text:
Gay Quotes
Mein plan was to become the biggest gay movie star since Schwarzenegger.
– Sacha Baron Cohen
As Bruno, in Bruno movie.
I think I may be becoming a little bit gay.
As gay reporter Bruno, Da Ali G Show. To Pastor Quinn, the 'Gay Converter' HQ.
Vassup! Being gay is the new coolest thing, so that's why I've come to the gayest part of America – Alabama!
Bruno, Da Ali G Show.
Every time we stay at or take meetings at or dine at any of these nine hotels, we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens for being gay or accused of adultery. Are we really going to help pay for these human rights violations?
– George Cooney
Calling for a boycott of Brunei-owned hotels.
It's not something that defines me. I'm not a half-Indian politician or a doctor politician or a gay politician for that matter. It's just part of who I am, it doesn't define me, it is part of my character I suppose.
– Leo Varadkar
I am a gay man. It's not a secret, but not something that everyone would necessarily know.
All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job.
– Harvey Milk
I'm Israeli and gay.
– Gideon Raff
I think a lot of what I've done is about people feeling as if they are part of the world but also not part of it at the same time. I don't know whether that's from being a gay kid, but I definitely think that resonates with me.
– Greg Berlanti
I think knowing people by first names, not by what they do sexually, is really what it's about. Not being afraid. Fear is the enemy. I've always been comfortable with being gay.
– Herb Ritts
I do think it's well over-time to have a female Doctor Who. I think a gay, black female Doctor Who would be the best of all.
Says he, 'I am a handsome man, but I'm a gay deceiver'.
– George Colman
Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.
I condemn the national gay press for its emphasis on consumerism.
– Harry Hay
From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.
It's a good thing to be foolishly gay once in a while.
– Horace
To me, if a heterosexual has a right to do it, then I have a right to do it. And if it's important to the gay youth – who are now setting the agenda – then its important to me.
– Harvey Fierstein
Football is at least as 'gay' as rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and the film '300.'
Young, gay and stuck in Arkansas? Sounds like a horror flick.
Gay rights are human rights.
If you play a gay role, it sticks more than it does if an actor were to play a murderer or a psychopath.
– Harry Hamlin
Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they're active and they talk about it.
America is off-the-hook gay. I will not go all Ann Coulter on you and say, 'Our gays are better than their gays,' but as far as countries go, we are in-your-face gay.
I think people feel threatened by homosexuality. The problem isn't about gay people, the problem is about the attitude towards gay people. People think that all gays are Hannibal Lecters. But gay people are sons and daughters, politicians and doctors, American heroes and daughters of American heroes.
– Hollis Stacy
It should never be a crime to be gay.
An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.
– Gustav Mahler
It was my own internalised homophobia. I didn't want to be gay.
– Jane Lynch
Sometimes we look at gay being a bigger sin than being proud or not telling the truth. I don't think God categorizes sins.
– Joel Osteen
What 'March' is saying is that it doesn't matter whether we are black or white, Latino or Asian. It doesn't matter whether we are straight or gay.
– John Lewis
For gay people, we learned about our lives in secrecy and a lot of fear.
– Ira Sachs


Gene had his T-shirt on backwards.
Brenda said that somebody was after him.
Sandy told us to be careful.
Santa used to be skinny.
Ole was reasonably certain that Ji had stolen his grandfather's gold watch.
I saw you having coffee this morning with Sergei.
Linder's life is insured for three hundred thousand dollars.
Christian is in your class, isn't he?
We had Srinivasan Jackson under surveillance.
I've seen pictures of Murat standing in front of the Eiffel Tower.
I think I may have offended Clyde.
Pitawas was in total shock.
Teruyuki arrived shortly after Pierette left.
John put the dishes in the dishwater.
Have you already met Teresa?
Isidore has already explained that to us.
Thank Juliet for the help.
Sanford looked like he was rich.
Bucky asked Brandon the same question he had asked me.
Why was Irving at your home?
Takayuki doesn't seem to be interested in making friends.
I came here to investigate Antonella's death.
Eduardo had to make a difficult decision.


Cube some chicken breast and put into a saucepan with 1tbsp oil, green chillies, a little ginger and garlic and some salt......when almost done, add to it some dhania powder and red chilli powder and one chopped firm tomato and one chopped green pepper.
try it ppl its yummy!!!!!!!!!
It sounds great, I've noted the recipe. I'll try to make it soon. Thanks a lot!
piyaarshi	 12 2270 2014-12-05T14:31:45Z inflorescence.
verisimilitude	 1193 97257 2014-12-03T15:45:36Z .Brooke.


text:
Broom's Bloom features our own old fashioned ice cream, homemade lunches, and our own artisan cheese and pork sausage. Locally produced lamb, beef, chicken, turkey, and free-range eggs.
We are closed every Monday.
New Winter Hours
Tuesday-Sunday: Close at 6 P.M.
Click to order a Cheese Box for your next event here!
Check out @broomsbloom_girls on Instagram!
Grocery sales only:
Tuesday through Saturday, 9 A.M. - 11 A.M. Sunday, 9 A.M. - 12 P.M.
Food service and grocery sales:
Tuesday through Thursday, 11 A.M. - 6 P.M. Friday and Saturday, 11 A.M. - 6 P.M. Sunday, 12 P.M. - 6 P.M.
We offer other Harford County agricultural products as well as some specialty items in addition to our own old fashioned hand dipped ice cream made right on the farm. We've made well over 100 flavors, but only 12-18 are served at a time and vary daily.
Broom's Bloom Milk: Milk directly from our cows to your table. Available in whole, 2%, and chocolate.
Broom's Bloom Cheese: An artisan cheddar made from our milk (several varieties available).
Broom's Bloom Pork sausage: A lean and flavorful country sausage (several varieties available).
Woolsey Farm Lamb: Mild and succulent. A real treat that Kate's brother Worley produces on the Umbarger farm in Churchville. Many cuts available.
Woolsey Farm Beef from the Umbarger Family of Churchville: Aged and Tender. Many cuts available.
Homelands Turkey and Chicken
Granova's Chicken: All Natural Chicken Sausage raised with love in Forest Hill.
Cybee's: locally produced honey.
Golden Grains Bread: Beautifully handcrafted loaves and rolls made locally from whole grain.
Local Produce: Seasonal vegetables straight from Harford County Farms.
Beichlers Beyond Bread Also available at the Bel Air Farmers' Market
Daily Crisis Butter
Also available: Broom's Bloom t-shirts, local eggs, local coffee beans, books from local authors, and seasonal beautiful cut flowers.
Current places to find Broom's Bloom Cheese and Pork Sausage, Woolsey Farm Lamb and Level Farm Beef:
Bel Air Farmers' Market: Saturdays 7-11 ; April through Oct. Bond and Thomas Streets Bel Air
Waverly's 32nd St. Farmers Market: Saturdays 7-12 : YEAR ROUND Barclay and 32nd Street Baltimore City
We do offer wholesale pricing on bulk ice cream and cheese orders. We also offer seasonal ice cream pies and cakes but please call 410-399-2697 for availability and pricing as it is subject to change.
Our name originates from the colonial land grant for the area along with the original owner of the land, John Broom. The 'Bloom' refers to crops flourishing and providing for the tenants, hence the name, "Broom's Bloom Dairy."
Broom's Bloom is an interesting mix of ancestral history and new beginnings. The farm and house dates back to the early 1700's and is supporting its 9th generation of the Dallam family. The farm is named after the colonial land grant for the area. In 1997, David and Kate Dallam started milking 65 cows on the farm and even more recently they started making and selling old fashioned ice cream, farmstead cheese and pork sausage. Our animals are fed a natural diet of grains and forages and we do not use artificial growth hormones.
January and February
Tuesday-Saturday : 11 am - 6 pm
Sunday : 12 pm - 6 pm
Labor Day through Memorial Day
Tuesday-Thursday : 11 am - 6 pm
Friday & Saturday : 11 am - 6 pm
Memorial Day through Labor Day
We are closed on New Year's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and every Monday.
We are located at 1700 South Fountain Green Road in Bel Air, Maryland.
From I-95: Take Exit 80/MD543 off I-95. Head toward Churchville off the exit. We are about 4 miles from the exit. Continue on MD543, cross Route 136 and we are on the left. Look for our sign. If you go as far as the light for Wheel Road you've gone too far.
From Rt. 22: We are 2.6 miles south on MD543 from the Route 22 Fountain Green intersection. On the right, below Wheel Road. Just 10 minutes from Bel Air, Churchville, and Abingdon.
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT:
Due to the coronavirus, we have temporarily suspended all events until further notice.
Broom's Bloom offers more than just award-winning ice cream and homemade lunches. We offer special events such as live music, group tours, and seasonal happenings such as Christopher's Train Garden.
We do offer fundraising events, please call 410-399-2697 for further information and scheduling.
Christopher's Train Garden
Our annual train garden in memory of Christopher Cooper, a little boy who loved trains and Christmas. The train garden opens the day after Thanksgiving and runs through the first of January. The garden opens at noon and closes at 8 pm. Free admission, but donations collected go towards improving the garden.
As rated in the Washington, DC / Baltimore 2014 Zagat Restaurants Guide, "Its awesome homemade ice cream is best enjoyed with a view of the cows who contributed at this friendly, family-owned country cafe in idyllic rural Harford County that's ranked as Greater Baltimore's No. 1 Bang for the Buck; in addition to the relaxing farm atmosphere, simple soups and sandwiches give many I-95 drivers the energy to continue on their road trips."
Here at Broom's Bloom, we are proud to receive such honorary awards. Come taste why we have been voted:
No. 1 Small Company: Baltimore's Top Workplaces 2014 by The Baltimore Sun
Fifth in the nation according to Tripadvisor's Top 10 Ice Cream Shops in the U.S.
Tripadvisor Certificate of Excellence 2011-2014
Harford County's Best Ice Cream 10 years in a row
City Paper's Best Place to Get Ice Cream 2007
Baltimore Magazine's Best Cheese of Baltimore 2007
Finest Ice Cream in Baltimore Region 2011-2013, Maryland Life Readers Poll
Zagat Rated "Excellent" or better since 2007
The Baltimore Business Journal has ranked us #17 on their list of Restaurants with top rated food in the Baltimore area.
410-399-2697 | bbdairy@aol.com
Broom's Bloom Email Newsletter
Follow the Barn on Instagram!
© 2022 Broom's Bloom Dairy
design & development by dusten wolff

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Gear for performing active queries.
Package makes integrating JWT Bearer Token Security to your ASP .NET Core 2.0+ app a breeze!! Azure Active Directory, Google, Facebook, Twitter auth integration. Also, Swagger UI integration!
The CData Active Directory Data Provider allows you to connect to Active Directory servers for reads and writes.
Lightweight Graph API client for the user management and reporting needs of a AAD B2C tenant.
Wraps Microsoft Active Directory services.


