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Upsetting the Apple Cart: Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Makes it Illegal for Collectors to Share Information With Vendors
23Apr 2021 27 Apr 2021
Anytime an appellate decision contains words akin to these you know its a big deal:
"It's not lost on us that our interpretation of § 1692c(b) runs the risk of upsetting the status quo in the debt-collection industry."
In case anyone missed it, we have officially entered a new age of legal decision-making. For a while we lived in the legacy of the old Warren-court paradigm: appellate court judges must apply common sense to the law to keep to assure it makes sense as applied, both at the time of application and in the broader context of the impact any ruling may have.
For better or worse, those days are gone folks.
Cases like Hunstein v Preferred are the new reality. Textualism. Decisions that refuse to take up the policy mantle from Congress and apply the words of a statute with unthinking precision. The Separations of Power doctrine means something. Etc. etc.
And while Hunstein isn't a TCPA case, its critical to our friends in the collection/servicing space. More than that, its critical for folks hoping to understand how the law works in all contexts–particularly with the TCPA–to understand cases like Hunstein.
In Hunstein–a published opinion by the Eleventh Circuit–the Court blessed the most awkward application of statutory language possible. And yet, its reading of the statute according to basic rules of interpretation is undoubtedly the correct one.
In the old days–like 5 years ago–the Court would have cleaned up Congress' spilled milk with a line or two about the need to apply common sense to a statute, or interpret it in accordance with its intended purpose. But none of that here. Congress created this mess, and it will be left to Congress to clean it up.
What mess?
FDCPA § 1692c(b).
It provides: "a debt collector may not communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than the consumer, his attorney, a consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by law, the creditor, the attorney of the creditor, or the attorney of the debt collector."
Pretty straightforward, no?
Well what about if a collector uses a vendor–say to send out demand letters by mail. The collector obviously will communicate certain information about the debt to the vendor–how else can the demand letter be generated, printed and mailed?
But it is also pretty obvious that the FDCPA never intended to treat the transmission of such data to a vendor to form-fill a template demand letter as a "communication" subject to the Act. Congress was worried about collectors disturbing neighbors, colleagues, co-workers and friends with nonsense shake down demands. That's bad stuff. And sharing information about a debtor to his social or professional circles is not just unpleasant, it can cause real and lasting harm.
But sharing sterile data points with a mass-print shop that specializes in GLBA compliance and double-thick envelopes?
I mean, come on. Where's the harm?
Actually, let's talk about harm for a second. Aside from the "new paradigm" angle here, Hunstein is a critical case for another reason. It frames Article III principles in a useful (although damaging) way. Indeed, I expect Hunstein will become the new primary Eleventh Circuit case onthe subject moving forward.
Hunstein recognizes three forms of Article III concrete harm standing: i) tangible harm; ii) the risk of tangible harm; and iii) statutory violation automatically causes intangible harm.
While Hunstein is correct in applying the standing rules around i) and ii), it swings and misses at iii). Specifically Huntein characterizes the protections of § 1692c(b) as akin to the old "public disclosure of private facts" suits. Cool. In some contexts, therefore, violations of 1692c(b) might cause real harm–like where a collector notifies everyone on a debtor's Linked in profile that they still owe 80 bucks for unpaid My Pillow purchases.
That might prove embarrassing.
But Article III is all about context. That the violation of a statute might cause intangible harm in some contexts does not answer the CRITICAL question of whether the violation DID cause harm in the specific context of the Plaintiff's case. And in the context of Hunstein there is absolutely no way the debtor was harmed. The Court even acknowledges as much at the end of the decision:
"We recognize, as well, that those costs may not purchase much in the way of "real" consumer privacy, as we doubt that the Compumails of the world routinely read, care about, or abuse the information that debt collectors transmit to them."
I mean, right. But that's why there's no injury in fact here. See those words "in fact." They mean, literally, under the "fact[s]" of the case. The facts here caused no injury. So there's no standing. So why are we here?
But we are here. And we move on.
After finding standing the Court turns to substance. And as I alluded to above the "substantive" review here is really just a review of the statute's language.
Notably the parties in Hunstein stipulated that the transmission of information to a vendor constitutes a "communication" under the Act (they probably want that one back.) That left only one question for the Court to consider—whether the communication was "in connection with the collection of any debt."
In addressing the question the Court first rejects the idea that 1692c only applies to "demands for payment." The statutory exceptions to the rule would be nonsensical if that were true. The Court also rejects Defendant's preferred approach of applying a holistic multi-factor test to determine whether the communication is in connection with the collection of a debt: the FDCPA has "a discernible ordinary meaning that obviates the need for resort to extratextual 'factors.'"
In other words– the Hunstein court has no interest in context or common sense. It care only for what the statute says. And that's fine. Straightforward application of the plain language of a statute does–as the decision points out–lead to more predictable results and to easier compliance efforts in the long run.
But when case law pivots from a "common sense" approach to a "what do the literal words of the statute say" approach overnight someone better sound the alarm.
And I guess that's my job.
So "AWOOOGAH AWOOGAH."
Sorry folks, I got so lost in the esoteric fun of it all that I missed the real world takeaway:
Collectors can no longer share information with vendors, even for lawful purposes like sending demand letters. Yep. Sea change.
Pick your jaws up off the floor and operationalize. The clock is already ticking.
Not sure whether servicers and collectors who aren't subject to the FDCPA can expect regulatory scrutiny here–but call me and we can talk.
Previous WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN?: The Czar and the Archduke Break Down the Importance of the Big SCOTUS FTC Ruling Today
Next WHAT CAN BE DONE?: Everyone's Asking Me About Options in Light of Hunstein– Here's a Few Musings
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HANSARD 1803–2005 → 1850s → 1853 → February 1853 → 14 February 1853 → Commons Sitting
LAND TAX COMMISSIONERS NAMES BILL.
HC Deb 14 February 1853 vol 124 cc88-90 88
§ Order for Committee read.
§ MR. W. WILLIAMS
said, he objected to the power given to the county Members to name the Commissioners of Laud Tax. He considered that he had as good a right as the Members for the county of Surrey to name these Commissioners. He had some names to propose, and though he had no doubt they would be put on if he mentioned them to the Members for the county, he objected on principle to take such a course. His constituency was more than twice that which returned the four Members for the county. Why, therefore, should he ask them as a favour to put these names on? Some years ago, when a similar Bill was brought in, he divided the House on the insertion of the names so often, that the Secretary of the Treasury gave way, and he obtained his point. He would take the same course again, if necessary. But he hoped the Government would not sanction an absurd custom, and put him to the trouble of dividing the House, which would occupy an inconvenient length of time.
MR. HUME
said, he would also submit it to the Government whether, as a change must take place in the mode of assessing the income tax, a change should not also be made in the mode of appointing the persons who were to carry the Act into effect. These Commissioners were appointed, not by the authority of the responsible advisers of the Crown, but by cliques throughout every part of the country. He had known this carried to an extent that would hardly be credited. In the case of Mr. Fielden, these Commissioners assessed that gentleman to a large 89 amount of profit, and distrained his goods, although it was clear that he was a loser by his business for the two preceding years, and the Government declared that they had no power to interfere. In the old times when Tory Members represented almost all the counties, they had Tory Commissioners from one end of the country to the other. The time was now come when the mode of electing the Land Tax Commissioners must be altered, and when all who had to do with the levying of the tax ought to be appointed under the authority of the Crown. He therefore begged to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the abuses which existed in many districts, where persons went before the Commissioners and stated that they were assessed at double and treble the real amount of their income, and afterwards, when they appealed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they wore told that he had no power to help them. That was a very disgraceful state of things, and ought to be redressed.
§ The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
said, that he understood his hon, Friend the Member for Montrose to state the great hardship which arose to individuals from the circumstance that the Government had no power to interpose in cases where the assessment was too high, and to propose that the Government should take power in order to enable them to meet such cases. But he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) would like to know if his hon. Friend proposed to accompany that proposition with power for the Government also to interpose in eases where the assessment was too low; because, although there might be grievances in certain spots and quarters from the assessment being too high, yet the real evil which they had to deal with was the great inequality of the assessment; and therefore he should like to know from his hon. Friend, who had great experience, whether he proposed that the Government should be invested with the power he had described?
said, that at the present moment the assessed taxes were levied by the Land Tax Commissioners appointed under this Act. The power of appointing the officers to collect the income tax, therefore, did not rest with the Government; and what he required was, that the powers given by the Act called the Land Tax Act should be abrogated, and that nobody should be appointed to collect the income tax except under the authority of the Chan- 90 cellor of the Exchequer, and the Treasury. Under the present system the Government could neither increase nor decrease the assessment. Looking on the income tax as likely to become a part of the permanent taxation of the country, he thought the assessment ought to be placed on as just and equitable a footing as possible.
§ SIR GEORGE PECHELL
hoped the grievance complained of by the hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr. W. Williams) would be remedied in the present Bill. It was not a proper state of things that large cities and boroughs should be obliged to submit their lists of additional Land Tax Commissioners through the medium of the county Members.
§ MR. FREWEN
said, that the law had never been altered since the Reform Bill passed; so that whilst the old Parliamentary boroughs still retained their former power of appointing their own Land Tax Commissioners, it devolved upon the county Members to appoint Commissioners for the new boroughs.
§ MR. J. WILSON
said, that it was proposed to postpone the Bill till the 11th of April, by which time he hoped to be able to answer the remarks that the hon. Member for Lambeth had just made. If the hon. Member had communicated with him before the Bill came under discussion, he (Mr. Wilson) would have taken care to inform himself of the particulars of the grievance alluded to. He would, however, investigate the matter before the subject again came before the House, and would inquire if there was a practical mode of remedying the evil complained of.
§ Committee deferred till Monday, 11 th April.
Back to GENERAL BOARD OF HEALTH BILL.
Forward to METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS (REPAYMENTS OUT OF CONSOLIDATED FUND).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Sabrina Rastetter (* 20. April 1987) ist eine ehemalige deutsche Fußballspielerin.

