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On December 14, 2016 December 13, 2016 By James CastroIn Opinions, Random FunLeave a comment
Let's face it…2016 has been a diaper fire of a year. In the face of rampant bigotry, violence, and the worst of the world receiving all the attention and rewards, I thought it would be best to share my superlatives; my favorites of the year 2016. These are of course my favorites, and even though I'm definitely RIGHT, feel free to disagree.
Best Movie: Captain America Civil War
I have to admit I was suffering severe super-hero fatigue going into this movie. I'd had my fill of comic book movies and nerd culture and this just seemed to be another on to add on the pile. Then I saw it and realized, whether you love this trend or not, you have to admire the skill with which the MCU's leadership is weaving its overall narrative. From call backs to films not even believed to be canon until now to payoffs set up four years ago, the movie is a masterpiece of culmination storytelling. It is a wonderfully directed and intensely personal story told with drama, humor, and action in almost equal parts. While I think Winter Soldier is probably a better made film…I can't deny I may enjoy Civil War on a pure watchability level more.
Best TV Show: Stranger Things
I've resisted most "made for Netflix" series because they truly don't appeal to me, but a horror-sc-fi-fantasy story set in the 80s? Yeah I'll check that out. Stranger Things reminds me a lot of my favorite British TV shows, Spaced and The Office. They are short, sharp, stories with absolutely zero fluff and cut down to just the best of the narrative. At only eight episodes it tells is rather complex story in a simple way and absolutely draws you in. By far the best "TV show" of the year and one I've revisited several times since my first viewing.
Best Album: Level 7 – Miracle of Sound
I've got a whole post on Gavin "Miracle of Sound" Dunn coming but his music is kind of the soundtrack to my 2016. I purchased all of his albums from BandCamp after listening to his YouTube channel and I couldn't be more impressed with his range and, more importantly, the passion he has for what he does. 2016 was a tough year creatively, and Dunn's experiences in the year are no exception as vocal negative fans seemed to be the voices shouting the loudest. Level 7 might be my favorite album he's done and the "controversial" Fires Fade one of my new favorite MoS songs. It'll definitely bring some good music to the end of what was kind of a lousy year.
Best Video Game: Doom
Where did this come from? After years of grey-brown "realistic" shooters id software treated us with a return to classic form in Doom. I love everything about this game. From its classic-style shooting (no reloading!) to its marvelous silent protagonist I can see myself wasting hours of time in this game the way I used to waste hours of time in the classic Doom 2. Whenever I have just time to kill (it does happen sometimes…) I definitely don't mind punching demons' appendages off for a while.
Best Time Waster: YouTube Creators
I've been a YouTube fan for a while, but this year I found myself turning to it more and more instead of "traditional" media. From classic favorites like Homestarrunner and AVGN, to Jim Sterling, Angry Joe, RedLetterMedia, and the Nostalgia Critic I found more entertainment having YouTube creators as the background of my day-to-day life than anything else. Got some drawing to do? Let's put on a Co-Optitude marathon! Sitting down for some reading? Cinemassacre's last full Monster Madness ever is going on! It shows the best of egalitarian art, anyone with ability and creativity can become a popular public persona, the established organized structures be damned! The quality content available on YouTube now is remarkable.
Most Surprising Entertainment: The Spin-Off Doctors Podcast
I'm a huge Jim Sterling fan and love his Podquisition podcast. Despite this I'd never listened to his second podcast, the Spin-Off Doctors (aka "The Movie Boys…") before about a month ago. I listened to the Warcraft episode and was hooked. I've listened to every one of them since then and they accompany me everywhere, work, the car, the gym, everywhere. If you haven't listened to Jim Sterling and Conrad Zimmerman analyze the various entertainment enterprises that spin-off from popular video game franchises you're missing out. Their Pixels episode alone is epic!
Best Personal Growth Discovery: Bodybuilding.com
I was introduced to Bodybuilding.com's programs this year and they have reinvigorated my desire to exercise. Admittedly after years of boxing, running, or BeachBody programs I was a bit burned out. These have been a great find and having excellent company and having a blast while working out has been extra motivation! I recommend Jim Stoppani's Shortcut to Size or Kris Gethin's Muscle-Building Trainer. Intense programs that really get results!
Best Cultural Event: Guns N' Roses – Not in this Lifetime Tour
Much like Doom this kind of came out of nowhere. From rumors that started last year a full blown tour no one thought the original line up of Guns N Roses would ever reunite for even one show let alone a multi-continent, months-long tour. Their show in Nashville was terrific and, despite my personal predictions of implosion, their tour in South America is still going strong with a Japan tour forthcoming. It was a childhood dream to see my favorite band live and, while I saw Axl with the new GnR a few years ago, seeing most of the original group together at the absolute top of their game this year blew my mind. By far the event of the year!
That's my positive year-end review. I may do a negative one as well…but a list of all the things that pissed me off this year may never end. It may prove cathartic though so we'll see how I feel in the coming weeks!
On December 7, 2016 December 6, 2016 By James CastroIn Movies, ReviewsLeave a comment
Growing up in the 90s often meant watching whatever was on TV. There was no streaming service, no YoutTube, and no OnDemand viewing for most of us. We generally either picked a channel that fit our mood and watched whatever came on there. As a result we saw a lot of strange and obscure films that were never big hits but made an impact on us because A.) they were all we had and B.) we grew up with them.
In retrospect a lot of these movies are dreadful…we might have loved them at the time but upon rewatching as an adult we regret not keeping them consigned to our memories (I'm looking at you, Mortal Kombat.) Others, however, remain entertaining and can even improve as we watch them with a more mature eye. These movies are what I like to think of as "better than they should be," they work in spite of all the elements that would normally mean they shouldn't. There are tons of these wannabe classics and I thought I'd share some of my favorites. Starting with one of the most unusual: Men at Work.
Title: Men at Work
Director: Emilio Estevez
Starring: Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen (pre-public drugs n' whores meltdown), Keith David (a.k.a. "the best thing in the movie"), Leslie Hope, et al.
Premise: James St. James (Estevez) and Carl Taylor (Sheen) are surfers and would-be surf shop owners who work day jobs as garbage men. They spend their days misbehaving on their trash route, asking each other Trivial Pursuit questions, and spying on their neighbors with binoculars. After they see what they think is one neighbor (Hope) being attacked by a man, Taylor shoots him with an air rifle. Their boss, tired of their at-work antics, mandates they have a ride-along with his brother-in-law Louis (David) and the next day they find the man they shot in with the air rifle in the trash, after he was coincidentally murdered by corporate henchmen. They then have to dodge two cops out to get them, get mixed up in a politics, and stop an evil corporation from dumping toxic waste.
There IS a reasonable narrative explanation for this scene in the film.
Why it's better than it should be: Sheen and Estevez didn't make a lot of movies together, especially where they shared considerable screen time. Their natural familial chemistry plays incredible convincingly (they have a ridiculous fist fight that is spot on how two friends actually fight and contains the dialogue "you're a stupid man, you're a stupid little man!") and since the film hinges on the audience believing in these two guys their relationship is very important. What makes the movie however is Keith David as Louis. I'd never seen him before this film and after watching it he was what I remembered most. A hard-bitten, angry Vietnam veteran, Louis starts out to get Carl and James and the comedic tension he adds is brilliant. As they get mixed up in the conspiracy and murder his role increases as he refuses to let the guys call the cops, and militarizes their entire investigation into what happened and why. The film is also full of wonderful vignettes of comedy; the actual air rifle shooting, finding the victim in the trash, the bumbling corporate hitmen, the needlessly senseless police, and the pathetic pizza man. People are handcuffed together in suggestive ways, a delivery man hostage is taken, and a dead body is dressed up like Richard Nixon. It is farce at its best.
Louis: Awe, lookie here…someone threw away a perfectly good white boy…
Carl(To two cops on bicycles): What happened Mike, they take away your vroom-vrooms?
Louis: Yeah, cop, I know you, man. I know what you're thinking…we got us another crazy n****r here with a gun. Well let me tell you something: human life means very little to me at this point in time. You see I thrive on misery. In the jungle misery's all you got, but things are different back here in the world, or so they seem! Nobody wants to talk about pain and suffering. Everybody wants everything to be nice…and civil. Well okay then! Let's be NICE. Let's be CIVIL. And let's drop those guns before I pull this trigger and change the way you feel about me.
Louis: There are several sacred things in this world that you don't ever mess with. One of them happens to be another man's fries… Now you remember that and you will live a long and healthy life.
Louis: I hate cops… (later) Rent-a-cops…I hate rent-a-cops too!
Hitman Biff: I think he wants us to kill some more people.
Hitman Mario: Ok.
James (offering pizza to hostage delivery man): Are you hungry? Would you like some?
Louis: Don't give him any, James.
James: Why not, he might be hungry.
Louis: He's a prisoner, he should be treated accordingly.
James: Have you completely lost your mind? We're not soldiers and he's not the enemy. He's a pizza man!
Louis: Back in Fubai, he would have been killed the second he knocked on that door. I would have snapped his neck like a twig. And he never would have seen it coming either.
James: Louis, calm down!
Louis: The commie bastard gets no food! (GONG)
Carl: Golf clap?
James: Golf Clap. (both clap softly)
On November 23, 2016 November 22, 2016 By James CastroIn Opinions, Random FunLeave a comment
So it's the week of Thanksgiving and, like the rest of the country, except for enjoying a couple days off, I've chosen to kind of ignore it as a topic and just do my own thing!
As someone with a wide breadth of interests I find it fascinating how many super popular trends never catch on with me. I tend to become obsessed with anything that even slightly grabs my attention long enough for it to become a "hobby" (of which I have far too many), but often the biggest or most prevalent of trends, or at least the ones everyone I know seems to be in to for extended periods of time, always turn out to be anti-interesting to me. So in lieu of being thankful in a post, I thought I'd share a few of the most popular trends I can think of that I simply just don't get… If you like any of these things no strike against you! Like Jim Sterling always says, I wish I could too because being able to enjoy more things would only improve life. But here's this year's list:
Pokemon: This one has been around forever and from day dot I never understood the appeal. Gathering Tamagotchi, training them, then battling them is something that just makes me scratch my head as to why it's popular. Plus it all seems like rock-paper-scissors while you try to increase numbers so your numbers are better than your opponent's numbers. It's also so nakedly commercial even as mercenary as I am I can't see past it… Definitely not for me.
Game of Thrones: My sister bade me watch this show when it was early in its second season. I watched the first four episodes of season one and gave up on it. R rated fantasy soap opera designed to shock you in the same way The Walking Dead did with the "no one is safe" philosophy. I'm not actually shocked by anyone who died because I don't care about any of them.
Internet Overreaction: Wow has this gotten out of control. Every rumor, every bit of news, every story snippet is met with a wall of people who bitch endlessly. Now I'm firmly in the Anti-Ghostbusters remake camp, but the internet reaction was ludicrous. Pro people acting like a movie represented an entire social movement; anti people acting like a film was destroying all pop history. In the end it's just a mediocre comedy. Any time Games Workshop brings out news it's declared "the worst thing ever." Film casting is the end of the world. The internet is like a herd of retarded gazelles; they panic at the slightest alarm but all run staggering in chaotic directions.
Dubstep: This one has faded into the general EDM noise, but it all still sounds like Sega Genesis music to me. This kind of music just makes me think I need to gain a few extra lives in Streets of Rage.
Anime: For a period of three or four years I was all about anime. I watched tons of it and then…well I'd kind of seen enough. I still love a few, Rurouni Kenshin, Full Metal Panic, You're Under Arrest, Love Hina… But so much of it is so…well poorly written while at the same time being so self-indulgently proud of itself I kind of lost all interest in it. And the way it has worked itself into all kinds of art and media has turned so many creative ideas into a gray hegemony of anime style. And wow can these writers really not end a story to save their lives…
