The Power of a HotLoad

The Power of a HotLoad the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot. Body

As I waited with a throng of Parisians in the Rambuteau Metro station on a blustery day, my frozen toes finally began to thaw. Alone we may have shivered, but together we brewed so much body heat that people began unbuttoning their coats. We might have been penguins crowding for warmth in Antarctica’s icy torment of winds. Idly mingling, a human body radiates about 100 watts of excess heat, which can add up fast in confined spaces.

Heat also loomed from the friction of trains on the tracks, and seeped from the deep maze of tunnels, raising the platform temperature to around 70 degrees, almost a geothermal spa. As people clambered on and off trains, and trickled up and down the staircases to Rue Beaubourg, their haste kept the communal den toasty.

Geothermal warmth may abound in volcanic Iceland, but it’s not easy to come by in downtown Paris. So why waste it? Savvy architects from Paris Habitat decided to borrow the surplus energy from so many human bodies and use it to supply radiant under-floor heating for 17 apartments in a nearby public housing project, which happens to share an unused stairwell with the metro station. Otherwise the free heat would be lost by the end of the morning’s rush hour.

Appealing as the design may be, it isn’t quite feasible throughout Paris without retrofitting buildings and Metro stops, which would be costly. But it is proving successful elsewhere. There’s Minnesota’s monument to capitalism, the four-million-square-foot Mall of America, where even on subzero winter days the indoor temperature skirts 70 from combined body heat, light fixtures and sunlight cascading through ceiling windows.

Or consider Stockholm’s busy hub, Central Station, where engineers harness the body heat issuing from 250,000 railway travelers to warm the 13-story Kungsbrohuset office building about 100 yards away. Under the voluminous roof of the station, people donate their 100 watts of surplus natural heat, but many are also bustling around the shops and buying meals, drinks, books, flowers, cosmetics and such, emitting even more energy.

This ultra green, almost chartreuse, body-heat design works especially well in Sweden, a land of soaring fuel costs,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. legendary hard winters, and ecologically minded citizens. First, the station’s ventilation system captures the commuters’ body heat, which it uses to warm water in underground tanks.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. From there, the hot water is pumped to Kungsbrohuset’s heating pipes, which ends up saving about 25 percent on energy bills.

Kungsbrohuset’s design has other sustainable elements as well. The windows are angled to let sunlight flood in, but not heat in the summer. Fiber optics relay daylight from the roof to stairwells and other non-window spaces that in conventional buildings would cost money to heat. In summer, the building is cooled by water from a nearby lake.

It’s hard not to admire the Swedes’ resolve. During the 1970s, Sweden suffered from pollution, dead forests, lack of clean water and a nasty oil habit. In the past decade, through the use of wind and solar power, recycling of wastewater throughout eco-suburbs, linking up urban infrastructure in synergistic ways, and imposing stringent building codes, Swedes have cut their oil dependency and drastically reduced their sulfur and CO2 emissions.

Part of the appeal of heating buildings with body heat is the delicious simplicity of finding a new way to use old technology (just pipes,High quality stone mosaic tiles. pumps and water). Hands down, it’s my favorite form of renewable energy.

What could be cozier than keeping friends and strangers warm? Or knowing that by walking briskly or mousing around the shops, you’re stoking a furnace to heat someone’s chilly kitchen?

How about the reciprocity of a whole society, everyone keeping each other warm?

Widening their vision to embrace neighborhoods, engineers from Jernhusen, the state-owned railroad station developer, are hoping to find a way to capture excess body heat on a scale large enough to warm homes and office buildings in a perpetual cycle of mutual generosity. Heat generated by people at home at night would be piped to office buildings first thing in the morning, and then heat shed in the offices during the day would flow to the residences in the late afternoon. Nature is full of life-giving cycles; why not add this human one?

Alas, I don’t see body-heat sharing sweeping the United States anytime soon. Retrofitting city buildings would be costly at a time when our lawmakers are squabbling over every penny. Also, the buildings can’t be more than 100 to 200 feet apart, or the heat is lost in transit. The essential ingredient is a reliable flux of people every day to provide the heat.

Managing Director. Shinn served as the executive assistant to Acting Mayor Caldwell in 2010. She has over twenty years of experience practicing law in California where she represented public and private entities in public law and employment litigation. She served as General Counsel for Oakland Unified School District and the Peralta Community College District. Shinn returned home to Hawaii in 2001, retired from the practice of law,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, and worked for the State House of Representatives as staff attorney for the Judiciary Committee and as special assistant and Chief of Staff for the Speaker of the House.

Deputy Managing Director. Deemer served as the Director of Communications for the House of Representatives, where she worked with Caldwell when he was the House Majority Leader. She served for 15 years as the State of Hawaii Film Commissioner under the Ariyoshi, Waihee and Cayetano administrations where she developed working relationships with city, state and federal agencies for film permitting for local, national and international production. She oversaw the design, construction and management of the Hawaii Film Studio at Diamond Head. In addition to her duties as Deputy Managing Director, she will oversee and unify the City's broad communications efforts across all agencies, elevating the importance of communications in the Caldwell administration.

Director of Transportation Services. Formby served as the Interim Director of Transportation under the Lingle administration, where he oversaw the management of the Airports, Harbors and Highways Divisions. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Director of the Harbors Division. At the DOT state level, he worked extensively on project planning and implementation, and with the state's environmental assessment and environmental impact statement process. Formby is an attorney; he has been a litigator for the past 20 years, and has taught at the William S. Richardson School of Law and Hawaii Pacific University. He supports Mayor Caldwell's vision for rail and other transportation issues.

New Television Shows Promise to Spice Up Winter Entertainment

One of those most anticipated new shows is the highly touted prequel to Sex and the City—The Carrie Diaries. The show, starring Anna Sophia Robb begins on January 14th on the CW network. In it, a teenage Carrie Bradshaw is trying to get her footing in life and dreaming of becoming a writer in New York. She's also dealing with the common issues of high school students like who to date, what to wear and how to become a strong individual. All of that plays into what molds and shapes Carrie into the woman she eventually becomes. It's also when she begins to get a passion for fashion and a yearning for the opposite sex.

While there are obvious nods to the later Miss Bradshaw, The Carrie Diaries also offers something unique that the older show did not. If it can maintain that freshness, it stands a good chance of survival. However, if it tries too hard to mold itself into Sex and the City too early, it may quickly lose its audiences. A delicate balance must be achieved between the old and the new. Tune in to see if the show can achieve it.

NBC continues to try to strengthen its TV lineup with a new drama called Deception. Starting January 7th, the show centers on the suspicious death of a young socialite. An FBI agent played by Laz Alonso recruits the girl's former best friend, who also happens to be his girlfriend, to work undercover to break the case. It's Joanna's (played by Meagan Good) job to uncover whether the girl was murdered or committed suicide.

Fraught with enough twists and turns to keep the most dedicated thriller junkie happy, there will be a lot of information for the average viewer to retain and process. For that reason, the show may not be for everyone. However, those who love ABC's Revenge will probably like Deception as well. The tone of the plot is similar while being just different enough to intrigue as well as captivate.

NBC continues to try to strengthen its TV lineup with a new drama called Deception. Starting January 7th, the show centers on the suspicious death of a young socialite. An FBI agent played by Laz Alonso recruits the girl's former best friend, who also happens to be his girlfriend, to work undercover to break the case. It's Joanna's (played by Meagan Good) job to uncover whether the girl was murdered or committed suicide.

Fraught with enough twists and turns to keep the most dedicated thriller junkie happy, there will be a lot of information for the average viewer to retain and process. For that reason, the show may not be for everyone. However, those who love ABC's Revenge will probably like Deception as well. The tone of the plot is similar while being just different enough to intrigue as well as captivate.

The members of the memorably named Cosmic Slim and His Intergalactic Plowboys admit they are getting rather advanced in age, but this fact of life, that we all must encounter someday, has not vanquished their life-long love of music.

In fact, by all accounts, time has only made it more potent. They still have an unending passion, as their motto states, for "touring the cosmos for your listening pleasure."

They describe their brand of music as eclectic, and there is truly something for everyone. Ultimately, the band plays what they personally find interesting and fun, and that can become pretty much anything. For this reason, they joke, "one thing is for sure, we aren't in it for the big bucks."

"Some us come from Folk, Country, Jug-Band, and old-fashioned Rock 'n Roll. And sometimes we'll just jam away on some Grateful Dead stuff," says the band.

"For example," they continue, "in an old jug-bandy kind of song, which are usually pretty straightforward harmonically, the jazz guy will occasionally throw in some of those 'ambiguous' chord voicings. Or we'll be doing an old boogie-woogie kind of thing, and suddenly you're hearing a finger-picked electric guitar, or a bass line that feels more like a Texas Shuffle. And imagine the thrill of doing a sweet old Blues Ballad, when the Pedal Steel speaks up!"