Karriere

Vereine
Rastetter spielte zuletzt in der Jugendabteilung des Karlsruher SC, mit deren B-Jugendmannschaft sie 2002 die Süddeutsche Meisterschaft gewann. Im Finale, das mit 7:1 gegen den 1. FFC Frankfurt gewonnen wurde, erzielte sie das Tor zum 2:0 in der 26. Minute. Beim 1. FFC Frankfurt galt sie als Nachwuchshoffnung und so bestritt sie in der Saison 2003/04 vier Punktspiele in der Bundesliga und erzielte in diesen zwei Tore. Diese erzielte sie in ihren ersten beiden Einsätzen am 10. und 18. April 2004 in den beiden Heimspielen gegen den VfL Wolfsburg und den FFC Brauweiler Pulheim beim 3:0 und 3:1-Sieg mit den Treffern zum 1:0 in der 20. und zum 3:0 in der 70. Minute.

Unmittelbar nach der Saison ergriff sie die Möglichkeit, sich nach Russland zu verändern, da sie dort ein Angebot des in Woronesch im gleichnamigen Oblast ansässigen Energija annahm; für diesen bestritt sie Punktspiele bis zum Ende der Saison.

Nach Deutschland zurückgekehrt, kam sie während der bereits laufenden Saison 2004/05 für den SC Sand in der 2. Bundesliga Süd zu Punktspielen, bevor sie zur Folgesaison vom Ligakonkurrenten 1. FC Saarbrücken verpflichtet wurde.

Nationalmannschaft
Rastetter debütierte als Nationalspielerin am 1. November 2001 beim 4:2-Sieg der U17-Nationalmannschaft im Testspiel gegen die Auswahl Frankreichs. Ihr letztes von 25 Länderspielen für diesen Nachwuchs bestritt sie am 11. Mai 2004 beim 5:0-Sieg im Testspiel gegen die Auswahl der Niederlande. Ihr erstes von acht Länderspieltoren erzielte sie am 2. Juli 2002 bei der 1:2-Niederlage im Testspiel gegen die Auswahl Dänemarks mit dem Treffer zum 1:1 in der 66. Minute.

Erfolge
 Süddeutscher B-Juniorinnen-Meister 2002

Weblinks

Einzelnachweise

Fußballspieler (1. FFC Frankfurt)
Fußballspieler (Energija Woronesch)
Fußballspieler (SC Sand)
Fußballspieler (1. FC Saarbrücken)
Deutscher
Geboren 1987
Frau

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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CONQUER THE KINGDOM
Sons of Texas #1
St. Martin's Press
Featuring: Owen Loughman; Natalie Dixon
Kindle: B01FQQMNIY
Romance Contemporary
Grant gets bonus points for imagination.
Amazing first foray into contemporary/action genre.
THE HERO'S HOMECOMING
Owen Loughman is a highly-decorated Navy SEAL who has a thirst for action. But there's one thing he hasn't been able to forget: his high school sweetheart, Natalie. After more than a decade away, Owen has returned home to the ranch in Texas for a dangerous new mission that puts him face-to-face with Natalie and an outside menace that threatens everything he holds dear. He'll risk it all to keep Natalie safe—and win her heart.
Natalie Dixon has had a lifetime of heartache since Owen was deployed. Fourteen years and one bad marriage later, she finds herself mixed up with the Loughmans again. With her life on the line against an enemy she can't fight alone, it's Owen's strong shoulders, smoldering eyes, and sensuous smile that she turns to. When danger closes in, how much will she risk to stay with the only man she's ever loved, in The Hero by New York Times bestselling author Donna Grant.
Fresh Fiction Box Not To Miss, Selection, January 2017


text:
In Case You Missed It: 'The Totally Unfair and Bitterly Uneven' Recovery
Your editor's fantasy of the week is that someday so many people will be economically prosperous, and markets and governments so functional, that philanthropists will have to occupy their time bringing joy to the chronically ill and funding the arts because otherwise there will be nothing to do. It's a good dream but there's much to work still to be done….
This week we start with a must watch: Next Friday, the documentary, "Inequality for All," with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich debuts in about 40 cities around the country. I have seen it and highly recommend it. This report from the Progressive Policy Institute looks at companies that invest most in the United States that should be of interest, especially to Heron folks. Over at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Guy Sorman looks at whether it is possible for charities to measure their effect on society. Also a major must read is Stephen Pittam's piece in Alliance Magazine on the potential corrupting nature of the "power relationships that philanthropy engenders."
The Sun's Out for Daddy Big Bucks
No editorial cartoon this week but I have some graphics to fill the gap. Last week the Huffington Post published a series of charts showing "the totally unfair and bitterly uneven" recovery, here's a few:
Is the Fed part of the problem? Billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller had this to say on CNBC:
"This is fantastic for every rich person," he said Thursday, a day after the Fed's stunning decision to delay tightening its monetary policy. "This is the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the rich ever."
"Who owns assets—the rich, the billionaires. You think Warren Buffett hates this stuff? You think I hate this stuff? I had a very good day yesterday."
Derek Thompson at the Atlantic offers up a possible way to get started on changing the paradigm—increase taxes on investment income:
Raising taxes on investment income would not, with the wave of a wand, eliminate income inequality. It would not bring back unions. It would not bring back manufacturing jobs. It would neither elongate the workweek nor raise wages. It wouldn't spur innovation. In fairness, it might hurt the financing for new, risky companies that could grow into domestic job-engines.
But it's awfully simple and direct. The most important source of income gains for the investor class is, after all, investments. If we want to mitigate, if not quite solve, income inequality, let's start there.
Folks may not love unions but there is some compelling data that shows a connection between union membership and middle class incomes says the Center for American Progress, check out this chart:
On another, somewhat poignant note, we have the plight of living in the world's most expensive city. I love New York but it is ridiculously expensive to live here--just ask Cari Luna over at Salon, who had this to say:
According to a 2013 study by the Economic Policy Institute, the average family of four needs $93K to survive modestly in New York, the biggest expenses being housing, childcare and healthcare. (That $93K does not allow for any vacations, eating out or savings, by the way.) It's the most expensive place to live in the United States.
When my husband and I were born, it was possible to raise a family in New York without extreme struggle. It was still harder than most places, sure. New York has never been easy. But it was possible to raise a family in reasonable comfort without being a corporate lawyer or investment banker or heiress. To be a middle-class family in New York these days is to be in eternal survival mode, always scrabbling, always scraping by. What happens to a city that's priced itself out of reach of the average family?
Now imagine instead of being a moderately struggling middle class family, you are Alpha Manzueta, who has two jobs in New York City but lives in a homeless shelter, according to the New York Times:
"I feel stuck," said Ms. Manzueta, 37, who has a 2 ½-year-old daughter and who, on a recent Wednesday, looked crisp in her security guard uniform, waving traffic away from the curb at Kennedy International Airport. "You try, you try and you try and you're getting nowhere. I'm still in the shelter."
With New York City's homeless population in shelters at a record high of 50,000, a growing number of New Yorkers punch out of work and then sign in to a shelter, city officials and advocates for the homeless say. More than one out of four families in shelters, 28 percent, include at least one employed adult, city figures show, and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs.
OH SNAP, You're Hungry?
Ah, some Republicans continue to use the least powerful among us to make ideological and political points on what they consider "an entitlement program gone wild," notes the Week. For example, over the Heritage Foundation's the Foundry blog, Rachel Sheffield argued:
To make a stand-alone food stamp bill a truly worthwhile reform, it should include a mandatory work requirement for all able-bodied adults.
The current bill encourages work among able-bodied recipients but only through an optional program. To encourage self-sufficiency and independence for all, food stamps should be converted into a work activation program.
A new reform should make it mandatory—rather than merely optional, as the House proposal does—for states that receive federal food stamp dollars to implement a work program for able-bodied adult recipients. Similar to the 1996 welfare reform, a new reform should require able-bodied adults to work, prepare for work, or at the very least look for work in exchange for receiving food stamp assistance.
Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich has joined the brave few willing to take "the SNAP challenge" and live on $4.50 a day. One small data point, on Friday I bought a pack of Dentyne and a box of Tic-Tacs for which I paid $4.00. In the last five years, food prices have risen 20 percent on the consumer price index with only fuel and healthcare prices outpacing them. (Also of general interest if this slideshow on what the world eats and spends to put for on the table form TIME.) SNAP has also entered the debate over the way U.S. poverty is measured. Officially U.S. poverty has been listed at about 15 percent for 2012 but check out this chart from the Wonkblog of what happens when safety nets like food stamps are added in:
Sheldon Danziger at the Russell Sage Foundation had this to say in the New York Times about poverty measurements and safety nets:
SNAP benefits not only reduce food insecurity and poverty this year; they also reduce poverty in the next generation. Recent research that tracked children into adulthood found that families' access to food stamps improved their infants' health and birth weight. Children who benefited from the program later posted better health, higher educational attainment, less heart disease and, for women, greater earnings and less reliance on welfare as adults.
The earned-income tax credit is also ignored in calculating the poverty rate. Yet this program offers working low-income families with children about $3,000 a year. When these tax refunds are counted, they reduce the number of people in poverty by about 5.5 million people.
David Henderson of the conservative Hoover Institution offers a pretty measured if a bit confusing conclusion about how safety nets have shored up both the poor and the middle class:
[W]hile the middle class—and especially the poor—saw declines in market income after 2007, the safety net appears to have performed just as we would hope, mitigating the losses experienced by households. By 2011, the safety net had returned middle-class and poor households' incomes to the highest levels ever seen. Since then, the situation has likely improved. Disposable income among the poor and middle class is probably at an all-time high.
Of course, neither the left nor the right is likely to be happy about this conclusion. The left worries that if things are getting better, public support for helping the poor will wane and their "middle-out" agenda will look misguided. The right does not want to concede that the safety net may have achieved income security. In response, the left might reply that things would be even better today if we had had more stimulus, while the right might say that safety net programs' work disincentives prevented greater improvement. It is undoubtedly the case that policy could have produced at least a somewhat better result, though if we are honest, we have no idea how or by how much.
Data Bits
In the Guardian, Neelam Makhijani argues "charities and philanthropists pay lip service to the concept of partnership when in reality they work in silos, and the main culprit is a lack of effective communication." Fast Company looks at whether big data is creating a new type of inequality where the only people who count are literally the counted.


text:
Q: Rails: Howto get the controller generator add format.json call to all action respond_to blocks? Could someone please remind how I get the generator to add the lines required to use JSON in my controllers? Having to type format.json  { render :json => @story } type lines to each action is starting to get old?

