Is there not a maximum price fixed?
I would point out to my hon. friend that if he will have his herds tested he will find that when the Government officials get through he will not be overpaid. I have had some experience, and I know of others who have a good deal of experience, and I can assure him they did not complain that they were overpaid.
I have much pleasure in endorsing that suggestion.
The first case mentioned by my hon. friend certainly does not come within the Act, because the dependents are not pensionable unless the death of the soldier is attributable to military service. Certainly if a man is drowned after being discharged healthy and fit, his death cannot be attributable to military service.


I have another product from Senspa, their Relaxing Body Butter. I picked this up on a whim when I had popped into my local Waitrose for a loaf of bread, I always have a quick browse down the health and beauty aisle. This caught my attention due to the fragrance with essential oils of Lavender, Bergamot, Patchouli and Geranium.
It's a gorgeous thick texture without being really heavy. Very nourishing with Shea Butter, Mango Butter, Cocoa Butter and Coconut Oil. Relaxing Body Butter melts into the skin and you are left with such a beautiful fragrance.
I've been using this as a Hand Cream as well as a Body Butter, you don't need much either so even though it's more expensive than usual supermarket lotions at £6.95 for 200ml, I personally think it's worth it. For hands and nails a pea sized amount is plenty.
I love this and would definitely buy it again. It smells divine and helps me relax whenever I use it and it doesn't contain any mineral oil in – yippee!! As well as Waitrose stores you can buy Senspa directly from their website http://www.senspa.co.uk.
I adore the Feather and Down Sleep Pillow Spray, it is absolutely gorgeous. As soon as I smelled the fragrance I rushed to Boots online to place an order for practically the whole range.
Sleep Butter is so beautiful, it's a gorgeous texture that melts into your skin. I use it all over and it's been great for my dry skin. This also makes a fabulous hand treatment with the body oil layered underneath. The smell is divine and really helps me relax. It has a soufflé type of feel to it, and I find it easier to use with a spatula. A little goes a long way too so you don't need to use half a tub!
Sleep Butter doesn't contain any mineral oils, it's Shea Butter based with Cocoa Butter and Sweet Almond Oil and fragranced with Lavender and Chamomile. It's also good value for money, £8.00 for 300ml. This is a definite repurchase, in fact the whole range is, Sleep I find difficult at the best of times so I'm interested in anything that helps me relax. Available from http://www.featheranddownsleep.com and http://www.boots.com.
Well I bring bad news: this is the last month I shall be bringing you the You Beauty Box. You have teemed up with Latest in Beauty so won't be doing their boxes anymore. Booooo! There will be options to choose more products but naturally this will cost more and from the look of the first shortlist I've seen, is short on full sizes. That's what I really loved about You, you were offered full sizes so we're really able to get massive value for money. Perhaps I am greedy….well to be truthful, there is no perhaps about it.
This box cost £10.95 including postage and you can buy from http://www.box.you.co.uk.
I will be trying out the Latest in Beauty offering so keep your eyes peeled for that post.
Today sees a body scrub review from natural brand Pure Purpose. They reached out to me and asked if I would like to try their coffee body scrub and facial and give some feedback. As everyone knows I'm obsessed with oils so said yes please!
Pure Purpose is a small family owned business from Kent, I really enjoy trying products from independents. You really get to know the brand on a personal level as often you are dealing with an extremely small team. That and I find that customer service is so much more personal.
So to the product! I have tried a couple of coffee scrubs before and I love 'em! They are so thorough but I find gentle enough for my eczema prone skin as there is Oil binding the formula together. The scrubs don't contain mineral oil, SLS, phlthalates or parabens. Ingredients are: Coffee seed powder, Sugar, Seaweed powder, Sea Salt, Sweet almond oil, Vitamin E, Eucalyptus essential oil, Grapefruit seed extract and Limonene.
This particular scrub is the Seaweed and Eucalyptus that smells gorgeous, I love the fragrance as its so uplifting. I use a tiny amount for each body part, I don't rub really hard, but enough to get the product to work. I love how my skin feels afterwards, I'm left feeling so smooth and moisturised, further oils or lotions aren't needed so this saves time for me. Also, this scrub rinses away so easily from the bottom of the bath (I already have a non-slip mat in my bath so I don't need to worry), quick blast of the shower and its all gone. Some oil will remain so if you haven't got a bath mat you probably need to clean it straight away.
Pure Purpose would be my choice of coffee scrub, while I have enjoyed using coffee scrubs before, their fragrances haven't been my ideal. I don't like the smell of Coconut and I am not a huge fan of sweet foodie scents so this fragrance is perfect for me. Also the price is incredibly reasonable at £13.50 for 180g. As only a handful is needed each time this would last months. The packaging is re-sealable too and in a waterproof pouch. I don't store mine in my bathroom as it's best kept in cool, dark places. You can buy from http://www.purepurposecosmetics.co.uk.
Today I have Egyptian Magic All Purpose Skin Cream. I ordered this a few months ago while I was having the most awful eczema flare up and wanted to treat it with more natural ingredients rather than the mineral oil based crap my GP prescribed which was not only revolting to use, but it made my skin drier.
Egyptian Magic has only six ingredients: Olive Oil, Bees Wax, Honey, Bee Pollen, Royal Jelly, Bee Propolis. It is a firm Balm that you need to warm up until it emulsifies into an oil and then you can spread it over your skin. A little goes a long way so do be careful with how much you get out of the pot! I use a small spatula and to cover my lower back and down to my legs where the eczema is (it stops mid-thigh) I use around a 50p piece amount and it covers that area. I use Body butter first and use Egyptian Magic to seal it in.
This is a fabulous balm which really does help heal skin. You can use this in so many ways, there are 20 uses for it on their website! You can use it as a makeup remover, lip balm, moisturiser, eye cream, face mask, hair conditioner, baby balm, nail and cuticle balm and the list goes on.
You also get a lot in the pot, 118ml so it's lasted me for such a long time. If I am wearing my pain killing patches then I'm only using the Balm in the evening. I've had mine for 3 months and I've not hit the halfway mark yet. I'm not using it quite so much at the moment, as the balm has got my skin in fabulous condition. I bought my pot from an ebay store for £10.00, it is available in Boots but at £29.00. If you have tricky skin and are looking for a natural alternative to the utter rubbish that GP's prescribe, Egyptian Magic would be a great option.


Sharp Electronics Corporation has announced that it is shipping an 80 page-per-minute (PPM) digital multifunction printer/copier for busy networked office environments. Learn more about the feature set within.
Sharp Electronics Corporation has announced that it is shipping an 80 page-per-minute (PPM) digital multifunction printer/copier for busy networked office environments.
The AR-800 Digital IMAGER features plug and play capabilities to integrate with networked systems. With an optional embedded print controller, the device can also serve as a workgroup printer, able to connect to workstations across multiple network operating systems and protocols.


Newer contemporary custom-built gated estate with well-crafted interior situated in beautiful City of Arcadia. This estate is designed by archit. PDS Studio. Automatic private security gated accented with beautiful brick paved circular driveway. This 5 bedrooms and 6.5 baths estate fully equipped with upscale life style. The wrought-Iron Glass Double door that leads to an impressive high ceiling grand foyer with crystal chandelier, marble tile floor and magnificent staircase. Thoughtfully designed open floor plan, high ceiling, detailed decorative, molding and recessed lighting throughout the house. Formal living room with fireplace leads to gorgeous formal dining. Gourmet kitchen offering an entertaining island with Viking appliances and custom crafted cabinetry adjacent wok kitchen. Built-in wine cellar, private gym or entertainment room offers both wet and sauna next to movie theater. There is one guest suite downstairs. Master suite features a retreat, walk-in closet and balcony. Master shower room with steamer, Jacuzzi tub and vanity. Custom pool and spa completed the outdoor touch with gorgeous landscaping front and back. Attached 3 car garage. Close to Golf course, Park, Library, schools and walking distance to supermarket and restaurants. Truly a must see!


Price REDUCED!! On free standing brick building! Previously used as successful law office. Building has large lobby/waiting area, large conference room, large main office. It also has 5 smaller offices and 3 bathrooms. Paved parking, and fenced rear storage area. This would be great for law office, medical or dental office, insurance agency, daycare the possibilities are endless in a building this affordable. Very close proximity to I-20 at the Linwood exit. Furnishings are negotiable, if needed.


