INDIANAPOLIS — Lawrence Tynes hated football. too much hitting, too much pain.

the native of Scotland preferred soccer when he was growing up in Florida, which was the latest stop for his military family. a lot of his friends spent their time tugging on helmets and lacing up shoulder pads, but he didn’t want anything to do with it.

given that background, it’s quite surprising that he’s a major figure in football’s biggest game.

the new York Giants kicker will play in his second Super Bowl on Sunday against the new England Patriots, the team he helped to beat in the title game four years ago. It’s a big stage for someone who wanted nothing to do with the game as a teenager.

“It’s pretty weird how it worked out,” Tynes said.

There’s no disputing that he really stumbled onto his Super path.

the 33-year-old kicker was born in Greenock, Scotland, where his father — a U.S. Navy officer — met his mother. the family moved to Florida when he was 11, and he did his best to blend in at Milton High School.

Football? Uh-uh. Had to draw the line somewhere.

“I didn’t like this game that I am playing on Sunday because it was tackling and physical,” he said.

During his junior year, his physical education teacher — and the football team’s defensive coordinator — asked him to see how far and straight he could kick a football. the team needed a kicker; Tynes was a good soccer player.

“I said, ‘certainly,”’ Tynes recalled. “So I went out to the baseball field, he throws his keys down in front of where I was going to kick and he said, ‘Kick the ball and pick my keys up,’  just to keep my head down.”

he kicked it long and straight. His friends urged him join the team. he made a life-changing decision.

“I am glad I did, because the only reason I did it was to hang out with my buddies in practice,” he said.

Tynes became so good at it that he became the kicker at Troy University, where he was a teammate of Osi Umenyiora. the Kansas City Chiefs signed him as a free agent in 2001, starting a pro career that meandered for a few years.

he was released by the Chiefs before the 2001 season, then signed again after the season, only to be released a second time. he played for the Scottish Claymores in the NFL Europe league, then signed with Ottawa of the Canadian Football League for two seasons.

INDIANAPOLIS — Lawrence Tynes hated football. too much hitting, too much pain. the native of Scotland preferred soccer when he was growing up in Florida, which was the latest stop for his military family. a lot of his friends spent their time tugging on helmets and lacing up shoulder pads, but he didn’t want anything to do with it. given that background, it’s quite surprising that he’s a major figure in football’s biggest game. the new York Giants kicker will play in his second Super Bowl on Sunday against the new England Patriots, the team he helped to beat in the title game four years ago. It’s a big stage for someone who wanted nothing to do with the game as a teenager. “It’s pretty weird how it worked out,” Tynes said. There’s no disputing that he really stumbled onto his Super path. the 33-year-old kicker was born in Greenock, Scotland, where his father — a U.S. Navy officer — met his mother. the family moved to Florida when he was 11, and he did his best to blend in at Milton High School. Football? Uh-uh. Had to draw the line somewhere. “I didn’t like this game that I am playing on Sunday because it was tackling and physical,” he said. During his junior year, his physical education teacher — and the football team’s defensive coordinator — asked him to see how far and straight he could kick a football. the team needed a kicker; Tynes was a good soccer player. “I said, ‘certainly,”’ Tynes recalled. “So I went out to the baseball field, he throws his keys down in front of where I was going to kick and he said, ‘Kick the ball and pick my keys up,’  just to keep my head down.” he kicked it long and straight. His friends urged him join the team. he made a life-changing decision. “I am glad I did, because the only reason I did it was to hang out with my buddies in practice,” he said. Tynes became so good at it that he became the kicker at Troy University, where he was a teammate of Osi Umenyiora. the Kansas City Chiefs signed him as a free agent in 2001, starting a pro career that meandered for a few years. he was released by the Chiefs before the 2001 season, then signed again after the season, only to be released a second time. he played for the Scottish Claymores in the NFL Europe league, then signed with Ottawa of the Canadian Football League for two seasons. the Chiefs signed him again in 2004, and he played three seasons there before the Giants acquired him in a trade for a seventh-round draft pick on May 27, 2007. good deal for everybody. Tynes immediately became part of Giants lore, kicking a 47-yard field goal in overtime of the NFC championship game at Lambeau Field that got new York into the Super Bowl. the Giants beat the Patriots for the title on Eli Manning’s late touchdown pass. Tynes got them back to the Super Bowl this season with another decisive kick, making a 31-yarder in overtime at San Francisco for the NFC championship. He’s enjoying his second title-game trip more than the first. “I really am trying to because the last time, I told my wife, the last one was a blur,” he said. “Let’s really enjoy this one. I am 33 now and hope to play a lot longer, (but) you never know when you are going to get back here. I am taking in everything. I have taken a lot more pictures since I have been here.” he didn’t get a chance for a game-winning kick in his first Super Bowl. given how closely the Giants and Patriots have played each other, there’s a chance it could happen on Sunday. “They’re like walk-off homers,” Tynes said. “those are fun, that’s the only word to describe it. You get to turn around and see 52 grown men acting like kids again. That’s the best part.” the worst part? what happens if he gets the chance and misses. It’s something that’s never completely out of mind for a kicker. “I get nervous,” Tynes said. “I am not a robot, but I certainly know how to deal with it. That’s what kind of separates guys. It’s if you can deal with the pressure and the nerves.” He’s been pretty good at that since he looked down at the car keys and made that kick on a high school baseball field in Florida.  

Super Bowl: Giants kicker once hated football is a post from: pirati.net

When you are looking for antique perfume bottles there are some common pitfalls most people fall into. Let me share them with you know, so you won`t!

First, failing to assess the correct condition of the bottle.

A reason for this could be that there are many factors at play when we look at the condition of a bottle and that buying bottles online has become more common incidentelty making this process harder. The obvious place to start is to carefully examine the bottle. this means taking your time and not be in a rush. this will hinder you from buying a bottle you thought was in good condition, only to come home and find out that the bottle had a chip. Every collector, even the newbie, wants to buy an antique perfume bottle that is as close to the original condition as possible. hence, there are several defects that will move it away from original condition as well as lower the value of the bottle. You should, with great care, check the bottle for any chips or cracks. Cracks are generally considered worse that chips, but both bring the value of the bottle down. how much depends on how common the bottle is. a “reproduction” or a very common bottle will almost ahve no value, compared for instance to a famous Lalique perfume bottle. 

next, you should check the stopper or cap, which should be in excellent condition. You should also check paper labels for tairs or stains, which also lowers the value of the bottle. Stains can also appear on the bottle itself, from the contents or from being burried. professionals can clean bottles with such stains.

Second, determining the rarity of the bottle:

Do not think that a bottle is worth more due to the fact that it looks old! The same can be said of the rarity of a bottle. a bottle could be very rare indeed but that alone doesn`t necessary make it valuable at all. There are other factors at play, but when they are there rarity can play a big part of the value. Rarity refers to how many bottles are available on the market, not as commonly believed how many bottles were made. therefore demand also has an inpact on the degree of rarity. The rarer the piece the more valuable it is to collector. this also holds for newer bottles that might be rarer than an older bottle. following is an excerpt from “American Glass” by Mckearin:

• <150 = Common to very common
• 75-150 – Comparatively scarce
• 35-75 – Scarce
• 20-35 – Rare
• 1-10 – Extremely rare

This scale can be used as general guideline to give you some idea about the rarity of a certain bottle! But the best idea is to refer to a price guide to be on the safe side.

Third, checking the packaging of the bottle.

As we all have seen not all bottles comes in the original box, but if it does it will most certainly add to the value. it is something you might even think about when looking for your next bottle, but it is certainly worth to look for.

I will leave you with the final advice of getting an Antique Price Guide to consilidate before buying your next Antique Perfume Bottle!

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Do you make these mistakes when buying a perfume bottle.. – Antique Perfume Bottles Antique Perfume Bottles is a post from: pirati.net

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1816) represents a conceptually and structurally troublesome text.  His ideology, critical theory, discursive practice, and writing process resisted and confronted the creative limitations institutionalized by the literary marketplace.  Readers and critics have been perplexed by this text since its initial publication.  Early reviewers like William Hazlitt, Francis Jeffrey, and John Wilson dismissed the project as a complete literary and critical failure, a book that presented little more than a rambling and uninteresting apology for Coleridge’s writerly inadequacies.  this text has equally frustrated twentieth-century critics and scholars, many of whom find it difficult to determine its literary, scholarly, critical, or autobiographical value.[1]  indeed, most wonder if it is even a “book” at all.  In this paper I argue that the physical structure of this complex work is not so troubling as most readers contend; rather, it demonstrates Coleridge’s reactionary style.  this style can be characterized as conversational pastiche, and it is a reaction against traditional book manuscript conventions and strict marketplace expectations for literary production.

From our historical perspective, we can easily acknowledge the vastness of Coleridge’s “writing”; the sheer number of pages of his writing is astounding.  Yet during his lifetime, Coleridge really did not publish a whole lot, and therefore was not a widely respected scholar, critic, or poet.  he knew that his contemporaries questioned his writing skills, and in the Biographia Coleridge begrudges those who criticized him for not having produced enough printed material:  “But are books the only channel through which the stream of intellectual usefulness can flow?  is the diffusion of truth to be estimated by publication; or publications by the truth, which they diffuse or at least contain?” (BL I 220).  Throughout his career, Coleridge was obsessed with providing objective Truth for his audiences, and he struggled with discovering the very best way to share his knowledge.[2]  the Biographia is indeed a major product of this intellectual and spiritual struggle.  It is a “book of truth” that demonstrates he can produce lengthy scholarship and that catalogues various truths as he knew them or that he discovered through his own intellectual and scholarly activities.  the Biographia is a defense of his writing career and a record of his literary life that links him to the great thinkers and writers of antiquity, Germany, and England.  by publishing this book, Coleridge attempted to establish himself as a key figure in a rich English literary and critical heritage and to proclaim what it should mean to be a man of letters in nineteenth-century England.

Even though the Biographia as a book is indeed an acknowledged failure, it is not a discursive mess that deconstructs itself.  rather, it provides its own context in which to view it as a successful critique of that medium which rejects it.  In other words, its failure as a model book is in fact its critical victory.  What Coleridge attempts to demonstrate in the Biographia is that structure, form, and unity of a book are not nearly so significant as the structure, form, and unity of thought and truth:  “Would that the criterion of a scholar’s utility were the number and value of the truths, which he has been the means of throwing into the general circulation; or the number and value of minds, whom by his conversation or letters, he has excited into activity, and supplied with the germs of their after-growth!” (BL I 220).[3]  Ultimately, Coleridge produces a scholarly text that is not the type of commodity the commercial marketplace expected.  In publishing the Biographia he attempts simultaneously to prove that he can publish and to introduce an alternative discourse through which to critique the very public sphere that rejected him.

