2012年5月31日 星期四

Hungry Mother Indeed

When I was growing up, corn bread meant one of two things. If it was a weeknight, and my mom, the daughter of two upstate New Yorkers, was cooking dinner, corn bread meant a side dish made from two boxes of Jiffy, cooked in a cast-iron skillet, and crisped on the edges by a half-stick of butter. If it was a Sunday, and my Georgia-bred dad was cooking,Trade organization for suppliers and distributors in the promotional products industry. we’d get corn bread from scratch: It had no flour, maybe a touch of sugar for seasoning, and was moistened with buttermilk. Sometimes it would come in cast iron, just like the Jiffy mix; other times he’d bake it off in muffin tins or the corn “finger” molds. This bread was sweet only from the natural sugar in the corn and, instead of holding together like cake, crumbled when sliced. The corn fingers were my favorite, as they had the highest ratio of shattering, buttery crust to tender crumb.

It’s the memory of this corn bread that I’ve taken with me in my moves across the country. It is the standard to which all others are judged.

Judging from the stream of comments posted to a recent New York Times Magazine essay about a popular Boston restaurant’s corn bread, I am not alone in my judgment. This restaurant, East Coast Grill, serves a mash-up of Caribbean, South American, and Southern-style dishes, from myriad barbecued meats to fried plantains. Their real specialty, however, is “Hell Night,” an evening where hot sauce addicts gather to torture themselves with ghost chili sauces and the like. It’s not exactly the place I’d look for quality corn bread, but hey, maybe the New York Times knows something I don’t.

According to the author, their corn bread (served as a side dish as well as a component of their barbecue platter) is so popular that any changes to the recipe have brought outrage from regular customers. Fierce attachment to one particular recipe is usually a sign of distinction (especially in the South).

One look at the recipe, however, and it becomes clear that this corn bread would have no place on a real Southern barbecue platter. Containing twice as much flour as cornmeal, almost a full cup of sugar, and absolutely no buttermilk, East Coast Grill corn bread is more cake than bread. In fact,This page contains information about tooling. it shows striking similarities to the Jiffy mix of my Mom’s weekday meals. There’s nothing really wrong with Jiffy (short of the hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated lard),Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network. but sweet, corn-flavored cake isn’t exactly what I’d want to use to sop up pulled-pork juices.

If only the Times had ventured down the road to the venerable Hungry Mother,TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China. they could have avoided the whole controversy. At Hungry Mother, they make corn bread that puts my Sunday night corn fingers to shame. Their bread, always served as a side in half or full portions, is cooked in a small cast-iron skillet until a perfectly caramelized, buttery shell forms around the barely sweet, crumbly interior. A simple mixture of little more than cornmeal, egg, butter, and buttermilk, this bread is better than even the best Sunday night corn fingers. A dollop of their just-sweet-enough sorghum butter almost guilds the lily, but instead turns a common slice into a bite transcendent.

Still, eating Southern food here in cold New England is usually like listening to the final sentence in a long game of telephone. Dishes will at least show some semblance to their Southern progenitors—the East Coast Grill corn bread is at least cooked in a cast-iron skillet—and sometimes restaurants will even get the food just right.It's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this. But even at spots as good as Hungry Mother, some details still get lost in translation.

Take, for example, Hungry Mother’s pimiento cheese appetizer. The spread is the stuff of pimiento dreams—it manages to be bright, spunky, and rich all in one bite. For me, it begs to be slathered on soft white bread and squished between my fingers. Alas, this pimiento cheese has an air of pretension unjustly foisted upon the humble appetizer. It is served in a demitasse cup alongside thin, whole-wheat crackers, pickled celery, and thinly sliced Benton’s country ham. To be sure, each of these items is wonderful in its own right—the crackers crisp and nutty, the pickled celery just vinegary enough, and the country ham is truly the jamón ibérico of the U.S.

When pimiento cheese is served in such a way, it is easy to forget its origins. Sure, it tastes great with picked celery and top-shelf ham, but it also tastes great when copiously applied in the crater of raw celery on a crudités platter or dolloped on top of deli ham and Ritz crackers. But at Hungry Mother, you’re paying extra for a fancy version of what was originally a leftover serving as an appetizer. The beauty of Southern cuisine is the way in which it celebrates earthy ingredients; many of the region’s most beloved dishes—grits, collards, biscuits, and, of course, corn bread—are low-key, ingredient-driven dishes that make the best use of food readily and cheaply available. I am glad that I know I can hop over to Hungry Mother for standout corn bread and properly punchy pimiento cheese, but dining there conversely makes me yearn for simpler dishes.

Visual Studio 2012 RC Goes Live

Visual Studio 2012 RC Goes Live Microsoft is one step closer to delivering the final versions of its Visual Studio integrated development environment and the .NET Framework 4.5. The Release Candidates are available today for download with "Go Live" licenses, in time for the Windows 8 Release Preview, which was also released on Thursday.

The Release Candidates of Visual Studio 11, now officially named Visual Studio 2012, are available to all developers (including MSDN subscribers). In addition to a new name, and a new purple logo, Microsoft is reintroducing a customizable setup process that allows developers to bypass installation of select Visual Studio components.

With or without a streamlined setup, users of the Release Candidates should see improved installations, which are about 20 percent faster than the beta releases, according to Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jason Zander, who heads the Visual Studio team.

Zander provided an overview of what's new in the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate in his blog and offered a demonstration of some of those features in a Channel 9 Visual Studio Toolbox video, hosted by Robert Green. In addition to the updated user interface, which reintroduces some color in the icons and elsewhere in response to developer feedback on the beta; the RC offers performance enhancements in areas such as typing, the toolbox and large C++ projects, according to Zander.

With the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate, Microsoft is introducing more Web publishing features, for example, additional support for Entity Framework Code First Migrations. The Release Candidate also supports Web site optimization through bundling and minification (removing unnecessary characters from source code) in JavaScript, and ASP.NET MVC 4 projects.

In addition,This page contains information about tooling. the Release Candidates introduce significant updates to the Visual Studio XAML designer and Microsoft Expression Blend tooling, according to Zander. For XAML projects, Microsoft is introducing theme animations from an Animations library,What are hemorrhoids? as well as a devices panel, which enables you, for example, to see the FullScreenLandscape, FullScreenPortrait, Filled,An indoorpositioningsystem for Improved Action Force Command and Disaster Management. and Snapped states of Metro-style apps. Expression Blend for HTML supports the display and editing of multiple images,Heat recovery ventilators including domestic home ventilationsyste. background gradients and components. It also adds the ability to cut and paste styles (CSS properties) between rules.

The company announced the official Visual Studio 2012 product lineup and specifications on May 18, when the next generation of products was still codenamed "Visual Studio 11." The Visual Studio 2012 editions and hardware requirements remain largely unchanged from Visual Studio 2010 outside of the free, lightweight Visual Studio 2012 Express tools, which are now platform-centric.Zenith manufactures a comprehensive range of rubbersheets.

Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate is the company's all-in-one Application Lifecycle Management platform. It integrates all of the tools with Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server for team collaboration. Microsoft Technical Fellow Brian Harry, the product unit manager for Team Foundation Server (TFS), details the changes in the Visual Studio 2012 TFS Release Candidate, from the beta, in his blog. Visual Studio 2012 Premium offers most of the diagnostic and testing tools without the high level architecture and modeling support. Visual Studio 2012 Professional is the entry-level developer product. Visual Studio LightSwitch, which was introduced out of band last summer and formerly a standalone product, is now available in all three editions. Visual Studio 2012 features LightSwitch version 2, which adds Metro-style templates and support for the OData protocol.

Where Hybrid War Meets AirSea Battle

In the budget wars between the services,It's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this. "hybrid threats" and "AirSea Battle" have become rallying buzzwords of two opposing camps.

On one side, Army leaders talk of hybrid threats, whose blend of guerrilla tactics and high-tech weapons pose the greatest plausible threat on land,Rubiks cubepuzzle. now that Soviet-style tank armies are extinct and the nation has largely sworn off large-scale counterinsurgency. On the other, Air Force and Navy leaders speak of AirSea Battle as a way to coordinate their expensive hardware in a high-tech war with regional powers like China or Iran.

While the services tend to use these concepts to justify their budgets, one of the fathers of the hybrid war idea,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. retired Marine Frank Hoffman, tells AOL Defense they are less contradictory than complementary, especially in a potential conflict with Iran.

AirSea Battle and hybrid war theory address two parts of the same strategic problem,Proxense's advanced timelocationsystem technology. Hoffman said: how to project American power around the globe when potential adversaries from militia groups to the Middle Kingdom are developing new tactics and new weaponry to stop us. "AirSea Battle is basically the outer half of the problem: how do you get into a region," he said. "The inner half [is] once you get inside a region, how can you operate" in the face of hybrid threats.

