When you think of security for the Mac, you're usually talking about firewalls, encryption products, and (most controversially) antivirus apps. But there are some much more brass-tacks security products on the Macworld Expo show-floor that have nothing to do with hackers or malware.
Orbicule's Undercover, Gadgettrak's MacTrak, and Absolute Software's LoJack for Laptops each in their own way make it possible for you to track and (it's hoped) recover a stolen Mac.
The basic idea is the same for all three: You install some client software on your Mac and register it with the vendor. If your laptop is stolen, that software can (depending on the app) transmit its IP address to the authorities (who can use that network ID to find the laptop's physical location), locate it via Wi-Fi triangulation, or even take a picture of the perp using the laptop's built-in camera.
To keep your laptop from being stolen in the first place, you could lock it up. Kensington is most famous for its laptop locks; Mac laptops have long had special receptacles for such locks built-in. But the MacBook Air is too thin for those receptacles. At least two vendors at Macworld Expo—i2 Electronics and Noble Enterprises—were touting some clever solutions to that problem.
In i2's case, that means a bracket that slips over the MacBook Air's screen; attach a cable and lock to the bracket, and your laptop can't be snatched off your desk. Noble's solution is a thin skin that attaches to the bottom of the MBA, with two thin feet on the bottom that provide stability and a place to attach a lock.
Not the sexiest products at the show, but some of the most practical.


The guys from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony are here to remind you that Cleveland rocks.
Two weeks ago, victory finally came to Cleveland. Fans there screamed and jumped and cried when LeBron James (a native of nearby Akron) and his Cavaliers beat the record-setting Golden State Warriors in a thrilling Game 7 of the NBA Finals. The city had not won a professional sports championship since 1964. The drought was over.
Also cheering was the entire crew of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, the Grammy-winning melodic hip-hop group from the city where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stands. The act, who had performed during a Cavs halftime show earlier in the playoffs, posted congratulations to their team via social media, while still promoting their various city-themed works, including "Cleveland Is The City," "The Land," and "Love My City."
"This one is for all the haters that don't like to give props ... This wasn't set up it was @kingjames destiny for #Cleveland #allin216 Thank you Cavs #believeland"
With the win, the city that raised them is getting respect on a national scale.
Bone Thugs, one of the first rap groups to implement singing and harmonizing into their music, have since influenced many artists, including Cleveland's own Kid Cudi. But despite their hits like "Tha Crossroads" and "1st of tha Month," which threw them into the national spotlight in the mid-'90s, the old-school act hasn't scored big on the rap charts in recent years.
Perhaps that's why they can't believe they're still together. Flesh-n-Bone, the group's oldest member at 43, told the Inlander in 2014 that they planned to be around for a long time, just like the Rolling Stones.
"Lucky for me, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony happened to be that one special group, and I feel fortunate because there's not too many like that still around," Flesh said. "For us, it's just something far beyond anything you can ever imagine, to still be here like that."
The group just keeps on touring. All five members — Krayzie Bone, Layzie Bone, Wish Bone, Flesh-n-Bone and Bizzy Bone — will be present Saturday night at the Knitting Factory. Previously in town to help ring in the 2015 New Year, they've come through Spokane often. But this time, after their city's newfound glory, their show can only be more of a party.


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Police probe over deaths of two men after bodies found in Co Fermanagh
Police are investigating the deaths of two men after their bodies were discovered in Co Fermangh
Police are investigating the deaths of two men after their bodies were discovered in Co Fermangh.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/police-probe-over-deaths-of-two-men-after-bodies-found-in-co-fermanagh-29872167.html
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article29686831.ece/74508/AUTOCROP/h342/psnibadge.jpg
The body of one man in his 30s was found on a river bank close to Loughview Drive in Enniskillen.
Elsewhere, the body of a man in his 20s was discovered at a house in the Tattynuckle Road area of Tempo.
Both were found on Friday afternoon.
Police have said post-mortems will be carried out to determine the cause of death.
The Open - updates from Portrush: Darren Clarke 'honoured' to hit first shot The Open
Man named as UVF leader met police for Avoniel bonfire talks Northern Ireland

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I take the peeled red onion in its glass bowl out of the fridge to bring it to room temperature, the cucumber, my favorite rye Manna bread, the vegan butter. I remind myself I'm thinking of not defrosting the last loaf of the bread in the freezer, just doing without it for the next few days before I leave for L.A., but almost before I'm done forming the thought it makes me cry. I don't berate myself for crying. I just take the last loaf of bread and the last pound of vegan butter from the freezer. (No argument with myself at all, only this instinctive response, this immediate decision to not deny myself this treat right now if it's making me cry.) It's disturbing that such a funny little thing is eliciting tears. But I don't try to unravel it, just sit on the bed with my hand on my heart and let myself cry. In between I remind myself it's okay. I get to keep eating the bread and butter. "You can always just get more exercise," I say. And then I laugh, tears still wet on my cheeks. I'm glad I didn't chastise myself for crying over this small looming deprivation. I decide that regardless of what worrisome state or precarious balance the crying might speak to, I feel good and sure and right about my response. I feel lighter for the release of tears, comforted by my kindness to myself. "Bread and butter," I whisper, "for as long as you need it." I'm grinning now.
This entry was posted in Daily life, Health, Home, Life, Love, People, Personal and tagged balm for my spirit, bread and butter by Riba. Bookmark the permalink.


14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.
16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
17And he said to them, 'What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?' They stood still, looking sad.
20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.
21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.
23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.
25Then he said to them, 'Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!
27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.
29But they urged him strongly, saying, 'Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.' So he went in to stay with them.
30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.
31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
11For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.


In high school I organized a walkout over standardized testing.
we cannot lower our standards.
in this morning's New York Standard.
CLIFFORD: We were tested this year.
In 25 years, I've never requested a panel of tests like this.


Father and Sons Walking Towards Shack in WPA Resettlement Admin.
Amongst the most popular canvas paintings and fine art prints in Arthur Rothstein are Dust Bowl 1936 Framed Photographic Print, Father and Sons Walking Towards Shack in WPA Resettlement Admin. Other, Poverty of Rural South Recorded for the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration Other, Pregnant Sharecropper's Wife Standing in Doorway of Wooden Shack with Daughter the Depression Other, Young Man at Outdoor Food Stand Drinking a Coke Other, .


Sergeant Scott Baker, Captain David Scott, Major Brian Meinberg, Sergeant Diana Darby, Senior Assistant General Counsel Crystal Bailey and Sheriff Tom Knight.
Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight is pleased to announce the promotion of five Sarasota County Sheriff's Office members.
Deputy Scott Baker is promoted to the rank of Sergeant assigned to the Patrol Bureau. Baker began his law enforcement career in 1996 in Indiana after being honorably discharged from the Indiana Army National Guard. Baker joined the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in 2001 and joined the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office the following year. Throughout his career, Baker worked in the Patrol Bureau, the Tactical Unit, and Crime Stoppers.
Detective Diana Darby is promoted to the rank of Sergeant assigned to the Patrol Bureau. Darby's career began in 2005 as a patrol deputy where she served as a Field Training Officer and later worked as a School Resource Deputy and eventually as a detective assigned to the Criminal Investigations Section. Darby holds her bachelor's degree in Criminology from the University of South Florida and has advanced certificates in Crisis Intervention, Interview and Interrogations, Criminal Law, and Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Assistant General Counsel Crystal Bailey is promoted to Senior Assistant General Counsel. Bailey earned her bachelor's degree in Speech Communications from Miami University in 2004 and her Juris Doctorate degree from Stetson College of Law in 2009. Bailey worked as an Assistant State Attorney in the 6th Judicial Circuit handling all levels of offenses, grand jury indictments, and was part of the Gang Prosecution Unit. She was hired in 2014 by the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office and is a current member of the Sarasota County Bar Association and Florida Association of Police Attorneys.
Lieutenant David Scott is promoted to the rank of Captain assigned to the Courts and Corrections Division. Scott began his law enforcement career in 1994 when he was hired as a corrections deputy. In 1997, Scott transferred to the Patrol Bureau and continued to serve in Community Policing, Criminal Investigations, and Youth Services. In 2010, Scott promoted to the rank of Sergeant and soon transferred to the Tactical Unit where he earned a Unit Citation for his work during Operation Booster Buster. In 2013, Scott was promoted to Lieutenant and served again in the Patrol Bureau, Intelligence, and Youth Services sections. Throughout his career, Scott was recognized as co-Deputy of the Year and earned his master's degree in Criminology from the University of South Florida. In 2015, Scott graduated from the Southern Police Institute's Command Officer Development Course.
Captain Brian Meinberg is promoted to the rank of Major and will oversee the Courts and Corrections Division. Meinberg began his law enforcement career in 2004 when he was hired as a corrections deputy. He quickly elevated through the ranks in the Corrections Bureau and promoted to Captain in 2014. Throughout his career, Meinberg served as the Corrections Emergency Response Team (CERT) Coordinator for the 2012 Republican National Convention, became a certified Florida Model Jail Inspector, CERT Commander, Probation Advisory Board member, Florida Sheriff's Association Commander's Academy Treasurer, and graduated from the Southern Police Institute's Commander Officer Development Course. Meinberg holds his master's degree in Public Administration from Florida Gulf Coast University and is currently working towards earning his law enforcement certification from Suncoast Technical College.


LPM: Most photographers have a moment where everything becomes clear and that moment could change the way we see photography. Have you had such a moment and how did it affect your style?
Read this and many more articles in High Definition inside Issue 7 of Landscape Photography Magazine.


