This summer, the roar of bulldozers replaced the sound of tractors over thousands of agricultural acres outside of Racine in southeastern Wisconsin. Road, water, and electricity infrastructure construction was well under way for a new industrial complex for Foxconn, the Taiwan-based technology giant. In the project's master plan, Foxconn will eventually own 4.5 square miles of once-prime Wisconsin farmland, an expanse about a fourth the size of the city limits of nearby Racine, population 77,000. The main 24-inch water main will have the capacity to deliver more than 20 million gallons a day of high-quality Great Lakes water (home to 21 percent of the world's remaining supply), although initial usage has been promised to be much less. Foxconn has pledged to be good environmental stewards, even as Wisconsin has waived many of its basic environmental regulations in order to expedite the project.
The company has promised to build a $9 billion to $10 billion sprawling industrial complex which will employ "up to" 13,000 workers in jobs the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), the state's semi-private economic development commission, has repeatedly described as "family-supporting." Most of the attention has been on the proposed first North America–based LCD panel manufacturing plant, described by boosters as a state-of-the-art automated factory that will producing next-generation large-scale screens for TVs and other consumer applications. More recently, Foxconn has confirmed reports from the Asian press that revised plans call for a more modest factory making smaller screens. Foxconn's initial construction project scheduled to begin this year is even less ambitious, designated as a massive low-tech assembly operation, putting together TVs and other consumer products using imported screens.
Industry experts put the employee count for even the original large-scale LCD manufacturing plant at 2,000, just 15 percent of Foxconn's promised workforce. Foxconn's original plans estimated that three-fourths of its workforce in Wisconsin will be hourly, a pattern that fits the company's core expertise: assembling iPhones and other electronic devices. For 15 years, Wisconsin taxpayers will be subsidizing Foxconn's payroll for employees making at least $30,000 to the tune of 17 percent, while capital costs over the first seven years of construction will receive a 15 percent rebate. Should Foxconn hit its capital expenditure and employment targets, Wisconsin taxpayers will end up sending some $3 billion to the company. While state-level support is touted as tax relief, in fact Wisconsin has already waived almost all of the pertinent taxes for businesses. The taxpayer-funded $3 billion in incentives (the largest ever to a foreign company) will be paid largely in cash. The local municipalities are chipping in another $764 million via a tax increment financing (TIF) project so large that the state legislature had to pass a waiver, since this amount far surpasses the statutory prudence level of 12 percent of existing municipal property values. Additional taxpayer-supported costs have put Wisconsin's total outlay at well over $4 billion, more than $300,000 a job. How expensive is this?
Carmen and Bob Brown express their views about the Foxconn deal as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker comes to Gillett Middle/High School to talk about education funding.
For Governor Scott Walker and his boosters, the project is "transformative," a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. Wisconsin Speaker of the House Republican Robin Vos called it "an American field of dreams." Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch went on the record touting the deal's value because "We did not meet the company's ask. Their number was bigger than ours." While Foxconn has described their completed complex as a self-contained city, with housing and food services for workers, Walker has preferred to call it the first step in a regional high-tech manufacturing boom he calls "Wisconn Valley." This vision of something wonderful blooming around the Foxconn facility helps explain the blank-check largess of the Walker administration. It's also the sort of wishful thinking that flies in the face of the evidence.
Expert Wall Street investors have trouble valuing corporations over the next calendar year. It's difficult to project the ten-year viability of even well-established manufacturing plants making slowly evolving products such as automobiles. How is it possible to value the 20- or 30-year prospects of a plant making a product, such as high-tech LCD TV screens, subject to rapid creative destruction? After all, 15 years ago we were all watching bulky rear-projection TVs.
In the face of all of these questions, to say nothing of the growing body of academic work shedding doubt on the wisdom of mega-incentive deals, Wisconsin officials dipped into a familiar well for politicians, municipalities, and state governments looking to invest public monies in large projects.
They brought in the consultants.
The economic impact–study business in the United States is well-entrenched and has a long history. The field was pioneered by Nobel laureate Wassily Leontief when he was serving as a consultant to the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. At the end of the war, he used the same sort of input/output model that is widely used today in commercial studies to examine the likely impact of the decommissioning of the weapons industry. In doing so, he not only established the power of these models, but their limitations, as he issued a warning that the United States faced a second Great Depression as a result of lost employment and production.
A small circle of firms routinely produce reports (all of them positive) examining the economic consequences of all kinds of major tax-dollar spending. Sports stadiums, convention centers, manufacturing and headquarters developments, and large convention hotels all are within this consulting industry's purview. A typical description of the process is provided by one of the larger players in the field, KMPG (a firm not involved in the Foxconn studies): "Economic impact analyses measure the direct and indirect effects of a business, organization or event on the local, regional, state or national economy. The presence and contribution of a particular project or business generates total economic impact that is substantially larger than the project's or business's activities on its own." The telling point being the assumption that the enterprise being studied not only will have a positive impact, but one "substantially larger" than its immediate business. This assumption is belied by experience. Imagine a long-term impact study focused on a nuclear power plant, taking into account its substantial construction and operational workforce plus the spinoff economic benefits of a new source of cheap, clean electrical power. Now suppose that plant is called Chernobyl.
The first economic impact report on the Wisconsin project was prepared by international accounting firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young) before Foxconn had been publicly identified as the company behind the initiative. It was commissioned by Foxconn and released in July 2017 under the code name "Flying Eagle." The EY report is the foundational document justifying the massive payouts to Foxconn. It was in turn used by all the subsequent studies. Baker Tilly, an accounting firm headquartered in Chicago, used the EY report for an August 2017 follow-up study commissioned by the semi-private Wisconsin Economic Development Commission, Wisconsin's deal-making agency. A UW-Madison professor, Noah Williams, was commissioned to rush out a paper, also in August, called "An Evaluation of the Economic Impact of the Foxconn Proposal." This paper also relied heavily on the EY report.
The Foxconn project was unveiled at a White House event on July 26, 2017. Joining President Trump on the podium were Paul Ryan (in whose district the factory would land), Wisconsin native and then–Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and Governor Walker. Foxconn was represented by its Chairman, Terry Gou, one of the richest men in the world.
In the wake of this announcement came dual revelations. From the Foxconn corner came the warning that they were only interested in sealing the deal if it could be expedited. On the Wisconsin side, the magnitude of the deal so exceeded the budget and charter of the WEDC and the state's existing economic development authority that special legislation would be required. In the rush that followed, the economic impact studies were the key drivers of the Walker team's campaign for public support and legislative momentum. The studies did not go without some initial critique. One of the first objections to the EY report was its failure to consider commuters from nearby Illinois who would be paying taxes to Illinois, undercutting the tax-based repayment calculation. This inspired the second commissioned study from accounting firm Baker Tilly. In the haste, signals must have gotten crossed because Baker Tilly's initial report for the Foxconn-boosting WEDC put 40 percent to 50 percent of the construction workers and full-time Foxconn staff as out-of-staters. This conclusion blew up the entire economic case for Wisconsin's investment. After what must have been a heated clarification meeting with the WEDC, Baker Tilly came back with revised figures of 100 percent Wisconsin residents.
Williams's report was also clearly inspired by the out-of-state worker concerns, as he spent considerable energy juggling numbers to show how Illinois workers wouldn't undermine Wisconsin's payback. His argument was that more Wisconsinites now commute to Illinois than vice versa, so Foxconn would simply stem the flow. But neither of these reflexive and unconvincing studies got specific about how the drive time from the Foxconn site to the Illinois border is nine minutes, while it takes 25 minutes to drive from there to downtown Racine, the local area with the heaviest poverty and unemployment. Add to the reality of commuting convenience, demographics. The Interstate running past the Foxconn site leads to Lake County, Illinois, which has a population of 703,000, compared with Racine County's 195,000. Residents of western Lake County currently put up with commute times that are the highest in the greater Chicago area. Next door, in McHenry County, Illinois, also bordering Wisconsin, half the population commutes a half-hour or more, mostly into Chicago metro traffic. As for the higher-paying Foxconn jobs requiring post-secondary education, Racine County and adjacent Kenosha County have college-graduate populations of 24 percent, compared with Lake County's 44 percent.
In the wake of all these studies, the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau prepared an important report for legislators who would be voting on the Foxconn deal. It was released on August 8, 2017, and used EY numbers to calculate the projected income and payback schedule. It was this report that produced a 25-year payback number that quickly gained currency in the legislative debate and in a wide range of media reports. Unfortunately, the overlay of urgency didn't seem to allow for examination of all the underlying premises—for instance, the study's choice to ignore the likelihood of out-of-state construction workers or full-time workers from nearby Illinois, to accept as granted the EY projection of $53,875 average salaries, and the Legislative Bureau's decision to calculate the break-even point without use of discounted cash flow, the time value of money.
Tony Evers speaks after winning Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary election during an event in Madison, Wisconsin.
Finally, the December 2017 TIF deal, in which Racine County and the Village of Mt. Pleasant (where the plant will be located) committed to $764 million in bond-raised revenue for infrastructure in support of the Foxconn project, also used EY numbers to justify the expense and project the payback, this based on increased property values of the Foxconn development site, which in turn rely on Foxconn's estimates of capital expenditure. As Mark Fralick, a Texas-based industry expert on automated production and a contributing editor to the most prominent U.S. trade magazine in Foxconn's industry, Supply Chain Digest, put it: "Foxconn has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering. I just hope the government entities and municipalities involved don't get screwed." It's not boding well. The TIF development agreement between Foxconn and Mt. Pleasant specifically calls for a "Generation 10.5 TFT-LCD Fabrication Facility," with the implication for massive supply-chain requirements including the $1 billion-plus Corning glass plant predicted by boosters. Even before breaking ground, Foxconn has voided this promise in lieu of a more modest facility, while Corning has scoffed at the prospect for a huge plant in Wisconsin.
In the end, a pyramid of assumptions, report after report, and billions of dollars of taxpayer commitments are all built on the case presented by the initial EY "Flying Eagle" report. If this foundational document is flawed, then everything about the project is in doubt. So you would assume that the EY study, especially considering the possible prejudice associated with its Foxconn commission and Foxconn-sourced assumptions, was the subject of intense scrutiny. Perhaps you'd imagine that the subsequent studies would pick apart the original's methods and conclusions.
You'd be wrong on both counts.
Economic impact studies rely on software that allows for the inputting of certain variables that in turn lead to a projected outcome. In an economic impact study like EY's for Foxconn, the direct impact is the capital cost of construction and subsequent Foxconn hiring. Indirect impact comes from the additional workers employed by the construction contractors plus the supply-chain effect. Induced impact comes from the money all these new employees spend on food and rent and consumables. These indirect and induced effects are expressed as a multiplier. In this case, EY used established benchmarks to predict that for every ten jobs Foxconn creates, another 17 jobs will be created in Wisconsin.
The Foxconn studies modeled the electronics industry to pick a multiplier. Yet most of the comparable companies don't hire large numbers of low-paid workers to assemble things (more often, they offshore these operations), and neither do their enterprises include worker dormitories, on-site housing, a large cafeteria, or other amenities, as do Foxconn's plans for what it is calling its "Smart City." The giant Foxconn complex will be much more insular than a normal factory, both due to location and design. Many of its employees (think H1-B Chinese engineers and dormitory-dwelling immigrant labor) will not be seeking commercial housing in the neighboring communities, nor spending as freely there as the technicians and engineers at the kind of electronics companies that were used as models. These regional companies also are typically owned and headquartered locally, keeping profits in the community, rather than being exported out of the region to distant executives and shareholders.