Handy-man Hans Vatter demonstrates how to install a new water line and drain.
Hans Vatter: Hi, I am Hans Vatter and today, we are installing the dishwasher. In this clip, we are going to be putting on a water line adaptor and we are going to be installing the drain. Alright, we have applied pipe there to the adaptor that goes from the solenoid valve to the flexible water line and we are just going to simply insert it in to the solenoid valve without cross threading it. You have to be careful not to do that. You just put it in so it's finger tight and if it goes down and you turn it by hand, that's a good sign that you don't have a crosshead. We are going to tighten this up using our real six inch crescent wrench. We don't want to over tighten and twist the solenoid valve. We just want to make sure that it doesn't leak. You got to keep in mind which way the water line is coming in and my fingers are here. There we go. That's pretty good and the water line will come in here and hook into that. Okay, now we will set the dishwasher up and get ready to install it. Now that we have covered getting the electrical down on the floor and got the water line connected, we have put the adaptor to the solenoid valve. We have to install the drain through the back of the cabinet into the underneath side of the sink where we are going to hook up the drain and this is just a matter of taking this end, this drain end and forcing it through the hole a little bit. It's not going to be real hard to put in. It just takes a little extra effort.
We want to push in as much hose as we can on the dishwasher until we get ready to move the dishwasher into position and then the hose will just simply follow into the cabinet as we push. It will have to go reach in under the sink with the one hand and push the dishwasher in a little bit. Pull the drain hose until we get it all inside the cabinet. Now we have pushed the dishwasher into position. Now try to remember, as we are pushing the dishwasher into the cabinet space, we are going to reach inside the under the sink, we are going to pull the drain line as we are pushing it in. Okay, now we are going to push the dishwasher in a little, we are going to pull the hose out a little. We'll push the dishwasher a little and we'll pull the hose out a little. You just keep proceeding in that fashion until you get the dishwasher in to the cabinet space. We have it up there, that's good. Now let's just forward those. That's good right there. Now that we have the dishwasher into position, we can connect the drain. We'll begin, we will be working underneath the sink and we have to make it what is called the air gap and the local code in some states or some cities require that you have a air gap. We'll just simply re-wrap around the piping and hook into the backside of the disposal. We will go and take the end of the drain line and you will notice this section for - there is different steps that you can actually cut off if this smaller and you can buy another one that's an adaptor. If this is larger, you can add on to this one and then connect it to your drain line on the disposal. Remember to put your clamp on first and you want to make it to where the screw head is available or easy access for you to tighten up. We will put that on there and we will tighten it up. What you are going to use is a little nut driver or you can use a regular screwdriver. You want to tighten it tight enough so that it doesn't leak and you don't brush the clamp when you are tightening it up. You should be able to pull off it and not come off. Next, we are going to be removing the access panel and making electrical connections underneath the dishwasher.


text:
<?php namespace Quallsbenson\Repository\CLI\Command;

use Quallsbenson\Repository\FileSystem\RepositoryGenerator;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Command\Command;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputArgument;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputOption;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\Question;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\ConfirmationQuestion;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\QuestionHelper;
use Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Filesystem;
use Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Exception\IOExceptionInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Finder\Finder;

class GenerateCommand extends Command{

  public function configure(){

    $this->setName('repository:generate')
         ->setDescription('Generate a Repository')
         ->addArgument(
            'name',
            InputArgument::OPTIONAL,
            'What\'s the Name of the Repository'
         );

  }

  protected function confirmGeneration($name){

     return new Question('Confirm Generation of '.$name .'Repository [yes]?', 'yes');

  }

  protected function getConfigurationFileDir(){

    return getcwd().'/config/repository';

  }

  protected function getConfigurationFileName(){

    return 'config.json';

  }

  protected function getConfigurationFileContents(){

    //search directories for configuration file

    $finder = new Finder;
    $finder->files()
           ->in( $this->getConfigurationFileDir() )
           ->name( $this->getConfigurationFileName() );

    foreach($finder as $file){
      $json = $file->getContents();
    }

    return (array) json_decode($json);

  }

  protected function getConfigurationOptions(){

    //get the contents of the config file as an array of options
    $options = $this->getConfigurationFileContents();

    return is_array( $options ) ? $options : (array) $options;
  }

  protected function validateConfigurationOptions(array $options){

    return (isset($options['generationPath'])      &&
            isset($options['templatePath'])        &&
            isset($options['modelNamespace'])      &&
            isset($options['repositoryNamespace']) &&
            isset($options['name']));

  }

  protected function generateRepository(array $options = array()){

    $gen  = new RepositoryGenerator;
    $gen->generate($options);

  }

  protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output){

    $name    = $input->getArgument('name');
    $qhelper = $this->getHelper('question');

    //give error if name is not set
    if(!$name) throw new \Exception('missing argument name in Repository:generate {name}');

    $options = array("name" => $name);
    $options = array_merge( $options, $this->getConfigurationOptions() );

    //give an error if configuration not set
    if(!$this->validateConfigurationOptions( $options ))
       throw new \Exception("Required Configuration Parameters Not Set");

    //ask user to confirm generation, exit if not
    $confirm = $this->confirmGeneration($name);

    if($qhelper->ask($input, $output, $confirm) !== 'yes'){

      $output->writeln("\n\nRepository Generation Cancelled\n\n");
      return;

    }
    //if user confirms generation attempt to generate files using options
    try{

      $this->generateRepository($options);
      $output->writeln("\n\nRepository {$name} was successfully Generated \n\n");

    } catch(\Exception $e) {

      $output->writeln("Repository Generation failed with the following message:\n\n");
      $output->writeln($e->getMessage());
      return;

    }

  }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Australians are great at pitching in to help and mobilising resources in an emergency. Remember the Queensland floods of 2011? Three-quarters of the council areas within the state of Queensland were declared disaster zones. Government funds were made available and a large workforce was mobilised to deal with the emergency.
Volunteers were quick to offer assistance. More than 55,000 volunteers registered to help clean up the streets of Brisbane, with thousands more simply pitching in to help in all affected areas. All over Australia kind-hearted individuals and community groups took the initiative to send supplies and raise emergency funds.
Declaring an emergency is a significant step. It mobilises government and community resources and funds that are not normally available and inspires the public to act for the common good.
We call on the Australian Parliament to declare a climate emergency and to mobilise resources to restore a safe climate.
1. In February 2016, global temperatures spiked to well over 1.5°C above pre-industrial times, just weeks after the Paris Climate Agreement set an aim of not exceeding that benchmark. Climate scientists say that we are facing a climate emergency, and that the future of ecosystems and human civilisation now hang in the balance. Our Great Barrier Reef is dying as the oceans heat up and recent fires in Tasmania burned ancient world-heritage forests.
2. Declaring a climate emergency is a vital step in building support for the very large changes required to restore a safe, cooler climate.
3. A society-wide mobilisation of resources is required at a scale and speed not seen since the Second World War. Carbon emissions must be reduced to zero within a few years, not several decades, and we must draw down all the excess carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere using measures that include mass tree planting. We must rapidly transition from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy, replacing fossil fuel jobs with jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
The climate restoration is an enormous task, but given the risks to ourselves and future generations we must rise to the challenge.
Government-led resource mobilisation is only half of the solution. The other half is what you and I do. During the Queensland floods, Aussies were taking neighbours and strangers to safety, sharing resources, and doing whatever was needed right from the start of the emergency simply because they could.
Individuals and community groups are already taking initiative and using their own resources to restore a safe climate. Tell Parliament and everyone else what YOU are already doing to show how we are mobilising together for the common good.
Use the form below to sign the petition.
If you wish, you can also add your climate actions. We'll add the data from the climate action counters when we submit the petition because we believe it is a powerful way of showing that the public is already mobilising itself.
For example, walk, ride, take public transport, use an electric vehicle, avoid air travel. Instead, use video conferencing, skype for business, etc, whenever possible.
For banks see www.marketforces.org.au, for superannuation see www.superswitch.org.au.
Invest in renewable energy, or donate to community solar projects (see www.corenafund.org.au).
For example, buy only what you need, and buy things that last. Recycle. Upcycle.
See the public figures supporting the call for a Climate Emergency Declaration here.
There are more images to share and tweet in the Toolbox at ClimateEmergencyDeclaration.org.
Help build support for a climate emergency declaration!
LIKE the Facebook page and invite your friends to Like it too.
A new 3-level of government Climate Emergency Declaration petition is at http://climateemergencydeclaration.org/sign. Please sign this new petition to add your voice to the signature count for state/territory governments and local councils even if you have already signed the national petition above!
What is a Climate Emergency PetitionSTORM?
This entry was posted in News on March 27, 2016 by Margaret Hender.
Why has CORENA launched a petition?