Beards: I honestly don't know why this has become the guy fashion trend of the 2010s or who started it. It's almost like all guys who think it's too "girly" to spend a lot of time on their hair decided they would grow beards instead and spending time working on their beards would be more "manly." Then most of them spend a lot of time on their hair too. An entire cottage industry of shaving paraphernalia has sprung up around it. It's like any fashion trend it'll pass eventually but it is still essentially just doing your hair guys…
Online Multiplayer: We all have been online at some point and watched people interact. It is, with possible exception of sitting in traffic, the worst of humanity on display for all to see. So why not put a competitive element in it as well? MMORPGs, First Person Shooters, the new MOBAs that are taking over. I can't imagine a more aggravating way to spend hours of my life than dealing with virtual people behaving anonymously for competition.
Beverage Obsession: This has gone on a long time…but with the prevalence of hispters in the world it's only gotten worse. Designer coffees, craft beers (I hate that term), wine culture, I'll never understand spending ungodly amounts of money on things to drink; it just seems so unusual. I mean there are so many books and Warhammer models to buy, am I right?
Ninten-culture: For some reason Mario and the Legend of Zelda get a world's free pass as cultural icons. When I was at DragonCon you couldn't move through the vendor hall without face-planting into some kind of Mario or LoZ I know a lot of it is my generation grew up with it and now we buy products that remind us of our youths…but retro gaming, and hell even Nintendo, was a lot more than two franchises. No love for Double Dragon, or Dragon Warrior (Quest)? Where is all the Atari or classic arcade based merchandise (not counting YOU Pixels…)? Sure love the two retro-giant franchises but not at the expense of the rest.
Device Fixation: Did you get the new iPhone? Or see it? Or bitch about what features it has/doesn't have? Yeah I didn't. I've been asked several times "what phone do you have?" and/or "When will you get the new one?" My response usually is "A Samsung Galaxy something" and "Whenever this one breaks…" The amount of time people spend staring at little screens is also astounding. They're great tools. I use mine for social media (I take lots of cat pictures), communication, and workout regimens, but to see the number of people with two headphones in everywhere (even in their cars which I'm pretty sure is illegal) or see how many people are constantly staring down at whatever is on their handheld glowing screen at the moment remains a culture shock. Karl Pilkington said it best, it's not about people wanting more information or music than ever before, it's all about having the accessory. Sing-it Pilkie01.
So that's my gripe list for the year. Yeah some of these are probably repeats but it just goes to show how long a lot of these trends have been lingering. It'll be interesting to see if any of these finally die off in the new year…or how many will appear on next year's list!
On November 16, 2016 November 16, 2016 By James CastroIn Games, ReviewsLeave a comment
I would say the game I spent the most time on as a kid was id Software's Doom. I played it on 32x, I played it as Shareware (yes, kiddies this was a thing) on my hard-drive-less PC (yes that was a thing too), and I played it on my regular PC when graphics hardware wasn't even a thing and the most important aspect of getting a game to work was ensuring your SoundBlaster was functioning.
I spent hours on Doom and the best game sequel ever, Doom 2. After beating both games I spent hours in god-mode just running around blasting monsters. I'd write my own narratives and, because the player avatar really didn't have his own personality, I could pretend to be anything as I went from level to level stomping demons.
I never got into Doom 3 but I did very much enjoy Bethesda's Wolfenstein: New Order and Old Blood. When I heard they were releasing their version of the venerable first person horror shooter I was excited but tentative. I couldn't get into the grim joylessness of the franchise's third entry and capturing the free-roaming fun of the 90s originals seemed like a tall order in the modern era.
I finally got Bethesda's Doom (2016) in October and…I love it. It is as close to Doom as I think we'll get without just getting graphically overhauled versions of the original games (which I would be for). How does Bethesda get it right?
Finding an updated take on the classic Doom Marine Armor is incredibly exciting.
Mood: Original Doom was fun. It had some brutal imagery and scary moments but it was really a power fantasy. Your Doom marine could take on hordes of undead monsters and massive demons with a chaingun and a rocket launcher and come through with just gritted teeth and maybe a bloody nose. The narrative, which was there despite what some critics believe, took place in text crawls between chapters. This game has a far more "Bethesda" story, which is to say it's involved and excellent. But you don't have to pay attention to any of it. This incarnation of the Doom marine certainly doesn't. The tone is just as power fantasy and irreverent as the original games; except here you can literally rip off demons' arms and beat them to death with them or shove a mancubus' explosive cells down his throat. It's all done with cartoonish hyper-violence and humor. It's brutal and violent but in more like a bloody looney tunes episode than Call of Duty.
I know and Imp, Revenant, and Cacodemon when I see them!
Design: One of the problems I had with Doom 3 was the design. It felt more like Aliens and later Dead Space than Doom. Everything was dark and cramped. The monsters just vaguely resembled their origin creatures. In Doom (2016) as soon as each monster appears Doom veterans will identify them. Imps, Pinkies, Cacodemons, and Barons of Hell all resemble the original game enough that you get excited when you first see them. Even the guns, the super-shotgun, the chaingun, the plasma rifle, all show their 90s origins.
Game Play: The most important aspect of any game and the one that concerned me the most about new Doom. But it got it right. Of course it's updated but the elements are there but you never reload your weapons; if you have 300 shots you can shoot 300 shots. You don't hide behind walls to heal; you brutally execute demons or find health power ups to heal. The camera doesn't wobble around like a drunk camera operator is in control of your character; it's static and the gun moves when you run. It feels like an old school shooter in a modern wrapper. Brighter colors, faster pace, but with all the junk that clutters modern games stripped out. The junk that makes them more "realistic" and less fun.
I can't recommend Doom (2016) highly enough. It's a terrifically fun game and is a blast from the past for classic shooter fans.
One footnote, the music is TERRIFIC!
HalloWarhammer: Horror in the World of Warhammer 40k
On October 31, 2016 October 30, 2016 By James CastroIn Books, Random Fun, ReviewsLeave a comment
So as most know I'm a huge fan of Games Workshop's fictional world. One of the best aspects of this world is it can essentially house every kind of genre imaginable. There are Ciaphas Cain comedies, Ultramarine traditional war stories, Last Chancers underdog guerilla stories, and even a few romances thrown in for good measure.
One genre that really lends itself to the world of daemons, monsters, and heroes is horror. The Warhammer world has its fair share of horror stories (if you go into Fantasy Battles that's even more true what with vampires, zombies, and Hammer Horror atmosphere everywhere) but I thought I'd share a couple of my favorites!
Old Soldiers Never Die (Sandy Mitchell) – Ciaphas Cain and his Valhallan 597th end up on the planet of Lentonia to assist in the quashing of a recent rebellion. During their time there a host of plague zombies arise and the put-upon commissar is forced to deal with a near spot-on Romero zombie uprising and a chaos cult. Even driving his command vehicle through the streets running them down. It's a great little story and a perfect Halloween zombie fix for fans of 40k and the hero of the imperium. For even more Ciaphas Cain zombie fun also check out Dead in the Water, a great audio drama about Cain on his own Apocalypse Now adventure.
Waiting Death (Steve Lyons) – The galaxy's quintessential tough-guy Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken and his Catachans are stationed on Borealis Four. During a long march his unit stumbles across a mysterious village where the regiment comes under siege by shadowy monsters who appear from nowhere, assault the wily jungle fighters, and vanish again. The description of the monsters is horrific and the tension voiced marvelously by Toby Longworth causes a wonderfully suspenseful narrative. It has a bit of a twist to it and the final monster is downright frightening. Not really "gothic" horror as such but its reminiscent of 80s action horror.
Alone (Joe Parrino) – This is the one that inspired me to write this article. Raven Guard Librarian Ithkos Jevel is lost on his own in an abandoned imperial ship. As he attempts to contact his battle brothers he is accosted by a presence who mocks him over the vox. The voice acting by Gareth Armstrong, Robin Bowerman, and Jonathan Keeble is amazing. Especially the eerie, shrill voice of the mocking daemonic presence that continuously torments Ithkos during his journey down the dark corridors, often imitating the voice of one of Ithkos' fallen comrades. Especially the evil reading of the line "You walk in dark places!" The imagery provided in the audio drama is equally frightening. The lifeless eyes of statuary truly has the feel of an Exorcist or Omen film. One scene in particular stays with me as true horror. One of the statues of saints comes to life and assaults Ithkos. The statue described as moving in a horrific, spider-like manner reminds me of something out of Silent Hill. This audio drama more than any of the others makes me realize just how effective horror radio shows must have been during the heyday of the serial radio program. If you're looking for something thematic to paint or build your armies this season it doesn't get much better than this!
Psych Tuesday the 17th: Must Watch Halloween 2016
On October 30, 2016 By R. PettyIn TV ShowsLeave a comment
Psych's Tuesday the 17th ranks in my top three, if not No. 1, in my favorite Psych episodes. It's the perfect mix of horror/comedy and has some of the most memorable scenes from any episode. Also, anyone who enjoys the Friday the 13th series will enjoy it, as audiences can see the Psych crew loves the series just as much. So much so that James Roday was interviewed in His Name Was Jason, the documentary that spans the 30-year franchise.
For those reasons and many more, I've picked Tuesday the 13th as the must watch for this Halloween. Here's why:
Friday the 13th – Psych Style
As a fan of the earlier Friday the 13th movies, I was beyond excited when Psych released the trailer for their Tuesday the 17th episode, which aired on Friday the 13. Imagine … Camp Tikihama (Camp Crystal Lake, Camp Blood), with stereotyped counselors, a creepy old guy, and Shawn and Gus.
I won't go into much detail because I don't want to ruin anything, but the Psych crew did an amazing job with this episode. The first half is the set-up, packed full of comedy and suspense as everyone looks for a missing counselor, Annie. You may recognize the name as the optimistic counselor from the original who's hitchhiking her way to camp. Then the twist happens, and the second half goes much darker. Even though it goes dark, it never loses its Psych sense of humor.
Homage to Friday the 13th
Tuesday the 17th pays homage to the first two films. And the show references the movies throughout the entire process. Here are just a few examples:
It's shot in classic 80s style atmosphere. Usually, Psych episodes are bright and crystal clear, but not this one. It's a little fuzzy with smart use of lighting, playing on light vs. dark. Psych actually does this much better than most horror movies that have been released in the last 10 years.
The entire episode takes place at the camp in the woods.
The group plays a game of strip cribbage, similar to the strip Monopoly in the original movie.
Erwin. The creepy old janitor who yells, "You're all doomed," which is a throwback to the second movie.
There is a Jason. No spoilers!
They reference the movie and the fact that they're in a slasher-movie scenario. There is indeed a killer on the loose, and he's wearing a potato sack.
The audience immediately knows this episode will be different because Shawn and Gus switch roles. From the beginning, Shawn is skeptical of the entire situation, while Gus shows no fear. Any Psych fan knows Gus is not fearless and runs from danger, so it's nice to see him in a more fearless role, and he is hilarious.
Lassie's Side Plot
Psych often had a couple of plots in each episode, ensuring the show never got too silly or too dramatic and the audience never got bored. When not at Camp Tikihama, the audience is with Lassiter during a very important life change. As it happens, you're a little thrown off, but it's huge in Lassiter's character development. Each subplot scene lasts only a couple of minutes, and by the end, you know nothing will be the same … for anyone.
Rewatch Value
When this episode premiered in 2009, I was still recording on DVD. This was before the wonderful DVR was available. The night it premiered, I fell in love. I watched it twice that night, then several times over the weekend, and I've seen it a hundred times since. It's that good.
It pairs well with the Friday the 13th traditions of watching the movies on every Friday the 13th, as you can watch Psych the following Tuesday on the 17th. I also recommend watching Friday the 13th 1 and 2, then watching Psych to get all the references.
If you love horror and horror/comedy, this show is a must. Also, I you've never seen the show, then watch this one episode. Tuesday the 17th is Psych doing everything the cast and crew loves to do: Have fun and keep the audience entertained while paying homage to a horror classic.
We hope you enjoy it and have a happy Halloween!
A quick note to Netflix fans: Netflix has announced it will remove Psych on November 1, so this Halloween may be your last chance to see it there.


