sells travel to a Florida resident with any one of the five designated countries as a destination, he/she must certify in advance of the sale and pay an increased registration fee ranging from $1,000 and $2,500.
Presently, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan and North Korea are the only countries designated by the State Department as terrorism sponsors. Today, ASTA noted, President Bush announced his intention to remove North Korea from the terrorism sponsor list within 45 days.
The agent must also post a security bond ranging from $100,000 and $250,000. Agents who fail to comply could face a $10,000 fine and a third-degree felony conviction. A single transaction involving travel to Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan or North Korea can constitute a violation.
In the past, agencies have been generally exempt from Florida's registration requirements if they have been ARC accredited for the past three consecutive years. But under the new amendments to Florida's Seller of Travel law, agents lose that exemption if they sell travel to at least one of the countries on the State Department's list.
ASTA has strongly objected to SB 1310 as an unfair restraint on citizens' freedom to travel. ASTA also believes that it is in direct conflict with federal law. When the legislation becomes effective next week, it will restrict travel which the federal government deems as authorized and perfectly legal. ASTA had urged Governor Crist to veto SB 1310, pointing out that it violates a total of four provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
Doesn't anybody in the Bush Administration think it's odd that North Korea is being removed from the list of terrorist countries while Cuba will still be listed a terrorist country.
Would someone please list the terrorist attacks by Cuba against the US?


text:
Eastchester Daily Voice serves Eastchester & Tuckahoe
serves Ardsley, Edgemont & Greenburgh
serves Hartsdale & Scarsdale
18-Year-Old Charged With Raping Victim Twice In Area, Police Say
Route 55 in LaGrange. Photo Credit: Google Maps
Man Accused Of Taking Photos Up Woman's Skirt In Westchester
Teens Caught: Stolen Westchester Car Slams Police Vehicle In ...
An 18-year-old has been charged with forcibly raping a victim on two separate occasions in the area.
State Police from the Poughkeepsie barracks arrested the teen on two counts of first-degree rape, a Class B felony.
Troopers were dispatched to Route 55 in the town of LaGrange for a domestic dispute on Monday, May 20. Further investigation found the suspect forcibly raped the victim on two separate occasions, state police said.
The suspect, whose name was not released, was arraigned before the town of LaGrange Court, and released to the custody of the Dutchess County Probation Department.
An order of protection was requested and granted on behalf of the victim by the court.
The suspect is next scheduled to appear before the Court on June 4.
Towns, trains and water are the keys to development in Westch...
Layoffs coming to LimeLife USA's Elmsford warehouse
Hudson Valley localities receive state funds to combat zombie...
Eastchester Daily Voice!
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text:
November 2012 United Nations
The UN's Internet Grab
International enemies of freedom want to take over the Web
by Arthur Herman
Leo Tolstoy once said, "Imagine Genghis Khan with a telephone." Imagine Genghis Khan, or a gaggle of Genghis Khans, running the Internet, and you have a sense of the ideas that will be percolating in Dubai at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in December.
Delegates from 120 countries will gather under the auspices of the United Nations to consider a plan to take administrative control of the Internet away from the United States and hand it over to an international body run by the UN.
In short, governance of cyberspace will pass from the country that has kept it free and accessible since its creation—the United States—to the same organization that gave us the financial scandals at UNESCO, voted to designate Zionism as racism, and seated China, Syria, and Muammur Qaddafi's Libya on its Commission on Human Rights.
"The Internet stands at a crossroads," is how Vint Cerf, one of the Web's founders, put it in a May New York Times opinion piece. What happens in Dubai, he wrote, could "take away the Internet as you and I have known it." Those who share his concern cross the ideological divide. Rebecca MacKinnon, of the liberal New America Foundation, and former Bush administration officials, such as Ambassador David Gross, similarly see Dubai as a defining moment, especially because the driving forces behind the meeting's agenda are Russia and China. Those two nations have established themselves as the world's worst cybercrime offenders and most systematic suppressers of political dissent on the Internet.
