The term "counting coup" or just simply "coup" that has come to mean one
studio signing a major star over another studio actually came about from
the Indians. When different sects of the same tribe would get together,
i.e. the Seminole creeks and the Muskogee creeks, they would ride against
each other in a type of war game. The only difference is they would use
sticks or branches painted different colors to "attack" with. Each hit
would be a coup. At the end of the match they would simply "count coup'
to determine a winner. I find it amazing how much of our language in
America actually comes from the Indian language.

A complete tea tasting consists of examining the dry leaves, examining the leaves after infusion and tasting the tea liquor. Look at the dry leaves and pay attention to how they are rolled, what size they are and how they smell. After infusing the leaves look at how they unfolded and if they are whole or in smaller pieces. Professional tea tasters take a small sip of the tea, swish is around their mouth and spit it out, tasting the teas quickly one after another.

Key things to pay attention to while evaluating tea

• Acidity - sensed on the sides of the tongue
• Sweetness - sugary taste that can be tasted at the tip of the tongue
• Tannin - can be tasted at the back of the tongue and tastes bitter, also has a drying effect on the gums
• Length - is how long you can taste the tea in your mouth after you swallowed, the longer the taste stays the higher the quality of tea
• Body - weight and fullness of tea
• Balance - when all the components of tea work well together

You don't have to be a professional to enjoy tea and with time the more teas you taste the easier you'll be able to develop your own palette of flavors and indentify tea quality. Here is some vocabulary taken from Teaosophy used by professional tea tasters that might help you describe your experience of each step

Dry leaves

• Adhesive - Well-rolled, wiry leaves that tend to cling together when picked up
• Attractive - Well-made, uniform in color, size, and texture
• Bloom - Leaves look lively and have a lustrous quality
• Brown- Leaves are brown in color. Although black is a desirable color for black tea leaves, tippy teas are never totally black due to the presence of the lighter-colored tips, which are desirable
• Dull - Lacking bloom
• Dusty - Leaf tea that contains some tea dust
• Golden Tip - Tea contains golden colored leaf tips. This is desirable
• Leafy - Tea containing larger than average leaves
• Leggy - Tea leaves are long and thin
• Stylish - Leaf of superior appearance containing "tip"
• Tip - Pieces of the leaf tip
• Tippy - Teas that contain generous amounts of leaf tip and therefore produce a more flavorful cup.
• Well-twisted - Refers to how the leaf was rolled. A leaf that has "twist" is well-rolled.
• Whiskery - Leaves covered with a fine hairy fiber. Also described as "hairy".
• Wiry - A thin long leaf that has been nicely rolled.

Infused leaves

• Aroma - Leaves have a fragrant smell
• Bright - Leaves have a lively reflective quality rather than looking dull
• Coppery - Leaves have a coppery color, usually denoting a good quality tea
• Dark - Leaves are dark or dull in color, sometimes denoting a lesser quality tea
• Dull - Leaves that lack a bright, reflective quality

Tea liquor

• Aroma - An attractive smell sometimes referred to as "nose" or "bouquet." High grown teas, such as Darjeeling, are prized for their distinctive aroma
• Astringency - The lively, pungent sensation on your tongue that gives tea its refreshing quality. This is not to be confused with bitterness
• Bakey - An unpleasant taste caused by using very high temperatures during drying ("firing") the leaves and consequently driving out too much moisture
• Biscuity - A pleasant taste resembling fresh baked bread that can be found in some Assam teas.
• Bitter - An unpleasant bitter taste.
• Body - How the tea liquor feels in your mouth. A tea is described has having light, medium, or full body. Full-bodied teas have fullness and strength as opposed to being thin. A tea's body will vary according to the region in which it was grown.
• Brassy - An unpleasant, bitter metallic taste.
• Bright - Liquor looks lively as opposed to dull. This quality becomes more apparent after the addition of milk.
• Brisk - A vivacious, slightly astringent taste as opposed to flat or soft tasting liquor.
• Character - Distinct qualities of the tea that allow the taster to detect the region where the tea was grown.
• Color - Describes depth of color. The region when the tea was grown and the grade of tea play a part in the resulting shade and depth of the liquor color.
• Coloury - A liquor that possesses depth of color, sometimes indicating full body or taste, but not necessarily so.
• Course - An undesirable harsh, bitter taste.
• Complex - A multidimensional aroma or taste profile.
• Dry- A slightly bakey or scorched taste.
• Dull - A liquor that lacks a lively, bright character in both appearance and taste.
• Fine - Tea of exceptional taste and quality.
• Flat - Lifeless liquor completely lacking in briskness. This can be the result of tea that is old or has been stored improperly.
• Flavoury- Tea that has a pronounced, satisfying flavor. Pronounced flavour is more generally found in high grown teas such as Darjeeling, Nilgiri, Kerala, and Ceylon.
• Full - Tea possessing color, strength and body as opposed to being empty or thin.
• Hard - Tea that has penetrating and desirable strength, particularly used for Assam tea.
• Harshness - An unpleasant degree of strength.
• Heavy - Tea that possesses a thick, strong liquor with depth of color but is lacking in briskness.
• Hungry - When the characteristics generally associated with the tea variety or region of origin are not present.
• Light/Pale- Liquor that does not have depth of color but may be flavoury or pungent. Darjeeling tea is a good example of this.
• Malty - A desirable malted barley taste often found in Assam tea.
• Mellow - Tea leaves which have matured well produce a mellow tasting tea.
• Muscatel- Grapey taste. This is an exceptional characteristic found in some Darjeeling tea.
• Point(y) - A desirable brightness and acidity often associated with Ceylon teas.
• Pungent - A bright liquor that has pronounced briskness and a strong, astringent flavor. Highly desirable.
• Rich - A pleasantly thick and mellow liquor.
• Round - A full, smooth-tasting liquor.
• Stale - Tea that has an unpleasant taste because it is old or has been stored in damp conditions.
• Strong - Liquor possesses strength of body and flavor.
• Thick - Tea that has good body as opposed to being "thin". Assam tea is known for producing a thick liquor.
• Thin- Tea that lacks body. This is not necessarily undesirable as certain tea growing regions, such as Darjeeling, are celebrated for their tea's thin, flavoury liquors. However teas from Assam should never have a thin liquor.
• Tired - Tea that is past its prime and consequently has a flat or stale character.
• Woody - Tea that has a sawdust-like character