Something interesting is happening. Passionate perfume lovers are getting themselves into print.
For some years now the internet has provided an unprecedented opportunity for perfume consumers to exchange ideas and perfumes, to buy and sell, to talk, listen and dream together. But books about perfume tended in the past to be about the history and production of perfume, rather than its consumption. The love, strength and inspiration that perfume provides us on a daily basis was not a subject for a book because there was no community to read it. And now there is.
You will recognize Alyssa Harad even if you have not read any of her posts on Now Smell This or Perfume Smellin' Things because she is one of us. Many of us know the sensation of 'falling down the perfume rabbit hole'. Perhaps we wore perfume in our youth, or our mothers did, but it was just a casual thing. Then something happens that makes us pause and smell again. The ground gives way and we fall down a rabbit hole of deep and abiding love of perfume.
Alyssa's book is essentially about this. It is her own perfume story told with candor, passion and wit. 'Perfume tells a story on the skin', she writes in her opening sentence. She became seriously interested in perfume not actually through perfume itself but by stumbling accidentally on her first perfume blog and noticing the vivid prose she found there, 'written simply for the joy of it'. After that, she says, she was hooked on the stories people told about themselves and what perfume meant to them.
Sound familiar? Then this is a book for you.
The 'who am I' question might have been less urgent had not Alyssa and her partner of ten years decided to get married. Her perfume explorations coincided with deciding what sort of 'bride' she would be and, and this journey gives momentum to the much of the book. Along the way are some magnificent 'set piece' descriptions: her attendance at sessions run by a natural perfumery laboratory in Austin, Texas; a hilarious visit to Bergdorf's in New York to sniff perfume; some nerve-wracking shopping for bridal wear; and a 'bridal shower' held for her by her mother and her mother's friends – 'the aunts' – just before her wedding.
To my mind this shower, more than the wedding, is the climax of the book. Alyssa had asked the aunts to contribute towards gifts of perfume, and invited them to share their own perfume stories. I won't say any more about this gorgeous-sounding event – you just have to read about it for yourself.
The final chapter brings us back to Alyssa's mother, who had mostly been in the background until then. We hear Alyssa's mother's perfume story (her signature had been Rochas' Femme, pre-reformulation). That led me to reflect that so often the very first person to tell us a story with their perfume is our mother.
Coming to My Senses is not a technical book, or a history of perfume, or a book about the perfume industry, although there are snippets of those things for the non-perfume wearing reader. Generally Alyssa avoids mentioning the names of the perfumes she discusses, except where it is crucial to the story, so that she can emphasize the emotions they conjure for herself and those around her. Once the book is published we can hop on to Alyssa's website – http://www.alyssaharad.com – to get the detail.
There is a delicious intimacy about this book. In telling her story Alyssa allows the stories of others to flow into hers. Perfume is all about intimacy, and sharing, after all. I've been calling the author 'Alyssa', even though academic detachment normally forbids it, because I feel I know her. I don't – and yet in a small way I feel I do. I have certainly shared aspects of Alyssa's perfume story and I suspect readers of this blog will have too.
My thanks to Danielle for the chance to review Coming to My Senses. The book will be published on July 5* and you can pre-order from Amazon. So look, put your perfume purchases on hold and go grab a copy. It will cost you much less than that bottle of Le Temps d'une Fete you have been eyeing off, and make you just as happy.
*date changed by publisher (editor update).
Thanks for the review, this looks like a great book.
Yes, indeed it is. Hope you get a chance to have a look!
Thanks for the review, annemariec! I love Alyssa's writing (her writing/perfume articles are probably among my very favorites from the perfume blogosphere)..looking forward to the book!
Thanks Lavanya. If you are fan of her blog posts you will love the book, for sure.
This is a wonderful review, Anne Marie! You should be a pro. (Or maybe you are?) I'm incredibly excited to read this, and your review has just confirmed that it will be a good read.
Thanks Natalie! Ha! No, not a professional reviewer, but I have written a few book reviews. None have been as pleasurable write with as this one. Yes, this book is a guaranteed a great read.
Thanks for the review. I'm intrigued by her decision to avoid naming the fragrances and instead focus on the emotions engendered. Looking forward to reading it.
Yes, that drove me nuts at first, but by the end I thought it was working. I found myself caught up in the strength of the story-telling, and less interested in the individual fragrances. However, she does name a few.
I enjoyed the suspense of names withheld and had fun trying to ID the perfumes described.
What a beaufifully written review, annemarie! It's funny how the ground does indeed just give way one day and we're suddenly in Perfumeland.
The book sounds wonderful but I'm a bit worried that the not naming of the perfumes will frustrate me, though I take it they'll be listed on the website, is that right?
Thanks Tara. Yes, there is an explanatory note at the beginning of the book in which Alyssa says that she has named the perfumes only where doing so is crucial to the story; otherwise she wants the emphasis to be in the emotions the perfumes evoke. She adds that she also wanted to avoid recommending perfumes that may be discontinued. She says that all will be revealed on her website once the book is actually published, which will be in a few days.
Many thanks for the info, annemarie!
I smell a best seller.


It Looks Like Malaysia Has Created Another "Oppa" ! 24-Year-Old You Zhang Jing Wins China Reality Show "Idol Producer 2018" !
On April 6, 2018, a famous reality show in China – Idol Producer 2018 had announced his 9 top-voted contestant and formed a mandopop band named Nine Percent.
The show brings together 100 trainees from 31 different entertainment companies and talent agencies from China and other parts of the world. Over the period of four months, 100 contestants had training sessions and coached by some famous artists in the Chinese and Korean industry like Korean band EXO band member Lay, GOT-7 band member Jackson, China singer Li Rong-hao and Asian-American Rapper MC Jin.
Although there are over 100 contestants competing in the show, a guy named You Zhang Jing had grabbed all Malaysians attention as he was from Malaysia. He was born in Batu Pahat, Johor and used to study in Chinese High School in Batu Pahat. He was a student in Nanjing University of Arts before joining Idol Producer.
You Zhang Jing has been the judges and audience's favourite throughout the show with his powerful vocals and cute looks. However, we cannot deny his talent on singing and dancing at all so we are all very excited when he finally stands out from other 91 contestants.
In the middle of the reality show, his rank was around #13 but the final results was to pick only 9 so when You Zhang Jing name was announced as the last contestant who made the cut, we all feel super happy and relieved!!!
The other 8 guys that won the competition includes August Cai, Chen Linong, Adam Fan, Justin, Evan Lin, Zhu Zheng-ting, Wang Ziyi, and Wang Lin-kai.
Now, let's us just put our hands together and hope that their first album will be coming out soon! (They will be singing Chinese songs although dressed like korean stars) Let us give some support to our Malaysia-born oppa!
Congratulations and thanks for making Malaysia proud, You Zhang Jing!


Contact Us - ILLAWARRA REMOTE CONTROL OFF ROAD INC.
If you have any questions or queries, please contact us below and we will generally get back to you within 48 hours.
Please enter an email that you can be contacted back on.
Please include here any comments, questions or queries you have for us.


text:
package com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Commands;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.core.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.core.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.core.collections.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Abilities.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Areas.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Behaviors.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.CharClasses.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Commands.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Common.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Exits.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Items.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Libraries.interfaces.ChannelsLibrary;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Locales.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.MOBS.interfaces.*;
import com.planet_ink.coffee_mud.Races.interfaces.*;

import java.util.*;

@SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
public class NoChannel extends StdCommand
{
	public NoChannel(){}

	private final String[] access=null;
	@Override public String[] getAccessWords(){return access;}
	@Override
	public boolean execute(MOB mob, Vector commands, int metaFlags)
		throws java.io.IOException
	{
		final PlayerStats pstats=mob.playerStats();
		if(pstats==null) return false;
		String channelName=((String)commands.elementAt(0)).toUpperCase().trim().substring(2);
		commands.removeElementAt(0);
		int channelNum=-1;
		for(int c=0;c<CMLib.channels().getNumChannels();c++)
		{
			final ChannelsLibrary.CMChannel chan=CMLib.channels().getChannel(c);
			if(chan.name.equalsIgnoreCase(channelName))
			{
				channelNum=c;
				channelName=chan.name;
			}
		}
		if(channelNum<0)
		for(int c=0;c<CMLib.channels().getNumChannels();c++)
		{
			final ChannelsLibrary.CMChannel chan=CMLib.channels().getChannel(c);
			if(chan.name.toUpperCase().startsWith(channelName))
			{
				channelNum=c;
				channelName=chan.name;
			}
		}
		if((channelNum<0)
		||(!CMLib.masking().maskCheck(CMLib.channels().getChannel(channelNum).mask,mob,true)))
		{
			mob.tell(_("This channel is not available to you."));
			return false;
		}
		if(!CMath.isSet(pstats.getChannelMask(),channelNum))
		{
			pstats.setChannelMask(pstats.getChannelMask()|(1<<channelNum));
			mob.tell(_("The @x1 channel has been turned off.  Use `@x2` to turn it back on.",channelName,channelName.toUpperCase()));
		}
		else
			mob.tell(_("The @x1 channel is already off.",channelName));
		return false;
	}

	@Override public boolean canBeOrdered(){return true;}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Career Grants(active tab)
Open to all established science writers, whether freelancers or employees of publications, universities, or other organizations, the Career Grants award up to $2,500 for projects that aim to increase the overall scope of the person's career opportunities. Through periodic offers since 2009, $100,000 in Career Grant funds have been distributed to help established science writers advance their careers. Future rounds will be announced via nasw.org.
Congratulations to the 2015 Career Grant recipients
Over $11,000 has been awarded to ten recipients in the most recent round of Career Grants offered by the National Association of Science Writers. Open to all established science writers, whether freelancers or employees of publications, universities, or other organizations, the Career Grants award up to $2,500 for projects that aim to increase the overall scope of the person's career opportunities. Read more to see the list of recipients.
Read more about Congratulations to the 2015 Career Grant recipients
Congratulations to our latest Career Grant recipients
This spring, NASW awarded over $15,000 to 13 enterprising science writers in the fourth round of our Career Grants program. Read on to learn about their projects and this mid-career fellowship program.
Read more about Congratulations to our latest Career Grant recipients
NASW awards second round of career grants
NASW is pleased to announce recipients of the second round of its Career Development Grants, which support education, training or other activities intended to help established science writers continue or advance their careers in today's rapidly changing media environment.
Read more about NASW awards second round of career grants
Career Development Grants awarded
We are pleased to announce the recipients of NASW's first Career Development Grants, developed to support education, training or other activities that help established science writers continue or advance their careers in today's rapidly changing media environment. The grant offers reimbursement of up to $2,500 for proposed activities. Fifty-one applicants submitted requests totaling over $84,000.
Read more about Career Development Grants awarded

