At $99, you get what you pay for

After a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $8.6 million,Online shopping for tooling. the Ouya video game console finally arrived in stores and supporters living rooms last week after some unexpected development delays.The Motorola amagiccube Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. I was fortunate to receive and spend a few days with the indie-developed console.With all the hype and fanfare preceding it, the affordable $99 console has plenty of promises to fulfill.

The initial setup was simple with the supplied HDMI cable and power brick. However, installing the controllers battery was a mystery. The minimalist instruction sheet provided no clue. And I barely remembered Ouyas Kickstarter video demoing the console. 

I was afraid of tugging hard on the controllers panels. Its build quality and plastic felt flimsy.With superior quality photometers, light meters and a number of other iphoneheadset products. Eventually the gray faceplates, held down by strong magnets, popped off, revealing cleverly concealed battery compartments. 

The pseudo-Xbox controller rested comfortably in my palms,The whole variety of the brightest rtls is now gathered under one roof. but my index fingers laid awkwardly on the bumpers and triggers, which wiggled and rattled. In the center of the controller is an excessively sensitive touchpad. 

As a student and observer of design, I was disappointed by Ouyas ubiquitous 3-inch cube and generic game controller. Especially because it was created by design savant Yves Behar, who I deeply admire for his uniquely modern vision of everyday objects (Bluetooth devices from Jawbone, SodaStream Source, the original Slingbox and the beautiful Herman Miller SAYL chair). 

Ouya proposed an ambitious plan to disrupt the video game industry, but physically on my entertainment center, it underwhelms next to my Xbox 360, PS3 and yes, the Roku.But more important for any gaming console is its video game library, and here Ouya really falls short. 

Powering up for the first time, Ouya requires your personal information, including a credit card number. Driven by Android, Ouya has its own enclosed ecosystem where users can download freemium products or demos. The console currently has a handful of familiar titles found on both Android and iOS (Organ Trail, Bards Tale, Shadowgun) and a few exclusives (A Bit of a Fist of Awesome, Monocole Man, No Brakes Valet and TowerFall). 

The Apps section awaits better digital entertainment apps. Currently theres no official support from premium services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Instant Video.Our manufactures custom jewelrybeads whether you need a short or long production run. 

Ouyas hardware specs cant compete with the Xbox 360, PS3 or your newly bought smartphone. Its nVidia Tegra3 mobile processor is already a year old. I wont hold my breath for AAA-titles, such as BioShock Infinite, Crysis 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II, ported from this generation of consoles to to Ouya. 

Ouya seems to foster retro, pixel-style games. Essentially, the console draws your attention away from your mobile device to the television. Deep Dungeon of Doom plays and looks great on both Ouya and my iPhone, where I originally downloaded the game. Canabalt gets a big screen facelift while preserving its pixel-art style. But unfortunately, A Bit of a Fist of Awesome, a beat-em-up side-scroller, looks and sounds horrible with its oversized, pixelated creatures and backgrounds through a 48 HDTV and sound bar. 

A woman called police June 30 when she noticed her credit/debit card was stolen. She thought it happened June 25 at Marcs and listed off the fraudulent charges to the bank. However, it was determined her husband did most of the transactions. She then thought her wallet was stolen because she keeps a card with her debit password with her debit card and there are suspected fraudulent ATM withdraws. She told officers she couldnt remember the last time she used it. 

The car was spotted doing 30 mph in a 45 mph. When the officer attempted to pull the car over, the car began to swerve before pulling into the Timber Lodge parking lot. When the officer approached he smelled a strong odor of alcohol coming from the vehicle. 

The driver, who said he and his wife were coming from a wedding, struggled to find his license. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy. He nearly fell over while completing sobriety tests and was placed under arrest for operating a vehicle under the influence. He registered a blood alcohol level of .21 percent. His wife had vodka in a silver bottle in the car and was cited for possession of an open container. 

A woman said she was going to her mothers barn and was not coming back June 22. Tenants took this to mean she was going to harm herself. The officer arrived and found a pill bottle with a plastic bag inside. The woman said someone stole her pills. Inside the bag there were 20 Percocet, which were seized as evidence. The woman was given a ride her mothers house by a friend. The investigation is still pending. No charges at this time.

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Michigan's Takeover of Detroit

By the end of this month, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will name an emergency manager to rescue Detroit’s finances. Whoever lands that unenviable task will face a city saddled with $14 billion in debt obligations and a $327 million operating deficit—a shortfall one-and-a-half times the size of the entire budget of Michigan’s capital, Lansing.The term 'solarlamp control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. The manager will also be granted vast powers to roll over the will of citizens and local elected officials. Here are some answers to questions about what’s happening in Detroit.

The city—once one of the largest in the U.S.—has lost half its population over the past 50 years. The resulting drop in revenue has caused Detroit to spend more than it takes in and to borrow ever-larger amounts of money to cover expenses. In 2012, the state declared a financial emergency and entered into a legal agreement with the city. Under the agreement, the city promised to collect more taxes, renegotiate its bond obligations, and undergo a financial review. When the review came out in February, accountants found that Detroit had sunk into an even deeper fiscal hole. Last Friday, the governor moved to appoint an emergency financial manager.

Whatever he wants to, more or less. The manager is like a little technocrat: He or she can completely reorganize the city’s finances without the consent of local elected officials. That could include rewriting or voiding union contracts that cover medical care for city workers, laying off city workers, voiding contracts with vendors, restructuring the city’s debts, and taking over the pension system. The manager can also sell the city’s assets, which include, for example, parking meters, the art museum,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose. and the municipal zoo.

Selling assets isn’t as easy as it sounds.Source solarpanel Products at Other Truck Parts. There’s no guarantee that the manager could find buyers. Detroit has been trying for years, with little success, to sell the 66,000 abandoned properties it owns. The city’s water and sewer systems are profitable; they are also under federal control, so it’s not clear that the city has the right to sell them. Selling the museum’s art collection would hobble its ability to attract future donors. The biggest question is how much more can be squeezed out of the city’s workers,Stock up now and start saving on iccard at Dollar Days. who have already seen pensions and salaries cut.

Officials have made attempts to save money, but they haven’t worked. Last year, officials slashed municipal workers’ salaries by 10 percent. Health insurance contributions were increased to 20 percent. Officials have already almost halved the city’s workforce, cutting the rolls from 17,000 in 2003 to fewer than 9,700 now. Future pensions have been reduced. (Current benefits are protected by the state constitution.) When the city’s credit rating was downgraded to double-C, the state stepped in and guaranteed $137 million in bonds. “That’s kept the city from having ‘payless’ paydays,” says Buss.

The victim in the case contacted police on Feb. 14 after he parked a rental car at Al Cohen's Mall the night before and lost the keys to the car while eating dinner at Shipwreck Tavern, according to a probable cause fact sheet filed Tuesday by V.I. Police Detective Sehkera Tyson.

The victim told police he had more than $10,000 in personal items locked in the trunk of the car, but because there was a rental car satellite office in the mall and "daybreak was only a few hours away," he took a taxi to his room at Marriott's Frenchman's Reef Beach Resort and left the car behind.

The victim contacted the rental car office the next day about the vehicle, and the rental agent told the victim his car was not there, adding that the area is "a magnet for criminal activity," according to the fact sheet.

Police put out an all-points bulletin to be on the look out for the rental car, a gray 2013 Toyota Corolla.

On Sunday, Tyson saw a car matching the description near the island's main police station on Veterans Drive. The car appeared to be broken down in the intersection, according to the fact sheet.

Tyson, who was having a conversation in the parking lot with another detective, watched two men push the car into the Fort Christian parking lot and thought the vehicle fit the description of the missing rental car, except for the license plate, according to the fact sheet. Tyson radioed in to dispatch for a registration check and found the license plate on the Corolla was registered to a 1995 GMC van.

Tyson also checked the sticker number on the car, which was paired in the government's vehicle database to the license plate of the rental car that had been reported stolen by that time.

Esquerdo "spontaneously uttered" that he was doing work on the vehicle for someone named Michael and that something must be wrong with the vehicle's fuel system, according to the fact sheet.

Esquerdo and his passenger then were advised of their rights and questioned by detectives.Our extensive range of plasticcard is supplied to all sorts of industries across Australia and overseas.

Esquerdo then told Tyson that he had gotten the vehicle earlier that afternoon from a man named Henry Samuel. Esquerdo claimed that he had asked Samuel for a ride to get some tools from Crown Bay, but Samuel told Esquerdo that he was waiting on some individuals to leave Hooters, so he told Esquerdo to take his car to get the tools and return the vehicle to the Havensight area.