Hoffman has street cred as a strategist. He was a lead staffer for the famous Hart-Rudman Commission that warned of large-scale terrorist attacks on the US homeland years before 2001, wrote some of the seminal works on hybrid warfare, and frequently writes, speaks, and wargames on military concepts. Now retired from the Marine Corps Reserve, Hoffman is a senior fellow at National Defense University, although he emphasizes that he speaks only for himself, not NDU.

The strategic problem will take the efforts of all the services to crack, Hoffman emphasized. The Air Force and Navy will take the lead in the long-range fight; the Army and Marines will bear the brunt close-in, but each has a role to play in both halves of the problem. The ground forces need ships and planes to get to the war zone in the first place, and once they're in the fight they depend on air support, from drones to jets to satellites, to help them spot and strike the enemy. Conversely, the Air Force and Navy need the Army and Marines to protect – or to seize – key forward bases.

Those forward bases are critical and increasingly vulnerable. The Air Force has a few intercontinental bombers that can strike targets around the world from bases in the United States, but the rest of its planes need to operate from airfields closer to their targets. Likewise the Navy needs access to ports around the world to refuel and resupply the fleet. The most obvious threat to US bases is enemy missiles: Even Saddam Hussein's Scuds got a lucky hit in 1991 that killed 28 US troops outside Dhahran, and modern adversaries such as China field far more accurate guided weapons.3rd minigame series of magiccube! But bases also need defense against cyber-attack, sabotage, and suicide bombers, and for that matter the simple threat of enemy ground troops invading the allied nation hosting the base. The Army and Marines provide crucial counters against all those threats, from Patriot missile batteries to foot troops with a decade's experience fighting guerrillas.

2012年5月29日 星期二

Ohio's white working-class voters: on the fence

Wilmink's new job is good news for President Barack Obama. ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant, is hiring again at the century-old mill that straddles the Cuyahoga River. Orders are up, thanks in part to a revival of the U.S. automobile industry for which the Obama administration claims credit.

In recent decades the white working class has steadily morphed from blue to red: Al Gore, John Kerry and Obama all lost the group to GOP opponents.

Two years ago the midterm elections marked a landslide. Hammered by the recession and revved up by the Tea Party, white working-class voters - men and women without college degrees who earn middle-income wages - swung Republican by a stunning 30 points across the country.

For many, change hasn't come fast enough, dampening hope. They remain impatient for prosperity.Professional Manufacturer for ceramictile.

In Ohio, these voters, who make up more than half of the electorate, are showing little enthusiasm for either the president or Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee.

As of this week, white working-class voters across the Rust Belt leaned toward Romney, with 44 percent of respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll saying they would vote for the Republican if the election were held today, versus 30 percent for Obama.

That is a far narrower spread than between GOP and Democratic candidates in the midterms. But if the president is to make headway with this group, he'll need more voters like Wilmink, 29.

"Obama is for jobs," said the newly minted steelworker. "He is eager to get the economy going again."

In 2008, Obama carried Ohio by five percentage points against John McCain. He captured other industrial belt states, too, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois. Even Indiana, which had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, narrowly embraced Obama's message of "hope and change."

This year the wobbly economy offers Romney a powerful opening, but he has struggled to relate to blue-collar voters. That's hardly surprising. His fortune is estimated at $250 million, he once penned a New York Times op-ed headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,Excel Mould is a Custom Plastic injectionmoulding Maker." and he regularly complains about "union stooges."

Both campaigns unleashed ads this month aimed at working-class voters in battleground states.Distributes and manufactures rubbermats. In Obama's two-minute TV spot, steelworkers blamed Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney once ran, for profiting from the bankruptcy of a Kansas City, Missouri mill, calling the Republican "a job destroyer."

Romney responded with a 60-second Web video praising Bain's investment in Steel Dynamics Inc, an Indiana company that grew from 1,400 to 6,000 employees, describing its success as "the American dream."

Amid these conflicting scenarios, a swath of blue-collar voters remains angry, anxious and undecided. Many supported former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the grandson of a coal miner, in Ohio's Republican primary, which Romney won by less than a percentage point.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. fewer than a fifth of manufacturing workers approve of Obama's overall job performance, with almost 40 percent expressing "mixed feelings."

On a spring Saturday, members of the United Steelworkers bowling league crowded into Cloverleaf Lanes south of Cleveland. An American flag hung on the wall. Budweiser flowed freely. T-shirts sported slogans such as "Steelworkers Forever" and "Tough Enough."

In the 1990s the league had 44 teams. Today, after corporate bankruptcies, consolidations, and restructuring, there are 17.

Jerry Roop, 52, worked for 30 years as a skilled tool and dye maker before losing his job in 2007 when his employer, Metaldyne, moved some operations to China. Since then he's been laid off twice by other companies.

Like so many factory workers, Roop is a victim of automation. Once he made $90,000 a year. Now he earns $50,000 at a plant that makes bearings for windmills.

"Before, you had to figure out what a machine should do," he said. "A lot of math was involved. Now a computer creates the pattern. You push a button."

Silver-haired with a bushy mustache, Roop sports an eagle tattoo on his arm. He high-fived and fist-bumped his teammates after rolling a strike.Buy high quality bedding and bed linen from Yorkshire Linen. The mood was jolly, except when the conversation turned to politics.

Like almost 70 percent of white Rust Belt workers in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Roop thinks the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. "They want this country to turn into a Third World nation, with a few haves and everyone else a have-not," he said.

Roop didn't vote for Obama in 2008 and doesn't support him now. "I just never knew where he came from," he said. "I couldn't identify with him."

He doesn't trust Romney, either: "He reminds me of a televangelist with a diamond ring and a Cadillac."

Peru Rebel Brothers Lead Retooled Shining Path

An outlaw band headed by three crafty brothers has badly shaken Peru's government by mounting hit-and-run attacks that leave little doubt: A retooled and well-disciplined Shining Path rebel force has taken firm root in the world's leading cocaine-producing valley.

The Quispe Palomino brothers, who command about 500 combatants, solidified their reputation with last month's abduction of 36 construction workers near Peru's main natural gas fields. The guerrillas then killed eight soldiers and police sent to rescue the workers in a fiasco that cost the defense and interior ministers their jobs.

"The Quispe Palomino band remains a very potent, violent, mobile and resilient force," said analyst Diego Moya-Ocampos, with the IHS-Jane's Information Group in London.

The very idea of a well-armed, resurgent Shining Path, fortified by cocaine wealth, stirs deep-seated fears in Peruvians who endured the terror of the once-powerful movement two decades ago.

While analysts don't believe the rebel band represents an existential danger to the central government in far-off Lima,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? where the old Shining Path had bombed civilians, they doubt the group can be defeated militarily.

Since 2008, when then-President Alan Garcia set up army bases in the region where the rebels are active, the renegade band has widened the scope of its attacks on police and soldiers,TRT (UK) has been investigating and producing solutions for indoortracking since 2000. killing more than 70 with ambushes, sniper attacks and land mines.

"There have only been defeats, not a single victory" for the government,Choose from our large selection of cableties, said Fernando Rospigliosi, a former interior minister.

Pedro Yaranga, a leading Peruvian authority on the rebels, said the guerrillas "know how to move around, how to make homemade bombs, mortars and booby traps.We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges." The military, by contrast, "hasn't changed its behavior in 32 years," he said.

A poll released Sunday found 70 percent of Peruvians think the Shining Path is winning the war against the government. The survey by polling company GfK had a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points.

President Ollanta Humala, whose popularity has been hurt by last month's fiasco, said afterward that a military approach alone won't work against the rebel band.

The former army lieutenant colonel, who fought the original Shining Path in the 1990s, announced that the government would invest in roads, sewage systems and schools in the remote,So indoor Tracking might be of some interest. long-neglected region where scarcities begin with electricity.

The new Shining Path's muscle-flexing deeply troubles Peruvians, especially after the February capture in the Upper Huallaga valley coca-growing region of "Comrade Artemio," leader of the other, far weaker, Shining Path remnant.

Operating from thick jungles and rugged hills in the Apurimac and Ene river valley of Peru's southeast, the Quispe Palominos have remade a movement once rejected by Peru's rural poor for its fanatical violence.

By taxing a largely unchecked local cocaine trade, the group has been able to bestow largesse on the peasantry, moving freely through the valley, known as the VRAE, which the United Nations says is the source of 55 percent of Peru's cocaine.

Why green is such a dirty word

Last Saturday, at the Tedx 12 event in Sydney, social movement entrepreneur Jeremy Heimans played an advertisement from the American solar leasing company SunRun.

It introduced Paul and Cathy who, the narrator told us, installed solar panels on their roof to help save baby dolphins around the world. “Actually, no,It's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this.” says Paul. “It’s more the money thing.” But surely it was about the baby dolphins, pleads the narrator. “Well, that’s great too,’ says Cathy. “But we really love to save money.”

Heimans, a New York-based Australian who is co-founder of the social network movements Get.Up and Avaaz,Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network. loves baby dolphins, but he used the advertisement to demonstrate his thesis for the event: that green marketing is all but useless.