This alternative discourse is best described in terms of politicized bricolage and pastiche.[4]  It is important to note here that Coleridge’s political bricolage was not unique; for, in fact, he borrowed from a rich biblical and radical literary tradition that informed much political discourse of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Coleridge positions himself as a cultural sage and prophet, and he follows the biblical prophetic mode of combining several rhetorical and narrative genres into a singular prophetic fusion.  Leslie Tannenbaum, in his book Biblical Tradition in Blake’s Early Prophecies, explains that William Blake’s “great code of art” borrows heavily from various prophetic genres which fuse nonchronological and episodic structures with digressive narrative methods into an internally and thematically “unified” prophetic form that was itself a critical discourse:  “Blake would find a principle of form existing in the Bible that was based not on external rules, but on a principle of inner coherence that served the poet-prophet’s need to protest against the moral, religious, and political abuses of the time.  All genres would provide ammunition for this end, allowing the poet to move freely from one to another according to his particular rhetorical purpose” (35).  Similarly, Coleridge combines multiple genres—including periodical essays, published “books,” poetry, letters, notebooks, and marginalia—into a single work, and he shifts among various discursive modes—like writing, conversation, oration, lectures, dictation—to satisfy his rhetorical needs and to achieve his critical aims.  furthermore, Coleridge would have understood biblical prophetic form to be a nonlinear, nonchronological, and heterogeneous literary form, as this interpretive perspective was discussed by Thomas Howes, the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century biblical exegete.  Tannenbaum notes that such views concerning prophetic form “were available in contemporary works on rhetoric and literary criticism, commentaries on old Testament prophets, and, most importantly, commentaries on the Book of Revelation, which was universally acknowledged to be the summation and the most perfect embodiment of all biblical prophecy” (36).  as a reader of the Bible, a theologian, and a commentator on the relationship between the Church and State, Coleridge was familiar with biblical narrative structure, and it is clear that like Blake and other late 18th-century religious and political radicals, Coleridge’s non-traditional literary style was influenced by biblical prophetic forms.

Coleridge’s discursive bricolage also draws from the rhetorical style used by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century radical writers.  In the book Dangerous Enthusiasms John Mee notes that radicals from 1795 to 1840 produced texts that eclectically combined a number of different genres and styles into a transgressive political discourse (4).  Although Coleridge was not a radical in the strictest sense by the time he wrote and published the Biographia, he was clearly demonstrating a similar critical practice and produced a politicized bricolage steeped in theological idealism as well as transcendental metaphysics.  Mee further notes that many radicals in the 1790s, particularly the lower-class radicals, “took up the role of the bricoleur; they relished breaking down those discourses which had cultural authority and creating from them new languages of liberation” (9).[5]  clearly, Coleridge was not a lower-class radical, but as Nicholas Roe points out in his book Wordsworth and Coleridge: the Radical Years, he very much engaged the practices, thoughts, ideas, and discourses of the 1790s radical and dissenting movements.  I am arguing that from this theological and radical discursive tradition, Coleridge models his critical practice and attempts to resist the demands of the publishing industry.

The Biographia is the best example of Coleridge’s critical bricolage.  Many critics have struggled to comprehend the discursive complexity of this text—which is primarily a pastiche of literary, philosophical, and moral fragments taken from notebook entries, prior publications, letters, lectures, and conversations—but these discussions have centered mainly on the topic of his plagiarism.  Charges of plagiarism in the Biographia date back to Thomas De Quincey’s 1834 article in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine occasioned by Coleridge’s death.  this tradition of outlining and discussing Coleridge’s plagiarism continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[6]  However, in his book Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition Thomas McFarland adds an interesting component to this debate by suggesting that scholars should consider this plagiarism issue in relation to discursive practices:  “for the very multiplicity of instances [of Coleridge's 'borrowings']—far more than at first charged, and by no means as yet all identified—suggests the explanation, bizarre though it may seem, that we are faced not with plagiarism, but with nothing less than a mode of composition—composition by mosaic organization rather than by painting on an empty canvas” (Pantheist Tradition 27).  I too find that we must think more about Coleridge’s plagiarism in the context of his discursive activity and critical practice.  But I don’t want to dismiss plagiarism totally.  McFarland’s main reason for losing the term plagiarism (and replacing it with “borrowings”) has more to do with his critique of the moral and ethical issues that have dominated the controversy.  according to McFarland, in order to understand the function and operation of Coleridge’s borrowings in terms of composition practices, we must get beyond charging Coleridge with plagiarism.  I would agree in part, as “charges of plagiarism” privileges universalistic concepts of genius and originality and ignores the realities of knowledge construction as dialogue or conversation.  However, instead of denying plagiarism (or categorizing it as a symptom of psychological depravity) and privileging metaphors of painting to describe Coleridge’s discursive practice, I suggest we consider his work in terms of pastiche or bricolage which can acknowledge and recontextualize notions of plagiarism.  While we may continue to consider plagiarism “wrong” or academically “unethical,” we cannot deny its place and at times key role in the process of creative acts that piece together various items into a pastiche, a synthesis of disparate parts that simultaneously achieves unity as it foregrounds multiplicity.

Our understanding of Coleridge’s fragmentary language, his plagiarism, and his unity in multiplicity is greatly enhanced by Jerome Christensen’s analysis of the Biographia in his book Coleridge’s Blessed Machine of Language.  Christensen describes Coleridge’s writing as marginal exegesis:  “Although Coleridge has appropriated passages from other writers, every word in the Biographia has become his.  a book is not a mosaic.  Words are not brightly colored stones, which the artist finds and then arranges on a background; even the crude facsimile of the most clumsy plagiarist alters its source by mediation and displacement.  …What Coleridge practices is not mosaic composition but marginal exegesis, not philosophy but commentary” (104-05).  Christensen notes that McFarland’s mosaic model reduces Coleridge to a skillful crafter who has little originating power and who simply arranges colored stones,[7] denying the mediating aspects of his composition; and Christensen demonstrates that Coleridge’s writing makes the writing of others his own and directly applicable to his contemporary conversation.  according to Christensen, Coleridge strips his language of a single and stable center, destabilizing its internal referential structure and extending the circumference of significance beyond the originating texts.

Yet this notion of marginal exegesis itself limits Coleridge’s complex discursive methods and reformulations, suggesting that he mainly wrote on and around the primary works of other scholars—a commentator, not a philosopher.  furthermore, marginal exegesis privileges written discourse, especially books, for the term calls to mind heavy glossing and marginal scribbling—to be a marginal exegete requires that one scribble in the margins of printed texts and to limit one’s generative work to note taking and commentary.  Coleridge’s practice was more than this.  Marginal exegesis does not account for Coleridge’s lecturing and conversation.  further, many of his published works were in fact dictated, written transcriptions of Coleridge’s verbal attempts to synthesize his notes, letters, marginalia, lectures, previous publications, and other scholars’ works.  Coleridge was a weaver of discursive tapestry who fused multiple and disparate ideas from a variety of media into written works that struggled against the conventions of the publishing industry.

We see this conversational tapestry illustrated clearly in Coleridge’s lectures on literature, in which he drew from a variety of sources, often not citing them unless they would be readily familiar to his audiences.  In his lectures on Shakespeare, he borrowed primarily from eighteenth-century English and German critics and philosophers, often using German methods and principles to revise the judgments made by English critics.  Plagiarism, again, characterizes Coleridge’s critical practice; in this case, he borrowed heavily from Schlegel’s lectures on Shakespeare to make many of his points against past assessments of the great English bard.  the lectures are pieced together from fragmentary notes written on loose pages, in his notebooks, on the backs of lecture tickets, in the margins of books, in his letters, and in revised published works.  Just like the Biographia, which is a dictated tapestry of multiple texts, his lectures were idiosyncratic yet scholarly programmatic combinations of fragmentary ideas and observations that, when finally collated, often worked to move from the general to the particular, to unify disparate pieces into a critical whole representing fundamental aspects of Coleridge’s principles for and practices of critical judgment.  the significant point here is that pastiche and orality informed the bulk of his “writing” in the Biographia and lectures and formed the basis of his critical discourse.

The relationship of oral tapestry in the lectures to the orality or conversational manner of the Biographia is readily apparent once we consider its dominant mode of production:  dictation.  Instead of imposing upon this book the expectations of a rigid structure or a focused argument, we can view it as a transcript of a rather long conversation Coleridge had with John Morgan.  indeed, parts of the book are focused and contain a tight structure, but the characterizing style is that of conversation and lecture.  Christensen notes that many “local promiscuities” have annoyed readers since its publication: untraceable references, “capricious coinages,” confusing leaps in logic, and unnecessarily digressive footnotes, concluding that “[t]here seems to be no suitable explanation for such errancies ” (120).  interestingly, these very same attributes that irritate readers of the Biographia constitute the essence of what made him such a popular and idolized orator.  Coleridge was notorious for speaking for hours on many different topics on a variety of intellectual levels, though often soaring over the heads of most attendees of his lectures, conversations, or table talk.  he did frequently coin new words and terms.  His conversation often took jarring jumps in logic or spun off into non sequiturs, explaining the etymology of terms or exploring the philosophical context or religious debates surrounding a minute issue at hand.  the most obvious explanation for the Biographia‘s apparent, and, for so many, annoying “errancies” is that he modeled his written discourse after his conversational mode.  the Biographia is an oral text, a conversational book that challenges the patience of its readers and the conventions of book publishing.  as Christensen suggests, “the theme of the Biographia is its test as book” (121).

In addition to mixing writing and lecturing, Coleridge’s critical tapestry is also characterized by epistolary and conversational forms.  Coleridge was very much aware of his epistolary style and even referred to himself as a writer of pastiche.  In a drafted yet (characteristically) unpublished advertisement or preface to his essay on the Constitution of Church and State (1829) Coleridge writes, “the Volume might have been entitled Epistolary Disquisitions, or Extracts from a series of Letters on the word, <Idea; and on the> Constitution, the State, the Church, and according to the Idea.  … to say, it is patchy … is but another less courteous way of conveying the same description.  for the Work purports to be a Pasticcio” (CS lv-lvi).  Pasticcio is an Italian term that in music refers to a dramatic assemblage of various songs, dances, and other musical and theatrical elements;[8] and it is, once again, in the Biographia that Coleridge is at his pasticcio best, particularly in the case of the attached letters.  Most critics and scholars dismiss the Satyrane’s Letters as nonsensical filler used as a last desperate effort to fulfill the publisher’s demands for a double volume work in which both volumes were of relatively equal length.  But Coleridge could have selected any other textual filler, such as poems, articles, and lectures.  Instead, he chose to juxtapose these private conversations with his more scholarly and critical musings, thus transforming the nature and content of public discourse.  His critique of critical and scholarly practice relies upon the belief that the measure of a true scholar or critic depends not merely upon the number of publications but also on the content of the truth and knowledge shared with others.  Coleridge raises the common letter—private conversation—to the status of scholarship and public discourse, offering the letter as an appropriate medium for the creation and distribution of knowledge.