From outside, it's clear why Britain has to stay in Europe

So now we know: Europe will be roiled by internal turmoil for another five years. While Germany,Explore online some of the many available selections in floor tiles. France and others wrestle to build a stronger core Europe around the eurozone,Bottle cutters let you turn old glass mosaic and wine bottles into bottle art! David Cameron's Conservatives, if elected in 2015, will try to renegotiate the terms of Britain's membership in the whole EU club and then put that "new settlement" to the British people in an "in or out" referendum by the end of 2017.

World, you have been warned. Europe as an economic giant? Yes, still. Europe as a strong force in a new multipolar world? Postponed to the Greek calends – and now to the British ones as well. Whether you are watching from India, China, Russia, America or Brazil, you can forget that prospect for the foreseeable future.Our team of consultants are skilled in project management and delivery of large scale rtls projects. In fact, most people in those countries already have.

But first, what of the speech itself? Well, it could have been a lot worse. As a pro-European who has argued that Britain should hold an "in or out" referendum in the next parliament, once the shape of eurozone-Europe and the results of any attempted renegotiation of the terms of Britain's membership are known, I can hardly complain if the British prime minister plumps for exactly that. While much of the phrasing was patently crafted to please Eurosceptics, some of his criticisms of today's EU are also justified.

Above all, the peroration of the speech was as clear, eloquent and forceful an argument for Britain staying in the EU, on clearsighted, hard-nosed Palmerstonian grounds of national interest, as you could hope to hear from a leader of today's Conservative party. Those last minutes, between about 8.35am and 8.45am London time, confirmed me in a view that I have taken against nervous British pro-Europeans for some time: when it comes to the point, the British people will vote to stay in the EU.

Yet they also confirmed the futility of this entire strategy. For those basic arguments of national interest for Britain to stay in the EU will remain true, however paltry the results of any formal renegotiation after 2015. In fact, since Europe is a permanent negotiation,Panasonic ventilation system fans are energy efficient and whisper quiet. Britain would get a better deal if it remained fully involved and committed all the time.

If other EU member states agree on nothing else, they agree on this: Britain should not be given any major new exceptions from the rules of the whole club. Now they will concede even less. If EU politics were a game of bridge, Cameron has just effectively thrown away his strongest ace: the credible threat of Britain leaving. Germany and other free-market north Europeans would not really want to be left alone with the southerners. Even France would be ambivalent, since Britain is the only other European country with a serious tradition of projecting hard power – as most recently in Libya.

It's also bad for Europe. Some of the good reforms Cameron is preaching at continental Europeans are now even less likely to happen since, whatever he says, our partners all feel that he is batting for Britain not for Europe. In a rare and revealing stumble by this otherwise accomplished speaker, when he was arguing for his preferred option of a new reform treaty for the whole of the EU, he said: "But if there is no appetite for a new treaty for us [pause, stumble] … for us all." Freudian slip or Thatcherite one: that's what most continental Europeans think he subconsciously means.

And yet, even though it would have been better for Europe to carry on without this added diversion to the core problems of the whole project, a referendum would have come sooner or later anyway. With the stakes raised like this, it will be hard for other parties to refuse the British people a direct choice. As a nice Polish phrase has it: we have to swallow this frog.

Meanwhile, the world will yawn its way through five more years of euroshemozzle. And it will deal with Europe as it finds it: economic giant, political hydra-head.

Like Reading Lolita in Tehran, watching Cameron in Mumbai has been a surreal experience. Here I am, surrounded by the afterlife of British colonialism at its most grandiloquent – the monumental Gateway to India, built in Bombay harbour to celebrate the visit of the King-Emperor George V in 1911, colonial-style tearooms fluttering with now Indian talk of "tiffin" and "chaps". And there, on the television screen, a hundred years later, is a vaguely viceregal British prime minister who nonetheless feels it necessary to explain, to what was once the party of empire, why Britain really should not opt to be an offshore Switzerland, a Norway without the oil or the Greater Cayman Islands.

And the Indians, those at the top of the pile who are now prosperous and sophisticated representatives of one of the 21st-century's great emerging powers, how do they view this distant political gymkhana? Mainly not at all. Indian acquaintances confirm my impression that the speech did not make the news bulletins of the main local channels. Indians have their own politics to worry about, and their own problems: India's poverty makes hard-hit Greece look like paradise. But beyond that, they view Britain's agonising about its place in the world with mixed feelings.

One hears of a liking for London as a place to live and do business; of admiration for UK universities (if only the Cameron government's misbegotten student visa squeeze does not prevent their children studying there); of some attachment to British traditions of literature, good government and common law (a shipping merchant here tells me he makes contracts with Chinese partners under English law).

But there is absolutely no echo of the neo-Tory idea that a strategic special relationship between Britain and India, Britain and the whole Commonwealth, could be any substitute for Britain's place in Europe, and India's relationship with Europe as a whole. India, like Britain, will pursue its own national interest, starting in its own neighbourhood. If Cameron doesn't know that already,We can supply howo truck products as below. he will hear it again on his planned second official visit to India next month.

Ultimately the point is this. History has dealt Britain an amazing hand. Though a shadow of its former imperial self, the country has unique ties to Europe, to the United States, to the rest of the English-speaking world, and to quite a few other places (for instance, in Latin America) as well: spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. Who but an idiot would throw away one of his (or her) strongest suits? And we Brits are not idiots, are we? Are we?

Epic adventures with the Hobbit hunter of Middle Earth

Checking that we were alone, with no other covetous eyes watching, I held out my hand to reveal the precious items nestling in my palm...four green and glossy oak leaves from a Hobbit’s tree.

‘I didn’t steal them,’ I promised. ‘They were just lying on the ground, honestly. Do you think I should sell them on eBay?’ My companion laughed. Assessing my ‘find’ was Ian Brodie, one of a handful of people in the world best able to judge its value.

Ian is the author of what is reputedly New Zealand’s best-selling book – and it’s not the Bible, Fifty Shades Of Grey or even Rugby: The All Blacks’ Way. It is The Lord Of The Rings Location Guidebook.

It’s 11 years since the release of the first of Peter Jackson’s trio of movies based on J R R Tolkien’s book. The films were shot in New Zealand and since then the country has become Middle Earth for millions of fans worldwide, obsessives known as ‘Ring-ons’.

The phenomenon is again about to burn as hot as the fires of Mount Doom with the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of a new trilogy based on the prequel to Lord Of The Rings.

The premiere is on November 28 at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington, the country’s capital and Jackson’s home city. The film is then due for worldwide release in cinemas in December.

Fans will have to wait until December 2013 for the release of the next one – The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, with the final instalment – The Hobbit: There And Back Again – scheduled to come out in July 2014.

In the films, Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, with Martin Freeman (famous for The Office) in the central role of Bilbo Baggins. There will be much rejoicing among Ring-ons the world over, and especially within New Zealand’s tourism industry.

The government has been collaborating wholeheartedly with the filmmakers, hoping to benefit from a surge in visitors, particularly those based in faraway destinations such as the UK, whose numbers have dropped due to the recession.

Everyone is gearing up for total Hobbitmania. Of course, you don’t have to be a full-time Tolkien-ite to want to travel the 11,500 miles to New Zealand, but even non-Ring-ons will want to include some film locations in their holiday.

After all, they do showcase many of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet. But therein lies a problem. Trying to get official information about the filming locations proved nigh-on impossible.

The filmmakers are seemingly keen to keep it all a surprise and confidentiality contracts have been signed by those involved.

But thanks to some friendly Kiwis, I did pick up plenty of clues. And anyway, many of the locations used to represent Middle Earth in Lord Of The Rings have been revisited for The Hobbit.

I started my Hobbit journey in Queenstown, South Island. Queenstown sits on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by the stunning Southern Alps.

It’s been called the adventure capital of the world and adrenaline junkies by the truckload come here to bungee-jump from bridges or try white-water rafting, jet-boating, skiing and hang-gliding.

I didn’t do any of those, but I did clamber aboard a helicopter for The Grand Circle tour, a breathtaking whizz around the mountain-tops and various Lord Of The Rings locations, landing 4,Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture,500ft up on The Remarkables, which became Dimrill Dale in the films.

During The Lord Of The Rings trilogy,Installers and distributors of solar panel, fans did cause problems,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. he admitted. ‘They were all over us,Thank you for visiting! I have been crystal mosaic since 1998. even hiding in trees overnight so they could get photographs the following day.’

This time, he said, it had been calmer. More filming has been done in the studio, and of about 40 locations used, only a quarter are accessible to the public.

Rampant Chinese whispers and an enduring national curiosity in the Tolkien phenomenon mean there’s a lot of misinformation out there.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte.

For example, I had been assured that filming for The Hobbit had taken place in the world-famous Waitomo Caves, too – but it has not.

They are certainly worth a visit, though. Formed more than 30 million years ago, the caves feature some amazing formations – Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sang in one called The Cathedral – and thousands and thousands of glittering glow worms.

