dev meets ops, ops meet dev. devops explained by Monty Python: http://bit.ly/bkEOms # Check it out: 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors - http://bit.ly/bRyce3 # For those who think that adding value is only possible by increasing revenue or reducing cost: http://bit.ly/dwCLVU # So this is what being 70 looks like today: http://bit.ly/aK2OMk # Versao 3D de [...]

Candidates for California governor promise to release income tax returns San Jose Mercury News In recent weeks, Democratic groups have been taunting Whitman, a billionaire who once ran eBay, for her unwillingness to release tax information in response ... and more »

The members of the search committee weren't looking to make a political statement or even a big splash. They were trying to decide between 20 or so candidates with nice résumés, some of them long and impressive, who wanted to be head coach at Coolidge High in Northwest Washington. The only problem, according to one member of the committee, was almost all of them talked about themselves, about their credentials and qualifications, their goals for the team.

We dropped by the Denny International Middle School cafeteria just before lunch today – to visit the fabled Lunch Ladies who had let us know earlier this week (as reported here) about their plan to try to break a record for most school lunches served in a day. The old record was 599 – and [...]

More than 60% of the Bar is made up of lawyer firms ranging in size from solo to 9.  In any business, one would think that paying attention to a demographic that provides such a high percentage of your revenue would be wise. Of course, that presupposes that your customer base has an alternative.

In the case of integrated (mandatory!) bar associations, lawyers must be members, must pay their dues no matter how they disagree with the policies of the staff or of its Board of Governors! Therefore, their views can be disregarded. Such was the case recently when sole practitioners objected to the new rule of professional conduct that requires lawyers to tell clients in writing when they do not carry E & O insurance (malpractice) coverage.

Today, in California, there was a hearing on the rule regarding the sale of a law practice. The proposed new rule will make the lawyers (both buyers and sellers) jump through more hoops and cause further delay to get a deal done, thus jeopardizing the entire deal. Who does this target? The sole and small firm practitioner.  Only they are involved, to the extent this happens, in the sale of their practice. Large firms don't sell their practice. They can break up, they can merge, they can combine ... they can move entire practice groups from one firm to another ... but they don't "sell" their practice ... at least they don't call it that and thus side step rule 1.17 regarding the sale of a law practice. (I will discuss the details of the new proposal in later posts.)

So why should the Bar care? Why should they fix something that isn't broke? Good question. I might attribute nefarious motives to the actors, but that would be unkind ... and generally untrue. Because the folks on the commission are honest, hard-working and capable lawyers. But, in their zeal to do right, they are not doing good. They are like the law school professor who puts forth hypothetical situations that, if ever, happen rarely and can be dealt with on a case by case basis. The California rule ain't broke; therefore don't fix it.

When the ABA commission looked at the rule, they backed away from the precipice of considerable change ... ultimately because they realized that there was no need to alter the rule. They made one change ... and I'm proud to say I was the catalyst for this discussion. They now allow a lawyer to sell a practice area and still remain in practice, but not in the area sold. For example, a probate and estate planning lawyer may want to sell the estate planning segment, but retain the probate segment. This will allow him to work less, reduce marketing and still make a contribution to the law. Any other course would require him to sell/close the entire practice and wait for death ... or continue his practice while serving his clients with less vigor because of aging ... to the detriment of the clients.  It is a shame that younger attorneys on the commission have little or no sympathy for this aging process.

I've seen it in my clients; I've seen it in my family. That was why I recommended that the ABA make the one change it did accept. Clients are better served, both those whose estate plans are handled by other lawyers interested in the segment they purchased, and those who are probating estates of decedents ...

One example after another in recent years demonstrates the Bar focuses on its perception of public protection -- I say its perception because I don't think the public is truly protected by a number of its recent actions, two of which are mentioned above. It is also very clear, however, that the interests of the Bar's largest demographic is either disregarded or adversely impacted by the Bar's new rules. I have come to the conclusion that the Bar should be a voluntary organization ... as is the American Bar Association ... needing to justify its value each year in order to maintain its member participation and dues revenue. The "mandatory" Bar as we know it should only be a licensing agency ....