Surveys may well show that 75 per cent of people have great intentions (or even more, like the Big Solar campaign that took to Canberra on Monday armed with a survey pledging 94 per cent support for large-scale solar), but only 2-3 per cent of the population will actually follow through. Which is why green products barely represent 3-4 per cent of market share.

And while green marketing is moving into the mainstream,Trade organization for suppliers and distributors in the promotional products industry. it is being co-opted and appropriated by anybody and everybody, including those who are not green at all. “That really matters, because if the sustainable products we really need only have 3-4 per cent market share, that is not going to create the shifts that we need,” Heimans says.

The money thing is clearly understood in Australia. Solar installers understand this, because most of their advertising has been pitched at the tabloids and talk-back radio shows, the very markets where climate change is ridiculed and green is a dirty word; because the cost of living is paramount, and solar can deliver those savings.

And it’s true of the commercial sector too. As one budding renewable energy entrepreneur (who is seeking to sell solar and hybrid systems to miners and other off-grid locations burdened by the huge cost of diesel) told me recently – “just don’t mention climate change or any of that green stuff.” A global survey released by Ernst & Young on Monday confirmed it. More senior executives at global corporations are getting across energy supplies, and the opportunities of self generation and incorporating renewables – but only as a cost and security issue. Climate change and green issues rank low on their radar.

Heimans says that it’s time to admit defeat on green as a powerful marketing tool. “If you can compete on price, say with solar, don’t talk about green, lead with price,” he says. “And where you can’t compete on price, pull other levers, such as status.”

The SunRun advertisement has a special relevance to Australia.This page contains information about tooling. The solar leasing business has had a dramatic impact on solar PV in the US market and has shifted the demographics of the technology because it offers zero-cost up-front payments, as well as a reduction in power bills.

One of its competitors, Sungevity, has just announced it is setting up a solar leasing business in Australia, and, it is suspected, SunRun and another US rival SolarCity, may be following close behind, along with a host of local copy-cats.

The impact of these new business models should not be underestimated, because such structures and innovative financing will accelerate the arrival of grid parity – where energy produced by consumers is cheaper than the electricity they can source from the grid.

Yet another report predicting solar grid parity across the globe within a few years was released last week – this was by a research and consultancy firm GlobalData. It predicts that solar parity will be widespread within five years – across the US by 2017 and across China by 2015. It suggests that wind is already at wholesale parity in the key markets of India (where it costs just $0.042/kWh to $0.062/kWh), and in China (where it costs $0.055/kWh).TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China.

It is a significant development. Not only will it have a profound impact on incumbent business models, it means that deployment can continue without waiting for breakthroughs in international climate change talks or consistency in policy making (although it does require regulatory barriers to be dismantled).

The underlying strategy behind climate change denial, the blockages at international climate change talks, the push-back against clean energy incentives, the resistance to regulatory change, is to protect existing businesses and to delay the inevitable. Solar, like other technologies before it, is proof that deployment is the key to price reduction.

Somali Farmers Rejoice at End of Militant Tax

The farmers in Afgoye, a town on the outskirts of Mogadishu long controlled by Islamist militants, didn't even wait to clear away the bullet casings from last week's battles before filling up trucks with produce to drive into the capital.

Farmers here are rejoicing at the taking of Afgoye by African Union peacekeepers on Friday after three days of fighting because they will no longer have to pay up to 50 percent of their crops in "taxes" to al-Shabab militants. The military operation marked the AU's biggest success in Somalia since the peacekeepers pushed the militants from the capital Mogadishu last August.

Since Afgoye's fall,An indoorpositioningsystem for Improved Action Force Command and Disaster Management.Zenith manufactures a comprehensive range of rubbersheets. dozens of vehicles carrying fresh fruits and vegetables have traveled from the farm town into the Somali capital, which last year experienced the region's worst famine in 18 years. The famine was declared over in January.

Some farmers hope they will be able to produce more crops now that the insurgents have been driven out. Tractors were already out in the fields this week, plowing more land. The farmers say hope has returned and they aim to plant sorghum, maize, bananas, mangos and other items.

Mohamed Hussein said he hoped to grow and sell more lemons since he would not have to pay such high taxes anymore. He recalled life under al-Shabab's strict rule as he supervised lemons being loaded onto vehicles at his store.

"We waited for this for a long time because we were the most affected," he said, looking out of a speeding car carrying bananas. "They took 50 percent. Many of us gave up farming. I hope the army's presence will soothe the town.What are hemorrhoids?"

During the years when the town was under militant rule, many people soured on farming or fled the region.This page contains information about tooling. Even as crop production fell, hundreds of thousands of Somalis flooded into Afgoye from Mogadishu, seeking an escape from the years of fighting in the capital.

The taking of Afgoye is the latest success against al-Shabab militants. After African Union forces primarily from Uganda and Burundi pushed out the insurgents from Mogadishu, Kenyan troops began pressuring al-Shabab from the south and Ethiopian troops pushed in from the west.

The three-pronged offensive has given the African coalition the best chance in years of taking back control of Somalia to allow some nascent form of government to begin providing services.

Militants have increased bomb attacks as the territory they control shrinks.

On Tuesday al-Shabab fighters ambushed the convoy the Somali president was traveling in after he visited Afgoye,Heat recovery ventilators including domestic home ventilationsyste. said Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, spokesman of the African Union military force. The attack was repelled and the president safely returned to Mogadishu, he said.

UNHCR said on Tuesday that 14,000 people fled Afgoye over the last week, and that 10,000 have reached Mogadishu, where the aid community is providing assistance.

Nur Saney returned to Afgoye over the weekend after two years of life in Mogadishu. He had fled his farm because of the high taxes and on Sunday he was back on it, clearing weeds.

"I hope for better days ahead," he said.

Still, many in this agricultural town worry that irregularly paid government soldiers may become the next illegal tax collector.

Abdikarim Yusuf Dhagabadan, the chief of Somalia's armed forces, told reporters he has warned soldiers not to take money from citizens.

2012年5月28日 星期一

Tuscany Offers True Italian Fare

For several weeks, a merry band of cooks and businessmen have been transforming the former site of Five Guys on Valley Road in Upper Montclair into an oasis of authentic Italian fare.

The result has been Tuscany, a new restaurant with Tuscan gold walls graced with Italian landscape paintings that puts the focus squarely on fresh pasta.

I admit I was a bit skeptical of a lunch menu that includes mostly dishes costing $14 or $16. Indeed, the cheapest item is the Melanzane Toscane, or thinly sliced layers of eggplant with fresh plum tomato sauce,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. pecorino, and Italian basil, for $10. Another pasta and eggplant dish, Lasagnette Toscana, is priced at $12.

But almost everything else on the lunch menu costs more.

Dinner, of course,TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China. is another story, with Rigatoni alla Bolognese priced at $19; Capellini Bosco E Mare priced at $26; and Bistecca Toscana priced at $36.

But I dare say the food was worth the money.

There's no kids menu, but I ventured to Tuscany for lunch with my three children anyway. They are older and have a penchant for Italian cooking. We perused the menu from a nice spot by the window. The quick delivery of warm bread, good for dipping into a notably savory herbed olive oil, struck a pleasant chord.

I opted for my usual favorite, Pappardelle al Ragu di Agnello, for $14. The flat wide pasta came out in about 15 or 20 minutes, adorned with a lush ragu containing tender chunks of lamb and topped with a hefty sprinkling of pecorino.Industrialisierung des werkzeugbaus. It couldn't have been more tasty.

Also delicious was my son's Rigatoni alla Bolognese, also priced at $14. The braised sirloin sauce with celery, carrots, and tomatoes rang out with flavor.

My other son chose Cannelloni—a specialty here. The tubular pasta stuffed with braised short ribs, for $16, was not what he expected. (At least that's what he said.) But he immediately proclaimed it delicious. I had a few bites and, indeed, the meat was so tender it nearly melts in your mouth.

My daughter's nicely shredded Insalata di Caesar for $14 also was appealing, with an abundant coating of dressing. (There was so much salad, we ended up taking some home.)

The restaurant's amiable owner, Valter Cianni, hails from Italy, having come over to the United States in 1980. He proudly notes that he's a true, real Italian and not "a want-to-be Italian."

It's no surprise, then, that the food is also purely Italian. As the very gracious and attentive waiter noted, the pastas and the sauces are made on-site by inspired cooks that know how to transform fresh ingredients into something spectacular.

Cianni is not new to the restaurant game. He also owns Tuscany Bistro in Tappan, New York and Cafe La Mer in Naples, Florida. He also owned another restaurant called Tuscany Trattoria for 18 years in Westwood, N.J. before closing it in 2010.

Nice touches at his new Tuscany restaurant in Montclair include the curvy white plates, almost a cross between a plate and a bowl, brought in from California. Also nice is the ample space between tables. In addition, the plentiful supply of parking in the lot behind the restaurant couldn't be more handy.Proxense's advanced timelocationsystem technology.