Business Owners Tally the Storm Damage and Ponder Its Lessons

The storm and its tidal surge ravaged stores and restaurants, soaked inventory and stalled manufacturing throughout the New York region last week.

Food and goods not ruined by seawater and the lack of power fell victim to sewer waste and mold. Even businesses on working power grids lost an important ingredient for success: employees. Many workers faced impossible commutes because of gas shortages and spotty public transportation.

As is often the case, many business owners in the storm’s path had not bought insurance beyond standard business protection — nothing for floodwaters or business interruption. Even a week later, after hauling out sodden goods and trying to reroute shipments and find insurance brokers, some were too overwhelmed to know if their businesses could survive.

“We made a pact that we weren’t going to think about it,” said Kristy Hadeka, co-owner of Brooklyn Slate Company, which sells slate cheese boards and kitchen items. “If you think about how the situation is, it’s so incredibly overwhelming, you don’t want to do anything.”

Ms. Hadeka, 29, and Sean Tice, 28, her boyfriend and business partner, were weeks from moving their business into a renovated storefront in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, three blocks from New York Harbor. New plumbing and electrical work had been installed, costing them more than $10,000.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.

They planned to have offices and a small store there, too. It would be a big step for the two-and-half-year-old company, which started in the couple’s South Slope apartment and grew to $1.5 million in sales last year, including to big clients like Whole Foods.

All of that — and $5,000 in merchandise for a holiday market — was ruined by six feet of oily water. The company did not have flood insurance. Mr. Tice called the agent later to say, “Add it.”

The storm “wreaked havoc on the business,” Ms. Hadeka said. “We invested a lot of money in this space.”

They were just weeks from the start of the holiday season, when they expected to collect 75 percent of their revenue for the year. Mr. Tice said the company has business-interruption insurance, “but we haven’t stopped operating, so that hasn’t been an issue.”

With their 10 employees scattered — six in the city, the rest in upstate New York, where Ms. Hadeka’s family owns the quarry that produces the slate — the co-owners shouldered most of the work in the days after the storm.

Just getting to the new storefront proved taxing. With public transit suspended, Mr. Tice laced on his jogging shoes and ran the 11-mile round trip. Their New Jersey warehouse was still closed, and dozens of customers called and e-mailed, wondering when they would receive their orders.

With U.P.S. shipments halted, Ms. Hadeka said she had to work with the shipping company to issue new tracking numbers. A big shipment destined for Whole Foods in Massachusetts — 2,500 cheese boards — could not be found. After hours of calls,An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. the couple discovered that the boards were on a truck parked in Elizabeth, N.J.

Ms. Hadeka wondered whether retail sales, and gift items in particular, would suffer. “People are devastated,” she said. “We rely so much on people buying cheese boards for Christmas and entertaining.”

But there is little time to dwell on such thoughts. Nor does the business plan to leave a waterfront neighborhood that is filled with young people running small craft businesses. “We have to keep going,” Ms. Hadeka said.

When faced with another hurricane warning,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, Mr. Tice said, “we’ll probably take everything valuable out of there and put it on a higher floor or a storage facility.”

In Sheepshead Bay, in southern Brooklyn, many mom-and-pop businesses were destroyed. A tidal surge flooded the bay and smashed into restaurants and stores at street level. Water gutted Istanbul Restaurant, a 17-year-old enterprise owned by Riza Atas.

The day after the storm, Istanbul’s interior looked like a scene from “Titanic.” Tables, chairs and settees were toppled. Plaster board and wallpaper hung from walls. No one could enter the kitchen; large industrial refrigerators and stoves had been thrown into the doorway.

Gawkers who entered the restaurant stood not on a floor once made of marble and granite tiles but on shards of wood and dishes. Mr. Atas lost a great deal of meat and fish. Worse, the storm destroyed the photographs, tiles and carpets from his native Turkey that he had lovingly displayed.

“We did not lose a restaurant,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products.” Mr. Atas said. “We lose Turkish culture here.”

After the storm, the building’s owners sent 25 contractors and helpers to pump water from his basement and to clean, but the basement started filling again. Mr. Atas could not reach his insurance broker on Long Island, where thousands of customers had no power. His kitchen appliances, including the grill and the fryer, were filled with water. And he did not know how he would keep his 10 employees. “If we get something from the government, we have to help them, too,” he said.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products.

Mr. Atas said he had not yet decided whether he would reopen. He estimated he would need $200,000 and three months to do so. “If the government or city helps, we can rebuild,” he said.

Considering what happened elsewhere in Brooklyn, Carl Manni, chief executive and co-founder of Linda the Bra Lady, said he got “kind of lucky.” Although the company headquarters and his home are in Dumbo, along the East River, neither place filled with water, and he did not lose power. But with subways halted, most of his 40 employees could not get to the office or to the company’s two Manhattan stores for several days.

Working solo for nearly three days, Mr. Manni said he was forced to let Web orders go unfilled. Several of his vendors’ warehouses were damaged badly, which meant the company could not replenish its stock and ship to customers.

In all, Mr. Manni figured the seven-year-old business lost $50,000 last week. “In a way, that’s the same thing as physical damage,” he said. “It’s really dollars at the end of the day.” He said the company had business-interruption coverage that began after 72 hours, so he expected to get some money, though he did not know how much.

In the meantime, with the business closed for nearly a week, cash flow has been a struggle. “We’re just not prepared for that,” he said. “We don’t run with a ton of cash in the bank. I’ve had to do incredible financial gymnastics to make sure we can pay rent and make our payroll.”

Frustrated by the transit shutdown, Mr. Manni also became creative with transportation. He dispatched the company’s delivery van, which is not made for passengers, to pick up employees throughout the city.

By the end of last week, operations were getting back to normal. “With the online business, people expect that you ship their packages and answer their e-mails,” he said. “We just can’t stop moving because of Sandy.”

AP sports writer's harrowing tale of Sandy

AP sports writer Dennis Waszak and his family had moved into their Staten Island 'dream house' just weeks before Superstorm Sandy devastated parts of the New York City borough. These are his recollections a week after the storm hit and upended life for Waszak, his wife and their three children.

I was standing in our pitch-black basement as water streamed through the broken windows like a waterfall. A bathtub drain gurgled, the slimy sewage quickly pooling in an ominous mess. Just eight weeks after we'd bought our dream house — three bedrooms, big kitchen, pool,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. white fence and a finished basement — Superstorm Sandy was ripping it apart with a fury that was hard to comprehend, along with the rest of our Staten Island neighborhood.

At 9 p.m. Monday, I sent my sister Christina a text message saying our basement was still dry.

Minutes later that all changed.An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. The man cave I couldn't wait to show off to my buddies, the one I'd spent hours working on, was fast being covered in rancid brown muck, beginning with what was once a white carpet. Watching it methodically swallow up the mementos that took us a lifetime to gather, I lost it.

Family photos, clothes, thousands of CDs, furniture. Thirty years of Topps baseball cards my dad gave me each and every Christmas. A copy of nearly every story I'd ever written — as a budding sports reporter at Xaverian High School in Brooklyn, from the Super Bowl and World Series, during 16-plus years with The Associated Press — all gone.

My wife, Daria, urged me to stop, if only for the sake of our kids. I ran up the stairs toward the living room, struggling to compose myself. Behind me, all the while, the sludge kept rising. At 9:16 p.m., I texted my sister again: "The basement is completely covered in raw sewage. It's destroyed."

Some 10 hours earlier, I was on a conference call with New York Jets coach Rex Ryan, hearing him describe the challenges his disappointing team still faced. Now I was swept up in the biggest natural disaster to hit the New York area in decades, wondering how to protect my family.

It's funny the places your mind wanders sometimes, even in moments of crisis. So the fact that my mother's name is Sandy was at least good for a rueful smile. Even she can't believe now how much death and destruction will be attached to it for, well, forever.

Our neighborhood in the Eltingville section of Staten Island was designated a Zone C area, at very low risk for evacuation during a storm. That's why so few of us were alarmed earlier in the day, when the water from a creek that was part of a planned park poured out onto Arthur Kill Road and up our street at high tide. We thought that would be the worst of it.

Then the wind began whipping up, right around 4 p.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products.m., and that picture-postcard white fence was blown to pieces. Soon after, with everything else we could tie down, board up or cover already secured, and roof tiles flying around like the occasional Frisbee,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. my neighbors and I headed inside to ride the storm out.

The power was on for two more hours, gone just as Daria was cooking dinner for the kids. They thought it was fun to eat and play by candlelight. But I looked out the window, saw the water from the creek halfway up the street, and it struck me that Sandy hadn't even really hit yet. Then came a frantic knock at the door.