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July 28, 2017 July 28, 2017 Medicine I Didn't Know I NeededCloser, Comix, Feminism, Nine Inch Nails, Sherry FlandersLeave a comment
By Sherry Flanders
July 20, 2017 July 20, 2017 Medicine I Didn't Know I Needed1940's Jazz, 1950's Jazz, Bebop, Billie's Bounce, Bird, Charlie Parker, Jazz, Jazz Saxophone, Saxophone1 Comment
Billie's Bounce
by Spencer Finnan
When I was fifteen I became obsessed with Jazz music. I had taught myself to play piano a few years earlier, and I finally had the faculty and rudiments of theory to begin appreciating jazz on a deeper level as both a listener and a fledgling student. While most of my peers were listening to whatever forgettable bubble-gum spewed from the Top 40 circa the late 90s, I was lost in my own world of post World War 2 era Bebop. I loved the frenetic tempos, soaring horns, the endlessly complex lines weaving snake-like through dense harmonic changes. I loved the combative one-upmanship of the soloists, the "oh yeah you can play that, well check out this phrase" attitude. If you know anything about that era in Jazz, you know it starts and ends with the king, the legend: Charlie Parker. Or simply, Bird.
It's no exaggeration to say that Charlie Parker occupies the same place in music history as giants like Bach, Beethoven, Louis Armstrong. He changed the way music was played forever after his short sojourn on earth. His fleet playing was oft imitated but never replicated. I also loved his compositions. Even with his ability to play anything that
popped into his mind, he always wrote very memorable, singable melodies. One of my favorites was the song Billie's Bounce. This was the leitmotif of my Bebop studies, the song I kept coming back to and practicing obsessively. It was my vehicle for improvisation. I would spend long stretches of time walking a bass line in my left hand and working out phrases in my right hand over the bass line.
Thinking back to half a life ago and this song still bring up a host of crystalline memories. Getting my driver's license, having a tape player in the car where I would listen to Bird's solos over and over until I could sing along with every note. In my mind it's always a sunny day, somewhat incongruous considering it was the Willamette Valley. I think I wore out that tape. Another memory is of deciding I needed the family piano in the basement, where my room was, so that I could play later into the night without keeping my parents up. I enlisted the help of friends to help me get the piano down the basement stairs. Even though it was small, the hallway was so narrow that I'm amazed it fit (I don't think it's a good idea to put a piano down on it's side though). This was the age where I started to become a night owl, and having the piano downstairs really helped my late-night musings. It was in those late hours I think I played at my most inspired. Although I knew little about the jazz world, I knew for sure that both Jazz and everything else that was fun in life happened late at night.
One of the most important things I learned in my discovery of jazz was that you're never "done" with a song. Songs are templates for your improvisation and musicality, in a way that's different than playing classical. With studying classical, at some point you finish your song and move on to the next, ideally retaining each in your repertoire. In my tidy world of being a good student and going through the Syllabus program, both grades and songs were benchmarks to be achieved and completed, only to move on to the next set. I find jazz to be so much more nebulous a discipline. One only hopes that from year to year your solos become hipper, more coherent, and ultimately closer to conveying your own style, finding your voice. It's been 16 years or so since I first learned Billie's Bounce, and I still play it regularly, hopefully much better than in my teenage years. In fact, I think I'll go play it right now…
Billie's Bounce on YouTube
July 13, 2017 Medicine I Didn't Know I NeededAmerican Land, Bruce Springsteen, Emma Lazarus, Lemon Peralta, Statue of LibertyLeave a comment
American Land
By Lemon Peralta
Mr. America
I used to work at a clinic that was frequented by the used condom wrappers of humanity. You know the type, torn and scummy and spending most of their time in the gutters. Because I'm a non-judgmental person, it never bothered me, except for the time when I had to get rid of the dirty men's underwear someone had wedged into the mail slot overnight. Or the time when a woman puked on the hood of my Honda Civic parked out front, a puke so saturated with whatever drugs she'd been taking that it ate right through the candy-apple red paint, leaving corroded shape that in certain lights looks just like the Virgin Mary.
It never bothered me much. But dealing with the condom wrappers of humanity really ate into a lot of the employees. Especially my manager.
He would spend his days practicing all of the slang words he could think of: freak, boof, e-tard, perma-fried whore skank kimchi towelhead beaner. One day as a form of protest I told him that he should just call me a Block Hopping, Shemale Watermelon. I even drew a picture.
But I didn't call him a wop, even though he earned it.
He was Italian in the way that a Hawaiian pizza is Italian.
That is, he wasn't very.
But he paraded his Italian-ness like a Hawaiian pizza, big chunks of ham and pineapple and a whiff of garlic. Lots of cheese. I guess the same way I parade my trans-genderedness, if you want to really pick a fight. But do you? I'm pretty tough. I can hide razor blades in my hair.
Anyway, one day the little Honda Civic with the BVM on its hood broke down. The clinic had just closed and I had spent the last twenty minutes kicking Magic Marker, a regular, out of the office. He was harmless but exhausting, and it was raining and I had no cash on me.
Who steps in but Mr. Italian-American Hero?
Now, being someone who's still got a perfectly intact hyphen, I understand hyphenates. I've actually got several intact hyphens. I'm Puerto Rican American (no hyphen in English, but one in Spanish: puertorriqueño-americano). I'm Guatemalan-American, I'm pre-op transgender. I've been known to be obsessive-compulsive, but I'm non-diagnosed. I'm often hot-to-trot, when I'm not feeling like a stick-in-the-mud. And I understand how important those little hyphens are. You're not one thing or the other, you're both. And you're not beige, you're café-au-lait.
So I get it. But I was skeptical about Mr. Italian-American and the ride home.
He was big Springsteen fan.
Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon
Being someone who came of age in the Outkast and Ludacris era (I lost one hyphen to the track "Humble Mumble"), I always lumped Springsteen into the same pasty white category as Simon and Garfunkel, or Crosby, Stills and Nash. Yawn. Why don't you just set the table with a big old bowl of mashed potatoes?
So, Born in the U.S.A. and all that. I mean, really, do I have to listen to it to know what it's about? Flag waving, shotguns and rednecks.
But I was desperate for a ride. And he had a truck. With a cassette player. And guess what was playing?
When we got to the song "American Land" my heart froze in my chest. Did he even understand what he was listening to?
What is this land America? So many travel there
I'm going now while I'm still young, my darling meet me there
Wish me luck my lovely I'll send for you when I can
And we'll make our home in the American land
This sounded like a letter my grandfather could have sent home to his amor. The song went on, reporting on the experience of an immigrant in a way that I recognized from my grandfathers stories.
I won't say I was happy to be forced to change my view of this slab of provolone. I tried to watch his face as he mouthed the words. Did he even understand what he was saying? He seemed to.
When I got home I Googled Bruce Springsteen, just to check up. Turns out his mother was Italian-American. Birth name Zirilli.
A little more Googling led me to this:
Give me your tired, your poor
But the part that we don't hear as much struck me even more:
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome.
Hey, I'm no poet. The only thing I slam is my two-inch nails in the car door, and that's by accident. But it sounds to me like Bruce, maybe our most American singer ever, and Lady Liberty, are in agreement.
I know I'm not the only one whose very hyphenated person is at odds with our currently elected leader, but it seems to me that if Bruce and good old copper tits are in agreement, there's really nothing to argue with. If Mr. Hawaiian pizza can understand, what's keeping Middle America?