Gandurile isi mentin cursul si incep sa imi aduc aminte la cate institutii am vazut astefel de rampe speciale dar erau absolut imposibil de folosit. Ori erau prea abrupte, ori prea inguste sau mai stiu eu ce. Ba am vazut locuri unde usa era atat de mica incat  ma indoiesc ca ar fi permis unui carucior sa patrunda in cladire. Si mai bine!...

Deci, stati linistiti, ca loc in "troleu" aveti, numa' sa va aduceti rampa de acasa.

1. Say it. When you say the words "I LOVE YOU." do they carry it with them the desire to show someone you love them or do they carry it with them is it what you want to feel? And when you say it make sure you really mean it and are willing to do anything for that special person.
2. Empathize. Put yourself in someone else's shoes. Rather than impose your own expectations or attempt to control them, try to understand how they feel, where they come from, and who they are; and realize how they could also love you back just as well.
3. Love unconditionally. If you cannot love another person without attaching stipulations, then it is not love at all, but deep-seated opportunism (one who makes the most of an advantage, often unmindful of others). If your interest is not in the other person as such, but rather in how that person can enhance your experience of life, then it is not unconditional. If you have no intention of improving that person’s life, or allowing that person to be themselves and accepting them as they are, and not who you want them to be, then you are not striving to love them unconditionally.
4. Expect nothing in return. That doesn't mean you should allow someone to mistreat or undervalue you. It means that giving love does not guarantee receiving love. Try loving just for loving's sake. Realize that someone may have a different way of showing his or her love for you; do not expect to be loved back in exactly the same way.
5. Realize it can be lost. If you realize that you can lose the one you love, then you have a greater appreciation of what you have. Think how lucky you are to have someone to love.

It does not make you a bad person to desire someone else's love, even if they do not love you. However, to truly love someone, you must let them be free . It is selfish to blame them for your feelings.

• People in love are sensitive to each other's needs, and endeavor to meet them even when they do not feel like doing it.
• Men and women may be equal in value but different by nature. People who truly are in love give their mates "space" to develop their  potential and find their fulfillment in life.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

I'm trying to read a book on how to relax, but I keep falling asleep.

I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.

When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.

Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.

When you're right, no one remembers. When you're wrong, no one forgets.

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

Everyone makes mistakes. The trick is to make mistakes when nobody is looking.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded.

You know the speed of light, so what's the speed of dark?

Evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening', and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

Death is hereditary.

There are three sides to any argument: your side, my side and the right side.

Always forgive your enemies - Nothing annoys them so much.

They say hard work never hurts anybody, but why take the chance?

Always borrow money from a pessimist.  He won't expect it back.

I like work.  It fascinates me.  I  sit and look at it for hours.

Where there's a will, there are five hundred relatives.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Palin:  Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that.

Again, John McCain and I, that commitment that we have made, and we’re going to follow through on that, getting rid of that corruption.

One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say ‘never again’. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let’s do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don’t live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we’re taking personal responsibility through all of this. It’s not the American peoples’ fault that the economy is hurting like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say, ‘never again will we be taken advantage of.’

Ifill: Senator?

Biden: Well Gwen, two years ago Barack Obama warned about the sub-prime mortgage crisis. John McCain said shortly after that in December he was surprised there was a sub prime mortgage problem. John McCain while Barack Obama was warning about what we had to do was literally giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal saying that ‘I’m always for cutting regulations’. We let Wall Street run wild. John McCain and he’s a good man, but John McCain thought the answer is that tried and true Republican response, deregulate, deregulate.

So what you had is you had overwhelming “deregulation”. You had actually the belief that Wall Street could self-regulate itself. And while Barack Obama was talking about reinstating those regulations, John on 20 different occasions in the previous year and a half called for more deregulation. As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry deregulate it and let the free market move like he did for the banking industry.

So, deregulation was the promise. And guess what? Those people who say don’t go into debt, they can barely pay to fill up their gas tank. I was recently at my local gas station and asked a guy named Joey Danco (ph). I said, “Joey, how much did it cost to fill your tank?” You know what his answer was? He said, “I don’t know, Joe. I never have enough money to do it.” The middle class needs relief, tax relief. They need it now. They need help now. The focus will change with Barack Obama.

ANALYSIS OF BIDEN’S RESPONSE:

Barack Obama can be found nowhere in the Congressional or Senatorial record to have sounded any alarm with respect to the sub-prime mortgage crisis two years ago. If you see my response in my blog regarding the first question on the crisis, I note there, with source documentation, that it was, in fact, John McCain who sounded the alarm. Democrat-controlled banking and finance committee members were given a report indicating that there needed to be additional oversight, which responsibility it is for the banking and finance committee of the House to manage. By not following through on the order to submit the report of HUD stipulating that additional oversight was necessary and allowing it to die in committee, the Democrat-controlled banking and finance committee allowed the perpetuation of the predatory lending practices that were occurring and which have continued to occur. Look at any web site that carries major advertising, including lenders and you will find advertisements spouting “government has reduced the lending rate and extended financing for troubled mortgages – click here to find out how much you can save!” All of these sorts of advertisements are from predatory lending institutions (or at least mostly so).