There were no other customers there during our lunch, but several people popped their heads in to ask for a look at the menu. Many took away a copy of the lengthy takeout menu. On it is everything from Aragosta "Martini," or a lobster, avocado, and mango salad, for $16, to Gnocchi alla Toscana,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. with fresh pesto, plum tomato, and pecorino, for $18. In addition to pasta, there's also veal, beef, salmon, and chicken on the menu, served a variety of ways.

Will Tuscany succeed? We hope so. As the owners of the nearby Jafajems observed, there really is no other place like it in Upper Montclair. While other parts of town enjoy the likes of Osteria Giotto, this neighborhood's residents have long wanted their own touch of true Italian. Finally, they got it.

Making home sweet

Memorial Day heralds the beginning of summer, especially in these parts where, for decades, part time residents have come to get out of the city from June until September. For those who live in part time and vacation-residences, this is a weekend for Yard Sales in the morning and opening up the house,Welcome to polishedtiles. complete with beating the rugs and long afternoons dusting off the shelves. For those of us who live here year-round, spring-cleaning has long since happened. This is the weekend when quiet turns to bustle on the main streets of most towns in the Catskills, and we gear up for the season.

There is definitely a bustle at 86 Partition Street in Saugerties, fresh paint on the walls and Big Band music keeping the pace up. Shari Weingarten and Kathleen Smith Honzik, have been making up for lost time busying themselves getting ready to open the doors to their new shop, Light House — Home and Entertaining Essentials.Save up to 80% off Ceramic Tile and porcelaintiles. Everything you need to enjoy your home and host others to do the same. It is exciting. There is so much love in the room — almost as if they are blessing each item with camaraderie before it goes home to you. Shari and Kathleen are childhood friends who reunited last year and opening this shop together is more than a labor of love. Their energy together is perfect for the Feng Shui. You want to sit and have tea with them.

Since moving to Woodstock in 5th grade, Shari has found herself more at home in this area than anywhere else. Graduating from Onteora in 1986, Shari went to SUNY Purchase for Music Composition, a classical pianist since elementary school. Shari recognized that her stage fright would limit her chances of taking the talent all the way to a career, and plunged into recording engineering which fast became a love of hers.

In an effort to maintain continuity in her major, she and several other students literally developed a new major — Studio Composition, combining the two disciplines. Being such a new program, it meant different things to different people, but for Shari, it was a way to stay at Purchase, study music and go on to be a recording engineer, which she did until the lifestyle became too much.

“You show up at ten in the morning and work until two in the morning seven days a week. No one should do that for too long.”

Not long after that, Shari found herself teaching for The Culinary Institute Of America. She took a childhood hobby of preparing delicious meals and entertaining at home to providing comfort to innumerable people across the globe as second chair in a program commissioned by US AIR to upgrade its first class food and service program for flights departing from several major U.S. hubs to places like Paris, London and Madrid. She taught eight-course meal service to international flight attendants — with classes ranging from wine pronunciation, to cultural awareness. When asked how she landed a job like that, Shari will tell you, ‘it just happened.’ She has a way of making you feel comfortable and taking a compliment with grace. And it is not difficult to see how she could teach others how to strive for a similar quality. “My mother expected me to study at the CIA since I got French Cooking For Kids and made the family Pork chops at seven years old. She never mentioned it,The core of an indoor positioning system.It's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this. knowing that I would have balked if it had been at her suggestion, and it never occurred to me.”

At the end of that contract, Shari moved to Florida, and then to Pennsylvania where she worked at Williams Sonoma. “I was a stay at home mother, that job gave me an opportunity to get out of the house. And…I learned everything you could ever want to know about cutlery and cookware! It was the perfect way to be with other adults and spend time doing things I loved.”

In 2005 Shari came home again with her two daughters, 11 year old Evi and Kaia, who is 9. Shari wants them to grow up here, and share the kind of roots that she has held on to. It is easy to come home, “When you are from Woodstock, you don’t really fit in anywhere else in the world. I enjoyed living other places, and sometimes I think it would be good to live in other places again, but nothing is quite like here, it kind of pulls you back.UK chickencoop Specialist. You go away and come back, go and come back, and every time you come home, it’s Woodstock.”

American women steal show on Day 2

Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer moved into the second round of the French Open without mishap. No surprise there, but how about six American women?

Without getting carried away, because this is, after all, just the first round, such across-the-board success made it a memorable Memorial Day for American tennis in Paris.

Apart from headliner Lauren Davis, who scored a barely believable 6-1, 6-1 victory over the talented young seeded German Mona Barthel, there were solid and slightly surprising victories Monday for Bethanie Mattek-Sands, Vania King, Sloane Stephens, Varvara Lepchenko and Christina McHale. In all, there are 12 US women in the draw, and 10 have won while Serena Williams and Jamie Hampton are scheduled for first-round matches on Tuesday. This hasn’t happened in a while.

Just to add to the little green shoots of optimism that are appearing, many of the winners are still in the early stages of their career and beat higher-ranked opposition. Stephens scored a particularly impressive 6-4, 7-6 victory over the experienced Russian Ekaterina Makarova. Stephens is 19 and is ranked 70.This is a really pretty round stonemosaic votive that has been covered with vintage china . Makarova is four years older and ranked 38.

King beat Galina Voskoboeva of Kazakstan, who, at No. 49, is ranked eight places higher King, 23, was four years younger than her opponent.

McHale, who battled to a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 win over the Dutch player Kiki Bertens, did not fit the mold in that she is considerably higher ranked (36 to 91) than her opponent. Nevertheless, this is red European clay and Bertens looked far more at ease on the surface at the start before McHale wore her down.

Mattek-Sands, ranked 167th, had to overcome the biggest negative ranking differential when she faced the talented German Sabine Lisicki who is the 13th-ranked player in the world. But Mattek-Sands came through in style 6-4, 6-3.

Earlier in the day,TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China. on Court Three, which is to be found in a far-flung corner of the Roland Garros complex, Davis scored the best win of her career over another German, Barthel, who is considered the most naturally gifted of a group of young emerging players from the nation of Steffi Graf.We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. Davis, who packs a punch off her double-fisted backhand despite her diminutive height of 5-foot-2, knew that hanging around behind the baseline against a big ball striker like Barthel wasn’t going to work.Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network.

“She wins a lot of matches in the smaller tournaments by grinding it out,” said John Evert, Chris Evert's brother, who has been overseeing Davis' development at the Evert Academy in Boca Raton, Fla.This is a really pretty round stonemosaic votive that has been covered with vintage china . “But we knew she would have to take it to Barthel and knock her out of her rhythm,”

The tactic worked from the get-go. Having seized the initiative, Davis never let go. The German was in such a state by the end that she served four double faults in the penultimate game as she tried to make the lopsided score line look more respectable.

“I’ve seen her play on TV,” said Davis with all the wide-eyed wonder of the 18-year-old that she is. “I mean, she’s 13 in the world. She’s a really good player. Her backhand is so sick, I tried to keep away from it. I have a lot of confidence right now — probably my biggest win.”

Asked to define herself, Davis said: “I have a lot of heart. I have so much passion for the game. I love playing. I’m tough mentally.”

Davis is obviously helped by her environment.

“I’ve been there two years,” she said of the Evert Academy. “It’s basically my home. I love it. It’s like my family there. Everybody’s so supportive and so loving. I fit in perfectly.”

The good thing — for two players, at least — is that the US is guaranteed two players in the third round because their are two all-American matches in the second round. Davis will take on McHale, and Mattek-Sands will play Stephens.

2012年5月24日 星期四

48 Hours in Hatay, Turkey

With thousands of refugees now taking shelter in Hatay after fleeing violence just across the border in their Syrian homeland, Turkey's panhandle province has been in the news over the past year for all the wrong reasons.

But spend a couple of days exploring this fascinating subculture of Turkey and you will discover an area steeped in ancient history, hospitality and tolerance - Jews; Orthodox,Another Chance to buymosaic (MOS) 0 comments. Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians; Sunni, Shi'a and Alevi Muslims all worship here in virtual harmony.

Home to the ancient cities of Alexandretta or modern-day Iskenderun, the Mediterranean port where the whale is said to have spat out the prophet Jonah; and Antioch or modern-day Antakya,UK chickencoop Specialist. once the Roman Empire's third-most important city where St. Paul preached his first sermons and where Christians were first called Christians, Hatay is a lesson in Biblical history.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design

But most modern Turks come here for another reason: to eat.Industrialisierung des werkzeugbaus.

Once a part of Syria, Hatay has been blessed with its own rich cuisine that draws inspiration from northern Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia.

So with several airlines now operating daily flights to Hatay from Istanbul and Ankara, it's time to dust off the history books and put those diets on hold and discover one of Turkey's most well-kept secrets far off the beaten track.