Whoever controls the Internet controls the destiny of nations. Ultimately, how Internet governance gets settled in Dubai and afterward could well determine whether freedom or totalitarianism gains the upper hand in the 21st century.
This all began in 2005, when the United Nations sponsored a World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis. That choice of venue was itself rich with irony, since Tunisia's then dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was the Arab world's leading censor of the Internet, and the two sponsors of the summit's trade fair were China's biggest network companies, Huawei and ZTE. They are the anchors of China's Great Firewall that keeps out Western ideas and suppresses dissent—and also leaves it free to hack into the secrets of Western governments and corporations more or less at will.
That is precisely the kind of Internet many other countries would like to have, and China emerged from the Tunis meeting as their chief spokesman. Several belong to the so-called G-77 of developing countries, which includes Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil, and Argentina, as well as Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. They believe that the administration of the World Wide Web by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), headquartered in Los Angeles, isn't responsive enough to the needs of developing countries, and so they pushed through a paragraph in the Tunis final report that "underlines the need to maximize the participation of developing countries in decisions regarding Internet governance, which should reflect their interests, as well as in development and capacity building"—in other words, in helping governments control what their citizens can see, and can't see, on the Internet.
The best way to do that, China proposed in the run-up to the Tunis meeting, was to take administrative control of the Internet away from ICANN and hand it over to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The Union is a branch of the United Nations in which all countries have an equal vote, whether their delegates know anything about the Internet or not. (Most of the calls made by ICANN are done by engineers who have a background in cyber issues, and who are also—inevitably—trained and educated in the West).
A clear agenda was taking shape, with Chinese help. Free and open access to the Internet was being defined as a "Western" or "Eurocentric" priority that should not be imposed on "developing countries" by a Western institution such as ICANN. Accepting censorship as a governing principle was being defined as showing sensitivity to the needs of the developing world—with a UN-based body as the perfect vehicle for doing it.
Some human-rights groups disagreed. "If we have no freedom of speech," said one WSIS delegate, a dissident from Zimbabwe, "we can't talk about who is stealing our food." But what began in Tunis reached a crescendo in September 2011 in Nairobi, where 2,000 delegates from 100 countries met for an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) under UN auspices. There, Russia rallied around the idea of passing control over to the ITU as well. According to President Vladimir Putin, the goal of the IGF should be "establishing international control over the Internet," meaning that national governments, not users, would have the final say in the "norms and rules…concerning information and cyberspace." Not only China, but also Iran, India, Brazil, and South Africa have signed on to the International Telecommunication Union plan.
Nor is the ITU's current secretary general, Hamadoun Touré, opposed. He graduated from the Technical Institute of Leningrad and Moscow Tech in the Soviet era, and he knows the case against free speech only too well. But he also knows how to couch the case for Internet takeover in terms acceptable to Western liberals.
One term is democracy. As Touré told Vanity Fair, "When an invention becomes used by billions across the world, it no longer remains the sole property of one nation"—meaning the United States. "There should be a mechanism where many countries have an opportunity to have a say. I think that's democratic. Do you think that's democratic?"
Another buzzword is security. Everyone worries about proliferation of cybercrime and unauthorized hacking. Just before the Nairobi meeting commenced, Russia and China, backed by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, called for creating an International Code of Conduct for Information Security, ostensibly aimed at curtailing cybercrimes such as hacking and terrorism. One of the code's provisions would be committing signatories to "curbing the dissemination of information which incites terrorism, secessionism, extremism or undermines other countries' political, economic, and social stability."
The goal, in short, will be to force the United States, Canada, and Europe to shut down dissident websites or sites that provide any information another government deems extreme or antisocial. Most Arab countries at the Dubai meeting will go along with this goal, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring, when they learned what can happen if citizens have even limited access to the Web and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Another key appeal is on multiculturalist grounds. ICANN's business is largely conducted in English, and until recently the domain names it generated used the Latin alphabet (now they're available in Arabic, Chinese, and a host of other languages and characters). Critics such as the Internet Governance Project have long argued that the organization has a pro-Western, even pro-American bias. The group even states on its website that "the United States government holds unilateral control of critical Internet resources," meaning ICANN, "against the will of users and governments in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa."