University of Illinois at Chicago Associate Professor Joshua Drucker has studied the economic impact of the building and closing of major facilities, particularly military instillations. One of the lessons he's learned is that the local and regional economy can change across time, often significantly and unpredictably. Not only do the commercial studies fail to try to encompass the broad range of possible outcomes, they apply a linear model, so that the impact of 1,000 jobs is exactly a thousand times greater than one job. "These assumptions simply don't hold in real life," Drucker explains. "For instance, in a new facility, one thing we see is a high percentage of jobs going to people from outside the immediate area." The studies also entirely ignore the non-economic impact that a large project will have on a community in terms of quality-of-life issues, such as traffic and potential air and water pollution. What will be Foxconn's short and long-term effect on what is now a sleepy rural area in terms of the housing market, social service agencies, and new stresses on infrastructure and local schools? Don't look to commercial economic impact studies for the answers.
Despite all the peer-reviewed critiques from economists, politicians continue to enthusiastically commission reports and projects continue to be approved. While partisan lines seemed well-etched in most large corporate subsidy deals, with Republicans on the pro-business side, some of the most vocal critics of the Foxconn-type mega-deal comes from the far right. Roy Cordato is a lecturer at North Carolina State and senior economist at the John Locke Foundation, a conservative, free-market-oriented nonprofit.
Governor Scott Walker makes remarks during the July 26, 2017, White House announcement of the creation of the Foxconn factory. Speaker Paul Ryan and Foxconn CEO Terry Gou are on the right.
The philosophic underpinnings of Cordota's bile is one that must have also struck a nerve in many Wisconsin ideological conservatives. How can you support smaller government, free markets, and an America-first agenda while also boosting a multibillion-dollar government handout to a foreign corporation?
All of the reports prepared to analyze the Foxconn deal have one common flaw: They were commissioned by interested parties. Even the report issued by UW Professor Noah Williams turns out to be tainted. His chair is funded by conservative sponsors (including the Koch brothers, big Walker supporters) and he personally sought an economics consulting position on the Walker presidential election team. This might help explain why he used a generous 2.7-times multiplier, producing a rosy prediction of economic bounty.
Opportunity Costs. The most glaring and unsettling flaw in standard economic impact reports is their total lack of attention to alternative uses of the massive monies involved. This lack of vision is especially glaring in a state in which the governor has made major cuts to K-12 and university education and with serious infrastructure erosion, as witnessed by its roads being currently ranked among the worst in the nation.
As Cordato puts it, "Any economic impact study that does not attempt to assess these opportunity costs cannot legitimately be called economic analysis." With job trends favoring the educated and trained, education spending is one of the key alternatives that should have been examined. In Wisconsin, for instance, the most robust job market in the state is in the Madison area, where entrepreneurs with University of Wisconsin ties have been responsible for numerous fast-growing startups with highly compensated workforces in medical software, biotechnology, and game development, among others. Cuts to education spending under Walker have already resulted in the loss of many highly considered UW professors and the degradation of the K-12 teaching profession, while in-state students at UW are asked to pay more than twice what they did in the 1980s in inflation-adjusted dollars. Cost-cutting at the university level continues. In March 2018, the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, which serves 8,600 students, proposed axing all of its humanities degrees in response to a $4.5 million deficit, an amount equal to 0.01 percent of the state's financial commitment to Foxconn.
Labor Dynamics. The primary benefit of the Foxconn deal touted by Walker and his boosters is the creation of good jobs. While the promise of thousands of $54,000-a-year jobs harkens back to all those lost, well-paid, union manufacturing jobs in the auto industry, the reality is likely to be otherwise. The rub is in the calculation of average wages. Foxconn lobbied hard to allow up to $400,000 of higher-paid jobs to factor in the average, allowing them to hit their average income target with more than 90 percent of jobs paying in the $30,000 range. Foxconn has already opened up a TV manufacturing facility in Mt. Pleasant, where it has been hiring workers through employment agencies. The "family-supporting" wage Foxconn is currently paying these assemblers? Fourteen dollars an hour, a figure that is not only not "family supporting," but will potentially qualify families for food stamps, housing subsidies, and Badgercare, the state's health-care program for low-income residents.
What happens to companies who lose skilled workers to Foxconn? They might fill these jobs. Then again, the new subsidized competition might price them out of the market, forcing them to downsize, relocate offices or jobs, or go out of business. For instance, the 2008 opening of a large Honda factor in Greensburg, Indiana, didn't lead to the economic impact study's projected boom of thousands of regional auto-parts supply-chain jobs. Instead, a 2015 study by California State University, East Bay's Brian Adams ("The Employment Impact of Motor Vehicle Assembly Plant Openings," Regional Science and Urban Economics) showed that after five years, the area had experienced a net loss of 500 supply-chain jobs as the limited labor force was cannibalized by the subsidized new factory. These negative possibilities are not a consideration in commercial economic impact studies.
The Wisconsin Fiscal Bureau projections show a major uptick in state tax revenue in 2019 and 2020, when they predict the 10,000 construction workers anticipated in the EY study will be deep into excavation, concrete work, and building fabrication. The assumption is that these 10,000 workers would otherwise be unemployed Wisconsinites. In 2012 a major study on a similar issue was commissioned by Metrolinx, the Toronto planning authority, to examine construction capacities prior to some major infrastructure projects. Unlike the studies on Foxconn, Metrolinx surveyed area construction firms and discovered major constraints among contractors likely to be involved, with skilled labor being the most important. The result was not unconstrained expansion of the labor market, but constraints on the number of simultaneous regional projects. One solution might be the migration of labor, but permanent relocation (with the anticipated Wisconsin tax revenue) is unlikely to be a major factor for specialized jobs that might only last a year. A more accurate scenario is Foxconn construction work forcing the delay of other construction projects.
The Payback. The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau crunched the Foxconn and EY numbers to come up with a 25-year payback. Regardless of the assumptions involved (and there are deep flaws), the very exercise is problematic. Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First in Washington, D.C., whose mission is promoting accountability in economic development, says "It's preposterous to think anyone can predict what is going to be happening with the economy in 25 years, particularly in high-tech where product lifecycles are so volatile." One example of the flawed assumptions: In its calculation of the 25-year payback for the Foxconn project, the bureau did not use the accepted standard of discounted cash flow. Instead, it calculated the break-even point as when Wisconsin gets its original money back—even though inflation alone across the 25 years mocks the entire concept. The Office of Management and Budget recommends that public projects use a 7 percent annualized rate of cash discount. Using such a number and retaining even the credibility-stretching bureau's job assumption, the payback period quickly diminishes from the 25-year period the bureau produced to … never.
The False Security of Clawbacks. Over the years, as states and municipalities have been burned in corporate incentive deals, a sort of insurance has been added to these agreements. They give the sponsoring body authority to reclaim their upfront money if the corporate entity fails to fulfill its promises—typically measured by capital expenditure and job creation. Clawbacks are an important part of the contract between the semi-private Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (formed soon after Walker's initial election in 2010, with Walker as chairman) and Foxconn.
As an April 25, 2016, story by Gabrielle Gurley in the Prospect explained, "Clawbacks have met with checkered success across the county." Pro-business officials who are personally invested in a project find it hard to activate clawback provisions even when they are triggered due to fear it will sour their pro-business reputations and confirm their over-optimism. Another factor can be the leverage that a corporation has once it has accepted and used a large amount of public funds. The optimistic forecasts by Wisconsin's fiscal bureau predict the state will be in the hole to Foxconn by at least $1 billion by the end of 2025. What would state officials say if Foxconn demands at this point a rewriting of the clawback schedule due to unforeseen industry or economic changes? Would they be willing to let Foxconn just walk away from the project? Could they successfully sue for clawback damages from a Taiwanese corporation or from the other guaranteeing entity, Chairman Gou's personal corporation, based in the Cayman Islands?
A deep look at the economic impact study process is bound to end up in a place of a certain amount of cynicism. Academics of all stripes have been taking shots at the industry for years without making much of a dent. It's a business model that is self-rewarding and self-perpetuating as long as politicians look for quick fixes, photo opportunities, and job-creation campaign fodder.
Some hopeful signs have emerged. Kansas and Missouri have signed what amounts to a détente agreement over not spending wildly to get corporate headquarters to move a few miles over their state lines. Florida has adopted an Australian-developed software model that allows its leaders to compare opportunity costs among several expenditures, so that decision-makers can look at the relative cost/benefit among disparate spending options such as a corporate incentive, beach improvements, or tax relief.
The Foxconn project has turned into a major issue in this November's gubernatorial election. Walker, who has been cited in numerous national roundups as a vulnerable incumbent, initially seemed surprised by the backlash against the project. In the months after the announcement, he was jubilant over landing the deal, no doubt still deep in the thrill of winning the multistate bidding war. He was pleased to have ammunition to fight his critics who pointed to how he had fallen far short of his first-term job development projections. He was also sensitive to his vulnerability over the state's economic competitiveness exposed by his presidential primary opponents in 2015, particularly Donald Trump. But when late 2017 polling showed the unpopularity of the multibillion-dollar commitment, he temporarily eliminated the topic from his stump speeches. But there were never any signs of doubt about the deal from the Walker camp. For a career politician better characterized by his ambition than his vision, with the prospect of fighting a blue-wave election cycle, Walker felt the need for the kind of dramatic and short-term boost provided by the prospect of thousands of imminent Foxconn jobs.
Since then, Walker, with Foxconn's assistance, has been assiduously working on promoting the project's statewide benefits, a tough sell considering the project's geographic location in the far southeast corner of the state. In July, Foxconn announced plans to develop R&D "innovation centers" in far-off Eau Claire and Green Bay, which have been noted as odd choices, given the educational and commercial landscape, which puts liberal-leaning Madison and its University of Wisconsin at the center of engineering and technological talent.
Would the Foxconn deal have been approved it had been put to a statewide referendum, rather than pushed through a compliant, Republican-controlled statehouse? It seems highly doubtful, since polls show significant skepticism over the benefits of the deal even among the state's Republicans. Business leaders such as Kevin Conroy, CEO of fast-growing Madison biotech Exact Sciences, maker of Cologuard, has severely critiqued the deal, lamenting the lost opportunity cost of using even a fraction of the investment as incubation and venture capital, with the potential to create the kind of high-paid workforce seen in his company and other emerging companies in the state.
As Wisconsin superintendent since 2009, Evers has seen the dramatic effects that Walker's education spending cuts and attacks on public unions have had on the quality of K-12 and university education. He's on the side of evidence-backed, peer-reviewed research that demonstrates that taking money from education and using it for corporate subsidies can be a disastrous path for any state. Historically, the Wisconsin electorate has proven to be finely balanced, most recently electing both Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson, among the most liberal and most conservative senators in Washington. The soft-spoken Evers may believe he can convince Wisconsin voters that Walker has misspent billions of taxpayer dollars to bring Foxconn to the state. But as of yet, he has not articulated exactly how he would go about modifying the signed contracts and the promised subsidies, nor is it clear that an onslaught of Walker ads touting the thousands of wonderful Foxconn jobs and concomitant statewide economic bounty will fail to sway. After all, which is easier to parse: 13,000 "family-supporting jobs" or "just thinking" about what a few billion dollars could do if spent on education.
Long after deal-maker Scott Walker and the current legislators who voted for Foxconn incentives are out of office, Wisconsin and Racine County taxpayers, as well as their children, will still be paying the bills.
Lawrence Tabak in a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer whose work has appeared in numerous national journals, including Salon, Fast Company, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. His previous work on Foxconn appeared in Belt magazine.


