TAMPA, FL--(Marketwire - October 25, 2010) - Impulse Point, award-winning provider of network access control solutions for the world's most complex, dynamic and scalable networks, today announced that a growing number of major U.S. universities are transitioning to SafeConnect from Cisco and Bradford Networks NAC solutions. A few of these universities include Northern Arizona University, The Master's College, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and Saginaw Valley State University. They selected Impulse Point for the following reasons: enhanced end user experience, reduced help desk support calls, increased reliability and availability, ability to scale enterprise-wide, managed support services and lower total cost of ownership.
"In the last year, we have experienced a dramatic surge in successfully displacing alternative NAC providers within the higher education sector," said Dennis Muley, president of Impulse Point. "We welcome the opportunity to work with new clients who are passionate about NAC, and value the end user experience of their customers. SafeConnect's managed service approach to the deployment and support of NAC allows our university customers to focus on the business of providing quality higher education versus becoming full-time NAC system integrators and help desk experts."
Students at higher education institutions, such as Northern Arizona University, tend to be early adopters of updated software and new devices. With more than 20,000 students, one of the key challenges facing the school's IT department was the delay with regards to operating systems and patch updates by their existing NAC system.
"Our students were showing up with new endpoint security software and operating systems such as Windows Media Center, Window 7, and Apple MAC Snow Leopard. For a period of six months, we had to make special exceptions within our Cisco Clean Access system to exempt these devices and the latest endpoint security software releases, which defeated the whole purpose of having a NAC system in the first place. When we switched to SafeConnect, this issue was resolved because their managed support service ensures that we receive new device OS, and security software updates within 24-48 hours," said Heather Bell, systems administrator for Northern Arizona University.
Due to a relatively small IT staff, The Master's College could no longer afford to spend resources on Cisco Clean Access maintenance and support, and migrated to SafeConnect.
"Although it was a robust solution, Cisco Clean Access was a time-consuming resource for The Master's College. Clean Access consumed excessive support resources due to user client issues, application quirkiness, as well as continual inconsistencies in detecting Microsoft operating system updates. We ended up running it at a reduced functional level because of the many issues arising from it. We simply did not have the resources to sustain the solution and eventually determined that this product might not be the best fit for our environment," says Paul Sedy, Network Manager. "With SafeConnect however, we have a solution that is not only powerful, but has proven to be far easier to use and maintain. The managed support service provided through SafeConnect has greatly helped to optimize our technical resources and reduce risk for our customers."
One of the fastest growing universities in Michigan, SVSU required a NAC solution that could scale. With more than 10,000 students on campus, and a solution requiring intensive Layer2 switch manipulation for each student device accessing the network, Bradford's Campus Manager NAC solution simply became too complicated and time-intensive for the university to operate.
"I am very impressed with Impulse Point. This has been one of the few times a product has actually worked as advertised," says John LaPrad, manager of network services. Dale Klimmek, network analyst at SVSU, echoes the sentiment, "SafeConnect accomplished more in two weeks than we were ever able to do in five years with Bradford."
When UCCS initially deployed Bradford Campus Manager, the school found that it would not scale to the growing number and types of devices accessing the network without requiring excessive network integration and management.
"The transition from Campus Manager to SafeConnect went very smoothly despite an aggressive summer deployment timeline," said Greg Williams, IT security principal for UCCS. "We are now able to easily address the number of diverse devices our end users bring to the network, such as smartphones and Apple iPads. It's an absolute requirement in the higher education space to be able to accept and assess new devices so quickly."
With its flagship SafeConnect™ solution, Impulse Point enables IT professionals to balance end user requests for unfettered network access with organizational requirements to maintain security and compliance protocols. Delivered as a managed service, SafeConnect™ automates the enforcement of endpoint access policies across diverse, dynamic and highly scalable networks -- such as those in education or leading-edge enterprise environments. Servicing more than a million endpoints, SafeConnect™ easily integrates with existing security frameworks, is rapidly deployed and has a demonstrated track record of reducing IT helpdesk calls by as much as 90 percent. For more information about Impulse Point, visit www.impulse.com.


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Q: Bootstrap 3 Popover with function for content Bootstrap 3 provides a Popover that I'm trying to use. The docs say that the data-content may be either a string or a function. However, I seem unable to set the content to a function:
<button type="button"
        class="btn btn-lg btn-danger"
        data-toggle="popover"
        title="Popover title"
        data-content="my_function();">
  Click to toggle popover
</button>

And here's the JavaScript:
$(function () {
  $('[data-toggle="popover"]').popover()
})

function my_function(){
    return "This is my popover's content";
}

You can try the JSFiddle.
I've also tried variations like data-content="javascript:my_function();". I'm not sure if my syntax is just a little off, or if you can't use data-content this way.
Is it possible to specify a function for a Popover's content using the data-content attribute? Or am I misunderstanding the docs?

A: Pass the data-, (i.e., data-content) attribute through $(elem).popover(options)
  $('[data-toggle="popover"]').popover({
    content: my_function(this)
  })

Here's your revised fiddle for you to review. https://jsfiddle.net/heb6gt6p/1/

A: It is not possible to specify a function for a Popover's content using the data-content attribute.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Triumph is the leading specialty contractor for mobile and modular buildings throughout New England. We rent and lease high quality temporary buildings such as classrooms and we have a permanent modular construction division. Our focus is on raising the bar and elevating the design and performance of both temporary and permanent building space.
With more than 38 years of experience, Triumph Modular Inc. has worked with owners, architects and engineers to design and build custom modular buildings. Today we operate in two distinct markets.
Regardless of whether a building is permanent or capable of relocation, by using our process, building construction can be accelerated without compromises to design or quality.
A 5,800 square foot Green Child Care Center in Cambridge, MA 2011 winner of USGBC Massachusetts Innovation in Green Design award.
A permanent high quality, green 6,000 Square foot brick sided addition with connecting link for Boston Schools, 2016.
A 16,000 square foot permanent child care facility for a leading Boston based university.
With several LEED AP on our team, we focus on lean construction, green design and integrated team building approaches to construction. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with leading factories, and top architects, engineers in our area.


It's thought that the word Pinot comes from the French word for pine or pinecone, this referring to the shape the grape bunch takes on the vine, and Noir coming from the French word for black.
Pinot is a notoriously tough grape to grow due to its thin skin, which is why you often pay more for Pinot Noir than most other red wines.
It's hard to mention Californian Pinot Noir without talking EXTENSIVELY about the movie Sideways and the tremendous effect it had (allegedly) on Pinot sales throughout the United States, but I'm not going to…so there!
Landmark Winery was founded in 1974 by Damaris Deere Ford, great-great granddaughter of John Deere (yes, THE John Deere). Today, her son and daughter-in-law, Mike and Mary Colhoun are the proprietors, continuing to express the family's agricultural legacy through Landmark's everyday vineyard practices.
The name Grand Detour comes from Grand Detour, Illinois which was where John Deere invented the steel plow back in 1838.
By California appellation standards, Sonoma Coast is a BIG region! 60 miles from end to end and 500,000 acres (converts to over 781 square miles).
2008 was anything but a conventional year for Sonoma. Severe frost in March and April damaged a number of the area's vineyards. A cool spring didn't help flowering, and if all of that wasn't enough; smoke from wildfires blanketed the Russian River Valley and the Sonoma Coast! Somehow Landmark Vineyards managed to pull through.
The Sonoma Coast is one of California's best regions for the production of Pinot Noir, with plantings making up over 40% of California's Pinot harvest.
Very expressive on the nose, showing a mixture of black and red cherries, fresh herbs and a touch of oak and vanilla. Rich and smooth on the palate revealing ripe cherry and raspberry at the beginning, more herbs and even a little spice toward the middle, making way for deeper darker black fruits toward the extensive finish. I'm not going to lie to you, this one hung around on my palate for longer than most other Pinot's I can recall. Beautifully balanced between fruit and alcohol, and doesn't finish hot like I've been finding with a lot of Cali Pinot's recently.
The Landmark Grand Detour Pinot Noir would pair with a wide variety of dishes due it being flavorful but not heavy in alcohol, oak or tannin. Give thought to grilled salmon, turkey, pork tenderloin, mushrooms, duck and coq au vin.


Basundi is a very popular Maharastrian dessert.It is actually sweetened, evaporated milk and it is generally served with Puris in Maharastra.Yeah,Puris with Basundi is fascinating.They also serve Puris with Aamras(Mango Puree).I have tasted basundi in restaurants but not in our home.My mom never prepared them at home as it involves lots of patience.It took 1 hour and 20 mins for me to make this dish.But when I tasted it,it was all worth for every second I spent making it.My sistor has a big sweet tooth and she was demanding me for a long time to make this sweet for her.So I made it painstakingly for my lovable sis :-)...I have heard people using corn flour to thicken it quickly.But I don't recommend that idea as you could smell it very distinctly..
In northern India,Basundi is called as Rabdi/Rabadi..
If you use Buffalo's milk,it would be more richer..
In a heavy bottomed vessel,bring the milk to boil .Add the condensed milk and Saffron strands. Combine well..
Keep the flame in medium and after a while a layer will be formed .Gently with the help of a spoon remove the layer from the milk and transfer it in a bowl.
This milk should be reduced to 1/4th .It will take approximately 1 hour and 20 mins.Do not forget to collect the milk layers formed inbetween.
Add the sugar and cardamom powder.And let the sugar to disslove.Add the collected milk fats to the thickened milk and simmer for few mins and remove from fire.
Garnish with Pistachios or any nuts of your choice.
NOTES: Adding orange flesh with some orange juice to the Basundi and refrigirating overnight givest lip-smacking 'Orange Basundi'..
Amazing Taste!!!!!!!! Day by day u r getting more experienced in ur cooking adventures madhu..
Great Recipe Madhu! With all the great comments coming my way, it was worth the effort.. Thanks a ton..


text:
Q: WinForms: Making a set of controls scale vertically I have a Windows Form that displays several DataGridViews in the following layout:
(No access to image hosting at work, so please pardon the ASCII art...)
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│┌───────────┐┌──────────────────────────┐│
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘└──────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Unfortunately, when the user resizes the form to be taller, the form ends up looking like this:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│┌───────────┐┌──────────────────────────┐│
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|             |                          ||
|             |                          ||
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|             |                          ||
|             |                          ||
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘└──────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Instead of this:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│┌───────────┐┌──────────────────────────┐│
││           ││                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘└──────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

To reproduce this, anchor the Top-Left DataGridView to Top-Left, the Center-Left DataGridView to Left, and the Bottom-Left DataGridView to Bottom-Left, and the big DataGridView to all 4.
What can I do to get the behavior I want?