The hissing outside was louder than the shrill howl of the wind. A man I'd never seen before was walking around in the storm, heard the leak and smelled the gas. Out of nowhere, a neighbor showed up with a wrench and shut off the main valve. Someone else called National Grid and three minutes later, two workers from the power company turned up to make sure everything was locked down.

I'm still not sure who the first of those guardian angels was, but I promised myself to find out soon. When I do, I'm going to hug him. But there were still more pressing concerns first.

Around 7 p.m., our next-door neighbor, a sweet Italian grandmother named Grace, ran outside crying that the water in her basement was already a few feet high. Ours was still dry. But the water rushing faster and faster up the street now licked at the door of Daria's car in the driveway.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, I grabbed the keys and drove five blocks, parking it up on a hill. Then I jogged back home, with rain pelting my face, my arms over my head to protect myself from the tree branches swirling around, and moved my car. When I returned the second time, the water was even with the first step of our house. And it kept coming.

Another step, then another. Two more and the water would be level with the first floor. What then?

That reverie was broken the second the alarm system tripped in response to the water bursting through the basement windows. Soon enough, the electrical outlets were submerged and there was no chance to reach the fuse box in the corner and switch off the circuits. We were running out of options, and fast. In a panic, I started reviewing one nightmare scenario after another.

An excerpt

Eighteen-year-old Rona Amir and Mohammad Shafia were a picture-perfect bridal couple, the beautiful eldest daughter of a retired army colonel and the handsome Kabul businessman.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. Shafia, accomplished at age 25, smiled for snapshots with his porcelain bride on his arm. It was 1978, the year that Rona would later lament that her lot in life "began a downward spiral." That day, in the crush of well-wishers and glare of flashbulbs that froze her mask of happiness, she did not see the turmoil ahead.

Many people attended their elaborate wedding at the Intercontinental, the finest hotel in Kabul. The surroundings were posh, adorned with chandeliers and carpets in rich red tones. The teenaged bride wore a gauzy baby-blue dress. Two blue roses, fashioned from the fabric, protruded from the satiny waves of dark hair near her left ear.

It was a refined beginning. Shafia's mother, Shirin, had arranged the marriage two years earlier. She had found him this good girl when she attended the wedding of a distant relative, Noor. At the reception, Shirin noticed the bridegroom's younger sister Rona. The slender sixteen-year-old had beautiful skin and a round face with delicate features. She was quiet and reserved, perhaps even timid. Shirin was pleased. This girl was attractive, and she came from a reputable, middleclass family.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. Rona would surely make a good wife for Shafia and mother for his children.

Shirin was careful to comply with the strict tradition of khwastgari, the ritual that dictated rules of betrothal. First she asked Rona's family for the girl's hand in marriage for her son, and then she visited Rona's home several times to see the girl with her family. The visits did not diminish her first impression that Rona was a good mate for her son. Rona and her family were also invited to Shirin's home, as custom required. The visits afforded Shafia a chance to get a good look at the girl that his mother had selected for him. He approved.

Rona's elder brother asked her if she would accept the proposal to marry Shafia. Rona didn't fully comprehend what it would mean to become a wife, but she recognized that it was her fate to be given away to a man she did not know or love.

"Give me away in marriage if he is a good man," she replied. "Don't if he is not."

And so Rona's family investigated Shafia. They learned that his father, Akbar, had died in a car crash when Shafia was only two. Shafia had completed Grade 6, but in the absence of a patriarch in his family, and out of economic necessity, he was thrust at a young age into a position of leadership and responsibility. He began apprenticing with extended family, learning to repair televisions and radios. By the time Shafia was a teenager, he had opened a small electronics shop with a loan from his grandfather. Shafia proved adept at electronic repair and was soon able to open a larger shop in downtown Kabul. He expanded from selling primarily radios to importing and reselling other electronics.

Learning this, Rona's family decided Shafia was a simple, hard-working young man who would succeed in business - an acceptable suitor. With the blessing of her family secured, the bright young high school student who had just completed Grade 11 was betrothed to a stranger seven years her senior.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. In a country where girls as young as two were offered up by their families as wives for men in their sixties and seventies, it was a reasonable arrangement viewed as a highly compatible match.

And so, in 1978, Rona and Shafia were wed, beginning their new life together in the same year that Afghanistan began its descent into three bloody decades of war and chaos that would reduce Kabul to rubble and displace millions of Afghans. President Daoud Khan was assassinated in a coup in which thousands died. War planes fired on the presidential palace in Kabul as military units loyal to Daoud battled troops sympathetic to the Soviet Union, which had long provided financial and political support to Afghanistan.

Rona and Shafia were still relative newlyweds when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Soviet commandos stormed the palace and killed the president, setting the stage for the installation of a puppet leader and a deadly, decade-long occupation that would see one million Afghans die.

In the Shafia home, an unexpected problem was festering: Rona could not get pregnant. At first, Shafia was not troubled by her failure to give him a child. He was busy with his expanding business empire. He launched a company, Babul Ltd., to import and distribute products from Japan. Rona visited several doctors, received injections and assurances, but still failed to conceive. Shafia took her to India for treatment from experts, but the expensive intervention did not help.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility.

After several childless years, Shafia began to hear derisive jokes from his acquaintances and business associates. People were ridiculing him for his failure to impregnate his wife. Maybe something was wrong with him, they were saying. There were crude taunts about farm animals.

Shafia trained his anger upon his barren wife. He began to snipe at Rona and became more controlling, telling her to stop leaving the home to visit her mother. "He would find fault with my cooking and serving meals and he would find excuses to harass me," Rona would write in her diary, years later. Until that point, she had considered his treatment of her to be kind.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, But Shafia could not contain his growing bitterness over his wife's failure to give him children.

Riding Out Sandy in the Rockaways

My neighbors in Rockaway are defying the evacuation order. The Master Plumber posted a picture of the boardwalk with the ocean already under it, but wrote that they were “high and dry,” and that I was missing the parties. It sounds like they’re moving from house to house, from cocktails to dinner to rum, waiting for the next high tide.

I am more concerned about my friend at the marina. I have a fourteen-foot rowboat with a six-horsepower motor, and last week I begged him to leave it in the water till Thursday, because it was my last chance this season to go by boat to the house my friend Paula inherited on the water in Gerritsen Beach, in Brooklyn. Since Paula and I are both from Cleveland, and not from boating families, we think it’s a riot that we have ended up owning homes (and boats) on opposite sides of Jamaica Bay.

The boss at the marina has been worrying about Sandy since early last week. I got to the boatyard on Thursday at about noon. He had left the boat in the water for me, but he was sitting in the forklift, eager to get boats out of the water. He had just taken out a boat called the Risk Taker. Another huge boat sat shrink-wrapped in ghostly white. I told him my plan. “Do you have my number?” he asked. “Call me, or I’ll worry.”

I loaded my gear into the boat and checked my cheat sheet: Gear in neutral, throttle on start, vent on gas can open, gas line plugged into motor, choke open. Pull cord. Nothing. Oh yeah, the lanyard: a red coil with a ring on the end, which I slipped over a knob to engage the engine. She started up. I throttled down and slowly pushed the choke in, then cast off.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. The tide was so low that I could see the floor of the bay. It was about 12:10 P.M. The bay was calm, the sky was overcast but not stormy. Oh, something I keep forgetting to put on the cheat sheet: make sure there is a stream of water coming from the engine, or it will overheat.

Ahoy! Land ho! An hour and a quarter later, I was at my friend’s dock. We headed down the inlet (Shell Bank Creek, according to my chart) to Tamaqua, a bar and marina. We asked at the dock where we tied up if there was a place nearby to get something to eat. “I’ve got frozen pizza I’ll heat up for you,” the guy said. Considering that we were hungry and that there was nothing else around, we said that sounded great.

Tamaqua is a big place, with a huge bar, a pool table, and a stage. It was decorated for Halloween. A handful of regulars—retirees—were propping up the bar. The barmaid was dressed as if for payday: full evening makeup, royal-blue blouse with ruffles, short tight black skirt, hair sprayed into place, plenty of bling at her throat. “Where did you ladies come from?” she asked as she served us a beer. We weren’t sure what to answer. Cleveland? An improbably long trip. Gerritsen? Why didn’t we drive? So I said it: Ebb Tide Marina, in Rockaway. “We’re the mean marina,” the boss has said. He flies the Jolly Roger.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.

The pizza was taking a while, so we asked for some bar snacks. The barmaid plucked a bag of Fritos and a bag of potato chips off the rack, spread a napkin on the bar in front of us, and poured the chips onto it. Paula and I looked at each other; we had never before observed this quaint custom.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. Finally the pizza arrived: pepperoni. “I bought a hundred of these,” the man said. “Thought I should have them around in case anyone get hungry.” He had heated up an extra one, which the barmaid distributed among the regulars.

