From Big Oil to Big Poo, from cold Canadian winters to humid Texas nights - a Plucky Canadian girl gets plunked into the sweltering heart of Tejas.
I'm learning how to stand up to that big 'ole bully, WORRY.
Unreasonably and immediately I am mad at him. He had to tell me this NOW? He couldn't have waited until morning when I can DO something about it?
So I check and there is indeed a cryptic message about results from blood work on my phone.
About a million and one really scary scenarios all flew through my mind in, oh, about the space of a 1.2 nanoseconds. Old me would have worried all night. Old me would have followed those terrible worries all the way through to their horrible conclusions and gotten no sleep at all.
NEW me took a minute to indulge in the scary possibilities, than shut it down.
You see, I come from a long line of maternal worriers. My Grammie Orser was so well known for her worrying it was mentioned several times at her funeral. How she would pace the floor at night, worrying and praying for her children. My own mom is a recovering worry-wort, kind of like me.
But I managed to push it aside because I knew there was nothing worrying would do right now, at 9pm at night. And luckily Bill didn't say…'Don't worry.' Which is like telling an obese person to just 'lose weight.' It's a stupid thing to say and totally unhelpful. I would have had to smuck him in the head with a dead fish.
Luckily he didn't say that. He made me laugh, which was nice. And I got a good night's sleep.
I've got a long list of reasons why THIS particular scenario is a big trigger for me. Doctors. Blood work. Results. For people who know my past they can easily imagine why this might usually send me spiraling off into some scary, dark unknown future.
Although this story is ongoing, the reality is almost never as scary as what we've imagined.
it has something to do with my having an Anti-M antibody. No one I've talked to has ever heard of this. Apparently if my mom was the carrier (passing it to me in utero) everything is sunshine and roses. If Bill is the carrier (passing it to me through…ah…marital relations….) everything MIGHT be sunshine and roses, or the baby might have something called hemolytic disease. Basically, the baby could become anemic in the womb and need a transfusion of blood either in utero or at birth.
So. We wait while Bill waits to have an appointment made to get his blood checked.
And while we wait I shall not worry.
Instead, I will share this story and I'm sorry if you've heard it before.
So, many of you know I meditate. While we were trying to get pregnant I did this online guided visualization thing about imagining being pregnant, positive vibes, etc. I was asked to also imagine the future baby giving me a message that would help me in my journey to become a mom again. In this scenario, I imagined the word 'strength'.
That night Bill came home with one of those pink breast cancer bracelets that had the word….you guessed it, STRENGTH written in all caps. "This is for you!" he said. And I said. "Wow, is it EVER!"
Some of you cynics out there might dismiss this as coincidence. I do not. Especially now, after all the drama I've endured before even this latest experience. (We had a close call where we thought the baby might have Down Syndrome a few months ago).
I think God knew I was going to need a reminder that I'm always cared for and supported. To not be afraid because all I need to get through this is a little strength, and that strength will be given to me. I have faith this is the message I was given, and I have faith that everything will turn out the way it is supposed to.
So, at the risk of getting hit upside the head with a dead fish…I encourage us all to just…stop worrying already. Let's all calm the heck down.
I have finally learned to give my worries to God & He gives me His peace!
The Pain and Magic of RIGHT NOW!
Angela's Rants. Or, the Beginning of the End to Angela's Ability to Keep Friends.


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Home Gaming
Microsoft's Xbox Series S Confirmed By Microsoft With $299 Price Tag
Microsoft's long-rumored cheaper next-gen console called Xbox Series S is confirmed to release with a retail price of $299.
Besides Xbox Series S, the Redmond giant is also expected to unveil Xbox Series X – the more powerful console – with a price tag of $499. Both consoles will reportedly launch on November 10th, 2020.
Initially trusted Microsoft leaker Brad Sams leaked a photo render via his Twitter account and Thurrott.com showing the Xbox Series S console is white in color. It is placed next to a white Xbox controller and doesn't seem to have a disc drive. It also features a large black circular grill in the top portion of the unit when standing upright, which is likely for cooling. Later the console was officially confirmed by the official Twitter account of Xbox.
? Let's make it official!
Xbox Series S | Next-gen performance in the ???????? Xbox ever. $299 (ERP).
Looking forward to sharing more! Soon. Promise. pic.twitter.com/8wIEpLPVEq
— Xbox (@Xbox) September 8, 2020
The Xbox Series S is said to include 7.5GB of usable RAM, 4 teraflops of GPU performance, and will reportedly be capable of 1080p and 1440p gaming.
On the other hand, the Xbox Series X will be Microsoft's "fastest and most powerful console ever" featuring 4K graphics running at 60 frames per second and reaching up to 120fps. It will also feature a new solid-state drive that will "virtually eliminate load times and bring players into their gaming worlds faster than ever before."
Before the official announcement from Microsoft, another known tipster who goes by the pseudonym WalkingCat on Twitter (@_h0x0d_) shared a separate video that shows the console is slightly smaller than Xbox Series X and also a lot slimmer.
pic.twitter.com/VMkQY9271K
— WalkingCat (@_h0x0d_) September 8, 2020
According to Windows Central, the entry-level Xbox Series S will come with a $25 per month Xbox All Access financing option that will include Xbox Live and Game Pass. Meanwhile, the Xbox Series X is said to come with a $35 per month Xbox All Access financing option.
As mentioned earlier, the console is accepted to launch on 10th November alongside the higher-end Xbox Series X.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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JOB FOR A COWBOY: More Studio Footage Posted
- August 24th, 2012 –
Drum Magazine Catches Up With Jon Rice; Band To Play Russia, Ukraine And Belarus
New footage from JOB FOR A COWBOY's Demonocracy studio sessions is currently available at the band's official landing page. Witness Jon Rice demolish his kit during "Fearmonger" at THIS LOCATION.
Additionally, Drum Magazine recently caught up with Rice to talk about his natural sounding approach to the critically-lauded record noting, "If you detect more of a feel-oriented style on JOB FOR A COWBOY's Demonocracy, credit Jon 'The Charn' Rice for that extra bit of human touch. Eschewing sound replacement, scientific Pro Tools quantizing, and the usual by-the-numbers approach favored by most death metal bands (and their power hungry producers), Charn and JFAC did it old school; well, almost. While the band certainly used computers to keep the perfect beast drummer in perfect time, they didn't follow the typical click track route. Similarly, Charn opted for natural drum tones and sounds. All this anti-machine behavior gives Demonocracy a serious kick to the groin, and on songs like 'Children Of Deceit,' 'Imperium Wolves,' and 'Fearmonger,' 24-year-old Charn smacks down single strokes, bleeds double pedal profundity, and generally rips the heads off your favorite death metal destroyers." READ THE FULL STORY HERE.
In related news, JOB FOR A COWBOY will bring their audio annihilation to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus this October! In the meantime, the band is still ravaging stages across North America on the final days of the Summer Slaughter Tour. See remaining tour dates below.
JOB FOR A COWBOY – Summer Slaughter Festival 2012
w/ Cannibal Corpse, Between The Buried and Me, The Faceless, Periphery, Veil of Maya, Goatwhore, Exhumed, Cerebral Bore [remaining dates]
8/24/2012 The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
8/25/2012 The Grove – Anaheim, CA
JOB FOR A COWBOY – Russia/Ukraine/Belarus Tour 2012
10/16/2012 Bingo – Kiev, UA
10/17/2012 Re:Public – Minsk, BY
10/19/2012 A2 – Saint Petersburg, RU
10/20/2012 KKZ Moskva – Moscow, RU
10/22/2012 VARITE – Saratov, RU
10/23/2012 Zvezda Club – Samara, RU
10/25/2012 Premio – Nizhniy Novgorod, RU
"…an ass-kicking, skull-cracking record," — Alternative Press
"…a very strong exercise in slickly-produced, technically sound death metal…" — Decibel
"Demonocracy affords JOB FOR A COWBOY another album to legitimize their death metal sound, which was set forth starting with Ruination…Bringing in guitarist Tony Sannicandro and Cephalic Carnage bassist Nick Schendzielos translates to dynamics not heard on any JOB FOR A COWBOY album to date…" — About.com
"The album plays like a constant assault, and while never backing off it still manages to add enough structure for individual songs to become memorable… the soloing is surprisingly catchy and well-executed while still managing to sit well in the context of the songs." — Ultimate-Guitar
http://www.metalblade.com/jobforacowboy
http://www.facebook.com/jobforacowboy
Buy iTunes Artist Page Artist News


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Bathyclarias atribranchus is among the least known of the endemic deep-water clariid catfishes of Lake Malawi. Greenwood (1961) described it (as Dinotopterus atribranchus) from a single specimen of 39 cm (15.4 inches) standard length. It has never been illustrated, so far as I know.
This species of Bathyclarias lives on the bottom at depths greater than 70 meters (FishBase). According to Eccles (1992), it feeds on worms.
B. atribranchus can be distinguished from the other species of Bathyclarias by possessing all the following characters (Greenwood, 1961: 230):
Gill rakers short, length of longest gill raker (on outer arch) divided by length of longest gill filament = 0.3-0.6 (0.3 in the unique holotype, a probable adult of 39 cm SL);
Barbels rounded in cross section, smooth and simple;
Body smooth, not pitted; and
Gills and suprabranchial cavity black.
In the same 1961 paper, Greenwood synonymized the genus Bathyclarias, which Jackson (1959) had created for the deep-water clariids of Lake Malawi, with Dinotopterus, previously limited to the single Lake Tanganyika species D. cunningtoni. Greenwood examined the anatomical features that Jackson (who did not mention Dinotopterus) had used to define Bathyclarias. These features include the degree of reduction of the suprabranchial organ (an accessory breathing organ that supplements the gill filaments in typical, shallow-water clariids), the arrangement of the superficial skull bones, and the lateral placement of the eyes on the head, so that the eyeballs protrude from the head outline when viewed from above or below. Greenwood also examined variation in the development of an adipose dorsal fin, and other features. He concluded, "If all these characters are considered, there seem to be no anatomical grounds for recognizing two genera..." and treated all the deep-water Malawi endemics as species of Dinotopterus.
Just recently, however, Anseaume & Teugels (1999) re-examined Greenwood's action, and revalidated Bathyclarias as a genus distinct from Dinotopterus. They found that the two genera can be distinguished by a number of characters from morphometrics (proportions), overall morphology, and osteology (study of the bones). As for the latter, Anseaume & Teugels (1999: 415) conclude:
...the two genera can be distinguished by the position of the suprapraeopercular, the position and shape of fontanelles [gaps between the bones on top of the skull], the shape of the mesethmoid and the latero-ethmoid, and the shape of the parieto-suproccipital process. The number of underlying elongated neural spines of the adipose fin and the smaller fin size in Bathyclarias distinguish them unambiguously.