10am - After a substantial breakfast in the hotel courtyard that could pass as a dinner anywhere else, take a slow walk down to the Hatay Archaeology Museum in the city centre just across the Orontes river that divides the city in two. The museum houses some of the world's greatest Roman and Byzantine mosaics. Climb the spiral staircase in one of the rooms to get a birds-eye view of the museum's largest piece, a pavement mosaic featuring hunting scenes with ancient Greek heroes.

12pm - Cross back over the river and spend an hour getting lost in Antakya's Uzun Carsi or Long Bazaar, a series of winding covered lanes and alleyways where shopkeepers sell anything from plastic Chinese goods to gold jewellery. Spot the elderly craftsman still hammering out copper sugar bowls by hand or watch young men skilfully cook long thin strands of batter on rotating hotplates to use in kunefe, Hatay's signature dessert.

1pm - Fight your way through the bustling crowds along the banks of the river for some lunch at Sultan Sofrasi or Sultan's Feast but make sure you spot the old parliament building across the river, a reminder of Hatay's brief period as its own republic just before World War Two.

Sultan Sofrasi offers some of Antakya's best lunch specials that change from day to day so forget the menu and walk straight up to the kitchen to see what's on offer. Try the yoghurt-based soup with bulgur covered meatballs, and for dessert how about some preserved walnut jam or crunchy stewed and sweetened pumpkin, drizzled with tahini and crushed walnuts.

2pm - After all that food, it's time to take a walk around Antakya's winding cobblestone backstreets, taking in some of the city's religious sites. Make sure you see the Orthodox church which contains some striking icons as well as the Roman Catholic church whose Italian priest has been leading his small congregation for more than two decades.Home ownership options with buy mosaic. Several beautiful mosques are dotted around the old town too. Don't miss the Habib Neccar mosque which dates back to the 7th century and the Sermaye mosque with its lavish balcony around the minaret. Back on Kurtulus Street you'll also find a synagogue.

4pm - Head back to the hotel to freshen up or grab a glass of tea or freshly squeezed juice at one of the street-side eateries in the town centre and people watch. Antakya's diverse make-up sets it apart from other more conservative cities in eastern Turkey. Most women will appear in public uncovered and young men and women can be seen strolling hand in hand.

Local artists invited to make a splash with public art project

A dozen new public art pieces will soon be springing up around Juneau – and local artists have been invited to help design them.

The project, organized by the Whale Committee, is designed to raise funds for and awareness of the 25-foot bronze whale sculpture currently being created by artist R.T. “Skip” Wallen for the Juneau waterfront. In keeping with the whale theme, the 12 public art pieces are shaped like whales tails; each one is six feet high. Visual artists are invited to submit their ideas for embellishing,It's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this. painting or otherwise artistically altering one of the resin tails – the sky’s the limit. Applications are due June 1.

Artists will receive a stipend from local sponsors that will also cover the cost of materials.

After they are decorated, the tails will be publicly displayed throughout the summer, at which point they will go up for auction.

Kathy Ruddy, chair of the Whale Committee, said she hopes the project will increase awareness of the bronze whale sculpture, now at stage two in a four part process. Spike, the small version of the sculpture now placed at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, was the first step, and the second step, a full size foam model, has recently been completed.

“We’re doing it in stages. The first stage was Spike, the second stage is the foam – (which we’ve) completed – and the third stage is the mold, and the fourth stage is the casting.”

Ruddy said the finished whale has the power to redefine the Juneau waterfront and become the distinctive icon for our city.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design The big whale will be the largest sculpture in the state of Alaska, outsizing Wallen’s Land Lease Memorial in Fairbanks.

“We believe that the full size whale will be as distinctive for Juneau as the Space Needle is for Seattle or the Little Mermaid (bronze sculpture) is for Copenhagen or things like that,” Ruddy said.Buy high quality bedding and bed linen from Yorkshire Linen.

Other iconic bronze sculptures include the bronze bull on Wall Street in New York City and the bronze Piggy Bank in Pike Place Market in Seattle.

Wallen has created other prominent art pieces around town, including the “Windfall Fisherman” near the Dimond Courthouse, and the “Gang of Four” in front of DIPAC. He has also created works in other cities, such as the Cougars sculptures at the University of Houston and “Sightless Among Miracles,” at the Carter Center.

Ruddy said Wallen’s whale will be distinctive for its size, its artistry and for its meticulous attention to detail.

“Skip has examined the skeleton of a whale so he’s got the jaw just right, he studied the anatomy of the eye, he’s studied the barnacles for the exact size and shape, and we’ve got the big dipper and the north star on (the whale’s) right jaw.”

The whale will also be a fountain, with water coming from a blowhole and from the pleats on his belly. A reflecting pool will be built around it.

“We want to recreate the experience of being on a boat and having a humpback blast out of the water near you,” Ruddy said. “It’s a breathtaking experience.”

In addition to being a distinctive piece of art for Juneau, the sculpture will also call attention to Juneau’s whale watching industry, she said, which is still growing.

“The whale watching industry in Juneau has really blossomed,” she said. “The analysis we had last year was that it is a 20 million dollar industry. About 200,000 people go out every year,At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design. for whales, at $100 a pop, from Juneau. So our industry is worth about 20 million.”

The original idea for the waterfront whale began with former Juneau Mayor Bill Overstreet, who approached Wallen with the idea back in 1993. Though a proposal was written around that time, it was subsequently put aside, but was resurrected last year as a way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of statehood.

Ruddy said its especially fitting for Wallen to make the sculpture, as he created the Windfall Fisherman to celebrate the state’s 25th.

The idea for the resin whales tails came from two other Whale committee members, Ruddy said, Sharon Kelly and Laraine Derr.Enhancements to RSS Based indoortracking. The women had seen similar projects in other cities and thought it would appeal to Juneau’s artists. Ruddy said they hope to generate a range of submissions from professional artists to students and that there is no limit to what people can suggest.

“We’ve got all sorts of artists with all sorts of ideas,” she said. “They’ve got ideas on top of ideas.”

Ruddy said the resin whales tails are virtually indestructible -- provided that artists use weather-proof material for their designs, they are safe to be placed outside.

Budget is all about plundering for a spending spree

This deficit spending of Bt300 billion is less than the last fiscal year's Bt400 billion, but it still represents 3-4 per cent of the gross domestic product.

Thailand's public debt now stands at 42 per cent of GDP. If the government continues to rack up the deficit and other debts, we'll be heading faster to the public-sector debt limit of 60 per cent of GDP.

Korbsak Sabhavasu of the Democrat Party says the government has run up budget deficits of more than Bt600 billion in two years. Yet it has repaid only around Bt100 billion. This means that debt creation is running significantly faster than repayment.

All of this has yet to take into account the off-balance sheet debt creation by the government, from Bt300 billion for the rice subsidy scheme, the rubber price intervention and other massive spending projects, all of which will eventually have to be factored into the government's accounting book.

Earlier,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, the Finance Ministry sought approval from the Cabinet to raise the public debt by another Bt450 billion. Of this, Bt350 billion will account for borrowing to compensate those who suffered damages from last year's floods; Bt50 billion for contributions to the flood insurance fund; and Bt50 billion to cover the revenue shortfall.We are professional canada goose jackets for women online sale shop. This borrowing spree will raise the public debt to GDP ratio to 50 per cent within this year or next.

Dr Narongchai Arkarasenee, a former commerce minister, has warned that the government should in fact keep the public debt to GDP ratio at 50 per cent or less. Since the government's spending accounts for around 20 per cent of GDP, raising the public debt beyond 50 per cent of GDP would put the country's fiscal position at risk.

Apart from this ongoing massive debt creation, the government also plans to dig deep into the vaults of the Bank of Thailand to spend at least US$100 billion (Bt3 trillion) of its $180 billion in international reserves.

Dr Virabongsa Ramangkura, who now heads the board of the Bank of Thailand, has said that the central bank should not hold such an unnecessary reserve surplus. The excess money should be used for infrastructure investment projects that will help lay the foundation for future growth.

The Bank of Thailand's reserves of $180 billion should be enough to defend the baht or facilitate international trade transactions.

Dr Prasarn Trairatvorakul,UK chickencoop Specialist. the Bank of Thailand governor, is protecting the reserves like - as the old Thai saying goes - "a snake protecting its eggs".Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? However, the government has already shown so far that it has no respect for fiscal discipline. And now it wants to spend even more by coming up with justifications to appropriate money from the international reserves.

Bank of Thailand officials are still haunted by the 1997 baht crisis when the central bank lost almost all of its reserves and the country was forced to accept a support programme from the International Monetary Fund.

With the sudden removal of Piyasavasti Amranand as president of Thai Airways International - supposedly over conflict regarding the long-term aircraft acquisition programme - a similar situation might arise with Dr Prasarn at the Bank of Thailand.