A: You would need to patch rails generator templates to handle this.  I know of no way to specify it

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Kanaris est un nom propre grec qui peut faire référence à :

Patronyme
La famille Kanáris, originaire de Psará, qui a donné à la Grèce plusieurs personnalités, dont :
 Aristídis Kanáris (1831-1863), officier grec, fils de Konstantínos Kanáris ;
 Konstantínos Kanáris (c. 1793-1877), amiral et homme d'État grec ;
 Miltiádis Kanáris (1822-1901), amiral et homme politique grec, fils de Konstantínos Kanáris.

Autres personnalités :
 Leonídas Kanáris (né en 1963), musicien et compositeur grec.

Éponyme
L'un des cinq navires de la marine de guerre hellénique nommés après Konstantínos Kanáris :
 Le Kanaris, une canonnière (1835) ;
 Le Kanaris, un navire de commandement de torpilleurs (1880) ;
 Le Kanaris (L53), un destroyer de classe Hunt (1942) ;
 Le Kanaris (D212), un destroyer de classe Gearing (1972) ;
 Le Kanaris (F464), une frégate de classe Elli (2002).

Voir aussi

Homonymie de patronyme
Patronyme grec


text:
Cuba Unveiled, Dispatch #2: The Cuban Intervention in Angola
If you walk the corridors of Old Havana, you can still see them gathered on the cobbled street-corners, these quiet old men. Grizzled and misty-eyed, often afflicted with PTSD, they sit in circles of plastic chairs and amicably discuss their pasts.
If you look into their eyes, you can see the memories of a war slowly fading into obscurity.
Veterans of Cuba's fifteen year intervention in the Angolan Civil War, these viejos have seen their fair share of warfare- the most vicious, in fact, that the island nation experienced in its whole three decades of militarily supporting leftist movements in Africa.
But it's all disappearing now. As these men die, the herculean drama once played out by the Cuban people- whose retrospective numbers totaled hundreds of thousands by the end of the war- against UNITA, Zaire, the CIA, and South Africa in the name of international solidarity and anti-colonialism, is being forgotten by much of the Western World.
No one knows, outside of Cuba, about the massive intervention ordered by Castro that
prevented the impending collapse of Angola's irst democratically-elected government; nor the way it strained the previously healing U.S.-Soviet relations in the uneasy era of detente; nor the way it helped ultimately topple South Africa's apartheid government and deliver in a new era of independence hopes and guerrilla violence in sub-Saharan Africa.
But these men know. They, like many from their generation, saw the violence with their own eyes; drove the convoys through the bush, fought day by day in the trenches.
For people today, the Cuban Intervention in Angola is but another obscure chapter in the vast, intersecting annals of Cold War proxies conflicts and African Independence movements; an episode of virtually no significance to the average American. But to these old men, it is none of that. It is merely another memory.
It all began in the fall of 1975, on the eve of Angolan Independence from Portugal.
Luanda, a port city once famed as Africa's Rio de Janeiro, lay eerily empty, deserted, stripped of all supplies.
Following the largely eventless collapse of Portugal's fascist regime, the vast colony of Angola had finally been granted its long-awaited independence.
Before this, Angola had been under European control since before the colonization of the Americas; since 1960, a low-burning guerrilla insurgency lead by rivaling independence activists had been simmering throughout the countryside.
The declaration of upcoming independence on November 10th had left the country in pandemonium: a wave of Portuguese settlers- white farmers fearing a massacre at the hands of the newly liberated black population- were fleeing the country by the millions, scrambling through the streets of Luanda and hoarding flights out of the airports.
The government that was soon to be officiated was the socialist MPLA, led by the soft-spoken poet Agostinho Neto.
This did not fare well with the various rebel groups who had voluntarily withdrawn from the independence agreements (UNITA, the FNLA), and as a result a massive preemptive revolt was sparked throughout the country, backed in conjunction by Zaire, apartheid South Africa, and the United States.
By late October, the rebel forces, buttressed by the regular armies of several invading regional powers, were closing in on the capital in a lightning speed blitzkrieg. Columns of armored South African forces, along with UNITA guerrillas, approach
ed from the south, while Holden Roberto's FNLA forces, supported by invading Zairean troops, came from the north, shelling the city with artillery day and night. The poorly equipped, undermanned MPLA didn't stand a chance. By the beginning of November, the rebels controlled over 80% of the country; the MPLA held a withering circle of land that withdrew in size every day. Defeat seemed imminent.
President Neto had made a last-minute plea to the Cuban government for assistance, and
though thousands of people emerged onto the deserted squares of Lunda on Independence Day to witness his ceremonial speech, the masses were still infected with an air of anxiety. Independence had come, but everyone instinctually sensed that the end was near.
But at the last minute, Fidel Castro responded to Neto's plea for military assistance: on November 9th, as a part of Operation Carlota, the first two cargo planes full of Cuban special forces touched down in Luanda. Over the following days the influx of soldiers hardly ceased- despite difficulties with crossing the Atlantic, for the Cubans had a limited supply of long-distance cargo planes, a force eventually numbering 30,000 entered the besieged capital city. The soldiers were well-trained, prepared, and imperturbably content with the possibility of dying for their fight.
The Cuban War in Angola had begun.
The Cubans were immediately dispatched to the northern and southern fronts, their mission being to break the siege of Luanda. They were like a tidal wave, their entry into the country shifting the tide of the war entirely. Within a month the FNLA, Zaireans, and white mercenaries had been driven out of Cabinda and the north, and within a year, the South Africans, who had been planning on an easy occupation Luanda the day after independence, were pushed all the way back to the southern border.
It was an unusual breed of warfare, this war, with the kind of large-scale, open battles that were reminiscent of the European Theater in World War Two and that had never before been seen in Africa.
The Cubans had earned a reputation on the battlefield. Ryczard Kapuscinksi, in his classic Another Day of Life, noted the sheer awe inculcated by the Cubans into their enemies: "…the FNLA and UNITA troops feared the Cubans most of all. They turned and ran at the sight of units in Cuban uniforms attacking, even though there might not have been a single Cuban among them… Later, this all reinforced the legend of an army of a hundred thousand Cubans fighting in Angola."
Speculation has arisen over why the Cubans performed so effectively as warriors. They openly recognized the technological prowess of their South African and other allied enemies, and yet they continually sent them running in the early years of the war. But to understand why they they performed so well means understanding why they fought in the first place.
The Cubans were willing die for their fight; they believed wholeheartedly in their mission, which they saw as a cosmic struggle against imperialism and South African expansionism. The vast majority of arriving troops were volunteers who'd specifically requested an assignment to the country. "Thousands of Cubans voluntarily traveled to Angola to defend the freedom of its people," wrote one Havana writer.
Each soldier was grounded in the belief that if they died in this far-off war, they died for a just cause- and this faith was reflected in the terrifying abandon with which they threw themselves into battle.
The same could not be said for the South Africans, nor for the white mercenaries, nor for Jonas Savimbi's rebel guerrillas. Many of the South Africans fighting in Angola were only there for a government paycheck, doing so at the behest of the corrupt apartheid government, and the peasants who formed the bulk of Roberto and Savimbi's armies oftentimes did so simply for food (malnourishment in Angola was at one of its highest levels in Africa at that time).
The Cubans also felt an ancestral connection to the oppressed of Angola, as most of the slaves who historically brought to their island reigned from the African nation, which for two centuries was the slave trades main supplier. This spirit of trans-oceanic solidarity was echoed by Cuban reverend Abbuno Gonzales, who said "My grandfather was born in Angola. So it is my duty to go and help Angola. I owe it to my ancestors."
All the while, as Cuban convoys engaged with the rebel armies throughout 1976, a diplomatic crisis was brewing in the corridors of Washington. The introduction of the U.S.'s communist nemesis had given a new dynamic to the conflict. Though the Soviet Union had little to no involvement in the war, the direct intervention of it's Caribbean ally spawned fears of power shifting within the global hegemony that existed between capitalist and communist states.
With a government reeling from it's recent disaster in Vietnam- Saigon had fallen to the Communists very embarrassingly that summer- direct intervention was out of the question. Congress-or parts of it, at least- was additionally leery about the prospect of providing direct arms to the South African apartheid regime.
Yet President Ford and Henry Kissinger nonetheless went forward with funneling support to all the rebel groups, keeping in tradition with American foreign policy of supporting groups with heinous human rights record so long as they openly funneled natural resources- in this case, Angolan oil and diamonds- to Western corporations. (Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA who was to receive CIA funding and training for two decades, was already pillaging the countryside with a barbarism that far outstripped the Taliban.) In 1976, the President authorized an allotment of 40 million dollars in weapons and training to UNITA and South Africa.
Thus, with both sides equally armed to the teeth, the conflict seemed as if it could be waged into eternity- the Cubans may have brought the war to an equilibrium, but the story was only starting.
By March 1976, the South Africans had been pushed back to the border with South-West Africa, though their humiliating defeat at the hands of a small island nation had only hardened their resolve to continue maintaining dominance in Angola.
Now united under the coalition of UNITA, the rebellions of Roberto and Savimbi would rage for the next ten years, with South Africa intermittently invading the country to support their rebel allies; thus, the Cuban military maintained their presence in order to support the MPLA.
The Cuban mission was not merely militaristic. The large majority of Cubans who traveled to the Angolan war zone were noncombatant volunteers- educated experts who came to the aid of the Africans merely out of a desire to help.
The generous volunteerism of many Cubans in Africa did not go without notice. Nelson Mandela would later remark that the "Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricultural experts, but never as colonizers. They have shared the same trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment, and apartheid."
Though however symbolically beneficial the large presence of Cuban humanitarians was, it did little to stop the actual fighting. Violence continued unabated over the next decade, with hundreds of thousands ultimately being permanently displaced from their homes.
The war also began to garner domestic criticism back in Havana. Many Cubans, as with the Americans in Vietnam, questioned why their country needed to be dying in a nebulous war whose parasitic draw was sucking their economy dry. One commentator wrote that "The economic drain, loss of life, and domestic discontent in Cuba…suggest that Castro might re-evaluate his African agenda, particularly in Angola, where Cuban soldiers are now being called into frontline combat… Military expenditures (in the war) have crippled Cuba's economy."
Though the war was seeming increasingly prolonged and pointless in the eyes of the Cubans (who were feeling the first economic repercussions of the dying Communist bloc), its spectacular culmination had yet to finally arrive. That would come in the fall of 1988, in a small town known as Cuito Cuanavale.
Cuito Cuanavale is a dry, insignificant outpost located in the dry bush of the country's deserted southwest. Swallowed up by the sheer vastness of the terrain around it, it was a village hardly noticeable to even the locals. But history would change there in 1987-88, when it became home to a monumental battle whose consequences earned it the name "Africa's Stalingrad."
Attempting to ease the bloody conflict into the hands of the MPLA government, Castro had spent much of the 80's attempt to withdraw troops without providing UNITA a window to once more take over the country. And throughout the 80's, South Africa had repeatedly invaded with the hopes of bolstering the groups that could finally take down the MPLA government.
In 1987 the South African Defense Forces (SADF) decided to throw in all their chips to take down the MPLA. The socialist government had taken a preemptory offensive to destroy UNITA once and for all, so to avoid a rout of their allies the South Africans invaded again, this time using a large contingent to take the town of Cuito Cuanavale.
The MPLA quickly retook the town, though found themselves at a crisis: surrounded on all sides by the forces of Savimbi and the heavily armed SADF, they estimated that it would only be a few weeks before their army was destroyed.
Following another plea by the Angolan government, the Cubans sent in a wave of soldiers to help defend the town.
Over the next eight months the Cubans held off a non-stop enemy barrage over the small town, engaging both the armies on land and the South African Air Force in the skies overhead.
The fighting was vicious. Over 25,000 UNITA guerrillas pounded the town with U.S. supplied stinger missiles and T-55 tanks. The South Africans attacked day and night with artillery and air strikes.
The final SADF offensive on the town was thwarted in March 1988. It was a watershed in the history of Africa: the largest defeat of the South Africans' military machine yet, it was an inspiration to the impoverished population of Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, it "was a milestone in the history of South African liberation."
The South Africans, humiliated once again at their defeat in a dusty, impoverished country and facing even greater international sanctions, soon withdrew from Angola permanently. Cuba, which was to experience a crisis of its own following the collapse of the Soviet Union, soon followed suit, removing their last troops in 1991.
The battle, which had drawn worldwide attention, was the impetus for the New York Peace talks.
Slowly, the Cuban fight in African was beginning to drift into irrelevance.
The war continued, just as terrifyingly violent as it was before, for the next eleven years, stopping only when Jonas Savimbi was killed in battle by government troops at a remote camp in 2002.
It had been twenty-seven years since independence was declared.
Cuba had lapsed into economic stagnation, and the military might that once shocked the world in Angola withered and died away. An era had died, a piece of Cuban history slipped irrevocably into the past.
And yet those men still sit out on the street corners, with scant remnants of their years in Africa but their scars, their dead friends, and their memories.
Few people know about this war. Though it bore global repercussions and arguably defined the evolution of Africa in its terrifying post-colonial years, this flashing emergence in history by a small Caribbean island becomes grainier and grainer in our collective subconscious.
So look closely when you look into the gaze of the old men. You never know what scenes from history are hiding behind those eyes.
Another Day of Life, Ryszard Kapuscinksi
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=105323
http://declanhill.com/kunduz-cubans-they-do-not-want-to-die/
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/9/27/cubas-other-internationalism-angola-25-years-later
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Africas-Children-Return-Cuba-and-Southern-African-Liberation-20151113-0012.html
http://www.historynet.com/cuban-fighters-angolas-civil-war.htm
https://books.google.com/books?id=HHk5Gg15UKkC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=UNITA+angola+stinger+anti+aircraft&source=bl&ots=ps6l85qmEq&sig=GdyLkJH_TsFF_NLk9badk3KdfEg&hl=en#v=onepage&q=UNITA%20angola%20stinger%20anti%20aircraft&f=false
Author jared8796Posted on March 9, 2017 March 9, 2017 Categories Uncategorized
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Let our Design Staff guide you in choosing a beautiful mate to your Engagement Ring. We focus on balance and symmetry without overpowering your existing design. Instead of competing with your Engagement Ring we compliment it at a price that will rival the generics found in most jewelry stores!