Day 9 Fly to Maui and explore the "Valley Isle"
Tauck's classic four-island Hawaii tour incorporates natural and historical sights, exclusive cultural experiences, and free days to pursue your own passions on Oahu, the Big Island of Hawaii, Kauai and Maui. Stay in ocean-view rooms at some of Hawaii's finest oceanfront resorts; have a hands-on gourmet cooking experience at a renowned restaurant on Maui; experience one of the most poignant chapters of World War II history at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor; take a private catamaran sail at sunset on the Big Island; hear a "talk-story" from a beach boy; take an outrigger ride along Waikiki Beach; attend a traditional luau on Maui; and enjoy a private evening highlighted by cocktails and dinner at Iolani Palace in Honolulu.
stories from a "beach boy"
Select small group departures, averaging 24 Tauck guests: January 31, March 5, May 10, June 1, July 15, September 30 and October 22.
Enjoy an amazing helicopter adventure into a world of lush tropical rainforests, jagged mountains, sea cliffs, beaches and craters. Music and narration combine as you soar into Waimea Canyon and view the Na Pali Cliffs.
Witness the fiery lava vents of Kilauea, the island's active volcano, and soar over the hidden tropical valleys of the Kohala Mountains and the beautiful rainforests of the Hamakua Coast. The island boasts 11 out of Earth's 13 climate zones – this excursion is an adventure you don't want to miss!
For activities marked with an asterisk (*) in the day-by-day descriptions, participation is at your own risk and a signed liability waiver will be required.


MYOB has recognised Kilimanjaro Consulting the only recognised Diamond Partner.
Creative Instore Solutions (CIS) continued the now annual event of showcasing the business of design to the next up and coming industrial designers by today hosting over 30 Year 11 students from Knox Grammar School. Providing a tour of the Sydney Head Office facilities and showing the students the business side of industrial design, including everything from concept creation to financial management. This years' tour, which continued annual tradition can serve to guide students interested in laying the foundation for a future in the design industry.
The CIS employees from all departments look forward to the students visit from the on site interaction to the submission of the final assessments and photography of the prototypes weeks later.
Fine Wine Partners (FWP) enlisted Creative Instore Solutions (CIS) to raise the bar on the wine gifting category in store taking the guess work out of "what wine to pick" for the consumer. Leveraging their range of domestic and international brands, such as Croser and Bollinger and the extensive range of correlating gifting items was a key driver for the resulting merchandisability of the CIS designed display.
FWP wanted a luxurious, premium unit in creating a sense of " the gift itself is the reason to believe", specifically capturing key holiday periods that lend themselves to gifting including Valentines day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas & NYE.
Keeping with the brand portfolio, FWP required a highlight on sophistication with the key deliverable of the display to drive uplift in sales and visibility for the gifting occasion. The design asthenic centred around understanding that liquor retail environments would be motivated to maximise on counter location, if the result had a premium look and was durable in construction and ensured retailer uplift.
The lightweight but sturdy display stand is easy to assemble, comes flat-packed all whilst being easy to shop with maximum gift visibility. Additionally, the viability of being able to re-dress the display by brand or occasion maximises long term ROI for Fine Wine Partners across their portfolios.
"The design was capable of communicating one story across the FWP portfolio, in addition to securing in store presence by being flexible across channels with the ability to transform and re-brand by season ensuring the brief objectives were achieved" said Deane Hubball, Group CEO, Creative Instore Solutions.
Amanda Goddard, Activation Manager, Fine Wine Partners agreed "Creative Instore Solutions hit the mark on our brief creating a luxurious, premium unit to showcase both our domestic and international brands in the gifting category".
The unit has been rolled out in Dan Murphy's and Independent Liquor retailers nationally.
Fine Wine Partners have dedicated sales teams based in every State and Territory in Australia. They specialise in servicing on premise consumption restaurants and venues and national and independently owned retail outlets. They are fully owned by Lion Nathan and the head office is based in Sydney.
"By creating a free standing mobile floor stand display unit (FSDU) with the ability to rebadge for different brands across the Asahi portfolio CIS have ensured critical value add for our customer through their activation cycle" said Deane Hubball, Group CEO, Creative Instore Solutions.
"Quite simply our independents and sales reps love the stand" concurred Matt Arnott, Trade Marketing Manager – Independents, Asahi Premium Beverages.
The first run of the unit has been rolled out across 250 independent stores nationally.
PepsiCo Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) has launched a Mexican Fiesta in independent supermarkets. To support this program, Creative Instore Solutions (CIS) designed an iconic point of purchase cart that invokes the culture of Mexico while showcasing the Doritos brand. The off location placement of the Doritos product in the fresh food aisle is designed to create an occasion around a big night i.e. in Nacho Night occasion for shoppers. It allows the rack to generate impulse sales with associated fresh food products such as avocados and tomatoes leveraging the Mexican fiesta theme whilst showcasing Doritos as the hero product.
The aim for the Doritos brand was to create an occasion in store, based on shopper insights around the impulse nature of snacks linking to social sharing occasions. This, when coupled with the popularity of Mexican cuisine, lead to the development of the Mexican Fiesta concept. The key for the display was to engage the shopper and create a true meal solution with all adjacency products within arm's reach to increase the retailer's basket size. The success of the Doritos Cart was emphasised winning GOLD at the recent POPAI ANZ Marketing at Retail Awards 2014 in the Short Run Category.
The display was designed for maximum flexibility in both shopper communication, range of adjacency products and ticketing. This allowed for different price points to be reflected from the display and the ability to create a bundled price offer for the shopper. This was clearly aided by the in store display that inspired shoppers to create the taste of Mexico at home, stopping busy consumers in their tracks.
By commanding the attention of the shopper in the off premise fresh food aisle of the independent retailer, cutting through clutter based on the iconic food cart design and driving retailer fresh food uplift the cart design is a true point of purchase success story.
Kellogg's in conjunction with Creative Instore Solutions (CIS) have produced a point of sale display showcasing the consumer 'To Go' snacking option and providing an iconic option for retailers. The striking unit creates high Kellogg's brand visibility utilising show stopping Kellogg's Red to cut through the retail clutter. The polished clear sides both protect the Kellogg's product whilst ensuring high visibility for the consumer.
CIS understand that engaging customers and unlocking growth opportunities in retailers across the UK was the key driver for Kellogg's and the design led approach focused on achieving this result for the client. The stand is a perfect fit within the store environment and sized to fit well with associated off premise locations which remind consumers about the snacking occasion. The display unit has been designed to hold shelf ready packaging which makes stock replenishment much easier for store staff and merchandisers, removing the need to decant product.
CIS and Kellogg's also ensured the long-term return on investment by forming adaptability based on the modular design which can be varied in height, hang off a wall or placed as a single cell on a counter. Additionally, all graphics are updatable safeguarding the brand and promotional strategic changes can be made with minimal effort. Speed of assembly is guaranteed due to minimal parts with the unit being flat packed for merchandising and transportation ease.
CIS pride themselves on designing and delivering truly iconic point of sale displays for customers to ensure their brands stand out in the cluttered retail environment.
The display can be seen in over 3000 high street stores across the UK.


Upon the end of my spring break away from spring in the Midwest , I had a few precious hours with one of my younger sisters. These hours are few and I treasure the time we have together. I wish to have the same amount of time, no matter how short and brief time allows, with my other siblings. Space in distance and expense upon travel does not help to make our visits frequent and planning ahead will be imperative.
This particular walk with this younger sibling was refreshing. Our conversation revolved around becoming more like Jesus and less about ourselves. I heard her voice and she heard mine. We both want more of Jesus.
We walked through her neighborhood while conversing about life. I told her about my angst in starting over in our new home and she told me how God is filling her life with more of Him. This was so encouraging for me! I thrill to hear my sister tell me how she is loving Jesus more; how God has transformed her heart. This sharpens me. Her steady and consistent relationship with Jesus motivates me to have the same.
We walked and talked about all sorts of things that may bring angst and uncertainty to both of us. We stopped along our walk to soak in the beauty of God's creation. I am in awe of God's grace. So very thankful for a walk with my sister to help me focus on an omniscient God.
Our ups and downs have no comparison to those who struggle with much more. I feel less in character when I compare our [my] struggles with someone else facing far more than me.
This walk with my sister has caused me to think beyond my sweet home front.
This entry was posted in Family, Life and tagged faith, family, God, home, Sister. Bookmark the permalink.


Discount Daytona Beach hotels offer visitors the chance to enjoy Daytona Beach without worrying about wasting their hard-earned money on overpriced hotel rates. Daytona Beach is a popular vacation destination for thousands of tourists each year. Between lodging, dining, entertainment and recreation, expenses can quickly add up. However, the numerous AAA-approved discount hotels in the Daytona Beach area can help keep costs down.
Of course, AAA approval is not essential in finding a good hotel, but it can be very helpful for your search. Approval from an outside monitoring organization such as AAA is an easy way for travelers to find quality lodgings as they undergo the task of booking their vacations. Through their unbiased reports on travel services, consumer protection associations help millions of travelers every year avoid bad experiences and substandard service while vacationing.
Amenities at quality low-priced Daytona Beach hotels vary from hotel to hotel. However, oftentimes, they will offer cable TV (including premium channels), swimming pools, jacuzzi, and sauna. Depending on whether they're located right on the ocean or not, they may have their own beach. Children's activities are also sometimes offered at discount Daytona Beach hotels.
Free parking, non-smoking rooms, and vending machines should be offered as a matter of course. In addition, it's always nice to have a restaurant, coffee shop, bar, or lounge to go to when you're in the mood. Finally, little things like in-room ironing boards, coffee makers, safes, and wireless Internet access are convenient touches.