Here is a letter from one of our students about how training with us helped him work with his depression, and helped with the difficult process of coming off anti-depressants.
I took the prescribed anti-depressant SNRI medication venlafaxine HCI ('Effexor') for 11 months between January and November 2013 reaching a peak daily dosage of 150mg. The medication served to lift me from the lowest point of a depression into which I had slumped following a personal trauma and gave me the boost of energy with which to begin to engage in other more holistic forms of treatment.
It was soon after commencing the medication that I enrolled in an introductory AuthentiCity meditation course led by Peter and Trisangma Watson. Although I had undertaken meditation training in the past, their presentation was unique in that they shared very specific skilful techniques for cultivating the attention of the mind with concomitant, simultaneous introspective and extrospective awareness. I responded very strongly and immediately to the practice.
By following the daily practice I was able to observe almost immediately a number of positive results, most notably that I was beginning to stabilise my mind and create mental space with which to begin to observe some of the fluctuations and ruminations of my mind without becoming immediately consumed by or reactive to them. This created a powerful platform for strengthening the overall power of my mind to direct its attention and awareness to my other activities throughout the day and night as well as becoming spontaneously more aware and attentive whilst engaged in these other activities. Furthermore, this practice empowered my mind to redirect its attention towards more peaceful and functional states of mind such as gratitude, as well as loosen the hold that negative mental states may otherwise have on me due to having become aware of the transience of such mental states.
In my experience, one of the most insidious challenges of depression is that one becomes engulfed in a mental darkness – which leads to a physical lethargy and a physical and emotional isolation – that is typically so consuming that one is not even aware of what is happening, let alone able to begin the process of navigating a way out of the fog. Accordingly, simply becoming more fully aware in the moment of the content of my mind, as well as what may be happening in my body, became the starting point for me for cultivating a process of more genuine healing and recovery.
In this way, I have been able to bring higher levels of focus and efficacy to the other aspects of a more healthy and balanced life such as a following a good diet, entering into more positive relationships with others, suitable physical exercise, a wholesome working life and taking proper rest.
Specifically, in my own recovery from depression and successful withdrawal from Venlafaxine HCI - a notoriously difficult drug to discontinue due to its withdrawal symptoms – I was able, due to the training received from Trisangma and Peter, to establish the foundation of sufficient self-awareness and to cultivate the mental strength and level of attention to partake of the range of synergistic mental and physical measures to facilitate recovery. My daily concentration and mindfulness practice as informed by my training with Trisangma and Peter has been a powerful, if not fundamental, part of my recovery.
AuthentiCity's method of training is precise, concise and exceptional in its understanding of positive states of mind and how to cultivate them. For example, they encouraged me to commence the meditation practice with relatively brief daily sessions so as not to overwhelm or exhaust the mind, and to inspire what they call the "positive feedback loop" by way of rejoicing for the small successes in each practice session rather than placing one's attention of the imperfections of one's fledging meditation practice. This skillful method in particular has had a remarkably powerful effect on my mental health. Further, additional nuances of the instruction were suitably provided at graduated levels so as not to overwhelm the student and to facilitate a sense of empowerment by being a very achievable practice that one may joyfully embrace with noticeable reward.
I heartily recommend AuthentiCity's programmes for nurturing mental health.


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Home Study in Canada Masters in Artificial Intelligence in Canada – Ranking & Fees
Masters in Artificial Intelligence in Canada – Ranking & Fees
Opting for your master's in artificial intelligence Canada is a smart move, considering the flourishing job prospects in the field here. Canada is known for its growing tech industry and increasing AI-based applications in various business sectors and industries.
Market demand has consistently gone up for those completing masters in artificial intelligence in Canada over the last few years, especially in fields like robotics, machine learning, data science, and more. Average course fees usually hover around CAD 18,000-36,000 or roughly INR 10.56 lakh to INR 21.12 lakh approximately. After completing their courses, aspirants can earn up to CAD 81,265 per year, based on their skills and experience. This works out to around INR 47.64 lakh as per estimates.
Best universities for masters in artificial intelligence Canada
How to apply for a master's in artificial intelligence Canada?
MS in Artificial Intelligence in Canada- Eligibility Criteria
Admission Procedure and Documents Needed
Reasons for studying MS in Artificial Intelligence in Canada
Cost of studying for masters in artificial intelligence in Canada
English Proficiency Test for International Students
Scholarships for MS in Artificial Intelligence in Canada
Jobs for MS in Artificial Intelligence in Canada
Here are the best universities in Canada for MS in artificial intelligence:
Name of the Institution Name of the Course Costs (CAD) Course Tenure
University of Waterloo Master of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence 39,996 (INR 23.44 lakh) 1 year (full-time); 3 years (part-time)
University of Waterloo Master of Mathematics in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) 39,996 (INR 23.44 lakh) 1-2 years
University of Alberta (Thesis-Based Courses)
Master of Science in Computing Science – Artificial Intelligence
Master of Science in Computing Science – Machine Learning
17,400 (INR 10.20 lakh) 1-2 years
Lakehead University Master of Science in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) 48,000 (INR 28.14 lakh) One year (Course); 2 years (Thesis-based)
York University Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence 80,150 (INR 46.99 lakh) One year
Queen's University Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence 87,390 (INR 51.23 lakh) One year
Disclaimer! All course fees and salaries are approximate amounts subject to change depending on various conditions.
Applying for an artificial intelligence master's in Canada is quite simple. Multiple programs at the graduate level are available across leading Canadian colleges, many of them provided as specializations along with other course types, including data science, computer science, and machine learning. All universities in Canada take applications online for their courses. You must visit the university portal and apply directly with all your documents.
Some universities may also require sending documents separately via post. Some universities also accept paper-based applications. In this context, you must just download the PDF version of your application form and send it along with all supporting documents.
Here are the eligibility criteria for MS in artificial intelligence Canada:
You should have a three or four-year bachelor's degree in subjects like computer science, data science, robotics, machine learning, computer science, mathematics, or any other field. The minimum average marks should be at least 70%.
You should have experience in statistics and computer science, as numerous institutions require.
Professional experience is strongly recommended, especially for master's programs in AI.
Valid GMAT/GRE scores are also needed.
IELTS or TOEFL scores (English language proficiency tests).
You will need the following documents:
Academic mark sheets and transcripts.
Updated CV/Resume.
Two reference letters.
GRE/GMAT score sheets.
Essay if required.
Here are the application timelines for admissions at many well-known institutions:
Intake Timeline)
York University September
University of Waterloo January (Masters of Math in Comp Science – Artificial Intelligence);
September (Master of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence)
Queen's University January
Georgian College January
University of Alberta September
St. Francis Xavier University January
Fleming College January
Lakehead University September
Here are the chief reasons for studying MS in artificial intelligence in Canada:
Canada is one of the flourishing markets for AI-related job roles in various business sectors. The country is expected to witness billions of dollars in investments towards the development of artificial and cognitive intelligence over the next few years.
More than half of IT and ITeS companies in Canada are reportedly planning to scale up AI investments while hiring more skilled professionals in the field.
The number of AI specialists and firms has doubled over the last few years, leading to more job creation in the sector.
Health and other sectors are fast witnessing the adoption of AI-based technologies for service delivery and more efficiency, leading to higher job opportunities and rapid growth of this sector.
The cost of studying for your master's in artificial intelligence will range between CAD 17,900-35,000 or roughly INR 10.49 lakh to INR 20.52 lakh for aspirants. Accommodation costs will hover between CAD 1,400-2,300 or INR 82,000 to INR 1.35 lakh per month. You will also have to budget for food, health insurance, transportation, and costs of purchasing books, stationery, and supplies.
International students will have to submit scores in IELTS, TOEFL, or PTE Academic at Canadian institutions. Here are some minimum score thresholds at leading universities:
Name of the Institution IELTS Cut-Off TOEFL iBT Cut-Off PTE Academic Cut-Off
University of Waterloo 7.0 90 63
University of Alberta 6.5 90 61
Queen's University 6.5 88 60
Georgian College 6.5 89 58
York University 7.5 100 65
St. Francis Xavier University 6.5 90 60
Fleming College 6.0 91 58
Lakehead University 7.0 80 58
Here is the list of available scholarships for aspirants:
Name of the Institution Name of the Scholarship
University of Waterloo Master of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (MDSAI) Graduate Scholarship
University of Alberta University of Alberta Master's Entrance Scholarship
Queen's University Vector Scholarships in Artificial Intelligence (VSAI)
Lakehead University Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master's
Georgian College Georgian Scholarship
York University Vector Scholarships in Artificial Intelligence (VSAI)
University of Waterloo Waterloo Graduate Scholarship
University of Alberta Alberta Innovates Graduate Student Scholarship
Successful graduates in artificial intelligence can expect jobs with several leading companies like Labatt, Deloitte, Bell, KPMG, Accenture, GALE, Teranet, and many others. Average salaries usually range between CAD 55-86,000 or roughly INR 32.24 lakh to INR 50.42 lakh in job roles like data scientists, machine learning engineers, operations analysts, and also software developers, to name a few.
Q1. Is AI in demand in Canada?
A. AI is one of the fastest-growing fields in Canada, generating steady employment for skilled professionals at leading technology and other companies. Graduates are finding employment in fields like teaching, academics, electronics, AI, robotics, engineering, and computer science while simultaneously pursuing research. An AI degree is useful in the biomedical sector as well.
Q2. Which institutions are best for AI in Canada?
A. Here are some of the best institutions for studying computer science (of which AI is a sub-field) and related fields as per the 2021 QS World Rankings for the field.
1. The University of Toronto- QS Rank 11
2. The University of Waterloo- QS Rank 23
3. The University of British Columbia- QS Rank 25
4. McGill University- QS Rank 49
5. The Universite de Montreal- QS Rank 61
6. The University of Alberta- QS Rank 109
7. Queen's University at Kingston- QS Rank 132
8. Simon Fraser University- QS Rank 136
9. The University of Ottawa- QS Rank 151-200
10. McMaster University- QS Rank 201-250
Q3. What can you do with a master's in artificial intelligence?
A. You can find work as an operations engineer, analyst, data scientist, machine learning specialist, and business intelligence developer. You can work in varied technological and business sectors as an AI data analyst, research scientist, AI engineer, or product manager.
Q4. What is artificial intelligence?
A. Artificial intelligence or AI is the capability of any robot or computer to perform tasks normally conducted by human beings since they require intelligence and the ability to make decisions. The branches of AI include artificial general intelligence, artificial superintelligence, and artificial narrow intelligence.
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Nunn's production is all the more powerful for the concentrated performances he draws from all five performers.
The emotional range of the leading roles is a rare gift for Iain Glen and Imogen Stubbs, whose performances are of a quality that audiences travel miles for they are both brilliant.
Stubbs enjoying a terrific stage partnership with that superb actor Iain Glen. He brilliantly nails his character's insufferable vanity in the opening scene and his many subsequent cruelties. He also captures both the gnawing sexual discontent and the way that old sparks of desire never quite die, in a brave performance that does not seek the audience's sympathy in it's exploration of the dark side of the male psyche.
Glen is superlative as the chilly and unlikeable Johan, full of savage asides – yet even while almost bouncing at the prospect of freedom, he is on the verge of tears.
Glen is superlative as the chilly and unlikeable Johan, yet even while almost bouncing at the prospect of freedom, he is on the verge of tears.