The Pedal Steel player is Tim Bowles, who indeed has a "long and glorious history" around the Worcester music scene. He has been a member of such local acts as The Trailers, Prudence and the Plowboys,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. the Prairie Oysters, and Dave Pike's Good Old Boys. Two other members of the band are legends of the Worcester rock n' roll scene as well, Rick McCarthy on drums and the newest member Phil Nigro on guitar.

The rest of the band consists of the three friends who met while attending Clark University back in the late 60s. Guitarist Rick Levine, bassist Bill Fisher and keyboardist Sten Gustavson played together in college before going their separate ways. Rick and Bill went on to help form the Prairie Dogs, while Sten moved to Arizona. Despite the distance, they stayed in touch.

"We've reconvened off and on since then, and this 'Slim' thing happened."

This "Slim" thing happened in a perfectly ordinary fashion. Once again, the common story of a bunch of guys coming together out of a unitary desire to play fun music.

"You need to know that this whole thing started out as just a weekly jam. Yes, we always intended to bring it out,We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. but basically this is about us having fun doing tunes we find interesting," they said.

As a young and quite unique creation with a non-traditional sound, they will play basically anywhere that will have them.

"We'd like to find that mix of fun and dancing rooms and 'listening' rooms. Something like a coffeehouse that would be happy with a 6-piece, all-electric-except-for-the-drums eclecto-improvisatory experiment that's always riding the line between art and a trainwreck!" they joke.

For those residents of the cosmos lucky enough to experience a performance by thw band, they can succumb to any number of possible emotions. Which one of the musical genres from their wide repertoire the band chooses to play depends on the context and setting in which they are placed.

"We do some tunes which are simply fun -- people out in a bar will dance and enjoy themselves," they said. "But then there are other things we do which are more for listening. We hope people enjoy them, but 'fun' would probably not be the right descriptor. These are the things you might more commonly hear in a coffeehouse or lounge setting."

But no matter what they choose to perform on a given night, they recognize the one important quality that unites all music, that truly makes music an art form in every sense of the word, i.e., its ability to stir special, potent feelings in both the listener and the musician, feelings that really can't be created by any other type of event.

"It's a fascinating exercise on a personal level. You're trying to bring technical skills to create or recreate an emotional event. We've been playing around with the idea for a long time now, and we still find ourselves asking 'How can that possibly work?' But it does. It's the almost magical part of artistic endeavors."

The band's music can be seen as purely improvisational,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. almost chaotic. They don't even consider any one individual a traditional 'frontman.' In other words, they are a 'band of sidemen.' But it is an organized and welcoming chaos that they bring to the music world, and after all, can't all music (and indeed the cosmos) ultimately be described in such a way?

"In a group context, the teamwork aspect is a thrilling kind of challenge. Our stuff is pretty improvisatory, but even when you're playing a tight arrangement, you're constantly listening and adjusting to what's going on. Lots of practice and repetitions make it more predictable, but you never quite lose that constant, unspoken sort of dialogue that's going on underneath the song," they explain in terms all true musicians can understand.

Our web platform is designed to provide product and assembly specifications for the purpose of assisting builders, architects and engineers in how to design our new assemblies against fire, mold, wood-rot, termites and high winds, providing protection up to nine feet above grade. The combination of Eco Red Shield ? lumber superstructure, encased with Eco Disaster Break? coatings, is the most defensive building innovation ever to hit the industry as we recognized that traditional felt paper and fabric are no longer good enough to protect against rising tides and high winds, let alone fire storms. ECOB building designed assemblies and products are now supported by the FDNY and California Fire Departments.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. Eco Disaster Break coatings applied to the exterior structure eliminate the need for outdated protection methods such as felt paper or vapor barriers around windows, doors and even under roofing and siding; decreasing the risk of water, fire, and termite damage for wood framed structures. Moreover, Eco Disaster Break coatings provide continual protection during high wind events, safeguarding the home's vulnerability against water penetration, and fire ignition.

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ECOB's subsidiary, E Build & Truss, will be one of the first companies to submit plans for the rebuild efforts from hurricane Sandy in Breezy Point, Rockaway, New Jersey and Staten Island next week; all of which are supported by firemen from coast to coast. ECOB has identified, and plans to open a core New Jersey facility by February 2013, positioning ECOB Products in the local market, so people do not have to rebuild using the same old building practices expecting a different result during future severe weather and super storm events without drastically increasing brick and mortar costs.

Pirelli calendar turns over a new leaf with war photographer Steve McCurry

During its illustrious history, attempts to portray the Pirelli calendar as more than just a lavish collection of nude photographs have occasionally come close to bathos. Last year, for instance, discussing Mario Sorrento's Corsican shoot, the American supermodel and actor Milla Jovovich made the implausible argument that "the thing about Pirelli is the really great tyres. They're strong and modern and they work, so in the shoot you've got these really strong, amazing modern women. So there's this relationship between these really strong tyres and these really strong women."

Well, up to a point.Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, This time round, however, Pirelli's claim to be offering something beyond the female form in a state of partial or total undress looks more solid. To celebrate its 40th calendar, the Italian company has decided to abandon the normal roster of fashion photographers such as Mario Testino and Terry Richardson, who transformed a trade publication into an annual celebration of "glamour" shots to grace the garage wall. Instead, for 2013,The oreck XL professional air purifier, Pirelli turned to one of the world's most famous war photographers and sent him to Rio, host to the next football World Cup and Olympic Games, and vibrant hub of a country which is booming like never before.

Steve McCurry made his name documenting Afghanistan in the early 1980s, having smuggled himself into the country by growing a beard and wearing traditional dress. The American's photograph of Sharbat Gula, a teenage Afghan refugee with vivid, haunted green eyes, became one of the most famous images in 20th-century photography after featuring on the cover of National Geographic. Describing himself as a "street photographer doing found situations", the 62-year-old McCurry has since travelled and worked in places such as Beirut, Baluchistan, Cambodia, India and Japan. So how did he wind up with 11 of the world's leading models, shooting a Pirelli calendar?

The result is an act of homage to a city and a country that Pirelli recognises as one of its most important future markets. "You can photograph nudes anywhere," says McCurry. "But these models are clothed, and each of them has her own charity. They are purposeful and idealistic people. I wanted to photograph them in a special place, and Rio was perfect for that."

There is a temptation to be somewhat cynical when it comes to models and good works, but in McCurry's company it is hard to be world-weary. Stocky, white-haired now and brimming with enthusiasm for a city with "the best views on the planet", this native of Philadelphia has lost none of his photographic ambition. And his version of "the Cal", as Pirelli types like to call it, is simply fabulous to look at. Rio is the true star of the 34 images, described by McCurry as a "mythic" place, with "mountains, beaches and incredible light".

Loyal to his street aesthetic,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. McCurry ignored the famous sand of the Copacabana and Ipanema and headed into Rio's urban and historic heart, usually at night. This is a Rio of shadows, sultry allure and moments of ethereal beauty caught on the hoof.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. "I wasn't interested in doing the beach type of thing," he explains. "I was more interested in the darker, moodier places. So we went to areas like Lapa and Santa Teresa, places where there's more texture and more life. Where there's people hanging out on the street, people barbecuing, people dancing, bars with all kinds of characters in them. I became fascinated by the graffiti. That could have been a book in itself. We went into the favelas, too. They were teeming with life pressed together. We found this hotel in a favela – called Bob's Place, I think – and we shot there for a couple of days against this amazing backdrop of Rio."

Some of the images feature ordinary cariocas – as Rio inhabitants are known – rather than models. One extraordinary photograph shows a young couple walking high above the city at sunset, looking down on a landscape that seems too beautiful to be real. "This is the best view of any city in the world," says McCurry. "I knew that spot because a few years ago I was in Rio and I wanted to get a cityscape kind of photo. I saw this high point in the distance and I thought if we could find it there would just be a fabulous view of the city. By luck we found the location and on the top of the hill there was a park. So we went back this time and these people were just out walking. Look at that light! It's just amazing."

When the models appear, they seem to be offering an invitation to savour the drama of the city that is unfolding behind them. Petra Nemcova, the Czech model and actress, sits in front of an open window which looks out on the heart of nighttime Rio. Karlie Kloss (see picture above) leans against a graffiti-covered tram as a bus departs for the city and a shadowy figure passes by unseen. In another shot, a dark silhouette walks away from the camera, across the famous Lapa viaduct, heading for the warmth and light of Rio's skyscrapers. "I wanted the models to be part of the environment and have life swirling around them, to be integrated into the city," says McCurry.

There was also a sincere desire to showcase the various causes promoted by the women he chose to photograph. Since 2004, when Nemcova lost her fiancé in the tsunami which overwhelmed Thailand, she has run the Happy Hearts Fund, dedicated to assisting child victims of natural disasters. Kyleigh Kuhn, who graduated from Berkeley university in California,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. has founded a campaign dedicated to the funding of schools for Afghan girls. The calendar gives a meticulous account of each model's campaigning activities. "Working with Steve on a project like this was an amazing opportunity to publicise the causes we're trying to help," said Kuhn. "I've tried to use my modelling as a platform from which to promote these projects, and this was the perfect situation." According to Kloss, "the fact that the models are clothed helps take away attention from the women's bodies and direct it to their causes".