Do you know of other examples in the organized Bar that defiles the sole practitioner? Do you know other industries where such monopoly power gives them the right to disregard the interests of its customers/patrons/members? How about the health insurance industry? How about the increase in premium rates that recently went up 39% to people who literally had no choice of carriers, only the choice of paying the increased premium or dropping insurance coverage ... How about the airline industry who, in response to recent "fliers' bill of rights" announced a decrease in flight schedules and increase in fare prices? Other examples abound.

Unless the Bar is able and willing to enhance the value and contributions to lawyers from whom it receives dues, it should not exist in its present form.

 

Swift the pale truth
That fear not earth.
The inferior dusky shade
Of human birth
Reflection made
By dark reverted rays
Artists uncomely dressed
Cartesian in nature
The light expressed
With saintly try
In their footsteps
You’re find suspended
The mortal lie
Seen face value
By an animals eyes
That tumbles down
From the formless sky.
Why with what words
Will the truth woo you
With a show of hue
That be the judge of things
Wordy and new toward the worldly truth
A creation from the maker
Breathe sinking in wonder
Amused that the muse who know’st it
The weak virtues’ of high truth
A combat of resemblance and submission
A sound good wisdom of holy rest
The best blind light of the sight of the mind.
When my mind is empty
I go ciphering off the swelling
Infinity of space, I wait my full
Of thoughts caught in a greater state
Of present of mind to rhyme some
Bit of time of worthless pride
That will misguide even the run of the sun.
Man is an eccentric of weathercock’s motion
In incoherent philosophies of masters.
The Britain, the isle, the breed
No longer lofty in its growth
The Royal Rose of ill-gathered zeal.
I hear the polluted muses
Praise poetry to soon to be true
When passion rape the sins of our sons
And the straight way of knowledge poison
The holy ignorance called Holy Spirit.
Anger, Almighty master scorned
Son of God scanty thread
Endless pardons won
Stubborn son forsaken
By foreskin
As idol on a cross
Crumble to rust mortals red
With false influence of doubt
Under primitive transcendence
The secret is always here
The secret sacred sphere
The exalted height of God
He struck mortals with his rod
And a private peace appeared.
The ambition of Jerusalem
Pharisees sages of faith
Village born boys not
Manger laid Savior
Who rule the blindfold
State of the church
Dilapidated to ruin and waste
And I as poet shall bare the weight
Of church in decline of loosing face
Its heavy crown heavenly rest
On the shaming of the mortal soul
Written in the list of prospects
To the holy order the brother
Of my fortitude
And the sister of my moderation
Both low-born past
That prostitute my days
Because my native seeds
Is the perfection of my naked light
And my old poetic sight
Is theological thought
Of the muse who wilds me so
That all of God I shall ever know
Is the archangel, archprelate
Arch-saints of miss-knowledge
Of providence and prayers
To reformed angels striving
To death-bed the religious lie
That the heart-sick consuming
The fever before the swarm
Of physicians let the paginations
Define the disease caught from
A Korean whore
During military service
When I seek to subdue the land
And misuse as best I can remember and
Stand to tell the knowledge grown
Purchased by priests from my tongue
I am the scholar poet from no college or school
The ill-mannered poet playing the fool
The happy controller of romances humanity