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Montgomery Planning Announces its 2019 Winter Speaker Series
News, Planning
Three sessions will focus on the challenges and opportunities for updating Montgomery County's General Plan as a guide for the future
Silver Spring, MD – The Montgomery County Planning Department, part of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, is sponsoring a three-part Winter Speaker Series, "Imagine the Future of Montgomery County," to be held in January, February and March 2019, that will focus on the upcoming General Plan update and the broad trends and challenges facing the county over the next 20 to 30 years.
The General Plan for the Maryland-Washington Regional District in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, also known as the Wedges and Corridors Plan, was adopted by the M-NCPPC in 1964. The plan has been revised and amended numerous times through local area master plans and countywide functional plans. Its core concepts of wedge-shaped areas of land situated between major road corridors connecting different communities have shaped the county for the past 54 years.
The goals of the General Plan — efficient use of land, preservation of open spaces, opportunities for outdoor recreation, protection of environmental resources, connective transportation systems and a variety of living environments, among others — are as valid today as they were in 1964. But the technological, social, environmental and economic changes that have occurred since the plan's adoption have led to the pressing need to refresh the plan for Montgomery County and set a direction for the future.
"Previous Winter Speaker Series have focused on specific issues, such as housing, transportation and economic development. This time, as we are preparing to update our General Plan so we want to start looking more comprehensively at the future of the county as we continue to grow and plan for our communities," says Planning Director Gwen Wright. "I invite anyone who lives or works in Montgomery County to attend or tune into this series as we consider the important issues related to the update of the General Plan."
The 2019 Winter Speakers Series will offer lessons from other jurisdictions in the DC region that have updated comprehensive plans and address issues such as resiliency, mobility and equity that will influence Montgomery County's General Plan update.
The series is free and open to the public and planning professionals. Credit for certification maintenance (CM) for members of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) attending the series is pending.
The presentations, which will include question-and-answer discussions, will be held at the Planning Department headquarters (8787 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD) from 6 to 7:30 p.m. as follows:
Session 1: Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Recent General Plan Updates in the Washington, DC Region
Several local jurisdictions have recently updated their general plans or are in the process of updating them. A panel of current and former planning officials from Washington, DC, Loudoun County, Virginia, and Howard County, Maryland, will discuss lessons learned from these updates, including community involvement in creating the new plans.
Speakers: Tanya Stern, Deputy Director of the Montgomery County Planning Department and former Deputy Director of the DC Office of Planning; Valdis Lazdins, Planning Director of Howard County; and Ricky Barker, Director of Community Planning and Development Services for the City of Rockville and former Planning and Zoning Director of Loudoun County.
Session 2: Wednesday, February 13, 2019
What is Real Resilience? Positioning our Communities to Thrive in Changing Times
This session will examine the probable disruptive technological, social, environmental and economic changes coming our way over the next few decades and the potential impacts these changes on the region, county, cities and towns. What can we do to position ourselves to not just endure, but thrive with the changes headed our way?
Speaker: Harriet Tregoning, Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Community Planning and Development at the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Session 3: Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Capital Region Blueprint for Regional Mobility by Greater Washington Partnership
Ensuring seamless, efficient transportation connections is critical to a productive and prosperous regional economy. This session will examine recommendations to address our region's most pressing transportation challenges included in the Greater Washington Partnership's recently released report Capital Region Blueprint for Regional Mobility, a strategy for prioritizing smart policies and investment in infrastructure.
Speaker: Joe McAndrew, Director of Transportation Policy, Greater Washington Partnership
Tanya Stern joined Montgomery Planning in August 2018 as Deputy Director. Previously, she worked as the Deputy Director for Planning, Engagement and Design at the DC Office of Planning. In that position, Stern directed land use planning initiatives, including the initiation of Washington, DC's comprehensive plan; waterfront and neighborhood planning, and urban design. These efforts included integrating the topic of resilience into the city's comprehensive plan for the first time and partnering with local, regional and federal agencies on climate adaptation and flood management initiatives.
Valdis Lazdins is the Director of the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. A professional planner and landscape architect, Lazdins directs and manages multi-disciplinary teams and municipal planning staff to prepare development and redevelopment strategies for new communities, mixed-use projects, brownfield sites and suburban areas. He has extensive experience with complex planning and urban design projects and much of his recent work focuses on re-inventing the suburbs.
Ricky Barker is the Director of Community Planning and Development Services for the City of Rockville. Previously, he was Planning and Zoning Director for Loudoun County, Virginia, where he led the development of a new comprehensive plan. Barker spent the prior 20 years as the Associate Planning Director for Cary, North Carolina where he worked with the town council to direct and manage growth and development through streamlined regulations. He has been a speaker at the national conferences of the American Planning Association on the development of comprehensive plans, among other topics.
Harriet Tregoning works on planning, smart mobility, disaster resilience, housing and community development issues. She served in President Barack Obama's administration as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Community Planning and Development at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. In that position, Tregoning helped states, regions and communities across the country to build a strong foundation for resilience in the face of a changing climate. Additionally, Tregoning is the former Director of the DC Office of Planning.
Joe McAndrew has more than a decade of policy and planning experience. He is the director of transportation policy at the Greater Washington Partnership where he develops and drives all activity relating to its transportation initiative. Prior to joining the partnership, McAndrew served as legislative assistant for the United States Senate Commerce Committee. Before working on Capitol Hill, he served as the policy director for Transportation for America where he led federal and state policy efforts, and supported state and local partners
Twice a month, usually on the second and fourth Wednesdays. View the upcoming meeting agenda.


