Filling the Gaps

If you've been playing Magic for some time, you've almost certainly experienced a temporary waning of the general fervor for the game. Don't be alarmed, this is perfectly normal. Do not attempt to cash out and sell your collection, you'll regret it when you want to start playing again, and even more so when you look up the would-be value of your cards in the future. Instead, take a breath, take a step back, and let's take a quick jaunt through some of my typical meanderings while I wait for my playgroup's interest to be rekindled by a new expansion or a shiny new deck.

If you're interested in some fairly in-depth Solitaire versions of Magic, you should check out this article, Playing Your Pet. I've been playing goldfish since I picked up a Magic deck, unbeknownst to myself until recently. It's just such an intuitive way to test a deck's ability to drop an opponent from 20 to 0,Wireless Indoor Positioning System have become very popular in the system. that in my mind it never needed a name and it was only the past couple of years that I discovered that it was called something after all. The long and short of goldfish is that your opponent does nothing, much like a goldfish swimming in its bowl. There is no real interaction. It simply looks on with awe as you deal 20 damage as fast as possible. Without any resistance,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. it should be fairly straightforward to win in short order, but it should be noted that just because it works against a goldfish, doesn't mean it works. Take an extreme case of a deck with 40 Goblins of the Flarg and 20 Mountains. Sure, you can beat a goldfish in 6 turns, but a single Grizzly Bears will basically shut you down. It takes a bit of refinement to see to it that your deck can deal 20 damage in only a few turns, while also being sure you are capable of powering through some defenses. Enter the dog. This solitaire opponent is much more of a challenge, since it actually does stuff during the game, and can even garner card advantage in a longer game (one land plus one spell per turn means that 7+ turns gives card advantage to the dog.) This is a more complex approach, but actually attempts to simulate playing an opponent, which can easily outclass a lesser deck, since the mana base is artificially perfect and the player will always be casting the most powerful possible spell on a given turn. Of course,Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself Ceramic tile. if I'm involved enough to be playing against the dog, I typically just pit two of my decks against each other, playing both sides and vying for neither deck in particular.

When I get tired of dueling myself in solitaire Magic, there's always my fallback digital facsimile, Duels of the Planeswalkers. I played the original and the more recent version(Duels 2012) to completion, and still I go back for more. They make a very sound investment for any Magic player that's used to spending $4 on a single Booster Pack, since you get access to several decks for only a few dollars. While the deck choices are pretty solid, the game will leave you wanting for more customization. You are not able to build custom decks in Duels, though you do unlock upgrades for most decks as you play,xcel Mould is a Custom Mold Making, giving some element of optimization,Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, if not construction, the longer you play. In Duels 2012 they even included Archenemy Mode which, if you're not familiar, pits up to three players against a single enemy. You can play as or against the Archenemy, and the casual format brings something new to the table with the Scheme Cards that give powerful effects to benefit the common enemy. If you're new to Magic or even just interested in learning, Duels is a great place to start. You'll learn all you need to know about the turn structure, as well as the basics of the Stack and Priority from playing a few games against the computer, which should prepare you well for a real game against a friend.

Finally, there is MTGO, the actual online counterpart to the paper-based game. This is a whole different beast than Duels of the Planeswalkers, since you'll need to have some idea of what you're doing to really get started here. If you're avoiding Duels because of the lack of customization, however, this is a great place to look. Not only can you get access to the Duels decks in the Planeswalker format, but you can even create custom decks from scratch without the heavy monetary investment required to get a Standard collection started. I started my own account a few years ago, but I never kept up with it, since I so favor paper Magic. As a result, my entire collection sports a paltry 26 Standard legal cards, making the barrier to entry into Standard a bit high for me. Though I am recently considering working on my drafting in MTGO, I'm currently relegated to the Planeswalker format and building out new decks from the pre-constructed card pool, at least until the new Cube format debuts at PAX East.

Louisiana Tech Eco-marathon Entry Enters Crunch Time

Our journey to Houston 2012 is well underway! This year our team is bringing three cars: a new gasoline prototype vehicle named ThunderDawg, a new diesel urban concept vehicle called HotRod, and the current American record holder urban concept vehicle – Roadster. We have a great team of over twenty people and over half of these people are new members! It is truly great to see our team continue to grow.

Since two of our cars are new,Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself Ceramic tile. we have designed and fabricated them from the ground up. Through the summer and the early part of the school year, our team worked on designing the two new vehicles: HotRod and ThunderDawg.

For HotRod, we took the design for Roadster and altered it in such ways to increase fuel efficiency. We narrowed the front end of the vehicle and removed some weight from the body. By decreasing the frontal area and the weight of the vehicle, we hope to achieve great gas mileage.

As for ThunderDawg, one of our team members spent months designing the body of this vehicle. The body, consisting of its curves and shapes, is truly a work of art.Wireless Indoor Positioning System have become very popular in the system.

Today is the two and a half week mark until we leave for the Shell Eco-marathon Competition. We have officially entered, as we call it, “Crunch Time.” Our team has been working around the clock to have our cars completed for March 29th, the day we depart for Shell Eco-marathon Americas.

After returning from the competition last year, we have a made a few improvements to Roadster, such as replacing the rear lights. Besides needing to attach a newly designed and fabricated windshield wiper, Roadster is ready to take the journey to Houston for the SEMA Competition.

So far, we have made great progress on our two new cars. In early December, we used our three axis foam router to cut out the body of HotRod. By mid January, we have completed applying the carbon fiber to our body. Also in mid January, we cut out the body for ThunderDawg. By the end of January, the body of ThunderDawg had been completely covered in carbon fiber.

Since then, the engine chassis for both HotRod and Thunderdawg have been designed and welded together. Meanwhile, a few of our team members have been diligently working on the fuel injection system for ThunderDawg.Dimensional Mailing magic cube for Promotional Advertising, It definitely looks promising this year!

Both HotRod and ThunderDawg have been making great progress. We have been completing the layout of all engine components, the steering system, the brakes, and many more aspects. Our team is making great progress on both cars and hope to have them each to paint in the next week. Our team is very much looking forward to the upcoming competition and will definitely remain in our hardworking “Crunch Time” mode to have our vehicles ready to compete!

We have officially reached our two week mark! Reaching this two week mark entails an exciting yet nervous feeling for all of our team members. We are so excited for the competition to be getting closer, but at the same time we are concerned with how much work must be completed in order for our cars to be up to the Louisiana Tech University standard that we pride ourselves in. Having been making such great strides in progress for both cars lately, we know that completing these cars for the competition is definitely possible.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality,

For the past two days, we have continued to make progress on our vehicles. As for both cars,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. the windshield molds are in the process of being made. HotRod’s windshield mold was completed today (March 15th), and ThunderDawg’s windshield should be completed by this weekend.

As for ThunderDawg, our team has been working very hard on the steering. This year, we are going with a rear steered vehicle. This is a new adventure for us since all of our previous cars have been front wheel steered vehicles. We hope to have the steering operating by this weekend.

For these two days, many things for HotRod have been in the works. We have officially installed the ignition in HotRod. This is a great step in the right direction to having the car ready for competition. Also, one of our members has been working on finishing the wheel pods, which include being able to attach and unattach them from the car and making sure the tires do not come in contact with them when making a turn. Lastly, we have been working on recessing the rear lights into the body of the vehicle. We are working for a smooth finish in the transition from the body to the cover of the lights and back to the body.

'Greatest human rights violation is poverty'

SA Human Rights Commission deputy chairperson Pregs Govender said apartheid police were blinded by fear and hatred when they opened fire on protesters in Sharpeville.

She said in modern South Africa poverty was the greatest human rights violation.

"Sixteen million people, mostly woman, in rural areas have no access to sanitation," said Govender.

She highlighted the unenclosed toilets in the Western Cape and the Free State as examples of post-apartheid human rights violations.

During a Human Rights Day celebration in Kliptown, Soweto, on Wednesday, President Jacob Zuma said South Africans must not take freedom and human rights for granted.

"Let us celebrate the right to life, equality before the law, human dignity, freedom and security of the person, freedom from slavery servitude or forced labour," Zuma said at a Human Rights Day celebration in Kliptown, Soweto.

"The right to privacy, freedom of movement, religion,Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, belief and opinion, as well as the rights of workers, women and children.

"On this day, let us join hands to celebrate our Constitution and in particular, the Bill of Rights."

He said the anti-apartheid protests in Sharpeville and Langa in the 1960s were used to assert people's right to work and live in urban areas.

"They were also reflecting the poverty and under-development in rural areas and then Bantustans.

"Our infrastructure plan is intended to tackle the legacy of decades of underdevelopment and to respond to the basic needs of all our people," said Zuma

The infrastructure plan recognised that black people were no longer temporary visitors.

"They are city dwellers, they have rights," said Zuma.

He said cities should not be the only places with lights and tap water.

"Infrastructure for development is also about connecting rural communities to economic opportunities through building dams and irrigation systems."

Zuma said it would connect farms and villages to the energy grid and build schools and clinics in rural areas.