I who forfeits the common God
Taught by Spaniards of
Triumvirate that holds
The body, the spirit, the soul
Feed them all
To attain the cheapest cost
Of fortune without fame
A gamester in the game
With laurel that as artillery
Recall to pick out old ladies
And orphans for the fall
And one legged boys fresh from the field
And widow’s blood as tears.
Remember that crown that
Holds men down
Remember that juggle trick
Made by the ignorant politics
Of shot the sky lambenent fire.
Solemn train of swards sheathed
By shame as the pulley reframe
That the great gigantic son
Of a bitch that speaks from
The ass of the train
Quake his little beast
As favorite of muse
Innocence of rules
She is viper of disuse
A reunite peace
Of words heard
In the ease of time
That drives all virtues
Toward their ready doom
Soon as the casement
Over their skin
Ease it retreat
And yield the field
To the luxuriant muse
Who takes her flight
By night for flight
To paradise where violent
Dreams are wooed by
Noble pens then
The innocent of Adam
And the fruitful Atom
And the ambitious of roots
In vain garden growing
Barren fruits that will rise again
Such is the spirit of divine nature
Mine yes my estate
Drudgery jewels on the plate
Muse’s galleys helm the shore
Muse control the oar still I tug
Vain try with questions why
The cross as falling across the
Spacious main and the Swift that used
Niggard the worthless
Humble muse
The indolence of
The white ease infused
By debauched praises
For the reversion of the
Black way of knowledge
With complaining breath
Accept the incurable disease
That white will always do what white for you
To fulfill all their needs
His kingdom purchase
By white blood and sweet along
His crown solid in its prudence
His monarch by make
Of white blood made by the mopped brow of God.
His courage to structure
The USA as a way to shade virtue
But adoration on shown
For the dying nation
That trophy
The crown the sole
Guard of the bloody fall
The guardian God
Of the boundless doubtful doubt.
The remaining labor
Of order and command.that deluge its flow
From moisture ladded
Primitive sailor
On the go from Africa to
South Americas
Following the great flood
That inundating its mighty ebb
In an ark of philosophical noise
When the muse played dove
And man’s lost embark was
Was as a conquerors
Victory over warring water
Eager muse what is the wave of your tune?
What cloudy aspect plucked the laurel
From the Nile and raised it as her own
What fatal Neptune flood the flowing
Paradise through deep birth-places
Of the transported muse with the
Wit of the Gods and the oracular
Greedy ears inspired by empty tongues
Of echoes of old virgin muse now
Schooled in the sexual ways of human senses.
Words from muse buzzing good-natured
Censure the selling of retail souls
And man as pupil frain his wisdom
And muse holds the reign of words
Meant to woo the through of
Who you do when the doing is done.
The age of atheists is a refinement won
A privateer of trade
Against all providence
Of denied logic as wit
Poor of corn and naturally born confession.
Something found in the round
That lives to gives the poetry
Enthroned with vanity
In man’s popular air of native sea
Flame’s enthusiastic fumes
Breathe and breath recount
The cut charm genteel and tame
Tight on the bone to deluding muse
The rebel muse fatal and
Immortal as a conspiring bloom
Of flower beauty’s cruelty
Bondage and slavery paid by the wage
Of the melancholy muse
Successor to the gothic
Throng where paradox
With prophet of voice
Suspend the poetic wicked ways
With fresh deceit of folly large
In sun lit heaps shadowing
The counterfeit dawn
That breaks in on dreams of muse who
Will not look after me.