A: Put a TableLayoutPanel in the left hand column with 3 rows and 1 column, dock each of the smaller controls in a row with docking stlye "fill", then anchor the TableLayoutPanel left, top, and bottom.

A: Try using the some SplitContainer controls in combination with some Panel or GroupBox containers. Then your user will have the ability to size as needed also.


Handgun and hose combination kit includes 1 240V handgun with .040 diameter nozzle and a 240V RTD sensor controlled heated hose. The hose is connected on the bottom of this handgun (bottom mount). This handgun/hose combination will fit on Nordson® 2300, 3000, ProBlue® and DuraBlue® melters. Handgun is the lightest weight on the market and has an ergonomic 4 finger trigger for easy operation. Locking mechanism keeps glue trigger safely secured when handgun is not in use.


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This weeks post is another product comparison – my favorite kind of posts. The purpose of the comparisons is to help find the BEST way to do something, in my case that means the highest success rate with the least amount of work. Other factors may be considered, especially when the outcome is close but for the most part it's all about the results vs effort.
Seed starting is something I've always struggled with, to date I haven't found that magic system that just seems to work with almost anything. I compensate by over planting everything, maybe this is just normal but when I see youtube videos and other blog posts with nursery type results I just scratch my head. What am I doing wrong? Quantity over quality still wins out, I manage to produce plenty but it seems to take a lot more effort than it should. Will one of these solutions be the magic? Lets find out.
The first contender in this contest is the AeroGarden Classic (mine is an earlier version with CFL bulbs) along with the AeroGarden Seed Starting System.
Basically this is a styrofoam tray that sits in the AeroGarden water reservoir and holds the seed starting sponges in place.
The kit also included an instruction pamphlet and four packets of nutrients. This is where I had the first "uh-oh", the nutrient packets looked partially crystallized. No telling how old this stuff is. Well, no stopping now.
I set the foam tray into the AeroGarden as a test fit, you can see how it sets in and what the sponges look like once removed. The setup is real easy, all that's left to do is set the sponges in, add water and nutrient packet, and add seeds.
The second contender in this competition is the Burpee Seed Starting Greenhouse Kit.
Notice anything? A little lacking in quality control, there's a pellet missing in the bottom right corner. The kit also includes a clear lid for each tray. The instructions are printed on the wrapper but they do include an identification sheet that you can fill out to track what is planted where.
For this comparison I've put together a somewhat random assortment of things.
I wanted to get an idea if either of these excelled one particular type of plant, plus I haven't started any Wolfberries yet so why not give it a try?
Setting up the AeroGarden was quite easy. As I mentioned before, it was a matter of adding water, nutrient solution, putting the sponges in the holes, and adding seeds. One modification I did make, half of the holes were covered up and not used. I did this to give a little more space between plants plus it made the total count (36) the same as the Burpee tray. Easy!
That's a pretty big difference, especially when you compare the expanded results. Lets see if the instructions say anything about this.
So, they've got themselves covered. Well, good thing I had a whole extra tray of pellets, I guess this 72 cell kit (with 71 pellets) is really around a 55 usable pellet+cell kit. Once I got everything balanced out and pretty level it was pretty easy, just add seeds and water. I'll be placing this under an LED grow light that is on for 16 hours per day.
Although the kit is sitting on a heating pad the heater is not turned on. It's plenty warm here in central Florida, no need to add heat now.
I won't make you wait a week for the results, look for them in a few days. I've got a lot going on here and there just hasn't been much time to dedicate to the blog. It's all good stuff, there's a lot going on with the property but I've also got some family things and my day job takes priority. Until next post, keep on planting (seeds)!


This paper makes a case for subsidising private sector investment in developing countries, based largely on the economic theory of positive externalities: the idea that the benefits from investment that accrue to society at large exceed the returns to private investors.
The implication is that without public intervention there is too little investment, from society's point of view. The social benefits of investment not captured by private returns include: the creation of knowledge about production possibilities; the formation of economic networks and supply of intermediate inputs; and increased investments in human capital. The presumption should be that more investment in developing countries is a good thing, subject to the right safeguards, even if there is not always an obvious immediate link to poverty reduction.
If donors have procedures in place to ensure that they do in fact have a positive impact on investment by (more often than not) subsidising projects that genuinely require a subsidy to be viable, then accelerating private investment in developing countries is a perfectly valid use of aid.


Seeking inexpensive automobile insurance cost quotes online? The Cheap Insurance Network is available to help.
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• Bring 4 2/3 cups water to a boil in a pot or microwave in a four cup Pyrex measuring cup (it will fit the extra 2/3 cup) or other microwave safe bowl.
Once the rice is in, put the bowls on the stove to warm up and cut up the broccolini in roughly 3 inch pieces. Discard (or compost) any really woody ends. Set aside until you get the salmon in the pan. Prepare the pot and steamer. Add about a cup to cup and a half water and set on low.
Why a bowl? You can use any kind of dish, but I like a bowl. I like to cup my hand around the bowl while I'm eating to share a little of the food's warmth with my hands. The best part is at the end: holding the bowl helps you get every last bit out. Also it's easier to make food look nice in a bowl.
This entry was posted in Bentosh and tagged Broccolini, Brown Rice, Salmon on October 30, 2016 by mrstrauss.


A report published online Thursday morning, Oct. 11, by the Dallas Business Journal detailing donations by North Texas business and community leaders to Donald Trump has prompted calls for a boycott against restaurants in the Firebird Restaurant Groups.
Mike Karns is the owner and CEO of Firebird Restaurant Group, which includes more than 50 locations for El Fenix, Snuffers, Village Burger Bar, Meso Maya, Tortaco and Taqueria La Ventana — including the Taqueria La Ventana that recently opened on Cedar Springs Road, in the heart of the gayborhood. Firebird also owns Sunrise Mexican Foods.
According to the DBJ report, based on data from the Federal Election Commission detailing on all contributions to Donald J. Trump For President Inc. made between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018, Karns donated $2, 700 to the campaign. In a phone call with me at Dallas Voice Friday evening about 5:30 p.m., however, Karns said that while he had once paid to hear Trump speak he does not consider that a political donation, and that he has not made any political donations to Trump.
After I had spoken with Karns, someone sent me a link to the Federal Election Commission's website that indicates Karns donated $2,700 to Donald J. Trump Inc., based in New York, on Oct. 24, 2017, and that he made a second donation, also for $2,700 and also on Oct. 24, 2017, to Trump Victory, a political action committee based in Massachusetts.
Karns described himself as a "proud Republican," but added that while he is "financially conservative," he is also "socially very liberal. I don't believe in subscribing to a certain set of rules and picking out a box based on those rules, then staying strictly in that box.
Karns said that he and his wife Valerie, a designer, live in the Turtle Creek area and are "very big supporters" of Oak Lawn and the LGBT community, which is one of the main reasons he chose to open Taqueria La Ventana on Cedar Springs Road. He said he and his wife contribute to a number of LGBT and HIV/AIDS organizations and events, including DIFFA/Dallas.
In addition, he pointed out that the Cedar Springs location of Taqueria La Ventana is a member of the North Texas GLBT Chamber of Commerce, and that the restaurant, as part of its grand opening, hosted a fundraising event for Lambda Legal.
Then he should come out publicly and speak at an event. Any event, will do. Take his wife to one of the many gala events or just come out to a fundraiser and speak. In the bigger picture $2,700 is not much more than a mid class rent payment in Oaklawn or the Cheetos tab at dinner. A organization can spend more than that on a float in the parade.
ANY amount that supports D Trumps campaign of hate and inequality is too much, especially when their business is on the strip that was just dedicated as an historic area for the Gay community. They can have their own views, but they can't expect the support of the gay community on our own strip… The should consider closing.
Actually, $2,700 is the maximum donation from an individual. He literally gave as much as he was legally allowed to.
I commend him, it's a start.
Financially conservative but socially liberal is like saying you're a little bit pregnant. If you stand for Republican values, then you are a Republican. That includes privatization of health care, which negatively effects LGBTQ and all Americans for that matter. Increased cost of living with stagnant wages while the rich get richer…he has to own that too. Low unemployment is great however, low paying jobs that keep families overworked and underpaid leaving kids to raise themselves while Mom and Dad have to hustle.
He's the owner and CEO of a successful corporation and doesn't know where that kind of money was going???? I say this makes him either a liar or an idiot. Either way he's not getting my money. I don't care if does "have gay friends." Oh….and this will be the easiest boycott ever for me since I think his restaurants are pure garbage and never go to them anyway.
This sounds like the beginning of a "Trump doesn't hate gay people" conversation.
Well, all his businesses just lost my patronage.
So it is wrong to shun homosexuals or businesses they own but it is great to do the same to others who happen to hold different political opinions from you?
Yep. He made his bed now he can lie in it.
No. These two things are not the same.
It's about giving money to groups who actively work and legislate against our own interests.
So much "tolerance and acceptance" from the very people that demand it.
So he can fund efforts to take away our rights, but we're not allow to respond? That's not "tolerance and acceptance." That's stupidity.
Nobody is trying to take away your "rights". Quit believing everything you read in the Voice and watch on MSLSD.
This is a free country – he world does not revolve around gay people.


Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a rare, bizarre disorder. Why are so many women being accused of it?
Nicola de Sousa, with Katerina, whom she was accused of harming, and her husband, Eurico.
Kay and Charles, it turned out, did have something in common. Kay's mother had tampered with her daughter's urine samples to make her appear to be ill when she wasn't. Charles's mother made him sick by feeding him high doses of salt.
Meadow gave this previously unrecognized form of child abuse a name: Munchausen syndrome by proxy, for the eighteenth-century German baron who was infamous for telling tall tales. Doctors had already identified a Munchausen syndrome, which referred to patients who feign illness or harm themselves in order to secure attention and sympathy—unlike malingerers, whose fakery is motivated by material gain (receiving a disability check, staying home from work).
Meadow's deliberately tentative conclusion is that Munchausen mothers "were using the children to get themselves into the sheltered environment of a children's ward surrounded by friendly staff." He leaves as an open question whether the disorder was unknown because it was so rare or simply because it lacked a name.
After Meadow, the physician who has perhaps done the most to draw attention to the syndrome is David Southall, who practices at a hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, England. In the nineteen-nineties, he pioneered the use of covert video surveillance to catch M.S.B.P. abuse in hospital rooms. Other researchers adopted this controversial investigative technique, and British and American TV have broadcast some of these images: blurry black-and-white clips of mothers smothering their babies, who struggle against pillows; a mother disconnecting her daughter's oxygen tube; another jamming her fingers down her baby's throat. These women seemed intent on creating a facsimile of breathing disturbances sometimes associated with sudden infant death syndrome, and counted on a doctor's subsequently reviving their children—an appalling gamble. The thirty-nine abused children in Southall's original study had forty-two siblings, twelve of whom were found to have died unexpectedly. Confronted with the video evidence, four mothers admitted to having suffocated eight of the siblings.
In recent years, Munchausen by proxy has seeped into popular culture, with a rapidity and a fervency that recall the fascination with child sexual abuse in the nineteen-eighties. In the 1999 film "The Sixth Sense," Haley Joel Osment's character discovers that a child has secretly been poisoned to death by her mother. In 2002, Eminem had a hit single, "Cleaning Out My Closet," which contains the lyrics "Going through public housing systems / victim of Munchausen syndrome / My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't." Last fall, Bantam published "Sickened," by Julie Gregory, the first memoir by a victim of Munchausen abuse—an Ohio gothic featuring a viperish mother, high on the fumes of medical melodrama, who pretends that her daughter suffers from a mysterious heart condition.
Paid experts now regularly testify in court about the syndrome and conduct workshops for law-enforcement officials and social workers. Web sites publicizing the disorder offer checklists and warning signs. And, lately, mothers of chronically ill kids nervously joke—or openly worry—about being accused of the disorder. It is the "omnipresent phantom which lurks around every mother of a child where illness is difficult to diagnose," Helen Hayward-Brown, an Australian medical anthropologist who has studied allegations of Munchausen abuse, has written.
This call for doctors who treat children to become hypervigilant for signs of Munchausen by proxy is more than a little odd, for the syndrome is, by most estimates, a rare thing. Most experts agree that there are probably about twelve hundred cases of M.S.B.P. a year in this country, from which perhaps a hundred deaths result. Donna Rosenberg, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado, said that, in fourteen years as a forensic pediatrician with the Colorado Child Fatality Review Committee, she saw about one death a year from M.S.B.P. In a 1990 study of 20,090 babies monitored for sleep apnea, the authors suspected—though they did not prove—that fifty-four cases, or 0.27 per cent, were related to the syndrome.
These numbers suggest that M.S.B.P., though horrifying, is far less common than other forms of child abuse. (There are about two hundred and fifty thousand confirmed cases of physical child abuse each year.) And it is also rare in relation to genuine chronic illness in children, at a time when kids are surviving with diabetes, asthma, renal disease, leukemia, and cystic fibrosis. Some Munchausen experts argue that cases regularly go unrecognized. Yet, given the rising awareness of the disorder among doctors, nurses, social workers, school personnel, and angry former spouses with access to the Internet—accusations are now being made in custody battles—it is not surprising that a different problem has begun to emerge: false allegations.
On a chilly afternoon in March, 2002, two caseworkers from the Children's Aid Society in Ottawa arrived at the home of Nicola and Eurico de Sousa and their eight-year-old daughter, Katerina. They said they had received a report of Munchausen abuse: someone at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, where Katerina had been treated off and on, was concerned that Nicola was subjecting her daughter to unnecessary medical interventions, including surgery. This was, on the face of it, a peculiar accusation, considering that Katerina had been born with a welter of serious congenital defects that affected her spine and liver.
Nicola de Sousa, who is forty-five, is thin, fair-skinned, and fragile-looking, with long blond hair and eyes as shimmery blue as a porcelain doll's. She has a fine-grained memory for medical details, and comes across as articulate and high-strung. Eurico, who is forty-three, has a brushy mustache and a genial manner. They are both nature lovers and introverts, who find hiking more rejuvenating when they don't meet too many people along the way. Throughout Katerina's life, they have worked as a team—Eurico, who is a systems analyst at the Bank of Canada, did research on the Internet and prepared long lists of questions for Katerina's doctors; Nicola took her to most of her medical appointments.
The investigation, however, focussed on one parent: Nicola. In an affidavit, Ned Jackson, a caseworker who interviewed her, noted that she "suffered from depression from the ages of sixteen to twenty" and "was presently being treated for depression by her family physician." Nicola didn't work, though she is bright and comes from a family of academics. She volunteered regularly at her daughter's school; according to the affidavit, Katerina's third-grade teacher found her to be overly demanding, and her "presence in class to be disruptive." Another caseworker reported that Katerina was "tremendously meshed with her mother; father appears to play a more passive role." But Jackson's affidavit offered perhaps the main reason that the investigation had centered on Nicola instead of on Eurico: "Most M.S.B.P. offenders are mothers of the victim." If Katerina was being harmed by unnecessary medical procedures, her mother was, by definition, the prime suspect.
Several months later, Ned Jackson wrote up his affidavit—a bill of particulars urging a family-court judge to place Katerina under a "six month supervision order." After meeting Nicola twice, he had arrived at a scathing assessment of her. He concluded that although Katerina did have congenital problems, she "may have been subjected to invasive and unnecessary surgical procedures and medical tests, as a result of what appears to be Mrs. de Sousa's insatiable need for attention from medical practitioners, family members, the community." The battle for Katerina had begun—a battle that was, in large part, about how much mothering was too much, and about the suspicions that an assertive and anxious parent can arouse.
How it is that Nicola de Sousa came to be lumped together with the terrifying mothers whom Roy Meadow wrote about, and whom David Southall videotaped, is both complicated and disturbing. Over the years, psychologists have steadily loosened the narrow definition of an arcane syndrome—a phenomenon known as "definitional creep." In an effort to prevent Munchausen abuse by drawing up a standard portrait of the perpetrator, they fashioned a profile that was broad enough to cast suspicion on many mothers whose children were genuinely ill. Not coincidentally, the M.S.B.P. diagnosis flowered at a moment when fretful overparenting was becoming common in the West; psychologists began to worry that some expressions of anxiously attentive mothering might be unhealthy—or even pathological.
None of this is to say that M.S.B.P. is a figment of the medical profession's imagination. In England, where three mothers accused or convicted of infanticide on the basis of testimony by Roy Meadow have had their cases overturned in the past five years, there has been an outsized backlash against the diagnosis. Articles in the British press railed against Meadow's rule of thumb that a second crib death in a family was suspicious, and a third was murder, unless proven otherwise. (In the overturned convictions, the British appeals court suggested that genetic factors might explain the incidence of multiple infant deaths in some families.) The British government has ordered reviews of hundreds of cases in which parents were accused of killing their children. Many of these cases involve accusations of M.S.B.P., and if even one of them is found to have been false it will be troubling. But recent press accounts in Britain casually refer to M.S.B.P. as a "discredited" diagnosis—as though the issue weren't whether people had been falsely accused but whether the syndrome itself was real. Those who need reminding that it is might look to the case of Maxine Robinson, one of the first cases to be reviewed. At a hearing in April, Robinson confessed that she had killed three of her children.
The larger question, then, is whether M.S.B.P. is best thought of as a disorder or simply as a criminal act. People who rob banks aren't usually called victims of "bank robber's syndrome," after all, and parents who beat their children are simply called child abusers. And nobody assumes that these wrongdoers are all driven by the same set of motives—let alone by a discrete mental illness.
One of the primary aims of psychologists and pediatricians who first defined M.S.B.P. was to ascertain a motive for such perverse behavior. In a 1994 article for the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Roy Meadow abandoned his initial circumspection in favor of something like the deep-dyed specificity of the short story: "The perpetrating mother is commonly an alert, intelligent, and socially more aware person than her rather feeble, unenterprising husband. Alternatively, she is a worried, inadequate woman with a dependent personality, and has a particularly 'macho' partner who spends the evening in front of the television, reading Gun Weekly, whilst his wife cooks offal for his Alsatian dog." Meadow noted, "Sharing an ill child with your partner may be better than sharing nothing." A woman who tends to a child with a "rare" illness attracts sympathy and attention and admiration from friends and relatives, feels a sense of purpose, and gains temporary residence in the hospital ward—a comforting world where the clamorous demands of other children are held at bay with the best of excuses. "A pediatric unit is a disguised mental health facility . . . and rather more acceptable than one with an alternative title," Meadow wrote.
The book was published to acclaim; the social dynamics it described, however, were from an earlier era. Schreier and Libow depicted a world in which "isolated women in rapidly expanding suburbs" were in thrall to fantasies of all-powerful male doctors—fantasies fed by soap operas and sixties shows like "Dr. Kildare." But by the nineties women had entered medicine in record numbers; TV depictions of doctors had become cynical; patients had become stroppy, self-taught medical consumers; and the realities of managed care made Schreier and Libow's depiction of a pediatrician lavishing special attention on a mother and her child seem quaint. Furthermore, the quasi-feminist context in which the authors placed M.S.B.P.—frustrated, smart women looking to exercise their thwarted ambition in socially acceptable ways—was both dated and facile.
Profiles can be useful, but they are rarely predictive. (Most anti-American terrorists may be young Arab men, but few young Arab men are terrorists.) And in this case the profile was especially unhelpful. The relatively few clinical assessments that had been made of Munchausen mothers indicated that the perpetrators were not nearly as similar as the profile suggested. Some showed a high incidence of depression or a likelihood of having been abused as children; some did not. A few studies reported that the mothers had a history of psychosomatic illnesses; others equivocated. Some showed a high preponderance of personality disorders, but this was clearly an insufficient explanation, since most mothers with personality disorders do not harm their children in this way.
Many of the profile's other supposed warning signs—familiarity with a child's medical history; a protective relationship with a chronically sick child—are actually signs of good parenting, as studies have confirmed. In one survey of parents with sick children, subjects were asked to list helpful things that hospital staff could do for them; the most important was "being allowed to stay with my child as much as possible." A study comparing paternal and maternal styles of coping with a child's chronic illness noted that "mothers tend to use contact with the medical team treating the child as a coping behavior more frequently than fathers," and feel more personally responsible than fathers for a child's therapeutic needs. Furthermore, parental attitudes that might seem worrisome if a child is healthy—overprotectiveness, a tendency to treat the sick child as if he were younger than he is—can be functional if the child is chronically ill.
Indeed, habits characterized as "abnormal parental health-seeking behaviors" by Munchausen experts can appear unremarkable in this age of widespread parental anxiety. Middle-class parents tend to be exquisitely aware of health and safety issues, and often micromanage their children's lives in order to fend off a buzzing pack of threats. (Tainted vaccines! Stranger danger! Playground hazards!) David Anderegg, a psychologist at Bennington, argues, in "Worried All the Time" (2003), that this is in part because safety innovations like childproof bottles and bicycle helmets can actually make us more uneasy by reminding us of the threats they were designed to avert. Moreover, the one-child family is increasingly becoming the norm in the West, and these families are characterized, in Anderegg's words, by "high parental investment"; first-time parents tend to worry the most.
Perhaps it was inevitable that some expressions of fretful child-rearing would eventually be cordoned off and declared a syndrome, if only to distinguish them from what the rest of us do all the time. Just as, in the nineteen-eighties, satanic ritual abuse represented the worst fears of what could happen in day care, so M.S.B.P. has come to represent the danger posed by mothers who are excessively involved with their children.
The notion that mothers can love and protect their children too much is not new. In Puritan New England, ministers warned mothers not to attach themselves too fondly or mourn their children too fiercely. A beloved child's death was not something to resist; it was something to accept, graciously, as God's will. Thus Increase Mather inveighed against a mother who had "doted" on her son and, when "the lovely youth fell ill of small pox," vowed not to let it take him. It was her "unruly passion," Mather chided, that kept her from taking the counsel of her ministers to accept whatever God decided for the boy—and she was duly punished for her excessive love when she died during the birth of her next child.
In "A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear" (2003), Janna Malamud Smith, a psychotherapist, chronicles the ways in which maternal anxiety, and even maternal doting, have been denounced for centuries—first because the unruly passion of mother love could render a woman insufficiently submissive to God (and to men of God), and later because it could lead her to defy the advice of male doctors. In the nineteen-twenties, the behaviorist John Watson railed against sentimental mothers who destroyed their children's character by coddling them—which, in his view, included hugging them. David Levy, a child psychiatrist in New York, coined the term "maternal overprotection" and published a book about this menace in 1943. It was a sickness "well portrayed," Levy wrote, "by a mother who holds her child tightly with one hand and makes the gesture of pushing away the rest of the world with the other." Some of Levy's colleagues preferred the term "octopus mother," with its intimations of slimy engulfment. Pop psychology of the fifties blamed "smother love" for breeding mama's boys, homosexuals, and Communists.
Nicola de Sousa gave birth to Katerina on July 19, 1993. The delivery was normal, but when Katerina was two days old Nicola and Eurico noticed a bruiselike mark on her arm. Nicola remembers thinking that it looked as if someone had accidentally smacked the baby's arm. But the mark got bigger, and the de Sousas soon noticed similar ones on their daughter's chest and scalp. Her belly seemed to be swollen, too.