One could argue, on the other hand, that this alleged tilt toward Western values is something many dissidents in China and Iran might desperately want to increase—just as they probably have a clearer notion of who's being held against his will, or who's not, than the IGP does. Still, the diversity argument has many sincere proponents, and the fact is, the United States and Western countries are a major source of the information that authoritarian regimes and others in the developing world find objectionable (as witness the tremendous furor recently over the Innocence of Muslims video).
But handing control over such content to the UN is where even a liberal critic like Rebecca MacKinnon has to draw the line. Former CNN correspondent, author of Consent of the Networked, and an enthusiast for "democratizing" the Internet, MacKinnon is no fan of ICANN or what she sees as the preponderant role corporate sponsors play in its decisions. Still, she recognizes how China has cleverly used the cultural-bias argument to push for replacing the current "multi-stake holder" model of cyberspace—in which governments have no more say than do engineers, activist groups, and the technology companies who own its biggest servers—with one in which governments will dominate. And many of those governments, she notes, don't have the consent of their own citizens.
"The UN system's chronic inability to protect and uphold human rights around the world," she writes, "and its propensity to empower and legitimize dictators within the global governance system—as well as the lack of technical understanding of how the Internet really works among many countries' ministers of communications—are good reasons that power over the Internet's critical resources should be kept out of intergovernmental hands," and in the hands of ICANN.
In fact, contrary to the multicultural critics, one could argue the key to the success of the Internet lies precisely in its original, American, even capitalist, bias.
The widely circulated story that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep vital computer communications open in the event of a nuclear strike is a myth. The original network built by the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the late 1960s had nothing to do with nukes—it was to ease communication among universities doing defense-related research—and was funded, not built, by the government. Nearly all the technology involved, including the first computer hardware and phone lines, was installed by private companies such as Honeywell and AT&T—and when ARPA's director, Robert Taylor, moved to Xerox, that company developed the first Ethernet to connect different private computer networks.
Indeed, the explosive growth of what had been a government research project has been steadily fueled by U.S. corporations such as CompuServe, universities, and individual engineers such as Stanford's Vint Cerf, the inventor of the TCP/IP address system, as well as Britain's Tim Berners-Lee, who in 1990 developed the hyperlink system he dubbed the World Wide Web. The Internet is the one clear, simple, and efficient communications network that everyone depends on, regardless of national origin or ideological orientation. That's why most American companies who do business on the Internet support the work of open-standards organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force and World Wide Web Consortium, as well as ICANN. All three are nonprofit voluntary organizations that answer to no government and state in their charters that they serve the interests of Web users.
By the time ICANN was created in 1998, the Internet had spread from the United States to more than 100 countries. Today it includes some 2 billion users, sharing millions of bytes of data and information every second. Everyone recognizes that it is a truly global institution with no government master. But it also retains its fundamental American character, as a never-ending cascade of what Cerf calls "permissionless innovation." Users from all over the world are constantly adding to and extending its performance, not to mention its range of services and commodities and new ideas. It is "not merely a radiance of connections; it is a mesh of constant invention," writes George Gilder in his book Telecosm. "The Internet is yet another demonstration of the triumph of intelligence over time and chaos"—and of the profoundly American principle that freedom is superior to constraint and control.
International bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task Force are important to keeping the Web strong, efficient, and open, but ICANN is crucial. Its job is to oversee the assignment of the unique identifiers essential for the TCP/IP address system. By making sure every computer server or network has a unique Information Protocol address, ICANN is able to ensure that any user gets access to data emanating from that specific address and no other—and can do so from anywhere he or she enters that address on a Web browser, whether it's to look at a website, download data, send an email, or buy something.