Swift the pale truth
That fear not earth.
The inferior dusky shade
Of human birth
Reflection made
By dark reverted rays
Artists uncomely dressed
Cartesian in nature
The light expressed
With saintly try
In their footsteps
You’re find suspended
The mortal lie
Seen face value
By an animals eyes
That tumbles down
From the formless sky.
Why with what words
Will the truth woo you
With a show of hue
That be the judge of things
Wordy and new toward the worldly truth
A creation from the maker
Breathe sinking in wonder
Amused that the muse who know’st it
The weak virtues’ of high truth
A combat of resemblance and submission
A sound good wisdom of holy rest
The best blind light of the sight of the mind.
When my mind is empty
I go ciphering off the swelling
Infinity of space, I wait my full
Of thoughts caught in a greater state
Of present of mind to rhyme some
Bit of time of worthless pride
That will misguide even the run of the sun.
Man is an eccentric of weathercock’s motion
In incoherent philosophies of masters.
The Britain, the isle, the breed
No longer lofty in its growth
The Royal Rose of ill-gathered zeal.
I hear the polluted muses
Praise poetry to soon to be true
When passion rape the sins of our sons
And the straight way of knowledge poison
The holy ignorance called Holy Spirit.
Anger, Almighty master scorned
Son of God scanty thread
Endless pardons won
Stubborn son forsaken
By foreskin
As idol on a cross
Crumble to rust mortals red
With false influence of doubt
Under primitive transcendence
The secret is always here
The secret sacred sphere
The exalted height of God
He struck mortals with his rod
And a private peace appeared.
The ambition of Jerusalem
Pharisees sages of faith
Village born boys not
Manger laid Savior
Who rule the blindfold
State of the church
Dilapidated to ruin and waste
And I as poet shall bare the weight
Of church in decline of loosing face
Its heavy crown heavenly rest
On the shaming of the mortal soul
Written in the list of prospects
To the holy order the brother
Of my fortitude
And the sister of my moderation
Both low-born past
That prostitute my days
Because my native seeds
Is the perfection of my naked light
And my old poetic sight
Is theological thought
Of the muse who wilds me so
That all of God I shall ever know
Is the archangel, archprelate
Arch-saints of miss-knowledge
Of providence and prayers
To reformed angels striving
To death-bed the religious lie
That the heart-sick consuming
The fever before the swarm
Of physicians let the paginations
Define the disease caught from
A Korean whore
During military service
When I seek to subdue the land
And misuse as best I can remember and
Stand to tell the knowledge grown
Purchased by priests from my tongue
I am the scholar poet from no college or school
The ill-mannered poet playing the fool
The happy controller of romances humanity
I who forfeits the common God
Taught by Spaniards of
Triumvirate that holds
The body, the spirit, the soul
Feed them all
To attain the cheapest cost
Of fortune without fame
A gamester in the game
With laurel that as artillery
Recall to pick out old ladies
And orphans for the fall
And one legged boys fresh from the field
And widow’s blood as tears.
Remember that crown that
Holds men down
Remember that juggle trick
Made by the ignorant politics
Of shot the sky lambenent fire.
Solemn train of swards sheathed
By shame as the pulley reframe
That the great gigantic son
Of a bitch that speaks from
The ass of the train
Quake his little beast
As favorite of muse
Innocence of rules
She is viper of disuse
A reunite peace
Of words heard
In the ease of time
That drives all virtues
Toward their ready doom
Soon as the casement
Over their skin
Ease it retreat
And yield the field
To the luxuriant muse
Who takes her flight
By night for flight
To paradise where violent
Dreams are wooed by
Noble pens then
The innocent of Adam
And the fruitful Atom
And the ambitious of roots
In vain garden growing
Barren fruits that will rise again
Such is the spirit of divine nature
Mine yes my estate
Drugs as jewels on the plate
Muse’s galleys helm the shore
Muse control the oar still I tug
Vain try with questions why
The cross as falling across the
Spacious main and the Swift that used
Niggard the worthless
Humble muse
The indolence of
The white ease infused
By debauched praises
For the reversion of the
Black way of knowledge
With complaining breath
Accept the incurable disease
That white will always do what white for you
To fulfill all their needs
His kingdom purchase
By white blood and sweet along
His crown solid in its prudence
His monarch by make
Of white blood made by the mopped brow of God.
His courage to structure
The USA as a way to shade virtue
But adoration on shown
For the dying nation
That trophy
The crown the sole
Guard of the bloody fall
The guardian God
Of the boundless doubtful doubt.
The remaining labor
Of order and command.
That deluge its flow
From moisture ladded
Primitive sailor
On the go from Africa to
South Americas
Following the great flood
That inundating its mighty ebb
In an ark of philosophical noise
When the muse played dove
And man’s lost embark was the cue
To who and what to conquer
Was as a conquerors
Victory over warring water
Eager muse what is the wave of your tune?
What cloudy aspect plucked the laurel
From the Nile and raised it as her own
What fatal Neptune flood the flowing
Paradise through deep birth-places
Of the transported muse with the
Wit of the Gods and the oracular
Greedy ears inspired by empty tongues
Of echoes of old virgin muse now
Schooled in the sexual ways of human senses.
What sexual underlining under my pen
Can stain the sheet as I dream
Of nude muse that I tattoo.
Words from muse buzzing good-natured
Censure the selling of retail souls
And man as pupil frain his wisdom
And muse holds the reign of words
Meant to woo the through of
Who you do when the doing is done.
The age of atheists is a refinement won
A privateer of trade
Against all providence
Of denied logic as wit
Poor of corn and naturally born confession.
Something found in the round
That lives to gives the poetry
Enthroned with vanity
In man’s popular air of native sea
Flame’s enthusiastic fumes
Breathe and breath recount
The cut charm genteel and tame
Tight on the bone to deluding muse
The rebel muse fatal and
Immortal as a conspiring bloom
Of flower beauty’s cruelty
Bondage and slavery paid by the wage
Of the melancholy muse
Successor to the gothic
Throng where paradox
With prophet of voice
Suspend the poetic wicked ways
With fresh deceit of folly large
In sun lit heaps shadowing
The counterfeit dawn
That breaks in on dreams of muse who
Will not look after me.