Soon I had to take my friend back to her house on the water. I called the boss at the marina, to let him know I’d be a little late—closer to five-thirty. The return trip was faster: now I was going with the tide. Four swans flew over, their necks stretched out like those trumpets they use in productions of Shakespeare to blow a fanfare for the king.

Circling into the marina, I consulted my cheat sheet again: Pull gas plug, slow way down, curve into slip just as engine dies (yes!), grab line on dock and wrap around cleat at stern,HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spare parts for sale are also welcomed . climb onto dock with bow line. Close vent on gas tank. Put plug on gas-intake valve, put gear in Forward, tip engine up and on its side. Oh, yeah,Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. remove lanyard.

I put the lifejackets in the office for the winter and looked for the boss. The door to the bungalows on the dock was locked up tight. I walked back out among the slips, wondering if he was working there. Then he signalled me from the dock with a lantern and came out to meet me in the boatyard. “This could be a big one,” he said as I handed over the lanyard. He would take the boat out of the water the next day. The hurricane was on course to meet a storm coming from the west. “And there’s a full moon,” he said. The street leading to the marina floods regularly at moon tides; he has had as much as four feet of water in his bungalow. “And there’s so much stuff lying around in the yard,” he sadi. “I just hope it doesn’t hit at high tide.” He looked up at the sky and said, “Pop”—he is from a long line of mariners on Jamaica Bay—“let this one blow over.”

DART committee updated on paid parking initiative

A pilot program to charge residents of non-DART cities for parking at some rail stations has caused a spike in parking at downstream stations, and an expansion of the program may be necessary to fill an $88,600 deficit, a DART planning committee was told Tuesday.


The program was launched in April at Parker Road and North Carrollton-Frankford stations. The program is intended to address concerns from DART member city residents that many who park and ride come from outside of the service area and do not help fund the DART system with their tax dollars.

Between March and September, parking by non-residents at Parker Road station has dropped off by 438 vehicles per day, said Todd Plesko, vice president of planning and development for DART.

However, availability of parking at George Bush Turnpike Station, the first park-and-ride station south of Parker Road, has decreased, with 383 more vehicles parking at the station per day in September compared to March, bringing the station close to its parking capacity.

"Much of that population that's shifted from Parker Road obviously went from George Bush," Plesko said.

As of September, the overall program is running an $88,600 deficit.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. Parking-fee operations at both stations are administered and paid for by a third-party company called Platinum Parking, Plesko said.

So far, non-residents parking at free lots have cost the program approximately $100,000 in revenue.

"If we don't make, ultimately, some different decisions in the long-term, it's perhaps not a break-even operation," Plesko said.

One way to capture this lost revenue is to expand the program, shifting lots at George Bush and Trinity Mills over to the pay-to-ride model, Plesko said.

The expansion could be done without a dramatic increase in costs by spreading labor across multiple stations, potentially using existing DART staff to help further offset costs, he said.

Plesko said expanding the program could bring it to a positive net revenue of $22,117 per month.

"It does address the equity issue, but it's not a massively profitable program," he said.

Ridership has changed little since the implementation of the program,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. according to data presented by Plesko. Ridership is down 1.8 percent at Parker and has increased by 9.4 percent at George Bush since the implementation of the parking program.

"Realize that almost all of the riders that we believe didn't want to pay have gone to another station," he said. "They have not decided ...Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. as far as we know, to leave DART altogether."

After Plesko's presentation, Mark Enoch, board representative for Garland, Rowlett and Farmer's Branch asked what the likelihood of implementing an extra cost at George Bush Station might be.

"I think that was the thought, to see where this takes us before we move forward," said Timothy McKay, executive vice president of growth and regional development.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. "At some point you've got to assume if it puts people too far down they will drive."

Pamela Dunlop Gates, representative for Dallas and planning committee chair, said the board must have a sense of how far down it can expand the program before it reaches the threshold of people choosing not to ride altogether.

"For us to be able to make an informed decision about how well this is going to work, we're probably going to have to modify the pilot,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. the demonstration," she said, adding that the staff will have to bring the issue back to the board for further discussion at a future meeting.

The pay-to-park program expanded to Northwest Plano Park and Ride in July of this year. An already planned expansion of the program at Belt Line Station in Irving is slated for December.

'Rock Iowa' revs up young voters

An echo of the feverish get-out-the-vote effort under way by political parties, interest groups and community organizations in these waning weeks of the 2012 election is sounding in several Iowa high schools through the secretary of state’s new outreach program.

Matt Schultz has been traveling to dozens of high schools across the state in recent weeks with a special presentation for voting-age students aimed at getting them registered and ready to cast ballots.

It’s called “Rock Iowa,Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology.” and it represents a collaboration between the Republican Schultz,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, whose office is the state-level administrator of elections, and Rock the Vote, the venerable youth-voting advocacy group. Schultz calls it the first such program of its kind and says it could be a model for other states in the years to come.

We’re the first, and kind of a one-of-a-kind event, but I think it’s going to start catching on,” he said.

The effort is an outgrowth of a Rock the Vote-sponsored “Rock the Caucus” event at Valley High School on the morning of the Iowa caucuses last January. That event featured Republican candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, and four of eventual GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s sons, and inspired Schultz to take the show to high schools across the state.

Schultz and his staff have hit about 40 high schools with a slide show on the mechanics of voting and voter registration, a slickly produced Rock the Vote video and plenty of audience participation. The underlying message emphasizes participation.

“The rough math is, about half of you who are eligible don’t vote,” Schultz told the students in Perry. “Hopefully, after today, we can change that.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile,”

The seniors at Perry High School didn’t appear to need much of an explanation or encouragement — several dozen already were registered and many more were involved in mock congressional and presidential campaigns being run out of government teacher Diane Gibson’s classroom.

The whole school will be invited to vote on Election Day, and the government classes will tally and scrutinize the results, comparing them and turnout data to local and national statistics, Gibson said.

On Tuesday,Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products. the school’s hallways were plastered with signs, banners and buttons signaling support for or opposition to congressional candidates Leonard Boswell and Tom Latham and presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and students in Gibson’s class were busy constructing color-coded ballot boxes.

But even with that background, the students were game for Schultz’s Rock Iowa presentation, in which he quickly described the rules and procedures for voter registration and then pulled two students up to the front of the school auditorium for an impromptu debate.

Daisy Cerna received a lanyard designating her “Candidate A,” and Kory Eiteman received another identifying him as “Candidate B.” Then they took questions from their peers on a wide range of issues: energy, the national debt,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. same-sex marriage, abortion, the war in Afghanistan and more.

Many of Cerna’s and Eiteman’s answers were thoughtful, some pleaded an earnest ignorance and surprisingly few differed all that much. And neither candidate hewed exactly to the established dogmas of the Republican and Democratic parties.

Cerna, for example, offered the more liberal view that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, but described a strong opposition to abortion, a conventionally conservative view.

“I say go for it, because everyone deserves the right to have someone they love,” she said of same-sex marriage, drawing the loudest cheers and applause of the afternoon from her classmates. On abortion, she added, “I think women should have their children. Any child that is conceived, or whatever, should get the opportunity to live.”

Eiteman came out in favor of technological innovation and high fuel standards as the solution to high gas prices and a gun policy that allowed the purchase of all but military-grade weaponry.

When one shaggy-haired student asked about legalizing marijuana — the question doesn’t come up at every Rock Iowa, Schultz said later, but it does at many — Cerna suggested doing so could be a source of additional tax revenue. Eiteman, after a long pause, said, “I honestly don’t have an opinion.”

The Naked Truth

Gustav Klimt, one of the art world’s original rebels, is at the centre of global celebrations,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. as art lovers gather in their thousands to mark the master’s 150th anniversary from this summer until the end of the year. As a founding member and president of the Vienna Secession movement, he strived to shock the public with his overtly sexual, sinuous paintings.HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spareparts for sale, Klimt’s contribution to this radical movement was pivotal in inspiring a number of artists, including his protg, Egon Shiele, to veer from the traditional and somewhat archaic style that dominated Austrian Art at that time.

Klimt’s work and achievements were such that they sent global shockwaves, as seen by a number of countries paying tribute to his legacy. In London,HOWO is a well-known tractor's brand and howo tractor suppliers are devoted to designing and manufacturing best products. celebrations were out in full force, including “Klimt Illustrated”, which I had the pleasure of viewing.

Hosted by the Lazarides art gallery in Soho, the exhibition was made up of the works of nine internationally renowned street artists who produced Klimt-inspired pieces, in front of a live audience in London’s Grosvenor Gardens on the 21st of August. In the spirit of Vienna’s rich cultural diversity, the event was freely open to the public, with the aim of showcasing the city’s modern art scene and imperial heritage. The event was said by one London magazine to be a “superb parallel universe that would make you feel like flying straight to Vienna to see Klimt’s original paintings.”