Located in Edinburgh, guests staying at the Dakota Forth Bridge Hotel can easily reach a variety of area's places of interests such as Doune Castle, National Gallery of Scotland and Edinburgh Festival Theatre.
This property has 108 well-appointed accommodation units, which are furnished and decorated to give comfortable stay for guests in Edinburgh. All the units feature amenities such as air conditioner, flat screen television, radio and a telephone.
Dakota Forth Bridge Hotel has a restaurant - Dakota Restaurant that is awarded the Scottish Seafood Restaurant of the Year 2009 and the Scottish Restaurant of the Year 2008. This restaurant serves meals for guests prepared with only fresh local products.
Follow signs for Forth Road Bridge (A90), hotel is at the Ferrymuir roundabout as you come into South Queensferry.
Children in own room charged at full price. Foldaway beds can be supplied in adult's room for children under 12 at no additional cost.


Jakarta: On Sunday, the pilot of a Lion Air flight from Indonesia's Bali island made a distress call only minutes after take-off due to technical problems, but they were overcome and he pushed on to Jakarta. And the same air craft crashed during another flight hours later, killing all 189 people on board.
Herson, chief of the airport authority for the Bali-Nusa Tenggara area, told Reuters that after the call, the pilot updated the control tower to say that the plane was flying normally and he would not return to the airport as requested.
"The captain himself was confident enough to fly to Jakarta from Denpasar," said Herson, who goes by one name, speaking over the phone from Bali and referring to the resort island's airport.
The pilot of another plane that was approaching Bali after the Lion Air jet had taken off, said he was ordered to circle above the airport and listened in to a radio conversation between the Lion Air pilot and air traffic controllers.
"Because of the Pan-Pan call, we were told to hold off, circling the airport in the air," said the pilot, who did not wish to be named. "The Lion plane requested to return back to Bali five minutes after take-off, but then the pilot said the problem had been resolved and he was going to go ahead to Jakarta," he added.
The Denpasar-Jakarta flight landed at the Indonesian capital's airport at 10:55 pm local time on Sunday. The same Boeing 737 MAX jet took off at 6:20 am the next morning, bound for Bangka island, off Sumatra, and plunged into the sea 13 minutes later. Just before the crash, the pilot had made a request to return to base.
Divers have found a piece of landing gear from a crashed Lion Air jet, Indonesian authorities said on Thursday, following the discovery of a critical black box that could explain why the brand-new plane plummeted into the sea.
Search teams have been scouring the seabed for the fuselage of the Boeing-737 MAX 8, which plunged into the waters off Indonesia's northern coast shortly after takeoff on Monday despite only being in service a few months.
Referring to the landing gear, search and rescue agency head Muhammad Syaugi said late on Thursday, "we have found part of it", as authorities piece together what caused the crash. "Separately, we have found bigger parts of the plane than we have seen in previous days," he added, hours after officials announced the recovery of a data recorder from the plane.
The plane's black boxes, which airlines are required to install, offer investigators their best chance of discovering why such a new jet crashed. The devices record information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane as well as flight crew conversations.
"The good news is we have found one of the black boxes," Syaugi told reporters. Authorities said a flight data recorder was recovered, but they were still looking for the cockpit voice recorder.
On a Jakarta dockside, Boeing and US National Transportation Safety Board officials joined the Indonesian team in sifting through twisted metal plane parts and piles of passengers' torn clothing, shoes, wallets and phones.
There were no known survivors and only body parts have been found so far. Many others have yet to be located and analysts hope more victims could still be found with the bulk of the wreckage.
"I assume that there will be a lot of bodies still strapped into the seats," aviation analyst Dudi Sudibyo told AFP. Dozens of divers are taking part in the massive recovery effort along with helicopters and ships, but the authorities have all but ruled out finding any survivors.
Passengers' remains are being sent to hospital for DNA identification. Forensic experts identified Jannatun Cintya Dewi as the first victim of the crash Wednesday evening. The 24-year-old civil servant's coffin was carried by pallbearers through the streets of her East Java hometown Sidoarjo on Thursday.
Some relatives have shared heart-wrenching tales of their final contact with loved ones. A selfie taken by a newlywed husband, Deryl Fida Febrianto, and sent to his wife about 30 minutes before the jetliner crashed has gone viral online.
Aviation experts are puzzled by the accident but say it's too early to determine what caused it.
Lion Air's admission that the jet had an unspecified technical issue on a previous flight — as well its abrupt fatal dive — have raised questions about whether it had faults specific to the newly released model, including a speed-and-altitude system malfunction.
Lion Air has been plagued by safety concerns and customer complaints over unreliable scheduling and poor service. The budget carrier has been involved in a number of incidents including a fatal 2004 crash and a collision between two Lion Air planes at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport.