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Q: How do I specify the column to display in a dropdownlist? I have a database table with a computed column. The computed column merges two names (first and last) into a single display name. In the code below, I want to specify the value of the computed column, named DisplayName. How do I do this? Thanks!
FYI, this is MVC Beta 4.

    @Html.LabelFor(model => model.PdId, "Pd")

    @Html.DropDownList("PdId", String.Empty)
    @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.PdId)

A: Use a view model and a strongly typed view and DropDownListFor helper. Can't see your code, so here's an untested psuedo:
public class MyViewModel
{
    public int PdId { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Names { get; set; }
}

populate view model from controller
public ActionResult VIewName(?)
{
    var people =  // query
    var model = new MyViewModel
    {
       PdId = people.nameId,
       FullNames = people.Select(x => new SelectListItem
        {
             Value = x.nameId.ToString(),
             Text = x.FirstName + " " + x.LastName
        })
    };
    return View(model);
}

In  view use the strongly typed DropDownListFor helper
@model MyViewModel

@Html.DropDownListFor(
    x => x. PdId,
    Model. FullNames
)

A:

    @Html.LabelFor(model => model.PdId, "Pd")

    @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.PdId, Model.DisplayName)
    @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.PdId)

A: As long as the column is an actual field, it should be an option when you connect to the database when you do a SELECT in the DDL with a DISTINCT.
If it is an aliased column, and is being reference with a computated column then just reference the computed column in your select statement on the C# side...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Disa woodii är en orkidéart som beskrevs av Rudolf Schlechter. Disa woodii ingår i släktet Disa och familjen orkidéer. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Orkidéer
woodii