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Image / Agenda / Image Writes
Unpacking the latest Olivia Wilde drama leads to one clear conclusion — we know too much
There is *so* much to unpack in all this messy Olivia Wilde drama — but most of all, an undeniable double standard hangs in the air.
Attempting to distil the seemingly endless and multilayered madness currently surrounding Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles, and her ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis is no mean feat, but we're going to take you on a whistlestop tour of the story so far.
As we've already discussed at length, the response to Don't Worry Darling has been (wait for it) very worrying indeed. From the behind-the-scenes feud rumours to the carnage that was the DWD press tour, we've seen more coverage of #spitgate than actual movie reviews.
At the centre of it all is actor and director Olivia Wilde, a woman whose name has been thoroughly dragged by the ultra-online and Harry Styles fans alike. Back in January of last year — just a couple of months after Styles was confirmed to be replacing Shia LaBeouf as the male lead — Wilde and Styles were photographed holding hands at a wedding in California and it soon emerged that they had been dating for some time.
Being the new love interest of an ex-boy band member so beloved by a certain subsection of the internet that they feel a sense of ownership over him was never going to be easy, but then whispers began growing momentum surrounding the timeline of their relationship and whether Wilde had, in fact, cheated on her then fiancé, Jason Sudeikis.
"why does anyone even care about celebrity gossip?"
I just read a headline that said jason sudeikis laid down in front of Olivia wilde's car to stop her from bringing Harry styles a salad with special dressing. I'm just supposed to scroll past that and go on about my day???
— sarah ? (@sarahthetaurus) October 17, 2022
Though a source has told People that the split was amicable and that they had transitioned into a great co-parenting routine with their two children, aged five and eight, things got a little murky when Sudeikis served Wilde a manilla envelope with legal documents regarding their children while onstage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.
Clearing things up — though really, did she even have to — Wilde told Vanity Fair that the idea that she left Jason for Harry is, to use her words, "complete horseshit."
"Our relationship was over long before I met Harry. Like any relationship that ends, it doesn't end overnight. Unfortunately, Jason and I had a very bumpy road, and we officially dissolved the relationship towards the beginning of the pandemic. We were raising two kids during lockdown, so we co-parented through that time."
ok so Olivia Wilde made a special salad for Harry Styles which upset her then husband Jason Sudeikis who was married to Kay Cannon who wrote and directed Cinderella which starred James Corden who was recently banned from Balthazar by restauranteur Keith McNally pic.twitter.com/qoLJctACN7
— Chris Murphy (@christress) October 18, 2022
You would assume that this would mean that the whole messy incident has been put to bed and we can all move on with our lives, but you would be very, very wrong.
Enter the latest antagonist in Olivia Wilde's life: an unnamed former nanny. Talking to the Daily Mail in a since-deleted interview, the ex-nanny detailed multiple scandalous allegations that have since been deemed "false and scurrilous" in a joint statement from Wilde and Sudeikis. Yet naturally, that hasn't stopped the internet's fascination.
The allegations range from screenshots of alleged texts between the nanny and the former couple and that she was let go with no severance pay, to the bold claim that Jason lay under Olivia's car so that she 'wouldn't leave' because he didn't want her to bring a salad with a 'special dressing' to Harry. She also said that the DWD director gave away her dog to spend more time with Styles. The brain, quite literally, boggles.
?olivia wilde gave us her salad dressing recipe which is from nora ephron? pic.twitter.com/LYxracNCC7
— ilana kaplan (@lanikaps) October 19, 2022
In their joint statement responding to the allegations, Wilde and Sudeikis wrote: "As parents, it is incredibly upsetting to learn that a former nanny of our two young children would choose to make such false and scurrilous accusations about us publicly. Her now 18-month long campaign of harassing us, as well as loved ones, close friends, and colleagues, has reached its unfortunate apex. We will continue to focus on raising and protecting our children with the sincere hope that she will now choose to leave our family alone."
Those waging the war on Wilde argue that the fact that she is the common thread between each of these scandals is entirely down to her own doing, and that as a master of her own narrative, she ought to be scrutinised accordingly. Wilde is a woman whose personal life has entirely eclipsed any semblance of professional merit in recent months and quite frankly, we need to shift our focus and reassess the standard to which we hold successful women.
Did she fall out with Florence Pugh? Was she distracted by her new relationship with co-star Styles while in the line of duty? Did she *really* give up her dog for a man? Does their age gap verge on inappropriate? Did she cheat on her fiancé? If so, when?
Would we ask even one of these questions if she were a man?
'Keeping your own surname absolutely changes the way people perceive your marriage'
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Irish actor Niamh Algar on 'The Wonder' and why Florence Pugh's baking is hard to resist
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Ankara expects single-digit rates next year
Turkey will attain single-digit inflation and interest rates, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, adding that this will pave the way for investments, job creation and production.
"Private financial institutions have recently started to provide investment loans. This is crucial. The previously state-owned lenders would provide such credits. They [private banks] were reluctant [to extend such financing]. Now, both private and state-owned lenders are providing loans. Turning on the credit taps would encourage investors," Erdoğan told public broadcaster TRT on Dec. 9.
As laid out in the New Economic Program for 2020-2022, the government's target is to bring inflation down to single digits permanently, he said.
"We are going to achieve this target."
The Central Bank's Monetary Policy Committee will meet on Dec. 12 to decide on its key rates.
A survey of economists by state-run Anadolu Agency showed that the bank is expected to cut its main policy rate (one-week repo rate) by 150 basis points.
In October, the bank cut its one-week repo rate by 250 basis points, to 14 percent, down
The period of recovery has started for the Turkish economy, Erdoğan also said, pointing to a number of indicators.
"The seasonally and calendar-adjusted gross domestic product [GDP] has exhibited positive growth for the three consecutive quarters. The real sector confidence index rose 9.2 points in November. Confidence in the Turkish Lira is also growing," Erdoğan noted.
The president stressed that foreign demand remains strong: "This is particularly important for the rebalancing process."
He predicted that the number of tourists visiting Turkey, which amounted to some 41 million in January-October, will reach 50 million at the end of this year.


Information is generally lacking about South East Asian fisheries in terms of their biology, fishing practices, and environmental impact, as well as their contributions for social (employment, food security implications, etc.), or economic (value, trade dynamics, etc.) factors. Some social and fisheries management issues are well known and attract criticism right across the fisheries, fishmeal, fish feed, aquaculture, seafood and retail sectors, both in SEA and beyond where some of the markets for the regional products extend. It is challenging to assess long-term viability, yet these fisheries are of key importance to direct and indirect food security in the region and globally, and represent a regional societal vulnerability. What is needed urgently is an understanding of these fisheries from the perspective of social, economic and environmental sustainability.
The regional challenge with fisheries management is reflected within the raw material supply for aquaculture. The SEA fisheries provide a large volume of raw material for fishmeal and fish oil production, which is supplied into the aquafeed markets in SEA for manufacture of feed for the regional aquaculture industry. The development of certification standards for aquafeeds has placed additional emphasis on the importance of sourcing sustainable feed ingredients, and the importance of sourcing fishmeal and fish oil through certification schemes such as the IFFO RS is now being brought to the fore. Improvements need to be made in the region in order to fill this gap in supply.
The global fishmeal sector is generally well-managed and responsible in its operations as seen by the high proportion of uptake of the IFFO RS (Responsible Supply) scheme. One region where there are documented issues relating to social and environmental concerns is South East Asia, and in order to remove the vulnerabilities for the industry that are associated with practices in the region, it is important to understand the supply chain with a view to developing improvement projects in the future.
provide recommendations and develop a plan for implementation to manage a change process, covering short, medium and long term time-scales.
Vulnerability and the level of risk associated with farmed and wild seafood in the region will be reduced over time as additional information feeds into a process that facilitates change. This will be a first phase of project work that is likely to extend over many years, but progress is likely to occur continually over time as information is provided.
Provide a comprehensive report summarising the issues, the actors, and the plan for change, including proposals for projects to implement the change process.
Stakeholders: SFP, Retailers, Regional National Governments, FAO, Worldfish, Feed companies; Aquaculture companies; Fisheries companies; Fishmeal companies; NGOs; seafood certification schemes.
Proposed Timeline: Project commences 01/07/2017 and runs for a period of 18 months.


The foregoing may include models not available in some regions.
Be sure to update the camera firmware to the latest version.
Use a computer to download the latest camera firmware from the Nikon Download Center.
- Once the camera is paired with your smart device, new photos can be downloaded automatically.
- Adjust camera settings and take photos.
- View the pictures on and download photos from the camera.
- Use the app to pair the device with up to five cameras.
- Automatically upload pictures taken with the camera to NIKON IMAGE SPACE (Note 1).
- View downloaded photos or share them via e-mail or social media.
- Add photo info or text to uploaded photos.
- Download location data to the camera (Note 2) or set the camera clock to the time reported by the smart device.
- Receive notifications of firmware updates for paired cameras.
- Note 1: Upload to NIKON IMAGE SPACE requires a Nikon ID.
- Note 2: The GPS function runs continuously in the background, increasing the drain on the battery. The drain on the battery can be reduced by choosing power-saving mode. This feature is not recommended for use with devices not equipped with GPS.
- Turn the paired camera off and then on again.
- Switch tabs in SnapBridge.
- Exit and relaunch SnapBridge.
- Users can register for a Nikon ID using this app.
- Enable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when using this app.
- Remote movie recording is not supported on some cameras.
- Movies can be downloaded by switching to Wi-Fi and selecting the files manually.
- Upload/download of AVI and interlaced movies is not supported.
- 4K UHD movies transfer and playback are not supported on some devices.
- Remote photography and movie download are available only if the camera has Wi-Fi.
- Keep the app displayed in the foreground when downloading images from the camera via Wi-Fi. Download is not available when the app is running in the background.
- The app may not perform as expected depending on your environment and network conditions.
For more information, use the app "Help" option.
Made some minor bug fixes.
We look forward to making still more improvements based on your feedback!
Notice: Customers who plan to use the "synchronize location data" feature with iOS 11 should select "Always Allow" in the location permissions dialog displayed when the app is launched for the first time. This option can also be accessed by selecting "Settings" > "SnapBridge" > "Location" on your iOS device.
Need more functionality in the app. More setting control and options.


Audi R18 e-Tron Quattro is the world's first LMP1 car to combine a highly-efficient TDI with a hybrid system. The race car will make its official debut on May 5 in the six-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium and will compete for overall victory at the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans in France on June 16/17.
"Audi has always consciously selected championships and categories in racing that have a close relationship to production and therefore have technical relevance for the Audi customers," said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich, who personally drove the new Audi R18 e-tron quattro onto the stage on Wednesday evening during its world premiere in the Audi Training Center at Munich airport - electrically and almost silent.
"Quattro, TFSI and TDI are three excellent examples of how motorsport has stimulated production development. A similar tendency is apparent with the e-tron quattro: we test a completely new technology on the race track before it's introduced to the Audi production line.", he added.
The R18 e-tron quattro uses recovered kinetic energy, which is fed as electric into a flywheel accumulator before being retrieved under acceleration again above a speed of 120 km/h. The extremely efficient V6 TDI diesel produces 510PS (375 kW) powering the rear wheels. Both systems complement each other to create the new drive principle e-tron quattro.
"The TDI engine invented by Audi is still the most efficient drive in the world," said Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich.
"We are convinced that the TDI has even more potential. This is why Audi not only supports the hybrid in motorsport as it does in production, but in parallel also the further development of the conventional drive.", he added.