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A Closer Look at the Fortis Cosmonautis AM Ceramic Chronograph
The Fortis Cosmonautis AM Ceramic Chronograph, is an iconic watch that stood out from the Baselworld 2016 because of its unique design. The ingenious mix of silver and black dials, combined with ceramic and steel bezels, as well as the bracelet and leather options made it stand out as a version that would meet the needs of many fans. The only thing that made it unattractive was its price, at $3076.38, it was still out of reach for many fans. All that changed when their US retailer WatchBuys decided to go for a "direct pricing," which brought them down to $1,680. That made not only affordable to many ardent fans, but also a worthy every dollar spent on it. In this review, we are going to take A Closer Look at the Fortis Cosmonautis AM Ceramic Chronograph.
The AM means this watch has a silver dial, but if you want one with a steel dial, you can choose the PM model. Starting with the case, which measures 42mm by 51mm by 15mm, it has a masculine appearance, but isn't too big for a 7-inch wrist, although a slight increase in size would make it look oversize. Overall, the watch has a tall appearance but you wouldn't be able to notice because of the undercuts. The case dips nicely into the wrist to give a slim appearance when worn, while the rounded sides, and domed crystal gives it a simple wristwatch appearance, that's perfect for formal occasions.
Overall, you will like the simple design, which features flowing sides that are fully polished, brushed tapered lugs, as well as the crown and its guards on the right side of the case. However, you will notice that what stands out most, and makes it unique, is its black ceramic tachymeter bezel. The ceramic material gives it an appealing sheen that isn't shiny, but has a light texture, while its white fill doesn't appear as too bright, instead, it appears as somehow aged.
What some may not like about it, is that it uses screw-down pushers that were in the original 90s Cosmonautis. They can be quite a challenge to manipulate if you have the watch on, but the good news is that they work, but all you may also take off the watch, and make adjustments if necessary. The watch has a Valjoux 7750 movement, and it isn't decorated much, apart from the custom rotor. Other than that, the outer look of this watch is simply great. Its rotor has a blue-filled Fortis logo etched into it, a text that says "World's First Manufacturer of Automatic Wristwatches," as well as some stars. The writing simply serves to remind you the watch's history in space.
The real star of this watch is its dial, it shows a clear balance between legibility, great use of color, and most important, what a quality design should look like. That's something that you don't easily get from a wrist watch in that price range, which shouldn't be surprising considering its initial pricing of over $3,000.
The black dial is obviously a classic design, however, the silver dial is a tribute to its original design for use in space. The dial has three sub-dials and two major areas that are separated by graining. In the center area that is sunburst, you will find the primary index. It's within this area that you will find the numerals for each hour expect for 3, 6, 9, and 12. Instead of those numerals, you will find rectangular markers, as well as triangle for the case of 12. The markers are tall enough to give a 3-D look, and are filled with some green lume, and surrounded by black borders, which makes them legible at night.
The graining has also be used to separate the sub-dials at 12, 9, and 6, where one sub-dial shows the Chronograph hours, chronograph minutes, and active seconds. They all have clear black numerals as well as lines to make them easy to read. The hour and minute hand, they used swords that are black with the mid section filled with lumen. The second hand has a stick with an arrow that's half orange half-black.
Overall, the Fortis Cosmonautis AM Ceramic Chronograph is one of the best wristwatches that you can get for $1,680. It's designed to be worn in formal occasion, but it's isn't too formal that you can't wear it to a game of golf, or when you are out to watch your favorite game. We hope that you found this review to be informative and engaging, and you will enjoy your new watch.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Cibecue Battlefield
Located on the White Mountain Apache Reservation, the Battle of Cibecue, August 30, 1881, was brought on by the influence of a shaman, Nockadelklinne, who preached a doctrine of raising the dead and removing the white interlopers from Arizona. Alarmed civilians and military personnel wanted the shaman arrested. Fighting erupted shortly after Nockadelklinne's arrest along Cibecue Creek. The Prophet, as he was called, died in the aftermath, as did several soldiers under Col. Eugene Asa Carr. Most of Carr's casualties resulted from the mutiny of the White Mountain.
Apache scouts. The Cibecue affair touched off a general outbreak that saw Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches such as Naiche, Juh, and Geronimo bolt the reservation and plunge Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico into two years of turmoil. Cibecue battlefield is located in the village of Cibecue. No marker denotes the site.
Bill Yenne gives the following version from his book, Indian Wars.
Carr reached Nakaidoklini's camp on Cibicue Creek on August 30, with elements of two companies of cavalry and a two-dozen-man detachment of White Mountain Apache scouts under Lieutenant Thomas Cruse. The scouts spoke with Nakaidoklini, explaining that he had to come with the soldiers. If he did not, they told him, he would be killed. Nakaidoklini predicted that he would never be killed and went with the soldiers.
As the troops made camp, Nakaidoklini's disciples attacked in force. The Apache scouts promptly revolted and joined in, shooting wildly at the soldiers. Having been ordered to shoot Nakaidoklini if anything happened, Sergeant John MacDonald did so, although it took several shots to bring him down. Various accounts of the incident have Nakaidoklni's wife and members of his family also being killed.
The soldiers took cover and the two sides traded shots until dusk, at which time, Carr organized a withdrawal under cover of darkness. He had lost four men killed in action, and another man would later die of his wounds.