In August, an ultrasound revealed that Katerina had large hemangiomas on her liver. Hemangiomas are benign tumors made up of clustered blood vessels, and in their most common manifestations—as discolored swellings on the skin—they are harmless. However, in rare cases hemangiomas can crop up in the brain, the airways, or the liver; these can cause heart failure, because the infant's heart must work especially hard to shunt blood through the densely bunched vessels.
Katerina was admitted to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. The de Sousas say that a pediatrician told them that she was likely to die; a letter from this doctor in Katerina's file states that "the baby has attacks of pallor for a few minutes, when she turns purple under the eyes. . . . The heart sounds were rapid. . . . I'm really concerned." The cardiologist who examined Katerina during her hospital stay, however, was optimistic, and reported, in another letter contained in her file, that "from the cardiac standpoint, I think the baby should do fine." He did not think it would be necessary to see her again.
Meanwhile, Nicola and Eurico began researching treatments for Katerina's condition. They learned about an experimental protocol in which interferon was used to slow the growth of tumors by switching off their blood supply. The study was taking place at Children's Hospital in Boston, and was conducted by Judah Folkman, the renowned cancer researcher. (This early work on hemangiomas in children was a crucial step in the development of angiogenesis inhibitors, which are promising new cancer drugs.) Nicola called Folkman's office, and his nurse told her that Katerina could receive immediate treatment. When Nicola reported back to Eurico, he said, "Let's do it." But she was apprehensive. Under Canada's health-care system, all citizens are insured, but the waiting lists for specialized procedures can be long. In Boston, the doctors were eager to act immediately. If the experimental therapy worked, this haste would be justified; if it didn't, Nicola would feel that they had taken a foolish risk.
Nicola had liked Folkman's nurse, so she called her back and asked whether she would enroll her own child in the study. The nurse said that she would. Within a week, the de Sousas were on their way to Boston; within another week they had brought Katerina home and were giving her interferon shots themselves. Six months later, the tumors had shrunk substantially; after fifteen months, they were gone.
The decision to seek experimental treatment was, as Folkman put it, a "triumph" for Katerina's parents. The de Sousas, for their part, began to think of the American medical system as more responsive than the Canadian system. Some of the de Sousas' Canadian doctors, however, thought they were seeking care in the States unnecessarily and habitually—almost addictively.
In systematic studies of the M.S.B.P. profile, its predictive value has not held up well. A 2000 study conducted at a children's hospital in Atlanta, employing covert video and audio surveillance, concluded that the profile had not helped identify which mothers would turn out to be guilty: "While many of the families fit the usual stereotypes of M.S.B.P. . . . we were unable to predict the certainty of diagnosis using these factors." Fewer than half of the twenty-three mothers whom video surveillance proved to be abusers had read medical journals or had seemed, according to the staff, to be particularly close to doctors or nurses.
Leading authorities on M.S.B.P. have begun to acknowledge that the profile is flawed. "Some non-experts have been sloppy in their thinking," Randell Alexander, the director of the Division of Child Protection and Forensic Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine, in Jacksonville, said. "They've jumped at some aspect of a person's behavior or personality and said that shows she did it." Donna Rosenberg, of the University of Colorado, told me that researchers' focus on intention was misguided. "I haven't the foggiest idea how one penetrates motivation," she said. "There's a reason our skulls are soundproof." Marc Feldman, who argues that it's not useful to think of M.S.B.P. as a psychiatric disorder, also opposes profiles. "I don't think there are any personal characteristics that define a potential perpetrator," he said.
A few months ago, I met a woman on whose behalf Mart recently testified as an expert witness. Heather, who asked that I use only her first name, is thirty-six and lives in New Jersey, in a pretty condominium where the baby's room has a basket of board books on the floor and antique prints of mice on the walls. She is an operating-room nurse who put herself through nursing school by working as a bartender at night. It's easy to imagine her in both roles: she is warm, brassy, and efficient.
In April, 2003, she gave birth to a boy, just as she and her husband, an electrician, were on the verge of breaking up. Soon after his birth, Heather's baby was given a diagnosis of acid reflux, and twice, when she thought he was choking, she called 911. According to a pediatrician who attended to the child, Heather's husband thought she was making a fuss over nothing, and on the second visit to the emergency room he told the attending doctor, "I think she may be hurting the baby." A physician is required by law to report credible suspicions of abuse, and the doctor called child-protective services.
The two incidents involving reflux, and a visit Heather made to a urologist to consult about adhesions she had noticed on the baby's foreskin, were the only medical inquiries she had made that were not routine. Nonetheless, Heather fit the profile: she was a nurse; she had a good store of medical knowledge, which she was not shy about sharing; she was a worrier; and she was crazy about her baby.
As a result of the investigation, the child was placed with Heather's in-laws, with whom she did not get along. She was allowed to see her baby for two supervised visits each week. During these visits, Heather was not allowed to give any food or liquid to the baby—if she really was a Munchausen mom, she might try to poison him.
When I visited Heather on a wet, gray afternoon recently, she was padding around in a cardigan and socks. She served Tom and me a lunch of homemade lasagna and cooed at her son, who sat in his high chair, pink-cheeked and wriggly. "Hi, handsome!" she said brightly, kissing him on his head and offering him a teething biscuit.
More recently, some experts have begun stretching the M.S.B.P. diagnosis even further. They are applying it to mothers who spend too much time visiting schools, not hospitals—to moms who "overadvocate" for special-education services, or aggressively seek diagnoses of cognitive or psychological difficulties, such as attention deficit disorder or dyslexia, for their children.
Herbert Schreier, the influential co-author of "Hurting for Love," has written that school psychologists and behaviorists have become the "new targets" for manipulative mothers. He describes them, chillingly, in a 2000 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, as powerful figures with "the uncanny abilities of the psychopath or imposter to simulate someone above suspicion." To complicate matters, some of these bad mothers are themselves psychologists or learning specialists, Schreier maintains, and thus have "broad and detailed knowledge of the mental-health field" with which to dupe school officials.
Family courts considering M.S.B.P. cases are likely to hear estimates of mortality rates presented by the prosecution. These will probably be based on cases of medical abuse in hospital settings. Yet the new cases are often presented as though they shared a similarly dismal prognosis. The Child Maltreatment article quotes death rates of between nine and twenty-two per cent in Munchausen families. Even for hospital-abuse cases, twenty-two per cent is probably too high; Marc Feldman and others say nine per cent is more realistic. And, in any case, it seems a stretch to suggest that a mother who tries to get a child a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (even if she's doing a normal child a disservice) is as dangerous to her children as a mother who systematically smothers her baby. Yet some M.S.B.P. experts argue that the one behavior lies on a continuum with the other. In a variation on the old slippery-slope argument, angling for a learning-disorder label (and perhaps a better class placement) is seen as the equivalent of smoking marijuana, and smothering a child is tantamount to smoking heroin: one, it is feared, could lead to the other. A judge who worries that a child could end up dead may well err on the side of caution, and place him in foster care—a drastic step that can cause children to suffer tremendously.
Eric Mart recently testified in a case involving an M.S.B.P. accusation from school officials. The mother, who lives in Massachusetts and has a son and a daughter, "came to school and said her kids had terrible learning disabilities and kept demanding more evaluations and out-of-district placements. When officials took a good look, they were concerned whether there was anything wrong with these kids, and it actually went to court." More than three years later, the case remains unresolved; the son, who turned eighteen, is now free to see his mother, but the daughter, who is in her mid-teens, remains in foster care.
When Richard Asher, a British physician, first identified the original Munchausen syndrome, it was 1951, and Britain's National Health Service was only a few years old. Asher and the other doctors who first wrote about "peregrinating problem patients" characterized them with unusual vitriol, as Allison and Roberts observe in "Disordered Mother or Disordered Diagnosis?" One early article recommended that the British Medical Journal publish a "rogue's gallery" of known fakers. In a remarkable violation of patient privacy, some case studies did print the names of their subjects. Several recommended that the lying "hospital hobos" be confined in mental asylums for life.
In this way, the social and economic circumstances of medicine helped bring needy patients into contact with frustrated doctors; one product of this interaction was the portrait of the despised Munchausen patient. Similarly, it is no accident that the rise of the Munchausen by proxy diagnosis has run parallel with the rise of aggressive behavior in medical patients. During the past decade, people have routinely shown up at doctors' offices armed with Internet printouts, or displayed a suspicion of "mainstream medicine" fed by alternative practitioners and by dissatisfaction with managed care. These patients, caught up in their conceptions of themselves as "empowered advocates," can come into conflict with doctors and caseworkers.
When Katerina de Sousa was four years old, Nicola took her to Children's Hospital in Boston for an annual checkup of her liver, and while she was there she mentioned Katerina's difficulties with bladder and bowel control, and some conflicting diagnoses that she had received from Canadian doctors. A neurologist at the hospital ordered an MRI, and discovered that Katerina had a tethered cord: her spinal cord was fastened to a benign fatty tumor and could not move freely. A tethered cord can cause various problems, including spinal curvature, back and leg pain, and incontinence. As a child grows, the cord becomes stretched beyond capacity, damaging surrounding nerves and blood vessels. The de Sousas couldn't afford elective surgery in Boston, so they returned to Canada; two months later, a neurosurgeon in Toronto performed an operation to untether the cord.
Katerina was beginning to thrive—she attended a nursery school, at which Nicola was a frequent volunteer, and she took swimming lessons and gymnastics. She was on her way to becoming the pre-Raphaelite beauty that she is today, with milk-white skin, a luminous smile, and a scattering of pale freckles. But she also had several symptoms that, as she grew older, became more pronounced. She experienced continued incontinence, and pain and weakness in her legs, which the tethered-cord surgery does not always correct. (Indeed, scarring can make the pain worse.) Other symptoms were more baffling: her left eye sometimes rolled upward independently; she had headaches; sometimes she seemed to have double vision, and complained that she saw two Mommies. At other times, she insisted that she had "bees in her ears"—probably tinnitus—and she couldn't stand loud noises. She sometimes had choking spells when she ate. Nicola's father, Ian Templeton, a retired physicist, recalls that he and his wife, Elsa, were often nervous when Nicola dropped Katerina off for lunch at their house: "It was scary. She'd just be eating and then—for a moment she wouldn't be breathing." With the exception of the eye-rolling, doctors did not witness these symptoms, which were described by the de Sousas as unpredictable and intermittent.
During a visit to a physical-therapy specialist in Toronto, a nurse asked Nicola if she had ever considered whether Katerina might have Chiari syndrome, a developmental anomaly in which the lower portions of the brain are compressed. Her symptoms were consistent with the disease, the nurse said. At the de Sousas' behest, a neurosurgeon in Canada examined Katerina but concluded that she did not have the classic Chiari malformation, in which the tonsils of the lower brain project downward. But, in the meantime, Eurico had read about a neurosurgeon in Brooklyn, Thomas Milhorat, who was adept at reading MRI scans for subtler signs of skull crowding. Milhorat, who now heads the Chiari Institute in Great Neck, New York, examined brain scans of Katerina and concluded that there was clinical and MRI evidence of Chiari syndrome. The de Sousas sought a second opinion from David Frim, the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of Chicago. He, too, saw evidence of brain crowding, and believed that Katerina's clinical symptoms pointed to Chiari syndrome. He also offered to perform the surgery for free.
It's not clear who first used the phrase "Munchausen syndrome by proxy" to describe Nicola de Sousa's care of her daughter. Susan Bennett, the chief of child protection at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, would not comment. A spokesman for the Children's Aid Society said that the agency could not comment on specific cases. But it is clear that the Canadian doctors who knew about the Chiari diagnosis didn't approve, and were alarmed by the de Sousas' pursuit of surgery.
Frim found the de Sousas' approach neither unusual nor disquieting. "This is how medicine is now," he said. "We have patients who come in with hundreds of pages they've printed off the Internet, and they've seen six other neurologists. The de Sousas were looking for the best possible care, and they were demanding, but that doesn't mean they were wacko." In January, 1999, Frim performed cranial surgery on Katerina. He found that Katerina had abnormal tonsils that were impeding the flow of fluid between the brain and the spinal cord, much the way a classic Chiari malformation would. According to the de Sousas, within a few weeks after the operation all the symptoms associated with Chiari syndrome—the eye-rolling, the choking, the headaches—vanished.
Katerina continued, however, to experience pain and weakness in her legs, as well as incontinence; her charts show a number of consultations with pain clinics. In the spring of 2001, the de Sousas decided to see Frim again. He suggested that the cord might have become retethered—a fairly common occurrence—and that a second operation might be advisable. Once more, he offered to waive his fee, and, once more, the choice was not an obvious one. Bowel and bladder problems can be made worse by surgery, and back and leg pain isn't always resolved, either. The de Sousas opted for the surgery. They believe that it did give Katerina some pain relief and greater mobility, though it was not a cure.
The M.S.B.P. investigation of the de Sousas lasted longer than a year. During that time, Katerina remained with her parents, pending a possible appearance in family court to decide whether she should be placed in foster care. The de Sousas began homeschooling her, partly because they thought they could manage Katerina's pain better at home, and partly because they believed that it conferred some academic advantages—but mainly because they worried that social workers might arrive at school and take their daughter away. In the meantime, Katerina did lots of things that propelled her into the world: she took weekly classes in drama, pottery, painting, drawing, and swimming, and she practiced woodworking at a local home-improvement store. (To Nicola's delight, Katerina turned out to be a whiz with power tools.) She played regularly with her old schoolmate Victoria. Still, keeping Katerina at home only reinforced the suspicions of Nicola's accusers. In his affidavit, Jackson calls the de Sousas' decision "surprising, and concerning." Homeschooling is a kind of sheltering, and the M.S.B.P. investigation was based, in part, on the idea that Nicola sheltered Katerina too much.
As time wore on, the de Sousas began to feel isolated and bitter. Eurico's father died of a stroke in November, 2002, without knowing whether Nicola and Eurico would be able to keep his only grandchild. Katerina, who had overheard the caseworkers say "We're not going to take her today" on their first visit to the de Sousas' home, had nightmares about being placed in foster care. Some acquaintances and friends stopped speaking to the family when they heard that Nicola was being investigated for child abuse. In the grocery store, when neighbors saw Nicola, they escaped to another aisle. The de Sousas hired four lawyers and spent about fifteen thousand dollars on Nicola's defense. They began writing indignant letters, some of them rather ill considered, to various officials, members of the press, and politicians who they thought should know about their ordeal. They became increasingly terrified of losing Katerina.
She called a violin a banjo, a glove a statue, and pliers a banana. Why was she losing her ability to recognize objects?