This section will house all of the documents for this project.
America's forests are facing a perfect storm of threats. Infestations of diseases and invasive pests like the Emerald Ash Borer are killing tens of thousands of acres of trees nationally. Increased development is splitting once-vast forests into small fragments, and a history of suppressing natural fires has created unhealthy stands of forests. Additionally, climate change is altering the size and growth patterns of forests.
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UK Phone-Hacking Scandal Shows Clash of Privacy with Need to Know
British journalism has undergone one of the most radical weeks in several decades this week.
"Rocked," "chaos," "shocking" -- use whatever adjectives you like, but news this week that the News of the World (NOTW) tabloid hacked into the phones of child murder victims, families of July 7, 2005 terror attacks and parents of soldiers killed in action has turned the stomachs of much of Britain.
Now Rupert Murdoch's News International has shut down the NOTW after 168 years. This weekend will be the last edition of Britain's biggest selling newspaper.
The public appetite for information, particularly about celebrities and major news stories is insatiable -- until it becomes an intrusion into your own individual life. Is the duty to provide information more important to society as a whole than individual privacy? Does the civil "public interest" test outweigh the private protection of an individual?
'Hackgate'
The phone hacking scandal, or "hackgate" as some have dubbed it on Twitter, is a long-running saga and the New York Times Magazine investigation last year remains the best and most detailed single explanation. The Guardian has steadfastly kept attention on the matter.
As a basic summary, a reporter or private investigator would dial into the cell phone of a celebrity, politician or other public figure and then use a four-digit PIN number to access the voicemail. Many people never even change the PIN on their mobile voicemail or know how to do that. Investigators might pose as the celebrity in question and call the cell carrier saying they lost their PIN and need to reset it.
The technique first began to unravel in 2005 when messages to Royal family aides were appearing read and saved, even though they hadn't heard them.
That eventually led to the conviction of NOTW Royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Police said Mulcaire's notebook had thousands of names and corresponding details of cell phone numbers and PIN numbers.
Since then, attention has always been on which celebrities, MPs or other public figures had their phones hacked -- a practice which is illegal, except by the security services with a court order.
A Widening Scandal
That was until this week. When it emerged on Monday that Mulcaire had accessed the voicemail of 13-year-old Milly Dowler who went missing, and deleted messages in some cases giving the impression she was still alive to worried family members, the public reacted. Only on this past June 23 a man was convicted of murdering the schoolgirl so it was still fresh in the public's mind.
The revelations have continued, with more alleged hacking vicitms: the parents of murdered children Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, the family members of victims of the London terror attacks on July 7, 2005, and the parents of fallen soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has also been revealed that up to five Metropolitan Police may have been paid bribes of £100,000 for information, from the same force that was supposed to be investigating the allegations of phone hacking, throwing the entire voracity of the inquiry into question.
So, how widespread is the practice of phone hacking? There have been reports -- by the New York Times feature last year in particular -- that other newspapers may have bought information obtained through phone hacking, or phone hacked directly, or that the technique was common at the NOTW. Although there have been a handful of arrests from within the NOTW, nobody has ever been charged beyond the original Royal reporter and private investigator. No other newspapers have yet been identified by police.
Pushing the Boundaries
I know a fair number of reporters and not one of them would engage in illegal activity for a story. Have we sometimes pushed boundaries? Of course. Do we sometimes feel a bit questionable afterwards? Yes. We're human.
When a newspaper told me they wanted a picture of school pupils but with "no fatties, uglies or ethnics," they apologized but that was the style of the paper. That's not illegal, but it's not the journalism I believe in.
Stories are regularly "spiked" because of the biases or agenda of a paper. Thankfully the UK has enough publications that almost any story can end up in print eventually, despite those barriers.
This story is still moving rapidly. Advertisers were pulling out of the paper. Ford was the first, very early on after the revelations and before any social media campaign really got going.
Social Media Pushes Advertisers Out
Mitsubishi said they were second on Tuesday as "morally right" to suspend advertising with a paper. Based on a suggestion from one of their Facebook followers, they are diverting the money to a children's charity instead.
As the week went on and the public identified which advertisers were in the weekly paper -- particularly thanks to data from the Guardian -- many other firms have pulled the plug, including the Royal British Legion on Thursday morning.
Tesco, the UK's largest food retailer, said they wanted the police investigation to take its course, even while people on Twitter and Facebook bombarded them demanding they pull their advertising.
The Co-operative Group confirmed they heard from members by email, phone and via Facebook and Twitter while they were already reviewing their advertising, which they have now suspended.
Airlines, phone companies, the Post Office, and others have all pulled their advertising. One parody story even joked that Fish Refusing to Be Wrapped in the News of the World.
Other social media suggestions have included canceling subscriptions to Sky TV (i.e. BSkyB) which News International is trying to buy, or avoiding shops that sell the paper.
Closing NOTW
And then late on Thursday afternoon, News International chairman and Rupert's son James Murdoch told staff that the good work of the paper had "been sullied by behaviour that was wrong -- indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company."
"The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself," he said.
Ultimately, the paper was in decline already. Circulation of the NOTW fell from 4,104,227 in October 2001 to 2,606,397 in April 2011, a drop of 36.5 percent. That is a significant pressure on any paper.
Total sales for 10 Sunday papers in October 2001 was 14,044,396. That has plummeted to 9,082,065 as of April, a drop of 35.3 percent. But the UK remains one of the most read newspaper markets in the world.
One non-press colleague said yesterday: "Everyone talks about freedom of the press. They've had their chance. Take it away."
Hundreds of people have worked for the NOTW as staff, hundreds more as contributors, and thousands more have been willingly quoted in the paper.
The actions of a handful of reporters or those they hire does not in any way dissuade me from the importance of journalism, a free press or a "smart, fearless journalism," as Mother Jones magazine aptly puts it.
Feeding the News Appetite
I personally don't know any reporters who lack souls. We don't exist in such realms of black or white, good or evil. But I know all of us are under pressure to feed the ever increasing news appetite, often within ever shrinking offices of demanding firms with expectant shareholders.
In one case, a colleague was required to supply one story each week on Harry Potter author JK Rowling, no matter what. "No" isn't an answer to the boss. They achieved those results perfectly ethically.
To interpret pressure as justifying unethical and illegal practices is a choice of individuals. They are culpable, as are any bosses who knew of them.
However wrong the hacking activities were and are, many of those leaping to condemn them are not without bias themselves.
Broadsheet newspapers are almost gloating at the peril of the tabloid press which disgusts, but outsells, them.
MPs have repeatedly been caught in adulterous or worse behavior by the tabloid press over the years, but would never dare speak out against News International prior to the current public furor.
And government opponents see this as a chance to extract blood from Prime Minister David Cameron for making the mistake of hiring former NOTW editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief (who might be arrested tomorrow).
Final Consequences
Ultimately we have a clash of what my retired philosophy professor father refers to as the "social duty to provide as much information as possible", and the duty of "non injury to others." So which trumps which?
The question now is what will happen in this Sunday's last ever NOTW. What will the NOTW put on its front page (one tweet suggested the word "Sowwy" and a picture of a kitten)? Will it come back in another form in a few months?
When the Sun published lies about the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, it has arguably never recovered sales in Liverpool and is still reviled. That may well have happened to the NOTW, but would have requited more than 2.6 million customers to switch off to the celeb gossip and "real life" coverage they are in the habit of devouring. Has the Murdoch empire now successfully drawn a line under this sordid tale by closing the paper?
It is only one product -- the conflicting appetites for information and privacy are not going anywhere any time soon.
Disclaimer: I have, a few years ago now, been paid for freelance stories and tips by the Scottish editions of the News of the World and the daily sister paper, The Sun, and more recently by the Sunday Times. I stand by those individual stories.
Photo of Rupert Murdoch by David Shankbone via Wikipedia.
Tristan Stewart-Robertson is a Canadian freelance reporter based in Glasgow, Scotland, operating as the W5 Press Agency.
Tags: Europe Global View Legacy Media NewspaperShift guardian hackgate james murdoch news international news of the world phone-hacking politics rupert murdoch united kingdom


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Waking up to a rumour that Givenchy might collaborate with H&M in 2013 is probably the best way to start my morning. And though we still don't know whether the above image holds any truth whatsoever, I thought I'd join in the collective hysteria/wishful thinking, and say OMFGPLEASELETTHISBETRUE!!! The Givenchy x H&M collection would be absolute amazingness, and I would totes line up for it! Would you? Share in the comments!