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Stand-up, Start-up: The Message Is the Means
By Richard Rossow
Washington, DC – Since coming to office in May 2014, the BJP-led NDA government has attempted to channel attention to a few key economic initiatives by launching focused media campaigns.
These campaigns are generally seen as heavy on intentions and optics, but they await the implementation of critical policy changes to ensure their success. However, the recent launch of the "Stand-Up, Start-Up" campaign, a series of policies to help entrepreneurs grow, is different.
The value of start-ups and small businesses, and the challenges they face, gets far less attention in India than issues that impact bigger businesses. A focus on helping new businesses is fairly novel. Building awareness, even if related reforms take some time to enact, is actually progress to this group of businesses.
The Narendra Modi government is not lacking in its high-profile campaigns. The more prominent national campaigns include "Make in India" for manufacturing, "Smart Cities" to make India's urban environments more livable, "Clean India" to improve a range of hygiene and sanitation factors, and "Digital India" to expand access to the power of the information age.
However, some of the Modi government's bigger reforms, such as launching transparent auctions for resources, coal reforms, reducing price controls on fuels, and liberalizing a series of FDI caps, are only tangentially related to these major campaigns.
Last year Prime Minister Modi first announced his intention to focus government efforts at helping start-ups succeed during his August 15, 2015, Independence Day speech. The government announced a targeted package of incentives on January 16, 2016, that are meant to help entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed.
These incentives include simplified documentation, fast track patents, access to capital, various tax incentives, and programs to build out incubators and research parks. The government's already tabled legislation to rationalize and expedite bankruptcies, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2015, is also considered a key piece of the new legislative and regulatory framework to help budding businesses.
While policymakers in any nation may reflexively think of how policy changes may impact their large companies, in fact small businesses play a major role in the economy. In the United States, for instance, 64 percent of net new private-sector jobs are created by small businesses. And small businesses account for about half of current payroll employees.
In India, of course, small businesses are critically important. But historically they have lived in a strange environment where they have remained outside of the government's purview. Instead, they have been labeled as a part of the informal economy, forced to remain small as part of the government's program to reserve certain industries for small businesses (the last vestiges of which were removed last year), or living under other incentives to stay small, with disincentives to grow. An example of this last type of policy includes the onerous labor laws of the "Industrial Disputes Act," where if a firm has more than 100 employees, it is difficult to downsize.
Many of India's important "new" businesses are arms of existing corporate houses that expand into new fields. Social pressures magnify the difficulty for an individual to become an entrepreneur.
In launching the "Stand-Up, Start-Up" campaign, the Modi government is striking out into relatively new ground by highlighting this important group. Time will tell how many of the regulatory changes and other programs announced as part of this initiative will come to fruition.
Regardless, the value of start-ups has been articulated and highlighted more vividly than at any time in the past, which is perhaps just as important as any programs that may come out of the initiative. This may play a role, however early, in shifting mindsets toward embracing risk taking.
Clearly India is not without heroes when looking at entrepreneurial success. Names like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Azim Premji, H.R. Narayana Murthy, Sunil Bharti Mittal, among many others, stand out. But success has often been viewed as progress in spite of the government and not due to the support of the government, as often pointed out in the writings of noted business authors including Gurcharan Das.
The Stand-up, Start-up campaign may prove to be a critical first step to strengthen the country's embrace of small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Richard Rossow
Richard Rossow is a senior fellow and holds the Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at CSIS.
https://www.america-times.com/author/richard-rossow/
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STOP! Do not read another word! Advance mouse to Investopedia.com. Do not pass GO. Do not collect another prospectus.
The NYSE advance-decline line has been positive for nearly six years!
Note: Statistics gathered manually from various sources, certainly may be off a few percent in either direction.
What is wrong with the averages? How sick are the Mutual Funds?
Investing always involves more questions than answers, and the idea that Wall Street has those answers and that they are imbedded in the products that they market to the "moneyed" public, is simply part of the brainwashing of the American investor. So, too, is the myth that Mutual Funds are a safer investment mechanism than a properly constructed portfolio of individual securities. Perhaps they should be, in concept. In reality, they haven't been for decades.
Investors have always searched for a safe and easy way to protect and to grow their portfolios. This used to be accomplished by applying a combination of management and investment principles to the process. A diversified portfolio of high quality, profitable companies, and an appropriate amount of less volatile income producers was pretty easy to create, to manage, and to monitor.
It still is, when you realize that investing is not a competitive event. The original Mutual Fund managers actually knew how to do this, were paid to do it, and were not at all influenced by the incredible confluence of outside forces that impacts their decision making today. In their original form, Mutual Funds were Trustee directed within the retirement benefit community, and a stepping-stone to a properly diversified, individual security portfolio on the personal level. Before the three-ring Wall Street circus came to town, there were only two "classes" of securities, retirement programs were not self-directed, the DJIA was an economic indicator, investing was a personal goal directed activity, and the Yankees won the American league pennant most of the time.
Almost everything (except the Yankees) changed with the onslaught of the "new generation" of Mutual Fund marketeers and self- directed retirement vehicles. Wall Street invented market prediction techniques and new subdivisions of securities; investment products were mass-produced in every shape, size, model, and color, with great financial planning success; sales literature was sold as research/analysis, and financial institutions became indistinguishable from one another. People pay extra not to collect current interest and loss-taking is seen as a good idea. Unproven team-player Mutual Fund managers receive signing bonuses that would shock professional athletes, and 60-second sound bites on CNBC define today's investment reality to the masses. A calendar year is now long-term, buy high/sell low a religion, and absolutely everyone, from accountants to wedding planners, can sell Mutual Funds for extra cash. Wall Street is Las Vegas in pinstripes and red suspenders.
Are today's late trading, market timing, and executive suite scandals going to change things dramatically? It's doubtful, simply because Mutual Funds are so profitable for the institutions, so mindlessly easy to sell for financial professionals, AND the only available investment medium for hundreds of millions of employees throughout the country! But is there a better way to invest safely and profitably in spite of all the problems? You can't afford to be lazy anymore. Learn how to manage a high quality, diversified portfolio of individual securities.
Answering the six questions raised in the first paragraph, from the pages of the Business Best Seller: "The Brainwashing of the American Investor". Yes Virginia, there is investment life after Mutual Funds. (2) Rediscover individual securities, after taking a crash course in the principles of investing. (3) Trust yourself, once you've taken the course. (4) Most investors have no choice but to use Funds, the others learn their lessons slowly. (5) Yes, individual securities in a plain vanilla investment plan can be much safer. (6) Some planners have de-toxed from funds, but it's a lot more like work. Most won't try. (7) Nope, you'll have to take the blame for the losses yourself.


The UK's ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, formally informed EU Council president Donald Tusk of the date this morning.
LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May will begin the official process of the UK's exit from the European Union (EU) on March 29, her spokesperson announced today.
"We said it would be by the end of March and thought it would be helpful to say when it will happen. We want negotiations to start promptly. We expect it will be a two-year process and we are confident that is what we will achieve. So Britain will exit the EU on 29 March 2019," the Downing Street spokesperson said.
The UK expects to receive a response to Barrow's notification from the EU Council within 48 hours, he added. The move comes nine months after Britain voted 51.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent in favour of Brexit in a referendum on June 23, 2016.
Talks on the terms of the UK's departure and future relations with the EU are not possible until the UK formally notifies the EU it is leaving.
May has already announced that she will make a statement to the House of Commons shortly after invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
If all goes according to the two year negotiations set out in the official timetable, Brexit should happen in March 2019.


Brace yourselves, season 6 is coming and the marketing force behind the returning series will leave no one behind. HBO has already begun the network's marketing campaign for "Game of Thrones" season 6, starting things off with a Jon Snow teaser.
The promo released today was released on Twitter earlier today, HBO released the image to get fans excited for the early return on the series. In the first promo for the new season, fans were introduced to a very bloody Jon Snow, who fans are still hoping returns in a big way in the next season despite what happened to him at the end of season five.
The image's release is sure to reignite the year-long debate about Jon Snow, mainly if Snow is alive in some shape (or form) or if he is gone for good.
Many fans (myself included) are still grasping at the idea that Snow will return to the series and somehow shake the icy-grip of death from the Wall. The author of "A Song of Ice and Fire" himself, author George R.R. Martin, has been teasing the idea that Snow could return in season 6. Snow wouldn't be the first character to come back to life in the new season, in fact, coming back from the dead should play a very big role in season 6 with, or without Jon Snow.
HBO stopped short of giving us the exact date that Game of Thrones season 6 will premiere but at least we know that it will happen in April at this point. The new season will air on HBO and HBO Go in 2016, so fans only need to set a reminder and get through the next four months of promos before the big day finally arrives. That's sixteen-weeks of arguing your point that Snow is alive or dead, which Kings may return and which Ice-Walkers will make their debut, so stay warm.