That may be overstating it a little. But McCurry is lost in admiration for his subjects. "Spending time with the girls outside the shoot and finding out about their work and causes was for me maybe the best thing about doing the calendar. You've got this false stereotype of models who don't have much to say… so to get to know them as real people was just fascinating and inspiring."

The launch of "Steve McCurry's Rio", compered by Sophia Loren, was an opportunity for Milanese executives to bask in the acclaim of Pirelli's first "social" calendar. Even Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the left-wing former Brazilian president, turned up. But for some seasoned observers of Pirelli calendars past, the combination of McCurry, clothed models and social commitment was just a little too baffling. In its early years, a calendar launch was a very different affair, populated exclusively by members of the tyre-making industry and that year's collection of models. As Loren presented Lula with a Pirelli award for "social engagement", there were those who remembered those simpler days with a degree of nostalgia.

"I can't quite figure out what the point of it is any more, I'm afraid," observed one veteran of a motoring publication. "What's the connection between nice pictures of Rio and Pirelli? You know, when you used to have the distinctive tyre tread painted on a model's bottom, you could see the marketing strategy. Not now."

Dunedin Beacon

“I started in 1965, I joined the Air Force and worked in fire crash rescue for four years,” Meyer said. “Then I came home in ’69 and started with Clearwater for 20 years there and came here for 24. And the fire service I joined in Pinellas County, we didn’t have 911. We had seven-digit phone numbers we advertised. We didn’t do EMS. Clearwater was very proud of the fact that all of our firefighters were Red Cross First Aid trained. So we were at the same level of first aid that the Boy Scouts were doing, basically.”

As EMS evolved, it was contracted out in Dunedin to an outside agency. Therefore, the biggest change in Meyer’s time as head of the Dunedin department is that he helped bring EMS back in-house. In 1996, the fire department took it on as a major part of its duties.

“Now it’s basically 80, 90 percent of what we do,” Meyer said. “Bringing that back to fire services was a really big deal.”

The other major accomplishment Meyer recalls of his Dunedin career is getting Fire Station 62 on Belcher Road built, also in 1996.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. This significantly improved response times in the city, he said. He is also very proud of the ISO insurance rating the department has achieved. There is a very tough, 10-point scale, with 1 being the best, and Dunedin is ranked as a 2,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , he said. That makes the Dunedin department in the top 2 percent in the country.

“It allows us to do our job safer, quicker, faster, with an end result of us being able to get to the scene quicker, we can control the fire faster, so instead of having a house burn completely down, we can get there when the fire is still really small. Smoke detectors are another technology that really developed over my career. We really didn’t have them when I started in Pinellas County. Today we have them in all our homes, and the lives that that has saved is just unbelievable. We’re getting the location of the fire very, very early, so when we get there we have a very small fire to deal with.”

One of the biggest challenges Meyer says he’s faced as fire chief has actually been the budget shortfall in recent years. It is hard to keep cutting yet still provide the same, quality services, he said. There have been many operational budget cuts, they have lost a fire inspector’s position, and most recently, the fire marshal’s position was eliminated but they gained an inspector’s position, he said. This will be one of the biggest challenges Parks will face when he takes on the position of chief, he said.

“EMS, we have countywide studies going on right now and how transport should be done,” Meyer said. “One possibility they’re looking at is for firefighters to do transport. I think that would be natural for us to do because we’re already out there.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , Our people already do it on their days off. So it’s not something that would be strange for us to do, and we see that firefighters doing transport works all over the country. Even in Pasco County, Hillsborough County, Tampa Fire, they’re all doing fire department transport, so that’s something on the horizon that could be a big change even in the next year or two.”

Meyer said he does not regret one thing about being fire chief. He always enjoyed coming to work, even when it was challenging. But now he looks forward to retirement. The time felt right, he said, and he wanted to retire when he is still young enough to take advantage of it. He and his wife, Melody, are going to sell their house and build a new one in Clay County, near where their daughter lives in Jacksonville. They want to travel more to places they love, like Colorado, where they will ski, bike, hike, and enjoy the mountains, and they also want to travel to places they have never been. They also have a son who lives locally, and they have one grandchild named Sierra,Installers and distributors of solar panel, who is 10.

Meyer said he is excited about his successor, Jeff Parks, who has worked as deputy chief in Dunedin since September 2007. After doing a national search, the city and DiSpirito decided that Parks was the most qualified for the job.

“I think he’s going to do a great job,” Meyer said. “He has been in the fire service for a long time here in Pinellas County and he has a real good understanding of the services that we are providing. I’m sure he’s going to be able to move the department on and do some wonderful things for us. We did do a national advertisement and we narrowed that process down to four candidates that were interviewed by the city manager and a couple of department heads, and Jeff just did a great job.”

“He had the best combination of relevant experience, education, and I think a very compelling vision for the department,” DiSpirito said. “On the experience end, he has – unlike a good number of the applicants – served as a chief previously when he was in East Lake. So he has actually done the job before. He has also been a fire marshal and overseen an inspection bureau, which is important in this district. He has also worked for us for five years in this capacity as deputy.”

DiSpirito added that he and the city have had time to evaluate Parks in action, and he has done a very good job and has proven to be hard working, loyal and an accepted employee with the department.

Parks said he knows that the first major challenge that he will face as fire chief is dealing with the tight budget – trying to do more with less, maintain the same level of service and not have to raise taxes to do so.

Another major, immediate task is overseeing building of Fire Station 61, the process of which is already under way.

One great asset that the Dunedin Fire Department has, Parks said, is how well everyone gets along and works together. There is not a clash between labor and management, which can sometimes happen, and that helps things move smoothly, he said. What will be an initial challenge, though, he said, is that the department is undergoing reorganization, with a lot of new faces.

Meyer has been chief for so long, it will be an adjustment for everybody now that he won’t be in the other room and readily available to answer any questions as they arise, Parks said. There also will be other personnel moving into the administrative office who are used to firefighter shifts instead of the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. office job, he said.

“Right now, I have been operations chief for five years and we have an EMS division chief who’s been here for over 15 years, but the training chief retired, so we have an interim person,” Parks said. “We will have an interim person in the deputy chief spot. So we are kind of new and upcoming. They are being brought in off of being on the shifts their whole career, so moving into the 8-to-5 job. It’s a different atmosphere. You’re used to getting up for a 24-hour work day and then having a few days off.”

Along with that, Parks said that administration will need to spend the winter brushing up on emergency management skills, so everyone new to the office knows exactly how to run the department and respond during a hurricane or other disaster.

“We’ve had a great teacher here,” Parks said. “Chief Meyer has done a great job with the department in his time here, and I’ve learned a lot from him, so hopefully I can carry on the tradition that he’s established.A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls.”

'Zero Dark Thirty's' compound challenges

First-time feature production designer Jeremy Hindle admits to some dicey feelings while taking director Kathryn Bigelow on an initial walk-through of "Zero Dark Thirty's" key set. But they weren't rookie jitters.

"I remember telling her, 'You're going to feel insanely creepy. You're going to feel like he lived here,'" Hindle says.

The verisimilitude Bigelow demanded for all aspects of the film was particularly important to the re-creation of the compound in which Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs last year. "We walked through, and the detail … it felt like someone had lived there; six years of never leaving," Hindle says. "We knew what his bed looked like from photographs. We knew he had an AK-47 hanging over it. We knew he was a pack rat. The hallway was just jammed full of every newspaper he could get his hands on.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging.Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers,"

Using primarily open-source intelligence from news reports and the like, and enhanced by Oscar-winning writer-producer and military journalist Mark Boal's research, the production constructed a full-scale, fully operational replica of Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

"You can scale quite a lot off photographs," Hindle says. "We had a company called Frame Store in London model it in 3-D for us. Once you have the photographs and video, it's all a big math equation. It was a couple weeks of math, really.

"We built it for real out of stone and steel. We flew real Black Hawks in; there was a Black Hawk 50 feet over that set with Kathryn and every actor inside it. So the compound was 21/2 times over-engineered," he says, noting the set had to withstand the crash of one of the helicopters [hanging by a crane]. "There were 9-foot caissons underground, steel, cinder blocks; it was a bunker. It would be hard to blow that place up."

Hindle made the jump to feature film work from commercials — on which he had worked with such directors as Spike Jonze, Nicolas Winding Refn and Alejandro González I?árritu — in part due to the recommendation of "Zero Dark's" cinematographer, Greig Fraser.

"Kathryn hates wild walls [which can be removed for ease of filming]. Because [our] walls don't move, some cinematographers would have had a heart attack. Greig's not like that. We've worked together before; I've boxed him into places before. He loves that kind of style. He knows it creates a certain energy. It's difficult to shoot in when it's 120 degrees, but I said, 'I'm not going to make it easy for you to shoot; I'm going to make it great so you can shoot it.'