The government is going to spend money like crazy and will test its borrowing to the limit. It has insisted that it will keep the ceiling at 60 per cent of GDP. But we can hardly trust the word of politicians on their borrowing and spend.Save up to 80% off Ceramic Tile and porcelaintiles.

If the global economy heads south and Thailand's GDP takes a hit for several years in a row, the debt to GDP ratio will rise to 80 per cent or 100 per cent in a hurry. Then we will become another Greek tragedy.

2012年5月22日 星期二

Grilling and smoking for newbies

There's a certain wizardry about grilling. The magic of a low, slow fire -- and a heady touch of smoke -- transforms a simple rib-eye or portobello mushroom into mouthwatering fare.

It's such a straightforward trick, yet there are so many tools and gadgets out there that what was once a simple act of barbecuing has become a tad intimidating. These days not only are there are smokers, gas grills and Weber kettles, but also wood planks, chips. charcoal chimneys, grill racks, salt plates, slider molds, asparagus grabbers and, of course, jalapeno racks to keep your peppers erect.

So there you are at the supermarket, hefting a baggie of apple wood chips and wondering, can you put wood chips in a gas grill? And how important are erect jalapenos, anyway?

You'd ask your neighbor, the barbecue king with his own professional-grade smoker, but that would be like asking Tim Lincecum for T-ball tips.

Fortunately, we've got someone better -- because Ray "Dr. BBQ" Lampe is all about demystifying the art of the 'cue. The Florida-based barbecue guru and serial cook-off champion, who's heading to the Bay Area this summer for a big barbecue showdown at the Oakland Coliseum and other appearances, has a new book out. And "Slow Fire: The Beginner's Guide to Barbecue" answers nearly all those questions .

The new book is a deliberate departure from the classic barbecue how-to's, which are typically penned by heroes of the pitmaster circuit with "brash personalities, huge egos and a room full of trophies," Lampe says. "By the time you get through the ridiculous pieces of equipment that cost more than your car, it's intimidating. "

The bottom line, he says, is that newbies shouldn't run out and spend a lot of money on equipment they may end up using once. Use what you have, he suggests, experiment and then see if it's a cooking technique you want to pursue with something more suitable -- and more easily temperature-controlled -- than the ubiquitous backyard gas grill, such as an old-school kettle barbecue, a smoker or even a stovetop smoker.

In California, we tend to describe any kind of grilling as "barbecue," but real barbecue is cooked low and slow -- with indirect heat and a bit of culinary restraint. "It's not 'if a little smoke is good, a whole lot should be better,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges.' " Lampe says. "You can easily oversmoke food."

Indirect heat means putting the fire on one side of the grill and placing the meat on the other, with a drip pan underneath. Temperature is key, 230 to 250 degrees is ideal -- and the thermometer on the top of your shiny barbecue lid is useless. It reads the heat at the top of the lid, not an inch or two above the grate, where you're cooking dinner.

"If you have it 240 on top, but the heat has risen,Save up to 80% off Ceramic Tile and porcelaintiles. you might be trying to cook that meat at 160 degrees," Lampe says. "You can cook on just about anything but you gotta learn the tricks."

Some grills have a built-in drawer to hold wood chips, but the tried-and-true foil pouch works just as well, Lampe says.

That's something about which Denis Kelly, the James Beard award-winning cookbook author and a St. Mary's College professor in the integral studies program, fully agrees. Kelly has written three meat-related books for Williams-Sonoma, including "Williams-Sonoma Grilling," and several cookbooks co-authored with Berkeley sausage king Bruce Aidells.

Kelly puts a handful of wood chips in the center of a 10-inch square sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil, folds the foil around it and crimps the edges tightly. He then pokes holes in it with a skewer -- Lampe's a fork man -- and drops it into the barbecue. You can soak the wood chips for an hour first, which slows the burning time,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, but just be aware that all that "smoke" pouring out is going to be steam for a while.

Don't get too obsessed with the wood aspect, Lampe says: "The smoke is part of it, but the long slow cooking is it."

And don't -- pardon the pun -- bite off more than you can chew. The trick, Lampe says,At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design. is not to tackle a project that's simply too big.

"Don't try to cook a brisket for 14 hours the first time," he says. "Do chicken quarters or pork chops,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? smoked fajitas where you use skirt steak. Stuff that takes one hour versus 12 hours."

The shorter the project and the less intimidating, the more likely that you'll do it again -- and again and again.

Bulk rigid container recycling advances

Recycling the large bulk rigid plastic containers that grocery stores use in the back rooms of their deli, bakery and seafood departments is moving closer to reality. The effort could create a collectable source of polypropylene and high density polyethylene for recyclers scrambling to meet the increasing demand for recycled resins.

Two six-month pilot programs — the second one just completed in April — have the industry optimistic that it can capture that material, which is estimated to be 354 million pounds annually just among medium and large supermarket chains. The pilots suggest grocers could avoid landfill and disposal costs, and do it with no increase in labor costs.

The pilot programs, done at two supermarket chains in the Northeast, have involved items such as rectangular fish containers, oyster buckets, large pharma- ceutical stock bottles used to fill individual prescriptions, floral bins and containers, large frosting pails, salad bar containers, and butter cream and doughnut glaze buckets used behind the scenes in grocery stores.

Containers for meat and floor-care products were not included in the pilot.The all New Bluetooth Reader BT1000 features a handsfreeaccess.

Although there is no definite commitment yet — each chain tested the recycling in one of their districts — routinely recycling those containers could soon become a reality, said Elizabeth Bedard, director of the rigid plastics recycling program started three years ago by the Washington-based Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers.

One of the chains has already indicated strongly that it will continue recycling the containers, Bedard said.

“They are still collecting those containers,” she said, even though the pilot is over, because it has saved money.

The first completed pilot found that the grocery chain saved 7 cents a pound in disposal costs and was able to sell the material for 8-15 cents, said Ted Brown, owner and partner in Portland, Maine-based Brown Sustainability Solutions Inc., which managed the pilot programs for APR.

“The Food Marketing Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers Association [are] prepared to engage grocers to do this on a large scale over the next two to three years,” said Brown. “There is a lot of material, and grocers are interested in the potential opportunity to aggressively collect it.”

“This is very clean, food-grade material that is currently mostly discarded and thrown away,” added Bedard. “A lot of it stacks easily and there are a limited number of different sizes,” she said.

“The volume is consistent and very clean,” added Brown. “Twenty items represented 80 percent of the materials. So the bulk of the volume is in a small number of [stock-keeping units] that are easy to get at” with no additional cost.

That information is critical, he said,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. because in the past there was no data available to grocers to give them an incentive to recycle. “Store leadership must see the economic value and the reduced tonnage costs” to adopt this type of program, said Brown,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, as there is limited back-room staging area in stores.

“There was no more extra work involved in recycling those containers than there was in walking those same containers to the dumpster and throwing them away,” said Bedard. “It does not require any additional labor to recycle them.”

In addition, “Rinsing out those containers was also less labor-intensive than we anticipated,” she said. “They weren’t as dirty as we thought they would be, they only needed minimal rinsing, and they could be washed without creating an odor issue.”

Equally as important, the pilot uncovered that sorting the containers by size also resulted in them being sorted them by resin. “That was one of the surprises,” said Bedard. “We found out that it is not difficult to separate by resin type.”

As Brown explained: “You can sort by size and color with minimal training, and when you sort them by size,Award Winning solarpanel and heat pumps for electricity and heating.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design the containers and lids also end up sorted by resin type. Sustainable recovery and sorting of rigid plastic containers by size and color can be performed by store associates with minimal initial training and ongoing repetitive training.”

The tests showed that about half of the containers are HDPE and half are PP — which is a change, as APR initially expected that the breakdown would be 55-70 percent HDPE and 30-45 percent PP. “In the past three years, corrugated PP containers have replaced a lot of waxed corrugated and wood containers,” Bedard said.

The next step: spread the message to other grocery stores that recycling can be profitable.

“We will start a nationwide educational initiative in late summer or early fall to share the lessons that we learned,” said Bedard. “We want to get the word out to grocery stores that they are throwing away a valuable and recyclable material and, by doing so, increasing their disposal costs.”

“We are going to put together a best-practices manual and have a Web component with an interactive element that will help grocery stores calculate how much material they can capture,” she said.

Each chain used a different traiing approach, but both found the amount of training was minimal.

“The containers need to be stacked by size [in gaylords or watermelon bins] to be moved elsewhere,” said Brown.

She said there are three keys to training: “You have to show employees how to properly nest containers. You have to place the lids in a clear bag and you have to place the pharmaceutical bottles in a clear bag.”

SAP Shares Five-Point BI Improvement Plan

SAP Hana and a new visual discovery tool, Visual Intelligence, took center stage at SAPPRIRE last week. But more noteworthy to me is the fact that SAP is once again innovating in business intelligence (BI), not just integrating products. Specifically, SAP outlined plans to innovate in five areas: core BI, creative analysis, mobile, analytics, and social.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design

Visual Intelligence is a new desktop tool that lets Hana users visually explore and manipulate data. The tool is intended for power users, a key difference from the vendor's lightweight, Web-based BusinessObjects Explorer visual discovery tool. A versionrelease of Visual Intelligence that uses Hana as the data source is generally available immediately and is included as part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite license. An individual, named-user-licensed release, not tied to the BI server, is planned but not yet finalized.