The construction of the 14-kiloton NOvA far detector in Minnesota hit a major milestone this week: Collaboration members poured the 2 millionth gallon of scintillating oil into the detector.
The NOvA detector, when completed early next year, will stand 50 feet high, 50 feet wide and span more than 200 feet. It is constructed of PVC modules, each wired with light-sensing fiber-optic cable, and will be filled with a liquid scintillator. According to Deputy Project Manager Rick Tesarek, the liquid — which emits detectable light when charged particles interact with it — is cheaper by weight than solid plastic scintillator.
Workers are constructing the NOvA far detector near Ash River in Minnesota, just south of the Canadian border. The last of 28 plastic blocks is scheduled to be completed and placed by March, with all 2.7 million gallons of liquid scintillator poured by April and the final bank of electronics installed by June. The detector is already receiving neutrino beam from Fermilab's particle accelerator complex, and the first detector modules are recording data.
NOvA is on track to finish filling the detector with scintillator oil by spring.
Fermilab retiree Jacqueline Wilson, who worked at the laboratory for more than 30 years, passed away Nov. 27. A visitation will take place on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 11 a.m. until her funeral service, which begins at 1 p.m. at Dunn Family Funeral Home at 1801 S. Douglas Road in Oswego.
Jacki Wilson started at Fermilab in 1980 and spent most of her years at the laboratory in the Technical Division as a technician. She also worked for the Particle Physics Division and, during accelerator shutdown periods, the Accelerator Division. She retired in 2011.
All Fermilab experiments are receiving beam and taking data. Fermilab will host a labwide party on Friday, Dec. 6, at 4:30 p.m. to celebrate this achievement.
Between Nov. 25 and Dec. 2, the Main Injector provided 157 hours of proton beam to the NuMI target for the production of neutrinos for MINERvA, MINOS and NOvA. The machine delivered an integrated intensity of 4.84 x 1018 protons on target. This includes approximately two days of requested lower-intensity operation to NuMI.
AD personnel worked on Recycler commissioning.
AD personnel worked on beam tuning for Test Beam Facility experiments, which took 72 hours of beam last week. Experiments T-979 and T-1015 are now online.
AD personnel worked on beam tuning for the SeaQuest experiment, which took 140 hours of beam last week.
After a three-hour drive southeast of Mexico City, past farmers using horse-drawn ploughs and through a village with sheep crowding the main street, the dirt road on Sierra Negra mountain splits at 4,000 metres above sea level. To the right is Orizaba, North America's third-highest peak. To the left is a new observatory that will be hunting for the highest-energy sources known in the universe.
When finished in autumn 2014, the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) in Puebla state will have a tight array of 300 barn-sized tanks, covering a total of 20,000 square metres. Already, more than one third of the tanks are taking data, mapping higher-energy cosmic and gamma-rays than similar observatories could detect before.
Cindy Conger, chief financial officer and head of the Finance Section, wrote this column.
Since the U.S. budget and debt ceiling will be back in the news early next year, I'm taking this column to briefly explain how the Fermilab budget interfaces with the U.S. budget.
On Oct. 1, the U. S. government partially shut down because Congress had not passed appropriations legislation for FY2014, which gives government agencies the authority to obligate federal funds. Some parts of the government, including contractors such as Fermi Research Alliance, continued to operate using funding remaining from prior years. On Oct. 16, Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR) funding the government through Jan. 15, 2014. As I wrote in my Aug. 28 column, CRs provide a "budget" to keep things going at last year's levels but do not allow new projects to start, giving Congress time to pass appropriations legislation covering the entire year.
At the same time the partial shutdown took place, the nation also was approaching its so-called debt limit, the ceiling on the amount that the U.S. Treasury is authorized to borrow to pay the nation's bills. This situation can happen at any time, including when the government is fully funded and appropriations legislation is in place. The fact that these two events occurred concurrently makes it more difficult to understand that they are separate and distinct and have different effects.
To help explain, let's use the analogy of putting an addition on your house. You sign a contract with a builder, make an initial payment and approve the builder to start work. The builder completes your home addition and sends you an invoice for the unpaid portion of the work. You write a check to the builder, who deposits it in the company bank account.
Fermilab's "budget" allows the lab to obligate funds, the equivalent of signing the contract with the builder and having the work completed. The budget does not come with cash but with the authority to draw on the U.S. Treasury when cash is needed, that is, when checks clear. The failure to raise the debt ceiling could mean that there might not be sufficient cash in the laboratory's bank account to pay the check to the builder, even though the work has been properly authorized and performed. It is not clear what would actually happen in the unlikely event of a U.S. default, but failure to raise the debt ceiling could prevent the Treasury from being able to provide cash and could have an immediate effect on the government's ability to operate, even if sufficient budget is available. The ceiling will be automatically increased through Feb. 7, but many expect it to be reached again shortly thereafter.
By Jan. 15, Congress will need to pass appropriations bills or a CR to avoid another shutdown. Fortunately, Fermilab has sufficient funding to continue to operate in the event of a short-lived shutdown.
Brookhaven National Laboratory will host the third and final public Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) meeting from Dec. 15-18, including a town hall meeting on Monday, Dec. 16. While this will be an open meeting, registration is appreciated in order to help with logistics.
The meeting will be webcast (details on how to access the feed will be posted to the meeting website soon).
The focus of this workshop will be future accelerators, rare-process and precision experiments at proton machines, and accelerator R&D.
P5 held the first town hall meeting at Fermilab in early November and a second meeting at SLAC early this month. Learn more about P5.
Like a classic detective story, the saga of dark matter continues to revolve around circumstantial evidence. Astronomical observations point to unseen mass, but we don't know what it is. Several experiments are under way to catch and identify the culprit (or culprits) directly, but these often require massive detectors seeking faint fingerprints. But a benchtop approach may have something to offer, as Christian Beck of the University of London, UK, reports in Physical Review Letters. He proposes that one dark matter candidate called the axion may leave clues behind in a relatively small superconducting device.


text:
package org.gdg.frisbee.android.fragment;

import com.android.volley.Response;

import java.util.ArrayList;

import org.gdg.frisbee.android.api.ApiRequest;
import org.gdg.frisbee.android.api.model.Event;
import org.gdg.frisbee.android.app.App;
import org.gdg.frisbee.android.cache.ModelCache;
import org.gdg.frisbee.android.utils.Utils;
import org.joda.time.DateTime;

import org.gdg.frisbee.android.R;

import de.keyboardsurfer.android.widget.crouton.Crouton;
import de.keyboardsurfer.android.widget.crouton.Style;

public class GdgEventFragment extends EventFragment {
    @Override
    void fetchEvents() {
        DateTime now = new DateTime();
        mStart = now.minusMonths(2).dayOfMonth().withMinimumValue();
        mEnd = now.plusYears(1).dayOfMonth().withMaximumValue();

        setIsLoading(true);
        final String cacheKey = "event_" + getArguments().getString("plus_id");

        Response.Listener<ArrayList<Event>> listener = new Response.Listener<ArrayList<Event>>() {
            @Override
            public void onResponse(final ArrayList<Event> events) {
                mEvents.addAll(events);

                App.getInstance().getModelCache().putAsync(cacheKey, mEvents, DateTime.now().plusHours(2), new ModelCache.CachePutListener() {
                    @Override
                    public void onPutIntoCache() {
                        mAdapter.addAll(mEvents);
                        setIsLoading(false);
                    }
                });
            }
        };

        ApiRequest fetchEvents = mClient.getChapterEventList(mStart, mEnd, getArguments().getString("plus_id"), listener, mErrorListener);

        if (Utils.isOnline(getActivity())) {
            fetchEvents.execute();
        } else {
            App.getInstance().getModelCache().getAsync(cacheKey, false, new ModelCache.CacheListener() {
                @Override
                public void onGet(Object item) {
                    ArrayList<Event> events = (ArrayList<Event>) item;

                    mAdapter.addAll(events);
                    setIsLoading(false);
                    Crouton.makeText(getActivity(), getString(R.string.cached_content), Style.INFO).show();
                }

                @Override
                public void onNotFound(String key) {
                    setIsLoading(false);
                    Crouton.makeText(getActivity(), getString(R.string.offline_alert), Style.ALERT).show();
                }
            });
        }
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The purpose of this intervention was to undertake a Licence Condition (LC) compliance inspection at EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Limited (NGL) Heysham 2 power station in line with the planned inspection programme contained in the Heysham 2 Integrated Intervention Strategy (IIS).
I also carried out a review of progress made on ONR issue 3693 relating the Emergency Diesel Generator (EDG) roof plant equipment.
No safety system inspection was undertaken, hence this is not applicable.
My sampled inspection and discussions with Heysham 2 staff and contract partners, provided good evidence that there is good understanding of responsibilities in reporting requirements. This evidence was further supported with the level of documented reporting for CR's from the various contract agencies. It was apparent that the contract agencies are aligned with NGL's reporting culture.
I am satisfied that the arrangements and their implementation for LC7 are to a good standard and have rated this inspection through the IIS as 2 (good).
Work regarding ONR issue 3693 is being progressed on BY EDG roof plant on a number of work front areas. I will continue to monitor progress of this issue through my normal regulatory engagements.
Overall I considered that the arrangements and their associated implementation for LC7 met with the requirements of ONR guidance and was rated through the IIS as 2 (good) respectively.
There are no findings from this inspection that could significantly undermine nuclear safety and no change to the planned interventions and inspections of Heysham 2.