"You're cramming everyone in the room; it makes it so real. It's not a way that anyone else [but Bigelow] would make this film.This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. [Normally,] you'd just say, 'Let's go to a stage … break it down, each floor.' But it's real. It was engineered, architecturally drawn up, and we built the thing in 10 weeks."

Scouting and construction of meticulously authentic locations on several continents and the design and assembly of approximations of stealth Black Hawk helicopters happened very quickly.

"I got hired the 25th of November, and we started shooting Feb. 28. It was mind-blowingly fast," Hindle says. "Every one of those military bases [seen in the film] didn't exist. We built all those. The Islamabad embassy, that's an engineering school in India. That was after scouting in Jordan for months."

But Hindle had concerns beyond making his timeline. Safety became an issue as the replica of Bin Laden's compound was built and shot in Jordan.

"It was haunting, for sure," Hindle says. "There were bomb-sniffing dogs checking the set before you walked on. There was a lot of security. We were 30 miles from Syria and three miles from Israel. For the first half of [building] the structure,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. nobody knew what it was. And then the helicopters came in, hanging from cranes … it was like, 'Huh. We're about a mile from the Dead Sea.'"

Like the hundreds of windows that make up its shiny facade, Carleton University’s new River Building is the result of many smaller victories, says university president Roseann Runte.

Opened this fall, the $55-million building is symbolic of how committed the federal and provincial governments, as well as individual donors, are to funding higher education, she says.

The reliance on sustainable construction practices — the building has a bio-wall and green roof — and its location near the Rideau River signify Carleton’s connection to the community and its concern for the natural environment.

But Runte says its greatest symbol is inside the building, in the form of a giant sculpture carved from the wood of an oak tree that stood in Old Ottawa South for more than 200 years.

The impressive sculpture, called Sailing Through Time, shows a tree upside down, its branches pointing toward the ground and its roots in the sky.

“To me, that is a symbol of what happens at university — that people learn new ways of thinking, new ways of opening their eyes to the world,” Runte said in selecting the River Building’s opening as the single most important achievement at Carleton in 2012.Best howo concrete mixer manufacturer in China.

With baccalaureates largely seen now as only the first step toward entering the workforce, Runte says, Carleton must make getting such a degree as enriching as possible.

A few years ago, the school started giving students a co-curricular record upon graduation, which is essentially a transcript of all the volunteer work, internships and international work they did outside of class during their time at Carleton.

Co-op placements are also a big deal, Runte says, adding they’re not just for science and engineering students any more. All arts departments at Carleton offer co-ops now.

In terms of reforming the post-secondary sector as a whole, Runte said stable government funding and a greater adoption of technology on campuses provincewide are key.

It might soon become commonplace to have some courses taught on campus and others offered strictly online, for example. “I think that will become the norm,” she said. “There will be a greater mixture of how that is done, and that will bring greater collaboration among institutions.”

Collaboration is something else she’d also like to see more of.

Runte used the example of a unique joint program it offers in conjunction with Algonquin College called the Bachelor of Information Technology. Students attend both schools concurrently, getting both the theory and the practical, and graduate in four years with both a degree and a diploma.

That means entering the workforce two years earlier and saving thousands of dollars on tuition.

Runte said the two schools are currently looking at other programs to do this with, and added that other Ontario campuses appear interested in doing the same.

Although calm has been restored now, this year’s Quebec student protests and ongoing concerns about rising tuitions have put the issue of access and affordability front and centre.

Runte says the current model requires a balance to be struck between what proportion government and individuals each contribute, though there is not currently a formula to set these amounts.

What is the ‘security quotient’ for your child’s school?

The horrific tragedy in Newtown, Conn., illustrates the escalating anti-social,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. high-risk behavior that may expose our schools to personal injury, property damage and disruptions to the educational environment. This event may have pushed our society beyond its tolerance threshold, turning talk into real action that addresses our collective desire to give our children a safe environment in which they may develop socially and academically.

With a balanced approach, somewhere between siege mentality and general indifference, positive steps can improve school security.

Schools should implement strategies of cautionary vigilance. But they will have to overcome the perception that school security is a budgetary “add-on.” Our new paradigm dictates that school safety is an integral part of a school’s infrastructure as much as bricks and mortar. What can school districts do to approach this task systematically and analytically?

First, school leaders must reassure students and parents that their school is safe by implementing an actionable safety plan. Knowing that responsible adults are taking action to address safety issues is more encouraging for the school community than the notion of, “It won’t happen in our school.”

Maine should require every school to develop a multi-agency, crisis-management plan and provide the resources, guidelines and training. This kind of preparedness is sound public policy and is the least that we should expect of our schools.

Research has already identified the components of such an operational school safety plan for grades pre-kindergarten through 12, comprised of the following components:

1. Perform safety drills, which are mandated by law and are familiar to all. When was the last time your child’s school was subjected to a “stress test?” Annual school safety plan audits should consider: How current is our plan? Is all of the school staff knowledgeable about the plan and updated regarding any changes? Does the plan call for regular safety drills that include certified and noncertified staff? Do teachers, students, noncertified staff and school administrators have clearly defined roles and actions to take in the event of a school crisis? What is the training and practice frequency?

Every aspect of the plan should incorporate staff redundancy when assigning specific response tasks. Each school should review its physical plant and consider potential student safety zones.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. Lockdowns must be practiced frequently, and all schoolrooms should have two methods for communicating with the office.

2. Schools need regularly scheduled school safety audits that evaluate safety vulnerabilities due to structural characteristics of the school and patterns of building use. Staff should consider how to monitor and manage the location of schools’ entrances and exits. They should review interior and exterior surveillance capabilities.

3. There should be schoolwide disciplinary policies. Like parental expectations at home, school disciplinary policies should be consistent, predictable and perceived as fair by students. These policies should reflect the normative values and beliefs of the entire community. The policies should be made public and be implemented fairly and decisively.

4. Schools should monitor their campus.An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. This is perhaps the easiest thing schools can do to improve their safety. Studies indicate that open campuses allowing upperclassmen to leave and return during the school day increases the level of difficulty in controlling contraband. Implementing an identification program, which acknowledges how students and other adults who belong in the school are recognized and identified, is essential.

5. Conduct an evaluation of the school’s safety. Every school should be obliged to conduct an annual evaluation of its relative safety. Within the context of their community, schools should perform a self-assessment of risk indicators associated with existing, problematic student issues and generate risk-reduction measures.

The information gleaned from reviewing these essential elements can provide a comprehensive profile of a school’s safety quotient, leading to an effective school safety plan. Can these measures guarantee violence-free schools? Obviously not, but they may deter, delay and discourage such attempts.

As part of ongoing proactive efforts to remove impaired drivers from our roadways, Troopers from Louisiana State Police Troop L will collaborate with the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Twenty-First Judicial DistrFind detailed product information for howo tractor and other products.ict Attorney’s Office to conduct a no refusal DWI checkpoint on Thursday, Dec. 27 at an undisclosed location in Tangipahoa Parish.

The checkpoint will begin at approximately 88 p.m. In addition to increased DWI enforcement, Troopers will be focusing on motorists not wearing seat belts, unrestrained children in vehicles, and any dangerous driving behaviors such as speeding, following too close, and driving while distracted.

According to research conducted by the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission, 251 alcohol related fatalities were reported across Louisiana in 2011 with nearly 7000 suspected impaired drivers refusing to submit to a breath alcohol test. The No Refusal initiative addresses this issue through the cooperative efforts of law enforcement personnel,Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. prosecutors, and district judges to quickly obtain search warrants for blood samples from suspected impaired drivers who refuse the breath test. During these specified enforcement efforts, prosecutors and judges make themselves available to streamline the warrant acquisition process and help build solid cases that can lead to impaired driving convictions.

The task of stopping impaired drivers is a joint effort of law enforcement agencies and the public. By never allowing an impaired driver to get behind the wheel of a vehicle and reporting dangerous drivers to law enforcement, the public can play an important role in the reduction of crashes caused by impaired drivers. Making poor decisions in a vehicle such as driving impaired, driving while distracted, or not wearing a seat belt leads to serious injuries and deaths every day across the state. Making the responsible decision can mean the difference between life and death.

NRA commentary in response to Newtown school massacre

The National Rifle Association's 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the fam?ilies of Newtown, Connecticut .We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory... who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime.

Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls.

Now, we must speak ...Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. for the safety of our nation's children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases braggingabout them.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. They post signs advertising them.

And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are theirsafest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.

How have our nation's priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security.

We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.

Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day. And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn't planning his attack on a school he's already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine thatrewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark?

A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

And the fact is, that wouldn't even begin to address the much larger and more lethal criminal class: Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade.

So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you've got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.