Human Rights Day was previously known as Sharpeville Day to commemorate the shooting of 69 unarmed black protesters by the police in 1960.

The crowd at Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown burst out in cheers when Zuma walked around the square.

Security was tight around him with orange-jacketed marshals forming a human chain around him and his bodyguards pushing photographers away.

Zuma was accompanied by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, Deputy Basic Education Minister Enver Surty and Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane.

A lone protester greeted the morning crowd with a poster at the entrance to the square asking the ANC about its conscience.

"ANC where is your conscience? Sharpeville 21 March 1960," the placard read.

This was in relation to protests in the Vaal, where residents were complaining that the Human Rights Day was being hijacked from them.Wireless Indoor Positioning System have become very popular in the system.

They wanted the event to be celebrated in Sharpeville.

Human Rights Day was celebrated in Kliptown, Soweto where the Freedom Charter was developed and adopted in 1955.

The Freedom Charter became a guiding document in the fight for liberation, it also calls for democracy and human rights, land reform,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? labour rights, and nationalisation.

Cope leader Mosioua Lekota said Human Rights Day was for all South Africans and not for a particular area.

"When Indians were forcibly removed it was a human rights violation," he said.

He also lamented the absence of political parties at the event,

"This is a national event. On this day we must forget about our differences."

Only the ruling ANC,Dimensional Mailing magic cube for Promotional Advertising, Azanian Liberation Organisation (Azopo) and Cope were present at the event.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air.

Lekota said political parties must educate South Africans on the fact that human rights were not about the Sharpeville and Langa massacres.

"It is about human rights," he said.

Lekota who defected from the ANC in 2008 to form Congress of the People, the name echoes the 1955 Congress of the People at which the resistance movement developed and adopted the Freedom Charter, said the charter served to consolidate an alliance of the anti-apartheid forces of the 1950 and protect human rights.

Stoke your spring romance in Jamaica

What do Paul McCartney, Angela Bassett, Bruce Willis, and the late Dame Elizabeth Taylor all have in common? They’re just some of the A-listers who’ve over the years stayed and played at Round Hill Hotel & Villas in Jamaica.

The famed Montego Bay resort is perched on a hilltop amidst 30 acres of tropical gardens, overlooking a jewel-like Caribbean Sea with a golden sand beach.

Originally opened in 1953, Round Hill has long been a favorite retreat for Hollywood's glitterati, including other such fabled stars as Grace Kelly, Fred Astaire and Paul Newman. Royalty like the Windsors have been special guests, and John and Jackie Kennedy spent part of their honeymoon in Villa 10, where the original mosaic-tiled sunken bathtub (built for two) remains.

The scenic hideaway is also where the hit movie “How Stella Got her Groove Back,” starring Angela Bassett was filmed; leading man Taye Diggs later returned there to marry his Broadway baby, Idina Menzel. Other celebs have enjoyed the resort, too: Alfre Woodard, Patrick Dempsey, Gabrielle Union, and Russell Simmons among them.

Today, Round Hill retains its old-school glamour and casual elegance. The resort features 27 private villas (owned by individual "shareholders" whose places are available for rent when the owners are not in residence) and a 36-room oceanfront hotel, "The Pineapple House."

The hotel rooms are decked out in island chic décor designed by Ralph Lauren.Online fine art gallery of quality original landscape oil paintings, Think four-poster mahogany bamboo beds, sumptuous upholstered furniture and spacious bathrooms with deep soaking tubs.

The villas, each beautifully decorated in unique style, boast a bevy of amenities such as private pools. Expansive porches allow for stunning sunsets and tropical breezes.

There's plenty to do here, including the SPA at Round Hill, located in an elegantly restored 18th century plantation house on ten acres of beachfront lawn. Facilities include an indoor/outdoor fitness center, full-service beauty salon, nearly a dozen treatment rooms and a “Garden Loft” set amidst the lush Jamaican rainforest.

You’ll also find guests enjoying water sports,Wireless Indoor Positioning System have become very popular in the system. tennis, golf, yoga classes, and massages by the sea. Fragrant gardens have walking trails and tropical flowers such as orchids.

The service and overall vibe at the resort is warm and exceedingly gracious. No wonder couples, families and from all the over the world,Dimensional Mailing magic cube for Promotional Advertising, have returned to holiday each year.

You can’t leave Round Hill without sampling its house specialty tomato tapenade created by Executive Chef Martin Maginley, which is available for purchase at the lovely resort gift shop. The mouth-watering coconut pancakes that the staff whips up for breakfast are reason enough to come back. Last but not least,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? a popular treat is limbo night, complete with live music,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. folk dancing and general revelry including flame swallowing and other daring feats. It's one more reason you'll love Round Hill.

The Stones Are Back

I know I’ve not offered any new writing in a while, and I feel that I owe my Reader an apology. This is unreasonable of me, yet I feel the need to offer an explanation nevertheless.

Earlier tonight, Mrs. Likko wondered why it is that I was cranky and made an unkind remark. We’d had a very nice morning and a pleasant afternoon together. We’d been together,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. away from work, since Wednesday. The ailment that nearly felled me Wednesday and Thursday has been abated and will be treated hopefully soon, my schedule allowing. So what was wrong with me?

These two concerns are related. After all, how was I to tell my wife that a big part of what was making me anxious and unsettled was not just my anxiety about having to pass a kidney stone out of my back in the next several weeks, but much more so my inability to find some quiet time to myself to sit down and write about something?

You see, it’s been insanely busy at my meatworld job. It’s a combination of my eviction practice and my “big boy litigation” practice. All of these are converging to require trials and intense out-of-the-area depositions all at once. You may skip the next four paragraphs, Reader, if “work has been incredibly busy and stressful” is a sufficient summary.

The eviction trials keep on getting pushed back by the court. What ought to be short-cause, ten-minute trials are pumped up into four-day jury trial events due to a “public interest” law firm that invokes their clients’ jury trial rights so as to “negotiate” cash-for-keys money from my landlord clients, the merits of the case being irrelevant.* Well, as it turns out, a critical mass of my clients have decided that they’re tired of being extorted, and would rather pay me my hourly rate to fight these guys than to feed the monster. And the courts, surprisingly enough, think they have better things to do than jury trials for evictions, so we keep getting our trials continued because criminal courts keep poaching our juries at the last minute.

So I have half a dozen clients screaming at me that their tenants have been living in their houses for six months to (in one case) an entire year without paying any rent, wrecking the places and pissing off the neighbors, and no one in the legal system will do anything about it. And documents and trial dates and witnesses to wrangle, juggling each one every week as a new date approaches. Worse, my office’s infrastructure is not set up to handle all of this with anything approaching efficiency.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?

Then, I’ve got what would otherwise be a tasty and interesting case that I could sink my teeth into, only I haven’t the time to do it because of all the fishing evictions. This case will take me away from home for overnight, multiple-day depositions at least five times over the next six weeks. It’s a technical, complex, bet-the-company sort of case. And I haven’t been able to put in the time and intellectual energy that the case deserves.

All the other lawyers in my firm who litigate are also up to their eyebrows and crying for life vests as well, so I can’t count on them for a lot of support.What is a third party payment gateway ? With all of this going on, it’s been long hours at the office and a deep-fried stress McNugget functioning as my brain by the end of the day,InLocality specializes in indoor Tracking Technologies. which is why for about a week here at the best blog on the internet I was putting out “B” material, and then decided that if I couldn’t bring my “A” game I would be better off taking some time off and dealing with other stuff.

This is when a trip to the deep south to celebrate my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday, which has been planned for six months now, comes due. As of last week, my litigation schedule was working very, very hard to give me lots of incentives to cancel the trip, forfeit the airfare, and disappoint my family. But with an effort that felt truly Herculean, I managed to get away for three consecutive days. Now all of my PTO for the calendar year is gone, a situation which makes me not happy at all. After all, I might get sick.

Which is what I did, the very first day of my time away from the pressure-cooker. It didn’t help that I’d got very little sleep for the two days before leaving, but lack of sleep does not cause the symptoms I experienced upon landing in Birmingham, Alabama. These included a headache of an intensity I’d never known despite a history of migraines, and sudden-onset nausea along with other even less pleasant gastrointestinal disquietude. Other migraine symptoms, like floaters or blind spots, were absent. Thinking it might be food poisoning, I waited another functionally sleepless night to see if the symptoms persisted. They did with even tap water generating nausea, so I asked to be taken to see a doctor. An urgent-care clinic was found, where I spent five hours of my last days of vacation for the year waiting for a doctor to attend me.

The diagnosis came back “kidney stones,” complicated by a viral and a bacterial urinary tract infection. I have a history of kidney stones, so that’s hardly a surprise,Official web site for Uwe cube puzzle and novelties, and it’s not difficult to see how stones scraping around inside the organs could facilitate pathogens getting in there and breeding. I still can’t feel the stones pressing against my kidneys, so I know they’re large enough to obstruct my systems but not yet large enough to move on and pass. So I have that to look foward to in the near future, too. And upon our return, we had to spend nearly the whole day getting our household affairs in order, which in turn meant lots of more time spent on life’s myriad minutiae, eventually resulting in me taking ten fishing seconds to read an e-mail from a friend on my phone when I could have been folding my laundry when Mrs. Likko had the misfortune to ask “What are you doing?” and I snapped something less than gracious back.