October has not been kind to Juneau, weatherwise. The last dry day was Sept. 25, which was the day I left on my Golden Circle bike tour. It seems like ages ago. Since then, we've set a number of disappointing records ... daily rainfall records, consecutive days of rain, high wind speeds. We're still pace for a record number of wet days for the year (Up to 211 right now, but who's counting?) Complaining about rain in Juneau is like complaining about sand in the desert. But it would be a lie, I believe for any of us here, to say that waking up to the 34th consecutive day of dripping gray fog doesn't make us feel like eating a few thousand calories of pure carbs and crawling back into bed.
So my point is, after a streak like that, when the sun comes out, it matters. It more than matters. It nourishes. Like fresh bread and butter after a long fast, the long-hidden rays soak into skin and fill every cell with warmth and light. So when I woke up on Thursday to a clear day that I wasn't expecting, I knew it could only mean one thing - binge, binge, binge.
I took Pugsley up the Perseverance Trail. A couple of days ago, the bottom bracket started clanking and it got worse quickly. I know I'm gambling by riding this bike when the bottom bracket could crack in half at any second. But I figure the worse that can happen would be me becoming stranded. And what better day and place to get stranded than here?
But I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of riding a clanking, ailing bicycle for six hours, so I parked Pugsley and set out on foot up Granite Creek canyon. I wasn't planning on hiking, so I didn't have snowshoes with me. The snow quickly went from ankle-deep to knee-deep to thigh-deep. It was a huge, strenuous slog just to move slowly through it. The snow was crusty and heavy but highly collapsible - sort of like walking through shaved ice. I'm not even sure that snowshoes would have helped, because they likely still would have punched through and then become stuck in the postholes. Skis with good skins would have definitely been better - if I owned any. As it was, there were enough open stream crossings and bushwhacking that even the death sticks would have been difficult. It's all good, though. Any activity that's excruciatingly slow and needlessly difficult is great Iditarod training.
But, yes, Granite Creek Basin is a magical place and worth the slog. Hard to describe and impossible to photograph, but I love the way the ridge wraps itself around the valley like a chiseled fortress. And the snow. Oh, the snow. It was still crusty even higher on the mountain, and whipped by an intensifying wind, but I still wished I hadn't forgotten my snowboard, too.
But the sun. Oh, the sun.
I started to struggle when I was climbing toward the upper basin. There were steep pitches with no way around, and the wind chill was becoming a concern. When I left the house at 9:30 a.m. it was 35 degrees. But up in the basin it felt so much colder. It seems illogical that there would be that much difference in temperature, but I was convinced the temperature with windchill was well below zero. Could be that it's just early in the year and I don't have my cold blood running yet. But what matters is I was cold and that's why I turned around.
On the way down, I had an odd mishap. I was tracing a diagonal path, just above my original steps, down a steep pitch when I planted my right foot in a rotten patch of snow and sank all the way up to my waist. In my original struggle to extract myself, I managed to compress all of the snow around my boot until it formed an icy block. I'll admit there were a few moments of mild panic when I finally realized I was stuck. I knew I could tug my foot out of my boot to free myself, but I very well couldn't hike all the way down the mountain with only one boot. At least, not without losing a toe or two. But I pushed through the panic and formed a plan. I carefully pulled my leg out of the boot and spun my body around, laying on my stomach and holding the sock foot in the air. Then I used my mittens to dig a trench around the outside of the posthole, careful to remove the snow rather than push it over the boot. When I got down to boot level, I widened the trench until I could leverage my body and punch out the ice-snow barrier around the boot. The anxiety-filled process took at least 15 minutes, but when I finally freed the boot, I was so happy. It was the best part of the day. After that, I was careful to only step in my own footprints, despite the ankle-twisting risk, until I made it back down to the basin.
After that, it was a relaxing hike back down, with a little bit of elation about the genius way in which I conquered the boot-eating snow.
Then I rode back to town. The roads were bathed in direct sun. Everything felt so warm. Even though I was tired and hungry, I took off my extra layers, turned my bike away from home and rode north for a while, just to soak it in.
I didn't think I was going to ride today, but then I read Elden's blog.
Most people who browse this site also read fatcyclist.com, so I don't need to rehash the details. But any entry with the title "Getting the ending right," in regards to cancer, casts a heartbreaking mood over the morning.
I had been sitting at my computer, downing cups of coffee and trying to pull myself out of poor-sleep fatigue. I had already decided I was due for a "reward day." Reward days are the days that I let myself skip the waterlogged rides and/or hikes, put on something comfortable and cotton, grab a New Yorker magazine, and spend a relaxing and dry hour or two at the gym. Most of the time I love to go outside, but the rain and wind does start to wear on me, so every week or 10 days, regardless of what I had planned to do for training, I'll give myself what is essentially a rain day and hunker down inside.
That was going to be today. But after I read Elden's post, something just felt empty about going to the gym. There were thoughts I wanted to process and memories I wanted to confront. I changed out of my gym clothes, put on several layers of fleece, pulled on my neoprene socks and gloves, and headed out the door.
Hard rain fell from dark clouds and flowed around the decimated snow pack. The melt allowed me to ride my road bike, and I went out strong and fast, pedaling hard while squinting at the wet pavement. I was fixated on the movement and flow. My lungs burned and my legs ached. It's a tough place to ride, and a quiet place to think.
I lost my great-grandmother to brain cancer about four years ago. She had lived a full life. She was about 80 years old. But the disease cut her down shockingly fast. I was busy with whatever silly things I was busy with in 2004, and I was only able to visit her twice. The first was in the hospital, when she was still laughing and joking. The second was after the family had already moved her home in the care of hospice. I sat down next to her bed and she contorted her face as she looked at me. Cancer had stolen her ability to string thoughts into words, and she spoke in incoherent babble. Her eyes were filled with terror, and my mom told me that she probably no longer remembered who I was, and that she probably no longer even remembered who she was.
The look in my great-grandmother's eyes said everything, and I was devastated. Here was this vibrant woman, the woman who let me eat grapes out of her back yard and who peppered me with great stories when I was doing my seventh-grade report on the Great Depression, a woman who I had known and loved all my life, robbed of her memories, her personality, her mind. I was in my mid-20s and thought I had long accepted mortality and the realities of cancer. But my great-grandmother's eyes, with their emptiness and fear, brought that reality into sharp focus - cancer is a disease so frightening it can make death seem kind.
Death came mercifully fast for my great-grandmother. She was only with us a few more days beyond my final visit. I listened to distant family members, part of her enormous progeny, speak at her funeral. Their stories of happiness and love helped me realize that even if my great-grandmother left the world remembering nothing about her life, her family remembered and loved her for it. And that was important.
For all of the people in our lives, whatever distant connections we have, it's important to learn, and to live, and to remember.
Although we've been seeing snow in the surrounding mountains since mid-September, the actual city limits of Juneau weren't hit with snow until Friday night. Oct. 24 is actually a little early for Juneau's first snow, located as it is in the banana belt of Alaska. It means winter's not here to stay, but it's always fun to see white stuff before Halloween.
Riding through 6-8 inches of fresh powder up a moderately steep trail is the best full-body workout there is ... you know, besides running, yoga, cross-country skiing, pilates and swimming. For the second day in a row, I came home coated in sweat with legs tired to the core after spending four hours covering 32 miles. Still, the downhill runs are amazing ... steamrolling down singletrack in a white powder blast, wheels nearly silent in the snow, bouncing over partially-covered rocks, carving wide turns with the fat tires, eyes streaming with tears in the cold wind, kind of like a happy cry. Downhill snowbiking is always the best at first snows, when the dirt base allows unchecked speed, but the soft powder muffles inhibitions.
The rest of the time, you're moving slow enough to notice all the changes in your world. This is the spring-growth tree that I photographed the other day, looking a little forlorn. I don't think those baby leaves are going to last much longer, but I still admire the tree's effort.
And a single sun shot to part with. Now, back to rain.
It's been a good week for Pugsley. Not only did I recently promise him many, many hours of quality training time this winter, but the hurricanes that deluged Juneau in rain dumped a fair amount of snow in the mountains. There was even a small break in the weather today. Time to head up.
I saw the sun bursting through this small sucker-hole near the base of Eaglecrest Ski Area and actually stopped for a few minutes just to stand in its path. It's the first hit of direct sunlight I've had since I walked out of the Grand Canyon on Oct. 11.
The snow conditions were predictably bad - dense powder covered with a thin layer of wind-scoured ice. Beautiful when I could stay on top, but mostly I just sank in. The riding became much better atop the mid-mountain fields, where I managed to stay on top of the crust for healthy distances. The swamps and bogs were frozen solid. Large blocks of new terrain had opened up overnight. This is what I love about winter cycling. The regular barriers of mountain biking break down.
But winter cycling is also harder. I always forget just how much more time and effort the exact same routes can consume in winter compared to summer. I guess it makes sense - heavy bike, wide tires, bulky clothing, cold temperatures. But it's almost more than that, and it's difficult to describe. It's like, if summer cycling were like skipping along the beach, winter cycling would be like skipping along the beach just off the shore in waist-deep cold water, with quicksand under your feet. Oh, and there are sharks swimming around. It's hard. Maybe I'm just not used to it. But I love it just the same.
All afternoon I encountered intense snow squalls broken by calm periods of sunlight. Strange weather. After checking out the open terrain near the road, I left Pugsley at the top of the ski lift, about 3,000 feet up, and hiked to the ridge. A storm moved through shortly before I reached the top, but I continued upward anyway. As soon as my head peaked over the final horizon line, I was hit with a windchill so intense that it took my breath away. I just wasn't expecting such an extreme shift in temperature. The upper crust was covered in fascinating rime formations, but I didn't take any pictures because I was somewhat worried my hands would flash freeze if I removed my mittens. It was a white-out anyway. Quickly down I went. Not long after that, the storm moved through and it was beautiful again.
I stuffed that balaclava in my Camelbak almost as an afterthought. I was lucky to have it, because that PVC rain jacket and my wet wool socks really weren't pulling their weight. It continues to be tough to dress properly for longer rides this time of year. It was still raining at sea level.
But tonight, as we were having dinner with friends, the snow moved low and already there's a couple of inches on the ground. Good things to come. A good time to be Pugsley.
While riding along Perseverance Basin, I saw this tree, stripped nearly bare in an April avalanche, sporting its first sprigs of new growth. The blueberry bushes and alder branches surrounding it, only recently uncovered from the slow-melting avalanche debris, were rushing to do the same. It was an interesting scene - a futile burst of life in late October. All around, the Devil's Club had wilted. Brown leaves littered the ground. All the other trees were bare. But in the avalanche zone, it was spring. It was a little sad ... but inspiring, too - a reminder that life never stops trying.
I have had a good week of fun little Pugsley rides, jaunts to North Douglas, and trips to the gym. It will be my last unfocused week. The real training will have to begin now. But the truth is, I'm not ever sure where to begin. I have a much stronger base than I had at this time last year. Hiking and cycling, healthy knees and strong legs. I have been trying to do more high-intensity work, but it's always hard to get into it. I can usually bust out a few intervals, until 50 mph wind gusts knock me sideways and steal the breath from my lungs, and rain daggers pierce my scalp and stab my eyes, and my fingers go numb in the wet cold and I no longer have the energy to wiggle my toes for warmth. After that, I'm just trying to stay on the bike. October cycling is not about fitness. October cycling is about survival.
Some days - most days - it's just not worth it. I have been putting my gym pass to good use, in a place where I can run intervals that are actually effective workouts, without worrying about blowing off the road or nose-diving into some rainwater-filled pothole. This has been a week of strong wind advisories and heavy rain. Our storm total is nearly over 10 inches. Storm total! Single storm! It takes Anchorage about 7 months to accumulate that much precipitation. Combine that with the 50-60 mph wind gusts and in any Atlantic state you'd have a tropical storm. Here, it's just autumn.
The forecast calls for more of the same Thursday. I may try to get out for my first "training" ride of the season - if only because, for all the intervals I can run, survival is still the most important skill I can hone.
in my mind, in my mind.
in my mind, in my mind ..."
I was going through some old picture folders when I found the original file of a photo I have had over in this blog's sidebar for a while now. It was taken just a few minutes before the start of the 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational by Damion Kintz (or at least, that's who the little copyright symbol in the corner attributes it to.) For me, this picture is filled with the nervous energy and hope that surrounded the moment. But more than that, I see the one of those pivotal moments that life is full of - a moment of innocence lost.
The week following is still burned with startling clarity in my memory, and I think about it often. I think about the world of extremes, the beauty and the bleakness, the strength and the weakness, the highs and the lows. And I think about the what ifs. What if I had trained differently? What if I had different gear? What if I had gotten more sleep early on? What if I had eaten enough? What if I hadn't dropped my bike in Pass Creek? Would I have avoided the minor freakout and subsequent breakdowns that plagued me as I rode a wave of grace through the rest of that beautiful but brutal race?
What if? And if so, what then?
And then I got to thinking ... "Hmmm, it was about this time last year that I entered the 2008 race." Turns out, it was exactly one year ago. Time runs short.