In Thermopolis, as in most of the Rocky Mountain West, weather can be fast changing, and temperature extremes are quite common. Due to its sheltered location, in the Big Horn Basin, and low elevation, Thermopolis is often called the "banana belt" of Wyoming because the sun is almost always shining, and the wind rarely blows. Snowfall is usually light, and usually doesn't remain on the ground long. Thermopolis has one the most desirable climates in Wyoming, while still offering the beauty and diversity of all four changing seasons throughout the year.


Defending champion Mark Selby faces Kurt Maflin, who beat Steve Davis in qualifying, in the first round of the World Championship at the Crucible.
Selby, 31, won his first world title in 2014 after beating Ronnie O'Sullivan, who takes on debutant Craig Steadman.
Four-time winner John Higgins faces Robert Milkins, Australian Neil Robertson plays Wales' Jamie Jones and England's Judd Trump takes on debutant Stuart Carrington.
Selby plays on Saturday at 10:00 BST.
It is a tough draw for the Englishman, coming up against Maflin, a renowned break-builder who has two maximum 147 breaks to his name. The Norwegian is one of four debutants competing on the main stage.
"Players in the past have struggled, first rounds are always difficult," said six-time champion Davis, who conducted the draw at the Hallamshire Golf Club.
Can Fighting Talk's Josh nail 1985 pot?
"But Mark Selby is a very balanced player mentally, so I don't expect him to have problems."
Meanwhile, five-time World Championship winner O'Sullivan will fancy his chances against 32-year-old Englishman Steadman, another who will play at the Sheffield venue for the first time.
"The one tie that hits me is Ronnie against the debutant. A pressure match for both players. One with everything to lose, one with everything to gain," said World Snooker chairman Barry Hearn.
The Rocket has gone out in the first round three previous times, but has reached the final for the last three years. Second seed O'Sullivan could set up a repeat of last year's showpiece if both he and Selby progress.
The other stand-out tie is an all-Welsh clash between the much-improved Mark Williams, a two-time champion, and two-time runner-up Matthew Stevens, while an all-Scottish match sees Stephen Maguire come up against Anthony McGill - another making his first appearance.
Sheffield will host a festival of live BBC programmes and free events to celebrate the World Snooker Championship.


Children see the world with different eyes. You are full of curiosity, research and look for small and big secrets of the world. A microscope is therefore the perfect companion of childhood, because so little researchers come playful even the most hidden secrets on the track! Microscopes are used to the simple cell, magnified to represent small and smallest things and to show the viewer an insight into the microscopic world and whose operations.
Since the 16th century, microscopes (at that time still simple light microscopes, which catch the sunlight or the glow of a candle with mirrors) are made with ever higher resolution and magnification power. The object to explore is attached here mostly to medium (often a glass) and then either irradiated by light focused top with heavy or illuminated from below. Specially polished glass lenses provide the various enlargements of objects. With simple microscopes, these have usually three different lenses, can enlarge objects the size of a human hair enough for an accurate preview. We have different models in our range. The playful learning of your child we recommend different models we offer microscopes with higher resolution and magnification for more specialized Viewer.