Biden further stipulates that McCain was “surprised” in December (he does not say whether it was 2006 or 2007) about the sub-prime mortgage crisis looming. This is again false since McCain, two years ago (May 2006) mentioned in documented evidence (see question #1 blog) that there was a problem and that the Senate and House needed to act on it immediately. His bill proposal died in committee. Barack Obama’s name was nowhere on this document, nor did he propose any of his own legislation on the matter (see Thomas Register at senate.gov).

In looking at the claim that McCain would do for health insurance what he has done for the banking industry in Biden’s response, “John McCain while Barack Obama was warning about what we had to do was literally giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal saying that ‘I’m always for cutting regulations’”, I checked a source for verification which may not be 100% reliable 100% of the time, but which is correct in this instance. Here’s FactCheck.org’s coverage on the issue:

From: FactCheck.org

Out of Context on Health Care

September 22, 2008

Obama ad twists McCain's words on health care "deregulation."

Summary

An Obama-Biden ad falsely claims McCain says he wants to "do the same to our health care" that "Wall Street deregulation" has done to the banking industry.

The ad relies on a single phrase from a journal article under McCain's byline, in which he said he would reduce regulation of health insurance "as we have done over the last decade in banking." But the full context reveals that McCain was referring narrowly to his proposal to allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines.

Analysis

The Obama-Biden campaign released the ad Sept. 22 and said it will air on national cable TV networks. It claims that McCain said he would "reduce oversight of the health insurance industry ... just 'as we have done over the last decade in banking.' " But the ad takes the comments out of context, failing to explain what exactly McCain meant by the comparison to banking. He was talking specifically about allowing the sale and purchase of health insurance plans across state lines.

Obama-Biden Ad:
"Article"

Obama: I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message.

Announcer: We’ve seen what Bush-McCain policies have done to our economy. Now John McCain wants to do the same to our health care. McCain just published an article praising Wall Street deregulation. Said he’d reduce oversight of the health insurance industry, too. Just "as we have done over the last decade in banking." Increasing costs and threatening coverage. "A prescription for disaster." John McCain, a risk we just can’t afford to take.

McCain's words come from an article under his byline in the September/October issue of "Contingencies," a journal of the American Academy of Actuaries. Here's what the McCain article actually said, in full context:

McCain: I would also allow individuals to choose to purchase health insurance across state lines, when they can find more affordable and attractive products elsewhere that they prefer. Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation. Consumer-friendly insurance policies will be more available and affordable when there is greater competition among insurers on a level playing field. You should be able to buy your insurance from any willing provider—the state bureaucracies are no better than national ones. Nationwide insurance markets that ensure broad and vigorous competition will wring out excess costs, overhead, and bloated executive compensation.

Note that McCain began by speaking of buying insurance "across state lines." His comparison with banking regulation was limited to "opening up the insurance market" to "nationwide" competition to "provide more choices" to consumers.

McCain has in fact touted this aspect of his health care plan for months. His Web page on health care prominently says:

McCain health care plan: An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people's needs, lower prices, and portability. Families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines.

Obama used this misleading accusation on the campaign trail over the weekend. In Daytona Beach, Florida, on Sept. 20, Obama said: "So let me get this straight – he wants to run health care like they've been running Wall Street."

The analogy to banking in the article was poorly timed, given recent financial events, though it's likely it was written well before Wall Street's crisis reached its climax last week. McCain senior adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin complained to reporters that Obama misunderstood what McCain meant: "If Barack Obama thinks that today's financial troubles were caused by policies which allowed Americans to use an ATM anywhere in this country, then it is better that he continue to be silent about solutions to the crisis on Wall Street," he said. Holtz-Eakin told the Wall Street Journal that the article was talking about provisions that allowed for banking across state lines, which were approved in 1995 – not "over the last decade," as the article said.

Obama adviser Jason Furman said that it seemed to him that McCain was referencing 2004 rules that, the Journal reported, "pre-empted state banking regulations and that, [Furman] argues, helped bring on the current financial meltdown." McCain did not cite specific legislation. But it is clear he was comparing such regulations to his proposal to allow the sale of health insurance across state lines.

We’d also note that this was not "an article praising Wall Street deregulation," as the ad says. Wall Street itself is never mentioned, and the only reference to banking or the financial industry is that one line about regulation over the past decade.

This ad reminds us of another by the Democratic National Committee that took McCain's comments out of context. That ad charged that McCain wanted to stay in Iraq for 100 years, but his full remarks showed that he was talking about a peaceful presence in the country, much like U.S. troops' presence in Japan or South Korea, two examples McCain used in his remarks. McCain said staying in Iraq for a hundred years "would be fine with me, as long as Americans, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." The DNC left that part of the quote out of the ad.

An Accurate Quote

The Obama-Biden ad ends by calling McCain's plan "a prescription for disaster," as those words, credited to the Boston Globe, flash on screen. Unlike the first quote cited in the ad, this one is accurate. It comes from a Sept. 21 Globe editorial that compared McCain's and Obama's health care plan, raising objections to McCain's. Here's the quote in context:

Globe editorial (Sept. 21): “There is no comparable lab test, however, for the radical revision of healthcare that McCain is proposing. For all of his moderate positions on immigration and climate change, on healthcare he has endorsed a right-wing ideologue's vision: destroy employer-based coverage and turn Americans over to the tender mercies of private nongroup insurers in an unregulated environment. It's a prescription for disaster.”