The Iditarod Trail has been in the forefront of my thoughts recently as winter approaches, changes loom and memories linger. I have wrestled with the possibility of entering the race again in 2009, but was never able to make a strong commitment. Last year, I nearly killed my poor family with worry. I spent a lot of money and burned up a lot of time in training. I made a lot of mistakes.
And I wonder why I would subject myself to something so challenging and painful ever again. Even though I learned so much, and have so much more insight into the larger picture, and so much more insight into myself.
Yeah, that looks like my hat, thrown in the ring.
Recent discussions on my and Geoff's blog gave me idea for how to respond to the ever-circulating "Seven Random Things About Me" blog game, of which I was recently tagged by Carrot Quinn. So here's: "Seven Random Things About My Work History."
1. My first job was at Wendy's. I tried unsuccessfully for most of my sophomore year to land a job as a 15-year-old. So the day after I turned 16, I went into Wendy's under the recommendation of a friend and filled out an application. I told the interviewer that I appreciated that "Wendy's makes quality hamburgers, not crappy ones like McDonalds." (Oh yes I did say that.) I was employed within a week of my 16th birthday. I made $6.25 an hour.
2. I hated that job - not because it was a crappy fast food job, but because an unapologetic sexist hierarchy chained me to salad bar duty, which I despised. I wanted to work the cash register, and expressed that desire numerous times. My manager told me in so many words that he didn't want a girly handling the money. I quit and applied at Albertsons - gladly taking a $2-an-hour wage cut to work as a bagger for minimum wage. It was the first indication of one of my personality flaws: I don't really care about money, but I do like to work.
3. I worked two part-time jobs throughout college, logging about 45 hours a week on top of my classes. One of those jobs was a bagel baker at Einstein's Bagels, working Saturdays and Sundays from 4 a.m. to noon. Since I didn't want to miss out completely on the college experience, I often pulled all-nighters at friends' parties and clubs. When 4 a.m. rolled around, I'd leave the party and stumble sleepless into work, pulling an apron around the clothing I had worn the night before. I still think of baking at Einstein's Bagels as my first "endurance" sport.
4. My claim to fame at Einsteins was the creation of the "cinnamon twist," in which I braided raw bagel dough and drenched the sticks in cinnamon and sugar before baking. It was essentially a thick-coated cinnamon sugar bagel, but I stuck them on the counter and charged three times what a bagel cost. Those things flew out the door. I couldn't bake them fast enough. I was eventually reprimanded by the corporate managers for making something that wasn't part of the established menu. I could never forgive them for quashing my creativity.
5. I have been fired. In one of my second jobs in college, I worked a short stint as a film processor at a one-hour photo place called MotoPhoto. One night, I mistook a bottle of film cleaner for the bottle of water we usually used to clean the inside of the film processing machine. Overnight, the film cleaner combined with other chemicals corroded the plastic inside the processing machine, causing several hundred dollars in damage. For that I was fired. I was completely devastated about it.
6. Although I studied journalism and literature at the University of Utah, my first jobs out of college were as a graphic designer, a profession for which I had not taken a single class in school. I taught myself Quark Xpress, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in order to design a catalog for an art supply company I had worked for in retail customer service, but had been promoted upon receiving my degree. After that, graphic design pretty much stuck. I eventually found my way back into newspapers, but almost always as an editor/designer.
7. I have a strong work ethic but little ambition. It probably means I'll never belong to a high or even average tax bracket, but I hope it means I'll always have the time and energy to pursue the things I love.
Well, Geoff is back in town now. Even after some discussion, I'm still not completely sure why he decided to return to Juneau after vowing he would not - at least, not until fall and a fair chunk of November and December were good and over. Juneau has given him its warmest welcome, too. The weather has been on the soft side of horrific. I'm not sure what it was like while I was in Utah, but I do know it pretty much hasn't stopped raining since the minute my Alaska Airlines jet lurched violently in a gusty crosswind just feet over the runway. Now we pretty much just wait for lulls in the wind to go out. "Oh, just 15 mph wind and drizzle? That's practically sunny."
Yesterday, before three hours of cycling I misjudged how many layers I'd need and paid the deep and painful price. I noticed a chill set in as I was climbing and knew I was in for problems. I turned around before too long, but it was too late to stave off breathtaking windchill during the descent, followed by 10 miles of bucking that 25 mph headwind in my single soaked layer of neoprene/polypro and a pathetic rain jacket. Upon return, I had to curl up on my bedroom floor while my body worked through some incapacitating pain. Rewarming the extremities after deep, wet chills is horrible. I have to relearn this every October.
Geoff has been experiencing some back problems and hasn't been running this week. Today he expressed interest in going for a hike, so we hit up Mount Jumbo. All was fine until we hit snowline, then I started to struggle. I was up there just 10 days ago, walking on dry ground under clear skies. Today we were plodding through knee-deep snow, still a few hundred feet below the peak. The snow was so wet that it seemed to be infused with some kind of oil - it was just super slick. After I crossed a narrow saddle, I slipped on a steep, rocky pitch and slid several feet toward the yawning abyss of a deep bowl. There were no cliffs nearby and the snow was deep and heavy enough to stop me before I slid too far, but I was sufficiently sketched out. I had announced to Geoff earlier that I would probably not follow him to the top, so I turned around right there. It was just as well. He caught me on my way down the mountain to report thigh-deep powder snow, a blowing blizzard, near-zero visibility and wind chills below 0F at the top. Another reminder that if you don't like the weather, just take a few extra steps - it can always get worse.
It's not supposed to get much better, but I still have a few punches left on my gym pass. Thinking it's time to take a break from the Great Outdoors.
I was grinding up a slick stretch of singletrack on Monday when the bike's rear wheel, unsurprisingly, finally refused to turn. I used a stick to chip away at a thick layer of mud crammed between the tire and the frame, but it was no use. The mass held as steadfast as concrete, and nearly as solid. A day of "warmer" temperatures and plenty of snowmelt had left the Draper trails wet and muddy. I headed out anyway, forgetting that those clay-packed trails in Utah become unrideable when wet, unlike the spongy trails in Juneau, which are always wet.
Eventually I stashed the bike in some trees and started hiking up the Jacob's Ladder trail, which I remembered as a steep but scenic route that, on an ambitious day, eventually reaches Lone Peak - a peak that, before I moved to Alaska, I considered my favorite place in the whole world. I knew Lone Peak was out of the question on Monday, but it felt good to walk in its shadow.
I hiked up the snowy trail until I met two other hikers - young, somewhat pudgy guys who looked like they were about 23 or 24 years old. They announced they were scouting out the route for a planned Boy Scout campout up in the alpine cirque (some 3,000 feet higher and buried in snow) for the following week.
"You guys are going to drag Scouts up in this?" I said. "Poor kids."
"Well, it's supposed to be 70 degrees next weekend," one of the guys told me.
"Still," I said. "There's a lot of snow that's probably not going to melt."
"Have you been up here before?" the other guy asked.
"I have," I said. "It's been a while." I thought back to the last time I had actually been up on Lone Peak. "Probably not since 2002." And I realized that it really had been at least six years. Shortly after that, I discovered cycling, and the big mountains started to fall into the background.
"Do you remember what the trail's like?"
"Steep," I said. "Just steep. But beautiful. Are you guys going to try to reach the cirque today?"
One of the guys just wrinkled his nose. "Probably not," he said. "We just want to go far enough to see where we're going."
I hiked on ahead, along the Draper Ridge until the trail veered onto the steep face of the mountain. From there, the melting snow and mud made footing sketchy and difficult. Handholds were few and I found myself digging my thinly gloved fingers into the snow. Satisfied that the trail was no longer even hikeable, I turned around and looked out over the Utah Valley, the lake and the suburban sprawl that surrounded it. The city used to look so small. It looked massive to me now.
The views had a displaced familiarity - a scene I had witnessed often but had let years pass since the last time. Dry air and relative boredom at 7,500 feet had become a foreign concept to me - and I almost laughed at loud at what a non-local I had become. Below me, the once-barren ridgeline of South Mountain was choked with new development - high-end homes, streets, and even a brand new LDS temple. But the terrain above my head was more stark, more rugged, and more appealing than I even remembered. It was like I was seeing a new world through old eyes, and an old world through new eyes, all at the same time.
I ate a Power Bar and soaked in the views and a fair dose of cold wind, waiting to see if the two guys caught up to me. They never did. They had turned around even earlier, apparently abandoning the scouting hike and, I hoped, the ill-advised Boy Scout campout the following week. The next day, I would be on a plane bound for Juneau, back to low elevations and stifling cold humidity and wet trails that don't incapacitate a bike. Back to my home. But there was a fear about returning to Juneau, about the possible twilight of my time there, and how I may never be able to look at it the same way.
In the purple light of predawn, my dad and his friend, Tom, rushed to pull on every piece of clothing in their packs before the chill set in. I tilted my travel thermometer beneath the dim light of the South Rim bus station. It was 37, maybe 38 degrees. I was already wearing all of my clothing. Three years of Alaska outings have taught me to leave the house as pessimistic as possible and shed my way toward optimism.
The shuttle bus pulled up at 6:08 a.m. Arizona time (what time is that in Alaska? What time is that in Utah? In a state that does not observe daylight savings, the real time was a constant source of debate.) The bus was packed to the brim with people - other hikers bundled in their Arctic best for the long descent down the South Kaibab Trail. It was a swift dose of reality that the Grand Canyon is not the place to seek solitude. But more than that, we were astonished at the sheer number of people undertaking what just a few years ago to us was a bewildering idea - hiking from one side of the Grand Canyon to the other in a day.
But since those uneasy years, I had dropped off the rim three times. By the fourth, the edge had worn off a bit. I had become more accustomed to day-long physical exertion, and rarely on paths as well-built and luxurious as the Grand Canyon's main trails. But where the physical challenge dulled a bit, the wonder only sharpened.
In the warm light of sunrise, a huge chasm spread out around us. Serrated rock and soft sand is a kind of scenery so different from that which I see in my day-to-day adventures. I appreciate its beauty so much more now that I'm so far away.
My dad looked out over the trail snaking into the gorge and said, "this is one of those 'wow' moments, isn't it?" I smiled, because a love of sweeping spaces is something my dad and I both identify with. It reminded me that my dad and I share things that run so much deeper than bloodlines.
After just a little more than an hour of hiking, we were already watching the blue-gray ribbons of the Colorado River flow toward the oasis of Phantom Ranch. I felt like we were moving at the speed of light. Tom, who had been up Mount Rainier but never down the Grand Canyon, said "Wow, I feel like we've walked a long way downhill, and we still have a long way to go."
We skirted a narrow bridge across the Colorado River, elevation 2,400, at about 9 a.m. On the banks was Phantom Ranch, a little National Park resort with flush toilets and bunk houses and cold lemonade. We were still wearing half of our warm layers. My thermometer still hovered well below 60, in Arizona, in mid-October. I have visited that place at the same time of year when the temperature was in the 100s, and I have suckled the Phantom Ranch lemonade like it was the elixir of life. "You know," my dad said, "I don't really feel like a cold lemonade right now." And I realized with no small disappointment that I did not, either.
As we continued up the surprisingly un-oven-like box canyon on the lower north side, we saw our only member of the large wildlife community that we met during the trip, a bighorn sheep. We also saw, to our disappointment, dozens of other hikers.
We stopped for lunch at Ribbon Falls. I pulled out my assortment of Clif Bars and candy bars and tried to ascertain a good combination for lunch. My dad offered me a cheese bagel, with honey, and part of a can of Pringles - just like in the old days, when I was a grumpy teenager and my dad carried all of the food. The idea that he would still think of me when shopping for his hiking expedition made me feel warm and secure, and I relished in a lunch that still tasted as rich and nourishing as it did when I was 16.
Ribbon Falls was just spectacular in the noon sunlight. We finished lunch and climbed up behind the waterfall, trying to dodge the mist that on any other October day in the Grand Canyon would probably feel wonderful.
Ribbon Falls is about a perfect halfway point between the South and North rims. I think it should be a destination in and of itself. Crystal clear water over a ribbon of moss and vegetation as rich and green as anything in Juneau, contrasted against the red rocks. I would hike 24 miles out and back to see it.
I couldn't decide which picture to post, so I posted four. Yup, still Ribbon Falls.
A cold wind that had been blowing all day really picked up force as we ascended the North Rim. Gusts of 40 and sometimes even 50 mph blew away my hat and pounded us with chilling force. Luckily, the wind was almost always at our backs. Even on slow-moving feet, the push helps.
I ticked off the elevation on my GPS, announcing the numbers to my dad and Tom as we marched upward. Fall began to return to the landscape. The thermometer dropped back toward 40. The climb is long, more than 6,500 feet over the course of the day, and the mileage - about 22 - is not a short stroll either. Even so, near the top, a part of me felt like we were just getting started, and GPS confirmed it. We had spent just a little more than nine hours in the canyon, with only about six to seven of that hiking (GPS accuracy is hard to pin down on moving time.) For the first time in four rim-to-rim treks, I could understand why people would turn around and walk back into the abyss.
Clouds started to move in shortly after we crested the rim. By 5 p.m., it was snowing. But, all in all, we had an ideal trip. The weather was just about perfect - for my Alaska blood, that is. I was half disappointed I didn't get to see the snow while we were hiking. I imagine the canyon is beautiful dusted in white.
So that's my fourth time down the Grand. Would I do it again? Most definitely.