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Home Universal Studios Hollywood Universal Studios Hollywood is back open!
Universal Studios Hollywood is back open!
Brian Glenn
After being closed for more than a year, Universal Studios Hollywood has officially grand reopened.
The reopening process kicked off yesterday for Annual and Season Pass Members who were allowed to enjoy a special park preview.
While most rides will be operational, some rides and attractions will reopen at a later date as the theme park complies with government restrictions – such as The Simpsons Ride and Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. Guests will also be able to check out the brand-new The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash ride and new scenes at Jurassic World: The Ride.
"We have been looking forward to this moment for over a year and are incredibly thrilled to reopen our theme park today," said Karen Irwin, President & COO, Universal Studios Hollywood. "There is certainly lots to celebrate and we are overjoyed to return team members to work and welcome guests back to enjoy a Universal Studios Hollywood experience that is better than ever."
In accordance with government guidelines, only California residents may visit the theme park at this time and party size is limited to three households. Tickets to Universal Studios Hollywood are on sale for California residents only and can be purchased here. The theme park is continuing to celebrate Annual and Season Pass Members with a series of complimentary Bonus Days on select days through Sunday, May 16; these Bonus Days can be reserved here by Annual and Season Pass Members. Annual and Season Pass Members will be able to resume regular use of their passes starting on Monday, May 17.
Universal Studios Hollywood is implementing the following safety guidelines and procedures:
Temperature checks for all guests upon arrival. If temperatures exceed 100.4° Fahrenheit / 38° Celsius or greater, Guests will not be permitted to enter.
Face coverings required for all guests throughout their visit. Face coverings also will be available for purchase.
Controlled capacity within the theme park, and limited occupancy at all CityWalk venues to help enforce physical distancing. Some areas and programs may remain temporarily closed.
Rigorous cleaning and disinfecting at all food locations, restrooms, and all other high touchpoints.
Physical distancing practices at all locations throughout the park and at rides and attractions.
Eating and drinking permitted only in designated dining areas.
Contactless payment options wherever possible.
More information about Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal CityWalk is available at www.UniversalStudiosHollywood.com.
Stay tuned to Inside Universal for all the latest on Universal Parks & Resorts.
Grand Reopening
Indominus Rex
Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash
Previous articleGrad Bash and Gradventure to return to Universal Orlando in 2022
Next articleCelebrate Cinco de Mayo at SeaWorld's Seven Seas Food Festival
Brian may be reached at brian.g@insideuniversal.net - Editor-in-Chief
What's Happening at the Universal Parks – Week of January 23rd, 2023
Jurassic World: The Ride closed for refurbishment through February 2023 at Universal Studios Hollywood
Noodle House returns to Universal Studios Hollywood for 2023's Lunar New Year


A view at Bàgh an Dà Dhoruis in the far north of Islay. This is looking west from the eastern end of the bay, having walked through the natural arch. Small waves are rolling in, swirling around the rocks on the beach at this end.


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[ARTICLE] A Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) and robot hybrid system for multi-joint coordinated upper limb rehabilitation after stroke – Full Text
It is a challenge to reduce the muscular discoordination in the paretic upper limb after stroke in the traditional rehabilitation programs.
In this study, a neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) and robot hybrid system was developed for multi-joint coordinated upper limb physical training. The system could assist the elbow, wrist and fingers to conduct arm reaching out, hand opening/grasping and arm withdrawing by tracking an indicative moving cursor on the screen of a computer, with the support from the joint motors and electrical stimulations on target muscles, under the voluntary intention control by electromyography (EMG). Subjects with chronic stroke (n = 11) were recruited for the investigation on the assistive capability of the NMES-robot and the evaluation of the rehabilitation effectiveness through a 20-session device assisted upper limb training.
In the evaluation, the movement accuracy measured by the root mean squared error (RMSE) during the tracking was significantly improved with the support from both the robot and NMES, in comparison with those without the assistance from the system (P < 0.05). The intra-joint and inter-joint muscular co-contractions measured by EMG were significantly released when the NMES was applied to the agonist muscles in the different phases of the limb motion (P < 0.05). After the physical training, significant improvements (P < 0.05) were captured by the clinical scores, i.e., Modified Ashworth Score (MAS, the elbow and the wrist), Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA), Action Research Arm Test (ARAT), and Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT).
The EMG-driven NMES-robotic system could improve the muscular coordination at the elbow, wrist and fingers.
Stroke is a main cause of long-term disability in adults [1]. Approximately 70 to 80% stroke survivors experienced impairments in their upper extremity, which greatly affects the independency of their daily living [2, 3]. In the upper limb rehabilitation, it also has been found that the recovery of the proximal joints, e.g., the shoulder and the elbow, is much better than the distal, e.g., the wrist and fingers [4, 5]. The main possible reasons are: 1) The spontaneous motor recovery in early stage after stroke is from the proximal to the distal; and 2) the proximal joints experienced more effective physical practices than the distal joints throughout the whole rehabilitation process, since the proximal joints are easier to be handled by a human therapist and are more voluntarily controllable by most of stroke survivors [2]. However, improved proximal functions in the upper limb without the synchronized recovery at the distal makes it hard to apply the improvements into meaningful daily activities, such as reaching out and grasping objects, which requires the coordination among the joints of the upper limb, including the hand. More effective rehabilitation methods which may benefit the functional restoration at both the proximal and the distal are desired for post-stroke upper limb rehabilitation.
Besides the weakness and spasticity of muscles in the paretic upper limb, discoordination among muscles is also one of the major impairments after stroke, mainly reflected as abnormal muscular co-activating patterns and loss of independent joint control [2, 6]. Stereotyped movements of the entire limb with compensation from the proximal joints are commonly observed in most of persons with chronic stroke who have passed six months after the onset of the stroke, during which abnormal motor synergies were gradually developed. Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) is a technique that can generate limb movements by applying electrical current on the paretic muscles [7]. Post-stroke rehabilitation assisted with NMES has been found to effectively prevent muscle atrophy and improve muscle strength [7], and the stimulation also evokes sensory feedback to the brain during muscle contraction to facilitate motor relearning [8]. It has been found that NMES can improve muscular coordination in a paralysed limb by limiting 'learned disuse' that stroke survivors are gradually accustomed to managing their daily activities without using certain muscles, which has been considered as a significant barrier to maximizing the recovery of post-stroke motor function [9]. However, difficulties have been found in NMES alone to precisely activate groups of muscles for dynamic and coordinated limb movements with desired accuracy in kinematics, for example, speeds and trajectories. It is because most of the NMES systems adopted transcutaneous stimulation with surface electrodes only recruiting muscles located closely to the skin surface with limited stimulation channels [8]. Therefore, the muscular force evoked may not be enough to achieve the precise limb motions. However, limb motions with repeated and close-to-normal kinematic experiences are necessary to enhance the sensorimotor pathways in rehabilitation, which has been found to contribute to the motor recovery after stroke [10]. Furthermore, faster muscular fatigue would be experienced when using NMES with intensive stimuli, in comparison with the muscle contraction by biological neural stimulation [11].
The use of rehabilitation robots is one of the solutions to the shortage of affordable professional manpower in the industry of physical therapy, to cope with the long-term and labour-demanding physical practices [10]. In comparison with the NMES, robots can well control the limb movements with electrical motors. Various robots have been proposed for upper limb training after stroke [12, 13]. Among them, the robots with the involvement of voluntary efforts from persons after stroke demonstrated better rehabilitation effects than those with passive limb motions, i.e., the limb movements are totally dominated by the robots [10]. Physical training with passive motions only contributed to the temporary release of muscle spasticity; whereas, voluntary practices could improve the motor functions of the limb with longer sustainability [10, 14]. In our previous studies, we designed a series of voluntary intention-driven rehabilitation robotics for physical training at the elbow, the wrist and fingers [14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. Residual electromyography (EMG) from the paretic muscles was used to control the robots to provide assistive torques to the limb for desired motions. The results of applying these robots in post-stroke physical training showed that the target joint could obtain motor improvements after the training; however, more significant improvements usually appeared at its neighbouring proximal joint mainly due to the compensatory exercises from the proximal muscles [15, 17]. In order to improve the muscle coordination during robot-assisted training, we integrated NMES into the EMG-driven robot as an intact system for wrist rehabilitation [16, 19]. It has been found that the combined assistance with both robot and NMES could reduce the excessive muscular activities at the elbow and improve the muscle activation levels related to the wrist, which was absent in the pure robot assisted training [16]. More recently, combined treatment with robot and NMES for the wrist by other research group also demonstrated more promising rehabilitation effectiveness in the upper limb functions than pure robot training [20]. However, most of the proposed devices are for single joint treatment, and cannot be used for multi-joint coordinated upper limb training. Furthermore, the training tasks provided by these devices are not easy to be directly translated into daily activities. We hypothesized that multi-joint coordinated upper limb training assisted by both NMES and robot could improve the muscular coordination in the whole upper limb and promote the synchronized recovery at both the proximal and distal joints. In this work, we designed a multi-joint robot and NMES hybrid system for the coordinated upper limb physical practice at the elbow, wrist and fingers. Then, the rehabilitation effectiveness with the assistance of the device was evaluated by a pilot single-group trial. EMG signals from target muscles were used for voluntary intention control for both the robot and NMES parts.
The NMES-robot system
The system developed is a wearable device as shown in Fig. 1. It can support a stroke subject to perform sequencing limb movements, i.e., 1) elbow extension, 2) wrist extension associated with hand open, 3) wrist flexion and 4) elbow flexion, with the purpose of simulating the coordination of the joints in arm reaching out, hand open for grasping, and withdrawing in daily activities. The starting position of the motion cycle was set at the elbow joint extended at 180° and the wrist extended at 45°, which is also the end point for a motion cycle. In each phase of the motion, visual guidance on a computer screen was provided to a subject by following a moving cursor on the computer screen with a constant angular velocity at 10°/s for the movement of the wrist and the elbow. The subject was asked to minimize the target and actual joint positions during the tracking. In the limb tasks, assistances would be provided from the mechanical motors and NMES at the same time related to the wrist and elbow flexion/extension. NMES alone was applied for finger extension, and there was no assistance from the system for finger flexion (hand grasp). It is because that the main impairment in the hand for persons with chronic stroke is hand open, and the hand grasp can be achieved passively due to spasticity in finger flexors, and one channel NMES has demonstrated the capacity to achieve the gross open of the hand with finger extensions in clinical practices [2]. With the attempt to reduce the overall weight of the system, especially at the distal joints, for the coordinated multi-joint training of the whole upper limb, finger motions were only supported by the NMES in this work. The robot and NMES combined effects on individual finger motions in chronic stroke have been investigated in our previous work [21]. A hanging system was used to lift up the testing limb to a horizontal level (Fig. 1), to compensate the limb gravity and the weight of the wearable part of the system (totally 895 g).
Fig. 1 a The schematic diagram of the experimental setup, b a photo of a subject who is conducting the tracking task with the NMES-robot, c a photo of a subject wearing the mechanical parts of the system, d the configuration of the NMES electrodes and EMG electrodes on a driving muscle. The driving muscles in the study are BIC, TRI, FCR and the muscle union of ECU-ED
Continue —> A Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) and robot hybrid system for multi-joint coordinated upper limb rehabilitation after stroke | Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation | Full Text
elbow, Fingers, Neuromuscular electrical stimulation, NMES, robot, Stroke, UE, UL, Upper Extremity, upper limb, Wrist
This entry was posted on May 7, 2017, 22:41 and is filed under Paretic Hand, Rehabilitation robotics. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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'Regulated leisure', the basis of culture?
by Michael Severance • July 3, 2019
Every summer, as I prepare for much needed vacation, I am reminded of my favorite book, Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture. It was written by the neo-Thomistic philosopher who condemned a world of "total work."
The context in which Pieper's masterpiece was authored is his native Germany in the late-1940s during a furious rebuilding of Europe after the Second World War. He argues for making time for not just rest, recreation, and the arts in our day, but most critically silent contemplation and worship.
Ultimately, for Pieper, this meant hard working individuals must be willing to be inactive in order to become receptive to wonder and offering praise: "Leisure is not the attitude of the one who intervenes but of the one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who lets go, who lets himself go."
This was a prophetic admonishment for the next half-century's hockey-stick economic growth in Germany and soon thereafter in many countries of the nascent European Union. Hard work was certainly necessary for an ancient continent whose core businesses and infrastructures had been all but flattened by blitzkriegs.
However, Pieper's concern was not so much about working "too hard" or "too much", but really about addressing a potential anthropological identity crisis, that is to say: viewing our human worth merely in terms of what is "useful work or activity." This was certainly the utilitarian understanding of man and his dignity as vigorously promoted by the European far left parties of his time, especially in East Germany and the rapidly expanding U.S.S.R. As David Haines writes of Pieper:
So Pieper wants us to work less and play more? Some people will be very happy with this; however, as Pieper notes, contemporary people think about everything as a worker, and our society (as socialist as Germany was prior to the Second World War) has trained us to think this way. We have been trained to view every activity according to its usefulness. This is the problem that Pieper wishes to draw our attention to. If we view everything according to its usefulness, then we lose our identify.
In the end, for Pieper leisure is the basis for both culture and work, since it is in leisure, as he says, that we find "the surge of new life that flows out to us …[as in the] contemplation of a blossoming rose, a sleeping child, or of a divine mystery."
Maria Popova, writes in an article about Pieper's concept of leisure:
the most significant human achievements between Aristotle's time and our own — our greatest art, the most enduring ideas of philosophy, the spark for every technological breakthrough — originated in leisure, in moments of unburdened contemplation.
It is little wonder, therefore, that European nations, who pride themselves in their creative and artistic heritage as well as their industrial successes, take Pieper's 1947 epistemological and spiritual manifesto to heart. Fast-forward 70 years, and we find some extreme cases in which European governments are seeking to actually regulate their citizens' leisure time.
The latest peculiar example is the El Khomri labor law passed in French parliament 2 years ago and now having a broad impact in workplace culture. It was passed not coincidentally so during the traditional French summer vacation period of August. Since then, France has mandated the right to refrain from work-related emails and other social messaging services after 6:00 pm. From this hour, it is it is forbidden for some businesses to require staff to remain connected with colleagues or superiors by electronic means. Thus, the El Khomri law "entitles" employees to "disconnect" from their on-line working community.
In a Fortune magazine article we read: "the law requires companies with more than 50 employees to establish hours when staff should not send or answer emails. The goals of the law include making sure employees are fairly paid for work, and preventing burnout by protecting private time."
The intent of the legislation is to, therefore, to force employers to respect employees "off-line" time and not be tethered to their offices on like "dogs [on] electronic leashes" as the French politician Benoit Hamon said.
There are some obvious practical concerns and unintended consequences of France's leisure regulations.
What is the fine-line between colleague relations, which often blossom into confidential friendships of trust and interpersonal solidarity in the critical after-work hours? Would such leisure regulations ruin the fostering of such deep professional companionship and confidence that is good for the overall team spirit and long-term success of the company?
What about large international companies whose employees must communicate with each other across time-zones with as much difference as 6-8 hours? And isn't their good compensation a way to reciprocate their generosity to the company through timely after-hours communications?
What about a working mother who would rather" disconnect" from 3:00-6:00 pm while collecting her children from school and preparing dinner and then "reconnecting" in the late evening with her colleagues on line?
Finally, and most importantly, why should we assume the employees are "forced" or "required" to communicate after hours? Are these communications not based on voluntary relationships and judgements that can vary on any given work day?
There are many exceptional circumstances that merit our rejection – whole or partial – of France's El Khomri law and its copy-cat regulations in other countries, like in Germany where companies are now beginning to shut down email accounts during their workers' vacations. What is obviously wrong with the El Khomri law is that is that it assumes all workers:
are getting paid an "hourly wage" and not hired simply to "meet objectives";
actually want rigid 9:00-5:00 working hours instead of flexible time;
do not have a passionate vocation and can't wait to quit their "toil" each day;
are making valuable use of their leisure time (and not doing a second job) or involved in vicious pleasures after office hours.
The major "political" error made by France's legislators is its intrusion into the private agreements made between employers and employees when seeking to guarantee leisure hours and prevent burnout. People's personalities, personal issues, and overall passion for work vary incredibly from office to office. It is akin to the government attempting to fix a "just price" for a particular necessary commodity, like soap or milk, when it should be allowed to fluctuate per the specific market conditions and local needs.
The "anthropological" error, however, is more egregious. It tries to define the worker as a person who "works to live" in contrast with a person who "lives to work". While for Pieper, the human person is neither one of these, he would have supported attitudes about work that are vocational and which allow workers to forget about exactly how much time they are spending on work while joyously fulfilling their personal calling in service of God and human society. Such vocational fulfillment is hardly a human toil per se, but a labor of love – a form of worship and praise for the gifts given to us from God.
Featured Image credit: Wikicommons: "The Leisure Hour. 1855. Oil Painting by George Hardy (1822-1909)"
Michael Severance
Michael Severance earned his B.A. in philosophy and humane letters from the University of San Francisco, where he also studied at the university's St. Ignatius Institute, a great books program. He then pursued his linguistic studies in Salamanca, Spain where he obtained his Advanced Diploma in Spanish from Spain's Ministry of Education before obtaining his M.A. in Philosophy and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. While living in Italy, Michael has worked in various professional capacities in religious journalism, public relations, marketing, fundraising, as well as property redevelopment and management. As Istituto Acton's Operations Manager, Michael is responsible for helping to organize international conferences, increase private funding, as well as expand networking opportunities and relations among European businesses, media and religious communities, while managing the day-to-day operations of the Rome office.
Posted in Economics and Social ProblemsTagged El Khomri labor law, Josef Pieper, Liesure the basis of Culture, vocation, work
Labor and the limits of work
Who wants the EU?
Children and a Culture of Choice