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


It's bedtime when You climb into bed, smoothly slip into soft luxurious sheets and drift off in a safe heaven.
As you close your eyes imagine letting go and sinking into a comfortable, relaxed state of mind and float easily into a deep, calming sleep.
It feels like heaven, just like sleeping on fluffy clouds!
Imagine that same experience every night, at home, in the comfort of Your own Bedroom.
100% Italian spun Egyptian combed cotton.
Long staple fiber "Mako" quality selection.
Woven in Italy into a luxurious 430 Thread Count Sateen.
Available in color Sand, Tan and White.
Generously oversized (see bedding sizes).
Duvet cover is framed with a single line of Hemstitch along the flange on three sides.
PILLOW SHAMS are in solid Sateen framed with an hemstitched border on four sides.
Mako is a Premium Quality Extra Long Staple Egyptian cotton. Finest grade Mako spins into much smoother, finer and stronger yarn than any other cotton in the world. Only weaving these fine yarns it is possible to achieve a true Single-ply 430 thread count sateen that is soft, lightweight and breathe well yet being durable, withstanding frequent washings.
Today, Mako cotton crops are cultivated in a tiny area east of the Nile delta and represent 0.5% of the total annual Egyptian cotton production. Cotton is picked by hand so only the flocks that are at the right stage of maturity are picked each time. The care taken with cultivating and manually picking the cotton avoids the use of defoliants and other chemical products commonly used with mechanized picking.
Mako cotton fibres are extremely long (36 mm) and have a uniformity index of 88.5%. But what really makes this cotton exceptional is the fineness of its fibres, measured in micronaire, which is between 3.0 and 3.2, and the degree of brightness equal to 74.8, the best among the Extra Long Staple cottons. Despite this fineness, the stretching resistance of the Mako fibres is still high, an average of 44.30 g/tex.
These unique features of Brillance, Resistance, Cleanliness and Regularity of Mako Cotton fibers allow to spin fine-textured, lustrous yarns with a higher tensile strenght, ready to be densely woven into luxurious high thread count fabrics.
The Sheets made of this fine fabrics are extraordinarily soft with a silky hand, rich drape and a luminous sheen.
Higher count sheets are also stronger, more durable and much less likely to pill with washings and prolonged wear.


text:
<?php

namespace Ups\Entity;

class QuantumViewEvents
{
    public $SubscriberID;
    public $SubscriptionEvents;

    public function __construct($response = null)
    {
        $this->SubscriptionEvents = [];

        if (null != $response) {
            if (isset($response->SubscriberID)) {
                $this->SubscriberID = new $response->SubscriberID();
            }
        }
        if (isset($response->SubscriptionEvents)) {
            if (is_array($response->SubscriptionEvents)) {
                foreach ($response->SubscriptionEvents as $SubscriptionEvents) {
                    $this->SubscriptionEvents[] = new SubscriptionEvents($SubscriptionEvents);
                }
            } else {
                $this->SubscriptionEvents[] = new SubscriptionEvents($response->SubscriptionEvents);
            }
        }
    }
}


text:
Q: MVC for the complex structure of classes (in qt c++ audiobookplayer project) I need help.
Everyone knows that MVC and OOP solve a lot of problems, but I can't apply them.
I am writing a program - an audiobook player with Qt C++. I completely use OOP - each class is a small pure black box, has a finished interface with the individual responsibility. And it is easy to work with it and construct it.
For example. the object class BookView has only methods for setup the author and title(that it will show) and useractions signals (e.g. the users desire to remove the book).
Similarly, the Book object has only the methods to set and get author and title from the book, and notifications signals of their changes.
There is also a so called BookController - thin controller, which connects to the signals of Book changes and updates them on BookView, as well as and change the model while reacting on BookView user signals.
Here the problem: Model contains object BookShelf, which has Books objects, each of Book object contains Chapter objects (something like folder), Chapter object contains Page objects (something like files).
Model -> BookShelf -> Book(list) -> Chapter(list) -> Page(list)
The same is true for the views. MainView -> TabView -> ShelfView -> BookView(Table) -> ChapterView(tree) -> PageWidget
So how can thin controller know about it's view (and model)? How do it with OOP, cause each class must not know about others? Cause all objects are blackboxes.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Bringing innovation and sustainability to facilities as an industrial/commercial electrical contractor.
Our testing services include a broad range of electrical tests for transformers, switchboards, circuit breakers, cables, power quality disturbances, variable speed drive trip, lighting flicker, circuit breaker nuisance trip, copier or printer trip, data loss, harmonics, power flow, infrared thermography scans, transformer oil tests, dissolved gas analysis, motor integrity, generator load bank, insulation resistance, ground testing, building wiring, transformer turns ratio, ground fault calibration, switchboard load and overhead lines.
Call us if you have a hard to solve problem. We like the challenge in solving tough electrical problems.


Communist-turned-conservative writer David Horowitz famously observed that inside every liberal "is a totalitarian screaming to get out," and now they're coming for the plastic straw.
City leaders in the famously left-wing city of Berkeley are considering a ban on straws that would apply to restaurants, coffee shops, and bars.
The stated concerns include pollution and waste that threatens wildlife, and some claim that plastic straws are a health concern over chemical Bisphenol, or BPA.
Anti-straw activists in San Diego and Santa Monica are also mulling similar action in a possible race to see who bans them first.
Berkeley, which launched the free-speech movement in the 1960s, banned plastic bags in 2013 as part of its "Zero Waste Goal" and voters implemented a soda tax in 2015 in a campaign called "Berkeley vs. Big Soda."
The city's website also addresses environmental concerns, advertising a new location for charging electric cars and announcing "no-cost solar installations."
"It will go well with their soda tax, I guess," observes Jeff Stier, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR).
The allegation that straws contain BPA is untrue, he says, and the Obama-led FDA admitted that low-level exposure to BPA is safe.
Alternatives to plastic or petroleum-based straws include paper or bamboo but Stier says people will just raise environmental concerns about those products, too.
"I don't know how much bamboo they grow in Berkeley," says Stier, "but I imagine we have to take into account the climate footprint of importing the bamboo. I don't know where it would come from."
Will you mind when they can read your brain?
Visionaries are telling us a direct human/computer interface is right around the corner but with such extraordinary advances come extraordinary risks.


This enticingly aromatic wine is bone dry, delicate in structure, with racy acidity, and 12.9% alcohol. Consistent with the 2016 vintage, we blended two cool-climate appellations: Sonoma Coast (38%) and Mendocino Ridge (62%). The Manchester Ridge Vineyard and Mariah Vineyard from the Mendocino Ridge appellation sit at about 2000 feet elevation, situated extremely close to the vast Pacific Ocean, offering us unparalleled acidity. The vineyards from the Sonoma Coast appellation are all located within 8 miles of the coastline, set in the rolling hills of the West Sonoma Coast. Fruit from these vineyards perfectly complement those from Mendocino, offering ideal conditions to achieve the crisp, lively style of Rose we strive to produce.


Did some one call a meat wagon?
Due to massive over population, nothing is waisted in Mega-City one. Street Judges frequently call in the "Meat Wagon" or "RESYK Unit" to clean up the mess after an incident, collecting the dead to be broken down and rendering in to other materials.
It's a dirty job, but someones gotta do it!