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Mammoths in the news
In South Carolina, eight year old Olivia McConnell noticed that her state has a state grass doesn't have a state fossil. She set out to fix that. She wrote a letter to her state legislators, Rep. Robert Ridgeway and Sen. Kevin Johnson, laying out her reasons why the state need an official fossil and proposed the mammoth for the job. They were impressed and sponsored a bill for her.
The articles I've checked on all flip back and forth between Columbian mammoth and woolly mammoth and so does the bill. They are two different species. Columbian would be the correct one for South Carolina. Olivia probably knows the difference. She did her homework on this, but I can't find the text of her letter. One of the reasons she gave for choosing the mammoth was that it has an important tie to South Carolina. The first known mention mammoth remains in the Americas appeared in 1743 in Mark Catesby's in his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands he wrote "At a place in Carolina called Stono, was dug out of the Earth three or four Teeth of a large Animal, which, by the concurring Opinion of all the Negroes, native Africans, that saw them, were the Grinders of an Elephant...." Catesby probably heard about the teeth when he traveled in the southern states in 1725.
Olivia's bill should have sailed through both houses and been signed into law in no time. Rep. Ridgeway's version sailed through committee, was put to a vote and passed 94-3. Those three should be ashamed of themselves. Then the bill ran aground in the senate. Far right Sen. Kevin Bryant decided it needed to to be amended with an unconstitutional injection of religion. He wanted to add some verses from Genesis so every one would know just who created mammoths and fossils. Bryant's amendment was ruled out of order because it introduced a new subject. Bryant tried to shorten his amendment, but still wants to keep religion in the bill. Thus, it remains in limbo. In his defense, Bryant whines, "I think it's a good idea to designate the mammoth as the state fossil, I don't have a problem with that. I just felt like it'd be a good thing to acknowledge the creator of the fossils." Bryant has one ally in the state senate, Sen. Mike Fair, who has placed an objection on the bill. Fair, like Bryant is a creationist and climate change denier.
And so, it remains unclear if South Carolina will get a state fossil. Three other states have mammoths as their state fossils (and one has the mastodon), but duplication has never been a problem for state symbols (state flowers, for example). Changing the species won't help. Bryant and Fair will want to attach religion to any fossil. Most stories on this predictably end with the gag that perhaps Bryant and Fair should be the state fossils. The story shouldn't be about their obstructionism. It should be about Olivia McConnell, a smart, observant girl. I hope those two old poops don't discourage her. We need more girls like Olivia.
Posted by John McKay at 4:30 PM 3 comments:
Labels: creationism, mammoths, Olivia McConnell
Hobby Lobby and privacy
Over the last few days, while looking at some of the pre-trial commentary on the Hobby Lobby vs. Obamacare suit, something that's been nagging at me finally jelled into a coherent thought. The primary arguments will be over whether the government is violating the religious freedom of the owners of Hobby Lobby by requiring the insurance they contribute to for their employees to cover birth control. I think the feminist issues have been covered well by my side and both sides have covered the religious freedom angles. My epiphany was over the privacy angle, which actually grows out of the liberal argument about whose religious freedom is being infringed upon by whom. All of these issues are inextricably intertwined. It's the job of the Supremes to untangle them and decide which thread is the Constitutional issue they want to opine on.
How does privacy fit into this? I'm fairly sure privacy is not even a choice among the bases the Supremes will use to make their decision. Robert Bork, who was Reagan's first choice for Scalia's seat argued that there is no right to privacy and, as far as I know, neither side in this case is making an argument that it is relevant. But it is. Be patient with me.
The Green family, who own the Hobby Lobby chain, claim they don't want to control the sex lives of their (female) employees, they just don't want to be forced to pay for aspects of those sex lives that they don't approve of. Ty disapprove of birth control, which they (very incorrectly) equate to abortion. By their logic, they don't want to pay for scarlet women to kill babies. That's not the issue. The issue is the privacy of their employees. Not anyone's religion. Privacy.
Compensation for a job can include a lot of things, pay for work, paid time off, bonuses, stock options, and insurance. These things the employer gives to the employee in exchange for work of some sort. In most jobs, this means the employer has a great deal of control over what the employee can or cannot do during what are considered working hours. Periodically, in the past, employers have tried to control their employees during their off-work hours. Schools, both private and public, have been well known for imposing morality codes on teachers that apply to every hour of every day. Over the last decade or so, many secular employers have tried to exert control over their employees off-the-clock vices. They have tried to control their employees smoking and drinking, even when these haven't affected their job performance, in the name of keeping insurance costs down. Other employers drug test for pot use, even when this hasn't affected job performance, and a cost to the company, just in the name of the employer's pecksniffery. The liberal, libertarian, and even, occasionally, conservative counter-arguments to these efforts has been that whatever the employee does off-the-clock is none of their employer's damn business. Different parts of the spectrum can have different rationales for objecting or supporting some of these employer demands. From the perspective of privacy, none of it is justifiable. Which brings us back to Hobby Lobby.
Insurance is part of the total compensation package that an employer gives to an employee. If a female employee wants to use their insurance to cover birth control, the Greens say they are being made to subsidize something they disapprove of. But what if the employee chooses to use part of her pay for birth control? How is that different? Pay and insurance are both part of the total compensation package. If the employer has the right to tell an employee how to use their insurance, why don't they have the right to tell them how to spend the monetary part of their compensation package? Why not tell them which cable channels they can subscribe to? Why not tell them to eat more vegetables, like Michelle Obama isn't?
The Greens want to intrude into the most basic economic transactions of their employees. In its most extreme, how is this degree of control different that the company store or the plantation. Conservatives love the plantation analogy; how can they defend this one?
Posted by John McKay at 10:34 PM 1 comment:
Labels: politics, religion
The Vilui rhinoceros
Peter Simon Pallas arrived in Irkutsk an hour before midnight on March 14, 1772. He was accompanied by a painter and three naturalists. The horses, he writes, we tired. It was a week before the equinox but the rivers were still frozen and there was plenty of snow on the ground in that part of the world. This was a feature, not a bug, as far as travel in Siberia was concerned. When the temperatures rose, the whole country would become one endless, roadless, mosquito-filled bog. Since the beginning of the Russian state, the fastest way to travel its vast expanses had been by sleigh in the winter. He could have used those frozen rivers and snowy ground to continue deeper into Siberia but Irkutsk was his goal. He wrote that he knew the city held curiosities he had to see and stories he had to hear about the unknown land across Lake Baikal. Irkutsk did not disappoint. The governor had a rhinoceros to show him.
Pallas had arrived in Russian four years earlier at the invitation of Catherine the Great. He had been offered a teaching position at the Academy University, but that title was more a description of his pay grade and social status than a job description. He immediately set to work preparing for a five year expedition into the eastern provinces of Catherine's empire. Before leaving, he took time to look through the Academy's collections where he discovered a rhino skull that had been discovered near the Amur River on the Chinese-Siberian border. Numerous bones of rhinos along with hippos, elephants, and other tropical animals had been found in his native Germany and other parts of Europe. He wrote a paper describing this skull, tying it to the problem of the Siberian mammoth. Like most thinkers of his time, he was inclined to explain their presence in the north as a result of the Biblical flood washing the bones of tropical animals north. Pallas did not follow the usual method of scientific explorers, which was to collect samples and take notes and then analyze and write about them on their return. He sent several scientific papers back to the Academy and two volumes of a travel narrative while still on the road.
When Governor de Brill told him that he had preserved parts of an unknown large animal, Pallas' first thought was probably of a mammoth. Westerners knew of tales of bloody preserved mammoth carcasses as long as they had known about the mammoth. Earlier in the century there had even been a report by a reputable European. In addition, Pallas had seen dozens, possibly hundreds, of mammoth bones since leaving St. Petersburg. In his Travels, he wrote that there was hardly a river east of the Don that did not produce a few. He must have been both surprised and delighted when de Brill produced the head and feet of a rhino. During his four years on the road, Pallas had begun to doubt the wisdom of his having come to Russia. Captain Cook was the superstar of exploratory science. It seemed to Pallas that the South Seas was the real frontier. In Siberia, he lamented, one could go a hundred miles without discovering anything. A preserved rhino was something to get excited about.
Pallas was exceptionally lucky that almost everyone involved in bringing the mammoth to his attention had understood its importance. The rhino had been discovered by a group of Yakut (Sakha) hunters in December on the banks of the Vilui River, a tributary that fell into the Lena well above the Arctic Circle. The rhino was nearly complete when they found it, but enough of it was in a bad state of decay that decided to cut the feet and head from the carcass and leave the rest behind. In any case, even if they had wanted bring the whole body, breaking it loose from the frozen ground would have been almost impossible during the winter. The hunters took these parts to Ivan Argunov, the district magistrate who took a notarized statement detailing the location and position of the carcass and sent the parts and statement to the regional capital on Yakutsk in January. The authorities there kept one foot and sent the rest on to Irkutsk, where it arrived in late February, just three weeks before Pallas' arrival.
The head and feet were in excellent condition. Almost all of the skin was present and covered with hair. The delicate structure of the eyelids remained. Muscles and fat were preserved under the skin. Though the horns were missing, from the spots where they had been attached, he could tell it had been a two horned rhino. Of immediate concern was making sure it remained preserved in the best condition possible. It had already begun to give off a stench that he compared to "an ancient latrine." He chose to dry it in an oven. The melting fat falling in the fire caused the oven to get much hotter than he wanted and one of the feet was burned beyond any hope of saving. Naturally, the loss was blamed on an inattentive servant although I feel confident in say that no one in Irkutsk had any experience in drying rhinoceros parts so we should cut him some slack. Pallas took careful measurements of the head and feet and wrote a detailed article (in Latin) for the Academy. He would have liked to have spent more time studying it, but the Siberian Spring was coming and he wanted to get across Lake Baikal before the ice broke.
The Vilui rhinoceros as it appeared with Pallas' description (source)
Pallas' paper was published in the Academy yearbook for 1772 and eagerly read by scholars all over Europe. When he returned in 1774 he was covered in honors and eagerly sought out by other scientists. Moving to Russia turned not to have been a bad choice after all. he stayed in Russia for the rest of his working life. His rhino did not disappear into the Academy collections never to be seen again. During the Nineteenth Century, other scientists continued to study it. Its blood was examined, the remains of its last meal were picked out of its teeth, and, in 1849, Johann Friedrich von Brandt, the head of the zoology division at the Academy wrote a book length anatomical study of the remains. As an introduction to his study, Brandt went over the documents relating to the discovery.
In his rush to leave Irkutsk, Pallas regretted not having had time to make drawings of the remains. The Academy made up for this lack by having an artist prepare a detailed set of drawings of the head in profile and the remaining foot from the front and side. When Brandt made his study, he had an artist make new drawings, though not as detailed, of the head from all angles. By Brandt's time, enough other remains, especially horns had been made that they were beginning to be able reconstruct the Siberian rhino and see how different it was from living rhinos. One detail that particularly stood out was how unusual the horns were. Instead of being essentially conical, like those of living rhinos, The horns they were finding in Siberia were flat as a knife blade and ridiculously long, sometimes three or even four feet. Brandt had his artist match the skull up with one of the horns in their collection to give readers an idea of the horn's magnitude.
The Vilui rhinoceros as it appeared with Brandt's description. Because color printing was still rare, the illustration was most likely had colored. In either case, the use of color demonstrates the importance the Academy placed on the study. (source)
Like many extinct animals, the name of Siberian rhino has gone through many permutations over the years, from Rhinocerotis antiquitatis to Gryphus antiquitatus to Rhinocerotis tichorhini to its current name Coelodonta antiquitatis. It's commonly called the woolly rhino and is one of the best known ice age animals after the mammoth and sabre toothed tiger. Pallas never did have his name attached to it. It's curious that he didn't give it a name. At the time, he was working on his own naming system to fix the weaknesses that he saw in the Linnaean system. As it was, the naming credit has gone to Johann Friedrich Blumenbach who, coincidentally, also named the mammoth. Pallas needn't feel slighted; he named and has had named after him a number of other species.
Labels: paleontology, rhinoceros, Vilui
Monsieur Paquet's giant bone
Business must have been going well in 1779 for Monsieur Paquet, a Paris wine merchant. At least, that's what we can infer from his decision to expand his cellars that year. After removing part of the wall, He began digging into the yellow soil of mixed sand and clay. Two feet in, he discovered something very large and hard that was not a rock. At first, he thought he had run into a tree trunk, but, after clearing away more soil, he discovered that it was the biggest bone he, or anyone he knew, had ever seen. Paquet vanished from history soon after that, but the created a mini controversy and the last hurrah of the idea that mammoths were not elephantine in nature.
Paquet knew he had something valuable. He spent eight days trying to excavate it, but, with the soft walls collapsing, he finally had to give up. Using a sledge hammer and iron wedges, he broke off what he could see of the bone and built a wall over the rest. Even without the part still buried and other pieces chipped off, the bone weighted over 200 pounds. Several doctors came to view his bone and all agreed that it was one half of a giant pelvis. However, one learned visitor disagreed.
The exception was Robert de Paul de Lamanon, a promising new light on the French intellectual scene. As young men, Robert and his older brother, Pierre-Auguste, developed a habit of walking, rather than riding, wherever they went. This gave them the opportunity to examine all aspects of the countryside from agriculture to the living conditions of the peasantry to the geological structure of the land. After his father died, Robert dropped out of the seminary—as a student of Locke, Hobbs, and Rousseau he had no interest in religion—and set out with his brother to study the mountains of Switzerland. He estimated that they walked 1800 miles through the Alps that year. Based on his close-up observations of mountain valleys and the gravel deposits below the mountains, he developed a theory that the primary force shaping the earth was water—not the waters of the Biblical deluge, but rivers and periodic eruptions from enormous primal lakes in the mountains. This was the Lamanon who arrived in Paris and heard about Paquet's giant bone.
After rather roughly wresting it from the ground, Paquet kept the bone in the hopes of selling it for the sizable amount of 800 livres (at the time, Lamanon was living on a budget of 600 livres per year from his father's estate). Despite his high hopes for selling the bone, Paquet was willing to let Lamanon spend several days examining it. Lamanon hired an artist named Martin to help him and the two used their time to take measurements, make drawings, and even construct clay models of the bone. Based on his examination, Lamanon argued that it couldn't possibly be a pelvis. He pointed out that several structures were missing, most importantly, the acetabulum, the socket that meets the ball at the top of the femur to form the hip joint. To his eye, it looked like the lower part of a skull. Building on that observation, he stated that the bone bore no resemblance to the skull of an elephant or hippo or any other known terrestrial animal, which was true enough. Therefore, he concluded, it must have belonged to a whale. He admitted that the only whale skull he had seen was the damaged skull of a young whale left behind by a showman as he skipped town ahead of his creditors.
Monsieur Martin's drawing of the bone (source)
It was no coincidence that Lamanon specifically called out elephants and hippos for comparison. Besides being the largest of terrestrial animals, they had both been suggested as identities for other giant bones found around the Northern Hemisphere. In Asia and Europe, the bones were called mammoth and assigned to elephants. In the Ohio country of North America, mastodon bones, then as yet unnamed, showed features common to both elephants and hippos. Lamanon used his analysis of Paquet's bone to question those identifications. The mere resemblance of certain bones, he wrote, specifically referring to tusks and teeth, does not necessarily mean they come from the same animal. The teeth of a horse resemble those of donkey and the teeth of a cat those of a dog. Mammoth teeth resemble those of an elephant, but those of the mastodon do not. Couldn't this mean that mammoth, mastodon, and elephant are three completely different animals, or that mammoth and mastodon finds were not the remains of single animals but the co-mingled bones of several different animals, some elephant-like and some not? This was the position of the great Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton regarding the unknown animal of the Ohio. As for the Siberian mammoth, he pointed out that, even though the offer of a substantial reward for a complete skeleton had been in effect since the time of Peter the Great, no one had yet been able to produce one.
That Paquet's bone might have come from a whale was the starting point in the argument Lamanon wanted to make. His next point was the idea that other large bones were not necessarily those of known terrestrial animals. Having set his argument up, Lamanon moved on to his objective: using Paquet's bone to support his geological theories. The primal lakes that Lamanon envisioned shaping the geology of the north were really inland seas and their draining was a series of explosive, catastrophic events. He argued that whale bones in places like the Paris basin didn't come up from the ocean; they came down from the mountains. Mixed bones, such as those that Daubenton believed the Ohio animal to be made of, Lamanon saw as evidence of the violence of the lakes' draining. Even if the bones included those of elephants or hippos, these were animals living downstream, swept up, and deposited far north of their native habitats.
Most naturalists believed that the mammoth was an elephant and the mastodon was something similar, but there was still enough room for doubt that Lamanon's argument that they were not wasn't scandalous. What did scandalize some was the fact that he directly challenged Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Comte du Buffon and intendant of the royal museum (Jardin du Roi). Buffon was without question the most influential man in French science. Buffon's theory of the earth was that it had started out as a molten sphere and cooled first at the poles and that the habitable part of the world had expanded from there. He further claimed that only hot climates were hospitable for large animals. By this, he explained giant bones, such as the mammoth's, were relics of a time when the climate of the North was tropical. His theory of the relationship between temperature and size so annoyed Thomas Jefferson that he dedicated a large part of a chapter of his Notes on the State of Virginia to refuting it. Lamanon refuted Buffon by pointing out that there were plenty of large animals in the North such as moose, but especially fish and whales.
A childhood friend of his later wrote that "a thousand voices were against him, he was assailed on all sides, the newspapers rang with accusations of arrogance, audacity, boldness, ignorance itself." One such outrages person was one Baudon, who published a nitpicking response to Lamanon five months after his paper came out. Boudon upbraided Lamanon for having the temerity to contradict his betters. He followed this by assuring his readers that his only motive was his love of truth and not currying favor for his forthcoming book. August was embarrassed enough by his brother that he wrote a letter of apology to Buffon on his behalf.
Neither Buffon himself nor his protege Daubenton seemed particularly offended. Buffon was happy to take advantage of Lamanon's geological observations in his later works. Daubenton's curiosity was sufficiently aroused to make a trip to Paquet's wine cellar to examine the bone and convince the merchant to dig out the rest of the bone. Daubenton was the perfect man to settle what kind of bone it was. Forty years earlier, he had been chosen by Buffon to catalog the zoological collections at the Jardin du Roi. In that capacity, he had handled and measured the bones of hundreds of animals, both living and fossil. Later he had helped Buffon write his encyclopedic Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière by contributing anatomical essays on 182 species of quadrupeds. He was easily the most knowledgeable comparative anatomist in Europe. Daubenton took one of Lamanon's clay models and compared it to the bones in the royal collection. The closest match he found confirmed what Lamanon's observations. In a short paper read before the Academy, he set out his reasons for believing the bone was part of the sphenoid process, a lower part of the skull, of an especially large whale.
Daubenton was accompanied on his visit to Paquet's by the chemist Berniard. Lamanon asked Berniard if it was possible to determine, by chemical analysis, whether a bone came from a land animal or from a sea animal. Berniard admitted he didn't know. Since none of the three of them had heard of such an experiment. They secured a piece of Paquet's bone and Daubenton brought from the royal collections pieces of whale, elk, porpoise, and human bones; a walrus tusk; an elephant's molar; and one of the teeth of the unknown animal of the Ohio. As to the primary question, Berniard determined that there was no significant difference between the bones of land and sea mammals. For his readers he also pointed out that there was not enough difference between the human bones and the other animals to claim a special place for humans in creation. At least, not based on biology.