Las Vegas (/lɑːs ˈveɪɡəs/) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its consolidated casino–hotels and associated entertainment. A growing retirement and family city, Las Vegas is the 31st-most populous city in the United States, with a population at the 2010 census of 583,756. The 2010 population of the Las Vegas metropolitan area was 1,951,269.
Established in 1905, Las Vegas was incorporated as a city in 1911. At the close of the 20th century, Las Vegas was the most populous American city founded in that century (a distinction held by Chicago in the 19th century). The city's tolerance for various forms of adult entertainment earned it the title of Sin City, and this image has made Las Vegas a popular setting for films and television programs. There are numerous outdoor lighting displays on Fremont Street, as well as elsewhere in the city.


text:
Read on Stripes.com
DoDEA announces 2023 Teacher of the Year
Lester Middle School teacher Dr. Cara Kaiser was selected as the 2023 Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) Teacher of the Year.
Try these three activities to do solo on Okinawa
If COVID-19 has you restricted to on-base only activities, don't be discouraged. There are still plenty of productive ways to spend your free time and have fun, even if you spend a lot of time by yourself! Here are my top three activities to do solo.
USO Schwab hosts "Ooey Gooey" storytime with Schwab Program
Thousands of miles away from home, Marines volunteer to promote literacy for military children. The USO Camp Schwab is the northern most USO on the island of Okinawa.
AFN airing program honoring military-bound high school seniors
A U.S. Astronaut aboard the International Space Station is joining with military leaders and celebrities to recognize American high school seniors enlisting in the military following graduation in a special show.
Kadena Exchange Rewards Classroom Excellence with You Made the Grade Program
Whether learning at home or in the classroom, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service is recognizing military students for academic accomplishments through its You Made the Grade program.
Camp Foster Exchange rewards classroom excellence with You Made the Grade Program
AFN Airing Every Major League Baseball Team Over Two Days
Baseball bliss is speeding toward the overseas military community like a 105-mile-per-hour fastball. Starting opening day, April 1, the American Forces Network (AFN) will air all 30 major league baseball teams in two days.
Sun activity will cause AFN signal interruptions
Solar interference with the American Forces Network (AFN) satellite path will soon periodically cause the network's TV signal to go dark, pixelate or freeze and the radio signal to drop out.
AFN Airing Best of Rush Limbaugh
AFN 360 Internet Radio is providing Rush Limbaugh fans with the same "best of shows" airing in the United States.
Ensign Robert G. Hudson
CFAO Security Chief Petty Officer commissioned
Ensign Robert G. Hudson, assigned to Commander, Fleet Activities Okinawa security department, was commissioned Feb. 2, 2021.
Everything you wanted to know about Okinawa soba noodles
In Japan, everybody loves noodles, and Okinawans are no different. In fact, they've got their own regional strand of the classic Asian cuisine – Okinawa soba. It's not only a local favorite, but the dish of choice for many visitors who come in search of a true taste of Okinawa.
Toujin Soba: Tasting how this Okinawan noodles all started
Toujin soba (Chinese people's soba) - thought to be the origin of Okinawan soba - has been brought back to life at several soba joints on the island.
Time to slurp away like Okinawans
You may have heard that it's OK to slurp noodles in Japan.
Watch your manners! When, where, how to slurp noodles in Japan
Japan is a country which has many unique cultures within it, and slurping is one of the most unusual characteristics! This can be a huge surprise when you come across it for the first time as it often is considered as a bad behavior at meal in many other countries
VIDEO: How to make Okinawa's famous crepes
Chinpin is an Okinawan sweet often described as a pancake or crepe flavored with brown sugar.
The Bros on Okinawa serving up super sandwiches
Americans may be hard to please when it comes to sandwiches. Every U.S. state has its signature sandwich, and individuals often have their own favorites.


If you have more bags than the permitted allowance or your bags exceed the weight or linear restrictions, you will be charged additional fees. Contact Alitalia directly for more information or click on the link at the bottom of this page to access Alitalia's Excess Baggage Chart.
Some checked items, will be charged a fixed handling fee because of size, fragility, or other handling requirements. Contact Alitalia directly for more information or View Alitalia's Special Baggage Page.


text:
import Vue from 'vue'
import Router from 'vue-router'
import Hello from '@/components/Hello'
import Login from '@/components/Login'
import Registry from '@/components/Registry'

Vue.use(Router)

export default new Router({
  routes: [
    {
      path: '/',
      name: 'Hello',
      component: Hello
    },
    {
      path: '/login',
      name: 'Login',
      component: Login
    },
    {
      path: '/registry',
      name: 'Registry',
      component: Registry
    }
  ]
})


Trees are terrific in every shape and size: share your tree story!
This year, the Growing Works of Art contest theme "Trees are terrific in every shape and size: share your tree story." Celebrate the connections we share with trees by helping your students create a work of art that showcases fond memories enjoyed because of the trees in our lives.
See winning posters below and our feature Across the Fence.
Questions? Contact Rebecca Roy, Conservation Education Specialist at Rebecca.roy@vermont.gov.