And here's another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here's one: it's called Kindergarten Killers. It's been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn't or didn't want anyone to know you had found it?

Then there's the blood-soaked slasher films like "American Psycho" and "Natural Born Killers" that are aired like propaganda loops on "Splatterdays" and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it "entertainment."

But is that what it really is? Isn't fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.

And throughout it all, too many in our national media ... their corporate owners ... and their stockholders ... act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators. Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away.

The media call semi-automatic firearms "machine guns" — they claim these civilian semi-automatic firearms are used by the military, and they tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers ... when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don't know what they're talking about!

Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban — or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people — will protect us where 20,000 others have failed!
As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away ... or a minute away?

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you'll print tomorrow morning: "More guns," you'll claim, "are the NRA's answer to everything!" Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word "gun" automatically become a bad word?

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn't a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn't a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won't be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools?
They're our kids.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. They're our responsibility. And it's not just our duty to protect them — it's our right to protect them.

You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

Will you at least admit it's possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America's gun owners that you're willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year's budget, and scrapped "Secure Our Schools"policing grants in next year's budget.
With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can't afford to put a police officer in every school?Even if they did that, politicians have no business — and no authority — denying us the right, the ability, or the moral imperative to protect ourselves and our loved ones from harm.

Mixed Nutzle

When it came time to put together his new 100-piece retrospective, “Creating the Path,” local art icon and former Rolling Stone cartoonist Futzie Nutzle went to the attic and dug out some oldies, some dating all the way back to the ’80s. The resulting collection of paintings, drawings, cartoons and assemblages—some funny, some poignant and some a combination thereof—can be seen now through Jan. 26 at the new R. Blitzer Gallery location inside of Westside Santa Cruz’ old Wrigley building. “It's a remarkable collection of his work and a rare opportunity to see them all in this gallery space,” gallery owner Rob Blitzer states.

“The one difference in this show is that I really tried to concentrate on a title for each piece,” notes Nutzle, whose work was ubiquitous in Santa Cruz from the late ’60s into the ’90s. “I thought before that people had the foresight or the ability to interpret, and then I realized they don’t. They don’t have the time to interpret something, and they haven’t taught themselves, or haven’t been taught, to interpret things and process it in their own mind without some kind of guidance.”

Nutzle, who currently runs the San Juan Bautista antique shop, Fool’s Gold, with his wife Halina, says your guess is as good as his as to what the meanings behind his artistic creations are. “I think if there’s any difference between my work and others’, it’s that mine’s not based on a story—especially a story that’s already been told. I’m not really interested that much in mythology, and I’m not really interested that much in other people’s stories, and I’m really not interested at all in other people’s opinions. For me, it’s entirely personal.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile,”

While pieces like “Tarbaby” and “After the War” appear to be politically inspired, Nutzle says that even these are free of storylines and opinions. “If it is political, again,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. the interpretive value comes up, because I’m not trying to be on a particular side—Republican or Democrat or whatever,” he offers.This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. “That’s really old hat. In my opinion, we’ve come to this mother-may-I society where people that love each other can’t really get married unless we ask permission; we can’t smoke a joint unless we ask permission. I’m really tired of that shit. It’s just so antiquated, and it’s so unprogressive and square and terrible, and people are sitting in jail for no reason. If I had a message, that’s kind of what this show is about: the idea of having to get permission to do everything.”

“Creating the Path” contains a proliferation of what Nutzle refers to as his “weed paintings”—yes, paintings that depict pot plants. The artist says that attendees of the exhibit’s Dec. 7 opening night event stood in front of some of these paintings, comparing stories of their pot busts.

Another persistent image in this exhibit is that of a clown, as in the delightful “The Clown Detector,” a portrait of a clown being probed by a machine that’s testing to see if he’s a real clown or not. “I’m kind of a clown myself,” Nutzle explains. “I’m kind of a bozo. I don’t really have it all together. The clown is like a nobody, and yet he demands attention constantly.”

Nutzle says one of the pieces from this exhibit that evokes a strong emotional feeling from him is “Enigma,” which depicts a man out in the middle of the ocean, “maybe on top of—I don’t know if it’s a log or a big brush, or something out there. But it’s foreboding, and that’s me out there.” He adds that this image comes from the experience of “being an artist and living the studio life, not trying to be anything else. That’s probably the hardest part about being an artist: being an artist.”

The artist says “Enigma” isn’t an extension of any emotions he was feeling at the time he created it. “My feelings don’t really change that much when I’m painting,” he claims. “I’m just trying to portray something. It takes so much energy to paint that you really can’t spend emotional time getting all wrapped up in that. It’s almost a two-stage process where you nail the aesthetic, and then you take a step back. And then, if you have some kind of emotion, that’s cool. If not, better take it to the dumpster.”

One of Egypt's leading opposition figures on Monday pledged continued resistance to his country's Islamist-oriented constitution even if it is declared to have passed, contending that the process was fundamentally illegitimate.

Unofficial tallies say nearly two-thirds voted in favour of the draft constitution, but turnout was so low that opponents are arguing that the vote should be discounted.

Hamdeen Sabahi, who placed third in the nation's first free presidential race over the summer, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the majority of Egypt's people are not Islamists.

He argued that the string of election triumphs by President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group are the result of unfair electoral practices and key mistakes by the liberal opposition, particularly a lack of unity and organization.

"The Muslim Brotherhood is a minority — this is for sure. They get majority votes because of division within the opposition," he said. "If there is transparency (in voting) and unity among civil groups, then surely the majority will turn from the Brotherhood."

Sabahi said the Islamist groups in the country "for sure have tried to steal" the revolution that toppled authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak neat two years ago — "but we will prevent them."

Sabahi said the National Salvation Front — a union of key opposition forces that coalesced in the fight against the draft constitution — is not calling for civil disobedience in rejection of the Islamist-drafted constitution, but for a new constitution through peaceful means.

The path toward such an outcome appears uncertain at best — especially as Sabahi rejected the notion, somewhat plausible in Egypt, of the military stepping in to undo the inconvenient outcomes of politics.

In a sign of the opposition leadership's efforts to coalesce, Sabahi said the grouping would be led in the interim by Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the Vienna-based United Nations nuclear agency.

No confirmation of that was immediately available from ElBaradei.

In the interview, the silver-maned, charismatic former journalist seemed to embody the frustrations of liberal Egyptians today: While championing the democracy and lauding the 2011 revolution that felled Mubarak, they reject the outcome of that revolution, yet seem at something of a loss to cause a change of course.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets weeks before the referendum to demand a new assembly with greater diversity write the charter. Instead, an Islamist-dominated assembly hurriedly passed it before a court could rule on the body's legitimacy, and Morsi himself issued decrees, later rescinded, that gave him near absolute powers to push the constitution to a referendum.

Backers of the Brotherhood and others Islamist parties also rallied in support of the charter, leaving the country split and leading to violent clashes between the two camps that killed 10 outside the presidential palace in Cairo this month. That created the impression that street protests can be conjured up to support either side in the current divide.

But only around 30 per cent of eligible voters participated in the referendum on the divisive charter. Of that number, unofficial figures estimate that 64 per cent voted in support of it.

Sabahi said the low voter turnout shows people were not convinced by the Brotherhood's slogans — nor with the opposition's.

"This means that the battle for politics is concentrated on survival, food, jobs and prices — daily struggles that are the priority of all Egyptians," he said.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.

Under such circumstances, he said, it was illogical to enshrine the document as a constitution that can be amended only by supermajorities in parliament.

Critics say the new constitution seeks to entrench Islamic rule in Egypt and that the charter does not sufficiently protect the rights of women and minority groups. Morsi and his supporters say the constitution is needed to restore stability in the country, install an elected parliament, build state institutions and renew investor confidence in the economy.

In a reflection of the complex nuances at play, Sabahi refused to describe the current conflict roiling Egypt as a clash between secularism and theocracy, saying that in the Arab world, religion and public life could never be distinct in accordance with the Western model.

Rather, he said, the issue was preventing the Brotherhood from establishing a "tyranny" as a political movement not unlike that of the previous authoritarian regime.

He likened Morsi to the ousted leader, Mubarak,This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. saying the Brotherhood is after absolute power.

"He (Morsi) reached power democratically, but is not exercising power democratically," he said, adding that the Brotherhood "wants to establish a system of tyranny in their benefit."

Tally ho! Let the hunt remind us who we are

This morning hundreds of hunts across the Kingdom will be assembling for the Boxing Day meet. My family and I will appear in our polished uniforms on polished horses to stand ceremonially among our neighbours in Cirencester Park. With us will be a crowd of thousands who have come to enjoy the spectacle. For an hour, three species – hound, horse and human; carnivore, herbivore and omnivore – will stand peacefully side by side in a little patch of meadowland, radiating tranquillity. One of the local bands will be playing. The Royal Agricultural College Beagles will be there, along with people from every walk of life, who have come to gladden their eyes on the spectacle before going for lunch in the town.

