14.10.08
12.10.08
Pommern Village Choir of Tanzania at Amzing Things Arts Center
Pommern Village Choir of Tanzania at Amzing Things Arts Center
I am very excited about this!
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
7:30 PM
Pommern Village Choir of Tanzania
Pommern Village Choir of Tanzania
Explore the roots of rhythm with the Pommern Village Choir from Tanzania, Africa Imagine you're sitting in the warm, late afternoon, Tanzanian sun.
The Amazing Firehouse
$15 (Stu/Sen $14, Mem $12)
[Get Directions]
106 Year Old Nun will vote for Obama
A 106-year-old American nun living in a convent in Rome could well be the oldest person to vote in the 2008 US Presidential election.
Sister Cecilia Gaudette, who last voted for President Eisenhower in 1952, has registered to vote and says she will vote for Democrat Barack Obama. [WOW!]
Although hard of hearing, she keeps herself informed by reading newspapers and watching TV at the convent.
"I'm encouraged by Senator Obama," she says.
{so am I, otherwise I would not have registered Democrat this year!}
"I've never met him, but he seems to be a good man with a good private life. That's the first thing. Then he must be able to govern," she adds.
Sitting in her modest office in the convent where she has lived for the past 50 years, the diminutive nun appears uninterested in the row inside the American Catholic church over Senator Obama's support for pro-choice policies on abortion.
Asked about her hopes for the US under an Obama presidency, she says: "Peace abroad. I don't worry about the Iraq war because I can't do anything about it. Lord knows how it will end."
"It is very complicated," she said. "Those Eastern people are not like we are."
But despite taking part in the 4 November election, Sister Cecilia does not intend to return to the US.
"I have no plans for the future. I am too old to go back to the US. Life has changed too much." Yes sister, I agree. I am not fond of American "living" as it is today
But she still watches "very important events" on TV.
The election comes under this category.
11.10.08
Troopergate Continues Palin Drag on McCain Campaign
Troopergate Continues Palin Drag on McCain Campaign
Tres amusant!
Tres amusant!
Palin violated the state’s executive branch ethics act, which says that “each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”
The report says Palin failed to rein in her husband’s inappropriate efforts to use the governor’s office to contact trooper employees in his attempts to have Wooten fired.
“Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda … to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired,” Branchflower’s report says.
“Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional. It is an individual responsibility imposed by law, and any effort to benefit a personal interest through official action is a violation of that trust. … The term ‘benefit’ is very broadly defined, and includes anything that is to the person’s advantage or personal self-interest.”
The result of this is that the report will be turned over to the President of the State Senate for possible disciplinary action. McCain’s supporters are already in full swing, furiously trying to spin the report into something palatable, but it’s hard to see this as anything but another black eye for the Arizona Senator’s campaign. The responses will say that Palin didn’t technically break any laws. (Well, I suppose that’s technically true on some levels, assuming you don’t think of ethics laws as… errr, you know.. “laws.’) They are also decrying the investigation as a partisan witch hunt. (The panel convened to investigate this was comprised of eight Republicans and four Democrats.)
The bottom line in the war of perceptions, though, seems to be clear. Before even winning the election, say nothing of moving to Washington, the potential Vice President is under a cloud of ethics questions and has the phrase “abuse of power” permanently attached to her name. The timing of all this would appear suspicious had the investigation not begun long before John McCain selected her as his running mate. The fact that Palin initially claimed to “welcome” the investigation, but later went into Silent Running mode won’t sell very well either. Apparently we’ll not be seeing any sort of real investigation into the Mat Maid Dairy situation before the election, nor will the names Kyle Beus, Matt Bobbich, Franci Havemeister and her amazingly-prosperous father-in-law Bob bubble to the top of the news cycle. But even without that, the Troopergate investigation will likely raise some eyebrows about the simple Washington outsider, hockey mom and Joe Sixpack candidate for the VP’s office.
10.10.08
30.9.08
McCain takes hit from bailout collapse - CNN.com
GOOD!