The inevitable is coming. Big brands are shrinking their TV budgets and this will only continue. That newly freed up money will go primarily to one place: social media. Social media advertising prices will skyrocket in the coming years.
The "golden age" of underpriced social media ads, as Gary Vaynerchuk puts it, will be over.
Social media advertising has been the cornerstone of paid acquisition and brand awareness for all the new purpose-driven brands that have grown to prominence in recent years.
But what will happen when all of the big brands bid up ad prices to the point where it becomes untenable for smaller purpose-driven brands who don't have behemoth ad budgets?
There's a massive consumer transformation underway.
Consumers are no longer buying on price/quality alone. They are becoming more interested in buying from companies that inspire them and have a positive impact on the world. In an increasingly interconnected digital age, consumers are becoming more aware of how their purchasing decisions affect the world at large. They want to buy from companies that help to create a more prosperous future. For many consumers, the company purpose is now the main factor in their decisions.
Among millennials in the U.S., for example, 25% state they solely buy based on a company's brand values.
88% of consumers believe brands must do more than make a profit.
80% state they are more loyal to purpose-driven brands.
66% are willing to switch to an unknown purpose-driven brand given comparable price and quality.
57% are willing to pay more for products from purpose-driven brands.
The macro numbers bear this out across all industries. Take the food and beverage industry in the US as an example. As the Economist points out, the largest 25 companies accounted for only 3% of total growth in the last 5 years. Companies outside the top 100 accounted for more than half of growth. Bain & Company's recent research found that these smaller purpose-driven brands are 65% more likely than large brands to outgrow their category.
People want to make a positive difference in the lives of others and they are increasingly basing their purchasing decisions around what makes the world better.
As trust of mainstream institutions, including the big established brands, continues to erode, consumers are looking to younger purpose-driven companies as a channel to express their values.
Direct-to-consumer has become the name of the game for purpose-driven brands. In doing so, these companies garner a plethora of direct data regarding their product that would otherwise be filtered through from retailer data. Fulfillment through companies like Amazon also has helped many take their growth to the next level. The success on Amazon for small brands is bolstered by the fact that many big brands have been averse to selling on the platform, resulting in lower search rankings for them, and better rankings for the up-and-comers. The point is: purpose-driven brands are going direct-to-consumer, so generating brand awareness that can drive online purchases is paramount.
Of course, advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram has been instrumental to purpose-driven brands. The user base and targeting capabilities are immense. The targeting is often too good. There are times where I think about a product or a brand that I've never seen an ad for previously, only to wake up the next day to see an ad from that brand right away. Crazy powerful stuff. Too powerful for many, made evident by the greater percentage of users expressing their distrust of digital advertising due to rightful data privacy concerns.
Facebook is slated to do nearly $70B in global digital ad sales in 2019, much of that coming from purpose-driven brands. But as TV continues to dissipate in importance, that TV money ($70B in the US in 2019, almost exclusively allocated by the big brands) will be moved primarily to social media. Facebook is already saturated and Instagram is quickly catching up, so only one thing can happen as demand increases: massive price increases.
Leaving the price issue alone for a minute, the saturation of ads on Facebook and Instagram presents an additional problem: brand recall. As more ads flood these platforms, the effectiveness of each individual ad reduces.
Our brains are quick to adapt. Once we become accustomed to seeing something too frequently, we tune it out. This is what users are doing. In their unlimited scrolling binges of Facebook and Instagram, due to the amount of ads they see, they tune out all the great purpose-driven brands worth discovering and learning more about.
Increasing prices + decreasing brand recall thus presents a double whammy.
So social media prices are only going up (and fast) in mature markets like the U.S. Consumers will still want to buy from purpose-driven brands, but the use of Facebook and Instagram as discoverability channels will no longer be as effective as they once were. The costs will be too prohibitive as the major platforms cater to big brands finally catching on to the whole "digital advertising" thing. What purpose-driven brands will need are other channels that can be leveraged to drive awareness and engagement. One such opportunity comes with in-app advertising traditionally not thought of as a feasible option for brands: advertising in games and apps.
Of course, this channel has the eyeballs, whether it's a casual mobile game or a food recipe app. These user experiences as they stand today are filled with ads for other games and apps, so even more so, consumers welcome a more insightful and different ad experience. Think of it like this. If a TV show only served ads for other TV shows, they would get boring really fast. That's how a lot of the in-app advertising market is today. When it comes to in-app advertising from a user perspective, the bar is set so low. Therefore, the effectiveness of quality brand content can deliver massive value to the user experience, translating to more attentive viewers of brand content, and in turn, more conversions.
As with all new verticals, many are slow to adapt. But the brands that proactively adapt to the social media market trends in order to drive more cost effective brand awareness and acquisition will have a big leg up on the rest.
Also, this article was published on our Jukko Medium Page. Follow us there for more content related to mobile advertising for purpose-driven brands and publishers.


The most portable and playable mini keyboard I have ever used, ideal for working and producing while travelling.
I've spent a lot of time on the bus or up in the air with the Xkey and it's always been great. A must-have for touring musicians.


text:
package org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping;

import java.util.Map;

/**
 * Creates URL patterns as Strings. A UrlCreator is passed is a set of parameter values and
 * produces a valid relative URI.
 *
 * @author Graeme Rocher
 * @since 0.5.5
 */
@SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
public interface UrlCreator {

    /**
     * Creates a URL for the given parameter values
     *
     * @param parameterValues The parameter values
     * @param encoding The encoding to use for parameters
     *
     * @return Returns the created URL for the given parameter values
     */
    String createURL(Map parameterValues, String encoding);

    /**
     * Creates a URL for the given parameter values
     *
     * @param parameterValues The parameter values
     * @param encoding The encoding to use for parameters
     * @param fragment The URL fragment to be appended to the URL following a #
     *
     * @return Returns the created URL for the given parameter values
     */
    String createURL(Map parameterValues, String encoding, String fragment);

    /**
     * Creates a URL for the given parameters values, controller and action names
     *
     * @param controller The controller name
     * @param action The action name
     * @param parameterValues The parameter values
     * @param encoding The encoding to use for parameters
     * @return The created URL for the given arguments
     */
    String createURL(String controller, String action, Map parameterValues, String encoding);

    /**
     * Creates a URL for the given parameters values, controller and action names without the context path information
     *
     * @param controller The controller name
     * @param action The action name
     * @param parameterValues The parameter values
     * @param encoding The encoding to use for parameters
     * @return The created URL for the given arguments
     */
    String createRelativeURL(String controller, String action, Map parameterValues, String encoding);

    /**
     * Creates a URL for the given parameters values, controller and action names without the context path information
     *
     * @param controller The controller name
     * @param action The action name
     * @param parameterValues The parameter values
     * @param encoding The encoding to use for parameters
     * @param fragment The fragment to append to the end
     * @return The created URL for the given arguments
     */
    String createRelativeURL(String controller, String action, Map parameterValues, String encoding, String fragment);