With the Hana in-memory database in production not-quite a year, only a few hundred customers can immediately make use of Visual Intelligence. SAP CTO Vishal Sikka cited 353 Hana projects, with 145 live deployments.

That's just the beginning, as SAP has big plans for Hana and big plans for Visual Intelligence. SAP also announced a developer version of Hana available in the Amazon cloud, with more than 2,000 instances ready immediately. I expect this seeding approach to boost Hana's uptake.

Visual Intelligence will gain wider market potential in June with the planned release of an upgrade supporting additional data sources such as Excel, flat files, and free-hand SQL (for Web Intelligence users who have been mourning the loss of that feature, I can imagine some resounding cheers!). A third release, expected by year end, will bring support for Universes, the vendor's semantic layer. I hope it will support both for newer .UNX and older .UNV files, as SAP has offered with its new predictive-analytics software. Dual support may be harder to deliver, but it certainly helps with customer uptake.

Based on initial demonstrations, Visual Intelligence is ahead of some competitors on data-manipulation capabilities,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? automatically guessing at measures and dimensions, as well as hierarchies, such as time and geography. If the data is not clean,UK chickencoop Specialist. users can perform transformations with no scripting, a point of differentiation from QlikView. Data models can be saved back to Hana for other power users to access. It's yet to be seen how well Visual Intelligence merges multiple data sources.The term "Hands free access" means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.

The breadth of visualizations--ranging from standard bar charts to newer tag clouds and trellis charts--seems to compare with some of the best-of-breed visual discovery tools such as Tableau Software and Tibco Spotfire. Lacking, though, is the ability to share discoveries while also preserving interactivity. A power user, for example, can email an image to another user, but Visual Intelligence does not yet have an ability to publish a collection of analyses as a type of dashboard or exploration view that decision-makers can then consume and interact with via an iPad or the Web. Expect these improvements to be added in the end-of-year release.

SAP's improvements in dashboards and predictive analysis didn't get stage time at SAPPHIRE, but they were the topic of one-on-one briefings and booth demos. Adam Binnie, VP of Business Intelligence Solutions, and Jason Rose, VP of Business Intelligence Marketing,UK chickencoop Specialist. outlined five areas where SAP has been executing well or intends to improve its capabilities.

2012年5月20日 星期日

China trade tensions worsen amid solar energy row

China's government on Friday rejected a U.S. anti-dumping ruling against its makers of solar power equipment, and Chinese manufacturers warned possible higher tariffs might hurt efforts to promote clean energy.

The conflict has worsened U.At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design.S.-Chinese trade tensions. The two governments have pledged to cooperate in developing renewable energy but accuse each other of violating free-trade pledges by subsidizing their own manufacturers.

"The U.S. ruling is unfair, and the Chinese side expresses its extreme dissatisfaction," said a Commerce Ministry spokesman,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, Shen Danyang, in a statement.

Mr. Shen warned the ruling might harm clean energy cooperation but gave no indication how Beijing might respond. Some American companies have warned China might retaliate against U.S. suppliers.We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges.

Thursday's preliminary ruling by the Commerce Department said Chinese producers sold solar cells and panels below fair price and hurt American producers. If that is upheld, tariffs averaging 31 percent could be imposed on Chinese solar-panel imports.

Three major Chinese manufacturers -- Yingli Green Energy Holdings Ltd., Suntech Power Holdings Co. and Trina Solar Ltd. -- rejected accusations they were selling goods at improperly low prices.

Foreign competitors complain Chinese manufacturers get improper government support in the form of low-cost access to land, bank loans and other resources. Beijing acknowledges giving research grants and tax breaks but says those are in line with its free-trade commitments and practices by other governments.

"We will challenge with data all of those assumptions," said Trina's chief commercial officer, Mark Kingsley. He said China's subsidies are lower than those provided by Germany and some other countries.

Mr. Kingsley said Trina's exports to the United States are unlikely to be affected if Washington raises tariffs. He said any solar cells or other parts affected by the duties can be replaced by components from other countries.

Chinese producers also warned that higher U.S. tariffs might raise the cost of solar equipment and hamper efforts to promote renewable energy.

"Tariffs are disruptive and destructive for the entire solar industry," said Yingli's chairman, Miao Liangsheng, in a statement.

The Commerce Department launched its investigation in November following complaints by a group of U.S. producers led by Oregon-based SolarWorld Industries America Inc., a unit of Germany's SolarWorld AG.

Beijing responded by launching its own probe last November into whether U.S. government support for producers of wind, solar and other renewable energy technology is an improper trade barrier.

Chinese solar equipment manufacturers warned earlier that sanctions could result in a loss of American jobs because U.S. companies are both buyers of Chinese products and suppliers of materials.

Mr. Kingsley said Trina buys silicon from Michigan and manufacturing equipment from New Hampshire, plastic and glass from Japan and South Korea and other components from suppliers elsewhere in Asia.

"These products,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?Save up to 80% off Ceramic Tile and porcelaintiles. by design, are incredibly international," he said. "The vast majority of this value chain is not in China."

Strong fundamentals to drive regional plastics sector

The emergence of the Middle East region as a key player in the global plastics industry and the plentiful opportunities it offers to equipment and machinery suppliers and manufacturers were the important factors that attracted a record visitor turnout at the inaugural Plastivision Arabia & Arabia Mold trade fairs.

The shows, which were held at Expo Centre Sharjah from May 14 to 17, received 4,763 visitors from 66 countries during their four-day run, leaving a positive impact on the regional plastics and molds industry with their very first edition. The show also had the distinction of seeing almost all the machines displayed getting sold.

In order to understand first-hand the exhibitor and visitor response to the launch, Mr Ahmed Mohammed Al Midfa, Chairman, Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, toured the halls on the last day of the event. He spoke to exhibitors who briefed him on machinery and other equipment on display at their stalls.

Being a production powerhouse, exhibitors and visitors believe that the Middle East is the happening place for the plastics industry now. The Middle East, during the last decade, has fast emerged as a serious player in the global market owing to the twin benefits of low raw material and feedstock prices and proximity to the highly lucrative Asian market.

A steadily growing population, which now stands at 7.2 million at the end of 2011, is also a significant driver of the economy and supports plastics consumption.We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges.

"Regional governments and industry bodies are creating a conducive climate for the growth of the plastics industry. A flourishing upstream industry has succeeded in laying a strong foundation for the downstream petrochemical industry, while planned projects will further promote the plastics production in the region," said Mr Saif Mohammed Al Midfa, Director-General of Expo Centre Sharjah, co-organiser of Plastivision Arabia along with All India Plastics Manufacturers Association (AIPMA).

"We were quick to realise the opportunities that the region had in store and in association with AIPMA launched Plastivision Arabia, along with ArabiaMold. Over 150 exhibitors and more than 2,000 pre-registered visitors had already set the pace for a successful show. Now, we have seen an impressive turnout of trade visitors too, providing the icing on the cake," Mr Midfa added.

"India and the UAE are largest trading partners of each other and share a long history of trade and cultural relations. So when we decided to bring the show closer to our customers, we chose the UAE and Expo Centre Sharjah, and the success of the Plastivision Arabia shows that we have been right in our choice. AIPMA is also highly optimistic about the growth prospects of the plastic industry, which were amply demonstrated during the show," said Mr Jayesh Rambhia, President, AIPMA.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design

Despite being held for the first time,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, exhibitors said they were happy with the organization and management of the shows and reported receiving good response from the target markets.

"The shows were well organized and had enough business opportunities up for grabs. It was a good exhibition for us," said Akhil Parikh and Harpit Parikh of Rajhans Plastic Pvt Ltd, an exhibitor.

The Plastivision and ArabiaMold shows covered an exhibition area of 10,000 square metres and featured exhibitors from 20 countries, displaying raw materials and machinery for key segments such as plastic processing, injection molding, thermoforming, packaging, industrial users, construction, infrastructure, automobile and telecommunication, among others

"I am very pleased with the exhibition on several counts. First, the presence of quality visitors... then, visitor representation from across the region. Above all, good business leads. All these constitute an interesting start for my company to strengthen our presence in the Arab World," said Najib El Khouri, Senior Sales Manager Middle East,The all New Bluetooth Reader BT1000 features a handsfreeaccess. Aschulman.

"A very commendable effort for a first edition," Mr Sunil Jain, President of Rajoo Engineering Limited, New Delhi.

"The show has exceeded our expectations. We have been able to show our innovative, value-creating plastic solutions to all visitors and even other exhibitors at Plastivision Arabia 2012," said Adel Ali Al Fahim, Regional Communications Manager-Middle East, Borouge.