text:
LION KING to return to Sydney
Disney's global favourite musical The LION KING is set to return to Sydney in 2013!
President of Disney Theatrical Production, Thomas Schumacer, announced last week it will re-open at the Capitol Theatre in December 2013. He said although the musical premiered in 1997, enormous demand for it continues worldwide.
"It's still going to be new to the audience that see it for the first time," Mr Schumacher said.
Based on the 1994 animated movie, The Lion King features music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice, musical score by Hans Zimmer's and choral arrangements by Lebo M.
Julie Taymor's stunning original production features use of large puppets on the musical theatre stage. The Lion King has won six Tony Awards including Best Musical, with Taymor receiving the award for Best Direction of a Musical, and sharing the Tony for Best Costume Design. Taymor will also supervise the new production undoubtedly continuing her expert blending of African art and Broadway showmancship.
There are high expectations from the NSW Government's Minister for Tourism, Events & the Arts, George Souris that the production will attract more than 500,000 interstate and international visitors generating over $36 million for NSW. He says a new generation of young families is ready to enjoy the musical.
"It's the most successful musical in the world and it exceeded all expectation in 2003," he said.
The original Australian production of The Lion King played at the Capitol from October 16 2003 until June 26, 2005, playing to 1.35 million people. During that original 21-month Sydney season, the show played to 90% capacity. A Melbourne season at the Regent Theatre followed from July 18, 2005 until June 4, 2006.
Mr Schumacer said, "We get many more requests around the world for productions of The Lion King that we can't accommodate…"
Since opening in America in 1997, there have been 19 productions of the musical around the world.It is estimated to have been seen by 63 million people and grossed more than $4.7 billion. The Sydney production is predicted to run for about eight months.
Opening with an Australian cast in December 2013, the show will be competing for audiences with big-stage local productions King Kong and Strictly Ballroom, both produced by Australian-owned Global Creatures.
And veteran producer John Frost is preparing for the world premiere in Sydney in May of a new stage musical based on the Hollywood movie An Officer and a Gentleman.
Disney Australia's managing director, James Thane, said competition is healthy for business.
"It is possible to have hit shows running at the same time that appeal to different parts of the same markets," Mr Thane said.
Stay tuned to DanceLife for more Musical Theatre updates!
Tags: 2013, lion king, musical, sydney
3 thoughts on "LION KING to return to Sydney"
Hi there I'd love to audition for the lion king but am unsure of how to go about it
I'd be greatful if you could forward an email address or application form
Dolly Dube says:
Hi there,my name is dolly and I would like to audition for lion king.if you can please forward your email address so we can take it from there.im a singer,actress and I do bit of dancing.i'm from South Africa and my first language is Zulu .i would welcome the opportunity of being part of your cast:-)
chrisduncan says:
Hi Dolly,
Audition details are contained in our article.
The DanceLife Team
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