[1]Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife If there's any job tougher than being a soldier, it can be finding a civilian employer who truly understands the skills a soldier brings [2]. From the New York Post: The unemployment rate for returning veterans is around two percentage points above the national average. Given how high that average is to begin with, “That’s pretty catastrophic,” says Tarantino, who’s now a legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, lobbying on veterans’ behalf in DC. Veterans and their advocates say a number of barriers can stand in the way for vets seeking jobs, as well as those returning to work after serving in a war zone. They include long gaps in private-sector work histories, the lack of a network, difficulty adjusting to a work environment after the extremes of combat and a corporate world that often fails to appreciate the crossover value of the considerable skills, both hard and soft, that soldiers acquire. Throw in a disability, either physical or an invisible one like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and things get harder still. And the cruel irony is, finding work is often a crucial step toward successfully readjusting to civilian life after a deployment. Young veterans [3]face the most difficulty, reports the Los Angeles Times: Young combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have another challenge waiting for them when they return home: steep unemployment. More than 1 in 5 can't find work, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department. The unemployment rate last year for veterans ages 18 to 24 reached 21.1%, compared to 16.6% for that age group as a whole. In addition to the recession, veterans groups attribute the high jobless rate to a lack of education, job experience and job training in the years before entering the service. Also, many return home with health and mental health problems that make it difficult to find work. "When a person is deployed, it takes them out of their natural environment and they're not out there able to compete with the general public for jobs," said Joseph Sharpe, director of the economic division of the American Legion. "And when they return, they're not on an even playing field." One video game developer is putting its money where its mouth is [4], donating $1 million to help veterans find work, reports the Washington Post: The military's predominantly male makeup falls squarely into Activision Blizzard's preferred 18- to 35-year-old male demographic. The military has started using video games to train recruits, and service members often spend their down time with game consoles in hand. Activision Blizzard regularly donates video games and gaming consoles to the military through the USO, and the donations have helped the company identify and hire veterans who are interested in the gaming industry. The foundation will make its first donation of $125,000 to the Paralyzed Veterans of America to help open a vocational rehabilitation center, the company said. Yet some veterans are doing just fine, reports Fortune [5], thanks to a special mentoring program: News Corp. (NWSA [6]) is one of 17 major companies and universities -- from Campbell Soup (CPB [7], Fortune 500 [8]), General Electric (GE [9], Fortune 500 [10]), Home Depot (HD [11], Fortune 500 [12]), IBM (IBM [13], Fortune 500 [14]), Procter & Gamble (PG [15], Fortune 500 [16]), Verizon (VZ [17], Fortune 500 [18]), and the University of Texas to, just recently, Bloomberg, Deloitte, and Harvard -- that has signed on to provide mentors to veterans through American Corporate Partners since it launched in 2008. Currently ACP has more than 500 mentors matched up with veterans. There are another 800 veterans on a waiting list hoping to be assigned executive role models. The non-profit is the brainchild of a former investment banker named Sid Goodfriend, who spent 25 years working first for Merrill Lynch and then Credit Suisse (CS [19]). Goodfriend, 50, has no military background himself. Prior to forming ACP, he didn't even have any close friends who had served in the armed forces. But in the years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he says he had developed a really deep sense of appreciation for how fortunate he's been in life and an admiration for the soldiers that serve to keep him and his family safe. "I owe so much of what I have to these young people who decide to put country first and their welfare second in a lot of cases," he says. By 2007, the financially well-off Goodfriend decided that he wanted to leave Wall Street and spend his time giving back to veterans who have served since 9/11. The question was how? As a board member of a New York City non-profit called Student Sponsor Partners, which matches at-risk students in New York's public school system with sponsors who pay for them to attend a private school and take a role in their education, he had seen firsthand the power of mentoring. And he knew how important mentors had been to him in his own career at Merrill. He figured veterans trying to break into business could use some expert guidance. Fortune's March 22 cover story [20] features several veterans now being recruited by major corporations. Meet the new warrior elite [21] [1] http://www.daylife.com/image/097Pgdv9fd3Ol?utm_source=zemanta&utm_medium=p&utm_content=097Pgdv9fd3Ol&utm_campaign=z1 [2] http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/jobs/reporting_for_duty_EpbnuknPFPlaVEYnkvMTWL [3] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-vet-unemployment13-2010mar13,0,2551488.story [4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/08/AR2009110817897.html [5] http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/12/news/companies/warrior_workers.fortune/index.htm [6] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=NWSA&source=story_quote_link [7] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=CPB&source=story_quote_link [8] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/snapshots/73.html?source=story_f500_link [9] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=GE&source=story_quote_link [10] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/snapshots/170.html?source=story_f500_link [11] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=HD&source=story_quote_link [12] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/snapshots/2968.html?source=story_f500_link [13] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=IBM&source=story_quote_link [14] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/snapshots/225.html?source=story_f500_link [15] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=PG&source=story_quote_link [16] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/snapshots/334.html?source=story_f500_link [17] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=VZ&source=story_quote_link [18] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/snapshots/2773.html?source=story_f500_link [19] http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=CS&source=story_quote_link [20] http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/fortune/1003/gallery.military_business_leaders.fortune/index.html [21] http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/fortune/1003/gallery.military_business_leaders.fortune/index.html