And, I’ve received e-mails from more than one of my fellow Ordinaries who’ve been inquiring as to why I haven’t produced any new material. It’s gratifying to know that the community cares about its members enough for those sorts of inquiries to go out. So this is the public, long-form answer.

And the weirdest thing about it is that the exercise of sitting down and writing, expressing my thoughts and giving vent to my frustrations, is somewhat calming and palliative. Stephen King, at least apocroyphically, was once asked, “Why do you write at all?” and his answer was, “You assume I have a choice.” If the story isn’t true, it ought to be. I think to some degree that syndrome applies to everyone who writes for a blog and receives in return only the compensation of the pleasure of knowing they’ve been read. The act of writing is itself a pleasure, or at least a release.

So that’s my explanation for why I’m cranky. It seems downright silly to attribute a bad attitude to an inability to sit down and write. But now that I’m nearing a conclusion to the essay, I do feel some weight off my shoulders, a resolution of at least some tension. I’d like to think that I’ll have time over the next few weeks to think about a political, legal, or cultural issue and share those thoughts, offer something worthy of debate or at least thought by others. I’m not optimistic and I’m already stressed out even contemplating what awaits me at the office tomorrow. But at least I’ve been heard from.

Court jails three Indians for disobeying its orders

Three Indian brothers, who are owners and managers of a plastic wares manufacturing factory in Lagos - Sacvin Nigeria Limited- were yesterday jailed for contempt by a Federal High Court in the state.

Chandru Ganglani (Managing Director), Bharat Ganglani and Trishul Ganglani (both described as directors in court documents), according to a ruling by Justice John Tsoho, are to spend one month in prison for disobeying the order of the court.

Justice Tsoho’s ruling came after arguments from lawyers representing the complainant and the contemnors on whether or not the Indians should be committed to prison or not.We are professional Plastic mould,

The complainant, Vik Industries Limited had sued Sacvin Nigeria Ltd on the ground that the defendants allegedly engaged in the manufacturing and sale of plastic products similar to its own.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality,

It claimed to have been the sole authorised manufacturer in Nigeria of plastic products produced in the design of VIK Singera Basin Mould, VIK road, Neck Mould and VIK Mug Mould.InLocality specializes in indoor Tracking Technologies.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air.

The plaintiff said it discovered in June 2009 that Sacvin Nigeria was allegedly selling in Nigeria plastic products with the design of Sacvin, though not its own but closely resembling and identical in design to its products.

It claimed to have been experiencing difficulties in sales as a result of the defendants’ company’s infringement, and was incurring financial loss on daily basis.

The court, on July 9, 2009 granted an interim order restraining Sacvin Nigeria from further engaging in the trade or business of manufacturing and selling or distributing the plastic products and surrender them to the court pending the determination of the substantive suit.

The defendants ignored the said orders and went ahead with its business, a development that informed the contempt proceedings.

Vik Industries’ lawyer, Chukwudi Enebeli told the court while arguing his application yesterday that the defendants disobeyed the July 2009 orders with impunity and engaged in manufacturing, importing, supplying, selling and distributing the plastic products.

Enebeli consequently urged the court to commit the defendant company’s directors, who were in court, to prison for disobeying the order of the court. He said if they were not penalized, they will persist in disobeying the order of the court.

Defence lawyer, Dan Olowojaiye, who did not file any counter motion to the contempt proceedings,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? argued that the directors cited for contempt were not personally served with the court’s orders.

He claimed that the said contempt was carried out by the company and not the directors, an argument Enebeli countered, insisting that it was the court’s directive that the orderwas to paste it at the premises of the court. He added that the directors are the directing minds of the company.

Justice Tsoho upheld Enebeli’s argument and held that the directors, being the directing minds of a company, are liable for any act committed by the company.

The judge rejected the defence lawyer’s suggestion that his client be given an option of fine on the ground that it will make a mockery of the judicial system and consequently sentenced the three directors to a month imprisonment.

Byron facility completes equipment upgrades

Work crews Sunday completed the final phase of equipment upgrades at the Byron Generating Station, and plant officials say the improvements should prevent any future malfunctions from occurring.

“It’s just important to give us a more robust system out in the switchyard,” said Paul Dempsey, communications manager for the Byron Generating Station. “It’ll ensure we’ll have continued good reliability for both of our units going into the summer months and beyond.”

The repairs were made in the wake of two “Unusual Events” that were reported at the facility earlier this year. The most recent incident occurred in late February after an equipment malfunction caused a loss of power feed to the facility’s Unit 1. Plant officials blamed the loss of power feed on a failed insulator in the facility’s switchyard. A similar incident occurred in late January.

Following the January incident, Byron officials began implementing a plan to replace all the insulators at the switchyard. After the malfunction in February, an added emphasis was put on moving this plan forward.

On Monday, March 19, plant officials announced that a multi-faceted team had completed all the necessary upgrades, and that Unit 2 was restored to service on Sunday night.Silicone Mold Maker Rubber,

The station’s Unit 2 was taken offline Friday morning so that employees could complete insulator replacements in the switchyard, states a news release from Exelon Nuclear.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. The same work was performed the prior weekend, March 10 and 11, on the equipment that supports Byron Unit 1, the release states. Unit 1 was brought back online Thursday, March 15, and now both units are generating electricity.

“Our team did a fantastic job of safely making robust upgrades to our facility ...,” said Byron Station Site Vice President Tim Tulon in the news release.

An Unusual Event is the lowest of the four emergency classifications established by the U.S.InLocality specializes in indoor Tracking Technologies. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? All backup systems functioned correctly during the Unusual Events at the Byron plant.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality,

The Byron Generating Station is located in Ogle County, about 25 miles southwest of Rockford.

Needle exchange program is a health care necessity

Australia has more than 1000 new HIV infections a year. For the sake of future generations of Australians we should be doing everything we can to reduce the number of new HIV infections. In several countries, HIV epidemics starting among prison inmates sharing injecting equipment have sparked severe epidemics in the general community.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, Australia also has about 10,000 new hepatitis C infections a year. The overwhelming majority of old and new hepatitis C infections occur among people who inject drugs.

Many new hepatitis C infections occur inside prisons. Hepatitis C is a time bomb ticking for the Australian health care system. A good measure of a country's fairness is how it respects the human rights of its most disadvantaged populations. Prisoners are among our most disadvantaged. Professor Jon Stanhope (''Rights exist behind the wire'', March 13, p15) is right to emphasise the need to respect the human rights of prisoners. Australian governments have a responsibility to minimise the number of new HIV and hepatitis C infections. Who runs the Alexander Maconochie Centre? The government or the CPSU?

Mr Alistair Waters and Mr Michael Doyle (Letters, March 15) have not brought up any cogent reasons for denying a health protection readily available for the past 25 years to citizens in the community to citizens behind bars. Does the CPSU deny the effectiveness of needle syringe programs in the community or in prisons to reduce HIV and hepatitis C infections?

Finally the CPSU is showing signs of removing its head from the sand in the prison needle exchange trial debate. Alistair Waters (Letters, March 15) rightly points to ''a duty of care''. He is right, and according to the considered advice we have, this means that provision of sterile injecting equipment needs to go ahead.InLocality specializes in indoor Tracking Technologies. Mr Waters correctly states that members have a right to make a valuable contribution to the debate. That therefore requires members to be fully informed of the evidence-base from abroad, which shows that where controlled programs have been established there have been no recorded instances of syringes being used as weapons against prison staff. We have developed the world's first set of protocols that can guide establishment of a safe controlled needle exchange model (see www.anex.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air.org.au/prisons).Silicone Mold Maker Rubber, It factors in his concerns and the need to design an intervention for situation-specific environments that Mr Waters alluded to.

If the CPSU, with support from Government and public health agencies, was prepared to enable an informed discussion with its membership, then I am sure the workable solution Mr Waters hinted at could be found.

The ACT Hepatitis Resource Centre sees some hope in CPSU spokesperson Alistair Waters' call for ''a workable outcome among myriad competing issues'' (''Disagreeing with Stanhope on the needle exchange program'', March 15,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? p16); though we do not agree with his characterisation of this as a ''workplace matter''. Far beyond workplace politics the spread of blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis C within prison, and then from prison to the general community, has our prisons as incubators for these preventable, serious, expensive-to-treat, and for some life-threatening conditions.

The very worst model of a needle and syringe program is operating at the AMC right now. It is unregulated, circulates a limited supply of unsterile equipment, and fails to connect its ''clients'' with health professionals. Sadly there are other gaps in the current approach to BBV prevention. For the sake of detainees, prison staff and community health, the ACT Hepatitis Resource Centre calls for the development and implementation of a comprehensive, evidence-based blood-borne virus management strategy.