Obama and Biden may share that assessment of McCain's plan, as their ad says. But the ad's main criticism rests on distorting McCain's words rather than evaluating an actual component of his health care proposal.

– by Lori Robertson and Brooks Jackson

Sources

McCain, John. "Better Care for Lower Cost for Every American." Contingencies, Sept./Oct. 2008, Editorial. "World apart on healthcare." Boston Globe, 21 Sept. 2008.
Meckler, Laura and Nick Timiraos. "Crisis Draws Attention to McCain Social Security Plan," 22 Sept. 2008.
Balz, Dan. "McCain Health-Care Article Fuels New Clash Over Economy." Washington Post, 21 Sept. 2008.

So, on this Biden is completely off base. His stipulation in the debate was an inaccurate, wholly taken out of context, assertion. He loses points again. In addition, the article was published in Sept 2008, not last December, not December 2007, and not two years ago.

As for his claim that McCain voted 20 times in the last 1 ½ years for increased deregulation of the banking industry, I have so far not found such record. I have found a number of senate amendment proposals, dating back into June 2008, concerning the Housing Economic Recovery Act, and certain procedural votes thereon, which were not voted on by either McCain or Obama, but which were voted on by Biden. Therefore, Biden knew about this housing crisis at least as far back as June when these votes came up in the Senate. He cannot claim ignorance, nor can any other member of the senate or house. These votes were on HR bills (house of representatives) that had been approved in the House and were now in the Senate for their review. This indicates that the House of Representatives also knew about the problem. In addition, I have found video on the official site indicating that several House members knew about this problem and discussed it on the floor as far back as November 2007, attempting to place blame on the Republicans of the House. I cannot give points to Senator Biden.

Biden = -1 points for truthfulness, - 1 point for attempting to tell the public that he did not know of this and neither did the House of Reps.  Total, - 2 points.

Ifill: Governor, please if you want to respond to what he said about Senator McCain’s comments about health care?

Palin: I would like to respond about the tax increases. We can speak in agreement here that darn right we need tax relief for Americans so that jobs can be created here. Now, Barack Obama and Senator Biden also voted for the largest tax increases in US History. Barack had 94 opportunities to side on the peoples’ side and reduce taxes and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction. 94 times.

Now, that’s not what we need to create jobs and really bolster and heat up our economy. We do need the private sector to be able to keep more of what we earn and produce. Government is going to have to learn to be more efficient and live with less if that’s what it takes to reign in the government growth that we’ve seen today. But we do need tax relief and Barack Obama even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year. That’s a lot of middle income average American families to increase taxes on them. I think that is the way to kill jobs and to continue to harm our economy.

ANALYSIS OF PALIN’S POINTS

As to Senators Biden and Obama voting for the largest tax increases in history, with Obama having 94 opportunities to vote on the side of the people, it is well known that he has actually only been in the Senate 144 days of actually doing anything for the country. Yet he has been an elected senator for the last three (of four) years. It is quite likely that, whether it was a procedural vote (i.e., to end debate [to invoke cloture] or to vote on a motion to amend), that he has missed that many opportunities to help the common person. I find very, very few instances where, this year alone, even considering the election process taking away from his time in Senate from about March 2008, where he has voted on any measures, other than on March 13, 2008. He has typically been away from the Senate, running for president full time since about mid-March. In 2007, he voted several times to reject any extension of tax credits related to the production of electricity from renewable resources. For someone who is supposedly “pro-renewable energy”, he certainly didn’t vote that way on any bill amendments presented to the Senate in 2007. Further, he specifically voted to reject any extension of tax deductions on tax returns related to interest on student loans, college tuition deduction, to limit death tax exemption to 35% for families, family farms, and small businesses (by raising the tax exemption to $5 million). So far, I have been able to verify 15 instances where Obama (and Biden) could have been tax reducers to the American public instead of tax increasers. This search took about three hours looking into the Thomas Register. Given that Obama either missed the opportunity, or did not vote in the affirmative for increasing taxes for individuals (not families) making only $42,000 last year, I have not yet found that specific legislation; however, it could be in the specific text of one of the items I have already referenced in my search. According to FactCheck.org; however, the claim that Obama voted for the largest tax increase in history, is, in fact, accurate.

Sarah Palin = 1 point for plausibility of confirmation and 1 point for accuracy of greatest increase in tax history.

SCORE

Palin = 8 points

Biden = -2 points

Ifill; Senator?

Biden: The charge is absolutely not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes. The vote she’s referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way. It was a budget procedural vote. John McCain voted the same way. It did not raise taxes. Number two, using the standard that the governor uses, John McCain voted 477 times to raise taxes. It’s a bogus standard but if you notice, Gwen, the governor did not answer the question about deregulation, did not answer the question of defending John McCain about not going along with the deregulation, letting Wall Street run wild. He did support deregulation almost across the board. That’s why we got into so much trouble.

ANALYSIS OF BIDEN’S RESPONSE:

He loses another two points for his maintaining that Obama did not vote to increase taxes when, in fact, he did as well as his indicating that John McCain voted the same way when, according to FactCheck.org, he voted not to increase taxes on that particular issue. He also loses another point because it was not a procedural vote. It was a vote on an amendment to the bill, not to invoke cloture (cease debate) or to table, or to amend the amendment, all of which would be procedural. I find no instances where he gets 477 for the number of times under what he would claim to be Palin’s method of calculating the times that McCain would have voted to raise taxes. In all of the reviewing I have done today, all of his efforts are to vote on “budget neutral” initiatives (in other words, the senate would have to decrease cost somewhere else instead of simply adding a new program or new procedure with new monies). He loses another 3 points for his inability to speak truthfully.