text:
Ford News
New 2021 Ford F-150s Are Already Showing Underbody Rust and Owners Aren't Happy
The automaker says it's purely a cosmetic concern.
byPeter Holderith| UPDATED Mar 3, 2021 1:51 PM
Peter HolderithView peter holderith's Articles
_baldtires
Rust is never a good thing to see on any vehicle, but in the Northeast, it's just a reality as winter miles start racking up. Most vehicles will end up getting at least a little bit of cosmetic rust on the underbody as time goes on, but it seems like one of the "Big Three" automakers is having an issue with corrosion right out of the gate.
Ford's 2021 F-150 reportedly has rust issues, but it's worth noting that the corrosion is, so far, purely cosmetic and only affects certain parts of the new trucks. However, the company's best-selling vehicle is nonetheless suffering from early cases of underbody scale, and while other automakers have the same problem, Ford's rust woes seem a bit more widespread, or at least more publicized.
Pickup Truck Plus SUV Talk via YouTube
The Detroit Free Press
published an article about the issue earlier this week, and other publications like Ford Authority and Pickup Truck Plus SUV Talk have followed, with the latter providing personal experience with the issue.
The publisher of Pickup Truck Plus SUV Talk, Tim Esterdahl, bought a Power Boost Hybrid Ford F-150 to test for a year and, so far, has been impressed. As we've previously covered, he was able to squeeze more than 29 mpg from the truck, well above its EPA-rated fuel economy. However, he's clearly not happy about this rust issue. In the video embedded below, Esterdahl shows us the underbody of his truck, detailing the scale that has appeared so far despite him living in Nebraska, a state which does salt its roads, but which Esterdahl claims has not received much winter weather.
As well as Esterdahl's issues, the Detroit Free Press interviewed seven different F-150 owners who reported suffering from cosmetic rust issues nationwide. Pickup Truck Plus SUV Talk cited a thread of users complaining about rust on the F150Gen14 forum that garnered hundreds of responses. Most of the corrosion seems to be related to the rear axle, which is evidently sold unpainted and untreated to prevent scale from forming.
We reached out to Ford directly to get a comment on this issue, but we have yet to hear back. In response to an inquiry from Pickup Truck Plus SUV Talk, a representative of the Dearborn automaker was quoted as saying, "While some F-150 underbody steel components may show signs of surface rust, this will have no impact on part performance or life." Likewise, the automaker repeated this sentiment to the Free Press while adding, "We're looking, with our suppliers, into questions raised."
So, for now, new F-150s have cosmetic rust issues on the underbody that Ford has yet to address. There's nothing mechanically wrong with the trucks, but rust on a car's underbody, especially one like Esterdahl's with barely more than 3,000 miles, isn't a good look. These vehicles aren't dangerous, but it's nothing to celebrate, either.
Got a tip or question for the author? You can reach them here: peter@thedrive.com
Ford NewsNews by BrandTrucks


Description This apparatus controls the level of shock output. Low levels of shock were used to investigate learning processes in people and animals. The Lafayette Instrument Company sells updated models for use on animals.
Dimensions 10" x 5" x 4.5"


Absolute Write Water Cooler > Writing Genre > Animals and Nature > Salt water aquariums/corals?
View Full Version : Salt water aquariums/corals?
Anybody here keep saltwater set-ups? I just got an assignment to write an article about the care and feeding of corals. I've always thought that corals are so beautiful (and they're protected in many areas now). This will be a fun, interesting, complicated, learning-intensive assignment for me.
Are corals hard to maintain? I've got two freshwater tanks--have kept tropical fish for YEARS--but have never been brave (or smart) enough to tackle a salt water tank.
I'm just about to tackle a salt-water tank--haven't set it up yet. Let me know what you find out, Anne! I'd love to have corals and seahorses, but have heard that both are pretty tricky to keep alive and healthy.
Oh, lucky you, Mac! I've always thought salt water tanks are soooo beautiful. Let me know how things go.
I maintained a saltwater tank almost 30 years ago. The biggest problem was keeping replacement saltwater on hand. I did that by making and keeping the new saltwater in a heavy-duty plastic trash can. That way I could measure the balance of the salt and the pH before exposing the fish and shrimp I was keeping at the time to it. I didn't have any live coral, but the piece of coral in the tank was quite popular with both the fish and shrimp. I darn near had success in getting the shrimp to breed, but the tank eventually got out of balance and we lost everything in it. Because I was in the military at the time and was reassigned shortly after that happened, I never started another saltwater tank.
I just finished writing a 40-page site about saltwater aquariums and corals. I had no idea how interesting they are.
The best information I found was on the about.com, saltwater aquarium pages. The guides are a husband and wife team who have written hundreds of pages of great information. There are some pictures and useful links to other sites, also.
Sounds like you were on the right track if your shrimp were doing that well! Salt tanks are so gorgeous and I'd love to have one some day.
Musing: You know, I bet a power failure would ruin a salt tank in no time. Back in '98 we were without electricty for 11 days during an ice storm. We had two large freshwater tanks and didn't lose any fish at all; blankets on the tanks, kerosene heater in the house that kept the temps fine. But if those tanks had been salt, it would have been bye bye, fishies!
Where is your site? I'd love to see it. Salt/reef tanks are incredible!


Club championship events are open entries to all members of the club wishing to participate in competitive lawn bowls. These events are very highly regarded with winners having their names inscribed in gold lettering on the various honour boards which are proudly displayed within the club house.
There are separate championship events for ladies and men as well as a 'mixed' event for a lady and a man. Each event has its own 'conditions of play' (i.e. rules).
For new members of the club, experienced or novice bowlers, these events provide excellent opportunity to test bowling skills against other fellow member bowlers in a competitive but friendly environment.
The most prestige event is the 'singles' event. The lady and man winners of the singles championship from the previous bowling season have the great honour of rolling the first single bowl on the opening day of the current bowling season in front of club members / dignitaries as well as invited local community dignitaries.


DOGO presents an exclusive collection with the original characters of Harry Potter!
You have the right to return any product that you have purchased from our website in fifteen (15) days after delivery and get your money back, without any damage to the product, its package and without using it. If the product is used or damaged the return or exchange is not possible.