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In order to be respectful of the needs of other clients and avoid cancellation fees, we require that you provide us notice of your cancellation, reschedule or appointment adjustments, a minimum of 24-hours in advance from your scheduled appointment time. Your appointment can only be cancelled over the phone. Any cancellation/reschedule made less than 24hours in advance will result in a charge equal to 50% of the reserved services.
A "No-Show" is a client who does not show up to their scheduled appointment without canceling a minimum of 24-hours in advance. Failure to be present at your scheduled appointment time without notice, will be recorded in each client's chart as a "No-Show". A second occurrence of "No-Show" without reasonable cause may result in client discharge from the facility.
A "Same Day or Late Cancellation" applies to appointments cancelled within 24- hours of your confirmed and scheduled appointment time. This applies to cancellations due to being late to your appointment, services being removed or changed from your originally scheduled appointment, or the cancellation of one or more services from your scheduled appointment due to pre and post care negligence. Any cancellation/reschedule made less than 4hours in advance will result in a charge equal to 100% of the reserved services.


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Q: Is it possible to run a recipe in parallel with others in chef with some hack? I have a chef recipe say A which contains three recipes B, C and D. Now i what is to run D in parallel wrt sequential execution of B and C. One hack i know is write is to write logic of B, C and D in python(B.py, C.py and D.py) and execute them in parallel( All.py ) in some script and make a consolidated recipe that calls All.py. But the code is too large to convert. Is there any hack to run recipes in parallel in chef using the same recipes?