These letters were intended to be “journalistic” notes to his wife and Thomas Poole; however, by publishing them in the Biographia he transforms them into epistolary conversations with his readers.  the topics of these conversations often center on issues of community formation and literary debate, and their structure follows his conversational style.  In many of these letters, Coleridge slips into extended digressions that move us away from journalism toward a type of ethnographic study of his surroundings and the people he encounters.  In the second letter from Ratzeburg, for example, he describes the manner of style, dress, and custom of the Hamburg men traveling on a riverboat from Hamburg to Harburg.  he breaks from his description and immediately admonishes himself:  “But I forget my promise of journalizing as much as possible” (BL II 176).  Shortly after he returns to “journalizing,” he is off again on a tangential discussion of gentlemanly behavior:  “In short, the gentlemanly character arises out of feeling of Equality acting, as a Habit, yet flexibly to the varieties of Rank, and modified without being disturbed or superseded by them” (BL II 176).  In the larger thematic context of the Biographia, these passages concerning the descriptions of various types or ranks of people and the dissertations on gentlemanly behavior are directly related to his concern with critical practice in the literary public sphere.  we witness Coleridge’s concerted effort to identify and fashion specific audiences and to engage this audience through a conversational discourse.  In this way, these letters and their narratives become metaphors for his larger project.

This desire to create an intimate and conversational public sphere is reinforced by another anecdote describing an elderly French emigrant Coleridge and Wordsworth befriended on their trip to Germany and who becomes in this letter the exemplary gentleman and critic:

            I owe this digression, as an act of justice, to this amiable Frenchman, and of humiliation to myself.  for in a little controversy between us on the subject of French poetry, he made me feel my own ill behavior by the silent reproof of contrast, and when I afterwards apologized to him for the warmth of my language, he answered me with a cheerful expression of surprise, and an immediate compliment, which a gentleman might both make with dignity and receive with pleasure.  (BL II 176)

In this seemingly unimportant or insignificant little, elderly French emigrant, Coleridge is faced with his own critical impropriety, his own aggressive critical practice.  he receives in return a “silent reproof of contrast,” a reflection of what he was not and of what he desires to become:  a genial critic.  by themselves, these letters seem superfluous; but if read in light of Coleridge’s intentions for writing the Biographia, we can understand them to be stylistically and thematically integral to his critical program.[9]  Ultimately, Coleridge seeks to cultivate a specialized Clerisy, an exclusive gentlemanly club of readers and intellectuals who could understand and participate in epistolary and conversational pastiche and who would then share the cultural insights with the masses on their own discursive levels.

In the Biographia Coleridge does not present us with a unified system of thought or discourse; rather, he offers a body of work that reveals a mind in process and a mouth in constant motion.  Coleridge waged a battle of language.  he fought against the despotism of a commercial market that, in his mind, denied him the cultural position he desired, and he resisted the tyranny of the book that could not accept the fragmentariness and ambivalence of his composition process.  While his ultimate cultural project was politically and socially conservative, his linguistic strategies were rhetorically antithetical to the literary establishment.  It could be that his conversational tapestry was merely a desperate act of a pathetic man who indulged self-pity and perverse egocentricity.  But we must not forget that he was a man with a cultural mission:  to refashion criticism in his own image and to create a critically informed audience.  Arguably, the conversational structure of his oral tapestry was the underpinning of what he hoped would be the new critical discourse.

Coleridge’s Conversational Tapestry is a post from: pirati.net

Winter weather is headed our way and for many of us that means we could find ourselves stuck inside for a while.

There are those of us that will have to head out onto the roads.  for you, AT&T has issued some tips to keep in your back pocket during the coming storm.

First, use text messaging.  During an emergency situation, text messages go through quicker than voice calls because they require less system resources.

Second, program emergency numbers into your phone.  Make sure all your emergency numbers, including family members, the hospital, police and fire station are in your phone. 

Third, limit non-emergency calls.  Keeping calls to a minimum will conserve battery power and free up wireless networks for emergencies.

Make sure you charge your wireless devices.  Make sure all of your devices are charged before the storm arrives.  Car charges can be especially helpful to ensure you have back up power.

And finally become an amateur StormTracker.  Use weather apps, like StormTracker 59 Weather to track the storm. 

Beckley, Bluefield & Lewisburg News, Weather, SportsWinter Weather Tips and Your Phone is a post from: pirati.net

Warhammer 40,000 est un jeu de plateau avec figurines de Games Workshop qui f

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine : Pour l’Empereur ! – Chroniques de l’ab is a post from: pirati.net

This article looks at some of the fun ways you can show your team mates some appreciation at sports presentation. It provides some good and fun ideas on football trophies that you can give to the special members of your team.

Trophies are an important part of any sport including football, at the end of a tournament there will be a prize giving including football trophies. by giving out trophies people have something to remember the day with a feeling of pride, even more so if they won.

However, if you decide to customise your trophies you will make it that little bit more special. It is possible to customise trophies on many levels, from having a recipient’s name engraved on the bottom, to having an entire trophy created in whatever form you want. It can often be more costly but will be treasured for a long time.

There is even more of a novelty factor for children to have their names on football trophies. for adults, they will appreciate how their name has been carved into history; they will relish how all subsequent receivers of the trophy will know it was once held by them.

When attending awards ceremonies, participants may not be as enthusiastic if they are all handed the same generic trophy as everyone else. If you take the time to add the personal touch then recipients will feel more valued as a team member. If they have not, they might just feel a part of the crowd.

Sometimes if there is an award ceremony at a school there are lots of different trophies handed out at the same time. It would be a nice idea to make the trophies for the children unique so they can be differentiated in relation to which sport they have been doing. Examples of this included using a football shape for football trophies or a tennis racket for tennis trophies.

Ways to Liven Up You Awards Ceremony With Customised Football Trophies is a post from: pirati.net

Portsmouth’s Carl Hyatt contributes to ‘Modernist Photography’  at the Currier

Carl Hyatt is among more than 70 photographers whose work is on display in “A new Vision: Modernist Photography,” the new exhibition at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester. the significant collection emphasizes the modern way of seeing the world that came about around the turn of the 20th century; a view that was influenced by industry and the changing landscape, and furthered by the technology of photography.

A number of advancements around that time managed to make life both more productive and more leisurely, such as factories, railroads and power lines. with those innovations came a new aesthetic of straight lines and angles, repetitive patterns and simple shapes. Photographers were there not just to document these development, but to find the beauty in it, using the unique ability of cameras to see different perspectives.

The two photographs that Hyatt contributes to the exhibition are considered perfect examples of the modern aesthetic. one is an image from his “Portsmouth Harbor Salt Pile Series,” which abstractly captures man’s seemingly miraculous achievements, while the other is a cropped nude that calls attention to the delicate form of the individual. 

But Hyatt said he doesn’t use the modernist label, nor does his traditional approach entirely fit within its connotation.    

“For me, art is a sacred undertaking,” he said.

His studio in the Button Factory in Portsmouth is filled with artifacts, like masks and folk art, from his travels to learn about indigenous cultures, particularly those that still have shamans. he regularly visits Peru, where he said his notions about nature were confirmed by the people there, some of whom he’s photographed.

“My basic inspiration is that nature is alive and conscious,” he said. “Our culture doesn’t think that way. Stuff is stuff. but indigenous cultures always thought that way.” 

He said there are people whose entire culture is based on stones, and he also has a fondness for them that draws him to the rocky coast. there are piles of smooth or broken stones as well as gourds and branches in his studio.

Hyatt, like Thoreau, believes in taking the time to look deeply into the place where you live. For three years, he studied the massive salt piles that help define the Port City’s character. “Moment by moment, every day it changes,” he said.

He hopes to put a small selection of the many photos he’s taken into a book.

Hyatt still uses equipment that’s now considered antique, including a large format viewfinder camera with 8-by-10-inch film. the quality of the high resolution print, the detail and light, cannot be manipulated digitally. he also said the slower, more deliberate way of working with film is in line with his process.

He generally produces platinum prints for their rich depth. he does have some digital prints made to achieve large landscapes that look like you could walk into them, but he says there’s no reason to do that with nudes, since the smaller image is more intimate and sensuous. 

At the Currier, Hyatt’s photograph of a nude is paired nicely with two works by Edward Weston—another nude and a detail of a cypress tree with a similar curvaceous interest. Hyatt said he admires Weston’s work and shares his careful consideration of subject matter.

The largest collection in the show is by Brett Weston, Edward’s son, and some of his work is among the most abstract.

Many of the photographs in the show represent a shift toward putting form and composition above subject matter. While Hyatt says modernism brought about an important way of seeing at a particular time, he thinks singular attention to form has become cliché.

“There’s that extra thing in really good art. It’s that thing you really can’t put your finger on,” he said.

Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Paul Strand were among the first American modernist photographers to move away from the pictorialist tradition that sought to emulate the atmospheric effects of paintings and to earn photography its own critical acclaim.

Featuring more than 150 works displayed in three rooms, “A new Vision: Modernist Photography” also includes historic American photographers like Margaret Bourke-White, Man Ray and Charles Sheeler, as well as European artists like Lotte Jacobi, László Moholy-Nagy, Helmar Lerski and Imre Kinszki. It is on display through may 13.

The Currier Museum of Art is located at 150 Ash St. in Manchester. For more information, visit currier.org.

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Modern world is a post from: pirati.net

When most people shop for home audio speakers they often find a lot of information, but don’t know what much of it means. The purpose of this article is to provide a basic understanding of some of the key elements in speakers and to offer some guidelines for the average audio consumer.

Most home audio speakers bought today are 2-way speakers. This means the speaker has a woofer for low or bass sounds and a tweeter for high sounds. There are also 3-way speakers which add a mid-range and these can sound clearer, all things being equal. For most people, however, a good 2-way speaker is fine.

Home audio speakers typically come in either rectangular or round designs. Round ceiling speakers are ideal for background music and rectangular wall speakers are ideal for surround sound systems. with this said, in-wall speakers are often just not practical to install in a given room due to room lay-out and furniture. There are certain designs of round speakers which can help offset the inherent benefits of rectangular speakers for surround sound.