Restoring a French farmhouse

Twelve years ago the interior designer Henri Fitzwilliam-Lay came across the house of her dreams in the south of France. Friends joked that she and her husband, Hugh, a venture capitalist, and their young daughters would leave London, never to be seen again. In reality the house had been sorely neglected and it would end up taking many years before its restoration was complete.

'It had been very unloved,’ Fitzwilliam-Lay says. There was glaringly white crazy paving in the car-park, and wild boar regularly dug up the garden. But she looked beyond the grotty decoration, pink pebbledash render and plastic chairs and started work bit by bit. Gradually the flooring was replaced with reclaimed paving stones and five of the 40 acres nearest the house were fenced to keep the boar out.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air.

The family would visit during the summer months, and at the end of each holiday she would meet the builder to discuss what jobs could be done during the winter. It went on like this for nearly a decade. 'I don’t believe in fast design,’ she says. 'You can’t buy a life in a couple of months. Decorating takes time and consideration.’

The mas (Provencal farmhouse) sits high up in the hills above the beaches of St Tropez and has a winding drive that leads down to the entrance at the back of the property. Enter through floret-studded metal double doors, bought from a local chateau, to a hall busy with starburst mirrors (many of which were bought at Battersea Antiques Fair). 'I tend to go off on a theme,’ Fitzwilliam-Lay explains of the mirrored hall. Stone stairs lead up to five bedrooms on the first floor, including a master bedroom with en suite dressing-room and Carrara marble-tiled bathroom. From the entrance hall stairs also head down to an open-plan sitting- and dining-room and separate marble kitchen. Fitzwilliam-Lay didn’t really mess with the basic layout of the house, and maintained a warmth by using as much reclaimed material as possible. 'The tiles on the kitchen floor are reclaimed; we had to lay them out in the garden to see how they would work. All the doors are from a local salvage yard in Cogolin.’

Fitzwilliam-Lay has used an unorthodox approach to the interiors. 'I’m constantly fighting against falling into Provencal cliches,Museum Quality hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas.’ she says. 'And that’s hard because those cliches are so easy on the eye.Distributes and manufactures RUBBER SHEET,’ There are no ochre walls, Louis-style furnishings or 'rustic’ French armoires. Although they are in a traditional style, the kitchen cupboards are painted black and the counter tops and splashbacks are slabs of Carrara marble. Bright white walls, decorative Moroccan tiles and a large industrial pendant light help make the breakfast room a bright and modern space. The colonial-style armchairs and deeply buttoned chesterfield sofas in the living-room are rather more west London than south of France.

When the work was nearly completed, she and the girls (Charlotte is now 14, Josephine, 12, Lucy, 10, and Edith, five) did spend a full year in the house. 'It was fantastic,’ Fitzwilliam-Lay recalls. 'Hugh had to do a lot of travelling because of work,Online fine art gallery of quality original landscape oil paintings, but by being down there out of season we were able to feel like complete locals.All RUBBER MATS is comprised of all types of mats,’ The family still decamps to the house every summer, and friends have been invited to make good use of it. The property also has two guesthouses, each with two bedrooms.

During the summer months, family life is mostly outside, there are games of boules and tennis, and going to the beach. Baguette, cheese and rose wine lunches are enjoyed, often under a wisteria-covered iron pergola that runs alongside the house. 'In the summer it gives shade and in the winter it looks quite beautiful, all gnarled and knotted,’ Fitzwilliam-Lay says.

Allergy season comes early this year because

There were plenty of reasons to love this year’s “winter that wasn’t,” with its 60- and 70-degree days from November through February. But now it’s payback time — at least for those of us with allergies.

While the spring allergy season normally gets underway toward the end of March or beginning of April, people in the Washington area have already been sniffling, sneezing and suffering with other symptoms for at least a month.

“It really is unusually early for patients to be this miserable,Online fine art gallery of quality original landscape oil paintings,” says Derek Johnson, medical director of the Fairfax Allergy, Asthma and Sinus Clinic. “The mild winter has resulted in very high pollen levels in February and early March,All RUBBER MATS is comprised of all types of mats, when they’re typically very low or negligible.” In fact, he points out that tree pollen counts on Feb. 23 were 365 grains per cubic meter, compared with a mere 2.88 a year before. He also notes that because it has been so sunny and warm in the past few months, people have spent more time outside,Museum Quality hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas. increasing their exposure to such allergens.

The weather from here on out can change things, but all of the experts I spoke with say they expect the untimely effects to linger. “In past years, we’ve had a very compact,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. heavy-hitting allergy season, but this is shaping up to be a long slog,” says Gaithersburg allergist Jackie Eghrari-Sabet, who explains that while evergreen trees, such as cedar, cypress and juniper, have budded prematurely, other species will likely bloom at their regular pace, leading to “more of a slow, grand parade” between now and late April to early May, when pollen counts typically peak. “It’s not like because it started early it’s going to end early.”

And, of course, trees are only the start: “As soon as the tree pollens are over, overlapping at the other end, probably, will be grass pollens, and if we’re really unlucky and it’s a hot, hot summer, weed pollens really thrive in the heat, and some molds thrive in the heat, especially when it’s dry,” she says. “So this could be a constant buffet of pollens and mold” all the way through summer at least.

This early hay fever season comes on top of an already tough fall and winter for allergy sufferers, with nary a break from the onslaught,Distributes and manufactures RUBBER SHEET, which allergists say may be compounding symptoms for many people.

“There is something called priming that happens that’s sort of like an additive effect: One thing just builds upon another and another and adds up to a much larger overall problem,” Eghrari-Sabet says. She notes that this year, allergy sufferers were exposed to ragweed and other fall pollens for longer periods because the Washington area never had a period of really good, hard frost. Some mold counts also stayed high because of a wet, mild winter. “Now we come into spring and people are already inflamed and congested and absolutely primed for a more significant reaction to the tree pollen, because we haven’t really had a dormant season in all of this. So you’re not starting from the ground floor.”

Because of the unusually early arrival of spring allergies, many folks (including myself) have mistaken symptoms such as a runny nose, scratchy throat and itchy eyes for a run-of-the-mill head cold or the flu. The result is that many people did not begin the preventive regimens that allergists recommend — such steps as daily pills and steroid nasal sprays — well before plants and trees begin to flower. The buildup of these medicines in your system can help minimize or even eliminate allergic reactions and the accompanying misery all spring long.

“Normally we tell patients to start those at the beginning of March, so they’re protected and have good control and coverage by the time that pollens really hit a significant level,” says Johnson. “But this year everybody was caught by surprise — including allergists — and so there are probably very few patients who’d already started those medications at the beginning of February, when you really needed to this year.” He adds that it’s not too late to start taking them: They can make you feel better even if you’ve missed the longer-term preventive benefits.

Girl Scout memories

Girl Scouting is about adventure and merit badges, camping and calamities. For many of our readers, it’s also about friendships and family — friendships that often last a lifetime, and a history that spans generations.

As Girl Scouting marks its 100th anniversary in America, we asked our local Scouts past and present, to share their memories. Here are some of their stories:

Charlotte Stevenson Carrier, 78, and Cleona Dunlap Parisi, 77, became friends in first grade and joined the Girl Scouts at age 10. Both retired teachers, they remain friends today.The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free,

“We were the Girl Scouts of Troop 36 from about 1944 to 1948, and our members were students at Hollywood Junior High School, which is no longer standing,” wrote Carrier, remembering that weekly dues were a nickel.

As Scouts during World War II, “man and woman power was in short supply so we helped in many community activities,” Carrier wrote. “We worked at ‘Buy War Bonds’ events, stuffed envelopes for the Community Chest and later sold poppies for Veteran’s Day.”

For many girls, their first time away from home, usually to a rustic camp, was with Girl Scouts. It was a time for new adventures and to forget about unimportant stuff, like showers.

“When I was 9, I was finally allowed to go to overnight Girl Scout camp for a week,” wrote Mary Lou Drake Bell of her first time at Camp Chinqua Penn in North Carolina where she decided bathing was overrated.Can't afford a third party merchant account right now?

“I swam every day in the muddy lake, which surely was equivalent to a bath, I reasoned. No nagging from the counselors, who were more interested in scaring us with ghost stories than making sure their young charges bathed. At the end of the glorious week, when my parents arrived, I greeted them with a hug and a proud announcement. ‘Guess what? I didn’t take a bath all week!’ ‘So I can tell,Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself Ceramic tile.’ Mama responded, as she surveyed my matted hair, dirty nails and freckles covered with a layer of dust. As soon as we arrived home, I was marched into the bathroom for a good scrubbing.”

Wildlife has always been a part of the camping experience,Online fine art gallery of quality original landscape oil paintings, but few have seen the likes that confronted leader Kay Hughes.

Her husband,All RUBBER MATS is comprised of all types of mats, Patrick, told of her troop’s camping trip in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, near Fort Sill, Okla., where Patrick Hughes was an artillery instructor.