A: No, Chef does not support concurrent execution in the general case. Chef-provisioning specifically supports concurrent handling for VM creation but that's a special case.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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For Sale: 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle in Chatsworth, California
Collector Car Insurance.
$2,612.86*/month for 180 months at 6.50% APR
A Chevelle like no other!!!
This 1968 Chevelle has 4,000 Man Hours and Nearly $700K invested and it shows throughout.
Powered by the Vaunted Supercharged LT5 Crate Engine that powered the Legendary ZR1 Corvette, it produces 755 Horsepower and 715 LBS of Torque out of the crate. No longer available, the LT5 will plant you to the seat as it pulls hard through every gear of the Tremec 6-Speed Manual.
The all steel body has been widened 6 Inches and finished in a stunning "Carrizma Candy Red" that has so much depth, pictures just don't do it justice!!!
The interior has been redone in leather and maintains a classic look that perfectly compliments this ultimate Resto-Mod!
Hotchkis Suspension's Electronically Controlled Coil-Overs are installed and can controlled via a smart phone to make live adjustments to spring stiffness and dampening. Featuring premium adjustable monotube shocks featuring CNC machined pistons and digressive valving. Electronic shock control units, a master in-car control unit, cockpit controller switch and military spec wiring harness is installed to control the ride from either the dash or a smart phone.
Braking power is provided through 6 Piston Baer Disc Brakes with drilled and slotted rotors that show beautifully through the staggered Forgeline Wheels measuring 20x12 in the rear and 19x10 up front. Toyo 335's (rear) and 285's front provide excellent grip.
A GM 12-Bolt has been bolstered with Currie Axles and 3.42 Gears. Adjustable Power Steering allows adjustability based on preference and further enhances the amazing drivability of this one of a kind Chevelle.
Simply stated, this is a one of kind Chevelle that cannot be re-produced!!
Great lease rates and Financing also available on any of our inventory!
Buy Sell Trade Consignments Welcome!
Please email [email protected] or call 1-818-773-8181
About the Chevelle:
Part of the General Motors A-Body platform, the Chevelle was one of Chevrolet's most successful nameplates. Body styles include coupes, sedans, convertibles and station wagons. Super Sport versions were produced through the 1973 model year.
Ford released the mid-sized Fairlane in 1963, to which Chevrolet responded with the 1964 Chevelle based on a new A platform design. Riding on a 115-inch wheelbase, the new Chevelle was similar in size, simplicity, and concept to the standard-sized 1955-1957 Chevrolet models. The Chevelle was the U.S. auto industry's only all-new car for 1964 and was positioned to fill the gap between the small Chevy II and the full-sized Chevrolet models. Introduced in August 1963 by "Bunkie" Knudsen, the Chevelle filled the gap for Chevrolet with sales of 338,286 for the year.
Originally conceived as an upsizing of the Chevy II with a unibody platform which originated with the XP-726 program, GM's "senior compact" A-platform used a body-on-frame construction using a suspension setup similar to its full sized automobiles with a 4 link rear suspension.
The Chevelle Super Sport, or SS represented Chevrolet's entry into the muscle car battle. Early 1964 and 1965 Chevelle's had a Malibu SS badge on the rear quarter panel.
The 1968 Chevelle received an all-new distinctly sculpted body with tapered front fenders and a rounded beltline. The car adopted a long-hood/short-deck profile with a high rear-quarter "kick-up". The 1968 coupes and convertibles now rode a 112-inch wheelbase. Hardtop coupes featured a semi-fastback, flowing roofline with a long hood and short deck, influenced by the all-new Camaro.
The Super Sport SS396 sport coupe and convertible became series on its own. Chevrolet produced 60,499 SS 396 sport coupes, & 2,286 convertibles
Government-mandated side marker lighting was incorporated, with early 1968 SS 396 light bezels seen with the SS 396 nomenclature - Black-accented Super Sports had F70x14 red-stripe tires and a standard 325-horsepower 396-cubic-inch Turbo-Jet V8 engine with the special twin-domed hood; 350 and 375-horsepower 396 engines were optional. The SS 396 sport coupe started at $2,899 - or $236 more than a comparable Malibu with its 307-cubic-inch V8.
Whilst Fusion Motor Company make a sincere effort to supply information that is accurate and complete, we are aware that errors and omissions may occur. Therefore, we are not able to guarantee the accuracy of the information and we cannot accept liability for loss or damage arising from misleading information or for any reliance on which you may place on the information contained on this website or our advertisements. We highly recommend that you examine the vehicle to check the accuracy of the information supplied. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected] or by calling 818-773-8181
Price:$299,950
Location:Chatsworth, California
Make:Chevrolet
Model:Chevelle
Exterior Color:Red
Odometer:75
Stock Number:5681501
VIN:1383788145107
Hi, I'm interested in your 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle listed for sale on ClassicCars.com for $299,950.00.
Fusion Luxury Motors
20837 Nordhoff Street