Echoes of Klimt’s unique panache resonate in each of the works, often through the imitation of his outline shape of the figures depicted in “The Kiss”. The artists added something of themselves to their pieces, but held true to the “curves, spirals, mystical whirlpools and bright assorted shapes” of Klimt’s work, that one French art critic, Gilles Neret, dubbed as the rebel master’s artistic hook, with the purpose of “enticing the viewer towards the depths of the unconscious and the labyrinths of the mind”.

One piece even included a telescope piercing into a landscape painting, giving acknowledgement to Klimt’s own practice of viewing scenes through a telescope as his way of escaping the hectic city of Vienna and the turmoil of World War I. The showcase was an extraordinary testimony to Klimt’s bravery and determination to break down restricting societal norms through expressive Art, for which modern artists owe a great deal.

As well as the post humorous lessons he has been able to teach many a modern artist, during his lifetime, Klimt mentored a number of younger artists, with a great deal of his time focused on Shiele, who too had “had enough of censorship”, as put by Gilles Neret. Klimt and Shiele wanted to be free of state interference, wanting to escape the claustrophobic rigour of Vienna. In his support of Shiele, Klimt bought some of the young artist’s drawings, introduced him to potential patrons and brought him to the Wiener Werkst?tte, the major art workshop connected with the Secession.

His guidance led Shiele to found the “New Art Group”, which connected other disillusioned students of the traditional Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Klimt’s influence on Shiele’s life is typical of the encouragement that he gave to other artists like him, striving to deviate from the norm in a time where nothing but conformity was acceptable.

Quite naturally, Klimt’s artistic style was met with an icy reception by those who wanted to uphold the more orthodox pillars of Vienna’s art scene. Despite this, at the turn of the century, Klimt fell into a “Golden Phase” (1899-1910), where his work was positively received and most known for his use of gold leaf. During this period, he created “The Kiss” and was greatly inspired by his trips to Vienna and Ravenna.

Departing from the tortured artist clich, Klimt lived a simple life, involving little more than a robe, sandals and a paintbrush. He avoided personal scandal and public affairs, advising anyone who wished to know anything about him to “look at [his] paintings”. One of his final paintings, “Death and Life”, created in 1911, won first prize at the world exhibitions in Rome, demonstrating the progression of his work as viewed by the public and his momentous impact on global artistry.

Klimt’s colourful artistic career is still celebrated 150 years on. The city of Vienna held various exhibitions and remembrances to demonstrate the influence that Klimt’s work continues to hold over modern day artists.

The Belvedere, home to the largest collection of Klimt’s paintings, is hosting “Masterpieces in Focus: 150 years of Gustav Klimt”, curated by Dr.Find detailed product information for sino howo tipper truck. Stephan Koja,Choose from our large selection of cable ties. author of Gustav Klimt Landscapes (2002). The exhibition explores each year of his life, including all negative and positive public receptions of his work.

At the turn of the century Klimt’s work has become much more than a mere visual medium. For the general public who secretly shared his desire to break away from structure and regimented order, his work stood for change and the possibility of social liberation.

The most recent insight into Klimt’s life and artwork can be found in his last standing studio in the 13th district of Vienna, Feldmühlgasse, which recently underwent renovation for the first time since 1918. The abandoned studio is where he created most of his works during the last six years of his life. It still contains two of his paintings, “The Bride” and “Lady with a fan”, just resting on their easels. A fascinating insight into some of the strange patterns in his paintings was realised on closer observation of some of the unusual gowns discovered around the room and curtains covering the northern facing windows.

Klimt’s studio has now been reopened, after almost 15 years of political struggle. Various plans including secret demolition schemes kept cropping up in order for the property to be sold to Russian developers.

Banker Herb Allen to Put a Monet on the Block

In another sign that the smart money set is selling art this auction season, investment banker Herb Allen said his family is planning to auction off a Claude Monet painting of a water lily pond for between $30 million and $50 million next month in New York.

The planned sale comes as prices for Monet's watery scenes continue to climb, buoyed by interest from emerging collectors in China and Europe who think values for name-brand artists will hold up during times of economic uncertainty even if prices for lesser-known painters plummet.

Monet's Water-Lily series—the artist painted more than 160 views of his garden pond at Giverny, France between 1905 and his death in 1926—seem particularly popular. Five of the artist's priciest paintings at auction depict his garden, including "The Lily Pond," a 1919 example that Christie's auction house sold to a European buyer for $80.4 million at the peak of the last market in 2008.

"Water Lilies," a painting that dates from 1905 and shows mint-green lily pads bobbing atop a periwinkle pool,Find a cry stalmosaic Manufacturer and Supplier. will be offered at Christie's evening sale of Impressionist and modern art in New York on Nov. 7.

Christie's specialist Conor Jordan said Chinese interest is already piqued by "Water Lilies," so he's shipping it to Hong Kong next week so potential bidders can take a closer look.

Mr. Allen, the founder of the annual mogul-fest in Sun Valley, Idaho, said his father bought the painting in 1979 with his wife,Different Sizes and Colors can be made with different stone mosaic designs. Ethel Strong Allen. After Mr. Allen's father died in 1997, the painting remained in the collection of his stepmother, who died in June.

Mr. Allen said he's settling her estate by auctioning off the Monet and another pair of Impressionist paintings by Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.

Pissarro's 1895 landscape, "Apple Trees and Haymakers, Eragny," shows a pair of women using pitchforks to rake hay into piles in an apple orchard near Pissarro's home in Eragny, France. Christie's estimates the work will sell for at least $2.5 million.TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China.

Pissarro's performance at auction has been patchy lately, with several works going unsold, but collectors tend to pay a premium for scenes like this one that show Pissarro's signature way of painting long, afternoon shadows.

Christie's also expects to get at least $2.5 million for Sisley's "Alley of Poplars at Moret on the Bank of the Loing," an 1890 view of a poplar-lined path near a riverbank in the French town of Moret. Sisley's auction record is similarly hit and miss these days, but his poplar series still seems to find plenty of takers: Seven of the artist's priciest works at auction feature riverbank views of Moret—including an 1891 example that broke the artist's auction record when it sold for $5.7 million at Sotheby's five years ago.

It all begins on Oct. 20 with the “Main Street Paint Out” on 89A in uptown Sedona from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. This opening event is sponsored by the Sedona Main Street Program. Finished paint-out paintings are then displayed and sold in front of the Sedona Arts Center at 4:30 p.m.

The Main Street Paint Out is immediately followed by the opening reception in the Arts Center’s Special Exhibition Gallery and Theatre Studio space, which are designated as the “Plein Air Galleries” for this event. Wine and food are being provided at 5:30 p.m. by the Sedona Arts Center’s Board of Directors as a special welcome to the artists. The public is invited to both opening events making for a wonderful afternoon adventure in the arts.

On Sunday and Monday the artists will paint on their own and in small groups throughout Sedona, the Verde Valley and Oak Creek Canyon. The Jerome Chamber of Commerce and Jerome Artwalk are hosting the artists on Tuesday morning. Check in at the tent at Middlepark to see where particular artists are located, or just walk the streets of Jerome where artists will be painting all morning. Wednesday evening features Keynote speaker and noted plein air artist Kathryn Stats, whose presentation “Its Only Paint!” takes place at 7 p.Kitchen floor tiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles.m. at the Arts Center’s Theatre Studio.

On Thursday Oct. 24, the artists will engage in a 2-hour “Centennial Quick Paint,” a timed event from 10 a.m. to noon at the Sedona Heritage Museum, 735 Jordan Road in uptown Sedona. There will be models in period costume, historic equipment and stunning landscapes for the artists to paint. The finished pieces will be framed and on display for judging and sale at 12:30 p.m.

The public is also invited to return often to the ongoing exhibition, which will be changing throughout the week as artists complete new work. However, something special is held back for the auction event that will be the capstone to the week. When the doors open on Saturday, Oct. 27, at the Arts Center’s “Plein Air Galleries,” the artists will present the final pieces of the week’s output and each will have selected one work as their auction piece. The auction will be preceded by live music and Wine Tasting from noon to 4 p.m., featuring wines from Alcantara, Grand Canyon Cellars and Javelina Leap wineries. Tickets for wine tasting include five pours for $10. Cheese and crackers are provided by a sponsorship from New Frontiers.Save up to 80% off Ceramic Tile and plastic moulds.

Whitman Eye Center Selects Versus RTLS

Following several months of research, Key-Whitman Eye Center, a leading ophthalmic services center with offices in Dallas, Plano and Arlington, has selected the Versus Advantages Real-time Locating Solution (RTLS) from Versus Technology, Inc. to improve patient flow and satisfaction. Key-Whitman will use Versus Advantages to enable real-time visibility at and across each of its three clinics.