    /**
     * Creates a URL for the given parameters values, controller and action names
     *
     * @param controller The controller name
     * @param action The action name
     * @param parameterValues The parameter values
     * @param encoding The encoding to use for parameters
     * @param fragment The URL fragment to be appended to the URL following a #
     * @return The created URL for the given arguments
     */
    String createURL(String controller, String action, Map parameterValues, String encoding, String fragment);
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Planet Green Defines Eco-Entertainment with First-Ever 24/7 "Green" Television Network
Viewers will get a sneak peek at Planet Green's offerings later this month through a series of video-on-demand (VOD) premieres and the official launch of PlanetGreen.com.
[via press release from Planet Green]
LOS ANGELES, Ca., April 08, 2008 � Discovery Communications started a new conversation today about what it means to be green as it unveiled a robust slate of programming for Planet Green, the first and only 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network. At 6 p.m. EDT on June 4, 2008, when Discovery Home Channel is re-branded Planet Green, the network will reach 50 million homes with more than 250 hours of original green lifestyle programming. An authoritative and diverse group of celebrities and personalities including Adrian Grenier, Tom Bergeron, Emeril Lagasse, Maria Menounos, Tom Brokaw and Tom Green share their passion for the planet through a host of entertaining series and specials. Viewers will get a sneak peek at Planet Green's offerings later this month through a series of video-on-demand (VOD) premieres and the official launch of PlanetGreen.com.
"Planet Green represents a full spectrum of life experiences, personalities and points of view," said Eileen O'Neill, President and General Manager, Planet Green. "Working with a broad range of partners, our goal is to find innovative ways to engage people of all ages and backgrounds through content that's entertaining, relevant and accessible. Planet Green is about motivating people to take an active role in a new conversation about the future of our planet."
Planet Green's original programming combines unique formats and the most up-to-date information on green living with pop culture icons and engaging personalities to activate the armchair environmentalist in all of us. Whether it's SuChin Pak reporting on the latest eco-innovations, events or hot green trends, or comedian and social issues humorist Annabelle Gurwitch showing everyday households how to come clean for the sake of their bank accounts and the health of the planet, or rapper/actor Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and mega rocker Tommy Lee battling to see who can out-green the other as their entourages hit the tour route, Planet Green proves that sustainable living is entertaining living.
Beginning April 17, viewers will get a special sneak peek at what's to come on Planet Green with VOD premiere episodes of series such as WA$TED, MEAN GREEN MACHINES, RENOVATION NATION and GREENOVATE.
Planet Green's experts and personalities also live on the solutions-oriented PlanetGreen.com and sister site TreeHugger.com. Unveiling a wealth of new resources and features on April 17, PlanetGreen.com is the destination to find an eco-minded community including fan sites, take-action posts and great how-to-go-green information. For the latest in green news, opinions, interviews and modern green resources, online users can click over to TreeHugger.com, the leading eco-lifestyle outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream with more than 1.7 million unique visitors a month.
Simulcast in HD, Planet Green offers the following original series beginning June 4, 2008 (alphabetical):
EMERIL GREEN
Hosted by: Emeril Lagasse
Celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse joins Planet Green to share his philosophy of fresh, top- quality food with viewers this summer in EMERIL GREEN. With an increased focus on organic and locally grown foods, many Americans are often confused�sometimes even intimidated--about how to cook healthy meals for their families. In EMERIL GREEN, Lagasse shares how the best meals start with high-quality produce, seafood and meats, and helps families get inspired by using fresh and seasonal ingredients. Shot on location at Whole Foods Market�, Lagasse works with everyday cooks who have real culinary challenges. He enlists the help of the knowledgeable team at Whole Foods Market� and other experts to hand pick the best ingredients for every recipe, turning ordinary meals into extraordinary experiences. Faced with questions about quality, cost, taste and even some daunting food dares, Lagasse helps viewers conquer their culinary fears with an open mind and a healthy curiosity. Sudden eco-meal dilemmas and burning questions about the latest in green food aren't a problem with in-depth information and resources from the EMERIL GREEN team on PlanetGreen.com.
G WORD
Hosted by: SuChin Pak and Daniel Sieberg
"Green." Does a day go by anymore without hearing the "G" word? How does all of this green information translate into actions and resources for everyday life? In Planet Green's new daily series, hosted by MTV news correspondent SuChin Pak and CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg, viewers hear from eco-minded experts who head to the frontlines of the new environmental movement to bring viewers ideas and solutions that everyone can use. G WORD covers a broad range of subjects ranging from home, design, gadgets, food, shopping, the latest science and tech innovations to fashion and much more. SuChin, Daniel and the G WORD crew guide viewers through the ins and outs of green as they explore what we need to know about preserving the environment and enjoying life at the same time.
THE GREEN LIFE (WT)
Adrian Grenier, star of HBO's hit series Entourage, is a real-life "greenie" who wants to show audiences how they too can live the "green life." Using as base camp an LA home currently undergoing its own green makeover, this 13-part series follows his "Green Team" of experts as they help both celebrities and ordinary people learn the small steps they can take to transition their lives to green bliss. Adrian is joined by green guru Boise Thomas, sustainable style expert Angela Lindvall and eco-renovation expert Darren Moore. From overhauling an LA hot spot with salvaged materials and a bar-friendly recycling program to slope testing the latest in sustainable snowboard gear, Adrian and his team show viewers the way to a hip green lifestyle.
GREENOVATE
From the producers of TLC's popular series Flip That House comes a new half-hour series that gives an eco-friendly nod to the homeowners who are taking strides to make the world a better place. Viewers watch as home improvements ranging from the simple change of a light bulb to the drastic installation of a "living roof" reduce energy bills and carbon footprints while increasing the value of their homes.
In May 2007, Greensburg, KS was leveled by an EF5 tornado, one of the strongest in American history. Within days of the disaster, the people of Greensburg decided not only to rebuild their town, but to rebuild it green. Now, in a dramatic 13-part documentary series, Planet Green follows the rebirth of a rural town in Middle America into a model for the future. With more than 1,500 people displaced by the tornado and waiting to return to their homes, GREENSBURG documents the story of a community coming together and facing the enormous task of greening a small city. From climate impact to architecture, building and design to the personal stories of those affected by the disaster, GREENSBURG is an inspiring look into the human spirit. GREENSBURG is produced by Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, with Craig Piligian's Pilgrim Films & Television.
HOLLYWOOD GREEN WITH MARIA MENOUNOS
Celebrities are trendsetters�they set the tone for what's hot and what's not�and many of them are leading the way in the green movement. In partnership with the syndicated television series Access Hollywood, Planet Green presents HOLLYWOOD GREEN WITH MARIA MENOUNOS, a weekly one-hour entertainment magazine series that follows up-to-the-minute Hollywood news on the hottest stars making green headlines in movies, television, music and fashion. Whether it's a star-studded "Heal the Bay" charity event or an exclusive trip to the "green" room at the Emmys�, host Maria Menounos gives viewers VIP access to celebrities living the sustainable life. HOLLYWOOD GREEN uncovers the range of things celebrities do to help the environment, from trips to farmers' market to the hippest trends in eco-friendly fashions. Always fun and informative, HOLLYWOOD GREEN is the destination for the latest green news, green happenings and green gossip.
MEAN GREEN MACHINES
They may be better for the environment but are green machines as fast and furious as their not-so-earth-friendly counterparts? MEAN GREEN MACHINES sets out to discover the answer in a series of competitions that pit traditionally fuelled supervehicles against their new, green equivalents. Viewers watch the truth unfold as a champion is crowned in each adrenaline-packed fight to the finish line. Care to pick a winner when the Electric Snowmobile goes up against the Yamaha Apex MTX or the Killacycle vs. the American V-Twin?
Hosted by: Steve Thomas
The new green home-building movement unfolds in real time as Emmy� Award-winning host Steve Thomas takes viewers into the exciting world of green renovations. In this daily series, Steve brings his 20 years of expertise and experience to bear as he visits renovation sites across the country and meets the eco-sensitive homeowners who are making the choice to go green. Steve rolls up his sleeves and works alongside our homeowners and builders as he explores the coolest design trends and finds the latest in eco-friendly materials while demonstrating the most innovative technology in green home building. Viewers can get additional information on subjects covered in RENOVATION NATION and tips from Steve on PlanetGreen.com. Whether your house is new or old, your project big or small, Steve shows just how easy it is to go green.
SUPPER CLUB WITH TOM BERGERON
Hosted by: Tom Bergeron
Tom Bergeron of Dancing with the Stars invites viewers to be a fly on the wall at a Hollywood dinner party in the new series, SUPPER CLUB WITH TOM BERGERON. Each week, Tom hosts an evening alongside a renowned chef who cooks up a green meal, while four special guests including celebrities, activists, pundits and business leaders (not to mention contrarians), break bread and discuss the latest news and events in the green movement. From people and issues in the news, to green trends and tips, to movies and books, anything is fair game as Bergeron and guests cover the full spectrum of green topics.
WA$TED!
Hosted by: Annabelle Gurwitch
Annabelle Gurwitch, former host of cult favorite Dinner and a Movie on TBS, proves that American homeowners don't have to be extreme to be green. WA$TED! takes the average household full of eco-horrors and turns it into a clean, green haven, saving participants serious cash in the process. Every week, the WA$TED! team, led by Annabelle along with "green" handyman Holter Graham, audits a household's waste and its energy, water and transportation consumption. Each household has three weeks to reduce its consumption, going on a "green regime" to clean up its act. All improvements in energy efficiency and waste reduction are awarded to the households dollar for dollar for the recognized savings in the three weeks. Planet Green then multiplies those savings by the projected household savings for the year as a nice cash bonus for all participants. WA$TED! fans can extend their quality time with Annabelle and Holter on PlanetGreen.com where they will find additional tips, resources and insights from the dynamic green duo.
WORLD'S GREENEST HOMES
Hosted by: Emmanuel Belliveau
From high-tech superhomes fit for a Hollywood star to experimental eco-dwellings that wouldn't look out of place in a sci-fi film, this series profiles high-concept, one-of-a-kind homes to die for�and every single one of them has top-notch green credentials and an array of mind-blowing eco-innovations. In a dynamic room-by-room tour, host Emmanuel Belliveau explores the interior style and d�cor as well as the architectural boldness of each building, and also uncovers the incredible green secrets behind each home.
WRECKLAMATION
Featuring: Jodi Murphy
WRECKLAMATION is recycling on steroids. Each year, hundreds of thousands of homes are demolished to make way for new construction. These homes have traditionally been bulldozed and trucked to landfills where construction debris accounts for more than 40 percent of all solid waste. Enter Jodi Murphy, demolition auctioneer. In each episode, Jodi auctions off everything inside a home, from doors to cabinets, bricks to bathtubs�often resulting in heated and hilarious bidding wars among customers. The demolition begins with buyers literally ripping their new treasures off the walls. Once the home is destroyed, WRECKLAMATION follows the materials as they are reborn in new structures while Jodi moves on to her next home auction adventure.
Premiering Third Quarter 2008
BATTLEGROUND EARTH: LUDACRIS VS. TOMMY LEE
The hard-charging, hard-partying, carbon-laden world of tour bus-living musicians doesn't exactly scream green! Now, Planet Green challenges two icons to join the newest trend in music: "going green." BATTLEGROUND EARTH challenges hip-hop superstar Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and rock god Tommy Lee to battle against the toxic forces destroying Mother Earth as they travel across the country on a 10-episode tour.
Viewers witness the two stars pushed to the limit as they attempt to keep their high-wattage acts on an eco-friendly course. Enlisting the help of their posses, celebrity guests, and anyone else willing to lend a hand, Ludacris and Tommy Lee dive right into the BATTLEGROUND EARTH competition with unexpected and sometime hilarious results. The contest doesn't let up as each of these stars is judged and scored on the green meter. This Rap n' Roll battle culminates in a green carpet benefit concert at LA's legendary Greek Theater. The concert featuring Ludacris, Tommy Lee and many of their famous musician friends will support the renewal of Griffith Park, which was devastated by recent wildfires.
TOM BROKAW SPECIALS
Following the tremendous response to Discovery Channel's Global Warming: What You Need to Know with Tom Brokaw, the award-winning journalist joins Planet Green for a series of specials featuring in-depth examinations of the crucial issues facing the environment.
Premiering Fourth Quarter 2008
STUFF HAPPENS
Hosted by: Bill Nye
All the stuff in our lives�from the food we eat to the clothes we wear�comes from somewhere. It's created, bought, eaten, moved, loved and used�but where did it come from in the first place and what happens after we are through with our stuff? STUFF HAPPENS host Emmy� Award-winning Bill Nye (scientist, engineer, comedian, author and inventor) unlocks the secret lives of everyday things before and after we consume them, and reveals the unintended consequences of all the stuff we take for granted. As each item's life cycle is investigated and uncovered, Bill shows how simple, easy changes can reduce the environmental cost of things we love.
THE TOM GREEN PROJECT (WT)
Hosted by: Tom Green
We may all call Earth home, but just how much do we know about the world in which we live? Planet Green reveals the answer in the first game show with a green mission. Hosted by actor and comedian Tom Green, who brings his irreverent sense of humor and unique approach to the game show world, this new series brings viewers a fast, furious, fun and unpredictable half-hour.
About Planet Green
Planet Green is Discovery Communications' global, cross-company initiative with a commitment to document, preserve and celebrate the planet, including the first-ever 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network, coming to 50 million homes on June 4, 2008. Planet Green is the multiplatform media destination with a mission. It's the center for the new green conversation, speaking to people who want to understand green living and to those who truly want to make a difference in meeting the critical challenge of protecting our environment. Planet Green's unique content, tools and information will enlighten, empower and most important entertain.
Planet Green's platforms include leading eco-lifestyle website TreeHugger.com and the recently launched solutions-oriented PlanetGreen.com. Discovery will also launch Discovery Education Green, a K-12 service that hosts dynamic media content correlated to state standards. Discovery Education Green will help teachers integrate green lessons into their curriculum and empower students to make more environmentally conscious decisions.
About Discovery Communications
Discovery Communications is the world's number-one nonfiction media company reaching more than 1.5 billion cumulative subscribers in over 170 countries. Discovery empowers people to explore their world and satisfy their curiosity through 100-plus worldwide networks, led by Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Investigation Discovery and HD Theater, as well as leading consumer and educational products and services, and a diversified portfolio of digital media services including HowStuffWorks. Discovery Communications is owned by Discovery Holding Company (NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB), Advance/Newhouse Communications and John S. Hendricks, Discovery's founder and chairman. For more information, please visit www.discoverycommunications.com.
[april 2008]
· ALTER ECO (PLANET GREEN)
· BATTLEGROUND EARTH: LUDACRIS VS. TOMMY LEE (PLANET GREEN)
· EMERIL GREEN (PLANET GREEN)
· G WORD (PLANET GREEN)
· GO FOR THE GREEN (PLANET GREEN)
· GREENOVATE (PLANET GREEN)
· GREENSBURG (PLANET GREEN)
· HOLLYWOOD GREEN WITH MARIA MENOUNOS (PLANET GREEN)
· MEAN GREEN MACHINES (PLANET GREEN)
· RENOVATION NATION (PLANET GREEN)
· STUFF HAPPENS (PLANET GREEN)
· SUPPER CLUB (PLANET GREEN)
· TOTAL WRECKLAMATION (PLANET GREEN)
· WA$TED (PLANET GREEN)
· WORLD'S GREENEST HOMES (PLANET GREEN)