GOOD!
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House's failure to pass a $700 billion bailout package Monday not only held back billions for Wall Street, but also was a major blow to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign.
Sen. John McCain says he is ready to work to get a financial rescue plan through Congress.
The Republican presidential nominee raised the stakes for himself last week when he suspended his campaign and returned to Washington for negotiations over a solution to the financial crisis.
"Even before the House vote, voters blamed Republicans more than Democrats for the crisis. Then McCain suspended his campaign to come back to Washington to rally support for a rescue plan," said Bill Schneider, a CNN political analyst. "He failed, so he gets blamed by both supporters and opponents of the rescue plan."
During a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, McCain appeared to distance himself from Monday's House vote, saying the congressional inaction had "every American and the entire economy at the gravest risk."
"Yesterday, the country and the world looked to Washington for leadership, and Congress once again came up empty-handed," he said.
But over the weekend, McCain had involved himself in the efforts to get the bailout package to the president's desk. iReport: Do you support the bailout?
Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the top Republican in the House, said that McCain was actively involved in lobbying Republican House members Sunday to line up behind the bailout.
"He has been making calls to members in support of this bill ... and I'm grateful for his support," Boehner said.
Don't Miss
But it was a majority of McCain's own Republicans in the House who voted against the bailout by a 2-1 ratio Monday afternoon, leaving the outcome of the bailout in doubt and sending the stock market diving 778 points. Despite McCain's lobbying efforts, 133 House Republicans voted against the bill. 
After the vote, McCain was defensive, accusing his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, of just wanting to "phone it in" when it came to the bailout and introducing partisanship into the process.
"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame. It's time to fix the problem," the Arizona Republican said after the vote.
But on Tuesday morning, McCain said the bill failed "because we haven't convinced people that this is a rescue effort, not just for Wall Street, but for Main Street America, for working families, for small businesses, for the heartland of America.
"I may fail a first or second or third time, but we have to get this job done for America. And I have a plan to restore our economy," McCain added.
Before the House vote, McCain was losing ground to Obama because of the increasingly bad economic news. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted September 19-21 found that Obama was leading McCain 51 percent to 46 percent. Earlier, after the Republican convention, the two had been tied in the polls.
And the CNN poll found that Obama leads McCain 49 percent to 43 percent among those surveyed when asked who had showed better judgment in the economic crisis.
Terry Jeffries, a Republican strategist and CNN contributor, also said McCain may have hurt himself among conservatives by losing sight of his party's free-market principles.
"I think that John McCain failed to lead," Jeffries said. "He should be right there pushing the principles, and the conservatives in the House are doing that right now."
While Obama and McCain have mostly agreed on the principles of the bailout, Obama has mostly stayed out of negotiations and has used the financial crisis to attack the economic policies of the Bush administration and tie McCain to the unpopular President Bush.
"He didn't put himself in that process. He was smart enough to realize he couldn't control the House Republicans or Democrats," said Ed Rollins, another Republican strategist and CNN contributor.
But McCain's allies still said McCain made the right move when he inserted himself into the talks.
"He wanted to come back to Washington and to help with the crisis. And the fact it didn't work out, it's not on his shoulders," said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist. "Frankly, it's on the Democrats' shoulders, they're the ones who run Congress.18.9.08
McCain's McBit**
Have you ever heard of aerial hunting? It's a brutal practice. Wolves are shot from low-flying aircraft or chased to exhaustion, then killed at point-blank range.
Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President, promotes this barbaric practice, exploiting a loophole in the Federal Airborne Hunting Act to allow private wolf killers to shoot down wolves using aircraft. To encourage the killing, she even proposed a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf!
We have to get the word out about this! Please watch this powerful new television ad by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, and then share it with every wildlife lover you know:
Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President, promotes this barbaric practice, exploiting a loophole in the Federal Airborne Hunting Act to allow private wolf killers to shoot down wolves using aircraft. To encourage the killing, she even proposed a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf!