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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HomeImpunity
International day to end impunity – survivors recount harrowing experience at conference on safety of female journalists
ImpunitySafety of Journalists
When on May 12, 2021, Zoe Abu-Baidoo, a journalist with Citi FM in Ghana, received a WhatsApp message from her colleague inviting her out for lunch, it did not arouse any suspicion in her. After all, it wasn't the first time.
What she did not know was that the person on the other side of the chat was not her colleague, Caleb Kudah, but rather a national security operative who was trying to lure her to arrest her.
It took the timely intervention from another colleague, in the media house located in the heart of Accra, to scuttle the plot, as Zoe got to know that her supposed lunch date had been arrested for filming inside a national security installation.
But uncovering the plot did little to prevent seven strong men wielding weapons to pursue Zoe from the car park of the station into its kitchen.
Zoe who struggled to dam her emotions declined recounting the story when she joined other panelists at a Conference on safety of female journalists in Ghana on Friday, October 29. This is because she was yet to recover from the trauma.
When she took her turn, Rosaline Amoh, a Deputy News Editor of the state-owned Daily Graphic, `narrated how she narrowly escaped assault in 1999 when thugs invaded her house for reporting on a Stadium renovation probe that indicted some high-profile personalities. She had to deny her identity, telling the thugs "Rosaline lives here but has travelled."
Her small frame might have saved her, she said smiling, but that encounter sent chills down her spine as the assailants who did not know her left a message, warning her to stay away from the probe or risk being beaten to a pulp.
But a year earlier, she was not as lucky. She said she received a slap from a spectator during Ghana's World Cup qualifier against Morocco at the Kumasi Sports Stadium for doing her job.
In the case of Doreen Ampofo of the state-owned broadcaster, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), a case of mistaken identity during the collation of Ghana's 2020 general elections in the Ablekuma Central Constituency in Accra nearly got her assaulted. But she sustained various degrees of injuries when she fled from her attackers who mistook her for an official of the Electoral Commission.
The horrifying experience of these female journalists was a major highlight of the one-day conference in Accra which brought to the fore the vulnerability of female journalists in the face of increasing attacks on journalists in Ghana and other parts of West Africa.
Organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) with the support of the Netherlands Embassy in Ghana and the Alliance for Women in Media Africa (AWMA), the conference forms part of activities to mark this year's International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists which falls on November 2, 2021.
More than 80 active and retired female journalists attended the event in Accra, which also became a motivational session for young female journalists.
Zoe said beside female journalists facing threats and physical assault outside newsrooms in Ghana, they also had to deal with sexual harassment, which came from colleagues and superiors.
Those daring enough to demand the right tools for their work were also seen as all-knowing. This is worse for entry-level female journalists, she added.
For Doreen Ampofo, there was no form of orientation in newsrooms to raise the consciousness of journalists on safety on the field, which made female journalists in particular vulnerable.
Research shows an upsurge in attacks that undermine the safety and security of female journalists in particular across the world. Abuse against female journalists takes many forms –physical violence, entrenched behaviours (such as marginalization and hostility against them), unequal working conditions and online abuses.
These attacks have repercussions, the Programme Manager of MFWA in charge of Freedom of Expression, Muheeb Saeed, said, as he pointed out that the trends of abuse were pushing some female journalists and media workers to self-censorship, adopt lower public profile, switch beats to report on less controversial issues or even quit the profession.
"Some have also experienced psychological and physical harm as a result of some newsroom practices, inequalities/injustices, job security and sexual harassment. When women journalists are restricted or hounded out of the profession, society is denied access to a diverse range of information and perspective."
Guest speaker for the event, Eyram Bashan, whose experience in the newsroom and management spanned more than 20 years agreed.
"Women journalists bring a unique perspective to storytelling and must be provided with the necessary tools and safety measures by their employers," she explained.
She observed that the number of attacks on male journalists was because the media in the country was male-dominated.
She, however, said it should not mean that female journalists should not be protected even if their numbers were small.
"Male managers must understand that it is not a one-fit-all solution, there are peculiar needs of female journalists that need to be addressed but that understanding is still not there.
With female journalists complaining about sex predators in their newsrooms and dangers in the field, she urged her peers in leadership positions in the media to use their position to articulate safety for female journalists.
She was worried that some media owners would even fail to provide transportation for female journalists to and from work, leaving them in the worst form of vulnerability.
"Transportation is a basic tool for journalists without it, female journalists are stripped of all dignity."
To empower themselves against abuse and shield themselves against exploitation, she urged women in the media to seek and negotiate properly their safety nets including insurance, Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), job security and career development.
She also urged all female journalists to invest in their personal security and not to leave it in the hands of only their employers.
To employers, she had a caveat, "you can't send female journalists to high-risk assignments without insuring them," while urging the trade unions to create gender desks to fight for female journalists.
Convenor of the Alliance for Women in Media Africa (AWMA), Shamima Muslim, observed that while the country's television and radio space now had an impressive list of women, there was still a long way toward bridging the gap of inequality.
The conference, she said was, therefore, in line with AWMA'S commitment to building a meaningful partnership that took it closer to its goal of empowering female journalists.
Contributing to the discussions, a freelance journalist, Zubaida Ismail, said female journalists working in the regions as correspondents suffered the most and were the least resourced but the least protected.
But the Business Editor of Joy News, Odelia Ntiamoah Boampong, said the antidote to the challenges facing women in the media was that women were not represented enough in terms of leadership and ownership in the media.
"More women need to put themselves up for leadership and opportunities. Once the top is populated by men, they connect our issues to the menstrual cycle and stress from having children," she explained.
On safety, she urged her colleagues to consciously look into their environment while on the field.
"If you're not comfortable, trust your instinct and leave," she advised.
The conference preceded a forum on October 28 which discussed media professionalism, safety of journalists in Ghana.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomes the release of Iranian religious prisoner of conscience Fariba Kamalabadi, one of the Baha'i leaders known as the "Yaran" (Friends in Iran). In 2008, all seven leaders were arrested and sentenced to prison, charged with espionage and "spreading propaganda against the regime." Ms. Kamalabadi was released after serving her full 10-year sentence. This followed the September 2017 release of Mahvash Sabet, a fellow Yaran who also was held in Tehran's Evin Prison. The other five Yaran remain imprisoned.
Vice Chairwoman Arriaga took up Ms. Kamalabadi's and Ms. Sabet's cases as part of USCIRF's Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project. Through this project, Commissioners work for the release of individuals who have been imprisoned for their religious identity, beliefs, practices, or advocacy and highlight the laws and policies that led to the imprisonment.
Since 1999, USCIRF has recommended, and the State Department has designated, Iran as a "country of particular concern" (CPC) for the government's systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations. Since President Hassan Rouhani's election in 2013 and reelection in May 2017, the number of individuals from religious minority communities who are in prison because of their beliefs has increased. These prisoners demonstrate the Iranian government's callous disregard for the international human rights agreements that Iran has ratified.
USCIRF Chairman Daniel Mark stated, "This month, the State Department should release its designations of CPCs. USCIRF continues to recommend that the State Department designate Iran as a CPC based on systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom targeting not only Baha'is but also Christian converts, Sunni and Sufi Muslims, and dissenting Shi'a Muslims. The U.S. government must stand firm for the religious freedom of the Iranian people utilizing all policy tools available, including asset freezes and visa bans targeting those accountable for violations."
Read USCIRF's 2017 Annual Report Iran chapter here (Persian translation).


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Scandza ou Scanzia est le nom que Jordanès donna à la Scandinavie dans son Histoire des Goths au  de notre ère. La Scandza est considérée comme une île selon les connaissances géographiques de l'époque.

Sources
 Jordanès, Histoire des Goths, chapitres I–IV.

Voir aussi
 Thulé

Histoire de la Scandinavie médiévale
Pays ou peuple au Moyen Âge
Jordanès


text:
Die Peru International 2005 im Badminton fanden vom 21. bis zum 24. April 2005 in Lima statt.

Sieger und Platzierte

Weblinks
 http://tournamentsoftware.com/sport/tournament.aspx?id=10322E76-A973-40BB-9E1A-E2F5225EAEB6

2005
Badminton 2005
Badmintonwettbewerb in Lima


FFP is Sweden's most renowned Burlesque and Cabaret Club. Our Home is Nalen, a vintage Jazz ballroom in the heart of the stunningly beautiful 'Venice of the North' Stockholm, with the added extravagance of the hot and bumping Harlem swing lounge.
Run by the dashing duo: Fräulein Frauke and John Paul Bichard, FFP brings together burlesque and cabaret performers, Jazz musicians and artists from around the world for a wild, exotic, extravagant night of vintage inspired performances and partying.
Star Performers have included: Vicky Butterfly, Lada Redstar, Luna Rosa, GoGo Harder, Cleo Viper, Dusty Limits, Laurie Hagen, Christopher Wonder, Mr Pustra alongside Sweden's top performers.
Our magnificent guests bring a tremendous atmosphere to the occasion, dressed in exquisite vintage attire, toppers and tails, vintage uniforms, corsets, furs and feathers and all manner of extraordinary hats.
Our DJs ignite both the gilded, mirrored ballroom and the smouldering Harlem Absolut lounge with contagious tunes that make it impossible not to dance the night away.


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Oregon Children's Choral Festival Case Study
Posted on May 16, 2012 October 27, 2021 by Anthony Romero | 1 mins read
Anthony Romero
Anthony was product marketing manager at Dacast for 5 years. He loves the video streaming industry and is now working with our friends at IBM Cloud Video.
Through selecting Dacast's Pay Per View video services, the Oregon Children's Choral Festival was able to expand its outreach and get a new revenue stream.
The Oregon Children's Choral Festival was founded in 1984. It has served young singers from all over Oregon. The festival has seen as many as 3000 singers in attendance on certain years, and continues to operate on an annual basis.
Want to learn more about the Oregon Children's Choral Festival? Be sure to check out their website.
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It doesn't matter if I am going to for the day or to a local park for a few hours, I always take a thermos of water and a picnic basket with me. If you follow my advice, you can save well over a thousand dollars a year just like I do.
It's not hard to save lunch money. It just takes pre-planning. Your first step is to buy yourself good picnic baskets. I like one with a handle and wheels. Make sure it will easily fit into your vehicle. Because I live in sunny California, my baskets are very insulated – the hard-sided picnic basket type. When I lived in New England where the temperatures didn't get so high, I had a soft-sided picnic basket. The soft-sided baskets are easier to jam into awkward spaces and take up less room when they are empty. (Of course, if you can find one of these in great shape at a yard sale, then grab it up there!) For short outings, Niconail likes the Easy Lunchbox.