In these years re-construction and de-colonisation were among the main priorities of CoCo. Projects took place in many countries still with a focus on Europe including many bilateral projects e.g. between France and Germany; the US and Germany. Work camp activity also began in India, Algeria, Egypt, Senegal and other countries. CoCo also conducted study visits and training courses to study and develop youth and volunteer organisations in Latin America and South East Asia.


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If a computer case lacks a sufficient cooling system, then the computer's components may start to generate excess heat during operation. To avoid your computer burning itself out, turn it off and let it rest if it's getting hot. Additionally, you can check the fan to make sure it's working properly.
Dropped Internet connections can be very frustrating. Often the problem is simple and may be caused by a bad cable or phone line, which is easy to fix. More serious problems include viruses, a bad network card or modem, or a problem with the driver.


Give the gift of good taste! Treat a loved one, friend, or co-worker to an unforgettable neighborhood dining experience at Main & Market. Whether it's a Birthday, Anniversary, Holiday or just to say Thank You, our gift cards make the perfect gift. Our gift cards can also be used in our bakery and catering division.


911uk.com - Porsche Forum : View topic - 997 c4s left rear wheel on the bump stop ?
911uk.com Forum Index > General Porsche Chatter > 997 c4s left rear wheel on the bump stop ?
Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:17 pm Post subject: 997 c4s left rear wheel on the bump stop ?
Hi went to drive my 997 today and notice the left rear wheel if nearly touching the wheel arch ? It was fine last week.
The pasm on the dash says ok when changing sports mode.
The last time I drove it was fine,and it's just been sitting on my drive until today,would it just snap when the car is sitting still ?
Just seen a post on the Porsche owners FB page and this has happened to a chap on there while it sat over night on his drive, so it might be worth a look. It might be something to do with the extreme cold weather finishing off a spring that is on its way out at a guess.
Quite common on the 997 unfortunately, they can break in the cold weather with the car just sat.
There is a spring clip at the base of the shock , these let go and the coil just drops down .
No.5 in this link .
It doesnt happen very often , only seen a handfull since they came out and from memory you need a new shock as its the groove that wears that the clip fits into .. either way its a pretty small clip that holds it all together .
If it is that by the description,That looks a cheap fix provided that part 5 is easily obtained.? Good job it didn't fail whilst driving spiritedly!
I was driving hard the day before,perhaps that finished it off.
Am I right in thinking I will have to replace both ?
Pasm shocks are replaced as a single .. you dont tend to replace both .. in fact if it was a warrenty job then Porsche would only pay for one .
Either way it needs inspection first as we are not 100% certain on what parts are actually neded yet .
Seriously mate , you need to be working for yourself , you are a font of instant knowledge , you could go it alone ... think of the trade you would get !!
Bless you .. but being so far south im kinda in the Porsche wilderness down here .
Only 2 people on here live any where near me !


text:
Cardiology in the Young (2)
AEPC Association of European Paediatric Cardiology (2)
Pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect and major aortopulmonary collaterals: collateral vessel disease burden and unifocalisation strategies
Sophie C. Hofferberth, Jesse J. Esch, David Zurakowski, Christopher W. Baird, John E. Mayer, Sitaram M. Emani
Journal: Cardiology in the Young / Volume 28 / Issue 9 / September 2018
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2018, pp. 1091-1098
Print publication: September 2018
The optimal approach to unifocalisation in pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect and major aortopulmonary collateral arteries (pulmonary artery/ventricular septal defect/major aortopulmonary collaterals) remains controversial. Moreover, the impact of collateral vessel disease burden on surgical decision-making and late outcomes remains poorly defined. We investigated our centre's experience in the surgical management of pulmonary artery/ventricular septal defect/major aortopulmonary collaterals.
Between 1996 and 2015, 84 consecutive patients with pulmonary artery/ventricular septal defect/major aortopulmonary collaterals underwent unifocalisation. In all, 41 patients received single-stage unifocalisation (Group 1) and 43 patients underwent multi-stage repair (Group 2). Preoperative collateral vessel anatomy, branch pulmonary artery reinterventions, ventricular septal defect status, and late right ventricle/left ventricle pressure ratio were evaluated.
Median follow-up was 4.8 compared with 5.7 years for Groups 1 and 2, respectively, p = 0.65. Median number of major aortopulmonary collaterals/patient was 3, ranging from 1 to 8, in Group 1 compared with 4, ranging from 1 to 8, in Group 2, p = 0.09. Group 2 had a higher number of lobar/segmental stenoses within collateral vessels (p = 0.02). Group 1 had fewer catheter-based branch pulmonary artery reinterventions, with 5 (inter-quartile range from 1 to 7) per patient, compared with 9 (inter-quartile range from 4 to 14) in Group 2, p = 0.009. Among patients who achieved ventricular septal defect closure, median right ventricle/left ventricle pressure was 0.48 in Group 1 compared with 0.78 in Group 2, p = 0.03. Overall mortality was 6 (17%) in Group 1 compared with 9 (21%) in Group 2.
Single-stage unifocalisation is a promising repair strategy in select patients, achieving low rates of reintervention for branch pulmonary artery restenosis and excellent mid-term haemodynamic outcomes. However, specific anatomic substrates of pulmonary artery/ventricular septal defect/major aortopulmonary collaterals may be better suited to multi-stage repair. Preoperative evaluation of collateral vessel calibre and function may help inform more patient-specific surgical management.
Electrical dyssynchrony and endocardial fibroelastosis resection in the rehabilitation of hypoplastic left cardiac syndrome
Richard J. Czosek, Joseph Atallah, Sitaram Emani, Babar Hasan, Pedro del Nido, Charles I. Berul
Journal: Cardiology in the Young / Volume 20 / Issue 5 / October 2010
Print publication: October 2010
Staged left ventricular rehabilitation is a novel surgical approach in patients undergoing single ventricle palliation for borderline hypoplastic left cardiac disease, in an attempt to salvage the left ventricle. The procedure includes resection of endocardial fibroelastosis from the left ventricular free wall and apex. We hypothesised that endocardial fibroelastosis removal may significantly affect ventricular conduction and myocardial electrical characteristics.
This study included 27 patients with borderline hypoplastic left cardiac syndrome who underwent staged left ventricle rehabilitation with endocardial fibroelastosis resection following single ventricle palliation. The effect on electrical synchrony was measured by ventricular depolarisation timing (QRS duration) on electrocardiogram. Patients were evaluated for a change in QRS duration before and after fibroelastosis removal and at most recent follow-up.
The QRS change in the immediate period after endocardial fibroelastosis resection ranged from −16 to 36 milliseconds with a median of 0 (p = 0.09). However, long-term conduction delay was common in 44% (12/27) of patients having a QRS duration greater than 98th percentile for the age at the most recent electrocardiogram. Only one patient had QRS duration greater than 98th percentile before any surgical procedure. Two patients developed left bundle branch block and one developed right bundle branch block with left, but anterior-fascicular block. Overall, the QRS duration correlated with left ventricular size (R = 0.54, p = 0.006) at the most recent electrocardiogram.
Electrical dyssynchrony is a common finding in patients undergoing staged left ventricular rehabilitation after single ventricle palliation; however, it is not acutely related to surgical endocardial resection. Left ventricular size is correlated with QRS duration. Diligent follow-up is required to evaluate the effects of left ventricular growth and consideration of resynchronisation in this population.