“The morning of this particular trip Kay was waked before sunrise by the sound of sniffing and snorting outside her tent. She looked out over the area and saw a herd of over 50 buffalo nosing around the tents. She watched in horror as they pawed around, generally investigating the interesting structures and fragrant girly smells that had suddenly arrived in their domain.

“Everyone knew buffalo are not to be taken lightly. Almost every year tourists are killed or mangled by the totally unpredictable creatures. Kay and her Scouts were well aware of that fact, because warnings are posted everywhere. However, the rangers had assured her that the buffalo wouldn’t be roaming near their campsite.

“Kay realized the huge animals seemed to be headed to the nearby stream. Between the stream and the buffalo was the mess kit line, strung between two trees with 20 metal mess kits hanging from it. Imagining the reaction of the buffalo to the sounds they would hear when they ran into that line, and envisioning the entire herd stampeding over tents and children, including the general’s daughter and her children, Scott, Terry, and Debby, Kay immediately sprung into action.

“She quietly went around to each tent and announced a ‘special hike.’ She told the children to keep their pajamas on, put their shoes on immediately and very silently but quickly meet her at the bottom of the ‘mountain,’ a large stone they could climb up easily. The girls thought it was a great adventure and followed her instructions, making it up the rocky crag to safety, where they sat for what seemed like hours, watching the buffalo water themselves and finally leave the campsite.

“Instead of panicking, Kay demonstrated the Girl Scout spirit and ability as she quickly, calmly and efficiently managed to turn what could have been a disaster into an interesting, educational, safe and fun experience for her troop.”

In 1994, the commanding general at Fort Sill presented Kay Hughes, now 72, with the Molly Pitcher Award for her dedicated service to the girls of Fort Sill, a rare honor, Patrick Hughes wrote.

Behind The Guardian's Re-Imagined 'Three Little Pigs'

Who knew an ad to celebrate not just a newspaper, but possibly the entire journalism industry, could be so good?

Earlier this month, the U.K.'s The Guardian unveiled a two-minute spot that explored how a modern paper might cover "Three Little Pigs." Out of BBH, London and directed by Rattling Stick's Ringan Ledwidge, it reimagines the classic fairytale as a much grittier drama, where the pigs are either the victims or conniving fraudsters -- or both.

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, wanted to communicate the paper's "open journalism" approach, which emphasizes the exchange of ideas from reader to reporter to reader,xcel Mould is a Custom Mold Making, with the goal of bringing about change.

It was clear that BBH needed to tell a story to demonstrate the news cycle. But which one? "We couldn't pick a current-affairs story for fear of it dating," said David Kolbusz, creative director. "And writing a revisionist history of a historical event seemed insensitive." So they went with fairytales. BBH also created scripts for "Humpty Dumpty," "Hansel & Gretel" and "Cinderella." But Mr. Rusbridger is a big Orwell fan, so the "Animal Farm" parallel won out.

Creatives studied trailers that gave the most plot away -- "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," for example. Mr. Ledwidge also wanted the spot to feel like a trailer to a big movie, something like "The Dark Knight," for example. "I liked that the film inhabited its own parallel universe that was familiar but also allowed the viewer to embrace elements of fantasy," he said. "A mashup of old-fashioned nursery rhymes with a slightly futuristic contemporary world." Mr. Ledwidge looked at nursery-rhyme illustrations from the 1920s to the 1950s and based the costumes around those. The pig heads were cast from original molds from the Royal Ballet Co.'s production of "Beatrix Potter." The spot was filmed over two days, in two 20-hour shoots.

It took four weeks to add effects, according to Gemma Humphries, producer at production company The Mill. While the lenses used gave a cinematic sheen to the film,Listing of Taiwan & China Plastic Mould manufacturer & suppliers. they also created distortion that had to be removed before the shot was composited, then added back in.

"The debate we wanted to provoke was about the role of journalism in the modern world," said Jason Gonsalves, head of strategy at BBH. "It's been great to see the debate play out."

The Guardian's last brand-positioning spot, or "mission statement film," as Mr. Kolbusz calls it, was in 1986.What is the top Hemorrhoids treatment? Much simpler, that commercial,This page contains information about molds, "Points of View," shot the same scene from three different angles, showing how vantage points color your judgment of any event. Comparisons are inevitable, but for BBH, surprising. "It was only after the script was written and sold that we began to see parallels," said Mr. Kolbusz. "It's a different ad for a different era, but the principles The Guardian stands for are as true today as they were then.Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself Ceramic tile."

Rangers in court battle with Craig Whyte's lawyers over 3.6m to keep club afloat

Two firms linked to Mr Whyte, Merchant Turnaround and Jerome Group Pension Fund, have submitted claims for part of the money.Our guides provide customers with information about porcelain tiles vs.

At the High Court in London on Thursday, HM Revenue and Customs and Ticketus, which owns around 100,000 season tickets at Ibrox, also submitted claims for part of the money.

The counsel for administrators Duff and Phelps told the court that the case over the disputed 3.6m needs to be concluded by the start of the next SPL season or the club face liquidation.Distributes and manufactures RUBBER SHEET, QC Mark Philips told the court administrators expected to find closer to 9.5m in the seized Collyer Bristow account relating to Rangers,Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter. but only 3.6m was there.

This move came after administrators Duff and Phelps called for a quick sale of the club, with the "most likely scenario" of that being Rangers' assets being sold to a new company before the old one is liquidated.

During the hearing, Mr Philips said: "There is a risk that the club will fail to fulfil its fixtures. If that happens consequences would be grave," he told the judge.Mold is a plastic molds and plastic injection mold manufacturer in china.

"There is a risk that the club could go into liquidation and be demoted by the Scottish League, which would eliminate any realistic prospect of a sale of the club for any sum worthwhile to creditors."

Merchant Turnaround, of which Mr Whyte is the company secretary, are claiming for 1m of the money, while HMRC is claiming it is owed 2.8m and Jerome Group Pension Fund have put forward a claim for 2.95m.

Jerome is linked to Mr Whyte as it is owned by the Worthington Group, which the Rangers owner has an 18% stake in through his British Virgin Isles-based business Liberty Capital Limited.

Ticketus, which bought four years' future Ibrox season ticket sales in a 24.4m deal Mr Whyte used to fund his takeover of the club, has not not quantified its claim yet.

Duff and Phelps are believed to be claiming for the full 3.6m seized from the account of Collyer Bristow,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? the lawyers who brokered Mr Whyte's takeover last May.

Mr Justice Warren decided that the case would recall for a four-day sitting on March 30 at the High Court.

The administrator’s lawyers Taylor Wessing last week seized 3.6m in an emergency court action against Mr Whyte’s solicitors Collyer Bristow, who acted for him during his takeover.

In a statement released after the case had concluded, join administrator Dave Whitehouse said: "We are very pleased with the decision by the High Court today to order a further hearing on this matter on March 30 and I am sure that all Rangers Football Club supporters will be encouraged that this issue will be dealt with as speedily as possible.

"If we are successful in retrieving these funds that will help the recovery process of the club and will be an important step towards the club emerging from administration."

A spokesman for Rangers owner Mr Whyte, who has not returned to the club since administrators were called in, declined to comment on the court case.

Italy’s Alphacam Reseller Licom Celebrates 20th Anniversary

“If you have a CNC machine to run or axis to move, Alphacam is the solution.” That is the personal maxim of Marco Silva, General Manager of Italian software vendor Licom Systems s.r.l., which celebrates its 20th anniversary in April.

As well as providing the Alphacam CAM system to the Italian metalworking, woodworking, stone and plastics processing industries, Licom also works closely with end-users on support services, training,Our guides provide customers with information about porcelain tiles vs. bespoke applications and post processors. Marco Silva says they choose to specialise fully in Alphacam. “To be successful in this competitive market we realised we must be a ‘super specialist’ and not waste resources in something not related to our main business.”

With two offices in Turin and the outskirts of Venice and a representative near Naples, Licom works with OEMs such as the SCM Group and Biesse, and large international firms including aerospace company Alenia, Anglo Italian helicopter manufacturer Agusta Westland,Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter. and Italy’s largest power company Enel.

“And a big success for us, is the thousands of medium and small companies that form the Italian economic base,” he says.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? These include metalworkers with mills and lathes, and a growing market amongst aluminum cutting firms. A large slice of their turnover also comes from wood industry OEMs and every type of industrial woodworking from furniture to doors, sign-makers, craftsmen and joinery.

Alphacam is used in two applications for the Italian plastics market panel cutting, and trimming for thermoformed products. “Trimming is especially important in the thermoform market, where Alphacam creates the paths for CNC machines trimming off the scraps and cutting holes,” explains Marco Silva. For this type of strategy the tool position is calculated normal to the face direction following a drive curve. Using Alphacam on 5-axis machines means emphasis is placed on tolerances more normally associated with injection molding.

Stone manufacturers use Alphacam for 3- and 5-axis machines and robots producing sinks, shower bases, stairs and other building constructions, along with religious images and bas relief sculptures.