Using Imagify WordPress plugin, it's possible to optimize JPG, PNG, GIF (animated or not), but the format remains the same.
With Imagify Web App, JPG, PNG, GIF (animated or not) and PDF are the accepted image formats for optimization, and PNG to JPEG conversion is possible.
InformationWhen "Auto Convert PNG to JPEG" is enabled, all PNG images uploaded will be optimized and automatically converted to JPEG.
For the full guide on optimizing, please see "How to Optimize Images from Imagify App" and "How to Optimize Images from WordPress Plugin".
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text:
package com.randomlytyping.lovingleanlayouts.ui;

import android.content.res.AssetManager;
import android.graphics.Typeface;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.text.Layout;
import android.text.SpannableStringBuilder;
import android.text.Spanned;
import android.text.style.AlignmentSpan;
import android.text.style.TextAppearanceSpan;
import android.widget.TextView;

import com.randomlytyping.lovingleanlayouts.R;
import com.randomlytyping.util.AppCompatActivitySetup;

import butterknife.ButterKnife;
import uk.co.chrisjenx.calligraphy.CalligraphyTypefaceSpan;
import uk.co.chrisjenx.calligraphy.TypefaceUtils;

/**
 * @since 2015.10.21
 */
public class SimplerViewsActivity extends BaseActivity {
    //
    // Activity lifecycle
    //

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_simpler_views);
        AppCompatActivitySetup.with(this)
                .supportAppBar(R.id.app_bar)
                .upButton();

        //<editor-fold desc="Some Typeface Loading">
        final AssetManager assets = getAssets();
        final Typeface typefaceA =
                TypefaceUtils.load(assets, getString(R.string.font_path_merriweather_regular));
        final Typeface typefaceB =
                TypefaceUtils.load(assets, getString(R.string.font_path_clear_sans));
        //</editor-fold>

        final SpannableStringBuilder builder =
                new SpannableStringBuilder(getString(R.string.simpler_views_text_B02));
        int start = 0;
        int end = builder.length();
        builder.setSpan(new TextAppearanceSpan(this, R.style.TextAppearance_LLL_DialogueB),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        builder.setSpan(new CalligraphyTypefaceSpan(typefaceB),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        builder.setSpan(new AlignmentSpan.Standard(Layout.Alignment.ALIGN_OPPOSITE),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

        //<editor-fold desc="More Spannable Stuff…">
        start = end;
        builder.append("\n\n").append(getString(R.string.simpler_views_text_A03));
        end = builder.length();
        builder.setSpan(new TextAppearanceSpan(this, R.style.TextAppearance_LLL_DialogueA),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        builder.setSpan(new CalligraphyTypefaceSpan(typefaceA),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

        start = end;
        builder.append("\n\n").append(getString(R.string.simpler_views_text_B03));
        end = builder.length();
        builder.setSpan(new AlignmentSpan.Standard(Layout.Alignment.ALIGN_OPPOSITE),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        builder.setSpan(new TextAppearanceSpan(this, R.style.TextAppearance_LLL_DialogueB),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        builder.setSpan(new CalligraphyTypefaceSpan(typefaceB),
                start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        //</editor-fold>

        final TextView textView = ButterKnife.findById(this, R.id.simple_text);
        textView.setText(builder, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);
    }
}


The Indigo 5500 is a true professional moving head which is suitable for many applications. Due to the new revolutionary optical system the Indigo 5500 offers a very bright beam. Despite its 70W LED lightsource, the Indigo 5500 can compete with traditional moving heads equipped with an 400W discharge lamp. The Indigo 5500 is a true workhorse and is suitable for any application. It is equipped with 2 gobo wheels, 1 color wheel, rotating prism, DMX focus and a fast strobe function.
The Indigo 5500 offers a wide range of functions for a very affordable price. Its weight of only 12,5 kg makes this moving head easy to handle.