Biden = -3 points

Ifill: Would you like to have an opportunity to answer that before we move on?

Palin: I’m still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also. As mayor, every year I was in office I did reduce taxes. I eliminated personal property taxes and eliminated small business inventory taxes and as governor we suspended our state fuel tax. We did all of those things knowing that that is how our economy would be heated up. Now, as for John McCain’s adherence to rules and regulations and pushing for even harder and tougher regulations, that is another thing he is known for though. Look at the tobacco industry. Look at campaign finance reform.

Since Sarah Palin took office, she has helped to institute $5 billion in savings, overhauled education funding, and implemented a Senior Benefits Program that provides support for low-income older Alaskans. She created Alaska’s Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to provide oversight and maintenance of oil and gas equipment, facilities and infrastructure and the Climate Change Subcabinet to prepare a climate change strategy for Alaska. She passed two major pieces of legislation – overhaul of the state’s ethics laws and a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline. She has public accountants on the Alaska State Board of Public Accountancy, not her state officials, keeping them non-allied with any particular political party. Her state runs a surplus which is then invested and/or returned to its citizenry.  (source: Alaska.gov)

The (general) Fund ended fiscal year 2008 with a value of $35.9 billion after transferring $1.3 billion to the Department of Revenue for Permanent Fund dividend distribution. The long-term real rate of return for the current rolling 10-years 1999 - 2008 was 3.84%. This is the first 10-year period in Fund history that the Fund did not return at least 5%.

In FY2007, 100% of recurring expenditures were paid for with current year revenues

AA credit rating

$3 billion constitutional budget reserve FY2008 balance, a 44% increase over 2004

72% of agencies show progress towards achieving desired results

She’s doing what all governors should be doing. She gets points for this.

She is also correct about McCain’s work on campaign finance reform (McCain-Feingold bill), and reforms of the tobacco industry to get them to lower the tar and nicotine in their products.

Sarah Palin = 2 points

SCORE

Palin = 10 points

Biden = -5 points

Since I wasn’t exactly getting what I wanted from our instructor, I started pulling volumes of commentary from the college library’s shelves. Our priest, I prefer not to think of him as a teacher, had neglected to discuss the disputed nature of the texts - as far back as the earliest days of the church. If I remember correctly, there was some question as to whether or not the literature attributed to John was written by John during his lifetime or at some point following his death - at which point the texts in question could only have been constructed by his followers and not by John himself. Even Eusebius and Origen considered parts of the works attributed to John to be questionable in origin.

Anyway, I’ve been reading Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto, and he has been spending a good deal of time pointing to the internal and historical inconsistencies of the Christian bible in much the way the critics of Johannine literature had done when I was a student all those years ago. For example, Onfray makes the following claims:

• Historical records tell us that the traditional punishment for persons committing the crimes that Jesus was accused of was stoning, not crucifixion;
• Pontius Pilate would have spoken Latin and Jesus Aramaic, making it impossible for them to communicate with each other.

These are just a couple of Onfray’s examples. He provides many more which anyone interested in the validity of the bible may want to explore.

Coincidentally, I was watching a television show on cable last week (I’ve forgotten if it was one of the Discovery or History channels) about devices of torture. The crucifix was one the devices featured. The anthropological and archaeological experts interviewed pointed out that the traditional depiction of the crucifix as a cross was not historically accurate, that it would have looked like a “T” and not the traditional representation of crossed beams.

Together, all of these pieces of evidence reminded me that I had once begun to question the reliability of the bible and had somehow agreed with some other part of myself not to think about it. To accept what might not be the truth at all as some sort of divine revelation. I’m not sure why I needed god so badly that I would have allowed myself to stop questioning what was so clearly in need of questioning.

I’m certainly not an academic, but I’m not sure you need to be to ask whether it is better to rely on facts that agree with our experience of the world rather than stories entirely at odds with the facts of history. It bothers me that what so many of the religious are unwilling to consider the degree to which human intervention may influence what they believe to be divine revelation.

Academics and scholars have spent centuries commenting on the bible. Is it so difficult to believe that some of the earliest of these, also believers, took advantage of their learning to improve upon what they themselves saw as inconsistencies and deficiencies in the bible? Not really. I wish more people would have the courage to question, even if it frightens them to do so.

- Κάτι έχει γίνει και τα αγαπημένα μου blog κλείνουν το ένα μετά το άλλο: μετά τον metanoeiste και τον ifyouaskme81 και ο London Preppy αποχαιρέτησε το (μεγάλο) κοινό του.

- H Britney Spears ετοιμάζεται για παγκόσμια περιοδεία για το 2009. Το ανακοίνωσε στο Ζ100 radio της Νέας Υόρκης (ακούστε τη συνέντευξη εδώ). Πλέον οι σκοτεινές μέρες μοιάζουν μακρινές, δίνει συνεντεύξεις και ετοιμάζει να εμφανιστεί και στο αγγλικό X-Factor. Λέτε να μας έρθει;

- Είμαι ο μοναδικός που σιχαίνομαι τον Michael Phelps; Όχι η Wada δεν του έχει κάνει ποτέ έλεχγο αντιντόπινγκ, η Ολυμπιακή Επιτροπή της Αμερικής έχει απαγορέψει οποιονδήποτε έλεγχο σε οποιονδήποτε αμερικανό αθλητή από τη Wada, τον κάνουν λέει οι ίδιοι...