For more than 50 years, Key-Whitman has been providing vision correction and general eye care services in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex area. The largest Key-Whitman Eye Center, in Dallas, is also an Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) specializing in cataract, refractive and LASIK surgeries. There, the clinic treats 200 patients per day. The Plano and Arlington clinics average 100 and 80 patients per day, respectively.

Key-Whitman, like other clinics and hospitals, is not immune to declining CMS reimbursement.High quality Wholesale gemstone beads, To maintain profitability, the clinic recognizes the need to increase patient throughput while maintaining high patient satisfaction (HCAHPS). Like many other Versus clients, Key-Whitman understands that EHR implementation alone is not enough to drive this level of efficiency. In fact, the additional documentation requirements can add to staff workload. However, Versus removes the onus of documentation placed on skilled staff.

By providing patients and staff with Versus badges (small, dual-technology badges that emit unique Infrared and RFID locating signals), Versus automatically records interaction with the patient, notifying all of what has happened with the patient and what still needs to happen—all while recording the time it takes to complete each treatment interval. Just as the EHR is important for documenting patient care and outcomes, an accurate RTLS is important for improving the patient experience and operational efficiency—both of which impact patient satisfaction.

Known for its open integration platform, Versus’ RTLS will integrate to MedEvolve, the clinics’ practice management system, to enable hands-free documentation and increase data availability for patient monitoring by staff. This integration will also help Key-Whitman develop a scheduling template to balance and improve the pace of work for staff. Chambers explains, “We currently have patients coming in thinking they just need a simple eye exam and a prescription upgrade, but they often require a more detailed eye exam and specialized services. We must adjust our services on-the-fly to the patient’s exam needs, but it can impact our timeliness with other patients.”

The Versus Advantages RTLS will minimize the typical peaks and valleys of staff workloads often correlating with these extended exam times which cause missed lunch breaks for staff and complaints from other patients about delays. By creating a more accurate scheduling template, Key-Whitman hopes to improve patient satisfaction from an already high average of 88% and improve staff morale by eliminating stress caused by patient scheduling conflicts and unrealistic time allowances.

An additional integration to Simcad Process Simulator, a software system that facilitates predictive modeling and scenario-based simulations, will allow Key-Whitman to record the quantifiable data necessary to produce detailed reports for trend identification. This, along with Reports Plus? Analytics from Versus will further enhance Key-Whitman’s scheduling and decision-making capabilities.

With the 2014 EHR mandate set by the HITECH Act, the RTLS integration to Simcad is important to Key-Whitman for several reasons. One, Key-Whitman believes that real, accurate data will advance the design concepts of patient flow and staff workflow models. Second, importing RTLS data will assist with simulation testing of those models to analyze improved business performance.HOWO is a well-known tractor's brand and howo tractor suppliers are devoted to designing and manufacturing best products.

“It comes down to good data in, good data out,” says Susan Thomas,Find detailed product information for sino howo tipper truck. Director of Operations for Key-Whitman.Choose from our large selection of cable ties. “Using the Versus RTLS to passively collect and monitor actual staff utilization and patient flow data will create a real-time, operational picture that we can then use to address bottlenecks and resource deployment.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. It’s essential for lean management.”

The Louvre’s New Islamic Galleries Bring Riches to Light

When I.Visonic Technologies is the leading supplier of rtls safety, M. Pei’s glass pyramid opened at the Louvre more than 20 years ago, many argued that this 70-foot-tall structure had destroyed the classical beauty of one of the world’s great museums. But today, as crowds wait on long lines outside the pyramid,Sinotruck Hongkong International is special for howo truck. which serves as the Louvre’s main entrance, what once seemed audacious has become as accepted a part of the city’s visual landscape as the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe.

Now the museum is again risking the public’s wrath as it introduces the most radical architectural intervention since the pyramid in 1989. Designed to house new galleries for Islamic art, it consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof that seems to float within the neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard in the middle of the Louvre’s south wing, right below the museum’s most popular galleries, where the Mona Lisa and Veronese’s “Wedding Feast of Cana” are hung.

Ten years in the making, the $125 million project, which opens on Saturday, has been financed in part by the French government, along with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who gave the Louvre $20 million toward the galleries, the largest single monetary gift ever given to the museum. Corporations have kicked in money too, including Total, the oil company,Browse the Best Selection of buy mosaic and Accessories with FREE Gifts. and the governments of countries like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Morocco, Kuwait and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

On a recent cloudless afternoon, as teams of workers were putting the finishing touches on the project, a visitor was allowed to enter the heavily guarded Visconti Courtyard, where the golden roof billows up from waist level at the edges to about 22 feet close to the center. At first glance it looks gauzy enough to blow away in a heavy wind, but according to members of the architectural team who were working at the site, it weighs 150 tons and has been painstakingly fashioned from almost 9,000 steel tubes that form an interior web, over which are a layer of glass and, on top of that, a shimmering anodized gold surface.

This deftly engineered design is the work of two architects, the Italian Mario Bellini and the Frenchman Rudy Ricciotti, who won an international competition to create the new wing in 2005.

When the plans were first unveiled, the architects said, the roof resembled a “a scarf floating within the space” — a somewhat loaded description, perhaps, considering that last year the French officially banned full veils in public places. The museum’s “luminous veil,” or “flying carpet” as it has also been called, covers some 30,000 square feet of gallery space on the ground and lower floors. The new galleries, roughly four times as large as the space previously devoted to Islamic art at the Louvre, house a collection spanning 1,200 years of history, from the 7th through the 19th centuries, and includes glass works, ceramics, metalwork, books, manuscripts, textiles and carpets.

Their opening comes 10 months after the Metropolitan Museum of Art introduced its own new galleries dedicated to the arts of Islam. The Met, in an effort to avoid defining the collection solely in terms of religion, chose an unusually long title for its spaces, “The Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia.” The Louvre, on the other hand, has taken the exact opposite approach, calling its galleries simply, “Islam.”

“This is the way the world has spoken about Islam, not only the religion but the civilization,” explained Sophie Makariou, the Louvre’s director of Islamic art, insisting that the name is not an oversimplification. “We were out to tell the history of these people. It’s as complicated as a textile. There are many different threads and a lot of different kinds of civilizations who built this world.”

And while the Met’s installation is organized mainly by geography,This page list rubber hose products with details & specifications. the Louvre has arranged its objects chronologically. The collection draws both from the Louvre’s own holdings of about 14,000 artworks and artifacts representing the breadth of the Islamic world from Spain to India and from the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which is contributing 3,500 works on permanent loan.

Delicate manuscripts and textiles are displayed in the lower-floor galleries, where there is no natural light, while vitrines upstairs display stone sculptures, glassware and metalwork. (These angled glass cabinets — the work of the architect and museum designer Renaud Piérard — allow art and artifacts to be seen from all angles. “It is very important to have perception of objects, their shapes, their profiles and not to hang them like pictures against a wall,” Ms.HOWO is a well-known tractor's brand and howo tractor suppliers are devoted to designing and manufacturing best products. Makariou said.)

When Henri Loyrette, the Louvre’s director, arrived at the museum in 2001, there was not even a separate department of Islamic art. This in spite of the Louvre owning what it calls “one of the richest collections of Islamic art in the world” — a trove large and varied enough to easily warrant a museum of its own. Still, Mr. Loyrette said recently, he did not want to create a separate museum for the Islamic works because they are “so closely linked to our collection, and to Western art, they would be sorely missed were they not part of the Louvre.”

Already the world’s most popular museum, with nearly nine million visitors in the past year alone, it is on its way to becoming even more popular, Mr. Loyrette said. “We have always been open to the world, and today, as our attendance keeps growing, our visitors are increasingly interested in the Islamic world. But many people do not know anything about it, and it is important to show them the luminous face of this civilization.”

The Islamic collection includes prized objects that have been on view at the Louvre for years, like an intricately inlaid 14th-century metal basin from the Middle East known as the Baptistery of St.-Louis, Ottoman jade bowls that belonged to Louis IV and an early-11th-century Egyptian rock crystal ewer from the royal abbey of St.-Denis.

But now there will also be scores of artworks and objects that have not been displayed before. Sitting in her office on the Rue de Rivoli, several blocks away from the Louvre itself, Ms. Makariou talked of some of the discoveries she has made over the last few years. One of the most intriguing, she said, and the one that gave rise to the most challenging undertaking of the project, was the group of some 3,000 16th- and 17th-century ceramic tiles from the Ottoman Empire that had been languishing in storage since the 1970s.