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Cecile Richards' Desk Shows She's Totally in Love With Planned Parenthood and Herself
National | Micaiah Bilger | Oct 20, 2017 | 6:03PM | Washington, DC
A person's work desk can tell you a lot about who they are and what they value.
And the desk of Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards has a lot of pictures of herself.
Vanity Fair published a flattering new piece on the abortion business CEO this week, showing photos of her expensive New York City office and praising her as a "passionate promoter of women's rights."
"My desk is a reflection of who I am: my kids, my idols, and my adventures. It includes everything from the blue-footed booby from the Galápagos Islands to my collection of sea glass off an island in Maine, to Ndebele boxes from South Africa," Richards said.
But Richards, who makes nearly $1 million a year running the largest abortion business in America, also appears to think quite highly of herself by all the photos on her desk. Of course, it's normal for people to have photos of themselves with friends, family and influential figures on display; and Richards has those. But the Vanity Fair photos also show Richards' desk has several photos just of herself, as well.
Other items sprawled across her desk include quite a bit of pink swag promoting her abortion chain. One is a tiny model of a bright pink bus that Planned Parenthood used to travel across the country promoting its work killing unborn babies.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
Another is a pink button with Planned Parenthood's logo and the crude phrase, "Don't f— with us, don't f— without us." On another part of her desk is a small red bell with the words "My sex button" painted on it.
Interestingly enough, Richards also has a cross on a shelf near her desk, right next to a pink sticker that says "I stand with Planned Parenthood" and a photo of her with pro-abortion President Barack Obama.
Richards has been a media favorite lately, with women's magazines and entertainment sites comparing her to superheros and American apple pie. But the "non-profit" CEO's main focus is promoting the killing of unborn babies.
Planned Parenthood performs more than 300,000 abortions every year, more than any other group in the U.S. The abortion group's own reports show its focus is not on women's health care but on abortions. Non-abortion services have been dropping steadily at Planned Parenthood in the past decade, but its abortion numbers remain high.
In March, Richards refused to give up what she claims is just 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's work: abortion. President Donald Trump offered to support an increase in taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood if it stopped doing abortions, but Richards' abortion chain refused.
Richards went so far as to call the offer "obscene and insulting," making it very clear that abortions – not women's health care – are Planned Parenthood's No. 1 priority.