text:
How Target hit the bull's-eye in employee engagement
After layoffs and a customer data breach, the retailer worked hard to rebuild trust within and without. That included a successful focus on employee communication.
By Russell Working
@byworking
Editor's note: This story is taken from Ragan Communications' distance-learning portal Ragan Training. The site contains hundreds of hours of case studies, video presentations and interactive courses.
In 2011, things were going great for Minneapolis-based Target Corp.
The retail giant was opening 200 stores in Canada, and pesky Amazon's impact was little more than "a rounding error," says Sean Madigan, senior director of communications.
Within a few years, a bracing front of cold reality blew down from the north. Hackers breeched Target customer data days before Christmas 2013, and the expansion failed, costing the company thousands of jobs.
On top of that, Amazon introduced an app that enabled consumers to scan merchandise on store shelves and compare the prices to those sold elsewhere—alarming retailers everywhere.
The data breach "was a really, really tough situation," Madigan says. "Our sales fell right off a cliff. Our customers were really mad. We spent months and months and months trying to win back their trust."
How did Target do that—and recover its good name? It turns out trust-building starts within, Madigan revealed in a Ragan Training session titled, "How Target disrupted its internal communications channels to modernize its culture."
[FREE DOWNLOAD: Email measurement insights and best practices]
Through steps large and small, Target found ways to loosen up a staid internal culture and boost its staff loyalty. Here's how:
1. Scrap the dress code.
Target communicators knew they would have to win hearts and minds if the company was going to thrive. In a buttoned-down culture, the most obvious start was to change the "oppressively rigid" dress code, Madigan says. In an employee meeting, the human resources chief literally snipped someone's tie off with scissors.
"People went bananas," Madigan says. "The Wall Street Journal wrote a whole story about it."
2. Be genuine.
In 2013 Target introduced a new intranet on SharePoint. It included popular features, such as a group for parents called The Red-Hot Mamas, and one for dog lovers called The Bowwows.
"People loved that stuff," Madigan says.
What they didn't love, however, was their leaders' stilted engagement on the platform. The problem was, some leaders didn't like interacting on the intranet, so Target communicators posted for them, even boosting the posts through prearranged "likes" and comments.
"People were offended," Madigan says. "It was clear these leaders weren't writing the posts themselves. It was chockablock full of key messaging, and people could see right through that."
What was needed was direct, genuine interaction.
3. Host 'ask me anything' sessions.
Leaders did draw kudos when they participated in an "ask me anything" digital town hall. This was held in a conference room staffed with one comms staffer to guide each executive.
Despite this hand-holding, the bigwigs fielded all the questions themselves. Yes, their answers had a few typos. So what? "No one died," Madigan says. "And actually, people loved it."
4. Hold a real, live town hall meeting.
Brian Cornell, Target's first externally hired CEO, had all kinds of qualities one would want in a new leader, Madigan says. Among these was an appreciation of teamwork.
He had the company rent a huge space across the street from headquarters for a town hall meeting. Thousands of people headed over on their lunch hour.
"He talked about his career and his business philosophy and his family," Madigan says. "And then he decided to take questions."
He also circulated in the company itself, talked to people and shook hands, asking, "What are you working on? How can I help? What do you need?" Madigan recalls.
Employees loved the openness.
5. Launch your truth-telling vehicle.
The aggressive Canadian expansion failed, and Target prepared to shutter its stores in that country in 2015. HR and communications met in secret to draw up a plan for disseminating the bad news.
"The hard truth here is that 17,000 people were going to lose their jobs if we had to close our doors," Madigan says. "And we did."
In the wake of the layoffs, communications started producing a daily e-newsletter, Madigan says. "TGT Briefly" launched six days after the layoffs, arriving in inboxes at 6:30 a.m. every day. It contained precisely three stories of 150 words or fewer—never more. Target comms adopted a new tone: punchy, plucky, crisp, candid, direct, fun.
It was written "from the perspective of the company, but it's not from the top," Madigan says. "It's got to the tone of your older and wiser cube-mate that sits next door, and kind of like your big sister who's like, 'Hang in there,' but isn't going to … sugarcoat it."
Everything employees needed was in the body type or the headline. There were no links to eye-straining PDFs or quarterly reports.
6. Start a speaker series.
Communicators leaned on executives to find attention-grabbing speakers for the workforce. The CEO served up one of the foremost executive coaches in the world. The chief marketing officer brought in the CEOs of Pinterest and Snapchat. One of the most popular events was a session on tax policy.
The series has become an institution that is loved not just for the content, but for the bragging rights it gives employees, who can tell their spouses, parents or friends, "Guess what I did at work today."
This makes the series a dynamic driver of engagement.
Says Madigan, "They just were hungry for understanding our strategy in a way that was more accessible, that was candid, that was straightforward."
There's more to this session. Subscribe to Ragan Training.
Topics: Employee Engagement, Ragan Training, The Workplace
Employee Engagement | Robby Brumberg
Infographic: How to survive and thrive in a workplace wasteland


(Bloomberg) -- Can't decide between bourbon or rye? You might not have to: An increasing number of whiskey producers are combining multiple types of whiskey in the same bottle, in pursuit of unique flavor profiles. Purists probably won't approve, but these unusual combinations are yielding some remarkably sophisticated sips.
"We're creating something more complicated, more interesting, more balanced," says David Perkins, founder of High West Distillery in Park City, Utah, one of the first to trumpet whiskey hybrids, such as BouRye (bourbon + rye), or Campfire, which adds a bit of smoky Scotch to a bourbon-rye mix. "It's like a meritage in Bordeaux," a reference to the practice of blending two or more of the "noble" Bordeaux grape varieties in winemaking.
While it's part of the process to create a recipe of various grains, called the mash bill, prior to fermentation and distilling, it's rare to see finished whiskeys from different categories mingled together post-distillation. It's the polar opposite of the prized single barrel bottling—a mutt vs. a purebred whiskey.
But among modern-day distilleries, particularly American producers? We like to know what we're getting, and we don't tend to muddy the rye by mixing in bourbon (unless you're a bartender—split-base cocktails are a separate thing). And some categories have devoted, verging on rabid, fan bases.
Of course, it's always possible that some producers of amorphously labeled "American whiskey" may very well have mixed whiskey types but haven't been bold enough to disclose it. "Maybe talking about it, maybe that was unique," Perkins concludes.
Sometimes it's all about the concept: Diageo and film producer/director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Horrible Bosses) collaborated on the newly released Hilhaven Lodge, a limited-edition whiskey blend incorporating bourbon from the 2000s, Tennessee whiskey from the 1990s, and rye whiskey from the 1980s. The whiskey is named for Ratner's Beverly Hills two-acre property and is meant to evoke the decades of Hollywood history (more than just three decades, however) behind the luxe private residence.
In some ways, the DNA of products like Hilhaven (and Orphan Barrel, another Diageo line of limited edition "found" whiskeys) owes something to those post-Prohibition pragmatists, who scrapped together whatever hooch they could lay hands on.
Blends of whiskeys of different types and different ages are rare enough. But perhaps the most special blended whiskey of all is one that incorporates different geographies. Ichiro's Malt & Grain, made by Japan's Ichiro Akuto of Chichibu distillery, has created a "worldwide whisky"—a veritable United Nations of whiskey made with an unheard-of blend from the countries Akuto calls "the big five": the U.S. (bourbon, specifically), Canada, Scotland, Ireland, and, of course, Japan. It's silky and elegant, with warming, almond-like tones and a honey-pepper finish.
In an atmosphere where headlines constantly bemoan the imminent shortage of some of the world's most tightly regulated purebred whiskeys—namely, bourbon and Scotch, not to mention dwindling stocks of age-statement whiskeys of all provenance—perhaps an expanding lineup of experimental blends are just what we need right now.