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When you fall out of reality: Dispatches from Moments of Calm by Alexander Kluge & Gerhard Richter
As we witness an unprecedented assault on the integrity and role of journalists and the news media, fueled by recent events in the US—and, let's be fair, in many other nations in our current climate of political unease—this collaborative effort to re-imagine an alternative approach to capturing reality is ever more timely and precious. The genesis of Dispatches from Moments of Calm (Seagull Books, 2016) lies in an unusual experiment. For one day, October 5, 2012, all of the noisy and distressing political reportage evaporated from the pages of the German national newspaper, Die Welt. In its place? Thirty pages of photographs capturing the simplicity of the everyday—a quiet interlude in restless times, created and directed by renowned artist Gerhard Richter.
Inspired by this singular attempt to create a "moment of calm," writer and film maker, Alexander Kluge, started to work on a collection of small stories to accompany the images. Richter responded in turn with the proposal of a collaboration. He added more photos; Kluge wrote more stories. The resulting book—a continuation of their first successful joint publication, December (2010/2012)—is an important, and given the mood of the current times and the circumstances of the project's origin, a more meditative and philosophical work.
The photographs scattered throughout the text isolate the ordinary instant. The atmosphere is placid, low-key. We see a dog sleeping in the sun, the blurred image of a family at a meal, a deserted downtown street, images of nature, children at play, a moody seascape, and more. But each image exists in a space apart from time and the world. And Kluge's fictions, taking off as they so frequently do, from real life people, events, and ideas, offer the ideal counterpoint. Many of the stories explicitly explore the intersection between art, music and reality:
László Moholy-Nagy was asked whether a photograph reproduces a piece of reality. He denied the claim. He replied that a photograph is constituted by the fact that it concentrates on an actual moment and records it, becoming a textual addition existing outside the world. He knew, the Bauhaus man continued, series and networks of such photographs, which relate to reality or current events like a mirror (including the gaps in that reality, to a silence or to a nothingness), but which, when cut off from the rapidly receding stratification of time, would form themselves into their own republic, one that would superimpose itself (like an El Niño mudslide) onto the original impression that caused the photograph, which itself would have disappeared from the participants' memory, had they never had the impression to begin with.
Dispatches comprises 89 stories and 64 pictures. Some of the stories—which range from a paragraph or two to a couple of pages—were composed to accompany, after the fact, specific images from the original Die Welt project. Both Kluge and Richter added more contributions on their own. In the resulting book, the confluence between images seems to be accidental, rather than exacting. Where a connection exists, the image is unlikely to occur near the corresponding story. This arrangement adds to the incidental flow of the work. There is, however a thematic structuring at play.
The book is divided into five parts. The stories in first section turn on the element of chance. With narratives featuring real figures from science, music, and history, alongside parables drawn from nature and from everyday life, Kluge explores the vagaries of fate and circumstance. The consequences, happy or unhappy, have the effect of promoting a sense of disequilibrium—an awareness of the fleeting quality of those moments of calm that we experience.
The second part takes us into the city starting with stories set in modern urban spaces, moving back in time to vignettes that speculate on the Mesopotamian origins of the city-state and ruminations on the nature of the concept "city." This section closes with a story featuring sociologist Richard Sennett:
The city that we carry around inside ourselves, he said, is visible. But when you see a city destroyed by bombs, one which you do not know and means nothing to you, and you nevertheless feel sad, then you can see from this reaction that we carry around inside ourselves just such an invisible city. You see the city only when it has been lost.
These words seamlessly lead into a collection of stories set in the Middle East—Beirut, Lebanon, Syria, Israel—engaging current events, history and even opera to reflect, in words, the very instants Moholy-Nagy imagined captured in the mirror of a photograph.
The final two sections sharpen the focus on questions of reality—how we report it, record it, place ourselves in relation to it. The philosophical musings Kluge entertains in these brief stories offer so much to contemplate. His ability to exploit the fluid intersection between what we, especially in English language literature, want to divide into fact and fiction, lends his stories the sense that these should be considered fragmentary pieces of nonfiction. The influence that his work had on W. G. Sebald is evidenced in this regard. These stories, parables, and reflections are, in themselves, narrative truths—regardless of whether they describe events as they really occurred, or if they even occurred at all. Kluge wants to make you stop, in the moment, and think. Here, as an illustration, is one of my favourite stories, in its entirety to provide a taste of Kluge at work:
For many centuries, thousands of monks in monasteries between Ireland and Byzantium, dotted like islands across the barbaric land, were writing out the holy texts. Their zeal and their great efforts produced mistakes. The result was that the texts imperceptibly expanded. One learned monk in Samanca was delighted to find a text by Ovid on the back of a copy of the apocryphal LOGION OF ST JOHN. The copyist on the island of Reichenau could not resist including this interpolation. In this way, a text was expanded in a distinctly "unholy" manner.
A transcription of texts (just as if evolution had been tinkering with their DNA texts) doesn't only create lines to new future texts. It can also be reconstructed in the direction of paradise. The way there leads through indeterminacies. 'Nearer, my God to Thee' was the music played by the orchestra on board the Titanic as the ship went down. But it is also the working instructions to copyists of all countries, who are driven from the omphalos of experience into the parallel world (heterotopia), the pre-world history and the future world (the world of our children, who are so attached to life). For copyists, all images are NOW-TIME.
I don't know if it is the nature of the project from which this collaboration arose, that is, as an attempt to visually introduce an element of calm to the daily news cycle, that gives this book its impact, but in contrast to December, which I read at the end of last year (my review is here), Dispatches from Moments of Calm is a more powerful, comprehensive work. But then it may be a question of timing. Originally published in German in 2013, the driving forces against which Richter's photographic interlude at Die Welt was superimposed, have not slowed. Uncertainty has increased and continues to grow. But as Kluge and Richter, two of the most influential and respected artists of their generation stand to remind us, art is more critical than ever at times like the one we find ourselves in at the end of 2016.
Like the dome of lights over a great city, the STATE OF THE NEWS forms an aura in which a general notion of what matters in the world coalesces.
It is out of such NEWS VALUES and not out of the facts themselves that the daily image of the reality of our world is put together. The products of poetry form an antithesis to this daily fluctuation. In painted images, and in the narratives of short stories and novels, time outside stands still.
Dispatches from Moments of Calm by Alexander Kluge and Gerhard Richter is translated by Nathaniel McBride and published by Seagull Books. A second edition of their earlier collaboration, December (translated by Martin Chalmers) will be published, also by Seagull, in paperback, in Spring 2017.
Author roughghostsPosted on November 30, 2016 January 9, 2019 Categories Books, German, Review, TranslatedTags #germanlitmonth, Alexander Kluge, book review, books, Dispatches from Moments of Calm, Gerhard Richter, German, literature, photography, Seagull Books, translation
20 thoughts on "When you fall out of reality: Dispatches from Moments of Calm by Alexander Kluge & Gerhard Richter"
I saw an exhibition of Richter's work at the Tate Modern 4 or 5 years ago, a major retrospective including pieces from various points in his career. I can still recall the effect these works had on me, especially some of the paintings of his family. This book sounds equally powerful.
Richter and Kluge are an interesting team. In the back of the book they are listed with their baby pictures and birthdates—they are only a handful of days apart in age, both now in their mid-80s.
I read a review of this recently, & your post adds to my sense that this is worth seeking out – thanks
I've had it since just after it came out but my reading has been slowed by life events and losses this year. Reading it in the post-truth, post-Brexit/Trump state of unreality lends an extra element to the meditations (and need for moments of calm too).
Melissa Beck says:
It's so funny that you just posted this because I am currently reading December. It is quite a book and I think I will like this one even more. Great review, Joe!
I read December last December and I liked it and was intrigued by the flat, serious tone to Kluge's stories that seem like nonfiction. (Having read more Sebald as well as Sarotar's Panorama I am more intrigued by this quality.) The themes and images in this book are more varied and Kluge's philosophical and film director sides come through more. There is a lot to think about here.
Good post! I thought of William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, that greeny flower", though I can't replicate his line endings here for some reason…
"Look at what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in despised poems.
It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.
Hear me out for I too am concerned and every man who wants to die at peace in his bed besides."
Thanks for the poem Theresa. It is very timely and appropriate.
What a lovely sounding book. I think we need more calming influences in our daily lives, definitely…
Interestingly the "calm" in the stories is sometimes sad or unhappy. But the book offers much food for thought.
bookbii says:
A beautiful, thoughtful review of a book which sounds equally beautiful and thoughtful. It's a lovely idea to refocus on the simple joys of daily life, that sliver of sunlight slipping through the clouds. Gorgeous pictures, and the stories sound both intelligent and intriguing.
Thank you. As I indicated to Karen above, some stories are sad or deal with difficult themes, but they don't evoke the horror most of us feel just looking at the way the world seems to be spiraling of late.
How wonderful and beautiful and so, so necessary!
True, so true.
orientikate says:
This review was heart-expanding and hopeful. The project certainly sounds like one for our times and I shall be seeking out this book. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.
I hope you like it. It is hard to capture the feel of the work. Heart-expanding is a good expression.
Scott Abbott says:
I bought the book and am reading it slowly, looking at it carefully, savoring it. thanks!
I'm glad you're enjoying it. This is definitely a book that invited you to take your time. Best wishes for the holiday season.
Thanks for this review, I'll order the book now. I'm on way to Cologne to see Richter in Museum Ludwig later this week. What a great artist!
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This Super-Precise Clock Might Aid Scientists In Finding Dark Matter
Jannat Un Nisa September 17, 2021 0
Two physicists Hidetoshi Katori and Jun Ye, have just been awarded $3 million for their contributions on developing a super-precise clock that will allow scientists to examine and explore the universe like never before.
It enables scientists to identify gravitational waves, search for dark matter, and conduct precise tests of fundamental natural laws. Katori and Ye's research was critical to the creation of the optical lattice clock, which improves timekeeping precision by a factor of 1,000. The new timepiece is so accurate that if it ran for 30 billion years, it would lose less than 1 second, more than double the age of the Universe.
The research was awarded a $3 million 2022 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics. It is supported by numerous people, including Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg.
Optical lattice clocks are an evolutionary step beyond the traditional atomic clocks that rely on electromagnetic radiation and their interaction with the electrons in energised atoms to maintain time. They are used in worldwide satellite navigation systems such as GPS and control the wave-frequency of TV transmissions.
The physicists have developed a way of making the clocks more precise, with oscillating frequencies higher than those utilised in the existing atomic clocks, to the visible end of the electromagnetic spectrum. First, they required a solution to tame atoms, holding them still to measure time accurately. The researchers used an "optical lattice," a standing wave from a laser beam that creates a sort of egg-carton shape whose wells trap the atoms.
"It's almost like a science-fiction tractor beam," Ye explained to Space.com. "You put a tractor beam in the middle of the vacuum chamber, and you can hold atoms in the middle of the vacuum chamber with light."