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Cyber Security, Featured
Calls for standardized cybersecurity breach reporting 0 707
Internet security company ESET East Africa has added its voice to the call for legislation to compel organizations to share or release information to a supervisory authority, affected individuals or organizations in case of cybersecurity breaches.
According to Teddy Njoroge, ESET Country Manager in charge of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, this would help responsible branches of government, businesses as well as Cybersecurity services vendors to keep ahead of cyber-criminals.
"Due to the siloed and secretive manner in which breaches are reported in Kenya, another attack similar to 'WannaCryptor' ransomware could be devastating if directed to critical institutions such as health, government, and especially the financial services sector", He said.
On Tuesday, May 17, Joe Mucheru, Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MoICT) challenged the financial services sector in Kenya to improve information sharing and reporting on Cyber-security breaches.
"Breach notification eliminates the clandestine attempts by hackers to attack systems and enables synergized efforts towards the prevention of the criminal activity as well as their prosecution", he said.
Speaking at the Cyber-Security & Banking Forum organized by Citibank and the ICT Authority, the CS said standardized reporting would also help in quantifying the exposure and resilience of organizations both in public and private sector to cyber security incidents.
"A shared reporting system would be a welcome move in developing a unified preventive and counteractive measure to hamper the growth of malware such as 'WannaCryptor' and other forms of cybercrime in the country."
The encrypting – type malware is also known as 'WannaCry' or 'Wcrypt' that hit the world on Friday, May 14, 2017, spread rapidly around the globe by exploiting a vulnerability in computers running unpatched versions of Microsoft's Windows Operating System.
Njoroge added that a standardized and shared reporting system would be a welcome move in developing a unified preventive or counteractive measure to hamper the growth of malware and other forms of cybercrime in the country.
"In the aftermath of 'Wannacryptor' ransomware attack we can see from statistics a trend that indicates potential under-reporting of both successful and unsuccessful attacks especially noting that over eighty percent of personal computers and servers in Kenya run on the Windows Operating System", he explained.
ESET recorded eight 'Wannacryptor' attack attempts in Kenya during the period May 14th to 16th 2017. In Africa, worst hit was Egypt which recorded 1,592 attempts followed by South Africa at 386 and Nigeria at 42 attempts out of the 15 countries that registered attack attempts.
Around the globe, ESET recorded the highest number of attacks in Russia with 30,189 cases, followed by Ukraine – 7,955, Taiwan – 7736 and The Philippines at 1,973 cases and which was followed by Egypt.
"In this period 14,383 ESET clients reported 66,566 attack attempts which were all detected and stopped. 60,187 attacks were detected through file or memory detection while another 6,379 attack attempts were stopped through ESET's Attack Network Protection module", said Njoroge.
Play it safe during FIFA 2018
Flaws in email encryption revealed
Cyber SecurityRansomwareWannaCry
Previous ArticleWannaCryptor: What you need to know about the ransomwareNext ArticleWhy Parents need to defend their homes against the deep waters of the Internet
1.9MFans
Ransomware Protection Crucial to Enterprise 0 511
Dennis Koome 2019-07-24 9:15 am 2019-07-24
Ransomware is by far the biggest threat among Enterprises. So what is Ransomware? It is a malicious code that blocks or encrypts the contents of a device and demands a ransom to restore access to the data.
According to research done by ESET, Companies named ransomware their number one concern.
In response to customer needs and concerns, ESET integrated Ransomware Shield into its security solutions. ESET has long been providing its customers with very good behavior-based malware detection and also with Host-based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) that allows users to set custom rules for the protection against ransomware. However, should something slip past the 11 other security layers, Ransomware Shield will be automatically activated.
While ransomware infection often starts with clicking a suspicious link or a fictitious invoice, ESET found that email remains the most common distribution method.
To combat these scenarios, enter ESET Dynamic Threat Defense (EDTD). EDTD provides another layer of security for ESET products like Mail Security and Endpoint products. It utilizes a cloud-based sandboxing technology and multiple machine learning models to detect new, never before seen type of threats. In result, attachments that were classified as malicious are stripped off the email and the recipient gets information about the detection.
To learn more about how ESET can protect your business, and to book a FREE in house Cybersecurity Training Session for your employees, please sign up below.
Interview: Addressing the Six Biggest Cybersecurity Challenges for Enterprise 0 261
Dennis Koome 2019-07-01 10:50 am 2019-07-01
Ken Kimani, Channel Manager of ESET East Africa, introduces the 6 biggest cybersecurity challenges for enterprises
Enterprises are under constant attack from cybersecurity threats resulting in the loss of millions in revenue annually. Factors such as ransomware, targeted attacks, insufficient network visibility, various operating systems in an organization, bad security behaviour among office staff, lack of skilled cybersecurity workforce and the level of tolerance among staff are the major causes of cyber-attacks in the country.
To mitigate these issues, ESET East Africa offers free training, suitable for all skill levels to help educate enterprises on the importance of cybersecurity.
Subscribe to our newsletter to find out more about this training, our enterprise offering and to follow our series on the 6 Biggest Cybersecurity Challenges for Enterprises.


Dianna Kay (Gambrel) Merida, age 57, departed this life at her home in Barbourville, Kentucky on Wednesday, April 3, 2019. She was the daughter of R.P. and Susan Gambrel, born to them on August 25, 1961 at Mills, Kentucky. She was united in marriage to Wayne Merida and to this union two daughters were born. Dianna was a member of Springfield Baptist Church.
She was preceded in death by her father R.P. Gambrel and daughter Chrissy Lynn Merida.
Left behind to mourn her passing are her mother Susan Gambrel of Flat Lick, Kentucky, daughter Crystal Gail and husband Mark Powell of Corbin, Kentucky, granddaughter Ashley Nicole Hubbard, brother Curtis Gambrel of Flat Lick, Kentucky, sister Rita (Bargo) Dunford of Corbin, Kentucky, nephew Rodney Bargo and wife Stephanie of Harlan, Kentucky, niece Wendy (Bargo) Martin of Summerdale, Alabama, special aunt Hester Gambrel of Corbin, Kentucky. She leaves behind a host of many relatives and friends to mourn her passing.
A Graveside Funeral service for Dianna Kaye Merida will be held on Friday, April 5, 2019 at 3:00 p.m., with Reverend Kenneth Merida officiating. She will be laid to rest in Binghamtown Cemetery at Flat Lick, Kentucky. Cobb-Hampton Funeral Home is in charge of all arrangements.
To the Merida family, the staff of Cobb-Hampton Funeral Home would like to express our heartfelt sympathy during your time of bereavement.


Here at Galt Landscape we pride ourselves on understanding and working within your financial abilities. Whether you need landscape improvement or remodeling, new construction, rehab, rescue, or otherwise, we know that you have certain financial guidelines to adhere to and we're happy to work with you on building a custom landscape plan that fits within those guidelines. There are a plethora of options and plenty of flexibility when it comes to deciding on materials, finishes, sizes, arrangement and layout, etc. Reach out to us today and let us build and maintain a beautiful landscape for you.


Today, Capital One announced the acquisition of Wikibuy, an Austin, Texas-based technology company that is a leader in the growing market of automated online shopping comparison engines.
Launched in 2016, Wikibuy is a completely free, digital tool that makes saving time and money easy.
With more than two million members, Wikibuy removes friction from the online shopping process by automating cross-site price comparisons in real time while consumers shop; locating and applying valuable active coupon codes at checkout; and providing product price tracking and alerts.
"We believe that consumers want intelligent, real-time banking tools that proactively anticipate and deliver on their needs," said Joe Poellnitz, SVP of US Card at Capital One Financial. "With Wikibuy, we've acquired an innovative startup that helps customers save time, money, and enables them to shop with confidence."
Austin will continue to be home for Wikibuy, where it will continue to provide members with the same great, clear, and simple service they receive today.
"We've been impressed by Capital One's strong vision for the future and considerable experience leading innovation through technology," said Adam Gauvin, Co-CEO of Wikibuy in a blog post announcing the news. "As it has moved further into digital experiences, Capital One has expanded the ways it helps customers make better financial decisions."
For more information, please reach out to Sie Soheili (sie.soheili@capitalone.com).


Comentarios: The application is easy to use and setup. If you need assistance, support is swift and helpful.
Puntos a favor: The application is efficient and does what the website says it will do. What users say the enjoy the most is how it runs itself once you schedule the activity. Users also say they like how the content is safe and non- political.
Contras: I don't have any cons to speak of. The features provide what I was looking for.