text:
The Pleasure Binge
Author: Michael J. WolfMichael J. Wolf
__ In the Entertainment Economy, all the world's a play station. __
You may not often find yourself musing about mainland China and Las Vegas at the same time, but I do. That's because in 1997, in China, the world's most vibrant national economy, employment grew by 4.1 percent - less than half the rate of the world's most vibrant urban economy, Las Vegas, Nevada. Not too surprising, really, when you consider that Las Vegas is a city devoted entirely to entertainment. And at the turn of the millennium - when a CNBC story on cybersex sends trading on the New York Stock Exchange into momentary free fall; when Citibank turns to Elton John as its chief marketing tool to reach a goal of 1 billion customers; when American consumers spend more on entertainment than they do on clothing or health care - it is now clear that entertainment is the chief catalyst of change in the globalized, brand-dominated consumer economy.
The convergence of computers and telecommunications is creating an endless appetite among consumers for entertainment content. Entertainment can connect us emotionally with products and draw our attention to one product message among tens of thousands competing for our attention. So pervasive is the intrusion of entertainment into our daily lives that we have come to look for the "e-factor" in every aspect of life. We expect that we will be entertained constantly. Products and brands that deliver on this expectation succeed. Products that do not, disappear. Entertainment has, in a way, become the lingua franca of modern commerce, as indispensable as currency.
But entertainment qua entertainment is only part of the story. What's really significant is the way entertainment content has become a key differentiator in virtually every aspect of the broader consumer economy. From travel to supermarket shopping, from commercial banking to financial news, from fast foods to new autos, entertainment content shapes our ideas and our choices. The result is a world of commerce where the lines between entertainment and nonentertainment are increasingly blurred, and where the e-factor figures in virtually every product and service consumers buy.
How did the entertainmentizing of the economy happen? Culture, demography, and technology are all pushing us toward one goal: extracting the last drop of fun out of every experience. The numbers back up this instinctive assessment. The rate of personal savings in the United States has declined to a 63-year low of 2.1 percent. Yet entertainment spending is at a high of 8.4 percent of total consumer expenditures. Even if you don't count consumer electronics - which means leaving out TV sets and VCRs - entertainment is a $480 billion industry in the US. Leisure, entertainment, recreation, pleasure - no matter what you call it, we have become a world of fun-focused consumers.
While the common perception is that we have less leisure than previous generations, studies show we have just as much spare time as folks had in the days of Ozzie and Harriet - approximately 30 hours a week. Nonetheless, increasingly, fun is being equated with time. A survey last year revealed that 36 percent of Valentine's Day gift givers were forgoing the traditional presents of chocolates and flowers and presenting their significant others with spa passes, catered meals, even vouchers for cleaning services. In other words, they were giving the gift of a good time, or, more important, the free time that allows one to have a good time.
This is part of a larger cultural shift in the perception of time. Not long ago, leisure implied big blocks of unallocated time - time you could use to work in the garden, go bird-watching, read a book, do nothing. But through the influence of TV Guide, the Filofax, the PC scheduler, and the PalmPilot, we have begun to conceptualize time in a very different way, seeing it not as a slow-moving river but as a highly segmented grid.
Concurrently, as time has become broken into variable-length blocks, it has become commoditized. Today, we see our lives the way television executives see their week, as a series of little boxes that need to be filled. We have become highly sophisticated self-schedulers. As TV programmers do, we increasingly seek to break our time into small periods and to distribute these variable-length periods over the course of the week.
As a result, the 30-hour reservoir of free time once concentrated on the weekend is enjoyed in smaller parcels. We find ourselves with two hours before picking up the kids at soccer practice, so we stop in at Barnes & Noble. A business traveler might steal 10 minutes before leaving the hotel to check email and local restaurant reviews on AOL. A teenager does geometry homework with a Natalie Imbruglia video on MTV as musical wallpaper. Even the larger blocks are shorter - today, more than half of all holiday trips are weekend trips, according to the Travel Industry Association of America. (This trend has not been lost on the airline and hotel industries, which have developed a plethora of two- and three-day vacation packages.)
The entertainment marketplace allows us to recapture some of the pleasure associated with free time by offering fun in big or small doses, as stand-alone fun, or as part of a more utilitarian activity. In the 1980s we all became masters at channel surfing. At the end of the 1990s, we are becoming "time surfers": a little here, a little there, keep it interesting, keep it moving. In the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, schedulers abhor an empty block. So we schedule activity for all of our time, dividing between (and sometimes double-scheduling) home and work life and our reservoir of that now anachronistic concept, free time.
And if time-shifting is inherent in the new marketplace, so is place-shifting; there's a higher premium than ever on portability. We increasingly expect entertainment devices to allow us to have access to fun anywhere and everywhere, even when we're driving, working, or exercising. Similarly, duration - how much of my precious time do I have to commit? - is more important than ever.
__ Entertainment is the lingua franca of modern commerce, as indispensable as currency. __
As we become accustomed to treating the enjoyment of free time as a commodity, we're not only spending money on videogames, movies, and theme parks, but on formerly low-cost or no-cost activities such as gardening, flower arranging, or even riding a bicycle. You can now pay for the do-it-yourself kit, whether it's rose-pruning lessons, cooking, or instructional lovemaking tapes.
Consumers, already seasoned multitaskers in their professional lives, are increasingly looking to further maximize seemingly scarce leisure opportunities by seeking out products and services that include entertainment content as an additional part of their offering. The lure is the opportunity to make the most of that 30 hours of free time by combining entertainment with other activities, sometimes cannibalizing more "productive" time. Studies done using SurfWatch filtering software, for example, show that as much as 27 percent of corporate Web traffic is not business-related. Furthermore, an estimated 14.9 percent of employees who have Internet access have shopped online while at work. After all, as long as you are logged on to the company's server, why not check out an automotive site, participate in an online auction on eBay, or find the latest sports scores on ESPN.com?
In a culture that so values the productive and pleasurable uses of time, perceived waste is deadly. The apparent scarcity of free time and the necessity to plan for it has the effect of upping the ante for each entertainment decision. In a time-obsessed economy, a bad movie is more than a waste of time - it also represents a major opportunity cost in terms of the other fun you might have had. To limit those frustrating risks, consumers are now employing the same expert information resources and guidance tools in making entertainment decisions that business has long used for strategic decisionmaking. It does not require much behavior modification for an attorney who searches Lexis for case law to turn to Zagat's online restaurant guide to make a dining decision.
These changed perceptions and uses of time have provoked adults into treating fun not just as a reward but as an entitlement. They expect it to be part of the package, and they feel shortchanged if they don't get it. In such a climate, enterprises have no choice but to include entertainment in their business offerings.
To understand the importance fun has in dictating otherwise serious decisions, look at the resurgence of Apple Computer.
After a series of management blunders, a history of corporate underperformance, and in the face of Microsoft's domination of the computer market, Apple remains the technology industry's most miraculous survivor. That's because its Macintosh introduced the notion of creativity and fun to the computer industry. Today, the company is not only surviving but thriving, thanks in large part to the brilliant launch of the iMac under the renewed leadership of Steve Jobs. Yes, the G3 chip is really fast. But one small word tipped the balance: fun.
Entertainment - as a pure form or as value added to other products - speaks directly to the emotions. Writ large, such consumption choices are already influencing the national and international economy. Consider what's happened to Los Angeles. As communism was crumbling overseas in 1988, the city and its environs, with 242,000 jobs in the aerospace industry, lived in dread of the post-Cold War peace fallout. Yet 10 years later, California officials estimate for every job lost in aerospace, the local economy gained two in entertainment - a sector that's experienced 83 percent growth since the end of the Cold War.
Nothing has been more symbolic of LA's transformation than the $95 million conversion of a TRW defense plant into Raleigh Manhattan Beach Studios. Defense assembly lines have been replaced by 14 soundstages for film and video production. The annual net gain of this and other post-Cold War businesses in the local economy is an astounding $20 billion.
On the other coast, New London, Connecticut, was once basically a one-company town that built submarines for the US Navy. Military downsizing led to the loss of 17,000 jobs - more than 10 percent of the labor force. No local economy can take that kind of hit and survive. Or so it was thought, before the opening of the Foxwoods Resort Casino and the Mohegan Sun casino on nearby Indian land. With the concentric circles of jobs spreading out from that entertainment epicenter, an otherwise crippling blow has been largely offset.
__ Today, we see our lives the way television executives see their week, as a series of little boxes that need to be filled. __
In New York City, the economy's entertainmentization is even more impressive, in both relative terms and absolute size. New York wasn't hit with a peace crisis. Instead, in the late 1980s it experienced a good old-fashioned stock market crash. That nosedive, coupled with a rash of mergers and takeovers, led to drastic downsizing in Manhattan's mainstay financial and real estate industries. Yet only 10 years later, New York's hotels are full. Film and video crews tie up traffic in every borough. Tourists are flocking from all over the world to see the shows and sights, including a Times Square stripped of porn stores and revitalized in part by a $60 million investment by Disney. In pure entertainment-production expenditures, this turnaround has pumped an extra $6 billion annually into the local economy. Throw in tourism, which in New York is mostly about consuming entertainment in one form or another, and you have an $11 billion bulge.
Of course, you might say that New York and Hollywood are hardly typical of the rest of the country. What's this entertainment economy doing in the heartland?
The answer is: transforming it. Burdened by overbuilding, conventional shopping malls - the very malls that previously killed the urban downtown - began dying. Fewer than 10 percent of Americans shop frequently at malls, down from 16 percent in 1987. Even bargain merchandise - the traditional consumer pull - was not enough. Whereas typical shoppers each made 2.6 trips per week to the mall in 1994, today they're showing up about 1.7 times every seven days.
Enter the megaplex-centered mall and the theme-park mall - America's newest downtowns. The Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota, for instance, added an entertainment complex, a walk-through aquarium, and a 7-acre amusement park to lure shoppers. Attracting 40 million shoppers a year, it now hosts more visitors than Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and the Grand Canyon combined. At Ontario Mills, an outlet center in California, 214 stores are packaged in a facility with an indoor zoo, two ice rinks, and a motion-simulation theater. Where the average visitor spends just over an hour at a conventional mall, at Ontario Mills an average shopper lingers 3.5 hours.
While sociologists decry the demise of communities, these parking-lot neighborhoods of stores and entertainment centers are growing faster than any retail phenomenon in our history. The next step in this evolution is to put housing next to the stores and megaplexes and call it a small town - indeed, just as Disney has done with its prepackaged living environment, Celebration, Florida.
These multiplexes, megaplexes, and a few truly colossal gigaplexes have spilled over into their surrounding neighborhoods in ways few bond-issue-financed arts centers ever have. The opera, ballet, and concert halls of New York's Lincoln Center never engendered anything like the window shopping and nightlife that has come into Manhattan's Upper West Side since the Sony Theatres Lincoln Square megaplex went up nearby on 68th Street. Entertainmentization is also helping to revive the consumer economy in Harlem. A nine-screen multiplex owned by Magic Johnson Theatres is part of a $65 million redevelopment effort on 125th Street that will also include retail shops by Disney, HMV, Modell's, and Old Navy.
Declining urban areas outside the dynamic coastal environments are also being transformed by the entertainment economy. Ten years ago, the city of East Saint Louis, just across the Mississippi from Saint Louis, was a textbook case of Rust Belt decay: raw sewage in the streets, uncollected trash everywhere, and a bankrupt city government. The municipal debt was so extreme that when a resident won a judgment against the town, he was awarded the deed to one of the government's few tangible assets, City Hall.
With the arrival of the Casino Queen riverboat, this impoverished city of 42,000 added 1,200 jobs. More than 3 million people per year now visit East Saint Louis. The casino and associated taxes generate more than 50 percent of the town's operating budget, which includes a beefed-up police force that has helped cut the city's murder rate, at one time the highest in the nation. Obviously, movie theaters and casinos are not a panacea for declining social services, underfinanced schools, teenage pregnancy, and violent crime. But there is no doubt that more jobs, more goods in the stores, and more people enjoying themselves on the streets are all factors in improving the tax base and the general quality of life in areas where it was once assumed that the future held only despair.
The rest of the world is not far behind America's entertainment economy. Nothing in Las Vegas surpasses Melbourne, Australia's Crown Entertainment Complex; at 5.3 million square feet, it has the world's second-largest casino, a 500-room hotel, 25 restaurants, 40 bars, 3 nightclubs, and a 2,000-seat theater. Even more impressive is Malaysia's grandiloquently named Genting, City of Entertainment - a resort complex that attracted 10 million visitors last year. Gambling halls, convention facilities, golf courses, restaurants, and sports facilities all faithfully replicate the Vegas model of an adult theme park. Malaysian legislators have agreed to locate the entire national zoo within a three-wood's distance of Genting.