It also makes sure that the number of available domain names and addresses keeps up with the expansion of the Internet—which is one of the issues that has already led to some friction with governments, including that of the United States.* Indeed, if ICANN has any "bias" at all, it is in expanding the Internet and making it more available to users, no matter who or where they are, according to certain rules of the road called the Internet Technical Regulations, set down in an international conference in Melbourne back in 1988.
With ICANN as umpire, the Internet has become the closest thing to a globalized free market the world has ever seen, where individuals anywhere are able to use a basic and neutral set of rules to match their preferences—including buying and selling goods and services. Like any free market, the Internet is subject to abuse and prey to predators, both governmental and nongovernmental. But as the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, Robert McDowell, notes, thanks to ICANN, the Internet has become "the greatest deregulatory success story of all time."
Others, of course, view that deregulatory narrative not as a success story but as a threat—especially the authoritarian governments who would much prefer having an Internet they can directly police. (Iran, for example, has announced plans to create its own "clean" or halal Internet, which will serve individuals and institutions inside Iran in accordance with Sharia law and remain entirely cut off from the World Wide Web.) But they see replacing ICANN outright with a UN agency subject to their control as politically unfeasible—and also too much work. So they're looking at a different route. Instead of firing the umpire, they want to seize the rulebook by which he operates. And the place they intend to do that is Dubai.
After the December conference, "the governments of the world will have more power over the Internet than ever before," warns David Gross, who coordinated the State Department's communications policy under George W. Bush. What Gross expects is the creation of a new framework under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union—in which nation-states will make the important calls on changing the rules of the road, the International Telecommunication Regulations. These are "the most important and sensitive aspects" of how the Internet is organized, or rather, how it runs itself.
One of those changes would be taking dominion over ICANN's assignment of identities for the origin and destination of Internet traffic. This could allow governments to force ICANN to erase domains or IP addresses they don't like, thereby cutting them permanently from the Internet and dumping them down the cybersphere's memory hole.
Another would be inserting the Chinese- and Russian-sponsored International Code of Conduct for Information Security into the Internet's rules, which would force its international custodians, including ICANN, to cooperate with governments that want to censor what flows into their country.
The third would radically alter who pays for using the Internet. The Dubai conference will weigh proposals that invoke the principle of "sender party pays," making content providers such as Google and Yahoo! purchase the right to transmit content to users. "It's a completely new economic concept to the Internet," says Gross, "and it could have a radical and profound impact on the economics of the Internet, especially in the developing world."
The example he likes to use is a poor student in a village in Thailand or Nigeria who wants to download a page from a website he found on Google. As the Internet currently works, he gets the information for free: The only cost is paying for the Internet connection in the host country. "But if Google had to pay someone for the right to send that information," Gross says, that person might decide not to send it at all. "The eyeballs of a rural person in Thailand to an advertiser aren't probably worth the trouble." The result would be to shut down or severely limit access to the Internet in the world's poorest places—something that several governments might not find so objectionable.
Nor would its effects be limited to places like Thailand and Nigeria. Gross anticipates that "sender party pays" would lead to a multitiered World Wide Web, with different data provided to different users based on their levels of income and on advertising rates. That's not just a crimp to commerce; it spells an end of Internet democracy.
Gross's fears, like Rebecca MacKinnon's, are rooted in the Internet's possible future. But there's another older story being played out in Dubai, one familiar even to people who still haven't decided whether the Internet is a good thing for the culture or not.
Given that Russia and China are prime movers in the bid to wrest Internet oversight from the United States; that their allies include Iran, Syria, and Venezuela; and that ITU's Touré was trained and taught by Soviet apparatchiks, it's hard to resist the feeling we're watching a replay of the North–South debates of the 1970s, when totalitarians used the issue of the inequality of nations to push their real agenda of undermining the power of the United States and the West—not because they were barriers to prosperity, democracy, and free expression, but because they were their chief exponents.
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote then: "Our policymakers have yet to learn just how dangerous the world [has] become for a nation like ours, or to see that guarding the language of human rights would play no small part in our defense." Substitute "Internet" for "language of human rights," and one has a very clear statement of what's at stake in the Internet-governance debate.