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Home Defense New mortar system lighten the load for soldiers
New mortar system lighten the load for soldiers
Army photograph by David Kamm
Natick's new virtual reality dome will enable researchers to assess the impact of the environment on Soldier cognition, including decision-making, spatial memory or wayfinding. Researchers will also be able to assess the impact of new equipment on cognitive abilities.
The Watervliet Arsenal, N.Y., announced this week that it has received a $4.6 million contract to start a new product line for the 81mm mortar system that will help reduce an infantryman's fatigue and movement time over a cross-country route.
This next generation of an 81mm mortar bipod is a continuation of the Army's effort to reduce the weight of small indirect fire systems that are carried by Soldiers, said Laura Pisculli, the arsenal's supervisor of production planning and control. The arsenal already manufactures a lightweight mortar baseplate and tube.
"This multimillion dollar order will add to the Arsenal's current workload more than 13,000 hours of direct labor," Pisculli said. "Because this new product line will require a significant amount of preparation in regards to training and new tooling, our first delivery will not be until 2018."
The first shipment of the mortar bipods is scheduled to leave the arsenal in March 2018 and the order should be complete by November 2018. Each bipod consists of about 25 close-tolerance, machined parts, and will weigh approximately 22 pounds, as compared to the 27 pounds of the legacy system.
Nevertheless, with the start of any new product line, there will be challenges, said Scott Huber, an arsenal general foreman.
"Manufacturing such products as Abrams tank cannons and 155mm howitzer tubes is extremely challenging given the tight machining tolerances," Huber said. "But this product line is no less challenging as we will be working with material that is new to us, such as Kevlar and Teflon, as well as new processes that will require welding extremely hard materials such as Titanium."
Huber explained that when the arsenal begins a new product line there is a significant amount of time spent writing computer programs, developing special tooling, and establishing new outside vendors to provide the raw material long before the first part is machined.
"Although delivery does not start until 2018, we already have a team, from procurement to production planners to machinists, working hard to produce the first two systems," Huber said. "Long before we begin shipping these bipods to the Army, we will thoroughly vet the fit, form, and function of the new bipod through a rigorous quality control process. That will be our focus between now our first shipment in 2018."
In addition to the workload and the revenue, there is another added value for this order.
"Anytime we get an order for a new product line, it creates a great sense of excitement in the workforce because they will be required to do something that they had not seen before," Huber said. "We love a challenge here and when we know that our products will go from us into the Soldiers' hands, I can't think of any other job that would make us feel more proud of what we do."
The 81mm mortar system is used primarily by the infantry as an indirect fire weapon when a high-angle trajectory is required to hit enemy troops, materiel, and positions. It has a range that exceeds 5,800 meters.
The Watervliet Arsenal is an Army-owned-and-operated manufacturing facility and is the oldest, continuously active arsenal in the United States having begun operations during the War of 1812.
Today's arsenal is relied upon by U.S. and foreign militaries to produce the most advanced, high-tech, high-powered weaponry for cannon, howitzer, and mortar systems. This National Historic Registered Landmark had $138 million in revenue in fiscal year 2015 and has an annual economic benefit to the local community in excess of $100 million.
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First Boeing P-8A Poseidon for United Kingdom takes flight


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Q: Collision detection I am doing a project where there is a room filled with objects with different shapes.
I am drawing the room in paint, being the picture all white and painting all the walls/obstacles red.
I am drawing each movable object in a different file, also using paint.
Now, I load both the map of the room and the objects as matrix of 1's and 0's to my program. I have one matrix for the first, and another matrix for each of the objects I load on the room.
The object will be able to move freely in the room, moving by any distance, any angle, and being allowed to rotate itself. How should I go about devising a method that allows me to rotate the object by any angle and still being able to detect collisions? What I mean is that if the object could just go up, down, left and right, I could just check both the matrix to see if they "overlap" any of the 1's. But if I want to rotate the object, let's say, by 10º, I can't see how I can convert that to a matrix and check it against the wall's matrix.
Should I drop the matrix representation and create mathematical regions and deal with this as we deal with it in IR^2 calculus, with some library? Wouldn't it be pretty expensive in computation terms?
What is a simple method to do this? It doesn't need to be a top notch method, but I am using it for a complex algorithm and I wouldn't want to be losing too much computing time at each iteration with this.

A: This likely won't completely answer your question, but it may help.  When I was doing collision detection in a small game I was writing, I would have a collision 'hit box' surrounding the object as well as a more complex detection method.  You don't have to use the complex method until the two hit boxes overlap, and then you only have to calculate collision for the two objects, rather than every object to every other object in space.

A: I did a similar thing years ago. Each object of my 3D scene was composed of basic wall/floor/ceiling object patterns. Each object was a mesh with his own bounding sphere. Then I first tested my camera's bouding sphere against each object's bounding sphere for detecting collision, and if they collided I performed a more precise collision test (mesh/sphere).
It was fast enough (Duron 600 MHz) and it was really easy to implement.
For your scenario, you seem to have a lot of dynamic objects (I only had the camera in my project, as a moving object) so it might help to have some kind of space partitioning techniques like BSP-trees of quadtrees.

A: I suggest approximating both bodies as spheres (collision capsule) with radius R1 and R2.
If this is the case, you'll need to account for:
1 - The radius of the two bodies. In this case the enemy will be a point of radius 0 and the bullet will have radius getBulletSize();
2 - The velocity of the bullet and the enemy during the animation frame is between 0<=t<=1.
The case of the collision will occur when |r1 + r2| < d, where d is the distance between both bodies centre of mass.
d is given as P(t) - Q(t), Q and P are the centre of mass of both objects. P(t) = P0 + Vpt. Q(t) = Q0 + Vqt.
Vp = P1 - P0; Vq = Q1 - Q0;
=> d = P(t) - Q(t)
Solving for the case (R1 + R2)^2 = (P(t) - Q(t))^2 will produce the time of collision. Don't be scared of this formulae! It solves to a simple second order polynomial of which the quadratic formula will solve for t. If B^2 > 0 in the formulae, first time of surface collision occurs when the time is a minimum!
Collision Cases:
Occurs if:
1) 0 <= t <= 1.
Preliminary Check:
2) minimum d (derivative of radius condition = 0) must be < R1 + R2
You can also enhance this by creating a bounding volume hierarchy of the object mesh with a leaf density (number of primitives per cell) condition. The initial collision tests would then iterate from root down to handle over approximation due to the capsule order.


Bicycle Rally Organised by Srushtidnyan and ASP Cycle Club ASP College, Devrukh.
This was cool in the middle of hot summer with Climate Ambassadors of Srushtidnyan, ASP Cycle Club and Department of Geography of ASP College, Devrukh and our Swedish friend Zelda Tuvesson and Swedish Interns of Future Earth Sofia Constanza Brännström and Isabell Carlsson. Bicycle Rally on March 4, 2019 from Devrukh to Sacred Groves of Kundi Village. Thank you all for making this day great and feeling young!


8 h 30' Drive from Cao Bang town to the Ta Lung national entrance 70 km,visit the national entrance ,12h 30 lunch there .13 h go on walk along the valley and lime stone mountain from Ta Lung to La village about 15 km.Dinner and overnight in the Tay's stilt- house.
8h after breakfast,continue go on walk and clim the lime stone mountain , 12h lunch. ,13 h continue trave along the lime stone to the Na Nieng village.Dinner and over night in the Tay 's stilt- house.
8h after breakfast leave the Na Nieng village to Dong Khe town on walk 12km.Lunch in Dong Khe 13 h continue to the Pac Khoang village .Dinner and over night in the Red Dao 's village.
8h after breakfast trekking through lime stone valley ,the small streams 12 h stop for lunch.13 h continue walking to Na Pang village ,Trang Dinh district – Lang Son.Dinner and overnight at Tay's stilt-house.
- English or French speaking guide escorted from Hanoi.