text:
How to write about Russia, part three
Part one; part two.
Screenshots from source.
The first thing to be said: when describing Russia, it is not necessary to begin with politics. During my years of living in Elektrostal, and my visits to many other places in Russia, I was witness to the fact that Russians are normal people who can enjoy life, overcome personal crises, display amazing generosity and hospitality, and deploy wicked humor as needed. If the picture of Russia that emerges from Western journalism doesn't give this human context, it makes the whole of Russia that much easier to demonize.
It is not necessary to begin with politics, but it is also impossible to avoid politics. Everywhere we humans organize ourselves into communities, states, nations, empires, we are unavoidably caught up in systems where some seek to gain and maintain advantage over others, where some love to test the boundaries and others simply want to know where the boundaries are, where customs and rules arise to manage those inevitable conflicts, and where vast majorities simply hope to go from day to do, feeding themselves and their families without being noticed by anyone with power and an agenda.
What happens when someone is noticed? This is where a nation's politics meets its testing point. The philosopher David Hartman was right when he called "due process" the most important development in the history of humanity. Whenever due process is sabotaged -- in the USA, in Russia, or anywhere -- the demons that rush into the vacuum are corruption and cruelty.
Each country must face its own reckoning for the ways it allows those with power to crush people, whether by intention, or by structural racism and elitism, or simply by caprice and neglect. (Maybe we should make an exception for nations that do not claim to observe justice -- are there any such nations?) Such reckoning is not achieved by pointing at another nation's failures, but by accounting for and amending one's own by one's own claimed standards.
Yesterday, ABC reporter Rachel Scott confronted Russian president Vladimir Putin in Geneva with a pair of pointed questions. (CNN's version of the full exchange, with Putin's answers, is here.)
First question:
The list of your political opponents who are dead, imprisoned, or jailed, is long. Alexei Navalny, whose organization calls for free and fair elections, an end to corruption -- Russia has outlawed that organization in calling it extremist. And now you have prevented anyone who supports him to run for office. So my question is, Mr. President, what are you so afraid of?
The transcript with Putin's full answer is below, after the video, but it was an extremely vague set of references to organizations operating in Russia with USA funding, and claiming that one such organization (referring to Navalny's) was calling for mass demonstrations and trying to manipulate young people. He went on to refer to the disorders in the USA that followed the killing of George Floyd, and said that such disorders would not be allowed to happen in Russia.
Scott followed up:
You didn't answer my question, sir. If all of your political opponents are dead, in prison, poisoned, doesn't that send a message that you do not want a fair political fight?
Putin this time decided that she should have asked another question entirely ... who is killing whom? He then proceeded to answer that question by referring to the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. I think he is trying, with both of his answers, to claim, without saying it openly, that genuine political competition is too risky. And, the unspoken corollary is that it is better to arrest and poison people, and threaten their friends with loss of jobs, their children with loss of prospects, and a nation with bottomless cynicism, than to take the risk of an honest political fight which he and his whole "system" might lose.
Rachel Scott's question referred to Putin's political opponents ("dead, in prison, poisoned"), but last week brought a fascinating and shocking investigation into the apparent poisoning of a prominent poet, author, and literary critic, Dmitri Bykov. Bykov is not a political activist himself at all, certainly not on the scale of Navalny, and he leads absolutely no movement. However, he has made no secret of his opposition to Russia's current leadership. He is well-known, well-respected ... in other words, noticeable.
I remember when the original incident occurred, back in spring 2019; Facebook and Twitter came alive with requests to pray for Bykov, who fell ill on an airplane and remained in a coma for several days. Bellingcat's report is here; some of the puzzled commentary about the attempt on Bykov's life is here. According to Bellingcat, Bykov himself had no idea why he would be targeted; his very telling comment was that maybe he was just "next on the list."
I wrote about my own experience of one of Bykov's events on this post from 2016.
Does Russia in fact employ a team of poisoners working with their intelligence services to kill their own citizens who ask too many questions? This would certainly seem to be a way of reinforcing that desire, well-known in the former Soviet Union, of shrinking into the background, of simply living from day to day in the hopes of not being noticed by those with power and an agenda.
Back to Putin's reply to Rachel Scott. One of his rather disconnected phrases stuck out to me: "In many countries the same thing happens that happens in our country." Again, I'm guessing at his meaning: If something happens in Russia that doesn't seem to fit the ideal, then don't forget that it also happens everywhere else.
Scandals in other countries are not at all a reason for me to ignore or trivialize blatant cruelty as government policy in a land -- Russia -- whose people and culture have become part of me. However, it also is yet another reminder that when the USA's own people of power subvert due process, abuse and beat and kill suspects, harass peaceful demonstrators, weaken voting rights -- all that just makes life easier and more delightful for the world's smooth-talking authoritarians.
Just a reminder: cynicism is spiritual poison. If you're being invited to abandon your ideals because there also happens to be corruption elsewhere, resist! Together we can work toward the day when corruption and cruelty no longer have a home anywhere.
Among the winners of a survey of Russia's best speakers of Russian: Dmitri Bykov.
Putin's "master class" in whataboutism, and its possible weakness as a strategy.
Earth's energy imbalance has doubled. What does that mean?
This article about insomnia promotes a particular brand of bedding, but, having had several encounters with insomnia over the years, the article seems helpful to me. (Plus: Canadian content!)
Banda Health: Software developers in a frontline alliance with clinics in East Africa and Niger. (Thanks to Bob and Hope Carter, whose newsletter told us about Banda Health.)
Part two of my tribute to James Harman. Here he is at Buddy Guy's Legends club back in the '90's:
Rachel Scott (ABC News): The list of your political opponents who are dead, imprisoned, or jailed, is long. Alexei Navalny, whose organization calls for free and fair elections, an end to corruption -- Russia has outlawed that organization in calling it extremist. And now you have prevented anyone who supports him to run for office. So my question is, Mr. President, what are you so afraid of?
Vladimir Putin: Well, once again I would like to repeat what I said about so-called "foreign agents" and the people who position themselves as the non-system opposition. I've already spoken to your colleagues; now I have to repeat that to you. The U.S. has passed a law that said the U.S. would particularly favor individual organizations in Russia. And at the same time they declared the Russian Federation as an enemy. They publicly declared that they will try to contain Russia. My question is, "Which organizations, which political organizations in the U.S. are going to be supported by the U.S., especially if they pay them? We, the same as the Americans in the 1930's, have endorsed a law but their work is not prohibited. If the organization has an extremist character, that's another kettle of fish. I just wanted to tell you that that one in particular called for public mass demonstrations and also involved or urged minors to take part in street demonstrations and obviously they were being used or manipulated against the law enforcement agencies.
America just recently had to deal with terrible events after the killing of an African American. And an entire movement developed, known as Black Lives Matter. I'm not going to comment on that. But here's what I do want to say. What we saw was disordered destruction, violations of the law, etc. We feel sympathy for the United States of America, but we don't want that to happen on our territory. And we're doing our utmost in order to not allow it to happen. And some fears, has nothing to do with anything.
RS: You didn't answer my question, sir. If all of your political opponents are dead, in prison, poisoned, doesn't that send a message that you do not want a fair political fight?
VVP: As for who is killing whom, throwing whom in jail, people came to the U.S. Congress with political demands. Four hundred people. Over 400 people had criminal charges placed on them. They faced prison sentences of up to 20, maybe even 25 years. They're being called domestic terrorists. They're being accused of a number of other crimes. Seventy of them were arrested right away after the events. And 30 of them are still under arrest. It's unclear on what grounds. And as for the -- nobody from the official authorities has informed us about it. Some people, some people died. And one of the people who died was simply shot on the spot by the police, although they were not threatening the police with any weapons. In many countries the same thing happens that happens in our country. I'd like to stress once more that we sympathize with what happened in the United States but we have no desire to allow the same thing to happen in our country.
Posted by Johan Maurer Location: Portland, OR, USA at 17 June
Labels: blues, environment, politics, russia


Now here's an interesting smartphone from the folks over at Acer. The above video features the Acer Iconia Smart, a media-orientated smartphone that pushes its cinematic credentials to the fore by boasting an unusual 21:9 screen ratio and Dolby Surround Sound tech. It basically means your getting the same superwide cinema experience on this handset as you would down your local Odeon, with no annoying black bars sitting at the top and bottom of the picture.
Elsewhere the specs hold up well to rival handset on show at MWC 2011 too. The edge-lit LED 1024 x 480 touchscreen measures up at an impressive 4.8 inches, with Acer's latest re-skinning of Android 2.3 as the UI. Processing speed is clocked at 1 GHz, while an 8MP camera sits on the rear and 2MP on for video calling lies on the front. It's a fairly slim phone too, measuring up at just 64.5mm thick.
Hit the video above to give it a look.


Pet Talk > Pet > Pet General > Vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
View Full Version : Vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
didn't email as its to muc hassle so I have voted here instead.
I`m voting rabbits, dogs, cats, and fish.
Like Heather said, it`s too much of hassle to e-mail!
to much of a hassle for email.
Tell me off will ya, I think not!!
Dogs! It doesn't matter if I run outside to check the mail, when I come back they are so happy to see me like they haven't seen me in years. They listen to me better then my husband or son.