These cauliflower hash egg cups are a low carb and healthier alternative to regular hash egg cups. They make delicious breakfast bites that you can even take on-the-go.
Has anyone tried the new Amazon Fresh service for groceries? I recently decided to activate my free trial and so far I haven't bought anything. I thought it might be a solution from those emergency grocery runs I often have to do, like when I needed an extra dozen eggs for this recipe, but each order requires a minimum of $35.
And, at least for Southern California, the offerings are a bit slim. Many things I wanted weren't available. After browsing for a while, I finally got to the minimum purchase amount, only to be told that the earliest delivery was three days away, despite the program advertising same day delivery. So right now I'm very much regretting activating my free trial as it looks like it's going to go to waste. I ended up not finishing my order and just going out to get my eggs so I could make this dish.
I'm still on my cauliflower kick. I previously made cauliflower tots which I adored. These are a similar concept, except the tots are baked into muffin cups, with an egg cooked on top. The cauliflower hash doesn't get as crisp because of the egg, but it's still tasty.
You can cook the eggs to your own desired doneness preference. I prefer mine slightly runny though you can also cook the yolk all the way through as well.
If you adore cauliflower like me, check out these my other cauliflower posts: cauliflower tots, bang bang cauliflower, parmesan cauliflower bites, buffalo cauliflower bites, cauliflower bread sticks, cauliflower pizza crust, cauliflower fried rice, creamy mashed cauliflower.
To prepare the cauliflower, first steam florets until soft. Then either finely chop with a knife, or pulse a few times in a food processor until it resembles large course crumbs.
Add the chopped cauliflower, breadcrumbs, cheese and 1 egg into a large mixing bowl. Mix with a large spoon until everything is combined.
Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease the muffin tins of a muffin pan. Add about 1/4 cup of cauliflower mixture to each muffin tin. Use hands to compact the mixture and push it evenly down into the tin so that it fills about half of the tin. Bake for about 20 minutes until hash is a golden brown and the top and edges appear crispy.
Remove hash from oven. Break an egg onto each cup, removing about 1/2 of the egg white (so only half the egg white and the egg yolk goes onto each hash cup.) You can use remaining leftover egg whites for another recipe/meal. Place back in oven and bake for another 6-10 minutes until eggs reach desired doneness. You can hover over the oven during this time and turn on your oven light to check on the eggs.
Let egg cups cool a few minutes before removing. Use a small spatula to loosen the sides and remove each cup. Eat while warm.
Make sure you used seasoned panko otherwise, if you use plain ones, you'll need to add other seasonings.
I was really excited about Amazon Fresh and sad to hear its not really all the way there. I hear good things about Instacart so hopefully that will make it to SD eventually.
Oh and love the cauliflower in this! Healthy but yummy alternative to potato.
I was excited too. Maybe it's working better for other areas.
Hi Kirbie, I just discovered your blog yesterday and I'm so glad I did!! Cauliflower is my absolute favorite veggie, in fact one of my favorite foods of any kind and you have SO MANY recipes for it! Can't wait to make these!
Could you make these ahead of time and store them? If so what would be a good way to re-heat?
Although I'm not a big cauliflower fan, I am intrigued by these. How well does the base stay together while eating? Also, how hard is it to separate half the white of the egg. That intimidates me the most about this recipe.
the base stays together very well during eating. It's not hard to take out a little of the egg white. When you crack your egg, usually some of the egg white and egg yolk is in one half and some remaining egg white is in the other shell. Just carefully pour out the egg yolk side and most of the egg white on that side, but don't fully pour out all the whites. Or you can fully pour everything into the molds and then use a spoon to spoon out excess egg white.
I'm wondering if you have to squeeze all the liquid out of the cauliflower before cooking it as you do for cauliflower pizza crust. I love making the pizza crust and would love to try these.
nope, you don't need to do for this one!


Stone's Throw Garden has moved to Ethos Health.
Stone's Throw Garden is an organic garden on one acre in Lebanon Township, Hunterdon County, NJ. It was created in 2000 and is run almost single-handedly by farmer Nora Pugliese. After the birth of her second child, Nora Pugliese decided on a career change. She found it at Farmer John's Organic Produce, a 10 acre farm in Warren, NJ. Under the close tutelage of John Canright and his son — farmers, philosophers and mentors to many of New Jersey's current organic growers — she learned about Consumer Supported Agriculture from dirt to dinner.
After a few years apprenticing at Farmer John's, Nora and Mark with their two small boys moved out to a 5-acre house in Lebanon Township, NJ. The original fixer-upper farmhouse included a charming old stone building with lots of potential. They fenced in the old horse turnout and started breaking sod. Underneath was some great soil and hundreds of thousands of palm sized rocks.
In the decade since the first CSA in 2001, Stone's Throw Garden has grown a lot more than vegetables and flowers; it has grown a community of people interested in where their food comes from and how it tastes.
In January of 2014 Nora was approached by Dr. Ron Weiss to help him launch a new enterprise in Long Valley, NJ. It is called Ethos Health and it is a 340 acre Farm with buildings as old as the American Revolution. Ethos Health will combine Farmer and Doctor side by side with food being the medicine of choice.
Nora, Maya and Mark are there everyday and will probably move into the stone building called the Farmer's House. If you know someone interested in renting our fenced in 1 acre plot in Lebanon Township, let us know! It comes with a house to live in.


The 2015 Stones No. 3 from the Tench Vineyard in Oakville has an opaque garnet-purple color and is profoundly scented of crème de cassis, blackberry compote and dried mulberries with suggestions of dusty earth. Full-bodied and firmly constructed with generous black fruit, it finishes long and savory. Drink 2017-2037.


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As competições de 100 metros livre feminino da natação nos Jogos Paralímpicos de Verão de 2012 foram disputadas entre os dias 31 de agosto e 8 de setembro no Centro Aquático de Londres, na capital britânica. Participaram desse evento atletas de 10 classes diferentes de deficiência.

Medalhistas

Classe S3

Classe S5

Classe S6

Classe S7

Classe S8

Classe S9

Classe S10

Classe S11

Classe S12

Classe S13

S3

Eliminatórias

Eliminatória 1

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Final

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Eliminatória 2

Final

S6

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Eliminatória 2

Eliminatória 3

Final

S7

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Eliminatória 1

Eliminatória 2

Final

S8

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Eliminatória 1

Eliminatória 2

Eliminatória 3

Final

S9

Eliminatórias

Eliminatória 1

Eliminatória 2

Final

S10

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Eliminatória 1

Eliminatória 2

Final

S11

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Eliminatória 1

Eliminatória 2

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S12

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Eliminatória 1

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S13

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Eliminatória 1

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Final

Ligações externas

Eventos da natação nos Jogos Paralímpicos de Verão de 2012

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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What does Cinematography Mean?
besteducationschools February 14, 2020
What is Cinematography?
Cinematography means the art of capturing, recording and projecting moving images onto a screen, in an orderly and coherent manner. The word comes from the Greek kínēma, which means 'movement' and gráphein, which means 'to record or write'.
Cinematography was developed thanks to the invention of the cinematograph, an artifact patented by brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, capable of recording a sequence of frames on 35mm film and quickly projecting them onto a screen to produce the illusion of movement.
The cinematographer was presented by the Lumière brothers at the first public screening of a film record, on December 28, 1895. On that occasion, the Lumière brothers exhibited a scene documenting the departure of the workers from a factory.
Although cinematography was initially used for documentary purposes, its possibilities to reproduce fictional discourses were very soon explored, which eventually gave rise to cinema as we know it today.
In its broadest sense, cinematography strictly refers to the recording of moving images by means of a cinematograph. However, the term is widely used to refer to the seventh art.
Indeed, in the 1920s, film critic Ricciotto Canudo coined the term "seventh art" to fiction cinematography, which was then undergoing a fascinating development. Hence, Canudo considered it as a "painting in motion".
Features of cinematography
The creation process requires specialized technology, which makes it an industrial invoice product;
Its production, therefore, requires teamwork;
It is closely linked with photography, heir, in turn, to the plastic values of Western painting (composition of the plane, use of perspective, study of lighting, etc.);
Motion recording and audio integration allows you to develop the likelihood principle to its ultimate consequences;
It also integrates elements from other arts, such as literature (types of narration), theater (costumes, set design, stage performance), sound and music;
It has developed its own language that distinguishes it from other visual arts, based on the montage
Elements of cinematographic language
Among the elements that characterize the specificity of cinematographic language we can mention the following:
Frame: refers to the delimitation of the box. The frame determines what should be inside or outside the "frame". Each frame starts from an angle.
Angle: An angle of a frame can be:
Normal: The camera is placed in front of the object.
Chopped: The camera is positioned above the object.
Low angle shot: the camera is placed at the feet of the object.
Aerial: the camera, totally perpendicular to the ground, offers an aerial shot of the object.
Plane: it is the basic unit of cinematographic language. It can be of several types. Namely:
Wide shot (GPG)
General plan (PG)
Long median plane (PML)
Short Medium Plane (PMC)
American Plane (PA)
Close-up (PP)
Extreme close-up (PPP)
Detail plane (PD)
Camera shake: Refers to the types of camera shake during filming. They may be:
Physical movements:
Panoramic: the camera rotates on the horizontal or vertical axis.
Tracking: the camera moves off its axis.
Rotation: the camera rotates a few degrees on its axis, to the right or left.
Optical movements:
Zoom: Using the camera lens, objects in the plane are zoomed in or out without moving.
Focus: the camera lens allows you to alternate the focus of the same plane.
Editing: montage means the combination of the different shots taken in a film, the concatenation of which (always in the editing process) allows the construction of a scene and the formation of a point of view and a discourse. This is the most characteristic element of cinematographic language.
Lighting.
Tone and color.
Types of cinematography
When we talk about types of cinematography, we refer to film genres. This can be classified according to different criteria, such as theme, style, recipient, or format. However, as a speech, cinematography can be classified into the following basic types:
Documentary film:
Suspense or thriller.