We have to get the word out about this! Please watch this powerful new television ad by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, and then share it with every wildlife lover you know:
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Thanks to the unprecedented support of more than 14,000 wildlife supporters, millions of voters in key swing states are learning more about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s values -- and her brutal record on aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife. Encourage your friends to watch the ad online and help us reach even more people with the awful truth about Governor Sarah Palin’s brutal record aerial wolf hunting. With your help, we’re breaking this story wide open. This hard-hitting TV ad has already been seen by nearly 300,000 people online. It’s been covered by many news outlets, including CNN, ABC, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, several Ohio newspapers and more. And thanks to the generous donations of people like you, millions of people in Ohio and Florida know the truth about Governor Palin’s brutal record. Now, thanks to the phenomenal support of wildlife supporters like you, we’ll be able to extend our ad buy in Ohio and Florida, air it in Michigan -- and beyond. If you haven't already, please consider donating now to help put this ad in front of even more potential voters. The more voters learn about Governor Sarah Palin, the less there is to like. But as you can imagine, running a TV ad during election season is expensive. There are still millions of potential voters across the U.S. who haven’t learned the truth about Governor Palin’s brutal aerial hunting program -- millions who don’t yet know about her proposal to dole out $150 for the severed forelegs of dead wolves. Help us expose the awful truth about Sarah Palin before it’s too late. Tell others about Governor Sarah Palin’s record on the brutal and unethical hunting of wolves from airplanes. With your help, we can ensure that voters know the truth about Sarah Palin.  With Gratitude, Rodger Schlickeisen President Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund P.S. Right now, my team is preparing another powerful TV ad to air in key swing states. To help us reach more voters with the ad above and place our new ad, please make a secure online contribution today  | |||
16.9.08
Disaboom: Social Network for the Disability Boom
Social network Disaboom leads a growing demographic - Sep. 15, 2008
Opening new worlds: The Disability Boom
Led by a hot social network, disabled entrepreneurs are doing well by selling products that help the handicapped - and the rest of us.  |
| Dr. Glen House built a website where disabled users connect, find jobs, and date. |
Photos
Many gadgets developed for a disabled audience have found favor with the mainstream - and made use of technology that couldn't find a toehold anywhere else. Here's a selection.
(Fortune Small Business) -- Despite his wheelchair, and often because of it, Dr. Glen House has always enjoyed doing what he isn't supposed to.
Take the time he persuaded his neighbor in Colorado Springs, J.W. Roth, to join him on vacation in the ice fields of Taku, Alaska. The trip entailed flying to a remote lodge in a tiny ski plane that was ill-equipped for disabled passengers: Boarding was via a rope ladder. "They said no wheelchairs," Roth recalls. "So we signed up."
That 2006 trip was a turning point for House and Roth. The boarding process was dicey: Roth gave House a fireman's lift up the plane's ladder, which dangled over the ice. "If I go down, you're going with me," House snarled on the way up. But later the pair sat in the Taku lodge, wondering how they might bring such exhilarating experiences to other disabled people. "They're sick of doctors," House told Roth. "They want to know how to live forward with their conditions."
That chat led to this year's launch of Disaboom.com, a fast-growing social network aimed at the 50 million Americans with disabilities and their caregivers. In a time of social-network fatigue, as Facebook and MySpace have spawned hundreds of bland imitators, Denver-based Disaboom is unique. It focuses on a large, untapped audience eager to get answers and make connections, and one that advertisers had previously been unable to reach.
Like the entrepreneurs in the stories that follow, House demonstrates that disabilities are no obstacle in the brave new world of technology. If anything, the determination they engender provides a clear business advantage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of self-employed Americans with disabilities has grown from 12% to 15% since the dawn of the Web. For the rest of us, the figure has stayed static at 8%. Your next competitor may just zoom past you in a wheelchair.