An additional string to Licom’s bow is working with other Alphacam resellers writing post processors and macros for Italian machine tools that are sold worldwide. They have also developed their own automatic production management system ‘Gestione Produzione Automatozzata’ (GPA). “This is an application we wrote in VB and .Net to use Alphacam as a full automatic processing system, reducing any potential bottlenecks from the order right through to production.”

Marco Silva says their wood and stone customers find it particularly useful. “With GPA they can read and machine solids automatically. GPA is programmed using a set of more than 100 macros to read dxf files, apply parametric geometries, read the parameters from the SQL database, carry out nesting if necessary, apply toolpaths and output NC files automatically.”

He says that while Italy is a mature CNC market, there are still major opportunities for growth, including orders from the OEMs using Alphacam who are exporting their machines worldwide, especially to the Middle East,Injection molding and Plastic molding supplier， the Emirates and North America.

“Also, many small to medium size companies realize they must invest in software and efficient production processes to survive in the current difficult economic climate, and Alphacam can be used to drive machines from all manufacturers.They become pathological or Piles when swollen or inflamed.” It is proving especially popular for 5-axis machines and for companies wanting to automate as much of their manufacturing process as possible to cut costs and improve efficiency.

Licom is playing its part in helping the Alphacam R & D team’s ongoing enhancements to provide solutions that he says no other software can. “As we see users regularly, we readily understand their specific requirements and pass them on to the developers for inclusion in the twice yearly updates.”

The company started life as Sycam in April 1992, later becoming a reseller for Alphacam’s forerunner, Licom. In 1995 they became a subsidiary, and decided to maintain the Licom name in Italy when the software rebranded as Alphacam. Marco Silva runs the company with Giovanni Pichioldi, and they employ a total of 13 staff.

Adelman gets artsy in her first ceramics exhibition

In a small corner of the Tashiro Kaplan Gallery, people stop to gaze at the colorful tile pieces that cling to the walls.

What they see are hand-drawn, painted images of people from Calistoga Hot Springs and various spas in Budapest taking time away from the rush of their everyday lives, soaking in the silence around them.

A little girl reads quietly in the library; a wrinkled woman sits patiently in her chair; an old couple sits calmly at the side of the pool, letting the waters flow between their toes. Time seems to wait on us during these still moments.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?

"Moments-in-Time" is the first tile show for Mara Adelman, professor of communication at Seattle University.

Adelman's tile show captures her fascination with people watching, especially those who are indifferent to the gaze

of others.

"We walk through life so self-conscious about the gaze, and I find that children and older people are kind of indifferent to the gaze, so their postures are more natural,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free," said Adelman.

One of her tile pieces shows a little girl reading quietly at the library in San Pancho, Mexico. According to Adelman, she sat there reading for about four hours, completely oblivious to Adelman taking photos of her, which she would later sketch.

Adelman says it's easier to work off of photographs, especially ones that she takes of people who sit by the pool for hours, ignorant of the world around them.

"I call them the pool people because they just sit for hours. They're your perfect models. They're not self-conscious. They just sit there and read or wait or float – I love that.Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter."

According to Adelman, she draws most of her inspiration from impressionists, including female artists like Marie Cassatt, Alice Neel and Helen Frankenthaler.

"I'm in love with the impressionists,Our guides provide customers with information about porcelain tiles vs. especially the women," she said. "They too work on everyday life. It's a big thing for many impressionists to capture people in everyday posture."

"Moments-in-Time" captures the focus on facial expressions, gestures and postures as many of her favorite artists. Though the impressionist influence is evident in her work, she hopes to experiment more with her artistic vision and try new styles.

"I'm experimenting. I'm an artist in progress. I'm a lifelong student and I'm a lifelong artist. I think it's evolving. I'm always pushing things — adding more color,Dimensional Mailing magic cube for Promotional Advertising, working with perspective, providing more depth and playing around with positive and negative space."

Adelman is thrilled to be in the company of the Artisan Tile Northwest & the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) to have this opportunity to share her work with others and to evolve as an experimenting artist.

Her new series will be part of the upcoming NCECA show, which will have its 46th Annual Conference from March 28 to March 31 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.

For Adelman, it is an honor to be part of such a huge organization and would like to have more shows to come as a result. As she retires next year, she also hopes to have more time for her art.

"This is what I want to be doing in my retirement years," she said. "As a communications professor, that's what you do. You watch people. You observe human behavior. You look for the nonverbal gesture – the moment that is just so expressive. It's my training in a new direction."

Damp problems blamed on residents of West Leigh flats

A HOUSING association has blamed damp in some of its flats on residents who do not use their heating enough.

Guinness Hermitage has been criticised for failing to treat damp problems in Solent House,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? Swarraton Road, West Leigh.

Those living in flats affected say their children’s health is suffering.

Despite putting the rent up by eight per cent, the housing association has not dealt with a number of flats which are so damp the walls are covered in brown mould and wallpaper peels off because they are wet.

Mum-of-one Kerry Mitchell has damp in the lounge,Dimensional Mailing magic cube for Promotional Advertising, kitchen and both bedrooms.

The 28-year-old said: ‘I don’t think anyone should have to live like this. We get dripped on at night.

‘The bedsheets are always cold and wet and I’ve had to throw clothes away because they go mouldy.

‘We want to have another baby but it’s not fair to bring them up in this flat. My daughter Lillie-May seems to always have a cold – much more than a child of her age should.’

Dee Kilby, 50, first complained three years ago and efforts were made but the damp and mould came back ‘with a vengeance’.Our guides provide customers with information about porcelain tiles vs.

Guinness then covered her windowsills in plastic because they were rotting through damp but she says nothing else has been done.

She has now called in environmental health officers from Havant Borough Council and they confirmed they are monitoring the action taken by Guinness.

She said: ‘I have to take Piriton tablets because the damp causes what can only be described as year-round hay fever – I constantly sniff and have to blow my nose.Can't afford a third party merchant account right now?

‘When my grandchildren come to stay I give them my bed and I sleep on the floor because I can’t let them sleep in the spare room,Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter. it makes their asthma play up.’

In a statement, the housing association said it has investigated complaints and believes the damp and mould is down to ‘condensation due to domestic lifestyle’.

It added: ‘By this, we mean things such as not wiping down condensation from the inside of windows, not allowing enough ventilation when cooking or drying clothes, not opening windows and inadequate use of heating.

‘In our view, there is no evidence of any major problem of damp within these three multi-storey blocks, and it would seem that most reported incidents have been due to domestic lifestyle.

‘We will of course respond to any individual complaints of damp, investigate accordingly and, where there is an identified leak or route of water ingress, take quick remedial action.’

Travelers Not Required To Pay $500M In Asbestos Settlements

A federal judge ruled that The Travelers Cos. doesn't have to pay more than $500 million in settlements for thousands of people claiming asbestos-related health problems linked to one of the insurer's former policyholders.

At issue are people suffering maladies stemming from asbestos that was used in many household, industrial and military products from roofing shingles and car brakes to floor tiles and Navy vessel insulation. Travelers provided general liability coverage and other insurance between 1947 and 1976 to Johns Manville Corp., the largest manufacturer of asbestos products and raw asbestos in the U.S. for much of the last century.

The court decision is the latest in a legal volley that has already resulted in aU.S. Supreme Courtdecision in 2009. Yet, aspects of it continue to be challenged. The case pits Travelers against 26 state-court actions that were bundled into three settlements and mediated by former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo between 2002 and 2004.

Those settlements were fought by outside parties,Official web site for Uwe cube puzzle and novelties, including Chubb Indemnity Insurance Co.Bathroom Floor tiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles., which said it didn't want Travelers to be off the hook for future liabilities as a condition of the settlements. In the most recent ruling, the federal judge said that as a result of other court decisions, the Cuomo settlements do not absolve Travelers of future claims from Chubb and other insurers. As a result, Travelers is not required to pay the thousands of people sickened from inhaling microscopic asbestos fibers.

"While Travelers was willing to pay the additional $500 million to obtain complete peace through a clarification that any and all claims against it related to its handling of asbestos claims were enjoined ... this is not the relief Travelers obtained," U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York wrote in a Feb. 29 decision.

"Moreover,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? there is nothing unfair about not requiring Travelers to make the payments under the settlement agreements if it is not contractually bound to do so," Koeltl said.

Manville declared bankruptcy in 1982 as it faced a tidal wave of lawsuits from people who had various health problems associated with asbestos.

Asbestos is a generic name for six minerals in nature that were used during much of the 20th century in the manufacture of thousands of products: wallboard, floor tiles, roofing shingles, ceiling tiles, cement, textile products, automotive brakes, paper products and other items, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Asbestos materials can break apart into microscopic particles easily inhaled, and people who were exposed to asbestos on a regular basis for work have developed several types of life-threatening diseases, including lung cancer, according to the CDC.

The federal government has banned asbestos for different uses in several stages starting in 1973 through the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.

The three settlements in the most recent lawsuit are separate from, and in addition to, an initial settlement in 1986 when Travelers agreed to pay $80 million to a bankruptcy estate to cover Manville's asbestos liabilities. The 1986 court orders intended "to fully and finally extricate Travelers from the Manville morass," according to court files.