This was the final scientific word on Paquet's bone, but it was not the final word on Lamanon's paper. A year after the first appearance of his paper, Journal de physique, de chimie, d'histoire naturelle et des arts published a short paper by P. de la Coudreniere that challenged both Buffon's and Lamanon's theories of the earth and used mammoths as his main evidence. Coudreniere made a reasonable argument against each theory. Of Buffon's cooling theory he points out that because the earth is a flattened sphere, the poles are closer to the internal fires within than are the tropics and, by his calculation, should be the last to cool, meaning something else must determine the temperature gradient. Of Lamanon's lakes theory, he points out that the largest salt lake on earth, the Caspian Sea, doesn't host anything larger than beluga sturgeon and small seals. It certainly doesn't contain whales. So far, so good. Then he goes off the rails.
Coudreniere next turns his attention to the mammoth and the animal of the Ohio, which he assumes to be local breeds of the same beast. What does the animal look like? What does it eat? Where is its food found? It can only be, he informs us, a bear, specifically the giant bear of Greenland. How that answers the latter two questions, he doesn't explain. There is no known animal more voracious than polar bears, he tells us, but there might be an even bigger bear never seen by Europeans, known only to the Eskimos. Quoting an anonymous history of Greenland, he describes a black bear, reputed to be thirty-six feet high, though, he admits, the size was probably exaggerated. The reason the mammoth/bear is rarely seen in Eurasia and North America is that Greenland is its primary range and it only migrates into the other continents during times of famine. That Greenland was attached to the other continents by an unmapped polar land was a fairly common belief at the time. That elephant sized bears roamed that land was a less common belief.
Lamanon wrote very little about Paquet's bone after his article was published. After Baudon's piece was published he sent a short letter to the editor saying he never had the pleasure of meeting Baudon, but wished to assure him that he had no animosity toward Buffon or any other great men. He worked behind the scenes with Daubenton and Berniard but soon moved on to other projects. He never responded to Coudrenier's giant bear thesis. In 1785 he sailed on the la Pérouse scientific expedition to the South Pacific—the French equivalent of Captain Cook. He was killed in Samoa in December 1787.
Robert de Paul de Lamanon (source)
Paquet's bone did not achieve the fame of some other bones, but its impact on science was not totally insignificant. Berniard's comparative chemical analysis of bones would be cited several times over the following decades. The bone became an important piece of evidence for scientists deciphering the geology of the Paris basin. Freshwater shells and the strata of gypsum that underlie the city all point to an age when the basin was covered by water. Georges Cuvier, who occupied a position of authority in the first third of the Nineteenth Century equivalent to that of Buffon in the last half of the Eighteenth, frequently cited the works of Lamanon in establishing that fact. Cuvier also sought out the bone and was able to add to our knowledge of it. Lamanon and Daubenton were able to identify the bone as having come from a whale, but they could only speculate about the species. The collections at the Jardin du Roi were sadly deficient in whale bones. Daubenton used a small sperm whale, which is a toothed whale, for comparison and documented enough points of similarity to be confident that it was a whale, but could go no further than that. By the time that Cuvier approached the problem, that deficiency in the collection had been alleviated—partly through new donations and partly through directed looting by the revolutionary armies. Cuvier was able to narrow the species down further to a type of baleen whale. He thought that it most resembled a Greenland whale.
Though Lamanon's name was remembered and Paquet's bone was remembered, Paquet's name was not. He became merely "a wine merchant" in the literature. In 1785 he was finally able to sell the bone. In the six years since he had dug it out of his cellar wall, it had attracted attention, but no buyers. He was forced to lower his asking price. He was probably relieved when a Dutch collector offered him ten Louis d'or. Though less than a third of his original asking price, it was a sizable chunk of money and probably something of a record for a damaged partial bone. The buyer was Martinus van Marum, an agent for Teyler's Museum in Amsterdam. The museum was a rare public collection that was the brainchild of the late Pieter Teyler, a rich banker who left his entire fortune and personal collections to a foundation dedicated to bettering the arts and sciences. Marum, no doubt, grabbed the bone for the museum's grand opening that year.
Over the years, others have had a chance to examine the bone. It is indeed the sphenoid process of a Greenland whale or, as we would call it today, a North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). The taxonomy of the right whale went through several permutations in the Nineteenth Century being lumped together with other baleen whales at times and split into multiple species at others. For a time, Paquet's bone was seen as the type specimen of a species Balaena lamanoni. Paquet had been forgotten by then. By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Lamanon would no longer have his own whale.
The bone today (source)
The final word on the bone is a bit anticlimactic. The website of Teyler's Museum, tells us that the bone was neither a fossil—which was known when it was found—nor even very old. Though the bone was an important piece of evidence in convincing scientists of Cuvier's generation that Paris had once been deep underwater, it might be that it wasn't there at the time. Researchers at Teyler's think that it might have been nothing more than a waste product of the women's undergarment industry. Fragments of whales' ribs have been found in the same district that are known to have come from the manufacture of hoop skirts and corsets. This has not caused Teyler's to remove the bone from their collections. Whatever its age, it's a piece of history. It remains on public display in the same room as Homo diluvii testis, one of the most famous fossils in the history of paleontology and one of the Beringer lying stones and equally famous counterfeit. That's pretty good company.
If I ever get to Amsterdam, I'll definitely visit Paquet's bone.
NOTE: One of the annoyances of working with Seventeenth Century journals, especially French journals, is the convention of rarely using first names. Some modern countries, such as Russia, have a convention using initials rather than first names, but Seventeenth Century French journals rarely give even those. Everyone is "M" (Monsieur). This makes finding biographical details a bit of a challenge. Buffon and Daubenton are influential enough that I wouldn''t have had to go further than Amazon to find out who they were if I didn't already know. Lamanon is the only person in this post whose full name was given on his paper, and he was important enough that I could have picked up the few details I needed from Wiki. I'm not surprised at the lack of information about Paquet. It wouldn't have been unusual for the time if Lamanon had referred to him as "a wine merchant" and left it at that. This leaves Baudon, Berniard, and Coudrenier. I can find nothing else by or about Baudon. It looks like he never found a publisher for his book. Berniard, as I mentioned, was quoted into the next century, not just on bones but on other studies as well. Yet, no one in that century seems to have known what is name was. I was tempted to identify him with Pierre Berniard, another chemist who, however, I found out was in Poland at the time. Finally, I found a library entry for one of his articles that gave him the first initial "L". Maybe they were related. That leaves P. de la Coudreniere. I have two candidates: Henri Peyroux de la Coudreniere and his brother Pierre. Henri was a land speculator who left a small mark in history by encouraging Acadian refugees to settle in Louisiana. Pierre stayed out of his brother's schemes and stayed home to take care of their elderly mother. Henri would be the more fun of the two to work into the story, but I have no good reason to believe it was either one. Although it's unlikely in that century, I can't exclude the possibility that one of Baudon, Berniard, or Coudrenier might have been a woman.
Posted by John McKay at 9:29 PM 1 comment:
Labels: Lamanon, paleontology
Mini-Snopes: yet another congressional pay edition
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about this one. It's back. If you see it, help kill it.
Let's be clear. Neither members of Congress, nor the President, nor the Vice President get their pay for life. That is bullshit. Think about it for a minute. Do you really think some one-term, House member is going to get his pay for life after only "working" for two years? Even if you're going to be extra cynical and say "they would if they could," the correct answer is, they couldn't and they never will.
Members of Congress get a civil service pension just like the person delivering your mail, processing Social Security checks, or sending you your tax return. It's a formula based on the number of years they worked for the government times their highest pay grade times a fractional multiplier. The total cannot equal their final pay, even if they were boyhood friends with Jefferson Davis, like Strom Thurmond was. Ever since they began to pay for Social Security and Medicare in 1984, members of Congress been part of the civil service pension program.
I'm all for economic populism, but let's focus on the right things. How much pay Congress makes is not important. How much pay you make is. How much Social Security and Medicare your parents, grandparents, or you collect is. How much food, rent, and medical support other vulnerable Americans get is. These are the issues and people that are important. You should care more about what they aren't getting than you should about what a few hundred congress members get. If you've fallen into the the trap of hating the poor, then do it for the veterans. Many of them are poor, old, hungry, and sick. Everyone loves the veterans, in theory. It's too bad they don't care as much for the civilians that the veterans were protecting.
There are good reasons to cast a jaundiced eye on the benefits package congress gets. A lying internet meme is not one of them.
Labels: bad logic, mini-Snopes
Why I can't stand brown movie makers*
Long before we became human, our ancestors began rushing around the world, inserting ourselves into new environments and appropriating what was useful. When other people were already there, we learned what they had to teach us and they learned what we had to teach them. Our cultures merged and diverged, fused and fizzed, and a million years later we're still at it. Not everyone is happy with that.
This week, Salon published a piece by Randa Jarrar entitled "Why I can't stand white belly dancers." It is an article that I find, frankly, offensive. Although the article is part of a series by feminists of color and enlists the language of feminism and post-colonial theory, it is little more than a xenophobic rant about the other invaiding what the author perceives as an exclusive cultural sphere of her people. Jarrar's hostility is based on some understandably negative experiences. She grew up in the Middle East and the dance style called raqs sharqi** has specific personal associations for her that she feels are defiled by American belly dance. "Belly dance," for her, means the cabaret style (which she calls "Arab drag"***) usually seen on TV and in American Middle Eastern**** restaurants. But, after my moment of empathy for her unhappiness, what I heard was an echo of "I (or someone I know) was mugged by a Black person, therefore my hostility isn't prejudice; it's logical and valid."
Before I go much further into my personal perspective, let me quote better writers who have already said some of what I want to say in much more widely viewed media than my little blog. After all, I wouldn't want to be accused of appropriating their thoughts.
In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf has a commentary that builds on one by Eugene Voloch in The Washington Post*****. Volokh's title was so good that I couldn't help but appropriate it for my own use: "What would Salon think of an article called, 'Why I can't stand Asian musicians who play Beethoven'?" Volokh gets right to the point of criticizing Jarrar's core snobbery while Friedersdorf puts into the wider perspective that overlaps with what I wanted to say.
Volokh starts with a quote from Jarrar:
Women I have confronted about this have said, "But I have been dancing for 15 years! This is something I have built a huge community on." These women are more interested in their investment in belly dancing than in questioning and examining how their appropriation of the art causes others harm. To them, I can only say, I'm sure there are people who have been unwittingly racist for 15 years. It's not too late. Find another form of self-expression. Make sure you're not appropriating someone else's.
Volokh responds:
Appropriation — the horror! People treating artistic genres as if they were great ideas that are part of the common stock of humanity, available for all humanity to use, rather than the exclusive property of some particular race or ethnic group. What atrocity will the culturally insensitive appropriators think of next? East Asian cellists? Swedish chess players?
But, wait: Maybe — and I know this is a radical thought — artists, whether high or low, should be able to work in whatever artistic fields they want to work in. Maybe they should even be able to work in those fields regardless of their skin color or the place from which their ancestors came.
Maybe telling people that they can't work in some field because they have the wrong color or ancestry would be ... rats, I don't know what to call it. If only there were an adjective that could be used to mean "telling people that they mustn't do something, because of their race or ethnic origin."
Friedersdorf takes it from there******:
"We are human beings," [Jarrar's] jeremiad concludes. "This dance form is originally ours, and does not exist so that that white women can have a better sense of community; can gain a deeper sense of sisterhood with each other; can reclaim their bodies; can celebrate their sexualities; can perform for the female gaze. Just because a white woman doesn't profit from her performance doesn't mean she's not appropriating a culture. And ... the question is this: Why does a white woman's sisterhood, her self-reclamation, her celebration, have to happen on Arab women's backs?"
Friedersdorf responds:
After all that, one might be tempted to read up on belly dancing's history, to discover Dr. Ruth Webb*******, an expert in performance during antiquity, and to quote her saying, "with regional variations, something like Raqs Sharqi seems to have been known throughout the Mediterranean and certainly flourished in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean before the arrival of the Arabs in the 7th century."
Back to me. I've spent some time with the American belly dancing community********. I know something about the history of American belly dancing that I think builds on Dr. Webb's pre-Arab history. Jarrar mentions the "white appropriation of Eastern dance" in the 1890s. It might surprise her to discover that most American belly dancers are aware of that history in far greater detail than she knows. They know about Little Egypt (Fahreda Mazar Spyropoulos) at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and how this started the American style that came to be called "belly dancing," a phrase that dates back to Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. They might also know that she was a Greek from Syria. They certainly know that her style, which they "cabaret", is no more authentically Arabian than fortune cookies are authentically Chinese*********.
"Why does a white woman's sisterhood, her self-reclamation, her celebration, have to happen on Arab women's backs?" Leaving aside the historical question of whether raqs sharqi is exclusively Arab, or Eastern Mediterranean, or, perhaps, includes Persian elements**********, why does celebrating another culture by creating a fusion mean it was built on that culture's "back"? Returning to my original point, human cultures meet, mix, and separate. Often when they do, one culture is politically, numerically, or militarily more powerful than the other. When this happens, the usual result is that the dominant culture appropriates what is useful from the weaker culture and demands assimilation in all other respects. Sometimes, the dominant culture only assimilates enough of the dominated culture to parody it. Jarrar uses the term "brownface" to claim that this is all that American belly dance is; she shows only resentment for any other definition. But did any white minstrelsy group ever say blackface gave them "a better sense of community" or allowed them to "gain a deeper sense" of their brotherhood with other white men***********?
My clever (now ex-) wife took up American belly dancing a dozen or so years ago. Since then I've learned a lot more about that culture than Jarrar seems to know. While she studied belly dancing, Clever Wife and I socialized quite a bit with the Seattle belly dancing community. I tried drumming for a while and discovered that I suck at it, though I have kept my drums since our divorce. From her first class, I learned that cabaret, with its chiffon harem pants, coin bras, and hip shimmies, is only one among several styles performed in the states these days. Though it had once was only form known in North America, those days have been over for decades. Among the dancers, some time after the seventies, there developed a strong thirst for authentic folk styles. Score one for old hippies (Jarrar also seems to hate us). Maybe "River Dance" was responsible for the folk movement; maybe the increasing number of Arab-Americans before 9/11 was. I don't know. The result has been a less sexist costume style that they call "tribal" and the proliferation of more and more fusions.
Jarrar describes American cabaret style as being all about the "male gaze." For those not familiar with the term, it's critical term that describes a wide spectrum of patriarchal cultural norms and specific male behavior. If you are not familiar with the term, I recommend you look into it. It is a critical concept that should change how you look at gender relations. If you go back to Jarrar's conclusion, you'll see she denounces those white women who claim some kind of empowerment specifically as performing for "the female gaze." Public performance of cabaret style dancing might be about appealing to the male gaze but that is very small part of the belly dancing community. Nor is it about something that could be called the "female gaze." To my experience, the main point of the belly dancing community has nothing to do with the audience; it's all about the things that Jarrar finds so sneerworthy--community, sisterhood, celebrating sexuality. Just because Euro-American women looked to another culture to find a medium to express these does not mean they are looting these cultures. The vast majority of belly dancing events are by women and for women. At the smaller events I attended, I was often the only male there. At the the Mediterranean Fantasy Festival, an annual outdoor event in Seattle, most males present were either attached to women involved or passersby who just happened to hear the music.
As I mentioned, Clever then-Wife (CW) joined the belly dancing community around the turn of the century. They became a large part of our social life soon after. After attending Med-Fest for a few years to show support for her friends, we became vendors. CW makes wonderfully scented soaps and other products************. This was our biggest outdoor event to sell them. As vendors, we were there for every minute of the festival. I looked forward to it all year. I'm a middle aged, heteronormative male, but, beyond my testosterone driven enjoyment, I was genuinely inspired by the crowd. I love how the attendees love each other. I often joked that the festival would make a great setting for a mystery, but that Hollywood would reduce the entire setting to a hot, young, blonde, white woman, in a cabaret costume, standing on a table doing a hip shimmy as fast as she can while a white, young, largely male crowd cheers her on*************. I suppose that's what Jarrar thinks happens there. She's wrong. The crowd at the festival is mostly female. The dancers are all ages, colors, and sizes and dance to a wide spectrum of styles from cabaret, to authentic regional folk, to traditional Indian, hip-hop, salsa and anything else you can imagine. Everyone loves the pros, but the real crowd pleasers are the toddlers who bounce up and down to the music, the septuagenarians who still have it and know it, and the shy girls who have finally gained the courage to show their bodies in public. The old cabaret belly dancers might despair over dilution of the style with modern tunes and dance styles, but the most popular performers are a troupe of African-American dancers who perform to classic R&B and dance off the stage to the theme from "I Dream of Genie" and a guy in a bowler who combines Middle Eastern styles with Western techno-pop.
Jarrar is not just a xenophobic doorkeeper of her perception of her ancestors' culture, she's a clueless interpreter of American culture. The American belly dancing community is not a group of middle-class, white women unaware of their privilege. The community includes women of all races and most classes. The Middle Eastern women in the community are not Toms (or Tomasinas) as Jarrar implies; they are interpreters of multiple Old World cultures who share their cultural past with their cultural future. The black, brown, and beige************** recipients of their largesse are not imperial plunderers; they're lucky beneficiaries. The dancers, musicians, costumers, and importers who make up the community are just doing what humans do. We get together, we share, we borrow, we mix things up, and we invent. Sometimes we do it to music.
* For the humor deprived, let me assure you that I'm being sarcastic. Some of my favorite movie makers are brown. That was also sarcasm.
** She capitalizes "Raqs Sharqi" but writes "belly dance" in lower case. I'll leave the cultural and psychological implications of that to you.
*** Is this sort of feminist homophobia common or have I missed something in recent cultural criticism?
**** Considering the post-colonial strain of her critique, her use of the Euro-centric term "Middle East" shows an ironic lack of self-awareness.
***** As I wrote that sentence, I realized I'm a white man expanding on a white man's expansion of a white man's commentary on a woman of color's critique of a detail of white, patriarchal culture. This is certainly uncomfortable. If Jarrar wants to respond to me (a very big "if"), I suggest that as a starting point.
****** Well, just before there, if you're not reading their critiques. But, you should read both.
******* No, I'm not going to look up Dr. Webb. This is just a blog post after all.
******** "Some of my best friends... ." Just finish reading it.
********* They're not. They might have been invented in Japan, but the type Americans know showed up in San Francisco at about the same time Little Egypt showed up in Chicago.
********** Okay. I don't know if there is a Persian element in raqs sharqi or belly dancing or not, but why do so many Westerners lump Persians and Arabs together?
*********** Spoiler. No.
************ Yes, we're divorced, but her stuff is so good that I'll never use any one else's as long as she is in business. Go to her site. Buy something. Do it now.
************* I have a specific dancer in mind. She fills all of the Hollywood stereotypes, but she really is the best at that style.
************** A reference to Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, one of the greatest cross-cultural interpreters of the American experience.
Labels: belly dance, Randa Jarrar