When House wants to get somewhere, he goes fast. "That is how I ended up in the wheelchair," he says. During a ski vacation in Snowbird, Utah, House ignored the sign that read DANGER! ROCK! and at 20 became a quadriplegic from the pectorals down.
But House lost no time pursuing his next goal: He began studying for medical school. His Disaboom colleagues all have stories of his dangerously fast driving; one had to pull him from his car when it skidded off the road into the Colorado snow.
House is the public face of Disaboom, writing most of the medical guides to the 40 disabilities the site covers and participating in its forums. It doesn't hurt that he and Roth founded the company last year just as the Fox drama House, which features a partially disabled doctor named Greg House, started winning over critics and viewers. Glen House was not the inspiration for the show, although at least one patient insisted on his autograph anyway.
It helped that Roth, one of the founders of biotech firm AspenBio, came aboard as CEO. Roth swiftly garnered $15 million in funding and began targeting advertisers. By April, Disaboom had racked up $1 million in ad sales to corporate Godzillas such as Ford (F, Fortune 500), Avis (CAR, Fortune 500), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, Fortune 500), and T-Mobile, and had served up 23 million online ads.
Roth launched a sister site, Disaboomjobs.com, in an effort to address the 60% unemployment rate among disabled Americans. He even bought a disabled-dating site called lovebyrd.com.
"We don't want Disaboom to smell like a doctor's office," Roth says. "We want to deal with dating issues, sex issues, how to drive a fast car."
Disaboom officially launched in January. The main site now boasts 72,000 registered users, and the rate at which new users sign up is growing by 500% a month. In March presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both launched profiles on the site. Roth and House maintain folders full of thank-you e-mails, many from parents of disabled kids who didn't know where to turn until they found sympathy and suggestions from the Disaboom community.
The site is not without problems. Roth decided to take Disaboom (DSBO.OB) public before its launch; as of late August, the stock was trading at an anemic 50 cents a share, $1.30 off its 2007 high. One disabled blogger at GearAbility.com complained that Disaboom jobs listed too few positions specifically for the handicapped, and that much of the content read like PR blurbs.
"There's a lot of buzz about them," says Jennifer Simpson, senior director of technology policy at the American Association of People With Disabilities, a lobbying group in Washington, D.C. "We talk about them all the time, but I don't think they're where they want to be."
House and Roth are working on that. They recently struck deals with the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School to license a reliable range of medical content. With $4 million cash in hand, Disaboom's stock slump isn't going to bite anytime soon. The 39 employees on staff include three full-time "social marketers," who write blogs and help promote the site on a range of popular websites such as Digg and Twitter.
"This is the tip of the iceberg," says Roth at his conference table in a suburban Denver office park. He already has plans to launch other social networks for underserved markets. Neither he nor House will say more than that, but it seems likely that they'll soon be doing something they weren't supposed to do, one more time.
Share your thoughts on the disabilities boom in our discussion forum.
Opening New Worlds gallery: Check out these gadgets developed for the disabled that have gone mainstream.
A buzz about honey: A disabled son's obsession spawns a thriving family business.
Vision quest: How an entrepreneur turned a potentially crippling disability to his advantage.
Opening New Worlds gallery: Check out these gadgets developed for the disabled that have gone mainstream.
A buzz about honey: A disabled son's obsession spawns a thriving family business.
Vision quest: How an entrepreneur turned a potentially crippling disability to his advantage.
WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA
Stunned Lehman Employees Pack Bags Across Asia; Investors Fume
There was a somber mood at Lehman's Japanese unit, housed in a 54-storey skyscraper in Tokyo's glitzy Roppongi Hills complex where the bird's-eye view of the capital was once a metaphor for the bank's financial pride.
Employees of the 158-year-old bank, which crumpled under mortgage-related losses, were already trying to get on with their lives even though Lehman has made no official announcement on layoffs.
"Now I know what it feels like to be handed down the death sentence," said one American employee in his 20s.
He said he had been closely following developments in the past weeks in the news media, receiving no information from his superiors.