What makes a good teacher? The question to date has largely been answered with a nod toward mysticism. In a recent New York Times Magazine article, for instance, a director at the Urban Institute said successful teaching depends on a kind of “voodoo;“ in the same piece, Sylvia Gist, a dean at the college of education at Chicago State University said there is an “innate ability for teaching.“

If this is true—if good teaching really is just an accident of birth, not linked to any specific things that good teacher do (and that others can be taught)—then, frankly, a lot of money is being wasted on teacher training, funded graduate education programs and the like, since studies have shown that successful teachers are no more likely than the unsuccessful (as measured by student performance) to have gone to graduate school, to be outgoing, have prior experience working in impoverished environments, or posses many other qualities that experts have long thought causal to teaching success.

And yet a group of consultants and researchers actually do believe that good teachers are made—and that our current ways of educating aspiring teachers is not what makes them. The same New York Times article quoted above profiles the different efforts of two individuals, Doug Lemov and Deborah Loewenberg Ball. Lemov works for an organization called Uncommon Schools, a nonprofit that starts and runs urban charter schools. As part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of his teachers, Lemov conducted a multi-year effort to observe and record what the most successful teachers do in the classroom. The result of that effort is a taxonomy of effective teaching practices that outlines a series of “classroom management” techniques used to ensure kids are paying attention and doing the things they should to learn the lesson.