One of the problems with round ceiling speakers is that they basically send the sound straight down beneath them instead of out into the room or area most desired. however, some speakers offer angled woofers so that you can install them in the corners, for example, and still have the sound directed outward into the room.

Typical sizes for speakers are 5.5, 6.5 and 8 inch. The 8 inch will generally have stronger bass with the larger woofer. 8 inch speakers are recommended for surround sound systems and 6.5 inch for background music. I would not recommend 5.25 inch speakers except for very small rooms.

A dual voice coil home audio speaker helps handle small rooms where there isn’t really enough room to place two speakers. The dual voice coil speaker provides for both channels from the amplifier and these can be quite handy in bathrooms, for example.

Power ratings of speakers always get a lot of attention, but often too much attention because power is but one factor among several others. The fact is most people will rarely if ever use the full power of most speakers today because they would soon become deaf if they listened to music at peak power. Power is rated two ways; RMS and Peak. RMS essentially means the volume level the speaker can handle all day long without distorting. Peak is the top power level the speaker can handle before blowing. For most people in most homes, 40-50 watts RMS is plenty. some speakers only specify their Peak power rating and as a rule-of-thumb, divide the Peak rating by 2 to estimate the RMS rating.

The sensitivity rating should be 89db or more is the usual recommendation. This specification has to do with how clear the speaker sounds, and below 89db the sound clarity may be poor.

Range, or frequency response, represents the low and high end range of the speaker. here the low end range is the more important of the two, and typically, 45-50Hz is the low end of what most of us can hear. On the high end, most speakers today exceed what we can hear and usually they are 20KHz or more, which is well above what we can hear.

A speaker has to divide the signal coming into it between the tweeter and the woofer. The crossover is in effect a filter that performs this function, but whenever sound is divided there will be some signal loss. a crossover of 12db is the most common today, and again, is fine for most people. most speakers use passive crossovers, but some high-end speakers use active crossovers which are more sophisticated and allow for adjustments. few homeowners need speakers with active crossovers or want to make these kinds of adjustments.

The materials that woofers are made of are often cited in speaker specifications. Polypropylene is the most common material used and is okay, but bass sounds will not be as full as with other materials. Kevlar, fiberglass or aluminum woofers will cost more but do offer stronger bass end sounds. For true audiophiles with lots of money there are other highly specialized materials available, but again, just not needed for average listeners.

You will also find that some speakers today feature bridge mount tweeters and this can be a plus. Bridge mount tweeters do not penetrate the woofer cone and will not, therefore, interfere with the woofer low-end sound. This is not to say that there aren’t good speakers who do not bridge mount their tweeters because there are such speakers where very few people could tell the difference. however, the difference is there and if you want a superior speaker then a bridge mount tweeter is one consideration.

The range of speaker prices today is quite remarkable. The truth is you can buy a decent pair of ceiling speakers for as little as $40 and you can buy a great pair for $200. some people want the best and you can find those for as much as $1,500 a pair. As always, to some degree, you get what you pay for. however, it is also the case that the vast majority of us would have trouble telling the difference in sound from a good quality $100 speaker from a better quality $200 speaker.

Understanding Speakers and Speaker Guidelines is a post from: pirati.net

The availability of scarves of all colors and designs practically everywhere tendered this piece of accessory an ubiquitous part of any woman’s wardrobe. But not all scarves are made equal, some are made to look like the fashionable designer clothing accessory as they are, associated with some fashion icons like Hermes. But what really separated them form the lesser scarves is the price. In terms of quality and fashion sense, most lesser-priced scarves is even at par with these brand-name scarves.

But there are also lesser-priced scarves which are made of equally less quality material and craftsmanship. before, manufacturers of these tawdry accessories still made profits because most of their distributors cannot do anything but to continue on their plight for a lack of options. But with the kind of access clothing retail business to worldwide sources on materials, trends, and connections especially with the internet boom, one could easily dump those poor-quality manufacturers and suppliers and look somewhere else without much difficulty.

Wholesale scarves are the rage of the moment and knowing where to find wholesale scarves without compromising quality is definitely an advantage. There are countless suppliers offering quality and trendy scarves at wholesale prices online and you can even get big discounts when you make bulk orders. if you are a fashion accessory retailer or a fashion designer wanting to accentuate your creations with matching accessories, this could be a great bargain without compromising quality and good design. you have to check out your favorite wholesale directories online and visit some websites offering quality and affordable scarves for your business.

Where to Find Wholesale Scarves for Your Fashion Accessory Business? is a post from: pirati.net

Newt Gingrich’s recent proposal to colonize the moon is nothing new. Gingrich has been generating visionary extraterrestrial ideas at least since 1984, when he published a book called Window of Opportunity: a Blueprint for the Future.

and what a blueprint it was! here are just two of the space-related ideas Newt trotted out in that book:

1) Nocturnal Illumination. Gingrich wrote: “A mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.” The implications of this technology for law enforcement did not escape Newt’s attention: “Ambient light covering entire areas could reduce the current danger of criminals lurking in darkness.”

2) Helping the Handicapped. Gingrich saw and emphasized “the possible benefits of weightlessness to people currently restricted to wheelchairs.” this may sound farfetched, but Gingrich had done his homework; he reported that when he shared the idea with paraplegics they “begin asking questions in an enthusiastic tone.” I gleaned these two examples from a column for The New Republic that I wrote back in 1995, when Mickey Kaus and I were writing TNR’s TRB column on alternate weeks (and when TNR was a weekly). I’m reprinting the column, below, for two reasons: (1) I actually kind of like it; (2) it shows how long Newt has been giving conservatives good reason to doubt his bonafides.

The context for the column is that Gingrich had just gotten a lot of publicity for landing a $4.5 million book contract.

TRB FROM WASHINGTON: The $4 million mind

The New Republic, p. 6, Jan. 23, 1995

We stand at a crossroads between two diverse futures. O.K., I admit it: the previous sentence isn’t original to me. I was looking for an opening line with some oomph, and I lifted this one from the work of one of the most powerful writers of our time: Newt Gingrich. It is the first sentence in his book on America’s future. no, I don’t mean the book that a major New York publishing house is willing to spend millions publishing and promoting; that book isn’t written yet. I mean Window of Opportunity, published in 1984 by “Tom Doherty Associates”– and promoted via a $105,000 publicity budget donated by oil interests, textile interests, real estate interests and so on. But that’s another story. this week let’s use Window of Opportunity as the rare opportunity it is–a chance to glimpse a $4.5 million literary talent in action. to begin with, there is Gingrich’s justly celebrated use of imagery. Consider his description of how “welfare state” liberals wrecked the space program. When he writes that “the vision of a malaise-dominated decaying Western culture smothered the dream of a permanently manned station,” we feel as if we can see the malaise-dominated decay; and we watch, transfixed, as it (or, strictly speaking, the vision of it) slowly smothers a space station (or, technically, the dream of one). of course, more than Gingrich’s literary flair, it is his penetrating vision of the future that has made him such a sought-after writer. he reports, for example, that the modern economy calls for less and less physical labor, and then builds swiftly from this insight to the prediction that Americans “will increasingly … release the day’s tension by lifting weights, swimming or through contact sports.” Newtradamus has spoken. As Gingrich stresses repeatedly, the path to an “optimistic future” (one of the two diverse futures between which lies the crossroads at which we stand) passes through outer space. If the government had followed through on the 1969 moon landing, he says, then by 1984 we would have had two space stations and a colony on the moon. You might ask: what eventual benefits could justify such massive spending? Gingrich is ready for this question. “A mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.” Indeed, “ambient light covering entire areas could reduce the current danger of criminals lurking in darkness.” Also, don’t forget “the possible benefits of weightlessness to people currently restricted to wheelchairs.” Lending credence to this scenario, Gingrich reports that, if you describe it to paraplegics, they “begin asking questions in an enthusiastic tone.” The principle underlying this last idea–dubbed “compassionate high-tech” by its discoverer, Gingrich–admits to endless application. Since his book came out, there have been breakthroughs in the field of superconductivity. Should we launch a big federal research program? I say yes, and I think Gingrich will agree once he hears my logic. Superconductivity research involves very low temperatures. so on the roof of each laboratory we could build an ice-skating rink for underclass children who would be flown in to an adjoining heliport. “But what if it rains?” Luddite McGoverniks will ask. each rink would be covered with a geodesic dome, built by local prison inmates who would thus gain valuable job skills. there is a serious point here somewhere. Gingrich calls himself a ” conservative futurist,” yet when he gets futuristic he jettisons the conservative aversion to government involvement. Conservatives are supposed to ask, for example, “Mightn’t the market work better here than government spending?” But when the government spending is on technology, the only question Gingrich asks is, “Do I think this is cool?” The answer almost invariably is yes. For example, he thinks “home-based information systems using either the telephone or cable” are cool. thus “we need dozens of government-encouraged and subsidized efforts” to build such systems, so that we’ll find out which kind is best. Actually, since he wrote this, various media and telecom companies have proved willing, without special subsidy, to build expensive, suburb-size systems, installing living-room machines for videotext, multimedia, etc. so far the results can be summarized as follows: this is an excellent way to waste money. The whole notion of choosing a particular “type” of system is losing out to the realization that, if we provide capacious wires and a few industry-wide standards, the market will answer the hardware and software questions that Gingrich would have thrown our tax dollars at. Witness the “Minitel” example. in the early 1980s the French government decided what kind of on-line text-retrieval machines French homes would have. this did spur the creation of data services–home banking, and so on. But today these antique machines are so glacially slow that the physical infrastructure is stifling the development of new data-intensive on-line services, the kind featuring multimedia effects or even simple graphics. The United States now has gobs more computers and computer networks per capita than France, and its big networks, such as America Online, are invading French turf. back in 1984 Gingrich said Minitel “may make France the leading information-processing society in the world by the end of the century.” Better hurry. Gingrich also thinks health care technology is cool. Serious students of this subject worry that insurance insulates patients from the cost of technology, thus yielding lots of high-cost, low-benefit use and in turn steering too much of society’s resources to the further development of such machinery. But Gingrich wants more. in 1984 he wanted more cat-scan machines, and he wanted the government to provide a $100 million incentive for the development of user-friendly dialysis machines–even though “there are already companies and researchers interested in this problem.” The point here isn’t that Gingrich will now waste tons on technology. The current political climate will restrain this tendency. The point is that–in case you hadn’t noticed–there is little careful thought underpinning his enthusiasms, nothing solid beneath his unshakable self-assurance and his intense disdain for disagreement. (Did you know that the civil rights protests of the 1960s were a seminal contributor to America’s “epidemic of technological abhorrence”?) The man who would orchestrate a paradigm shift in American governance shows no inclination to clearly address this basic question: is government help required to reach a given social goal? and, lacking such clarity, he is at least as likely to say no when the answer is yes as to say yes when the answer is no. We stand at a crossroads between two diverse futures, and–wouldn’t you know it!–our compass is busted. I feel increasingly malaise-dominated.