"We engineered it in such a way that this action of holding onto these atoms turns out to cause no perturbations to the measurement of the energy spacing between these two quantum states that really mattered for the clock measurement. So, this was almost like the free lunch.
Katori and Ye's discovery cleared the path for the optical lattice clock. In contrast, atomic clocks lose a second once every 100 million years, showcasing the precision of optical lattice clocks.
There are various promising uses of this technology. For example, once combined with present tech, it could increase the accuracy of GPS navigation by 1000. Furthermore, the link between gravity and time could also help researchers track volcanic and seismic events here on Earth and hunt for buried oceans beyond this world.
"Optical lattice clocks could even aid the search for elusive dark matter," Ye said.
"Dark matter somehow must interact with ordinary matter, other than just gravitational physics," Ye said. "We want to be able to see very feeble signatures of a possible dark matter component to the ordinary matter that we know on Earth in the signatures of a clock being slowed down or sped up when the dark matter comes through. So we have been preparing experiments like that."
Google's Huge New Underwater Cable Spans 4000 Miles, But It Faces A Big Threat
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2018 Lincoln MKC Performance Review
The 2018 Lincoln MKC gives you a choice between two turbocharged four-cylinder engines, though both deliver similar performance. The MKC's ride quality is good, but its cornering ability isn't on par with rivals (look to competitors like the Acura RDX, Audi Q5, and BMW X3 if you're after an engaging drive). Fuel economy is about average for the class. Front-wheel drive is standard, and all-wheel drive is available.
Handling is far less responsive and engaging than most rivals, but we ultimately think this shouldn't be a problem for those shoppers more interested in its comfort credentials." -- Edmunds (2017)
"No matter the EcoBoost engine or drivetrain layout, Lincoln's 2016 MKC small-luxury SUV feels solid, confident and safe." -- Kelley Blue Book (2016)
"The same [2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder] engine appears in top-of-the-line versions of the Escape. We've raved about its smooth, assertive acceleration in the Ford, and it's more of the same here -- although the Lincoln does outweigh its humble cousin by about 150-200 pounds, depending on trim." -- Autotrader (2015)
Acceleration and Power
The MKC features a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder base engine that puts out 240 horsepower. It's mated to a six-speed automatic transmission. This engine has ample power and respectable acceleration and should be fine for most drivers.
A turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine is available in all-wheel-drive models, and it produces 285 horsepower. Though it's stronger, this engine doesn't deliver appreciably better performance. Both engines have a noticeable turbo lag when you hit the gas.
The base engine gets better fuel economy, earning an EPA-estimated 21 mpg in the city and 28 mpg on the highway. That's about average for a luxury compact SUV. The more powerful engine gets 18 mpg in the city and 25 mpg on the highway.
The 2017 MKC's base 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine packs a suitable amount of punch. The engine and transmission are responsive, and this helps make the MKC feel quicker than its bottom-of-the-pack acceleration numbers would indicate. In real-world driving, the 2.3-liter engine doesn't feel a whole lot stronger. It's also noticeably less potent than rival base engines, let alone other upgrades." -- Edmunds (2017)
"In a straight line, the MKC's nearly 2-ton curb weight with all-wheel drive holds it back, but there's still ample turbocharged thrust on tap, no matter which engine you select. The base front-wheel-drive model is quicker than you'd think, as it's significantly lighter than all-wheel-drive examples." -- Autotrader (2016)
With both engines offered, normal acceleration is fairly smooth and seamless. But if you're in a hurry and the throttle is floored from a stop, it takes a moment for either of the turbocharged engines to start producing real power, which then comes on with a slight surge." -- Consumer Guide (2015)
Handling and Braking
The MKC comes standard with front-wheel drive. All-wheel drive and an adaptive suspension with three driving modes (Normal, Sport, and Comfort) are available. This SUV is built for comfort; it has a smooth ride and soaks up road imperfections without complaint. But the MKC leaves a lot to be desired in terms of agility. It's less composed than many class rivals, and there is a lot of body roll when going around turns. Some drivers find it engaging, however.
The MKC leans significantly when you push it through a corner, lacking the poise and composure of most competitors, even with the suspension in its sportiest mode. In the city, the MKC's modest dimensions are a boon in tight spots." -- Edmunds
"The MKC's Ford Escape roots serve it well. With a wider track and lower center of gravity, the MKC corners with all the fun of a compact sports sedan." -- Kelley Blue Book (2016)
"The base suspension provides a decent luxury-level ride combined with good steering feel and fairly nimble handling. The adjustable suspension offers Normal, Comfort, and Sport modes, with a noticeable but hardly quantum leap between them. As with many adjustable suspensions, Normal mode seems to work the best unless canyon carving is on the menu, as Sport is a bit stiff and Comfort allows too much wallow." -- Consumer Guide (2015)
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"All three students are very motivated to learn Chinese," says Colorado Academy Upper School Mandarin Chinese teacher Julie Wei. Brothers Eric and Evan Rumsfeld worked in the Hebei Province, and Junior Alena Holbert volunteered at an orphanage in Hunan Province. Eric and Alena spent their summer break after freshman year doing independent study and were able to skip CA's Chinese 2 course. Their teacher says both of them will be in AP Chinese next year.
The Rumsfeld brothers were so taken by their experience, they say they plan to return to volunteer again next summer, and this time, they will take their younger sister, Natalie.
"In 2000, I was left at a train station. Due to the "one-child policy" in China and overwhelming preference for boys, I, along with thousands of girls, found myself at an orphanage. While I don't know anything about my birth family, and though I have a thousand questions, I trust that they love me because they left me to be found. They wanted a good life for me, and that's what I got. Through CCAI, an adoption agency, I was adopted from ChenZhou, Hunan, which is about 253 miles north of Hong Kong and 140 miles south of the ZhuZhou City Children's Social Welfare Institute. This past summer, I returned to China with 23 other adoptees to volunteer through a program called Adopteen.
The one-child policy ended at the beginning of 2016, dramatically affecting the population of Chinese orphanages. The stigma in China around disabilities is high to say the least, as evident by the fact that many places are not handicap accessible. These days, over 90% of the children in orphanages suffer from a physical or mental handicap. Traveling back to an orphanage, this is what I expected to see. What I didn't expect, though, was how much the children wanted to give and receive love.
We pulled up to the front of the orphanage in a bus not knowing what to expect. There were some kids outside waiting for us, and they were watching and giggling the entire time as the director gave us a tour of the facility. The campus was beautifully open, green, and inviting, complete with colorful classrooms, rehab equipment, a cafeteria, a playground, and even foster homes which are a unique part of this orphanage. Many of the children would live in a home with up to five other kids, and they would eat, play, and attend classes during the day. They rarely, if ever, get to go off campus. So, the first day, we took them to go watch Despicable Me 3 in a theater.
For most, this was their first time seeing the world beyond the orphanage, and it was incredible to watch their eyes light up with excitement, curiosity, and appreciation for simply going on a bus and watching a movie, something most of us take for granted. Meanwhile, we were having a hard time communicating with the children.
Before leaving, we met the roughly 30 children who were able to go (many didn't come because they were too young, would have a difficult time getting around, or were unable to leave their beds) and paired up with them. I walked up to a girl named XiaManQing who was 10 years old. She was extremely patient when I tried talking to her in my limited Chinese, and I learned that she loves getting her picture taken, she loves having her own things, she loves hugs, she gets cranky when she's tired, and, though she can walk perfectly, she likes people to carry her. She also has Down Syndrome. I also discovered that what she, along with the nearly 300 other children at the orphanage, want, though, is love, and in return they have so much to give back.
They act like kids, they talk like kids, and they love like kids, because that's who they are. From the moment they got on the bus, they were ecstatic. For most, this was their first time seeing the world beyond the orphanage, and it was incredible to watch their eyes light up with excitement, curiosity, and appreciation for simply going on a bus and watching a movie, something most of us take for granted. Meanwhile, we were having a hard time communicating with the children.
ZhuZhou is not very westernized, therefore rarely anyone knew English. Looking back on it now, I realized I was telling ManQing to stand, but she knew that I meant sit, and we bonded over hugs and my relatively poor Chinese.
I'm so lucky to have been adopted into such an amazing family that provides me with a limitless amount of opportunity, including this one that allowed me to give back to such an important part of my life. As a healthy and happy baby, the odds were stacked in my favor, but this element of chance means not every child finds their forever family. It was equally inspiring and heartbreaking to be back in an orphanage and to see where my life could have been. It was a wake-up call for me to recognize the opportunities that I've been blessed with. While the orphanage is providing well, and the nannies, directors, teachers, and foster parents are doing a marvelous job with their unflagging devotion and compassion, children thrive on the love and attention only a family can give.
The last moments at the orphanage were bittersweet. After making dumplings, visiting a museum, tie-dying shirts, doing crafts, singing, dancing, playing outside, and even celebrating some birthdays, we had to say our goodbyes. We cried, then they cried, then we cried some more.
We were leaving to return to our happy homes and wonderful families, but they were staying in ZhuZhou. Perhaps we gave them hope, hope that there is a family waiting for them, hope that there's an entire world for them to explore, hope that they will find the life they've always dreamed of. What I am sure of, though, is that we loved them with every ounce of our being, and they loved us back even more.
This summer my brother, Eric Rumsfeld, and I travelled to the Beijing and Tianjin municipalities in northeastern China. During the first couple of days of our trip, we toured around Beijing with our dad and bought food and groceries so my brother and I would be able to live independently in Tianjin, China 6,350 miles away from home.
We quickly became accustomed to the time difference, food, and language. Although some people are able to speak English with varying degrees of fluency in Beijing, as we moved farther away from the capital and into a more rural setting, it became more rare to be able to talk to someone without having to use Chinese. There was a further level of complexity in communication when trying to speak with people who have a specific accent or dialect, such as our driver taking us to the Great Wall.
Despite these complications, I could tell my pronunciation and overall fluency in the language improved a little each day. After our dad left, we lived in an orphanage in Tianjin to help the more than 60 children living there in any way we could. Shepherd's Field Children's Orphanage provides shelter, clean water, food, education, and medical assistance to special needs children who have been taken in from other orphanages across China.
As interns, we had specific daily jobs that assisted in taking care of the children living there. My task was to play with, and give attention to the children that couldn't attend the on-campus school. These kids were either too young to go to school, or had some sort of condition that would prevent them from attending. Often times, these kids are more neglected and left to their own devices throughout the day.
that gave her the basic experience of enjoying outdoors. Without those walks, it is unlikely that she would ever go outside. During my sojourn in Tianjin, I experienced first-hand what it means to make a positive impact on someone else's life.
In a world where these children would otherwise be neglected, their need for attention and love leading to self-validation is ultimately the reason why it is important to support places like Shepherd's Field. Although these children are often defined by their disabilities and differences, I have learned through their laughter, playfulness, and friendship the extent of their fantastic personalities. The memories and friendships from this trip are something that I hold dear and will always remember.