For her part, Deborah Ball, an assistant professor at Michigan State, believes classroom management is not enough. A teacher can have a great control of her classroom, but that won’t get her far if she has nothing to teach them. As a result, she has focused her work on identifying what teachers need to know. Her work shows that teachers need not only strong knowledge of their subject but strong understanding of how others think about the information, and why a student might some up with the wrong answer (she interestingly found that teachers who scored well on a multiple choice test designed to assess their ability to judge student math work, as distinct from their own math knowledge, were among the more effective instructors).

Lemov and Ball are not alone in their efforts to identify what makes great teachers. This January article from The Atlantic on what makes a great teacher highlights an effort by Teach for America to deconstruct the actions of their best teachers, those who bring their students forward by one or more years during a school year. Far from a mystical ability or any abstract ‘care’ they show for students, that effort has likewise uncovered some shared actions that effective teachers consistently do. For example, successful teachers are constantly re-vamping their teaching methods, techniques and materials to hit on something better. The classrooms of successful teachers also operate in a predictable and rhythmic manner, so that kids know what comes next and can transition from one activity to the next without confusion or lost time. Teach for America has been taking what it learns and using it to guide how it selects its fellows and how it trains them. Internal metrics show that these efforts have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of TfA fellows bringing their kids forward (the piece reported that there is a study underway by research nonprofit Mathematica Policy Research to see if those results hold).

The larger conversation in education today seems to focus heavily on the “market driven” experiments such as school choice and incentive programs. Little evidence exists for or against these initiatives, so there is not reason to embrace or dismiss them out of hand. But there is significant evidence that shows that the teacher can do great things or inflict great damage. From the outside, it seems logical and desirable to simply get rid of demonstrably bad teachers, but plenty of experience from New York shows how difficult that is to achieve in practice. And even if that could be done, what can school systems do with the ones who are simply mediocre? Viewing teaching as a set of skills and actions that can be taught—not as sentimental magic—offers a good beginning.

TX-Richardson, Creative Director is7 provides comprehensive interactive solutions to national and international clients, many of whom are large not-for-profit organizations. is7 is the interactive division of Stratmark, Ltd., a strategic marketing company that combines in-depth fundraising counsel, data analytics and strategic planning services with a full range of programs and project management. is7 is seeking

“Visiting the experimental winery at UNR is a must, put it on your Thursday calendar!”

There’s a groundswell of interest building in Nevada wines, and this is in part due to the work being done by Dr. Grant Cramer at University of Nevada-Reno, and in part by intrepid vintners and winemakers in Fallon and Genoa. Right now, we are going to offer you a glimpse of the wonderful work in UNR. Parts Two and Three will focus on Nevada vintners and wineries, which you’ll see in future columns.

Fast growing Moving Company located in Downtown LA seeks Accounting Clerk. Needs very organized individual who can multi-task. Must know QuickBooks and Excel. Bi-lingual English/Spanish is a plus.
Duties: data Entry, filing. assisting accounting department, assisting administration department and light phones.
Starting pay $10-$15 an hour depending on experience. Send resume with salary history and references. Please only email resume with contact information to vika@herculesmovingsystem.com

Dental Financial/Insurance Coordinator- with experience- I am seeking a motivated person with outstanding customer service and excellent communication skills to join our team. We treat our patients like gold.

The ideal candidate MUST have a minimum 3 years DENTAL experience, be computer literate, detail-oriented, punctual, reliable, comfortable with presenting fees, and knows how to estimate Indemnity & PPO insurance benefits and can multi-task.

If you are mature-minded, dependable, enthusiastic, welcome growth opportunities, and looking for an office which is open to new ideas and initiative please email your resume and salary requirements. We are looking for a long-term employee to replace someone who has been with the practice for over 20 years and is retiring.

Medical/Dental & 401K Benefits

Rejuvalase MedSpa is seeking a self-motivated, honest and punctual part-time laser specialist. An ideal candidate will have knowledge and hands-on experience in the following:
SALES (retail and service)
waxing
microdermabrasion
facials
lash/brow tinting
ear candling
laser aesthetics or medical background
Though these are ideal, we are willing to train and certify those who are missing certain criteria. If you love to work, enjoy people and have an excellent sales record, we'd love to meet you. EMAIL US TODAY!