Many new lawsuits emerged after the 1986 court orders, however, with new victims pursuing different legal claims based on state consumer statutes and common law theories. Those lawsuits were based on the underlying premise that Travelers "acquired knowledge about the dangers of asbestos from claims in the 1950s, recognized the potential for future escalation of asbestos litigation and began to influence Manville's purported failure to disclose knowledge about asbestos hazards," court documents say.

The lawsuits filed after 1986 were bundled by U.S. Bankruptcy Court and mediated by Cuomo.

In the federal court ruling last week, Judge Koeltl reversed a decision signed Dec. 16, 2010, by U.S.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, Bankruptcy Judge Burton R. Lifland, who said the dispute had "gone on for too long, especially for those asbestos victims who have yet to be fully compensated."

Lifland compared the legal plight of people with asbestos-related health problems to a "Sisyphean cycle," a reference to the endless and unavailing task of the mythological Greek king Sisyphus who pushed a rock up a hill only to have it escape and roll downhill repeatedly and forever.

"The same parties that were present thirty years ago are again before this court in this long-standing saga," Lifland said in his 2010 decision.Mold is a plastic molds and plastic injection mold manufacturer in china. "The relief sought by the parties is still the same — compensation for the thousands of asbestos victims who continue to await their agreed-upon settlement payments."

Heat-stroke of genius

THE idea of making things invisible has long hovered on the boundary between science fiction and magical fantasy. Readers of a certain age may recall the Romulan cloaking device from “Star Trek”, which caused entire space ships to disappear. Younger ones will more likely be familiar with the cloak of invisibility from the Harry Potter novels, which could shield a person or two. People, though, are still rather too large to hide in the real world. But a computer chip might not be. And that is what Sebastien Guenneau of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, in Marseille, thinks he can probably make vanish. The catch is that it would be invisible only to those whose eyes were sensitive to heat, rather than light.

The suggestion that things really can be made invisible is not completely new. In 2006 Sir John Pendry of Imperial College, London, and Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews independently worked out how it might be done in a limited way. Their idea,Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, known as transformation optics, was to map the electrical and magnetic fields that make up light waves on to a two- or three-dimensional grid and then distort that grid in order to alter the trajectory of the light, using the sort of mathematics that describe the way light is bent by massive objects such as black holes. By transforming the grid in the correct manner, light would be bent around an object and arrive at an observer just as it would have done had the object not been there.

Simple in theory. But rather harder in practice. The proposal Sir John and Dr Leonhardt came up with was to surround the object to be hidden with a cylinder of material built from concentric layers of different refractive indices. A material’s refractive index is a measure of how much it bends an incoming light beam. Get the layers right, and the beam can be bent in a curve.

It works, too. But only if the light to be bent is of precisely the right wavelength. That is because the exact refractive index of a material depends not only on the substance in question, but also on the wavelength of the light passing through it. Choose the wrong wavelength and the cloaking device will stand out like a sore thumb.

Dr Guenneau and his colleagues, though, do not have to worry about wavelengths. Their version of the cloaking device, described in a paper in Optics Express, is designed to deal with conducted heat,Bathroom Floor tiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. which has no wavelength. They have shown that variations in a quantity called diffusivity can do for heat what multiple refractive indices do for light. Diffusivity, as its name suggests, is a measure of how easily heat diffuses through a material.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?

Dr Guenneau’s team applied the mathematics of transformation optics to the equations describing thermal diffusion and found that the transformed equations do, indeed, make physical sense. They therefore realised that it should be possible to distort the space through which heat flows by manipulating diffusivity. This insight allowed them to design a thermal invisibility cloak consisting of 20 concentric rings of varying diffusivity that would isolate a central circular region from incoming heat, making it the best insulator imaginable.

Unlike existing optical cloaking devices, which are little more than toys, Dr Guenneau’s idea would have an immediate practical application: protecting heat-sensitive components in electronic devices. It might also be able to confuse thermal-imaging equipment, which would make it of great interest to the world’s armies, navies and air forces. That, though, is a speculative idea.

As, indeed, is the whole thing, truth be told.They become pathological or Piles when swollen or inflamed. For Dr Guenneau has yet actually to build a heat cloak. But he is confident that it should be possible, and he and his team are working with researchers from the University of Lille to produce prototype cloaks, suitable for use in microelectronics, within the next few months. If they succeed, remember that you didn’t see it here, first.Silicone Mold Maker Rubber,

Julie's tools

Mimi Robertson and Janet Freese estimate they've logged 65 hours so far cataloging the objects from their late mother's kitchen.

Clearly, this was no ordinary kitchen.

And theirs was no ordinary mother. Julie Dannenbaum, the internationally known cookbook author,Silicone Mold Maker Rubber, who owned and operated cooking schools in Philadelphia, at the Gritti Palace in Venice, and at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, died suddenly in December at 89.

Almost every tool and gadget from her Delancey Street home will be sold April 15 to benefit the Philadelphia Chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier,Bathroom Floor tiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. a philanthropic society of professional women in food who mentor other women aspiring to enter the food business.

Dannenbaum was among the founders of the local chapter, and proceeds from the sale will fund a scholarship in her name.

Gold and a cadre of "dames" recently went through Dannenbaum's drawers, counting almost 200 knives of various sizes, scores of whisks, vegetable peelers, pie weights, paté molds, aspic molds, ice cream molds, chocolate molds.

"She had something for everything," Robertson said. "And because she ran cooking schools, she needed multiples."

That explains the piles of stainless steel serving trays; pewter dishes; silver filigreed cuffs made to be worn by lamb chops; French-made Pillivuyt brownware porcelain dishes; and a variety of copper pots.

They found rolling pins - the American style with ball bearings and the French, made with solid hardwood.

The main kitchen in the basement of the Delancey Street mansion was equipped with a six-burner Garland stove , marble counters perfect for making bread, tile floor, aluminum sinks, and Mexican tiled backsplashes.

Also for sale, the half-dozen framed still-life paintings of bread, olives, peaches, and food scales that lined the walls of Dannenbaum's home kitchen.

Robertson and Freese grew up in the family's first home, in the Carpenter's Woods section of Mount Airy, moving to Delancey Street when Robertson was in college and Freese was finishing high school.

For these youngsters,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? Mom's pots and pans were not playthings.

"Copper, are you kidding?" Freese asks in mocking shock.

"And we were not allowed to talk when she was watching Dione Lucas on television," she said.

Lucas, a Brit who taught French cooking, was the first female graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in France. In 1948, she became the first woman to have a television cooking show, igniting a passion in Julie Dannenbaum for classic French cooking.

Dannenbaum traveled to New York several times a week to take classes with Lucas, and went on to study with experts such as Richard Olney in Avignon, France.

She started her Creative Cooking school in Philadelphia in 1964,Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, teaching classic French techniques to the well-heeled here, and in summer classes in Venice and at the exclusive Greenbrier.

Her influence in Philadelphia was such that she counted among her students Fritz Blank of Deux Cheminees. She was instrumental in the city's first Restaurant Festival in 1978; and the Book and the Cook festival in 1985. In 1988, then-Inquirer food critic Elaine Tait named her one of the 10 most influential food people in Philadelphia.

She wrote five books, starting with Menus for All Occasions in 1974. James Beard, who counted Dannenbaum among his friends, wrote about her book More Fast and Fresh for The Inquirer in 1983. A year later, in 1984, when she closed her Philadelphia cooking school, Dannenbaum helped start the Les Dames chapter. Always a hands-on philanthropist, Dannenbaum cooked for the nonprofit agency MANNA, which delivers nutritionally balanced meals to ill and infirm shut-ins.

Meanwhile, Harry Dannenbaum Jr. ran his family's rubber-coating business in Port Richmond, participated in charity events, and traveled widely with his tall, beautiful wife, who was the center of his attention.

"She was smart and funny and he was her straight man," Freese says. "He was not at all ill-at-ease with her success."

"We always told Mom her timing was perfect," Robertson says.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. "She started in the 1970s when mothers were just starting to get more free time and they enjoyed getting together."

Dannenbaum's daughters say they didn't realize how much they learned from her until they started cooking for themselves.

Solar cell maker needs workers for new Portland plant

SoloPower, a California-based maker of thin solar panels, announced Tuesday they are looking to hire people to work in their new Portland manufacturing facility.

The SoloPower manufacturing plant, a 225,000 square-foot former distribution warehouse located on North Marine Drive, should employ about 90 people by the end of the year, according to CEO Tim Harris. Eventually, the company hopes to employ about 450 people.

Prospective employees can apply for work with the company at the Interstate Career Expo on Wednesday, March 7, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Pre-registration for the expo is required.

SoloPower will be “looking for equipment engineers, chemical engineers, production and process engineers and front-end and maintenance technicians,” Thomas Barker, Director of Human Resources, said in a press release. “We’re proud to help Oregon continue on the path towards establishing a broad clean technology manufacturing base and a stronger state economy.”