It's science

1. On "The View," McCain claimed Sarah Palin did not take or request earmarks as governor of Alaska. "Not as governor, she didn't," McCain said. But in her first year in office, she requested $256 million in earmarks from the federal government.

2. Shortly after announcing Sarah Palin as his running mate, the McCain campaign ran an ad claiming, "She stopped the bridge to nowhere" — perhaps the most thoroughly debunked claim about the Alaska governor, who supported the bridge project before changing her position late in the game. Asked about the bridge during her 2006 gubernatorial bid, Palin replied: "I'm not going to stand in the way of progress."

3. At the Republican National Convention, McCain claimed Obama's national health insurance plan would "force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor." But according to factcheck.org, Obama's plan does not place burdens on small business, and people would have the option of keeping their existing insurance plans.

4. In a campaign ad, "Dome," McCain claimed Obama's election would result in "painful income taxes, skyrocketing taxes on life savings, electricity and home heating oil," the clear implication being that Obama wants to hike these tax rates. But factcheck.org says Obama hasn't proposed a tax on electricity or home heating oil and wouldn't raise taxes on investments for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year.

It's possible Obama's election would result in these tax rates increasing. But this McCain-Palin claim is a little like the Obama camp's misleading attack on McCain's Social Security plan, tagging his opponent with the most undesirable, unintended and far from certain consequences of his policy proposals.

5. McCain has repeatedly accused Obama of supporting higher taxes on people making as little as $42,000 a year. "Two times, on March 14, 2008 and June 4, 2008, in the Democratic budget resolution, he voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000 per year," McCain said this week. But this is a misleading claim: Obama's votes were for nonbinding resolutions, which supported allowing certain Bush administration tax cuts to expire but didn't actually have the effect of raising taxes.

6. In a July visit to Colorado, McCain told voters: "I want to look you in the eye: I will not raise your taxes nor support a tax increase. I will not do it." Last Sunday, however, McCain acknowledged to ABC's George Stephanopoulos that his health care plan could lead to some people paying taxes on employer-provided health insurance.

"It depends on what plan they have," McCain said. "But that's usually the wealthiest people."

7. McCain's campaign claimed adviser Rick Davis had taken a leave of absence from his firm, Davis Manafort, and vigorously attacked a New York Times story suggesting that Davis had profited from Davis Manafort's relationship with mortgage lender Freddie Mac. "Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006," wrote McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb, who called the Times story "demonstrably false."

"Mr. Davis has never — never — been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac."

But Davis Manafort was receiving $15,000 monthly payments from Freddie Mac as recently as August, and while the payments didn't go to Davis personally he still stands to gain from the success of his firm.

8. McCain has boasted of never requesting a single earmark, saying in January: "I have never asked for nor received a single earmark or pork-barrel project for my state." But he has requested federal funding for special projects back home, including $10 million for a center at the University of Arizona, $5 million for a home-state water project and spending authority to purchase land around Arizona's Luke Air Force Base.

Politifact says it's a matter of debate whether these projects constitute pork-barrel spending — but clearly McCain has searched for federal help in his own backyard.

9. In last Friday's debate, McCain accused Obama of "voting to cut off funds for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan." But Obama has consistently voted in favor of war funding bills, including an earlier version of the bill McCain was discussing. The Illinois senator voted against this particular proposal because it did not push the Bush administration toward a timetable for withdrawal. McCain's comment was technically defensible — but rather too sly to be called "absolute truth."

10. In July, McCain accused Obama of skipping his visit to a military hospital in Germany because he was told he couldn't bring reporters and video cameras. McCain ran an ad saying: "Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras." But when pressed to provide evidence that Obama had canceled the visit for this reason, McCain's campaign could not support their claim — and media reports found no evidence that Obama had ever planned to bring media with him.

Sounds like a typical high school, right?  Well, not at St. John's.  Reason #2- why SJP is not what people think it is.  We actually fit into everything in that paragraph... well, except for the talking about it all week/people coming in droves for the game part.  Yeah, at SJP we just ignore that all week.  I was going around school the day after we beat Everett (former #1 in state) like it was great, and some people weren't even aware that we won (in some cases, didn't even know we played Everett).  Frankly, and let me know if I'm wrong, that is not what High School is about.

I mean, it's bad enough we don't have girls at SJP (ergo- no cheerleaders), but we don't even have a band!  I mean, there is no reason why you can't have a band without girls.  It is sickening to see the music department and the athletic department attempt to separate themselves from each other.  They should be working together, but no.  They don't want any part of it.  Why?  I don't know.  The band is what makes a high school/college football game, well, a high school/college football game.  To me, it is an absolute necessity.  It actually causes me to consider going to the Beverly-Gloucester game rather than a home game at SJP.  It is just not the same,

Actually, I've become more of a Beverly fan than an SJP fan because of all of this, and, frankly, I think that is how most SJP students think.  Since it is just not the same as rooting for your hometown high school's football team, you may as well just root for your hometown.  It's funny, because until I went to SJP, I hated Beverly with a burning passion of hatred.  Now I long for their falling down ceilings, leaky library and bomb scares.  It feels more like home, unlike the "perfectness" of St. John's.  Unfortunately, my parents don't see this (and all my other complaints about St. John's) the same way. 