__ For every job lost in aerospace after the Cold War's end, California gained two in entertainment. __
Elsewhere in the underscreened, undermalled, still-waiting-for-cable world, new ventures are starting on an almost hourly basis. In much the same way that America grew by pushing into new territory while the already domesticated territories consolidated into new cities, so the entertainment economy is settling in new territories around the world. In Bangkok, for example, the Major Cineplex Sukhumvit entertainment complex has eight screens, a bowling alley, fast-food restaurants, and the full range of book and music stores that you might find in an Omaha, Nebraska, multiplex mall - plus a soon-to-be-completed Imax dome simulator.
Paradoxically, while entertainment may be a growth sector in the new world economy, few major entertainment companies are highly - or even marginally - profitable.
The most obvious reason is the glut of product in the face of consumers' fragmenting time. A battle is being waged for our attention. There are 10,000 more books published today than five years ago. Last year, nearly 30,000 albums were released by the major music labels and independents - of which fewer than 2 percent sold more than 50,000 copies. Close to 900 new magazines were launched just last year. In 10 years, the number of feature films released by the major motion picture studios has increased by almost 80 percent. Cable television, which only 20 years ago was just a way to deliver the major networks to outlying rural areas, today attracts a prime-time audience share approaching that of the big four broadcast networks - largely because the average cable TV viewer has access to 50 channels, up from only four or five per household two decades ago. Twenty-five percent of American households now have Internet access, and portals such as Yahoo! are creating a burgeoning new category of competition.
The fragmentation engendered by new platforms has transformed the economics of industries whose revenue has traditionally derived from amassing eyeballs. Many savvy media watchers proclaimed the final Seinfeld episode the greatest sitcom of all time. Yet the finale's audience of 76.3 million viewers was decisively beaten by the 80.5 million who watched the last episode of Cheers in 1993 and pulverized by the 106 million viewers who tuned in for the concluding episode of M*A*S*H in 1983 - a decline of 30 million viewers, even as the total number of television households grew by 16 million.
Our current oversupplied marketplace is light-years from the days when ownership of media outlets was a sure thing. Twenty years ago, Warren Buffett, whose investments in media companies such as the Washington Post Company and Capital Cities/ABC helped him accumulate one of the century's great fortunes, compared a market-dominant newspaper to an unregulated toll bridge - the newspaper owner could raise advertising rates or subscriber fees as much as he or she wanted. Today, an inundated environment has rendered distribution monopolies virtually obsolete. Future growth, it is now clear, requires global expansion into less mature markets, diversification into other industries, or - most important of all - major hits.
A hit is more than an economic success: It also provides the cultural context in which people see themselves. Hits transform mere commerce into a consumerist culture statement. Their effect is cumulative and pervasive; the more hits an enterprise produces, the more its suppliers, distributors, and consumers trust it, thus easing its ability to gain continued market access.
The reliance on hits, in both entertainment and nonentertainment industries, has been the single most powerful change in the business environment. It has subjected enterprises long accustomed to steady, incremental growth to dramatic swings in earnings. The quest for hits has forced marketing to the forefront of business planning and added an entertainment cycle to the business cycle, in the process ratcheting up consumer expectations and competitive risks. Equally important, hits also imply the existence of flops, forcing traditional businesses and their executives to open themselves to the insecurities of Hollywood studios.
__ Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey - they are the conquistadors of modern business. __
In such an environment, businesses will grow more quickly. They will die more quickly, too. I doubt we'll ever again see new restaurant chains like McDonald's, with 30-year category leadership. Nothing could better prove that point than the swift rise and equally rapid demise of theme restaurants such as Planet Hollywood and Rainforest Cafe. Similarly, Nike has overswooshed the world, and now it's no longer cool to wear its logo on your shoes, shirt, and hat - evidenced by its 51 percent drop in earnings during the second quarter of this past year.
In entertainment, losing is the norm. Most movies lose money. Most television shows never make it past their pilot. Most books are quickly remaindered. Entertainment is a portfolio industry in which some properties perform extraordinarily, but most don't perform at all. To expect companies to escape the new exigencies of doing business in the entertainment marketplace is like hoping that banks will go back to barter.
Is there any rationale to entertainment as business? Only if you look at entertainment properties like an investment portfolio. A well-considered stock portfolio is not a crapshoot. Rather, it's a collection of investments, some riskier than others, but all based on rational expectations of future value based on calculations of past performance. A variation on value investing also exists in entertainment. It boils down to this maxim: Bet on the talent.
Throughout the entertainment economy, there's been a power shift away from fast-disappearing distribution monopolies and toward the talent. Things have changed considerably from the days when Alfred Hitchcock imperiously observed, "I didn't say all actors are cattle. I said actors should be treated like cattle." Today, at the critical point where content connects with audience, celebrity is the indispensable mediator - and the only universal currency.
In this environment, brands are also celebrities. Successful businesses need celebrity brands to bring consumers through the door. These stars attract the attention not only of time-starved consumers, but of space-constrained retailers who are seeking whatever edge they can to raise their own thin profit margins. The star might be someone like George Clooney or Donna Karan, or it might be the Intel sticker on your PC.
The increased importance of dominant brands is shifting investment patterns throughout the economy, putting a new emphasis on Hollywood-style marketing and promotion campaigns in industries where expenditures used to be smaller and subject to longer-term budgeting.
Back in 1990, Alfred Zeien, who eventually became CEO of Gillette, came up with a then-gargantuan $175 million marketing budget for a new razor, the Sensor. Movie-like prelaunch teaser commercials on the Super Bowl broadcast kicked off an advertising and marketing blitz. Right away, the product grabbed 9 percent of the domestic market, which doubled in the next year and racked up sales in the first five years of more than $1.2 billion.
Like any hit, the Sensor began to run its course. It was time for a sequel. Zeien returned to the market in 1998 with an unheard-of $300 million ad and promotional campaign for the Mach3. Its name fairly shouted its concept: high performance. When the product was launched, the Dow Jones News Service wrote, "Everyone knows that Hollywood moguls have mastered the art of creating a buzz in the media. But can anything approaching that kind of buzz be generated for something much more mundane than a movie? Judging by Gillette's recent razzmatazz introduction of the Mach3, the answer appears to be yes."
Zeien's role in nurturing and launching the Sensor and the Mach3 underscores the unfamiliar role in which many senior business executives are now cast: mogul.
A hundred years ago, industrialists and financiers symbolized their age: the Carnegies, the Mellons, the Rockefellers. Today, Ted Turner, Sumner Redstone, Oprah Winfrey, and Rupert Murdoch are the businesspeople who capture the headlines and the popular imagination. They are the conquistadors of modern business. In the same way that staking out claims to huge areas of the globe created great wealth in the past, equally great wealth is coming with their conquest of the emotions, the interest, and the allegiance of the global audience. More than ever, companies - all companies - need nimble, decisive leaders who can about-face in a rapidly changing environment. Egotistical, focused, controlling, deeply intuitive, and undaunted by failure, moguls are the absolute - and necessary - monarchs of the entertainment economy.
But a modern mogul, at the top of a corporate hierarchy, cannot alone assure success. As consumer businesses come to be differentiated by how effectively they include the e-factor, their fortunes will rise or fall based on their ability to harness creativity at all levels of the organization - in brand development, product replenishment, design, marketing, and communications. Adding effective entertainment content is not something that is accomplished merely because a CEO wants it. Rather, it is a chimerical, hard-to-define quality. Those who can contribute to its creation must be sought out, nurtured, and rewarded.
This is easy to understand but hard to do. At successful companies, it's a 24/7 operation. Consider Gap. It is one of this era's star brands. Gap connotes comfortable and casual. Gap is cool. And Gap creates a new product line every six to eight weeks. Reinventing its offering with this frequency - the equivalent of a première every month and a half - puts tremendous pressure on its designers, window dressers, copywriters, and display architects to come up with clothes, presentations, and a sensibility that connects with the public.
Swatch also constantly introduces new styles. When Swatches first hit the market, they caught on because they were cheap, functional, and beautifully designed. Now people are moving to their third, fourth, and fifth Swatches. This calls for fresh colors, new shapes, new features, innovative designs. Likewise, doll-crazed little girls are never happy with one Barbie; they need three or four. That's three or four different wardrobe ensembles and sets of accessories, too.
Of course, it takes creative talent, up and down the line, to drive success in the entertainment economy. This is a little scary for businesspeople who are accustomed to making their decisions on the basis of spreadsheet analyses. There is no spreadsheet that can predict if the public will prefer one new color over another, one song over another, one film over another, one car design over another. Successful companies will be the ones that create talent-friendly environments.
But if the human imagination is still the primary asset, it will never again create entertainment merely as an indulgence or an extravagance. Indeed, the critical difference between the development of entertainment in such potentially enormous markets as China or India and in the United States is that, in America, entertainment began as a luxury, something that required a lot of discretionary income before people would make purchases of TVs, VCRs, and computers. In the developing world, these items are viewed not as luxuries but rather as necessities for entering the consumer class to which all of the world's masses aspire. Thus, the pace of economic entertainmentization is greatly accelerated.
Here is a number that never ceases to intrigue me. The Chinese like to take pictures. But the average mainland Chinese household shoots only about half a roll of film a year. If everybody in China who now has a roll of film in a camera finished it and started a new roll this year, worldwide sales of Kodak film could double.
It gives you an idea of what's waiting around the corner.
#magazine-7.03
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Occidental Brothers Dance Band International
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Chicago's Occidental Brothers Dance Band Int'l plays classic Central and West African dance music-specializing in soukous, Highlife, Rumba, Dry Guitar, and other delights from the great continent. The multi-racial band mixes their backgrounds in traditional African music, jazz, and underground rock to bring these classic sounds to life. The group has been winning over a diverse audience of listeners, dancers and rockers, as well as rock, jazz and world music critics! Word of the group's electrifying live shows is spreading as they play sold-out shows with Afropop legend Oliver Mtukudzi and art-pop superstar Andrew Bird, and showcases in the summer of 2008 at the Pitchfork Festival, Chicago SummerDance, Millennium Park, and the Art Institute of Chicago. The band is now scheduled to perform at globalFEST 2009 and collaborated this fall with Samba Mapangala on Obama Ubarikiwe, a hit song in praise of presidential canidate Barack Obama that spread all over the internet.
The band began by covering the songs of Congolese greats Mwenda Jean Bosco, Franco, and Bantous de la Capitale, and their debut cd (dist. Thrill Jockey/FINA) features many of these tunes. The band's new record, "Odo Sanbra (Come Back, Love)" has taken the music deeper into the roots of Ghanaian highlife with new original music, and into a deep sound that reflects the group's live show. At center is the singing of Ghanaian Kofi Cromwell. Kofi sings in a haunting mixture of English and his mother tongue, Fante.
Guitarist Nathaniel Braddock leads the group. Braddock has lived and studied in Ghana and teaches African guitar at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. He's a veteran of Chicago's indie-rock scene, playing with many bands including Edith Frost, and the Zincs. Greg Ward joins Braddock on alto saxophone. Ward is a rising star of Chicago's jazz scene, playing with Hamid Drake, Ernest Dawkins, and the Chicago Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble. Handling trumpet and vocal duties is Kofi Cromwell of the much-celebrated Western Diamonds (voted Ghana's best highlife band many times). The engine is fellow Western Diamond Asamoah Rambo who brings his energetic style and spirit to the trap drums. Young Puerto Rican bass-ace Joshua Ramos plays upright.
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Contact us if you'd like to download mp3's or for any further information
Nathaniel Braddock
obdbi@occidentalbrothers.com
occidentalbrothers.com
myspace.com/occidentalbrothers
North American Booking:
Erik Selz, Red Ryder Entertainment
erik@rryder.com
rryder.com
"This disc convinces me that the greatest African dance band on the planet this year hails from Chicago."
-Norman Weinstein, The BEAT vol 26 no 3
Best World Music Group, 2008
-Chicago Reader's Best of 2008
"One of ten must-sees at the Pitchfork festival: a blend of Chicago and West Africa, with the dancefloor as common ground."
-Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune 20 July 2008
"Pitchfork Festival - Sunday's Best: Many fashionable rock bands count themselves fascinated by the polyrhythms of classic West African pop, but scant few have the chops to pull it off convincingly. This Chicago band doesn't try to tame this beautiful music with Western ornaments but instead offers up respect through authentic interpretations and originals. A dance band for the thinking man."
-Matt Lurie, TimeOut Chicago, 17 July 2008
"No band in Chicago can play West African dance music like the Occidental Brothers."
-Tony Sarabia, Radio M, Chicago Public Radio 17 July 2008
"A horn section that sent the pre-dominantly indie-rock crowd back to the drawing board"
-Venus Zine 28 July 2008
"The band blends Central and West African dance beats with elements of jazz and underground rock, creating a vibrant musical cocktail for dancers in the July sun."
-Drew Fortune, Chicago Social July 2008
"There have been a lot of bad highlife, rumba and African salsa revival bands, particularly synth-based ones in the mid-80s, but the Occidental Brothers pull it off. The guitar work is spot on and they lay on some subtle effects to get that 1960s recording feel to the music as well."
-Matt Yanchyshyn, Benn Loxo du Taccu, 24 March 2007
"You could easily believe the tracks on this very sharp cd were recorded in Kinshasa or Accra years ago rather than quite recently in Chicago...OBDBI offer up simply stunning instrumentals recalling the golden ages of rumba, highlife and other African styles"
-T. Orr, World Music Central, 12 May 2007
Recent Podcast Appearances:
Crain's Chicago Business Video Podcast Art Institute of Chicago MuseCast TimeOutChicago interview KEXP Live Performances KEXP Song of the day