“Many of them didn’t even have accession numbers,” she said. Each tile was photographed, recorded and a database created, and then a team of curators, conservators and mount makers spent two years working every day to figure out how to arrange them in a convincing display. “It was a giant puzzle that took more than seven years to complete,” Ms. Makariou said.

A corridor outside her office is still papered with the thousands of color printouts, each representing a tile, that the team used in assembling the last display visitors to the galleries will see.

A scientist frames climate solutions in business terms

Entrepreneurs and investors alike will profit from Jonathan Koomey's new book on how to cool the climate while garnering some cold cash. Starting with a well-reasoned case for urgent action to slash greenhouse-gas emissions, Koomey dispenses tips for innovators who can help turn the tide.High quality Wholesale gemstone beads, While targeted at the business community, students, policymakers and even the general public will find this compelling book an easy read full of actionable suggestions. Koomey's blog summarizes the arguments.

Few of today's climate and energy analysts have the skill or take the time to communicate their insights accurately to non-specialist audiences. Koomey – a seasoned energy and environmental researcher – effectively positions this book between the "hardcore technical" and "readable but imprecise popular". He combines methods from multiple disciplines and boils an enormous literature down to its essential messages.

In a punchy foreword, Saul Griffith of Other Lab provides a great bird's-eye view of how to pinpoint efficiencies in any sector. My only quibble is that his clever set of conceptual formulae focuses on power and not energy, thus skipping over the important role of utilization (behavioural effects) and controls, an area of critical emerging technology. Readers must wait until chapter 5 for an introduction to the importance of operational efficiencies.

Koomey is a big proponent of effective data visualization, as described in his previous book Turning Numbers into Knowledge; the graphics in Cold Cash reflect care and craft. In one example, he provides a novel fusion of much-reported ice-core data on atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations spanning the last 400,000 years with directly measured values from the last half-century. The chart makes a far stronger point about the unprecedented pace of emissions’ growth than the ice-core data alone.

In a "safer climate" scenario of possible global emissions pathways, Koomey impresses on readers the importance of thinking in terms of an emissions budget, the recklessness – and higher costs – of dithering, and the implications of the carbon budget approach for conventional reserves of fossil fuels.Sinotruck Hongkong International is special for howo truck.Learn how Toyota's Solar Powered ventilation system uses the sun's rays. We will need to keep much of those reserves in the ground or figure out a safe way to sequester the emissions from burning them. Moving comfortably between atmospheric science and economics, he deftly lays out the deficiencies of economic models and describes an alternative way of approaching the future, one that recognizes the path-dependent reality in which we live. We do not get to the hands-on discussion of opportunities for entrepreneurs until chapter 6, but it is well worth the wait.

Koomey is no shrinking violet and does not take any prisoners in critiquing the faulty logic of naysayers. He is rightfully tough on those who advocate delaying action:

"If we want to prevent global temperatures from increasing more than 2 Celsius degrees, we have a fixed emissions budget over the next century. If we emit more now we'll have to reduce emissions more rapidly later, so delaying action (either to gather more data or to focus on energy innovation) is foolish and irresponsible. If energy technologies improved as fast as computers there might be an argument for waiting under some circumstances, but they don't, so it's a moot point."

Entrepreneurs and investors must "fail fast" and iterate rapidly towards improvement, because "learning by doing only happens if we do". In a discussion of the economic logic – and necessity – of retiring certain inefficient and polluting infrastructure early, readers learn that "it's your job to make existing capital stocks obsolete more quickly" by bringing compelling new technologies to market and being innovation "insurgents". The audience is encouraged not to create "artificial obstacles" by thinking too incrementally or succumbing to "feasibility blinders", institutional inertia or the "wilful ignorance" of climate-change deniers.

Traditional venture capitalists (VCs) somehow escape Koomey's scrutiny. One of the dirty little secrets of the "clean-tech" revolution that could have been addressed is the way impatient VCs without subject-matter expertise can swoop in and push innovators out or otherwise cut corners before innovation has had a fair chance to take root.Looking for the Best air purifier?

While private-sector initiative is clearly the missing link in cooling the climate, KoDifferent Sizes and Colors can be made with different stone mosaic designs.omey recognizes a key role for entrepreneurs in the public sector as well. To Libertarian idealogues he has one message: "When it comes to government, more is not better. Less is not better. Only better is better."

God did not create the Universe

As pointed out in Part 1 the off pat answer "God created it" is not an explanation of how the universe came to be,This page list rubber hose products with details & specifications. since no account is given of which religions God did it and how he did it. Some people think there is only one God and he is the same for everybody, as his name only changes because of different languages. But that is not true because the definitions of God vary from religion to religion, as do the rules, regulations and instructions given by each religions sacred book.

In any case it is irrelevant as to which religions God created the universe because science has discovered that the universe did not need to be created as it has all ways existed.Find a cry stalmosaic Manufacturer and Supplier. Steven Hawking wrote in "A Brief History of Time" that time and space started at the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the universe and it explains how the universe has changed. According to General Relativity, the initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, was a singularity. All the mass of the universe was once compacted into a space one trillionth the diameter of a proton.

Therefore you can say without contradiction that "the universe as we know it today began to change approx 13.75 billion years ago". Stephen Hawking reiterates in "The Grand Design" that there is no big gap in the scientific account of the big bang. The laws of physics can explain, he says, how a universe of space, time and matter could emerge spontaneously, without the need for God. All cosmologists and astrophysicists agree: we don't need a “god-of-the-gaps” to make the big bang go ‘bang”. It can happen as part of a natural process as the fundamental forces of the universe take us there. Gravity and other forces take a collection of randomly sorted atoms and forms star and planets, bring water and atmosphere to the surface and denser materials to the core. Chemistry takes random interactions of molecules and produces a higher-order structure.

Religious people often feel tricked by this scientific logic. They envisage a miracle - working God dwelling within the stream of time for all eternity and then, for some inscrutable reason, supernaturally creating a universe, perhaps in a spectacular explosion at a specific moment in history. God made everything to suit mankind and fine tuned the universe to suit us. In other words the universe exists because we exist. But that does not make any sense in the real world because they have it back to front. We are fine tuned to live in this universe; we developed according to pre-existing conditions. If the universe was structured differently we would have followed suite. So we are literally products of our environment and circumstances just like all other creatures on our planet. Our galaxy and solar system came first before life began and in the habitable zone capable of supporting life, life fine tuned itself to an existing environment. If our universe wasn't suitable to support life we wouldn't be here.

Why if God created the vast universe and put us, the pinnacle of creation, into it is most of the universe hostile to life? If you scaled the entire universe down to the equivalent size of a house,Browse the Best Selection of buy mosaic and Accessories with FREE Gifts. then the tiny zone that supports life in our solar system is as small as a single proton. That means our solar system is invisible and completely insignificant to the rest of the universe. The closest star to our solar system is Proxima Centauri and you would have to travel at the speed of light for over four years to get there as it is 6,132,000,000,000 miles away. That’s our neighbour which is only 4.2 light years away.

The region visible from Earth is a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light years. Our nearest sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located roughly 2.5 million light years away. There are probably more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. A 2010 study by astronomers estimated that the observable universe contains 300 sextillion stars.

Why all the wasted energy in creating a universe so immense? It has no design purposes what so ever? Is God that dim-witted? This is not what we would expect if the universe was intelligently designed for us, but is exactly what you would expect if we are merely an accidental by-product of a purposeless and chaotic universe. The fact that something is complicated and awesome does not argue for it being intelligently designed for simplicity is a hallmark of good design. Some Christians told me when confronted with this argument “that God did it because he can” or “he wanted to have some fun”. What “kind” of answers are those? How about my favourite one "but that's just man's perspective". So the scientific challenges to their faith are not dealt with just brushed under the carpet.Our guides provide customers with information about porcelain tiles vs.

Religious people think God created the universe because there is no better explanation. Yet how do they link the “uncaused cause” with teachings of Christianity: he is a triune God, he was incarnated, he made atonement, he was resurrected, he is coming back again etc.? How is it possible for a being to eternally exist as three "persons" without a body in a timeless existence; how is it possible for this being to be called a "person;" how is it possible for this being to think, make choices, take risks, or even freely choose who he is and what his values are?

You are reading this article via the internet on your computer or cell phone none of which would have been possible if it were not for the discoveries of science. Older people think it is a miracle,AeroScout is the market leader for rtls solutions and provide complete wireless asset tracking and monitoring. but the more enlightened know it is just little electrons running to and fro rather than magic or ESP. So whether we admit it or not we put our trust and faith in science every day. Therefore it is just plain common sense and intellectual honesty; to be in favour of rather being influenced by, expert senior research scientist’s testimony and witness, accepted in any court in the land as “bona fida” legal evidence than by a pre-science superstitious Bible creation myth.