"The market was in need of a show like Plastivision Arabia. We have not only sold our running film-line machine, which was on live display... but also signed contracts for five more of them. We have already booked space for the next edition and will display our complete range of machines," said B V Shettigar, Gurucharan Industries India.

India had a major presence at the show, with nearly half of the exhibitors coming from the country, while the rest came from China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey,Award Winning solarpanel and heat pumps for electricity and heating. the UAE and the UK.

MW3 Content Collection 2 Review

And with Modern Warfare 3’s 2nd instalment of extra maps and goodies due to arrive on May 22nd, the good folk at Activision really are spoiling us.

A whole bundle of Warfare goodness will soon be in our mitts. 3 standard multiplayer maps, 2 spanking new Spec Ops missions and 4 smaller maps for the all new Face-Off game mode make up what is without doubt a veritable feast for avid ‘Codders’ to get their teeth into.

The 3 standard maps bundled into this release wear the name badges, Sanctuary, Foundation and Oasis. The former two surfaced last month as an Elite membership drop while the latter makes it’s debut here.

The good news is all three sit on the right side of decent.

Sanctuary is a sizable location for all your team excursions, it’s very easy on the eye with it’s mountaintop setting and carved rock good looks and is also a joy to play. Despite being a fairly big map it also holds a wealth of team work and tactical opportunities for those more in tune groups out there to take advantage of.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design

Foundation is much tighter affair. Set amid the iron and dust of a disused concrete factory the map plays at a heartbreak pace. Little time to think and nowhere to hide Foundation is a fantastic map for the run and gun gamer to practice that fine art. Towers hold sniping potential but you’ll have to be on your toes to stay alive. It’s a weaker map than Sanctuary and certainly looks a lot less appealing but thanks to the high tempo it will surely find a place in many a gamers heart.

Now to Oasis and thankfully with this newest of the standard MP maps there’s not a hairy eyebrow or recycled guitar riff in sight, no, this is a much more interesting release than anything the Gallagher brothers have put out in a while.The term "Hands free access" means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.

Oasis takes place in a seriously flash Dubai hotel, you know one of those places where the stolen dressing gown you’ve accidentally placed in your luggage upon departure becomes the most expensive item of clothing in your wardrobe……….no?…. Just me then…anyway, I’ll probably never know how one of these places functions as a hotel but as a venue for raining down a hail of gunfire upon your enemies it works a treat. The killing grounds are large enough for some good old cross courtyard shootouts while within the walls there are a nice number of claustrophobic corridors and close combat opportunities to lap up. It’s another solid performer in what is fast becoming one of the strongest collection of maps seen in a Call of Duty game since Call of Duty 3,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? and I’m seriously biased towards that old gem so I don’t say that lightly.

Onto the beachside location of Getaway then. Here we find ourselves within the sort of luxurious beachside holiday home I imagine most of the Activision employees own. The building is also a window cleaners nightmare with glass as far as the eye can see (which, when there’s glass everywhere is actually quite far.) Getaway is a run and gunners dream though, the use of so much glass means there’s little cover available and you’ll find small reward from taking a stealthy approach. The map looks great and plays just as well. Personally I didn’t notice any locations that were used for a team to try and bed in and take advantage of, rather, matches here became a compete high octane bullet fest until the final Kill cam rolled. Love it.

The final of the 4 is my own personal favourite. Aground, set amid a long rusted shipwreck and craggy features of the unforgiving Scottish coastline is an absolute beauty. This map feels slightly larger than the others, to the point in fact where having a good sniper on the team can prove a real bonus, but still maintains a high pace. There are places where teams can attempt to hold up and keep the enemy at bay but equally the potential to flank the holding team is very evident. Aground looks superb and plays like you always hope a map will, beautifully thrilling from start to finish.

So that takes care of the maps now let’s quickly look at the Spec Ops missions so I can get back to some Face Off action, and no, that has nothing to do with removing my make-up. I only wear that on Wednesdays.

With this collection comes a couple of fresh Spec Ops missions to get to grips with.

Iron Clad and Kill Switch can both be played either solo or in co-op. Iron Clad takes place in Hamburg and tasks you with clearing a path for a tank by placing C4 charges along it’s route while also dealing with a multitude of heavily armed enemy forces. Kill Switch meanwhile requires one player to infiltrate a Russian Comms station and detonate an EMP. One player heads into the fray on foot while the other takes up position on an overlooking bridge armed with that trustiest of weapons, the sniper rifle. Both missions are decent and, as ever, ramp up the fun in co-op play but make no mistake unless you’re seriously into your Spec Ops missions these two are merely the nibbles next to the real meat of this release, that being the maps.

All in all we have another triumph for Activision and there DLC. There’s just so much to be getting on with, new maps to discover, new modes to sample and new missions to embark upon. Everything seems polished and unrushed, each map has the power to deliver top notch gameplay and none, so far, have become stale. Keep ‘em coming!

Member of the TiX team, borderline obsessive gamer and mocker of motion control. Published Freelance Journalist with work in print and online....can often be found on Xbox LIVE as "BaseAllstar" , will also often be heard calling for a medic....Northern monkey boy living in Cornwall....Looking forward to Halo 4, the next gen of consoles and something to drag me away from Football Manager..UK chickencoop Specialist..UK chickencoop Specialist..Pleased to meet you.

2012年5月17日 星期四

Man in the Middle

Last week — more than two months after Mayor Michael Nutter called a hasty press conference to announce a ban on giving away free meals in city parks — a task force of city officials and homeless advocates he belatedly appointed to come up with new meal solutions finally met.

That effort, according to several accounts of the meeting, did not get off to a roaring start. Arthur Evans, who directs the Department of Behavioral Health, offered a note of reconciliation to the several task-force members who represent the very feeding efforts being banned — but this was somewhat overshadowed by the crashing of the party by the uninvited Brian Jenkins, director of meal provider Chosen 300 Ministries and a leading critic of the mayor's ban.

The administration and homeless advocates have been clashing publicly for weeks, and worked together not much better behind closed doors.

"It seemed like a room where there wasn't a lot of trust," acknowledges the Rev. Bill Golderer, a Presbyterian minister who heads the Broad Street Ministry on Broad Street between Spruce and Pine and sits on the task force. "And without trust, there's very little progress to be made.We are professional canada goose jackets for women online sale shop."

Since the initial outcry over the ban, and a different regulation requiring Health Department permits to serve free food, things have only gotten uglier. A Board of Health hearing drew hundreds in opposition. A second hearing was so heated that the entire Board of Health left the room and holed up in another one, shutting the door and letting in only a few reporters and representatives. Recently, a third hearing was inexplicably rescheduled at the last minute. And,We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design as City Paper reported earlier this week, the Philadelphia law firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg is now investigating a possible federal lawsuit against the city on behalf of feeders who claim the ban violates their freedom of religion.

But sometimes, conflict begets opportunity — and Golderer gets that. Forty-two years old, with slightly boyish looks and a youthful energy that sometimes manifests in torrents of words and probably explains how he can also double as senior pastor at Arch Street Presbyterian Church, Golderer has largely stayed out of the feud between feeders and the city.

But he hasn't been idle.Buy high quality bedding and bed linen from Yorkshire Linen. For months now,Award Winning solarpanel and heat pumps for electricity and heating. he's been busy positioning himself and his church smack-dab in the middle of what he hopes will be something new in the city's homeless-service landscape. Rather than taking sides, he's quietly expanded his church's services — the first steps, he hopes, in a radical experiment to reimagine Philly's tattered homeless safety net. Broad Street Ministry already hosts a city-funded "cafe" shelter for the homeless during cold months and serves two meals a week in its spacious sanctuary — a free lunch on Thursdays and an after-service dinner on Sundays. Golderer is preparing to increase that to six per week within the next 90 days. His goal is to get to nine.

That, he hopes, is just the beginning: "The 'more meals' part of this could well be the least interesting part to mention of what I hope will unfold," he tells CP.

Golderer sees in the current uproar — along with the (almost certainly related) opening of the Barnes Foundation and the pouring of money into other public spaces on the Parkway; along with the slow, grinding decline of the city's shelter system; along with the disaster of poverty likely heading our way if Gov. Tom Corbett's budget proposals are realized — a "moment" that he intends to seize.

"We're working toward this world-class Philadelphia, anchored by the Barnes — and I'm excited about that. It's a good thing. I want the Barnes," he says.The concept of indoorpositioningsystem (RTLS) is fast catching up in industries. "But do you know how much money it took to raise the Barnes? If we're going to be stepping up to support things like this, then the do-gooders need to make sure this indoor-meal system will happen. When this city wants to do something, it can do it."

His plan is not without risk: namely, the risk of pissing off the city, his wealthy Center City neighbors and his religious and secular colleagues. But it's a necessary risk, and if his plan pans out he'll have helped bring them all a little closer together.