While on time project delivery may be important to your customer, it is also important to your senior management. Delivering a project on time means you are freeing up your project resources according to the original project plan to work on other projects that likely need them right away. On time delivery is really not a common occurrence, so when you can pull it off it's often an instant recognition factor and a nice feather in your project management cap.
In terms of the customer, delivering the project on time may mean success and rewards for the project sponsor or primary customer contact with their superiors. Depending on how the solution ties into their internal company workings and commitments as well as their own project obligations, it may mean that they are able to meet a critical deadline that they made a prior commitment to. This will also definitely make for a happy customer - you which we'll discuss in the third success factor below.
The second key success factor, on budget project delivery, is just about as rare as on time project delivery. In fact, they often go hand in hand. And both definitely have a fudge factor. Your senior management - and even your customer - will likely consider the project to be delivered on budget if it's within a certain percentage of the original budget forecast. I'd like to say 10%, but if you're working a $1.5 million project, that's $150,000 and that's not a fudge factor - that's an absolute budget overrun. So, obviously, the 'acceptable' amount is somewhat dependent on the size of the project in terms of dollars. Usually 3-5% is going to be acceptable by all parties - the customer and your senior management.
In order to ensure that you stay as close to on budget as you possibly can, it's critical that you closely manage scope. If you and your team are performing work for the client that is out of scope, that means you are performing unplanned work using planned hours - and that will ALWAYS result in your project running over budget. If there are scope changes, you must present those to the customer, get official signoff on them, and increase the project budget by that change order dollar amount. That way, you'll have a much better chance of delivering an on budget solution and keep senior management and the customer happy in the process.
Customer satisfaction is a hard one - at times it can be very subjective. On time delivery and on budget delivery may factor into their satisfaction level, but other things can affect it as well - and sometimes it's things you have very little control over or are clueless how to measure or fix. The key as the project manager - in terms of customer happiness - is to make sure you stay engaged with them throughout the process and are tending to their needs. Keep them informed, show them the output from your project management document on a weekly basis, always treat them as part of the team, give them good and bad news in a timely fashion, and definitely address any concerns very quickly. A customer concern that is left untouched ends up as an email or phone call to your CEO quicker than you can imagine - and customer satisfaction goes right out the window with it.
At the end of the project, have a detailed discussion with the customer. Get their perspective on the successes and failures of the project, conduct lessons learned with them, and get a feel on whether you're likely to get repeat business from them. Your goal should always be to have a happy, reference-able customer at the end of the engagement.