text:
I segni fissi sono i segni dello zodiaco situati al centro di ciascuna stagione.

Rapporto con le stagioni
L'ingresso del Sole nei segni fissi avviene nel pieno centro delle quattro stagioni:

  Toro (21 aprile - 20 maggio): segno di terra, è posto a metà della primavera.
  Leone (23 luglio - 22 agosto): segno di fuoco, è posto a metà dell'estate.
  Scorpione (23 ottobre - 22 novembre): segno d'acqua, è posto a metà dell'autunno.
  Aquario (21 gennaio - 19 febbraio): segno d'aria, è posto a metà dell'inverno.

Trovandosi nel periodo di pieno svolgimento della stagione, tali segni sono anche definiti solidi.

Qualità
Al segno fisso sono associate qualità di fermezza e stabilità nel proseguire i progetti.

Posizione nelle case
I segni di Toro, Leone, Scorpione e Aquario corrispondono rispettivamente alla seconda, quinta, ottava e undicesima Casa: tali case sono dette "succedanee".

Il Toro risulta opposto allo Scorpione, così come il Leone è opposto all'Aquario.

Note

Voci correlate
 Segni cardinali
 Segni mobili

Collegamenti esterni

Astrologia


Spark is a new Adobe web app where you can create, as Adobe says, stories in a professional layout. You can create stories in a webpage, in a video and even with graphic designs. In this video, I chose to use Spark for the first time and try to recreate "Only in Patagonia" example page and I wanted to share with you my thoughts, my first impressions while using this new app.
I find it very easy to use, intuitive so you do not need to have advance skills to learn how to build a page. As you can see in the video, I was a bit stuck looking for a way to get a personalised background until I figured out that this could not be possible. I must say that, as a professional, I did miss the ability to personalise a bit more these pages, or, in other words, a bit more of freedom design.
A great feature is that you have many options to get images: from your desktop, from google images, from Adobe stock and even from Unsplash and Pixabay which are free for commercial and personal use. All the elements are drag & drop and you are ready! The animation affects come with each block, so you do not need any widget, plugin or write any code to animate the sections.
If you are a student or you need to make a quick presentation, I think Adobe Spark is a great tool. The presentation will look really professional in a just a few clicks. But if you are a real professional, I might say that you will not find this tool that useful as you will not be able to export the page nor upload it into your personal domain.
Watch the video for the full first impression and have a laugh!
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Is Vilas the best Colorado city for your business?
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All Vilas population data above are from the US Census Bureau.
The population data for Vilas are from the Census' American Community Survey 2017 5-year estimates and the Census' 2017 Population Estimates. The demographic data for Gerrard, Jansen, Nucla, Orchard, and Sedgwick are the most current, comparable demographics available from the US Census Bureau, are from the American Community Survey 2017 5-year estimates, and were downloaded on 6 December 2018. Check out our FAQ section for more details.
With 112 people, Vilas is the 369th most populated city in the state of Colorado out of 452 cities. But watch out, Vilas, because Gerrard with 105 people, Jansen with 105 people, and Orchard with 109 people are right behind you.
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Each year, over 800 volunteers join our team and help out at making the festival succeed. Whether you feel liking setting up the festival site, serving drinks at the bar or helping our decoration team, everything's happening in a festive atmosphere.
This year we received over 1.000 applications! We wish to thank you all for your enthusiasm and commitment to our festival!
Regarding the volunteers who applied to help out this year: the confirmation or rejection mails will be sent around May 15.