Hunting with hounds is ostensibly a crime. It continues, not because hunting people wish to defy the law, but because an activity so central to their lives can no more be stopped than their heartbeats. They have had to adjust. But they cannot live in the countryside without also sharing it with their animals.

I first encountered hunting in my early forties. It was quite by chance that I should be trotting down a Cotswold lane on a friend’s old pony when the uniformed centaurs came galloping past. One minute I was lost in solitary thoughts, the next I was in a world transfigured by collective energy. Imagine opening your front door one morning to put out the milk bottles, and finding yourself in a vast cathedral in ancient Byzantium, the voices of the choir resounding in the dome above you and the congregation gorgeous in their holiday robes. My experience was comparable.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 energy that swept me away was neither human nor canine nor equine, but a peculiar synthesis of the three: a tribute to centuries of mutual dependence, revived for this moment in ritual form.

There is a singular and indescribable joy that comes from the co-operation between species. We go out together, a tribe, a herd and a pack, and move together in mutual understanding. We share dangers and triumphs, we are exhilarated and downcast simultaneously, and there grows between us a kind of unsentimental attachment that is stronger and deeper than any day-to-day companionship. This experience has been celebrated since ancient times. From the boar hunt that begins at line 428 of Homer’s Odyssey to the fox hunt that forms the climax of Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds, hunting has been used to lift characters from their daily circumstances, and to place them in another predicament, which rouses their animal spirits and puts them to a very special kind of test. The wall of domesticity has been broken down, and we cross it to “the other side of Eden”, as the anthropologist Hugh Brody describes the world of the hunter-gatherer.

In that world, animals are not the tamed and subservient creatures of the farmyard or the family house; they are our equals, with whom we are joined in a contest that may prove as dangerous to the hunter as it is to his quarry. In the paintings that adorn the caves of Lascaux, we see the beasts of the wilderness portrayed by people who lived in awe of them, who conjured them into their own human dwelling place. The aura that emanates from these images emanates also from our hunting literature, reminding us that we too are animals, and we live with an unpaid debt towards the creatures from whom we have stolen the Earth.

In a sense we know much about the experience of the hunter-gatherer, since it is the experience that shaped us, and which lies interred like an archaeological stratum beneath the polished consciousness of civilised man. At its greatest, the art and literature of hunting aims to retrieve that experience,High quality stone mosaic tiles. to re-acquaint us with mysterious and sacred things which are the true balm to our suburban anxieties,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. but which can be recuperated now only by returning, in imagination, to a world that we have lost.

In hunting you are following, and the thing you follow is a pack of hounds, which in turn follows a scent. Some follow on horseback and are part of the action; others follow by foot, bicycle or car. All are returning, to a certain extent, to a pre-agrarian condition. The landscape is being “thrown open” to its pre-historical use, and although the freedom taken by the hunt is at the same time a freedom offered by those with the power to forbid it, both parties to the deal are recapturing freedom of another and more deeply implanted kind. Hunting, which dissolves the boundaries between species, dissolves the boundaries between people too.

The thrill of jumping comes from this: you are abolishing the boundary that had vainly tried to exclude you. For a brief moment you are laying aside the demands of farming, and the man-centred individualism that farming engenders, and roaming across a landscape that has not yet been parcelled out and owned. The fields that I see from my window do not, for me, end at my boundary but stretch beyond it,Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. to the place where the hounds of the Vale of White Horse hunt must be called off from the territory of the Old Berkshire, where “ours” becomes “theirs”, and the riot of followers must turn back.

That feeling of “ours” is expressed in many social events besides hunting: in fun rides, farmers’ breakfasts, hunt balls and point-to-points. Those events form part of an intricate web of social relations through which we join in the collective possession of our whole locality, and override our separate private claims. It is this sense of community that will bring us all together today, in order to renew our commitment to the place where we are.

He saw a kaleidoscope of colors: reds, oranges and muted pastels. Sudden signs of life, like a migratory bird oasis suddenly appearing in the desert. And a landscape unlike anything he’d seen or photographed.

On one trip he captured images of the iconic Boar’s Tusk that juts suddenly out of the landscape. He was driving home,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, when in the distance he first glimpsed Honeycomb Buttes; an unworldly rock formation radiating color and texture.

The vastness and lack of easy access deter people from the area. The art in the show will give people a chance to experience the remoteness of the place, without the logistical planning and route finding needed to navigate the area.

Copeland is a strong believer in protecting the land for future generations and often uses his photographs to bring awareness to areas in need of protection. He wants to pass on the beauty he sees to his daughters.

“I feel if I can get some compelling photographs of these areas they can have some values … and maybe we can get some of these places protected,” he said.

His personal mission fits in with that of the show in which he will present photos of Honeycomb Buttes and several other places in the Red Desert.

There is a reason conservation websites all feature beautiful landscape photos, said Jennie Trefren, Bureau of Land Management outreach associate for the Wyoming Wilderness Association. People react to visuals.

“It provides an opportunity for a visual dialogue about the place,” she said. “If someone hasn’t been to the Red Desert, they don’t know how beautiful it is. They might think it’s a sage brush wasteland.”

The BLM is beginning a revision of its resource management plan, which is updated about every 20 years. While a draft of the plan hasn’t yet been released, the art show will bring awareness to people about the area and why it should be protected, Trefren said. The land has low oil and gas potential in the Red Desert, but there is more pressure all the time to develop public land, she said. And most of the Red Desert is open for oil and gas exploration.

WTO race wide open as NZ

The field of candidates to succeed Pascal Lamy as head of the World Trade Organization burst open on Friday, as New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan and Kenya threw names into the ring with 10 days left for nominations.

Whoever wins, faces the challenge of being the face of an institution that has been stuck for years in stalled global trade negotiations, with little real power to force a deal beyond cajoling, encouraging and occasionally blaming members.

Kenya’s Amina Mohamed, deputy head of the United Nations Environment Programme, became the third woman and second African contender, while Jordan nominated former minister of trade and industry Ahmad Hindawi, the first Middle Eastern nominee so far.

Mexico put forward its former trade minister Herminio Blanco, who negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Earlier on Friday New Zealand nominated its trade minister Tim Groser, who joins Ghana’s Alan Kyerematen, Costa Rica’s Anabel Gonzalez and Indonesia’s Mari Pangestu in the race to take over after Lamy’s second term expires on August 31.

Many trade diplomats think the job should go to an African,We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. Latin American or Caribbean candidate, since all but one head of the 17-year-old WTO has been from developed countries. The exception was Thailand’s Supachai Panitchpakdi.

As well as seeking trade agreements,Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, the body is also the global trade policeman, facing a surge of litigation as members fight for a share of a pie that is not quite shrinking, but expected to grow by a mere 2.5 percent this year.

The boom in disputes is forcing the WTO to reallocate staff, according to diplomats and documents at the global trade body in Geneva that in August had 157 members.

Mohamed, a fluent Russian speaker, is the only one who is not a current or former trade minister, but she was ambassador to the WTO from 2000 to 2006 and chaired several of the most important committees, including its dispute settlement body in 2004.

Her nomination may splinter African support and damage the chances of Kyerematen, who was anointed as the African Union’s approved candidate earlier this year.

If both Africans make it through to later stages of the race, when least-favoured candidates are gradually ejected, an African split could play into the hands of another regional bloc. When Lamy got the job eight years ago, Brazil was widely blamed for ruining the chances of Uruguay’s nominee.

Groser also comes with inconvenient baggage, since New Zealand is the only one of the seven countries to have held the job before, and some diplomats think that having another director general from New Zealand - developed, rich and agricultural - would be unbalanced or unfair.

Lamy has said his successor, chosen by consensus, should be picked on the basis of competence alone.An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building.

Groser, 62, was New Zealand’s ambassador to the WTO between 2002-2005, and chaired the organisation’s rules and agricultural negotiating groups. He had been widely tipped as a candidate.

Hindawi, 47, who was Jordanian trade minister in 2004-2005,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. is perhaps the candidate with the slightest connection to the WTO and the most involvement in the private sector.

With a degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University in the United States and a PhD from Birmingham University in Britain, he runs a management consultancy firm, Hindawi Excellence Group, from Dubai.

Blanco, who holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party of new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and former President Ernesto Zedillo, who some trade diplomats in Geneva had said would have made an excellent candidate to succeed Lamy.

As a minister Blanco was lauded abroad for his free trade agreements but came under heavy criticism in domestic politics, like the then finance minister Angel Gurria, who now heads the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

As happens every time there's a mass shooting - a tragedy of increasing frequency, it seems - gun dealers nationwide reported a spike in sales in the days following the terrible slaughter this month in Connecticut.

The experts tell us there are already about 250 million guns in the United States. I wonder how many more we'll need to feel safe.

I don't feel any safer, really, despite the 12-gauge I keep safely accessible at home. But I do feel just a bit ashamed as a gun owner who, each time another shooting makes headlines, shrugs helplessly, given the inefficacy of gun laws, the intransigence of the gun lobby and everyone's inability to make sense of the contradictory statistics of gun control.