Why have I not purposely got myself expelled or something if I feel this way?  Well, one reason, the track/cross country team.  It's the only thing that keeps me coming back for more at St. John's.  Without them, I'd be sure to be gone in a second, but instead I have stuck it out there.  Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the classic high school lifestyle rather than the thrown together, boring, crappy lifestyle found at St. John's.  Of course my parents think everyone and everything at St. John's is God, but unfortunately they have just been baptized (Godly pun totally intended) by the St. John's Preparatory School parent brainwash (patent pending).

Parents who are considering sending your kids to St. John's (I hope you look up the negatives of St. John's as you consider), please hear me out.  Do not submit to the parent brainwash.  Year after year they impress parents with SmartBoards, beautiful buildings, impressive statistics, a top notch athletic program, and core Christian values.  Most of this (key word: most) is true.  But, they fail to mention the negatives that go along with it.  Please understand it is not necessarily what you think.  Please, do not cause suffering and difficulty in your son's life by sending him here.  He is going through a tough time in his life (a little something called puberty) and now is not the time to throw these extreme difficulties on his back.  SJP tells you they prepare your son for the difficulties of college, and that is true, but there is a reason why college is where those difficulties begin: because fifteen year olds are not ready for it yet.  Period.

So back to the sports thing: it sucks.  Period.  The rest of it also sucks.  Period.  Your son should not have to submit to this suffering at such a young age.  If they do, who knows if they'll make it to an older age...

Talk at 'ya later.

They'll say like that because the 8 Megapixels camera will give them a more profit. As an enthusiast young person who really wants a camera, you'll believe what they're saying. But if you work harder. do some research about digital camera on the net, you'll find out that this is not right.

FACTS

The truth is, megapixels is related to the picture resolution. This feature is very important if you want to print the picture.

As an example, a normal 4 x 6 picture is good enough to be printed from a 5 Megapixels camera. but for a bigger size picture, you'll need more megapixels. As the pixels become larger, the size of the picture in also increasing.

CONCLUSION

As a conclusion, if you want to buy a digital camera, you have to know what you want to snap and what size you want to print your picture. The larger the size you want to print, the more megapixels you'll need and it will cost you a bit more. :)

(p/s: this article has been published on my otherblog, Info BlogZine)

Markets on the present scenario can be analysed on vrious factors and on various angles, but let me in short, just give you the analysis of bse and nse index alone in a way that gives you the gist of the current scenario.

Sensex on friday closed at 12523.3 pulling down 529 points and reviewers say the house representatives rejecting the bailout package was also a reason. The 12100 level is a kind of the last hope for the bulls as a break of the level could see the index sliding to 10300 and further deeper down to 9000 in the coming days. All are keenly awaiting for the movement of index over the next two weeks coz thats the key to determining the long-term road ahead.

And when it comes to Nifty (3818.3), it too recorded an intra-week low. Sources say failure to move above 4070 in the early part of the week would cost the markets seriously. Volumes have also recorded low. Also the sharp decline in assest prices in recent times has made many investors fearful of the stockmarket and still markets remain stressed.

Who knows what happens next.... Lets watch the game as it goes... :-|

 This doesn't even need an introduction, really:

At a level unprecedented in modern American history, physicians and medical students
from across the nation, from private practice and academic medicine, have come together
to sign a letter in support of the Obama health plan. [Doctors for Obama]

This really is a perfect storm. Obama speaks (in VA!) for 40 minutes - in detail - on health policy, and McCain's middle class health tax. Palin fumbles like crazy on healthcare in the debate. Studies predict that Senator Obama's plan will insure 34 million uninsured Americans, and others predict McCain will kick 

5,000,000 off of the rolls of the insured altogether. Doctors endorse Obama in record numbers:

Over 5,000 physicians and 1,300 medical students have signed so far from all 50 states, including many of the nation's most prominent leaders in healthcare. This is believed to be the largest number of physicians ever to endorse a candidate for political office. [Doctors for 

Obama]

And what does John McCain do? Runs away from the issues and attacks Senator Obama's character. 

This is one post in my series, 33 Days of Healthcare & The Election.  Until the America votes, I'm going to be blogging at least once a day on why healthcare should matter in this election.

The Obama campaign, thankfully, has for the past couple days been putting healthcare up alongside the economy as a major issue.  (Makes sense, given that one in four independents now ranks it a "top issue.")  So it would seem like a good time to talk about the intersection of healthcare and the economy.  Because it turns out that McCain's desperate economic proposals would have dire consequences for our healthcare system.

John McCain, in his ongoing and desperate quest to seem relevant to this economic crisis, has proposed a truly shocking measure: a federal spending freeze on everything but "national defense, the care of our veterans, and a few critical priorities." [Sharpy News]  Needless to say, this is a Really Bad Idea.   Frankly, I'm surprised people haven't been making more of the consequences of this freeze.  They are broad, and catastropic.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1630326&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

Now, it's not clear what those nebulous "critical priorities" or "vital issues" that will escape McCain's grasp might be - is Medicare going to be cut off?  How about Medicaid?  Social Security?  McCain gave a hint at last week's Presidential debate when he said that some entitlements might manage to skirt the fiscal hatchet.  So let's be charitable - perhaps too charitable - and assume for a moment that McCain isn't going to hose his fellow seniors by going after Medicare.  What does the spending freeze do to our health?

The freeze would leave us vulnerable to disease.  Pandemic flu.  The West Nile Virus.  Eastern Equine Encephalitis.  Anthrax.  All of these threats are the province of the Centers for Disease Control - the CDC. President Bush has had it out for the CDC for a while now, and they're struggling:

"[B]ecause of insufficient funding, the [CDC] will be forced to make compromises that affect public health in the U.S. and around the world. [Families USA, April 2008]"

The freeze would paralyze healthcare research.  The National Institutes of Health are already struggling to get enough funding.  In fact, there has been serious research done on the consequences of this, most notably in the Broken Pipeline study.  In 2003, NIH funding began to stagnate and inflation started to erode its purchasing power.  