This interactive and evocative music video is intended to draw people into a discussion about depression and mental health. 'Replace the Face' launched on Blue Monday (January 19th, 2015) and is a fitting platform given today Bell is donating 5 cents to mental health initiatives in Canada for everyone using the #BellLetsTalk hashtag on a variety of different social media platforms.
In the evocative music video, viewers are assigned a character (either male or female) and are engaged in discussions of depression and suicide (issues tackled in the short film) through a message board after. The collaborative effort, the mini-site is from Australian band Lowlakes and Dutch creative agency Spektor. The project is intended to create not just social change, but communal space and communication of shared experiences.


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Review: Lauren Groff's 'Florida' explores a state beyond the boundaries
Photo by Kristin Kozelsky Author Lauren Groff's new short story collection is "Florida."
By Colette Bancroft
Published May 31 2018
Updated May 31 2018
In "Flower Hunters," one of the stories in Lauren Groff's stunning new book Florida, a character gets a reader's crush on 18th century explorer William Bartram, an early chronicler of the state's flora and fauna: "She's most definitely in love with that dead Quaker."
She wonders what the "bright-eyed" Bartram would "have seen of Florida before the automobile, before the airplane, before the planned communities, before the swarms of Mouseketeers?
"A damp, dense tangle.
"An Eden of dangerous things."
Those last two lines sum up the Florida that provides the setting for most of these 11 finely crafted stories. Groff isn't much interested in the beaches and theme parks; she's focused on life beyond the boundaries, physical and emotional. Paradise is no paradise without peril, so every garden must have its snake — especially in Florida.
Groff was born and raised in upstate New York but has lived for more than a decade in Gainesville with her husband and sons. This is her fifth book and second collection of short stories.
Her bestselling third novel, the terrific Fates and Furies, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Award, and was named Amazon.com's No. 1 book of 2015.
Florida plays a supporting role in Fates and Furies — its gallant hero, Lotto, is born during a hurricane, the son of a former Weeki Wachee mermaid and a springwater-bottling businessman — but the state stars in most of these stories.
Several of them have main characters who are, if not the same woman, variations on the same type: mother of two boys, in a long marriage roiled by restlessness, she's bright and sensitive but just hanging on to sanity.
The book's first story, "Ghosts and Empties," finds her trying to walk off her discontent, looping through her Florida neighborhood at night: "Feral cats dart underfoot, bird-of-paradise flowers poke out of the shadows, smells are exhaled into the air: oak dust, slime mold, camphor."
The walks distract her from her own life by letting her secretly observe other people. "On my nighttime walks, the neighbors' lives reveal themselves, the lit windows domestic aquariums. At times, I'm silent witness to fights that look like slow-dancing without music. It is astonishing how people live, the messes they sustain, the delicious whiffs of cooking that carry to the street, the holiday decorations that slowly seep into daily decor."
One night she is startled to observe a friend naked, drying off after a shower. "Mostly, though," she says, "I see the mothers I know in glimpses, bent like shepherdess crooks, scanning the floor for tiny Legos or half-chewed grapes or the people they once were, slumped in the corners."
A similar woman develops that crush on Bartram as a defense when not only does her family begin to withdraw from her, but her supermom best friend tells her she needs "a little break" from their friendship.
Later, she weeps over a passage in Bartram. "I'm not crying, she tells the dog, but the dog sighs deeply.
"The dog needs to take a little break from her."
In "The Midnight Zone," a couple and their young sons visit the wild Florida that still lives beyond the suburbs.
"It was an old hunting camp shipwrecked in twenty miles of scrub. Our friend had seen a Florida panther sliding through the trees there a few days earlier. But things had been fraying in our hands, and the camp was free and silent, so I walked through the resistance of my cautious husband and my small boys, who had wanted hermit crabs and kites and wakeboards and sand for spring break. Instead, they got ancient sinkholes filled with ferns, potential death by cat."
The husband leaves for a business emergency, and she takes a fall that leaves her with a concussion and two terrified children, no cell signal and miles from the nearest town.
During the hours and days they await the husband's return, she has an out-of-body experience that lets her see time as something like that panther: It's "impassive, more animal than human. Time would not care if you fell out of it. It would continue on without you. It cannot see you; it has always been blind to the human and the things we do to stave it off, the taxonomies, the cleaning, the arranging, the ordering."
In "Eyewall," a childless middle-aged widow decides to stay alone in her old Florida house during a hurricane.
"The weatherman on the television repeated the swirl of the hurricane with his body like a valiant but inept mime. All the other creatures of the earth flattened themselves, dug in."
As she too digs in, Groff plays on the idea that as we face death, we're visited by the spirits of those who went before us. The story's narrator seems unsurprised to see her late husband show up, chiding her for drinking all the expensive wine as the winds rage.
She's not exactly mourning him. "A week after he left me, his heart broke itself apart. He was in bed with his mistress. She was so preposterously young that I assumed they conversed in baby talk. ... I was glad that she was the one who'd had to be stuck under his moist and cooling body, the one to shout his name and have it go unanswered."
His ghost will be followed by those of her college boyfriend, a golden boy lost to suicide, and her father. But finally, she'll be the only one there. "The house felt cavernous around me. I had thought it would be full by now: of husband, of small voices, at the very least of chickens." The storm, though, will leave her with a hopeful sign.
Some of the stories focus on other characters. "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners"is a virtuoso performance, a man's life story with as much plot and detail packed into its 15 pages as you'll find in many novels.
Jude is the son of a herpetology professor at the University of Florida, a man whose life is all about snakes. In Jude's boyhood home, Groff writes, "Coils of rattlers sat in formaldehyde on the windowsills. Writhing knots of reptiles lived in the coops out back, where his mother had once tried to raise chickens."
Jude's mother came from up North and finds life with her husband unbearable until World War II intervenes. With him away at war, she moves young Jude to the beach, where she runs a bookstore and they live for a few years in happy, snakeless peace.
But the serpent man returns. Groff follows Jude's remarkable life through the deaths of his parents, a flourishing academic career, a terrible accident and an almost accidental marriage.
His bride is full of surprises. He moves them back to the Gainesville house and one day finds that "she had killed a black snake in the bathtub with her bare heel and was laughing at herself in amazement.
"How magnificent he found her, a Valkyrie, half naked and warlike with that dead snake at her feet."
Groff is adept at portraying people in desperate straits, recounting how their humanity is stripped away — but not entirely. In "Dogs Go Wolf," she tells the story of two very young sisters. "Pretty little things, strangers called them. What dolls! Their faces were exactly like their mother's. Hoochies in waiting, their mother joked, but she watched them anxiously from the corner of her eye. She was a good mother."
But the girls are stranded in an old fishing camp on a remote island as first their mother, then the sketchy couple tending them sail away. They're so young they hardly grasp how much trouble they're in, and it's chilling to watch their efforts to survive unfold.
Another desperate character inhabits "Above and Below." Agraduate student with crushing debt and a crashing relationship, she literally runs away from home — and chooses to be homeless. "She thrust her fist out the window and released it slowly. She could almost see her hopes peeling from her palm and skipping down the road in her wake: the books with her name on them; the sabbatical in Florence; the gleaming modern house at the edge of the woods. Gone."
At first, living in her car and hanging outside all day is kind of a lark. "She thought of the thousands of dollars she'd spent on highlights over the years; all that anguish, all those diets, when all she needed to be pretty was laziness and some mild starvation!"
As her life crumbles, she finds wisdom where she can, like what she learns from a man who hires her to clean bars in the middle of the night.
"This land, he told her, was full of living twits and unsettled spirits, both. The spirits were loud and unhappy, and filled the place with evil. All them dead Spanish missionaries and snake-bit Seminoles and starved-to-death Crackers and s---."
It's still an Eden of dangerous things. The woman of the earlier stories returns in the last one, "Yport." She flees Florida for France but discovers her literary and personal quest there is empty. The whole world is Florida, paradise because it's dangerous and dangerous because it's paradise.
"She can't stop the thought that children born now will be the last generation of humans. ... Their world is so full of beauty, the last terrible flash of beauty before the long darkness."
Contact Colette Bancroft at cbancroft@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8435. Follow @colettemb.
Colette Bancroft
It's tough to tell crime from politics in Ace Atkins' 'The Shameless'
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Authors, vendors and volunteers can apply for the Times Festival of Reading as well.
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The former family counselor found inspiration for her latest novel in a news article.
Maureen Callahan's 'American Predator' is a bone-chilling portrait of a monster
The true-crime story of Israel Keyes brings a little-known serial killer out of the dark.
Monique Fields to sign her children's book 'Honeysmoke' in Tampa
In Dunedin, Kip Koelsch also discusses 'Delphys Rising,' his speculative fiction thriller.
'Furious Hours' author Casey Cep finds a nonstop book club as she tours the U.S.
Her nonfiction book about Harper Lee has opened the door to conversations about many other authors.
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