But all that crap about the victims of gun violence being the necessary collateral damage of our Second Amendment rights just doesn't seem like enough this time. Twenty-six dead, 20 of them little children, in the middle of the holiday season in the middle of an elementary school in the middle of the supposedly most civilized nation on earth.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. The victims of our historic love affair with guns and violence.

"Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of 'gun control' advocates?" conservative columnist Thomas Sowell asked the other day. Yes, dammit, until we get some better answers. We deserve better in these United States than more mass shootings - American exceptionalism at its worst.

On the other hand, you've got the yahoos on the other side insisting that the way to make us safe is to make sure everyone is packing in classrooms and crowded movie theaters. Guns don't kill people. No, people with guns kill people, too many people.

We have to get past the ideological mantras and have a rational discussion on this national shame, a dialogue in which everything is on the table. I don't think putting Glocks in the hands of language-arts teachers is the answer, but maybe armed guards in the hall are a short-term solution. Bans on assault rifles or 30-round "banana" magazines may not keep us safe, but maybe they are a step in the right direction - a statement that as a nation we don't think the answer to violence is more violence.

Blondes Might Have More Fun But Brunettes Have More Crowns

As Olivia Culpo took her predictable winner's walk down the runway as the first Miss USA to win Miss Universe in 15 years, she was -- as they all are-- smiling, crying and fidgeting to keep her crown in place.

But something else was different. The 20-year-old Boston University sophomore is a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman who looks more like Salma Hayek than Gwyneth Paltrow. This could be a symbol of progress. It could be that as a culture we are broadening our image of physical perfection to be more inclusive and representative of society.

Many perhaps were expecting a stereotypical American - blond-haired and blue-eyed in the mold of Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Cheryl Tiegs, Kate Hudson, Kirsten Dunst and Amanda Seyfried.

But perusing past Miss USA winners, all of them genetically blessed no matter what the color of their hair, an interesting trend emerges. Since 2000, eight Miss USA winners (including Culpo) have been brunettes, four have been blondes and one was a redhead.

Brook Lee was the last Miss USA to wear the Miss Universe crown in 1997 and she had dark hair as well. While blondes may have more fun, it's clear the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants prefer brunettes.

Could the look of the quintessential American beauty be changing as our population changes?

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates by 2043 whites will no longer be the majority in America. The Hispanic population is expected to more than double by 2060, making nearly one in every three U.S. residents Hispanic compared to one in six today. The black and Asian populations are on the rise as well, according to the census bureau. Perhaps, as our population has become more colorful and inclusive so has our definition of beauty.

Don't misunderstand; in no way do I condone or excuse objectifying women with a judgment on their external attributes. But it is helpful as a measure of how our culture perceives what is beautiful and how that perception might be changing.

Miss Maryland, Nana Meriwether, will take over Culpo's duties here as the new Miss USA. And in keeping with the trend she is a brunette.

Of course stereotypes persist -- "Modern Family" actress and Pepsi spokeswoman Sofia Vergara dyes her naturally blond hair brown to make her look more typically Latina.

And who can forget Dayana Mendoza? She not only won Donald Trump's 2008 Miss Universe contest, she also appeared on his 2012 edition of Celebrity Apprentice.

Throughout the season Ms. Mendoza was continually lambasted by her cast-mates, especially comedian Lisa Lampanelli. She was attacked for apparently not being smart, not working hard and in general being a bimbo. Mendoza didn't win, but she fought back and lasted longer than even she expected before hearing the infamous words from Trump, "You're fired."

Mendoza, who's from Venezuela, made it her mission on the show - along with raising money for charity -- to prove that a woman can have beauty and brains.

Culpo is also no dummy. She attends Boston University, graduated high school with honors and as a member of the National Honor Society. Her family says she conquered the cello in the second grade and played with renowned musician Yo-Yo Ma and performed at Carnegie Hall.

Music is in Culpo's genes -- both of her parents are professional musicians. But extraordinary height is not part of her DNA.

Of the 10 Miss Universe finalists she was by far the shortest woman on the stage. Culpo stands a diminutive 5-feet, 5-and-a-half-inches tall and in a world where beautiful women tend to tower toward 6-feet tall and still wear platform heels, it's nice to know a more down-to-earth woman can win too.

Like most all Americans in the 21st century, Culpo has a melting pot heritage. Culpo's father is of Italian decent and her mother is a mix of Italian and Irish ancestry.

But she looks to a Belgian-born icon for her beauty inspiration. According to Culpo's Miss USA profile she is a fan of the late actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn and keeps a journal of the actress's quotes.

As Hepburn did, Culpo will now champion a cause worldwide. During her year-long reign as Miss Universe she will travel around the globe to support HIV/AIDS prevention, according to the official website for Miss Universe.

I would like to suggest one more mission for the newly crowned Miss Universe - breaking beauty stereotypes. She's already proven you don't have to be a dumb blonde, and you don't have to be long and leggy to be gorgeous.

Next let's bust the beauty myth that you have to be a size zero.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. Perhaps one day we'll see a Miss USA or Miss Universe who is a size 10. And perhaps she can openly be a representative of the LGBTQ community, or discuss her or her family's struggle with mental illness or be one of the millions of Americans who have battled with and beaten an addiction.

Carrying survey equipment in remote areas in rough terrain is not easy. After a monument was found, it had to be located using GPS. Some monuments were 3 to 5 miles removed from vehicle accessible roads. Fortunately, Penfield & Smith had several four wheel ATVs available during the work, two owned by Glen Nelson and one owned by our firm. These rugged machines are what made it possible to get to the monument search area and then survey the monument if found.

Until the advent of GPS, large scale boundary surveys of remote sites in rough terrain was virtually impossible from a cost standpoint. Even the BLM later admitted that they did not perform a complete search for original monuments and evidence in T10N because it would simply cost too much. GPS completely eliminates the line of sight required by conventional optical instruments in terms of vegetation and terrain. Brush cutting is now limited to the search area instead of cutting a long line of sight to accommodate a traverse or monument side shot. In fact, GPS saves work at both ends of the process: the search A BLM "section corner" monument that was locus is pinpointed by GPS to minimize brush cutting and later re-marked as a control point pursuant then is used to position a found monument where brush to a settlement that was reached between must only cleared in the immediate vicinity for a clear sky the BLM and a protesting landowner. view. Contrast that with clearing line along a traverse for miles, looking for a monument, and then clearing another line when the monument is actually found.

This survey was conducted with a combination of static GPS in conjunction with Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS),We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. Real Time Kinematic GPS, and very limited conventional equipment methods. RTK can often give reliable results, but there is no way to prove the results are correct, so it was used only for navigating to a search locus area where smart phones did not have cellular coverage. Conventional equipment was used in a few instances where the tree canopy and undergrowth made clearing for GPS sky view extremely difficult. CORS was the fourth, and most productive, of the innovative tools used on this project.Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. A CORS station has a GPS receiver running 24/7, with data available to users online within a few days. Data from the users GPS is mingled with CORS data in a processing software to create vector ties to as many CORS as needed to determine a position. The advantage is that a single user, or multiple single users, can position a found monument without the time required to set up GPS equipment on other known stations in the survey, or having to coordinate observation times with other users. It is extremely efficient to work this way, all monument positions are related, and the very accurate results are easily documented and fully repeatable.

When the BLM was done with their resurvey, they had managed to upset most of the local landowners in one way or another, not to mention create divisions between those who accepted their work and those who didn't. Landowner AUH, adjacent to the JET property, ended up with a BLM derived boundary line splitting his house in two! Needless to say, the BLM resurvey did not solve any problems as intended, and actually touched off years of litigation, clouded and uninsurable title for many owners,Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. and negative relations between neighbors. Another result of the BLM survey was that the County of Santa Barbara passed an ordinance that applies only to this area, declares Tepusquet "an area of uncertain boundaries", and provides for boundary agreements between adjoining owners without going through a Subdivision Map Act process. AUH made use of this provision with two of his adjoining neighbors, referring to lines of occupation that were incorporated into the P&S survey.

There was quite a bit of suspicion from a few local landowners when Penfield & Smith contacted them to obtain permission to enter for surveying.Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. In some cases, we needed help from the Sheriff to arrange access times and locations, with anxious landowners providing paranoid supervision to our field surveyors. For some in the area, surveyors are unwelcome because they prefer to stand by the BLM lines from which they benefitted in terms of "extra land." The P&S survey attempted to harmonize long standing evidence of occupation, accepted local monuments, and the work of George Ryzner as the best evidence of the original GLO lines and corners. It is hoped that once our survey is accepted and recorded, it will become the basis for additional "corrective" surveys and boundary line agreements, as well as secure land rights and make title insurable, thereby increasing the value of the land for all the local landowners.