Newt Gingrich’s History in Outer Space is a post from: pirati.net

• Tyler Clementi jumped off George Washington Bridge in September 2010
• Open letters by brother James – also gay – reveal thoughts about Tyler
• Says he misses his violin playing and admires him for coming out young
• Batch of photos of brothers as babies and children also in Out magazine

by mark Duell

Last updated at 11:32 PM on 1st February 2012

The older brother of Tyler Clementi today paid tribute to his sibling’s life through tragic open letters and family photos reflecting on their time together before the gay teenager committed suicide.

Tyler jumped from the George Washington Bridge between new Jersey and new York in 2010 after his college roommate allegedly used a webcam to spy on his intimate encounter with another man.

Now his brother James, who is also homosexual, has written about missing Tyler’s violin playing, looking at him on magazine covers and admiring him for coming out four years younger than he did.

Happy siblings: Tyler Clementi fatally jumped from the George Washington Bridge between new Jersey and new York. here he is pictured left with his older brother James, right, as children

‘it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t the only one, that I had a brother who was also gay – my baby brother, whom I had always felt protective and paternal toward,’ James wrote in Out magazine.

He remembered deciding to talk to his brother about being gay after walking in on him looking at gay porn and soon after listening to singer Katy Perry. ‘I’m gay,’ James said. Tyler replied: ‘oh. Me too.’

‘I was really taken aback by how assured and poised he was, how much better he understood himself and his desires than I did at 18,’ James wrote in Out. He then went onto reveal the letters.

James addresses his brother as ‘pipsqueak’, ‘Ty’ and ‘little Peanut’ in the letters, which talk about the brothers’ relationship, coming to terms with Tyler’s suicide and what he misses about him.

Buddies: James, pictured left as a child, who is now a homosexual as an adult, wrote about missing Tyler’s violin playing, seeing him on magazine covers and admiring him for coming out four years younger than he did

‘You were one noisy kid,’ he writes of his brother’s violin playing. ‘I remember walking inside and the most beautiful sounds of Tchaikovsky and Mozart would waft through every room. And I hated it.’

‘You were one noisy kid. I remember walking inside and the most beautiful sounds of Tchaikovsky and Mozart would waft through every room. And I hated it’

But James adds that he regrets not attending his brother’s concerts ‘because I had to listen to you play all the damn time at home’ and admits that Tyler was ‘really talented’ and had a clear gift.

James also writes about not being able to sleep, hating being with his family and needing to ‘escape my life’. When he visited a Barnes & Noble bookstore he saw Tyler on the cover of People magazine.

‘How am I supposed to respond to seeing you on People?’ he writes. ‘It’s a lot to digest, you being a celebrity and all. I always knew you would make it big – I just thought you’d be around to enjoy it.’

Vacation time: James, left, Tyler and middle brother Brian Clementi, right, on holiday together as a family

Young: Tyler’s death spurred a national conversation about the treatment young gays and lesbians often endure

He adds that his family has received huge support from hundreds of letters, thousands of people marching and millions following the story. ‘You were never alone,’ James writes. ‘it just felt like it.’

‘How am I supposed to respond to seeing you on People?. It’s a lot to digest, you being a celebrity and all. I always knew you would make it big – I just thought you’d be around to enjoy it’

‘I always thought that, between you and I, you were the stronger one,’ his letter says in Out magazine. ‘That’s why, as protective as I felt toward you, I never worried that much.

‘You are beauty, fleeting and marvellous. I know there was pain, and I’m sorry for that, but you were joy, too. your voice, your smile, tiny hands clinging to mine. I will never let go.’

Parents Joe and Jane Clementi have only recently decided to grant interviews to the media in an effort to promote the foundation they’re launching in their late 18-year-old son’s honour.

Playful: Tyler at home as a child. his parents have set up a foundation in their late 18-year-old son’s honour

‘The positive would be that the publicity did generate interest in some of these big issues that need to be addressed,’ mrs Clementi, a 53-year-old public health nurse, said last December.

‘I always thought that, between you and I, you were the stronger one. That’s why, as protective as I felt toward you, I never worried that much’

Tyler’s death spurred a national conversation about the treatment young gays and lesbians often endure. Leaders from President Barack Obama to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres weighed in.

The punk rock band Rise Against recorded a song about the suicides of bullied young gays. in new Jersey, politicians say they adopted a school anti-bullying law in part because of Tyler’s death.

The saga still is playing out in criminal court where the roommate, Dharun Ravi, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of 15 criminal counts, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation.

Well brought-up: Tyler was incredibly driven and meticulous – so responsible that his mother would ask him to do the family’s grocery shopping

Ravi is a citizen of India who is in the U.S. legally. Jury selection will be on February 17, and the trial is expected to begin in early March. He has no homicide charges connected to Tyler’s death.

‘The positive would be that the publicity did generate interest in some of these big issues that need to be addressed’

His defence lawyers will try to show jurors that factors other than the webcam issue and Ravi’s Twitter postings about it led Tyler to suicide. But prosecutors say the issue is Ravi’s alleged crimes.

Until recent months, Tyler’s life story has been told largely through what could be gleaned from court documents and his scattered online postings, including on some gay-oriented message boards.

Tyler was incredibly driven and meticulous – so responsible that his mother would ask him to do the family’s grocery shopping. while in high school, he always wanted to arrive early, his mother said.

Profile shot: until recent months, Tyler’s life story has been told largely through what could be gleaned from court documents and his scattered online postings, including on some gay-oriented message boards

Throughout his childhood, Tyler relied on his own extensive research, mostly online, to teach himself new hobbies. his interests included unicycling, cacti, the stock market and photography.

At 17, when he decided to get serious about bicycling, his parents were amused to watch as he used money from gifts and his savings to buy a bike and an abundance of gear for his hobby.

Tyler’s main passion was violin, even though he came from a family where no one else was a musician. while he usually shied from attention, he loved to perform at concerts and hear applause.

Music also was the center of his social life. But his parents noticed, belatedly, that while he was outgoing and sociable at rehearsals, he didn’t often see orchestra or school friends anywhere else.

Coming to terms; James, left, writes about not being able to sleep, hating being with his family and needing to ‘escape’. When he visited a Barnes & Noble bookstore he saw Tyler, right, on the cover of People magazine

He never had friends over, or went to the homes of others. If he was bullied, they said, he never brought it up. And as good as he was as a violinist, he decided music would not be his career.

He didn’t want to have to teach, his father said. And, even as a teenager, he was realistic about the downside of the career. ‘He didn’t like the unsteady paycheque,’ mrs Clementi said.

She said she was in the family’s living room a few days before her youngest son was to head off to college. Tyler, who had been watching TV downstairs, emerged. she said he was shaking.

She thought he was having fears about college. to her surprise, he told her he was gay. And he shared his doubts about faith, and his sorrow about not having closer friends.

Parents: Joe and Jane Clementi have only recently decided to grant interviews to the media in an effort to promote the foundation they’re launching in their late 18-year-old son’s honour

Each topic would have been a big one on its own – and a surprise to a mother who thought she knew what was going on. The news altered her expectations for his future.

The conversation ended with hugs and ‘I love you’s’. When she heard him a bit later, laughing at a ‘Seinfeld’ rerun, she thought he was OK. she thought she was the one who was struggling.

‘was I sad? Yeah, I was. You can’t help your feelings,’ she said, adding that she told him they could talk further later. Since college was about to start, they had to focus on getting him ready.

Joe Clementi, 55, a public works director, said that the next afternoon, he took Tyler for a car ride. ‘I told him: “You’ve got to be careful. Not everyone is accepting as some people are”.’

Mother: mrs Clementi said Tyler was uneasy about being a professional musician because he ‘didn’t like the unsteady paycheque’

Two days after that conversation, they were moving Tyler into Davidson Residence Hall C in Piscataway, part of the sprawling Rutgers campus, an hour’s drive from his new Jersey home.

In coming weeks, Tyler would talk with his parents every four or five days, with text messages exchanged in between. there was no sign of problems, his parents said.

But Tyler’s text messages to a few friends in court documents told a different story. in one series of messages, he said he had come out to his family: ‘Mom has basically completely rejected me.’

‘I don’t even see that as that,’ mrs Clementi said. ‘Though maybe children see things differently.’

‘You’re marvellous… I’ll never let go’: Brother of gay suicide teen Tyler Clementi pens heart-breaking letters to his dead sibling is a post from: pirati.net

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Yes, we know. The iPhone is the best selling smartphone in history. Does that make it the best? Does it have the latest and greatest technological innovations inside? Sure, it’s a beautifully crafted device for people that love what technology can do, but perhaps don’t necessarily want it to be to technical. It’s difficult to sum up why it is so popular without being offensive or obtuse, but really, it boils down to marketing, ease of use, and these two things contribute to its overall appeal. That being said, it won’t remain like this forever. Apple has a knack for adding technologies to their portfolio in a way that makes it seem like they are the ones that came up with it. this, however, isn’t the case. for anyone that knows what is inside today’s smartphones, they know that many, many researchers and companies are hard at work coming up with new designs, new technologies, and are working at a furious pace to improve the overall technological landscape. with this in mind, what sort of technological innovations can we look forward to in the months and years ahead? Let’s take a peak, shall we?

Several Japanese manufacturers including Panasonic and Fujitsu are pioneers in this space, and are bringing to market Android devices that are not just water resistant, but actually waterproof. for anyone that has ever lost a $500+ device because of the rain, or because they accidentally dropped it into a toilet, this will come as a huge step forward!

Video 

Dual cores, quad cores – so what? aside from the absolutely massive battery (3300mAh) in the RAZR MAXX, most devices can run out of juice pretty quickly when put under ultra heavy loads. That being said, a brilliant team of researchers at the University of Cambridge is hard at work on a variety of technologies designed to curtail excessive energy waste and to extend and contribute to overall battery life.

To extend the time between charges, the research group created a prototype device that converts ambient light into electricity using an array of  solar cells made up of super thin film “hydrogenated amorphous” silicon that fits within the phones display. Essentially you can think of it as a solar cell inserted in between the display that collect residual light in between charges. It’s smart because it’s currently an unused venue for harvesting additional power, and because it takes advantage of the smartphone display’s large footprint. The research team went on to say that in a typical organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, most of the light generated actually escapes out of the sides, with only about 36% actually being projected onto the front of the screen. That means that 64% escapes out of the sides. they wanted to take it a step further and harness this wasted light by putting thin-film photo voltaic cells around the display’s edges as well.