text:
Halstead Property
Resident Login: Sign In Make A Payment Make a Payment - Picaso Contact Us
Managed Buildings
Our Property Managers
Carlos Castro
Director of Lease Administration
ccastro@halstead.com
As Leasing Agent for Halstead Management Company, Carlos Castro oversees the leasing activity in the firm's portfolio of managed properties, which include rental and cooperative buildings.
He was previously the Director of the Leasing Department for Caran Properties, which joined forces with the Halstead Management Company in 2011. In that position, he served as the liaison between residents, the management company and the owner, and was also responsible for the renting of investor-owned residential properties. In addition, he also managed the Transfer Department of that firm's portfolio of luxury condominiums.
Prior to Caran, Carlos served as an Assistant Portfolio Manager at Interfid Capital Corporation, where he maintained the accounting of client portfolios, monitored cash flow and acted as a liaison between management and Spanish-speaking clients in South America.
A resident of New York City for nearly 30 years, Carlos earned a B.B.A. from Hofstra University.
Return to List of Managers
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text:
<?php

$provider = new Zend\Db\ConfigProvider();
return $provider();

/* Basically provides this */

// return [
//     'dependencies' => [
//         'abstract_factories' => [
//             Adapter\AdapterAbstractServiceFactory::class,
//         ],
//         'factories' => [
//             Adapter\AdapterInterface::class =>
//                 Adapter\AdapterServiceFactory::class,
//         ],
//     ]
// ];


text:
Police search for ex-college student in campus…
Police search for ex-college student in campus shooting
Gerry Broome / AP
A police officer stands by as students and faculty are allowed to return following a lockdown at Wayne Community College, in Goldsboro, N.C., Monday, April 13, 2015. One person was killed in a shooting at the community college that was locked down as authorities searched for a gunman, officials said.
PUBLISHED: April 13, 2015 at 4:08 p.m. | UPDATED: April 15, 2019 at 4:43 a.m.
GOLDSBORO, N.C. — A 20-year-old former community college student fatally shot a campus print shop director that he used to work under, just as his old boss arrived for his job Monday morning, school officials and authorities said.
A manhunt was underway for the suspect, Kenneth Morgan Stancil III. Authorities are pursuing him on an open count of murder, Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce said.
Authorities believe Stancil has left the area but is still in North Carolina. They have not released a motive for the shooting.
Stancil entered a large Wayne Community College building around 8 a.m. with a rifle and went to the third-floor print shop, perhaps using a back staircase so he would go unnoticed, authorities and school officials said. Stancil's former work-study boss, Ron Lane, was killed in the print shop. He had worked at the school for 18 years.
The shooting frightened students and the campus was put on lockdown as officers stormed the building.
First-year student Jovaun Williams, 24, told The Associated Press that he was climbing a staircase inside the building and had almost reached the second floor when he heard a single muffled pop.
He recognized the sound as a gunshot, similar to the kind he heard growing up in a tough neighborhood near Long Beach, California. He didn't know where it came from.
"You hear a shot and my biggest things is, get out of there," he said. "It definitely wasn't where I was at, so that was good enough for me."
By the time he walked back downstairs, he saw police officers running into the building with their guns drawn. The building, the Wayne Learning Center, houses the cafeteria and library, among other things, school spokeswoman Tara Humphries said.
Stancil was a third-year student at the college but it wasn't immediately clear when he last attended.
Police are using helicopters and dogs to search for him. Authorities weren't sure how he left campus, including whether he left in a vehicle.
At one point, authorities thought they had cornered the shooter in a restroom and fired tear gas into it, only to find that it was not Stancil in the bathroom, Effler said.
Authorities have described Stancil as a white man, about 5-foot-11, with a goatee and a tattoo around his left eye and on his neck.
Sheriff's deputies blocked the driveway to the white mobile home listed as the residence Stancil shared with his mother and two younger brothers.
A next-door neighbor on the road lined with brick ranch homes, Barbara Williams, said Stancil's grandparents lived on the other side of the mobile home, where they operated an assisted living home. A sign in the front yard said "Stancil Family Care Home." An elderly man with a cane who came to the front door declined comment to an AP reporter.
Williams said Stancil once helped her late husband when he fell out of his bed.
"He came over here and picked him right up and put him back on the bed," Williams said. "I've never had no problems with those kids. … It just surprises me."
At the school, first-year student Joniece Simmons, 19, said she was sitting on a bench outside the learning center when two officers with rifles and a third with a drawn handgun ran toward the building, shouting for students to take cover in a safe place. She and others ran inside to the cafeteria and locked the door.
Though they were urged to stay silent, some students still wanted to talk. "I was like 'hush, it's serious.' I was crying," Simmons said.
Classes were canceled Monday, but the college was expected to reopen Tuesday.


K-State Research and Extension is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
Interest in native plants is growing and for good reason. Native plants support native insects and thus help preserve birds of conservation concern.


text:
Q: Using old command line in ArcMap I know that the command line has been replaced by the Python Window, but is there any way to use command line within ArcMap 10?