Harris said the company has already hired about a dozen people who are prepping the facility now for the installation of manufacturing equipment,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. a process that will be completed in a few more months. He also said a small number of current employees in San Jose will relocate to Portland.

Once an initial production line is operating, a planned expansion, coupled with a Department of Energy loan guarantee, will include a second local manufacturing facility, Harris said. The plan is to have four production lines employing about 450 people two years from now, Harris said.

Harris said the production facilities will be similar to wafer manufacturing plants in the computer chip industry, but without the clean-room environment. He said the SoloPower international customer base includes buyers in Japan, China, South Korea and some European countries.

“We’re excited about SoloPower’s ability to bring clean tech jobs to Oregon and promote smart job-growth in the private sector, which would not have been possible without the visionary support we’ve received from the State of Oregon, the Oregon Department of Energy and the City of Portland, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy,” Harris said. “A big reason SoloPower chose to build our new manufacturing facility in Oregon was because of the highly skilled work force, and we look forward to drawing on that local talent as our facility comes online.”

Harris said the company, which is currently producing solar panels at a facility in San Jose where they are based,Bathroom Floor tiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. did a lot of research about where to locate their next plant, including looking at overseas locations. “At the end, the Portland area was very attractive,” Harris said.

“We were very happy to come up with a good package to locate here in the states” rather than moving production out of the country,Specializes in rapid Injection mold and molding of parts for prototypes and production. Harris added.

Not surprisingly, the Portland plant will eventually feature rooftop solar panels but Harris said right now their focus was on getting the operation up and running and getting their product to customers around the world.Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality,

The solar power cells the company plans to make in Portland will have a flexible, lightweight design that requires less electrical system balancing hardware and are easier to install than traditional solar panels, SoloPower said in their press release.

Harris said the unique design of SoloPower’s thin solar cells makes it more attractive to businesses looking to turn otherwise empty rooftops into solar arrays that generate power. He said current solar panel designs are too heavy for large-scale installation on the rooftops of some large buildings.

Harris, who has been with SoloPower for two years as CEO, comes from a tech background and compared the emerging solar power industry to the evolution of another tech mainstay: computer hard drives.

He said that as solar power technology advances,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? the cost to make solar cells and the price for consumers will continue to drop while performance increases, making solar power an attractive alternative to current legacy power-producing technologies.

He said in some countries, solar power is already becoming a viable alternative to other sources of energy in terms of cost for the consumer.

Rubber on a roll

Thai traders could see a huge opportunity to export rubber to India, where an economy growing at 7% annually is leading to increased car sales and lifting up demand for automotive tyres.

Carmakers have pledged US$6 billion to almost double annual production in the coming years as cars increasingly become within financial reach for India's expanding middle class.

Passenger car sales last year grew by 4.24% to 1.95 million units, despite a generally downbeat mood among consumers worried about inflation and a steady series of interest-rate increases.

India is increasing its rubber output but the total will still fall well short of industry needs. The Rubber Board of India has estimated domestic production for the current financial year ending March 31 at a record 902,000 tonnes, an increase of 4.6% from the previous year. But the shortfall is likely to exceed 70,725 tonnes.

Meanwhile, the Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association (ATMA) is lobbying for duty-free imports of 100,000 tonnes of natural rubber to bridge the gap between domestic production and consumption.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?

"This could be a very good opportunity for Thailand to export more to India," said Adul Chotinisakorn, executive director and commercial counsellor at the Mumbai-based Thai Trade Center.

Mr Adul said that India's top rubber supplier at the moment was Indonesia, with $98.33 million worth of rubber exports (21,216 tonnes) in the first half of 2011. Thailand was next with exports of 16,466 tonnes worth $75.14 million. Just Choose PTMS Plastic Mould Is Your Best Choice!

In free trade talks, India has put natural rubber on its negative list, taking into account the socio-economic significance of the commodity.Monz Werkzeugbau und Formenbau.

In December 2011, India imported 21,734 tonnes of natural rubber, up 57% from a year earlier. The world's fourth biggest producer, India imports rubber from Malaysia and Vietnam also.

Costs for industries that use rubber are an increasing concern,TBC help you confidently purchase China ceramic tile from factories in China. however,Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter. since the top producing countries are not happy with the prices the commodity is fetching. Thailand, for example, in January approved a 15-billion-baht budget to buy unsmoked rubber sheet from farmers at 120 baht per kilogramme in a bid to prop up prices.

ATMA chairman Neeraj Kanwar said the tyre industry had passed through an extremely difficult phase of continuous and significant increases in the price of natural rubber and other raw materials. Since raw materials account for approximately 70% of industry expenditure, input cost pressure has resulted in severe erosion of net margins.

"We keenly look forward to the [Indian central government] budget to be announced on March 16 to address specific concerns of automotive tyre industry," he said.

Natural rubber accounts for 45% of the total raw material cost for the tyre industry. Despite the recent softening of rubber prices, the average price in current financial year is still 10-12% higher than average prices in the previous financial year, according to ATMA.

"Despite the peak rubber production season falling between October and February and favourable weather conditions, the domestic availability of rubber is a key concern for the industry," said Mr Kanwar.

"With new capacity creation in the tyre industry and limited growth in rubber area under cultivation, the availability situation is feared to worsen in the foreseeable future."

Since 2007-08, rubber consumption in India has outstripped production. The country has also become the second largest consumer of rubber in the world after China, while it still ranks fourth in production.

Mr Kanwar said the tyre industry was in the process of investing nearly $2.5 billion. To help increase competitiveness of the industry, the ATMA has asked for waiver of customs duties on raw materials that have no domestic production. These include butyl rubber, currently taxed at 5%, SBR or tyre-grade rubber (10%), EPDM (10%) and polyester tyre cord (5%).

Experts say there is little doubt about the long-term growth prospects of car demand in India _ Asia's third largest economy _ where a population of 1.2 billion dominated by young people with rising salaries and aspirations will likely make it the second-largest market in the world in 25 years.

The total installed capacity of the automotive industry has risen to around 4.5 million cars, and could reach 6 million in a few years. Export growth is strong,Official web site for Uwe cube puzzle and novelties, but only around 550,000 cars are expected to leave the country's ports this fiscal year.

Capacity growth will outstrip demand growth for the next two to three years, according to research by Credit Suisse.

Muskegon chamber survey targets worker training as top business concern

Ask a typical business owner among the 1,100 members of the Muskegon Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce what’s important and the answer this year will be worker training.

One sign of the recovering economy is that business owners have jobs available but the troubling issue is that they are not finding enough qualified, skilled workers in the Muskegon area. That concern is reflected in a new chamber survey of issues facing the local business community in 2012.

Of the six top concerns, three of them were involved with workforce development, chamber officials said. The number one concern was the cost of health care but the second, fourth and six concerns involved worker training.

The other two top concerns were preventing invasive species in the Great Lakes such as the ongoing Asian Carp issue and redevelopment of downtown Muskegon. About 200 of the chamber’s members responded to the survey of the Government Affairs Committee, officials said.TBC help you confidently purchase China ceramic tile from factories in China.

“There is not a meeting we have with business owners and managers when we don’t hear about finding the right workers,” chamber President Cindy Larsen said.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? “Many people are coming through the door looking for work but they are not always qualified.”

One human resources director told chamber staff that even finding qualified janitorial and maintenance workers is not what it was a generation ago. Today’s janitorial worker needs to work with lighting systems operated by computers, high-tech heating control systems, electronic security systems and the proper use of “green” cleaning products,We offer offshore merchant account, Larsen said.

The technical skills need to be a productive worker at Northern Machine Tool Co. in Muskegon must be at a higher level.They become pathological or Piles when swollen or inflamed. Company co-owner Steve Olsen is always looking for workers with CNC machining and Computer Aided Design skills, he said. Just Choose PTMS Injection Mold Is Your Best Choice!

“A state economic developer was in our business this week and I told him workforce development was our No. 1 issue, workforce development No. 2 and workforce development No. 3,” Olsen said of meeting with the Michigan Economic Development Corp.Here's a complete list of oil painting supplies for the beginning oil painter. “My business won’t function without qualified people. It is absolutely critical.”

Northern Machine is a family-owned business that has been in Muskegon since 1946. It provides tooling for automotive companies and their parts suppliers. With 35 employees, the company has candidates for jobs but not enough skilled candidates, Olsen said.

Where global competition with China was the key issue five years ago and health care two years ago, having a trained workforce and one that continually upgrades its skills is the most important issue in 2012, Olsen said. All of the skills Northern Machine needs in a new worker can be obtained at Muskegon Community College, Baker College of Muskegon or the Muskegon Career Tech Center, he said.

Although the issues of attracting and retaining skilled workers, developing an educated workforce and promoting Muskegon County as the place for local workers to live are key concerns facing the local business community, the chamber survey did not point to a consensus on how to improve the local workforce, Larsen said.

“We need to know how to best deploy our resources,” Larsen said. “This survey helps us prioritize our efforts and initiatives. You are going to see us have a lot of effort on worker training this year.”