 More on this here

Researchers have long aspired to create a battery that is both long lasting, and fast charging. with significant applications for the medical, military, and commercial sectors, battery research is finally yielding some breakthroughs. Findings recently published in the March 20 online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology featured a group that developed a three-dimensional nanostructure for battery cathodes that enables significantly faster charging and discharging without giving up energy storage capacity.

“this system that we have gives you capacitor-like power with battery-like energy,” said Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering. “most capacitors store very little energy. they can release it very fast, but they can’t hold much. most batteries store a reasonably large amount of energy, but they can’t provide or receive energy rapidly. this does both.”

The performance of typical nickel metal hydride (NiMH) or lithium-ion (Li-ion) rechargeable batteries typically degrades substantially when they are either charged rapidly or discharged. The research group, led by Professor Braun, wrapped a very thin film into three-dimensional structure, which enable the battery to achieve the holy grail of battery achievement: high active volume (high capacity) and large current. they demonstrated that the battery electrodes can charge or discharge in a few seconds, 10 to 100 times faster than equivalent bulk electrodes, but can can still perform normally in existing consumer devices, like smartphones and tablets, and much more.

Remarkably, this kind of battery technology could soon lead to our smartphones, tablets, and notebooks being able to charge in minutes or even one day, seconds, thus removing the necessity for overnight charging. as our devices get more and more powerful, improvements in the area of battery technology such as this will likely be a very welcome addition, wouldn’t you agree?

More on this here, here, and here

Over the next few months, there’s going to be a ton of Quad (5 core, actually) Tegra 3 devices hitting the market. We’ve got the Lenovo K2010, with its 2GB of RAM and 1080p display, we’ve got the ASUS Transformer Prime, and the 700T variant with its 1080p display, and the ASUS Memo 370T, which comes in a 7 inch form factor, but is said to launch at the $249 price point. And there’s lots more coming too! in our discussion with NVIDIA and ARM, both are already actively working on octo (8) core SoC’s, which should be arriving in devices sometime in 2013. The thing to remember is that both companies have already demonstrated that they are increasing performance beyond that of Moore’s law, and that the trend is accelerating.

Not too long ago, Samsung disclosed that they were actively working on a dual core 2 Ghz Cortex A15 chip called Exynos 5250.  Despite not being quad or even eight core, this dual core 2 Ghz Cortex A15 chip is reputed to be at least 2.5x as powerful as the current dual core 1.2 Ghz Cortex A9 chip in the Galaxy S2.

Furthermore, Samsung demoed a 10 inch display that featured a resolution of 2560×1600, which blows away current resolution on tablets not even released yet. Our writer Lucian Armasu tracked down some intel on this beast in this post here.

We should all look forward to insanely powerful devices in the years ahead, with this trend unlikely to ever stop. of course, necessity is the mother of innovation, and in this case, I am confident that display technologies will continually improve, as will the batteries that continue to power the devices we know and love. More on this to come.

Not too long ago, Toshiba demonstrated what many consider to be the highest resolution display ever created for a mobile device.

Here’s the specs: 

• 6.1-inch LCD (to be further miniaturized to 4.65inch, and increase up to 10.1 inches, too)
• 2560×1600 resolution
• an extremely high density of 498 pixels per inch
• dubbed “photographic quality,” Toshiba said it even adds a sense of depth in 2D.
• 1000:1 contrast ratio and wide 176-degree viewing angles.
• Its color accuracy at 61 percent of the NTSC color range, which is substantially better than any mobile display on the market
• 3D capable

People always ask me, why do we need quad-core? Why do we need that much power? The truth is, with such extremely high resolution displays coming to our mobile devices in the near future, extremely powerful and responsive hardware will be required to maintain the 60 frames per second we demand as consumers, for smooth performance. Imagine how many pixels need to be changed simultaneously, even with a quick flick of the finger, as the screen has to redraw absolutely everything – at 60 frames per second. That’s a lot of calculations folks.  This particular display created by Toshiba has a resolution four times that of the iPad 1 & 2.

Rumors are persisting that Apple is aggressively courting Toshiba, as they’ve essentially burned a lot of bridges with their largest component supplier, Samsung, and many companies are actually actively withholding their latest and greatest from Apple in the hopes that they can bring their own devices to market, with their own technologies on board. That being said, companies love money, and that’s something Apple has a lot of.

Either way, we can all look forward to glorious HD filled futures, whether the displays are in our smartphones or tablets!

More on this here.

Here we have another design win out of Fujitsu, which looks to radically improve the security of our devices. to any of you that have followed the incorporation of Face Unlock in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, first featured in the Galaxy Nexus, this will likely be something that you are interested in.

Fujitsu has worked very hard to develop a “contactless palm vein pattern authentication technology” that uses our highly unique vascular patterns as personal identification data. Vein recognition technology is pretty much as secure as it gets because the authentication data exists inside the body itself, and is therefore almost impossible to forge. in their tests, they also showed that it is also highly accurate — in testing over 140,000 palm profiles of 70,000 individuals, it had a false acceptance rate of less than 0.00008% and a false rejection rate of 0.01%. not bad eh? maybe time to bust out the tinfoil hats, people. Either way, it’s way more secure than Face Unlock, which can be duped by a photo. Finger prints can be read and replicated, thus foiling finger print readers like the one in the Motorola Atrix. do you feel like your device is already secure enough? Would you welcome this additional security feature on your Android device?

More on this here.

Toshiba has come up with a wireless transfer protocol, called Transfer Jet, which looks like it has potential to revolutionize the way we transfer data in between devices. got a 1GB 720p movie? good luck Bluetoothing that. How about Wifi then? No thanks, still too long. Transfer Jet is a 360Mbps wireless transfer protocol that is able to send large files lightning quick.

More on Transfer Jet here!

We know, we know. You’ve got a beautiful device, but you’ve got greasy hands, right? Well, everyone does. It’s always a nuisance to to have to rub it clean, but it’s looking like this won’t always be the case. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have released some findings on an inexpensive way to coat displays with a “liquid-droplet” repellent. Check out the video below.

They discovered that by collecting soot from a burning candle that they could further heat the soot to enable calcination to occur, thus making the soot transparent. After testing this surface, the researchers found out that it was extremely durable, and could even withstand sandblasting. most importantly though, they realized it had other unique properties, and when the surface was sprayed with different liquids and water, the droplets “bounced up and down on the surface, became spherical, rolled off and left absolutely nothing behind”. Pretty cool, right? hopefully, we can all look forward to touchscreen displays that are water resistant, oil resistant, and soon – smudge proof!

We’ve got a lot to look forward to, folks. whether it’s faster processing, more intuitive software with Android 5.0 Jelly Bean, brighter and more astonishing displays, more RAM, increased storage, self charging devices, thinner devices, waterproof, dust proof, smudge proof, you name it, it’s coming. It’s a lot to take in, I know. IF we know one thing about the pace of innovation is that it’s not slowing down any time soon. which Android device manufacturer is best positioned to take advantage of all of these amazing technological developments? which one are you most excited about?

Top Technologies Android Devices Will Get Before the iPhone is a post from: pirati.net

If you’re getting into diecast car models and you’re not really sure where to begin, then first of just about all, don’t pull your hair out over it.

It’s not like you’re trying to learn trigonometry here, you’re just collecting some toy vehicles, so here’s the main thing you want to know, make it your motto: Collect What you like.

When you go in to a hobby shop, most of them sell price guides so you can keep track of the amount your collection’s worth. Glimpse, forget that those price guides even exist. Wanting to study them and find patterns and figure out what’s going to cause you to a millionaire when you retire is a fruitless pursuit.

You ought to treat collecting diecast car models as what it is: A hobby, not a second job. Listen to your inner child, not your inner responsible adult.

Now that we’ve gotten that taken care of, here’s the second most important thing note about collecting diecast model car kits: take them out together with play with them sometimes.

Don’t be an old fuddy duddy, don’t be one of those guys who buys toys and then puts them behind glass to make sure that nobody ever has fun with each other ever, take them available, race them across the coffee table the next time you watch racing on TV, and, again, obey the inner child.

Since let’s be honest, they’re games. You’re collecting toys here. Collecting toys and never tinkering with them is like collecting real cars and never driving them.

What it comes down to is that you need to really only be gathering diecast models if you’re passionate about motorsports or vintage cars or what maybe you have. you should only be collecting them if you have a real appreciation with regard to automotive excellence and scale model perfection and attention to detail.

If you think you’re visiting get rich turning your diecast collection in to a retirement fund, go invest in something safe, instead. if you think you’re going to just display them for a shelf and impress of those with rare toy cars, leave behind it, we’re not that will impressed. But, if you’re planning to put those toy cars to good use, start collecting today.

Share and enjoy:

Trainees Guide In Collecting Diecast Car Models is a post from: pirati.net

7 February 2012, sporting her ‘old’ Montana Dogware fleece

I’ve struck out too many times now with store-bought and factory-made duds. Target, for example, has a number of cute designs at reasonable prices, but many offer very little in chest or undercarriage cover, let alone neck warmth. In other words, they skimp on fabric to offer something that looks cute at first glance, but is actually cheaply constructed. I purchased one before, but returned it as soon as I saw the poor fit.

Then there was the “Basenji-approved” coats that we bought on mega-sale at Fetchdog.com (featuring a Basenji model). We got two back in September for a very low price. Though they were the right length, they were way too tight in the chest for Bowpi, which made her immobile and unhappy.

6 October 2011. Can’t… breathe… chest… constricted.

Craftier Basenji people suggested affixing an additional strip of velcro to the back, which is how the jacket holds together. I was too lazy to go to a craft store, and frankly, I didn’t much like the obtrusive ridge. So the coats ended up being donated to our local shelter. I hope some little guys can make good use of them!

Bowpi’s coat count is now up to three — a red Outward Hound Foul Weather Coat which is quite thin but rain-resistant (and works nicely as an outside layer), her dark, hand-sewn Montana Dogware fleece, and now, this one that we just got from Wild Hare Creations.

31 January 2012

It’s currently her thickest and plushiest coat, double-layered and reversible. The wrap-around belt also makes for an adjustable, snug fit. I’m very pleased with the tailorship!

Wild Hare’s motto is “run fast — stand pretty — keep warm — look fabulous.” I think Bowpi fulfills their mission quite admirably.

running fast

standing pretty

keeping warm

looking fabulous!

Recently, we’d been hearing too many horror stories about Basenjis who backed out of their buckle collars, so we also bought a limited slip collar for Bowpi (Bowdu already has one). RJ was particularly insistent that she needed this, since he’s usually walking them on lead at night while I walk them off-lead during the day. According to him, she’s become increasingly bratty about refusing to follow, and has threatened to shake loose more than once.