text:
Neanderthals in a boat? Not such a far-fetched notion after all
By Kate AllenScience and Technology reporter
Tues., Dec. 27, 2016timer7 min. read
The first archeologists to find strange stone artifacts on Naxos were French researchers working on the Greek island in 1981.
Naxos, the largest in a cluster known as the Cyclades that dot the Aegean Sea, is rich in the type of archeology many would recognize from classical exhibits in museums: 5,000-year-old, beautifully proportioned white marble figurines; 3,000-year-old, strikingly patterned pottery vessels.
These scrappy pieces of rock looked much, much older.
"The stone tools they were finding on the site looked nothing like the stone tools that had ever been found before on prehistoric sites in the Cycladic Islands," said Tristan Carter, an archeologist at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Archeologists have long believed that the first people to colonize the region were early farmers who arrived by boat approximately 9,000 years ago. Only humans who had made the leap from a hunter-gatherer subsistence to organized agriculture — a major revolution in the history of our species, one that saw a lurch forward in technological and social complexity — could have accomplished the sea crossing.
But the stone tools on Naxos appeared to be hewn by Paleolithic people — much more ancient humans, perhaps not members of our species at all.
Since 2013, Carter has co-directed a new round of investigations on Naxos. He and a handful of others working in the region have begun to furnish evidence that humans reached the islands of the Aegean Sea 250,000 years ago and maybe earlier. If those dates are confirmed, it means the first people there were Neanderthals, their probable ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis or maybe even Homo erectus.
Could these archaic hominins have travelled by boat?
Sea voyaging is supposed to be an indicator of "behavioural modernity," the suite of capabilities that distinguishes us from our primitive, now-extinct human cousins and from primates. A crossing of any major distance requires the tool-making and co-operation necessary to build a craft, the navigational savvy to pilot it and, perhaps most significantly, the imagination and daring to conceive of the journey in the first place.
Other researchers insist that much better evidence needs to be discovered to attribute such complex behaviours to Neanderthals and other hominins: a rewriting of a significant chapter in the evolution of our genus.
"If things like erectus were deliberately zooming around bodies of water 1.5 million years ago, that would be an absolutely massive deal for overturning our received understanding for how these creatures think and behave," said Tom Leppard, Renfrew fellow in archeology at the University of Cambridge, and a cautious voice in the debate.
In recent years, many of these behavioural firewalls have crumbled. Archeologists have found indications, some still disputed, that Neanderthals carved cave symbols, painted their bodies with pigment, created musical instruments and jewelry, and intentionally buried their dead — all practices thought to be exclusive to us. Most stunningly, scientists have shown that living people with European or Asian ancestry carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, evidence of prehistoric interbreeding.
"Research over the last couple decades has just perpetually shown us that all of these characters are more capable, more complex that we thought," Carter said. "It's all about the archeology of ego in us."
Still, he is the first to say that with the stakes so high, his team must be incredibly careful in how they work and what they claim: "There's going to be a very high bar for us."
The French team on Naxos was not the first working on Aegean and Mediterranean islands to report artifacts older than the Neolithic, as the era that began with the adoption of agriculture is known. But the older discoveries were piecemeal and never stood up to scrutiny.
Then, in 1988, archeologists began excavating a collapsed rock shelter on the southern shore of Cyprus. They found about 1,000 bladelets and small tools typically associated with pre-Neolithic people.
"There was a lot of skepticism at first," said Alan Simmons, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who was involved in the work. "But once we had all the radiocarbon dates, it came to be accepted."
The site pushed the peopling of Cyprus back to 12,000 years ago — only a few millennia, but enough to break the Neolithic barrier and establish the presence of hunter-gatherers. Today, the distance to mainland Turkey is about 75 kilometres. Sea levels have fluctuated and the crossing was once shorter, but Cyprus has always been an island.
The discoveries on Cyprus overturned the idea that hunter-gatherers were incapable or unwilling to travel by sea. But the debate was still confined to the activities of our species, Homo sapiens.
In 2008, a Greek-American team of archeologists began searching on the southwest coast of Crete for pre-Neolithic artifacts. They found many from roughly the same era as those on Cyprus. But they also found rough quartz hand axes and cleavers that appeared to be much more ancient.
The team discovered artifacts eroding out of a layer of soil that dated to at least 130,000 years ago, and the tools themselves looked like those archeologists associate with archaic hominin sites on the mainland — ones that are at least 250,000 years old.
"That put the cat amongst the pigeons," Carter said. Like Cyprus, Crete has always been an island.
Archaeology magazine declared the finds one of its top 10 discoveries for 2010.
The discoveries on Crete are still roiling the field, with critics arguing the researchers' conclusions have leapt well ahead of what they actually found. Because most of the tools were discovered on the surface, rather than buried in layers of sediment, the artifacts have been difficult to date definitively.
"It's not enough. They have to find better pieces, more pieces," said Albert Ammerman, an archeologist who worked on Cyprus.
Better and more pieces is exactly what Tristan Carter's team is after. Even for those who can envision seafaring hominins, it takes more than one site to overturn a long-standing paradigm.
Two years ago, Carter and project co-director Demetris Athanassoulis obtained permission to excavate the formerly French site on Naxos, known as Stelida.
"I had always had a sneaking feeling, having visited Stelida a few times during my PhD many moons ago, that maybe this site fit into these new discoveries."
The site is challenging. The researchers believe it was a quarry, where people came to retrieve the material to make stone tools for hundreds of thousands of years.
"It's like going to a factory and only seeing the stuff they threw out," Carter said.
After years of work, Carter's team has found loads of artifacts, including distinctive tool types that on mainland Greece have been exclusively associated with Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis and could be more than 250,000 years old.
But that won't be enough to convince the skeptics: they need artifacts buried in clearly defined layers of soil that can be accurately dated.
"A lot of people are going, "Aha! You have proven you have Neanderthal seafarers,'" Carter said. "We've always said, first of all, we've got to wait until we've got really, really good scientific dates."
Carter is relying on a method known as optically stimulated luminescence. Unlike radiocarbon dating, optically stimulated luminescence works on extremely old soil deposits, but takes months to process. Early lab results have dated some of the Stelida artifacts to at least 50,000 years ago. But the team is still waiting for results from the lower layers of the site, where the pre-Neanderthal-looking tools were found.
Solid dates are important to estimate sea levels. Unlike Crete and Cyprus, Naxos is not a "true" island: when sea levels fell, it was connected to its neighbours to form one mega-Cycladic island. The region's active tectonics don't help: modellers disagree on whether that Cycladic land mass was connected to the mainland at times, allowing hominins to reach what is now Naxos by foot.
Discoveries half a world away from the Aegean complicate the picture. In 2003, archeologists on the Indonesian island of Flores found bones belonging to a hobbit-like species of human that stood only four feet tall and survived until 18,000 years ago, called Homo floresiensis. Stone tools later discovered on the island have been dated to as far back as 1.1 million years ago.
To some researchers, this is clear evidence that the origins of seafaring began well before Homo sapiens. But others argue that Flores may have been a short hop from the mainland. A few haphazard jaunts in Indonesia and the Aegean is not evidence of deliberate, established sea voyaging. That would explain why Paleolithic artifacts in the Aegean are so scant: millennia of human habitation should have left a more indelible mark.
But others believe that archeologists just haven't been looking until now.
Because most working in the region are specialists in the cultures that produced those exquisite ivory figures and pottery, "a lot of the archeologists really weren't trained to look for scatters of broken rocks, basically, because it wasn't very exciting," Alan Simmons said.
The artifacts may not look very exciting, but the implications are. If archaic hominins could reach the Aegean islands by boat, where else might we find them?
"We've always looked at the sea as a barrier," Simmons said. "But what some people are arguing is maybe it wasn't a barrier — maybe it was a highway."


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The role is for a skilled PR guru, who has experience in developing and implementing PR strategy, leading written communications across the organization.
- Creating and proofing written copy; newsletters, presentations, product labels, press releases, website copy etc.


text:
Oct,2023
The Pauly Jail - Ghost Hunt, Psychic Medium & Past Life Regression Hypnosis
Dr. Mary Barrett, Psychic Medium/Master Hypnotist
From: Friday October 27, 2023 - 05:00 PM
to: Sunday October 29, 2023 - 07:00 PM (local time)
The Pauly Jail 101 Conecuh Ave, Union Springs, AL 36089
Ticket sales will end on Oct. 27, at 07:00 PM local time.
No exchange
HISTORY –
One of the oldest surviving jail structures in the state, the Pauly Jail, located behind the 1871 Second Empire Style Courthouse, was erected in 1897. It replaced the original jail of 1868 which was located on West Hardaway Street.
This ominous structure has castle-like facade featuring small projecting square brick turrets with witch's hats (spiked metal caps) at the corners. There are rusticated stone lintels over the door and windows. The entrance is only a single door on the ground level. One the second floor you will find the bullpen containing a metal table and benches that served as the eating quarters. To the right of the table is the commode and an open shower for bathing. On the third level, a trap door is set in the floor. The door, which could be opened by pushing a lever, was used for hanging condemned prisoners in the early 1900's.
The Paul Jail is said to have been involved in one (Aberdeen Johnson) of seven documented lynchings occurring in Bullock County from 1889 to 1921. There have been many deaths associated with the Pauly Jail over the time it was in operation. One incident that occurred was that of JW Mann. It is said that he accidentally burned to death in his cell on Christmas Eve 1960.
In 2004, independent film company Strata Production filmed part of "Heaven's Fall" at the Pauly Jail. The movie is based on the historic 'Scottsboro Boys' case, in which nine black youths were falsely accused of raping two white women. The case led to the end of whites-only juries.
REPORTED PARANORMAL ACTIVITY-
Disembodied voices, strange sounds, heaving swinging sounds and multiple apparitions have been reported. There are also claims of seeing apparition of a man with a noose around his neck on the third floor.
FRIDAY - PSYCHIC MEDIUM REAINGS – SPIRITUAL AWAKENING!! Dr. Mary Barrett will host a psychic medium gallery reading connecting to your loved ones that have crossed over.
Dr. Barrett has a special gift of psychic mediumship. This is the ability to connect with the deceased and bridge the gap between life on earth and the other side. She will open the line of communication and relay messages, help you find closure, relay knowledge from her spirit guides and so much more.
Do you get a feeling your loved one is around you? Are you having lucid dreams or smelling a familiar scent that reminds you of someone that is no longer here? Maybe you keep hearing a song that your loved one played or find random items that make you think of a loved one. A spirit may be saying hello or trying to send you an important message. Don't ignore their presence!! Let Dr. Barrett help you!! You will receive validation of messages from Spirit.
After you have spoken with your loved ones then journey into the night with a ghost hunt of this terrifying location.
SATURDAY - PAST LIFE REGRESSION HYPNOSIS – ENLIGHTENMENT!! Dr. Barrett guides you as you travel into your past to find out who you were in your past lives. Have you ever had memories that you know were not yours? Do you have a fear of something and have no clue why? Do you feel extremely passionate about something but don't understand why? Do you ever have DeJa'Vu? If anyone would like to know if they lived another life, she will guide you to explore your past lives.
Hypnosis is a changed state of awareness and increased relaxation that allows for improved focus and concentration. You are in a deep state of meditation feeling calm and relaxed. Past Life Regression (PLR) Hypnosis accesses memories and experiences that are hidden from your subconscious mind.
Past Life Regression Hypnosis can help to:
Reconnect with past life experiences.
Help understand why you feel a deep connection with certain places.
Explore your past life and current Soulmate experiences.
Identify physical ailments you have, which may be remnants of past life experiences.
Explore unresolved emotions which have carried through into this lifetime, creating fears
or beliefs which you have been unable to explain.
Acknowledge and embrace the key lessons learned through those lives.
She also does hypnosis for habits, weight loss, fears, etc. After traveling through time and discovering who you where hundreds of years ago then it will be time to take a journey into the spiritual world with a ghost hunt of this mysterious but haunted location.
NIGHTLY INVESTIGATIONS -
This is an "authentic" paranormal investigation. You will be part of the team. We will be collecting evidence, documenting what we find and debunking what we can. This is a hands-on investigation. If you have equipment, please feel free to bring but keep in mind you are responsible for all personal equipment. Please bring a flashlight. Remember nothing is faked or staged. There will be no provocation, conjuring, etc.
NO REFUNDS/TICKETS ARE NOT TRANSFERABLE
Thursday Evening Show - 8pm
Rayne Drop Inn II (21+)
Marion Center, PA
Rayne Drop Inn II - Marion Center, PA
Guy's Party Center Pop-Up
Guy's Party Center - Akron, OH
Prime Nightlife (21+)
Toldeo, OH
Prime Nightlife - Toledo, OH
Brendan Eyre - Fri. 7:30pm
Brendan Eyre - Sat. 7:30pm
Bill Squire - Fri. 7:30 Show
Bill Squire - Sat. 7:30 Show
Claude Stuart - Fri. 7:30pm
Claude Stuart - Sat. 7:30pm
Alex Ortiz Fri. at 7:30PM
Alex Ortiz Sat. at 7:30PM
Etty
adapted and performed by Susan Stein


text:
De witte truffel (Tuber magnatum) is een truffel (ondergrondse bolvormige paddenstoel) uit Piëmont.

Deze truffel is alleen plukvers lekker en verliest de volgende dagen snel aan smaak en geur.

Het aroma van witte truffel wordt met bis(methylthio)methaan gesynthetiseerd.

Tuberaceae
Schimmelsoort