This project represents the most challenging Public Lands Survey System (PLSS) survey performed by P&S since its inception. We faced many technical and legal issues, and a great deal of research was required to ensure the proper execution of the survey. The two key differences between the P&S survey and the BLM resurvey were the location of the northeast corner of T10N and the acceptance of local monuments. Both of these issues required a thorough understanding of the rules under which the BLM performed their resurvey, as well as related case law and local standards of practice. In addition, it was critical to have a solid grasp on the history and events leading up to the P&S survey, largely made possible by listening to the local landowners and considering every piece of information they had to offer. George Ryzner's niece provided P&S with a box full of his binders, photos, and maps once she heard that a local surveyor had finally agreed to take on the survey. This information turned out to be the foundation of the P&S survey. P&S extensively reviewed the hundreds of pages of technical and legal material produced for the IBLA cases, as well studied and compared reference material such as the 1973 MSI, the 2009MSI, the CFR, books on surveying case law and legal principles, and private notes and letters of both George Ryzner and AUH. We even spent several months following leads to track down two members of the 1980-1982 BLM survey crew to ask questions and verify details.

Is it not High Time to Take a Principled Stand?

In this brief commentary, the writer attempts to show the extent to which the recently-concluded peace and unity mediation of bringing the two EOTC Holy Synods into one was doomed from the start, and why it miserably failed despite the gallant effort of the mediators. Furthermore, the author posits that the time is now ripe for the “neutral” EOTCs to join their sister churches of the Holy Synod in exile in light of the failure of the peace mission. Using the facts that came to light during the course of the mediation, the writer makes an objective assessment of the issues affecting the status of unity within the EOTC, both in the Diaspora and in Ethiopia. Critical for this analysis are recent reports that have characterized both the haste with which the Home Synod is preparing to install a new Patriarch in Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian government’s continued policy of meddling in the affairs of the Church. This turn of event has come despite the seemingly promising pronouncement made by the representatives of the two squabbling Holy Synods in the aftermath of their peace and unity confab in Dallas, Texas.

During the last three years, peace and unity mediators, consisting of concerned EOTC clergymen assisted by a few members of the laity, have made a genuine effort to bring the division between the two Holy Synods to a close, while aiming to restore the sanctity of the Church that has been severely damaged by the division. However, the three rounds of talks that took place in the U.S. did not substantively alter the status of the schism within the Church, which has profoundly bedeviled it for more than two decades. The major cause of the division, of course, was the Ethiopian regime’s installment of the late Abune Paulos in 1991 as the Patriarch of the EOTC illegally and in contravention of the Orthodox canon law. This was done by replacing Archbishop Abune Merkorios, the reigning Head of the Church at the time. The government’s action led subsequently to the establishment, in North America, of a Synod in exile led by the dethroned Patriarch, with a group of Archbishops and other clergymen supporting his cause. Since then, the Church has been in a state of paralysis, as EOTCs throughout the Diaspora became highly consumed with the crisis, and,High quality stone mosaic tiles. in many cases, even embroiled with further division of their own, as they became either the supporters of the Synod in exile or of the Synod at home. Some among these churches also took a neutral stand, which has no canonical basis in Oriental Orthodoxy, to which all EOTCs are supposed to prescribe in theory as well as in practice.

The breakthrough that was expected of the meeting between the teams of the representatives of the two Holy Synods in Dallas in the first week of December 2012 never materialized. Nonetheless, the members of the Council of Peace and Unity of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church should still be applauded for their effort. In retrospect, however, their mission was simply based on what may be termed as “wishful thinking,” which in essence was an exaggerated sense of faith and trust in the role that mediation has played historically to resolve disputes in Ethiopia. At the same time, the mediators seemed to have failed in recognizing this fact: the prevalence in Ethiopia today, and for the most part during the last 21 years, of a regime that gives not even an inch of compromise on anything that has the potential of changing the status quo, which, in effect, means maintaining the supremacy of its minority rule over all other Ethiopian ethnic groups without any limit to its domination. In other words, the mediators were under the false illusion that the members of the Holy Synod in Ethiopia were free to determine the fate of the return of the exiled Patriarch without realizing that the regime has been the driving force, all along, in determining whether Patriarch Abune Merkorios was to be reinstated to his former position or not. It has become clearer to all keen observers now that the regime has its own Patriarch in mind. The fact that the Tigrean People Liberation Front (TPLF)-dominated government in Addis Ababa had made the decision to install a Patriarch of its choice, replacing the deceased Abune Paulos, a Tigrean, with another of the same ethnicity, was in itself the cause d’être for the failure of the peace and unity mediation.

This is not, however, to deny the fact that there are among the esteemed Fathers of the Holy Synod in Ethiopia who have a genuine interest in ending the divide within the EOTC, and their wish is naturally the return of the exiled Patriarch to his rightful place.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, But this group may either have been outnumbered by those following the regime’s directives or simply have now succumbed to the pressure placed upon them by the government to go along with the regime’s wishes. Whether this is the case or not, time only will tell. Yet there is concrete evidence pointing to the fact— supported by the latest reports in Ethiopian websites quoting independent and reliable sources within the Synod in Ethiopia— that the Holy Synod in Addis Ababa is indeed on the verge of choosing the 6th Patriarch of the EOTC. This, of course, would be contrary to the spirit and terms of the joint communiqué announced by the representatives of the two holy Synods after the meeting in Dallas. That communiqué noted that another round of mediation would take place in January in Los Angeles to continue the peace process. In light of the new developments in Addis Ababa, however, whether such a meeting will be held as scheduled remains to be seen.

As of late, it has been reported that a division has emerged within the Addis Ababa Synod itself between those wanting to withhold the election of a new Patriarch until the outcome of the fourth mediation meeting, and those who are advocates of the government’s wish and thus proceeding with the anointment of a successor to the late Abune Paulos. At the time of this writing, the latter group, which appears to be the majority within the Holy Synod, has reportedly the upper hand in the rivalry that seems to be unraveling. The regime’s mighty pressure on the Synod’s membership to follow the “official line” on the selection of the Patriarch may have played a major part in this instance.

The mediators ultimately found out, along with the overly anxious faithful of the Church, that the Holy Synod in Ethiopia has violated the terms of the agreement that the envoys from Addis Ababa signed jointly with their counterparts from the Exiled Synod. One among the terms was the cessation of any provocative action by each Synod that will lead to the demise of the talks. After finding the sad news that the Synod in Addis Ababa was getting ready to conduct the election of the Patriarch, which they viewed as a clear violation of the terms of the agreement reached at the talks, the mediators issued a public statement on December 21, 2012 that criticized the move to do so. In the statement, they clearly lamented that the effort they had invested was in vain, adding that the promise to keep the talks going was highjacked by a group within the Addis Ababa Holy Synod that was determined to elect a new Patriarch contrary to the spirit and terms of the agreement made at the meeting in Dallas. However, the mediators avoided in their pronouncement the regime’s “secretive hand” in the matter, knowing well that such a public communiqué blaming the regime for the standoff would be politically “suicidal.”

The precarious position under which the neutral EOTCs in the Diaspora find themselves is hard to dissect thoroughly in an opinion as limited in scope as this one is. What is at stake, however, is that the time has become ripe for the so-called neutral EOTCs to take the righteous course of action and remain within the realm of legitimacy, as followers of Oriental Orthodoxy. In this regard, only two options are available to these churches: joining the Exiled Synod, or choosing the Home Synod by default. Neutrality should no longer be an option for these churches from hereon,High quality stone mosaic tiles. and never should have been in the first place. Yet, in the view of this writer, the neutral churches would be better off seeking a formal affiliation with the Synod in Exile for several practical reasons, which will be made clear in the paragraphs below.

Indeed, recent events associated with the reconciliation effort for peace and unity within the Church have not only brought more clarity about the forced removal of the exiled Patriarch by the regime in power, but also debunked many of the falsehoods that were propagated against those Fathers who created the Exiled Synod in North America. The issues that were raised by opponents of the Exiled Synod, many of whom are among the leadership of the neutral churches in the Diaspora, have been fully addressed. Most if not all had justified their neutrality based on the erroneous assumption or using the pretext that the exiled Patriarch had vacated his seat on his own will due to illness, which was unmistakably a government-concocted public disclosure that has since been found to be baseless.

During the last two years, several pieces of evidence corroborating the real causes of the dethronement of Patriarch Abune Merkorios have been made public,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. thanks to several Ethiopian-based websites and other forms of media in the West. More troublesome is also the regime’s covert intervention in the selection of yet another Patriarch of its own liking, an act which is increasingly becoming distressful to the faithful in the Diaspora as well in Ethiopia. Given these facts, any recognition of or association with a government-controlled Holy Synod in Addis Ababa would be tantamount to accepting the rule of dictatorship in Ethiopia.Installers and distributors of solar panel, Above all, it would not be in the long-term interest of the unaffiliated churches to remain neutral, nor would it be a defensible choice for them to recognize the Addis Ababa Synod at this time.