While he was considering enrolling in a US business school next year, "it looks like I could be leaving (
A trickle of casually dressed workers braved flashing cameras and drizzling rain to enter the building but it seemed many others stayed away -- possibly brushing up their resumes.
Another young Lehman employee decided to take the day off, going for a bike ride to shop and meet friends who worked for teetering Merrill Lynch and the now defunct Bear Stearns.
Smiling with them in a photo entitled "One crazy day" that she uploaded on her Web site, she added a hint of sarcasm with the caption: "reps from former banks." Lehman filed for bankruptcy and court protection from its creditors Monday after potential buyers, including Bank of America and Britain's Barclays PLC, walked away from a deal and the U.S. government refused to intervene.
Currently the bank is in talks with Barclays which is considering acquiring certain of its assets, including its key investment management unit.
Employees were not the only shell-shocked victims - thousands of investors and ordinary shareholders are seeing their holdings blow up, as Lehman shares have plunged 94% to
"I keep getting calls from angry customers yelling at me because they lost all their money. The market is fluctuating so much," said Tse Yu-tui, a dealer at Prudential Brokerage in
"I have told them not to buy any more, but they did not listen to me, and then what can I do?" he asked.
Camera crews waited all day in a shopping mall outside of
Local broadcaster Cable News quoted sources as saying that Lehman had told staff in
Employees at Merrill Lynch were also biting their nails, left guessing over their professional fates after its rescue buyout by Bank of America.
Managers are "trying to put a positive spin on the whole thing, saying that there will not be much overlap in their business and our business," a Merrill Lynch employee told AFP in
"The impression is that even if there are going to be any layoffs, it is going to be much less serious than the situation in the U.S. Right now even top management have no idea what will happen to them," she said.
14.9.08
About GRSites
About GRSites
Yes, I do appreciate your work.
Hi, I'm Gabriel Ross. I designed and have been maintaining GRSites.com since 1997. Now you know where the "GR" in the address comes from! :-)
I live in Montreal, Canada, with my lovely wife Kaamini and my sons Nathan and Alexandre.
I am actually a scientist by training, I am completing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at McGill University. Our laboratory focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of memory in the brain.
This web site began a decade ago when I found myself having trouble finding a good background texture for my first web site (long gone!) and realizing that the internet needed a good comprehensive archive of textures for use in web pages. So I made one myself, and since then it seems to have become the most popular one. I also created a web graphics archive, as well as one of fonts and sound effects.
Eventually, features were added that allows you to customize the background textures in interesting ways. And more recently, I created the Button Maker, Logo Maker, and Menu Maker features which have proven very popular indeed.
There's a whole lot more in progress at GRSites.com that you won't find anywhere else on the web, at least not for free: realistic 3D logos, complex animated Flash logos and menu systems, beautiful new button types, all fully customizable.
I hope you enjoy the site as much as I enjoy making it for you... 
Yes, I do appreciate your work.
About GRSites.com
Hi, I'm Gabriel Ross. I designed and have been maintaining GRSites.com since 1997. Now you know where the "GR" in the address comes from! :-)
I live in Montreal, Canada, with my lovely wife Kaamini and my sons Nathan and Alexandre.
I am actually a scientist by training, I am completing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at McGill University. Our laboratory focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of memory in the brain.
This web site began a decade ago when I found myself having trouble finding a good background texture for my first web site (long gone!) and realizing that the internet needed a good comprehensive archive of textures for use in web pages. So I made one myself, and since then it seems to have become the most popular one. I also created a web graphics archive, as well as one of fonts and sound effects.
Eventually, features were added that allows you to customize the background textures in interesting ways. And more recently, I created the Button Maker, Logo Maker, and Menu Maker features which have proven very popular indeed.
There's a whole lot more in progress at GRSites.com that you won't find anywhere else on the web, at least not for free: realistic 3D logos, complex animated Flash logos and menu systems, beautiful new button types, all fully customizable.
I hope you enjoy the site as much as I enjoy making it for you...
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