Wild Hare had a nice selection of ribbons, many of which we’d not seen elsewhere. after some deliberation, we went with the rabbit design because it seems to suit Bowpi’s mad sprints.

They don’t have a shopping cart system, so you do have to contact them directly to place an order. The process is a little slower than Etsy or other, more automated stores specializing in sighthound gear and custom collars, but their prices are very fair for custom work. I am happy to recommend them to anyone who might be interested!

Advertisement

Fashion hound: new coat and collar for Bowpi is a post from: pirati.net

For these reasons, amongst others, it is vitally important to get appropriate recipes for the hcg diet.

If the mind is not controlled then you will not have a control over your palate too. Once you do not have a good control over your palate, you will start eating all the junk available in the fast foods outlets. This paves the way for the regaining of weight. This is how weight is regained in the case of any other type of dieting method. on the contrary, since HCG has the ability to change the mind, you develop the tendency to say no to the catchy foods offered to you. Absolute control over the palate is developed thanks to the efficacy of the HCG diet, so long as you follow the hcg diet instructions.It should be known that the HCG diet used hcg diet injections and a low calorie diet in combination. getting the right recipes for the hcg diet can mean the difference between success and failure. HCG is the hormone called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin. It is freely available in the pregnant woman. It helps her to nourish the baby in her womb and it also transfers energy from the available and stored fat in the body. She remains energetic all through the pregnancy period and she feeds the unborn baby even when she starves! This means that the baby also derives energy and food from the stored up fat in the body of the pregnant woman.

The low calorie part is difficult, but with a hcg diet plan menu and some hcg diet tips you will be on the road that leads to a fitter you.

You must keep the mind strong when it comes to maintaining an ideal body weight. if the mind is not strong enough to ward off thoughts pertaining to tasting new food items and fast food items, then body weight cannot be controlled. hence it is very important that you keep your mind under control. In addition to the control of the mind, you should also ensure the control of the palate. This is the secret of the success of the HCG diet, and explains why getting the right recipes for the hcg diet is important.

It is now understood that the mind is the most vital organ that has to be cleansed when it comes to the concept of weight loss. Any diet will be a failure if the mind cannot be controlled properly. This is the reason why most of the earlier diet methods have been failures. on the contrary the HCG diet plan can never be a failure because the mind is easily controlled by the hormone of human chorionic gonadotropin.

Looking for more info on hcg diet?

Recipes For The HCG Diet is a post from: pirati.net

The Medion Akoya E4055 D (MD 8365) is a small desktop PC with a basic configuration that’s designed for everyday tasks. it features an AMD A8-3820 APU (accelerated processing unit), which also includes a built-in AMD Radeon HD 6550D graphics adapter. you won’t get as much speed out of this machine as you would from an Intel Core i3-based PC, but the price point this Medion is hitting is a little bit below what you would pay for an i3-based PC. That said, it’s still a fast enough machine for running office applications, undertaking photo editing tasks, encoding media files, and you could even do a little gaming on it (if your favoured games are not too graphics intensive).

Specifications and performance

AMD’s A8-3820 APU has four cores, meaning it’s capable of processing four software threads simultaneously, which is advantageous for multitasking and running multi-threaded applications. it has a standard speed of 2.5GHz and a Turbo speed of 2.8GHz. In our Blender 3D rendering test, it recorded a time of 41sec, while in our iTunes MP3 encoding test it got 1min 24sec. Neither of these times are faster than the previous Akoya that we looked at, the E2025 D, which features an Intel Core i3 CPU and took 39sec in Blender3D and 52sec in iTunes. The new machine was also slower in the AutoGordianKnot DVD-to-Xvid file conversion test, taking 1hr 6min compared to 49min for the Core i3 machine.

Unfortunately, the AMD doesn’t win in terms of efficiency either. we measured the PC’s power draw at 91W when it was under a full load, which is higher than what the Core i3-based Akoya got (64W) in the same test. when idle, the power consumption was around 34, which is also a little higher.

Where this AMD-based machine is noticeably better is in the graphics department. its integrated AMD Radeon HD 6550D graphics recorded a score of 5540 in 3DMark06, which is an improvement of 1564 in this benchmark. it allows some games to be played, as long as they aren’t too graphics intensive. Games such as Battlefield 3 will struggle on it, but it will occasionally achieve a frame rate up to 30 frames per second when played at a resolution of 1024×768.

Design and build quality

The Akoya has a shiny front panel and a case that’s small and easy to handle. It’s a mini tower with a micro-ATX-sized motherboard on the inside and the motherboard is installed upside-down compared to regular ATX configurations — the CPU socket is at the bottom while the power supply is at the top. this means that you will need to remove the right side panel to access the internal components.

Medion has tied all the cables out of the way and the construction is about as neat as expected for a basic machine with a rock-bottom price. There is a large shroud installed over the CPU cooler and it sucks cool air in through the vent in the side panel. It’s the only fan in the system (except for the power supply), but that doesn’t mean it’s a whisper-quiet system. In fact, its 1TB, 7200rpm Samsung hard drive (model HD103SJ) made a lot of noise while it searched for and wrote data — it recorded a rate of 58 megabytes per second (MBps) in our transfer tests, which is a good result. It’s installed on its side instead of being flat in the cage. The cage can accommodate one more hard drive if you wish to upgrade, and there is also one free 5.25in bay.

Other upgrades can be made via the motherboard’s free slots: it has one free PCI Express x16 slot and two free PCI Express x1 slots. There are only two DIMM slots and both of them are occupied with two 2GB modules that make up the system’s 4GB, DDR3 capacity. if you want more than 4GB of RAM, you will have to replace one or both modules in order to increase the capacity. The power supply is 350W, which means it has adequate headroom for a few upgrades (say one more drive and a mid-range graphics card), but it won’t handle a high-end graphics card.

A Samsung DVD burner (model SH-216AB) is also installed and there is a compartment on the front panel that hides a memory card reader. it can read SD and CF cards among other formats. There are microphone and headphone jacks on the front, as well as two USB ports, one of which is USB 3.0, which is very convenient. an interface for Medion’s own USB 3.0 drives is situated at the top of the case — you’ll have to be lucky enough to come across one on sale at ALDI if you wish to use that interface.

The rear of the case features analogue, surround sound audio jacks; digital audio (optical), Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek), four USB 2.0 ports, two PS/2 ports, VGA and HDMI ports (but no DVI). Wireless networking is also installed in this machine (Realtek RTL8191SU 802.11n), but its range isn’t great, so you won’t be able to set up this PC too far away from your router. it should suffice for a small home or apartment though.

For only $499, it’s hard to be too critical of this machine, but it isn’t as fast during general tasks as the previous Intel Core i3-based Akoya E2025 that we tested last year. It’s $100 cheaper though, and its graphics performance is better, so it all evens out in the end. All up, it’s a decent machine for running office tasks, editing photos and even for tougher tasks such as encoding your CDs and DVDs. it goes on sale at ALDI supermarkets on 8 February.

• Read more Medion desktop PC reviews

Medion Akoya E4055 D (MD 8365) is a post from: pirati.net

last updated at 10:06, Tuesday, 07 February 2012

S TRIDING from coast to coast across the neck of Britain for the best part of 2,000 years, Hadrian’s Wall is rightly regarded as one of the country’s most important ancient monuments.

It’s a World Heritage Site, which every year pulls in hundreds of thousands of tourists from across the globe.

Yet it is only in the last 75 years that this majestic relic of the glory that was Rome has been treated with such reverence.

How the Wall was saved, with letters to the Times from such notable personages as Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan and how its future was almost gambled away by the son of one of its saviours, is at the heart of yet another book on the Wall.

Saving the Wall – the Conservation of Hadrian’s Wall 1746-1987 may sound a trifle dull, but in fact it’s a rip-roaring soap opera involving rapacious land owners, feckless gamblers, noble campaigners and lots of things about the Wall you never knew.

Once the legions had taken their short, stabbing swords and military genius back to the Mediterranean, the Wall and its surroundings became a very handy quarry for anyone who needed an abundant supply of dressed stone.

Parts of Hexham Abbey, much of Corbridge and scores of farms are built from stones pilfered from the rugged boundary of the Roman Empire’s northern frontier.

But the biggest stone snatcher of all was Field Marshall George Wade, who was tasked with improving cross country communications in the wake of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s unimpeded march from Scotland as far south as Derby in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.

He was the man responsible for the building of the Military Road, not the Romans.

But the road certainly owed its foundations to Rome – he ripped up large sections of the Wall to provide the foundations for his 18th century motorway for troops.

The plunder continued unabated, with a 78-year-old man from Birmingham appalled in 1801 to find a large section of the Wall being demolished at Planetrees to build a farmhouse for a Mr Henry Tulip.

Mr Tulip happily confessed that he had already demolished 95 yards of the Wall, but still needed more.

The saviour of the Wall as we know it was John Clayton, owner of Chesters Fort near Chollerford, who was becoming increasingly distressed at the sight of large portions of Wall stone being carried away by the cart load for building purposes.

Fortunately a wealthy man, he began buying up farmland in the central section of the Wall, including Housesteads in 1838, and put a stop to the plunder.

However, he could only affect the sections he owned, but the depredations continued apace elsewhere.

One of the biggest threats was quarries, with the operators anxious to get their hands on the hardwearing stone of the great whin sill.

A previously unknown turret was discovered at Walltown near Greenhead in 1883, but it was threatened from the start by operations at Walltown Quarry.

Its destruction was predicted by Wall historian John Collingwood Bruce in 1883 – and a couple of years later, he was proved right.

Ironically, one of the reasons for the demand for stone was the increasing numbers of cars on the road, demanding more roads in order to visit attractive places like the Roman Wall…

Although quarries might not directly affect the Wall, the workings often came so close to the structure that landslips were induced.

The efforts of John Clayton to preserve the Wall were placed in jeopardy in 1928 when the 20,000-acre Clayton estate – which included the glorious central section featuring Housesteads, Carrawburgh, Carvoran, Vindolanda and Chesters – was inherited by Jack Clayton.

He was an inveterate gambler and built up such debts over the gaming tables of Whites of Piccadilly that the estate was put on the market to square his creditors.

it went under the hammer in a great two-day sale in 1929 at the Assembly Rooms in Newcastle, at which a youthful Eric Birley bought Vindolanda.

The historian George Trevelyan of Wallington Hall “persuaded” the feckless Clayton to gift Housesteads to the National Trust, along with a stretch of Wall – but there were dark clouds ahead.

News broke in the Times in 1930 of proposals for extensive quarrying operations in the central section of the Wall, which would ruin the setting of the structure forever.