It's not at all clear that the officials who will handle the Dubai issue for the Obama administration understand this. A memo issued by the State Department on January 23, 2012, after the Nairobi meeting dismissed the idea that a takeover of the Internet was in the offing. "There are no pending proposals to invest the ITU with ICANN-like government authority," it states—ignoring the fact that the real issue in Dubai will not be whether the UN agency replaces ICANN but whether member governments can use the UN to hijack the Internet agenda and reduce ICANN to a mere administrator of their collective will.
The same memo insists that the Obama administration must continue to support open access to the Internet and stresses that its efforts to push further "liberalization of international telecommunications networks" would be completely successful at Dubai. But it's not likely that an administration whose response to Muslim outrage over an allegedly derogatory video on YouTube was to seize and detain its producer is going to be a strong advocate for free speech—or for keeping the Internet free from nation-state control.
The Internet has proven that creativity and innovation flourish best when governments govern least. The United States has a solemn duty to protect the legacy it founded. In that sense, he who controls the Internet does control the destiny of nations—and ultimately the destiny of freedom.
Arthur Herman is Director of Hudson Institute's Quantum Alliance Initiative and author most recently of The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered The World (HarperCollins/MarinerBooks, 2021).
The UN and Israel in the Nikki Haley Era
by Jon Lerner
The Ignoble Prize
America and the UN
by Our Readers


Originally released in 1994 this album has been re-mixed giving these classic songs the sound they deserve. In addition the album has been re-mastered so it now sounds loud and fresh. It also includes the ultra rare Run Away EP as bonus tracks plus an edited version of Roads To Freedom!


text:
Short kids may have higher future stroke risk
DALLAS, Feb. 15, 2018 - Being a short kid is associated with increased risk of having a stroke in adulthood, according to Danish research published in Stroke, an American Heart Association journal.
A prospective study examined data on more than 300,000 Danish schoolchildren - born between 1930-1989 who were examined at ages 7, 10 and 13. Researchers noted that boys and girls who were 2 to 3 inches shorter than average for their age were at increased risk of clot-related (ischemic) stroke in adult men and women and of bleeding stroke in men.
While adult height is genetically determined, it is also influenced by factors such as maternal diet during pregnancy, childhood diet, infection and psychological stress. Several of these factors are modifiable and all are thought to affect the risk of stroke.
Researchers noted that a decline in stroke incidence and mortality rates in most high-income countries, primarily in women, occurred simultaneously with a general increase in attained adult height. Taken together, this suggests the involvement of shared underlying mechanisms for height and stroke development.
Researchers say these results have implications for understanding disease origin rather than for clinical risk prediction and future studies should focus on the mechanisms underlying the relationship between childhood height and later stroke.
"Our study suggests that short height in children is a possible marker of stroke risk and suggests these children should pay extra attention to changing or treating modifiable risk factors for stroke throughout life to reduce the chances of having this disease," said senior study author Jennifer L. Baker, Ph.D., associate professor in the Center for Clinical Research and Prevention at Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital and Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, at the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark.
Funding sources and author disclosures are detailed in the manuscript.
Available multimedia located on the right column of the release link: https://newsroom.heart.org/news/short-kids-may-have-higher-future-stroke-risk?preview=efe270c7f28bab6c2f79ec4046a1db63
After Feb. 15, 2018, view the manuscript online.
Follow AHA/ASA news on Twitter @HeartNews
For stroke science, follow the Stroke journal at @StrokeAHA_ASA
Statements and conclusions of study authors published in American Heart Association scientific journals are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the association's policy or position. The association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific association programs and events. The association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations and health insurance providers are available at http://www.heart.org/corporatefunding.
About the American Heart Association
The American Heart Association is devoted to saving people from heart disease and stroke - the two leading causes of death in the world. We team with millions of volunteers to fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies and provide lifesaving tools and information to prevent and treat these diseases. The Dallas-based association is the nation's oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. To learn more or to get involved, call 1-800-AHA-USA1, visit heart.org or call any of our offices around the country. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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