A: No.
I have asked our local ESRI support recently, their statement being that the old command line is dropped completely. Bothers me as well. You can still execute GP tools from the Python window.


text:
Q: Get Vibrant.js swatches using jsdom or Canvas for node.js I have a process to get images in node.js using either jsdom or Canvas. During the download process, I want to extract swatches using Vibrant.js in the backend. Neither of my code below works.
Using jsdom
const Vibrant = require('node-vibrant');
const request = require('request');

var jsdom = require("jsdom").jsdom;
var window = jsdom().defaultView;
var document = jsdom('', {
  features: {
    FetchExternalResources : ['img']
  }
});

var imgDom = document.createElement("img");

imgDom.onload = function() {
    console.log('onload triggered');
    // var imgData = 'data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAIAAAA7ljmRAAAAGElEQVQIW2P4DwcMDAxAfBvMAhEQMYgcACEHG8ELxtbPAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC';
    // var imgData = imgDom.replace(/^data:image\/gif;base64,/, "")
    // var binaryData =  new Buffer(imageData, 'base64').toString('binary');

    request.get(imgDom.src, function(err, res, body) {
        console.log(body.length);

        // Spit out a bunch of base64 code
        let v = new Vibrant(new Buffer(body, 'binary').toString('base64'));
        // Error image.load not found
        // let v = new Vibrant(new Buffer(body, 'binary').toString('base64'), {ImageClass: window.Image});

        // Error: Path must be a string without null bytes
        // let v = new Vibrant(new Buffer(body, 'base64').toString('binary'));

        // v.getPalette().then((palette) => console.log(palette));
        var swatches = v.swatches();
        console.log(JSON.stringify(swatches));
        for (var swatch in swatches)
            if (swatches.hasOwnProperty(swatch) && swatches[swatch])
                console.log(swatch, swatches[swatch].getHex())
    });

}

imgDom.src = 'https://unsplash.it/200';

// imgDom.src = 'data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAIAAAA7ljmRAAAAGElEQVQIW2P4DwcMDAxAfBvMAhEQMYgcACEHG8ELxtbPAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC';

Using Canvas
const Vibrant = require('node-vibrant');
const request = require('request');
const Canvas = require('canvas-prebuilt');
const Image = Canvas.Image;

var imgDom = new Image;

imgDom.onload = function() {
    console.log('onload triggered');
  let v = new Vibrant(imgDom, {ImageClass: Canvas.Image});
  v.getPalette().then((palette) => console.log(palette));
};

request.get('https://unsplash.it/200', function(err, res, body) {
    console.log(body.length);

    imgDom.src = new Buffer(body);
    // imgDom.src = new Buffer(body, 'binary').toString('base64');
    // imgDom.src = 'data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAIAAAA7ljmRAAAAGElEQVQIW2P4DwcMDAxAfBvMAhEQMYgcACEHG8ELxtbPAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC';

});

I could use URL in Vibrant.js but that's another http GET using Bluebird and I need to avoid calling the network to download again.
I think Vibrant.js has a hard time to understand the Image object in Node.js.
What is the workaround here so that I can pass proper Image class to Vibrant.js?

A: Building the buffer correctly
encoding:null returns buffers instead of strings.
(strings gives you unusably garbled data)
const Vibrant = require('node-vibrant');
const request = require('request').defaults({encoding:null});

doRequest('https://i.stack.imgur.com/N4TSy.jpg')
function doRequest(url){
  request.get(url, function(err, res, body) {
    if(err)throw err
      //Here is the magic
      const buffer = new Buffer(body)
      console.log(buffer)
      let v = new Vibrant(buffer)
      v.getPalette().then((palette) => console.log(palette))
  })
}

Extra : Using JIMP
The Vibrant constructor's imagePath arg is directly passed to the abstract Image constructor (NodeImage in the NodeJS environment and NodeImage uses Jimp)
/*:USING JIMP:*/
doJimpRequest('https://i.stack.imgur.com/N4TSy.jpg')
const Jimp = require('jimp')
function doJimpRequest(url){
  Jimp.read(url, function (err, image) {
    if(err)throw err
    image.getBuffer(Jimp.AUTO,function(err, buffer){
      console.log(buffer)
      let v = new Vibrant(buffer)
      v.getPalette().then((palette) => console.log(palette))
    })
  });
}


text:
BC's Best Spots To Celebrate Canada Day
By Jane Mundy
BC Mag Contributing Author· June 26, 2017
As if Canucks aren't proud enough already, our 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation is the time to get patriotic and celebrate being Strong, Proud and Free. The sesquicentennial marks 150 years since the colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick formed the Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867. Birthday bashes across British Columbia have gone all out, from food to fireworks. So dress up in red and white, wave the Maple Leaf flag and get ready to party!
British Columbia didn't join the Confederation until 1871, but Barkerville was the first place to celebrate Canada Day, on July 1st, 1868 (mere hours before Fort Langley followed suit). Dominion Day/Canada Day has always been a special occasion in Barkerville, but this year the community is upping their game. Mark Donnelly, the voice of the Vancouver Canucks home-game national anthems, will sing O Canada twice. At the Visitors' Reception Centre an original 1949 AY Jackson (Group of Seven) painting of Barkerville's Chinatown is viewable July 1, but get in line: up to 3,000 people are expected.
Dawson Creek has lots to celebrate this year. Not only does 2017 mark Canada's 150th anniversary, it also marks the 75th Anniversary of the Alaska Highway. And Mile 0 is at Dawson Creek.
"Canada's centennial year in 1967 helped create many important legacies that have had a lasting impact on our society, including the time capsule," says Mayor Dale Bumstead, who will open the copper cylinder at a ceremony July 1. As for the contents, no one knows. "Our history is built on agriculture so it likely contains grain seed. One story says it contains a bottle of rum, another story says the old timers drank it and put a note inside, saying how good it was. I don't know what else is inside so there is some suspense."
Students at Northern Lights College are building another time capsule to be opened 50 years from now. "It will include a flash drive promoting our city, a cell phone and other stuff, maybe a bottle of rum," says Mayor Bumstead, laughing.
Although Pouce Coupe is a small bedroom community of Dawson Creek, they put on the traditional Canada Day parade. "We respect that. We participate, but they get the glory," adds the Mayor, in typical Canuck fashion. Along with a pancake breakfast at the Legion, the community will serve a cupcake cake to the first 500 people.
The year before confederation, in 1866, the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island came together. This year B.C.'s capital has lined up two days of mainstage shows on the legislative lawns, including Canadian rock band the Arkells. And coming back from what used to be Folk Fest (15 years ago) are about a dozen food kiosks from multi-cultural associations serving their dishes by donation – monies raised by these non-profit groups will help promote their culture.
If you want to be a part of history, show up on the legislative lawns at 2 p.m. "We will attempt to break the bragging record for the Canadian Living Flag," says Alan Lowe, chair of the Greater Victoria Spirit Committee. "We have red and white t-shirts for participants, and there will be areal shots." Lowe anticipates that 5,000 t-shirts will be given out.
In & Around Vancouver
Grouse Mountain is attempting to break the Guinness Record for the "largest human maple leaf" in the world. Either take the sky ride or hike the grind wearing your best red outfit. Reach the cut by 1pm and you too can be part of history! Can't make the cut? You can – potentially – see the shape being formed from the city.
Canada Place is hosting the second biggest Canada Day celebration outside of Ottawa. There are more headliners than ever before, with big-name bands on five stages. The mainstage is programmed right through to the fireworks at 10.30 pm. The north point lounge at Canada Place will be serving beer and wine (it's family friendly) all day, and can accommodate 2,000 people. Party all day!
On Day 2 come back for a pancake breakfast (donations go to Strathcona Community Centre's "Food Security for Children" program) at the north point of Canada Place, which just got renovated and it doesn't look at all like Expo 86 –that's when the building opened. The parade at 5pm marks the grand finale.
At Creekside Park, Chinese Canadians at Vancouver-based Legacy 150 Celebrations Society hope to drum up a new Guinness World Record. "At 11am on July 1, eight cities across Canada will start drumming," says project manager Helen Yu. "We need 50 nationalities to celebrate Canada's multicultural fabric by drumming." If you want to drum but can't get to the park, take a video and send it to Canada150 drumming. Yu says you must have a valid passport and be in Canada on July 1.
Richmond and Steveston
"We're taking Canada Day to a new level, there's lots going on," says Mayor Malcom Brodie, "kicking off with a morning parade and a street party in Steveston. This is food central: the salmon festival has been going on for generations (since 1945) and in addition, lots of food trucks are pitching in. Around Steveston village will be multiple stages with major performers such as Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer. "I think axe refers to a guitar. I'm told these two guys are popular but hey, I'm just the messenger." And the mayor. Historically, over 70,000 people spend Canada Day here.
No matter where you celebrate, it's going to get crowded. So come on down (or up) and celebrate being a Canuck. It'll go down as a great day in our country's history.
Barkerville celebration: http://www.barkerville.ca/dominionday/
Dawson Creek celebration: http://www.tourismdawsoncreek.com/calendar/74/2270-Canada-Day-Parade-BBQ-Celebration-Pouce-Coupe
Victoria celebration: http://www.tourismvictoria.com/events/canada150/
Grouse Mountain celebration: https://www.grousemountain.com/events/canada-day-at-the-peak-of-vancouver-4dba6050-44b8-41ae-87a4-eeef67f3a404#.WU_Yj-msi5Q
Canada Place: http://www.canadaplace.ca/events/canada-day/
Steveston celebration: http://stevestonsalmonfest.ca
BC Mag Contributing Author
British Columbia Magazine is the scenic geographic and travel magazine of British Columbia. For 50 years, we have informed, entertained, surprised, and inspired our worldwide audience with award-winning profiles of Canada's westernmost province. Subscribe to our magazine and follow us on social media!