The risks [of continued flat funding of NIH] are that people who have diseases that five or ten years from now should be curable are going to have to wait a lot longer. [Broken Pipeline, March 2008]
Nancy Andrews, M.D., Ph.D. 
Dean, Duke University Medical School

The study - worth a read! - outlines several key areas of study that are being neglected because of our failure to adequately fund the National Institutes of Health.  And McCain's going to make it worse.

The freeze would cripple research into the delivery and efficency of care.  The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - AHRQ - is one of those underappreciated agencies.  They're a bit farther from the basic science end of things, and spend their time researching how to deliver effective, efficent care in the real world.  They work to lower the costs of care, increase access and reduce medical errors.  And guess what: they're chronically underfunded.

[T]he AHRQ is severely underfunded...the APM urges federal appropriators to provide the agency with a funding level that will allow the AHRQ to fulfill its charge of improving the “quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans”. With health care costs rising, the need for enhancing the federal government's support for the AHRQ has never been greater.  [American Journal of Medicine]

Need to be convinced that we can't afford to give AHRQ the McCain treatment?  Just read their September newsletter, and see what they're up to.  Figuring out how to halt spread of local pandemics, how best to get patients to take their medications, or reduce falls in nursing homes.  And that's just the beginning.

Who else would suffer?  The Administration for Children & Families, the Administration on Aging, the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, the Food & Drug Administration, and the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration - plus a number of others.  And that's just in the realm of health.  (Outside of that?  Think transportation, education, antipoverty...)

We all knew that Senator McCain's health plan was radical as can be.  What we need to make sure everyone knows is how McCain's reckless, desperate economic stunt could affect our health and safety.

To refresh everyone's memory, the Community Reinvestment Act was instituted to prevent the act of redlining, where banks used to draw a red line around minority neighborhoods to indicate where they wouldn't lend money. The Community Reinvestment Act sought to mandate that banks provide loans to qualified individuals regardless of their race or neighborhood.

The Community Reinvestment Act provided for oversight. In fact only a quarter of the subprime loans are CRA loans, and the default rate among these loans is relatively low. Many of the individuals who would have qualified for these loans were in fact steered toward interest-free and low interest adjustable rate mortgages that they are now unable to refinance because of the collapse of the credit markets.

What I would look more closely at are all of the exotic securities that were created, in particular the CDOs. The big problem is that these mortgage backed securities were sold with AAA ratings from rating agencies like Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch, when in fact they were junk, or worse. If you ask me, the folks that securitized these mortgages and the companies that rated them committed an act of fraud. If you want to start blaming someone, let's start with them.

For a great overview of the current Crisis I would recommend an excellent episode of Chicago Public Radio's This American Life that was dedicated to explaining it. You can find a free transcript here.

I would recommend a couple of other good posts:

The "Liberal" Subprime Crisis -- Myth and Reality over at Newsvine.

Misunderstanding Credit and Housing Crises: Blaming the CRA, GSEs over at The Big Picture 

There is one thing that I absolutely agree with in the "Burning Down the House" video, the usage of Warner Brothers' clips does constitute fair use and shouldn't be subject to a DMCA takedown notice. Hmmm, who was it again that brought us the DMCA...

Da ich nie ein bestimmtes Format festgelegt hatte und nur einfach immer weiter Zeilen in eine Textdatei geworfen hab, bestand sie aus den verschiedensten Textformaten. Mal waren die Sonderzeichen in UTF8, mal in einem ISO-Format, zu gewissen Teilen waren die Umlaute durch mehrmaliges konvertieren derartig kaputt dass plötzlich alle durch die gleiche Bitfolge repräsentiert wurden (das kann man nichtmal mit dem besten Script wirklich automatisch beheben, allerhöchstens durch Vergleichen mit einem Wörterbuch aber such da mal Sachen wie "pöse").
Zeilenumbrüche waren natürlich auch in den verschiedensten Formaten gemischt, kein Wunder, Sacred-Chao lief mal unter Windows, mal unter Linux und manchmal wurden Sachen von Hand nachbearbeitet. Weit über 2400 Zeilen an Text zu überarbeiten macht wirklich keinen Spaß. Dies gilt doppelt wenn nichtsichtbare Zeichen verändert werden müssen.

Ziel der ganzen Aktion ist natürlich auch die Datenbank um andere Angaben zu erweitern (Zeitpunkt des Facts, Channel, ID) und das ganze System von meinem mies programmierten PHP-Bot auf eine vernünftige Platform zu schieben. Von Snookie stammte z.B. der Hinweis auf das Twisted-Framework für Python mit dem sich das ziemlich leicht realisieren lässt. Beispielcode liegt aus der selben Quelle auch schon fast funktionsfähig vor.

Die nächsten Schritte sind dann also den Bot um sinnvolle Abfragefunktionen zu erweitern bzw. letzte Zeichencode-Probleme zu beheben, danach eine Ausgabe als RSS/Atom-Dateien auf meinen Webspace zu werfen wenn ein fact eingestellt wird.
Wenn dann noch mein Server endlich läuft kann ich mich auch irgendwann an zusätzliche Funktionen machen. Z.B. wäre ein Jabber-Interface für den Bot auch eine schöne Sache.

"Es gibt viel zu tun! Lassen wir es sein!"