Only professionals who are currently CompTIA Network+ certified under the 2005 objectives are eligible to become CompTIA Network+ 2009 certified by taking the bridge exam.
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CompTIA International Network+ Bridge (2009 Edition) test voucher is a discounted, pre-paid permit to write the exam. Usually, you would pay the regular price to VUE, or local testing centers for your International Network+ Bridge (2009 Edition) exam. But to take advantage of our voucher program, you can purchase the discount International Network+ Bridge (2009 Edition) test voucher from us and save money immediately on your CompTIA International Network+ Bridge (2009 Edition) exam. The voucher number is all you need to register and take your exam. You don't have to pay any extra fee. To learn more about our voucher program, click Here.
This page is for International Network+ Voucher only. For the vouchers to be used in US, Canada and Puerto Rico, please click North America Network+ Voucher.
Our VUE International Network+ Bridge (2009 Edition) Vouchers can be redeemed at Pearson VUE testing centers in the specific region you specify (see below) . No Prometric International Network+ Bridge (2009 Edition) Vouchers available as CompTIA exams are delivered exclusively with Pearson VUE only. Please locate a testing center near you before purchasing the International Network+ Bridge (2009 Edition) voucher.
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Is it a child's birthday and you want to surprise them? That's very easy with this set of 8 cups by My Little Day! Fun animals, unicorns or dinosaurs... children are going to love their birthday party! Also suitable for a picnic or baby shower!
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Conduct face to face interviews to establish the issue the client wants to resolve, question, probe and check understanding of the issue, diagnose the issue and begin action to resolve the problem.
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Are You Managing Your Holiday Returns for Success? Find out what steps you can take to turn your returns into more sales and greater profits.
Most ecommerce entrepreneurs dream big, and do so with small budgets and even smaller resources. If you're facing that pivotal moment when you're working out of your house, garage, or small warehouse and you've outgrown your current size, you must evaluate the best way to move your business forward. We've put together this list of factors every ecommerce business owner should consider when analyzing the move to outsourced fulfillment.
Find the Right Partner for Your eCommerce Fulfillment. Not every fulfillment company is in tune with the needs and business objectives of fast growing eCommerce retailers. And not all logistics solutions are going to be there for you at every stage of your company's growth, or work with you to make sure each package arrives on time with the correct products inside.
When it's a bargain, many eCommerce business owners share a common experience: oftentimes a "bargain" can end up costing far more than purchasing a quality service. Selecting the wrong fulfillment and shipping provider can actually cost you your entire operation.
Learn how you can outsource your freight and fulfillment operations to gain a competitive advantage.


Very unique...great for caramel lovers!
A must try from this artisan candy shop! Incredible combination you have to experience. I have sent these caramels as gifts to many friends and always get rave reviews!
All of your Chocolates are the best there is available. These are our favorites of all that you offer. Just the right spice, texture and in the dark chocolate Heaven.
As usual absolutely delicious. Our favorite candy ever. Wish we still lived locally so we could visit more often.


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text:
South African looting creates demolition possibilities
South Africa's demolition sector is being called on to contribute to rebuilding efforts after riots, looting and wanton destruction in 2021 caused damage estimated at billions of euros. PDi Africa editor Kevin Mayhew reports.
As South Africa was grappling with the dire economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, a week long trail of devastation, looting and arson hit two of its key provinces, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), in July 2021. The violent action was apparently triggered by supporters of former president, Jacob Zuma, to protest against his imprisonment for contempt of court. The main cities of the two provinces, Johannesburg and Durban, are at either end of the vital N3 transport corridor which links the Port of Durban to the financial production powerhouse of the country, Gauteng province, with its inland port of City Deep in Johannesburg.
The looting focused on the main retail centres and wholesale facilities. They were looted and many were set alight as part of the activity, leaving them in need of fast repair or reconstruction. Engineers declared demolition was required for the badly affected facilities which number in the hundreds with damage estimates of between €1B and €3B.
A spokesperson for Durban based Atomic Demolition confirmed it had been approached to quote on hulks of malls, buildings and warehouses for either partial or total demolition. The marketing manager of Phoenecian Group in Johannesburg, Catherine Habib, said it had been given two demolition contracts in Durban as a direct result of the mayhem, with more a possibility. Phoenecian recently announced its buy out of Wreckers Demolition (reported in PDi in December2021).
Renowned local economist Dr Roelof Botha, speaking at the release of the authoritative Afrimat Construction Index (ACI) after the riots, said: "Damage done to buildings through the rioting and looting in July, and likelihood of additional spend on building, repairs and security in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, was likely to boost construction activity in the third quarter and probably also into the fourth quarter." It now appears that this boost is continuing into 2022 as well.
Search Professional Demolition International - South African looting creates demolition possibilities


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This will include granting leases, licenses for alterations, assignments and under-lettings and lease termination. We can also deal with the service of Section 25 notices and a schedule of dilapidations at the end of the lease and provide advice where dilapidations negotiations become contentious.
Call us now to discuss your requirements on 0117 926 4121 or make a free enquiry online.


text:
Dong-A Ilbo Files a Constitutional Petition against the Newspaper Law and the Press Arbitration Law
Posted March. 23, 2005 22:49,
Dong-A Ilbo Files a Constitutional Petition against the Newspaper Law and the Press Arbitration Law. March. 23, 2005 22:49. by Soo-Hyung Lee sooh@donga.com.
Dong-A Ilbo (president Kim Hak-joon), reporter Cho Yong-woo of Dong-A Ilbo's Social News department, Yoo Jae-cheon, a reader of Dong-A Ilbo and also a Hallym University professor and head of the Hallym Institute of Natural Sciences, submitted an application Wednesday, contending the constitutionality of the Newspaper Law and the Press Arbitration Law.
The two laws were passed in the National Assembly on January 1 this year, promulgated on January 27, and will become effective from the end of July.
In the application, the Dong-A Ilbo and Cho claimed, "The main articles of the Newspaper Law and the Press Arbitration Law amount to improper exercising of law enforcement, violating the constitutional guarantees: freedom of press and publication (article 21 paragraph 1); freedom of vocation (article 15); and economic freedom (article 119 paragraph 1)."
Professor Yoo argued, "The Newspaper Law limits the freedom of readers to subscribe to their desired newspaper, and therefore violates the freedom of choice (deciding newspaper subscription) which is derived from Article 10 of the Constitution, the right to pursue happiness, and Article 21 paragraph 1, the right to know (the freedom of press)."
The Constitutional Court said on Wednesday that the constitutional petition submitted on February 18 by attorney Chung In-bong and others will be sent to the full bench of the court (Chief Justice Choo Sun-hoe) for deliberation on April 2.
Broadcasting and communications sectors monopolize the nation's propagation lines, and public broadcasters levy fees on viewers. For this reason, civic groups and viewers are eligible to have a say in the programming or policy-making process of the service providers. However, legally regulating newspapers is an infringement of the basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Therefore, propriety of the Newspaper Law should be reviewed in accordance with the judgment standard which states that the purpose of legislation should be inevitable and its means minimal.
The Newspaper Law-
Paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article 15 state that a newspaper company cannot operate news agencies or media organizations. In today's media, broadcasters' convergence and media convergence via information technology are realized. Moreover, technological development has reduced the rarity of broadcasting. Therefore, prohibiting newspaper companies from running news agencies or media organizations curbs the variety of public opinion outlets and violates the rule of anti-excessiveness.
Article 16 obligates newspaper companies to publish their business operations information. Newspaper companies are not public businesses that rely on the national budget. This article infringes on the principle of equality and the freedom of corporate activities. It also violates the rule that prohibits excessive regulation.
Article 17 states that fines can be levied on a newspaper company with a market share of 30 percent or higher and three newspaper companies with a combined market share of 60 percent or higher. The purpose of this article appears to regulate the oligopoly of the three newspaper companies (Dong-A Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo, and JoongAng Ilbo). However, the purpose of fair trade regulations is to prevent oligopolists from manipulating the price of the papers by engaging in a tacit collective activity. Each of the three oligopolists has its own voice and tone, and does not have capital or personal connections.
Government intervention into newspapers should be restrained so that the larger public interest, democracy, is not undermined. The nation can provide support for newspapers under certain circumstances, but such support should be limited within a range that does not curb the neutral state of the papers.
Article 27 describes the "Newspaper Progress Committee" and allows national intervention into the public opinions market but does not provide any measures to control the committee, and thereby is unconstitutional. In addition, the Newspaper Progress Committee rules out support for the oligopolists. Deciding financial support for newspapers based on the tone of the papers amounts to discrimination and is therefore unconstitutional.
Press Arbitration Law-
This law allows the Press Arbitration Commission to deliberate whether a press report infringes on the legal rights of the nation, society, or individual, to advise the press to make corrections, and to announce the discussed points to the public. This is unconstitutional because it allows post-screening of press reports. In particular, applications calling for corrections can be submitted by those other than the offended, for instance, a civic group. This may further constrict the freedom of newspapers.
Soo-Hyung Lee sooh@donga.com


The developer bought on 378 West End Avenue from West End Collegiate Church in a deal that closed September 7. It has secured approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to convert the 19-story building into luxury condominiums.
Alchemy also plans to build an adjoining 12 stories on the property next door, 260-262 78th Street, which once belonged to the Collegiate School, as part of the development. The company is partnering with Daishin Securities, a South Korean investment bank, on the project.
Bank OZK is providing pre-construction and construction financing for the development. Alchemy plans to break ground this fall.
Located on 78th Street between West End Avenue and Broadway, this is Alchemy's second condo development on the Upper West Side, the first being Two Fifty West 81st Street, which is set to open next year and has already sold 85 percent of its units.
For the project's sales and marketing push, Alchemy's in-house sales team will Stribling, which is also assisting with sales at 250 West 81st Street.