At least three people were killed when a suicide attacker blew himself up in Kabul Monday, close to where scores of Afghans had been protesting against Taliban attacks on the minority Hazara ethnic group.
Health ministry spokesman Wahid Majroh said another eight people were wounded in the blast, which struck in front of a high school in the downtown area of the Afghan capital. A photo shared on WhatsApp showed several bodies laying on the ground.
"The suicide attacker on foot wanted to target protesters, but he was stopped at a security checkpoint some 200 meters from the site," interior ministry deputy spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said.
"There have been casualties and I can say most of them are security forces." A police officer at the scene said he could see 10 to 15 casualties on the ground, as well as body parts. He said most of the victims were members of Afghanistan's intelligence agency and police, which had been deployed to secure the city during the protest.
"It was a huge blast near Istiqlal high school, very close to where the demonstrators were gathering," witness Qais Nawabi told AFP. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Demonstrators, including university students, had taken to the streets of Kabul to demand the deployment of military reinforcements to two Hazara-dominated districts in the southeastern province of Ghazni which have been attacked by the Taliban.
The explosion came as Afghan security forces step up ground and air offensives in Jaghori and Malistan districts, where Hazara pro-government fighters and Afghan troops are battling the militants. Fighting in the area has been ongoing since Wednesday, fanning fears that the violence could be rooted in ethnic or sectarian differences. Most Hazaras belong to the Shiite branch of Islam.
The Taliban, which are Sunni and largely ethnic Pashtuns, have been accused of committing human rights violations against the group during their oppressive 1996-2001 rule. "We have no news from our people living there," Asif Ashna, one of the protesters, said in a Facebook live broadcast.
"If the government's duty is to protect the lives of the people then why have they not taken any measures in the past week?" Protester Ishaq Anis told AFP that security forces should be permanently based in Jaghori and Malistan to prevent "further attacks against Hazara people".
Hazaras have long criticised the government for failing to protect them from Taliban and Islamic State group attacks, even suggesting the blundering was deliberate. The escalation in violence comes as US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad returned to the region as part of efforts to convince the Taliban to end the 17-year war.
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"Mommy" is without a doubt one of the most special words in the English language. I treasure the title and everything it stands for. To my kids, "mommy" means protector, helper, ice cream scooper, lullaby singer, kisser of boo boos, and, not to mention, a source of love and understanding.
It's a job I love. It's a job I was born to do. But it's not all I am.
I am still my own person. It's been years since I set my own schedule for sleeping and socializing, but I do vaguely remember that I have interests that have nothing to do with Disney princesses or LEGO Ninjago characters.
I don't want to lose myself completely in motherhood. At times, it seems like a forgone conclusion – being a mommy is like digging further and further into a rabbit hole until there's no way out. But as I dig, I leave a trail of breadcrumbs – little reminders of who I was, who I am, and who I will be.
I went to countless concerts before kids came along. I shouted the lyrics to every Usher song at the top of my lungs. And there's no reason I have to stop. I make it a priority to keep going to concerts, because that's one of the things I love, even if I may not go as often as I used to.
Going to work brings me joy. I have the opportunity to work with adorable children and fantastic families every day. I didn't go back to work after the kids were born because I had to. I wanted to. And nothing has changed in that department.
He was around long before the kids came into the picture, and he'll be around long after. They'll grow up and one day move away, and it'll be the two of us again. I don't want us to be strangers when that day arrives. We intentionally set up a great support system so we can enjoy nights out, even vacations, just the two of us.
There are days it's easier to prioritize myself and my interests. But some days, I'm lost in the crazy hustle and bustle of parenthood. And that's okay. Whether you love movies, music or anything else – dedicate a little time and energy to remember who you are. The "me" in "mommy" will thank you for it!


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"Sex And Education" at Penguin Rep has Great Writing and Acting with a lot of Laughs and Explicit Language
By dskriloff on July 3, 2014 Comments
BY GEORGE J. DACRE
This is a fun piece of theatre as presented at Penguin Repertory in Stony Point and a show that I believe teachers will especially like because it portrays a retiring teacher giving one last effort to leave a good impression on a student.
The drama begins as evidence seems to indicate that star basketball player Joe Marks (Logan Sutherland) of Roosevelt High School is guilty of sending a profanity laced, poorly written note to his cheerleader girlfriend Hannah Winters (Bridget Gabbe), as they are taking a final exam in Miss Edwards (Lizbeth Mackay's) English class. Said note gets intercepted by Miss Edwards, who is described, shall we say, uncharitably therein, and she finds that Joe is trying to seduce Hannah but Hannah is just not yet ready for that.
Miss Edwards promptly says that Joe, who has a scholarship to the University of North Carolina, will not pass unless he can write the note over in a proper manner still trying to get Hannah in bed. It must be written, however, with class and with the proper words and motivations.
What follows is a delicious dialogue between Miss Edwards and Joe that is priceless, as the jockish Joe just doesn't get it and debates Miss Edwards in some very funny scenes. Meanwhile Hannah, in her cheerleader uniform, which she fills very nicely, jumps on and off the stage with cheers that fit in with the story of the schoolmarm who is retiring to go into real estate, trying to educate Joe and Hannah.
This show is staged adroitly and there is never a dull moment. Sutherland is very convincing as Joe Marks, and his outlook on life and sex and education is far from Miss Edwards' very pointed instructions. As for Hannah, she just seems to enjoy the whole scene. It comes to a hilarious conclusion and make sure you do not miss Miss Edwards' final words.
All three actors are making their debuts at Penguin Rep. In the show they each speak separately to the audience and Director Joe Brancato has expertly put this all together. The writing of author Lissa Levin ("WKRP in Cincinatti," "Mr. Belvedere") is excellent.
Despite the use of explicit language, including the F word many times and description of a certain sex act by Joe in his note to Hannah, "Sex And Education," as I said, is just plain fun.
I rate it Three Stars out of Four. For tickets 845-786-2873.
"Sex And Education" at Penguin Rep has Great Writing and Acting with a lot of Laughs and Explicit Language added by dskriloff on July 3, 2014


So, the wait has met its fate. We have the first ever Calling Tab from Asus. If you thought this is the only surprise then read a few words more until you find out that it will not cost you more than Rs 16,000 to you. Isn't it great?
We have seen a lot of big players trying their brand names to in cash the budget segment, which indeed is the biggest segment in India and countries alike. Asus has played a very careful tact by launching this calling Tab much before than any of its natural competitors in this budget Tab segment.
This Asus Tab runs on the latest Android's Jelly Bean and its processor and RAM are 1.2 Ghz and 1GB respectively. With dual camera and crisp 1280×800 pixel resolution, the Tab has a lot to offer and much more.


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Graham Onions wins Hilton Garden Inn Player of the Month for June
Lancashire Cricket Club
News From Lancashire Cricket Club
Lancashire bowler wins Hilton Garden Inn Player of the Month
Lancashire bowler Graham Onions hit a purple patch of form in June which has seen the former England international scoop Lancashire's Hilton Garden Inn Player of the Month award.
After taking 2-74 and 3-29 against Essex at the start of the month, Graham went on to take 5-96 against Hampshire at Emirates Old Trafford in the Specsavers County Championship.
Onions has now taken 32 wickets in the Specsavers County Championship this year at an average of just over 20.
As a result of winning the award Graham has won a two night stay at any Hilton Garden Inn worldwide as well as a successful drawn voter who will be contacted over the next couple of days.
Onions beaming as he gets to work in life after playing
Graham Onions appointed bowling coach
Members Q&A with Graham Onions
Graham Onions to take part in Members Q&A