There was a call for the Wall to be taken into state ownership and maintained by HM Office of Works.

The threat came from land owner Sir Hugh Blackett and quarry engineer John Frederick Wake, who had an interest in the existing quarry at Cawfields.

A lease was signed giving Wake the mineral rights to the central section of the Wall, including the right to quarry within 10 feet of the Wall itself.

it later transpired that Wake had spent two years and £30,000 on planning his rape of the Wall.

There was a spontaneous outcry against the proposals, with the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne calling for the central section to be made a national park and for the Rockefeller and Carnegie Trusts to be called in to save the Wall.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons and the author Rudyard Kipling – who is believed to have written his Roman story Puck of Pook’s Hill while a guest of the Straker family at Stagshaw House near Corbridge – also railed against it.

The Government’s First Commissioner of Works, future leader of the Labour Party George Lansbury, was despatched North by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, to see for himself.

Not everyone was opposed to quarrying; he was met at Housesteads by R.J. Taylor, chairman of Haltwhistle Labour Party, who pointed out at the time of the great Depression, such a quarry would provide work for 500 men.

It later transpired the quarry would have yielded 200,000 tons of stone per year, but only employed 200 men.

Mr Lansbury concluded that quarrying should be allowed, but not in sensitive sites.

This provoked another flurry of letters to the Times, signed by Kipling and Buchan as well as prominent historians, including Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

Finally, the Ancient Monuments Act of 1931 was passed, giving the First Commissioner of HM Works the power to veto planning schemes and pay compensation to those affected.

However, it could not be applied retrospectively, and Wake’s leases ran to 1949 – with an option for another 20 years.

Some 300 yards of the Wall were destroyed by quarrying at Walltown and a further half mile faced imminent destruction.

It wasn’t until 1938 that a preservation scheme for the central section of the Wall was agreed and compensation of £16,000 paid to the land owners and quarry firms.

However, the hard facts of war meant that in 1943 a demand for whinstone for surfacing RAF airfields saw Walltown quarry once again advancing threateningly on the Wall.

The resulting furore led directly to the formation of Northumberland National Park.

Prior to 1931 and the introduction of the Ancient Monuments Act, the Wall was a vastly different place to what we know and love now.

The only places open to view were Clayton’s Housesteads, Peel Crags and Steel Rigg.

Familiar sections such as Birdoswald, Willford, Walltown, Cawfields, Winshields and even the iconic Sycamore Gap were buried beneath the soil, under trees and topped by drystone walls and wooden fences.

Thus it was that following the enshrining of the Wall’s protection in law, the massive task of consolidating the remains had to begin.

Much of the work was initiated by another Man from the Ministry, Charles Anderson, who spent 40 years nurturing neglected sections of the Wall.

He found Roman coins which had dropped through cracks in the floor at Corbridge, and rescued a temple at Benwell which was being used as a rubbish tip and was covered in trees.

At Heddon, the Wall was covered by a high mound of soil and rubbish and at Carrawburgh Mithraic Temple, Anderson made imitation columns of concrete which were so realistic visitors starting breaking bits off as “original” Roman souvenirs.

At Sewingshields, there was no exposed Wall to be seen at any point, while at Cawfields, the Wall was completely below ground level, with a drystone dyke on top.

Anderson also carefully demolished some sections of Wall and rebuilt them with the original stones, using lime mortar brought to the site by wheelbarrow.

Saving the Wall – the Conservation of Hadrian’s Wall 1746-1987, by Stephen Leach and Alan Whitworth, is published by Amberley Press, of Stroud, Gloucester, at £12.99, and is available from local bookshops.

First published at 09:05, Monday, 06 February 2012 Published by hexhamcourant.co.uk

Fending off the stone snatchers is a post from: pirati.net

You may think that only clear, bright days are great for taking aerial photographs.

If that were really the truth, not many days would qualify in most parts of the USA, and aerial photography prices would be a lot higher, thanks to the rarity of cloud-free days.

For vertical aerials, like the kind you see in Google Earth and Google Maps, yes, you want clear weather. Sometimes, in an isolated area, you will see a few clouds in the aerial pictures there, but for populated areas, they are trying to find that ideal day.

For the other kind of aerial photography, the oblique views, like what you see out of the window of a commercial airplane right after takeoff or before landing, the photographers can work in a variety of different weather conditions.

In reality some kinds of aerial photo work is best done under a high overcast cloud layer.

Why? Because there are no shadows. So the photos can be taken at any time of day without worrying about the front of the building being in the shade.

Other times, the photographer can find enough gaps in the cloud cover to get good photos that look as if they were done on a clear day. he just waits for the clouds to blow away, leaving the buildings he is photographing in the sunshine.

Weather forecasts for pilots include a prediction of how much cloud there will be, as a percentage of the sky that has clouds.

The more cloud there is , the harder it is to work around them. So if the clouds are getting thicker, it may be time to home to base and come back another day, unless the photos are required really quickly.

If you are buying aerial photographs, let your provider know how fast you need them. then he’s going to know whether to try to dodge clouds, or wait for a better day to get photos that are just perfect for you.

Rick Hamilton has been an aerial photograpner for twenty years, and has flown and photographed in every state of the USA except Alaska, including Hawaii and Puerto Rico. he manages full-time operations for aerial photo Houston and aerial photograph Washington DC. he has over 3500 hours of flight time as pilot in single-engine Cessna airplanes. He’s the author of how to buy Aerial Photographs, available soon at amazon-dot-com.

Weather for aerial photography — what you need to know, and what to tell your cameraman « Refinancing Homes In Bankruptcy is a post from: pirati.net

If you are like me you have recently found out about towel warmers and couldn’t wait to get your hands on one However once you started looking into them, you found there are a few different types of towel warmers and weren’t sure which towel warmer is right for you. This article will look at the difference between Electric Towel Warmers and Hydronic Towel Warmers.

Hydronic Towel Warmers

The difference between hydronic and electric towel warmers or drying units is the source of heat. Hydronic towel warmers need a hot water supply and generally utilize hot water circulating from the central heating system. Many hydronic towel warmers are floor or wall mounted so they can be connected to your home plumbing. However, because they are used in conjunction with the central heating, their operation is limited to when that central heating is running. It is possible to use a special pump and separate heating tube system so that hydronic towel warmers can be used during the summer months. Hydronic towel warmers tend to be more expensive and typically require a plumber to install. There are no electrical restrictions on the placement of a hydronic towel warmer. This makes them ideal for putting on the pool deck or at the end of a walk in shower.

Electric Towel warmers

The majority of electric towel warmers are oil filled. Once the electric towel warmers or heating racks are plugged in, the oil begins heating it. most oil filled towel warmers have a low wattage heating element, making them safe and economical. Electric warmers are self-contained with an electrical heating unit built into the warmer that heats the fluid circulating through the unit. Electric towel warmer are available as soft wired (plugged into the electrical outlet) or hard-wired (wired into the bathrooms electrical system). It is possible to use oil filled towel warmers with timers so that you can preheat your towels based on your schedule. Oil filled towel warmers can leak especially if not maintained regularly to ensure the seals don’t perish. the other problem I found with oil filled towel warmers is that if you find a good quality oil filled towel warmer they can take up to an hour to heat up and can be expensive.

Warmrails FilathermTM Towel Warmers

There is a new electric towel warmer from Warmrails that utilizes a dry element technology called FilathermTM. This element is similar to the technology used in radiant under floor heating. FilathermTM is energy efficient, costing only cents a day to operate and will reach operating temperature in only 15 minutes. It provides safe operating temperatures, consistent throughout the unit so there are no hot spots. Warmrails FilathermTM technology is guaranteed not to leak, so there is no risk of damage to wall and flooring or risk of injury.

Warmrails towel warmers are not designed to heat a room but will reduce humidity and assist to deter bathroom dampness and mildew. As such, they can be used year round without adding heat to rooms. the towel warmers can easily be self-installed and do not require upgrading the electrical circuit. the towel warmers do not come with temperature controls however you can use a timer if desired. Warmrails towel warmers are designed to run safely and efficiently 24 hrs a day and many find the comfort and convenience appealing.

Which Towel Warmer is Right for You? is a post from: pirati.net

Published on Sunday 19 February 2012 11:28

As the snow fell over Coventry Baths, the temperature inside was heating up as Leamington came away with four trophies and 19 podiums from the annual Coventry & District Relay Gala.

The gala got off to a great start for Leamington, with Abbey Jolly, Jessie Butler, Rebecca Morris and Evie Nicholas taking third place in the girls’ nine-year-old freestyle relay.

In the ten to 12 years category Teigan Parker, Felicity Dempster, Mollie Dibb and Jade Pickett took third place in their freestyle race in a time of 2:10.91, while the B team of Imogen Butler, Sarah Chapman, Amelia Morris and Georgia Kidd went one better and picked up medals in both of their relays.

In the freestyle, the team had a tough battle against Coventry but clinched it with an excellent final leg from Butler who snatched gold on the touch in a time of 2:16.12. The quartet later went on to secure silver in the medley.

There was an outstanding display from the boys’ A team, with Harry Manship, Kieran Curran, Finn Linton and Luke Williams taking gold convincingly in both the freestyle and medley relays with times of 2:03.45 and 2:21.10, respectively.

Success continued with the B line-up of Philip Warren, Finn Nicholas, Aran Shuttlewood and Edward Jolly achieving two bronzes, with times of 2:20.25 for the freestyle and 2:45.82 for the medley.

The 14-year-old girls’ teams achieved four medals, with the first string of Jess Nash, Sophie Vale, Hannah Pickett and Niamh Curran securing two bronze positions with times of 2:05.23 in the freestyle and 2:20.09 in the medley, while the B team of Amy Pettigrew, Harriet Riley, Megan McDonald and Grace Cain picked up silvers in their events.

The boys’ A squad of Max Clarke, Nick Payne, Josh James and Chris Finch gained third place in their freestyle.

In the senior section, Jonty Cartwright and Peter Clark teamed up with coaches James Wardle and Stuart Parker to secure second place in the open freestyle and bronze in the medley.

The girls’ open-age group had a remarkable night, with both the A and B teams securing medals.

The A team of Maddie Spalding, Hannah Greenshield, Sarah Smith and Sarah Brades secured third place in the freestyle with a time of 2:01.04 and silver in the medley in 2:13.01.

They were eclipsed by the B team of Charlotte Riley, Ellen Stone, Charlotte Collett and Jenny Chapman, however, who soared to first place in the medley in 2:20.21 and backed it up with a freestyle silver in 2:06.17.

Leamington are warmed by a string of podium finishes is a post from: pirati.net