text:
· Published August 15, 2020
Braves' injury woes could lead to lost season in Atlanta
Aug 4, 2020; Cumberland, Georgia, USA; Atlanta Braves center fielder Ronald Acuna Jr. (13) reacts after sliding into home safely against the Toronto Blue Jays during the fifth inning at Truist Park. Mandatory Credit: Adam Hagy-USA TODAY Sports
Normally, a player of Ronald Acuna's ilk being placed on the 10-day injured list with a minor wrist ailment wouldn't be cause for alarm.
Although, it's already known that the 2020 Major League Baseball season is anything but normal. During a 60-game schedule, a championship contender like the Atlanta Braves missing their best player for one-sixth of the season is a big deal.
Atlanta placed Acuna Jr. on the injured list Saturday, adding yet another core member of the team to be put on the shelf through the first three weeks of the season.
Back on August 2, ace starter Mike Soroka suffered a torn Achilles attempting to cover first base. This ended the youngster's season after he finished in the top six of National League Cy Young voting as a rookie.
Soroka is the second big-time member of the Braves' rotation to deal with injuries this season. Key free-agent signing Cole Hamels remains sidelined and has not appeared in a regular season game with Atlanta since they gave him $18 million back in December.
Could injuries lead to a lost season for the Atlanta Braves?
The three-time defending National League East champions headed into Saturday's game against the surprising first-place Miami Marlins with a mediocre 11-10 record. Atlanta has lost four consecutive after a strong 11-6 start to the season.
Every game is magnified more in a shortened season. Every injury hurts even more, especially when it comes to star players at every tier. For the Braves, that also includes top-level reliever Chris Martin currently being sidelined to an injury.
The next-man up approach has not proven to be fruitful for Atlanta, either. Touki Toussaint and Kyle Wright have each posted ERAs of over 7.20 in seven combined starts, going 0-4 in the process. Sean Newcomb has posted an 11.20 ERA in four starts. That's just not going to cut it.
With Acuna sidelined, the Braves' potent lineup will not be able to make up for this lack of quality starting pitching. Unfortunately for the team, the expectation is that the 2020 MLB trade deadline will also be extremely inactive due to the expanded playoff format.
All of this could lead to a lost season for the Braves months after the team had clear World Series expectations before the opening of the campaign was suspended due to the pandemic.
Whether it's Atlanta being the victim of circumstance or something else, that's sadly going to be the case when all is said and done come September