SugarCRM is a fast growing commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software company. We are looking to hire a talented Director of Product Management.

The Director of Product Management will be responsible for all global product management activities from concept/vision, to strategic product planning, to product definition, to tactical execution. This person must be results-oriented and a self-starter. The ideal candidate has deep customer-facing experience who can translate user problems into a great product, while managing complex product decisions and trade-offs in a global environment.

Key responsibilities include: creation of product strategy and roadmap, specification of product requirements, collaboration across functional and product teams, and participation in the concept, development, launch and sustain phases of the product lifecycle.

Responsibilities include:
• Ongoing development of the product vision and strategy with a focus on core user needs.
• Work closely with multiple of functions within SugarCRM to build business cases and customer use cases
• Development and execution of tactical plans. The candidate must be able to translate broad strategic objectives into specific tactical plans, and must be able to rapidly execute against specific tactical plans.
• Effectively collaborate with sales, marketing, services, operations and engineering teams to develop requirements, prioritize enhancements, translate into PRDs and drive projects to completion.
• Conduct competitive analysis and develop a strong understanding of our customers and partners to drive development decisions
• Define, track and improve key product metrics.
• Develop a functional understanding of the key technological and architectural components of the Sugar technology and applications.
• Aggressively identify opportunities for improvement, and incorporate new product features on an ongoing basis.


Qualifications:
• 5+ years of extensive product leadership experience developing, building, and launching web-based business applications
• Ability to manage, work with and motivate a team
• A blend of management, technical, creative, business, and marketing skills.
• Demonstrated strong capabilities in communication - both oral and written - and presentation skills for all levels of audience
• Proven product management capabilities
• Capability to execute rapidly and efficiently in an unstructured environment
• Ability to translate strategy into tactical plans

If you have the experience that we are looking for, please send your resume to jobs@sugarcrm.com.

Send cover letter and resume to the above link OR to our Web site link below --NOT to both--thank you.




Since 1984, Data Focus, located in Pleasant Hill, CA. has been providing IT departments of medium and large size organizations with computer supplies and accessories and onsite printer service plans; enabling our customers to keep their networks and enterprise systems running day after day.

No technical experience or technical background needed.

We're unique in offering the nimbleness of a startup with the stability of a locally owned and profitable and growing company in its 25th year. We hire self-motivated people with a positive attitude and encourage them to achieve their potential. Our company culture is defined by high energy, creativity and collaboration. We believe in hard work, a fun, open atmosphere, and the autonomy to push one's limits. And without question, our most valuable resource is our people: energetic, collaborative, creative thinkers who strive to continuously improve themselves and our company!

We are expanding and currently seeking an energetic and resourceful individual for an Inside Sales position, to generate new business from scratch by fearless B2B telephone cold calling. This assertive cold calling continually feeds ones sales pipeline with self generated qualified leads. As an individual's book of business becomes established, reorders become plentiful, creating significant residual income in addition to ongoing new business development opportunities.

Here’s what we offer to a winning candidate:

- Flexible hours (40 hours/week, scheduled between 6 AM and 5:00 PM M-F)
- Determine your own income; competitive salary of $40,000, plus, generous comm. w/no cap ($47,000-$80,000+ includes salary+comm.)
- Opportunity to earn an annual income of $100,000 or more within 20 months, and $150,000-$200,000 within 30-36 months -- no cap on income!
- Rewarding benefits package – including 401(k), self-directed with employer contribution
- Friendly, supportive, fun, casual and hardworking environment
- Location. No hassle with traffic; easy commute and lots of free parking
- Good balance between work and personal life
- Non-bureaucratic company –- no red tape
- Excellent career
- Long-term growth
- Independence
- Paid Professional Training
-Casual Work Environment
-Recession Resistant Opportunity

Critical to your success. Do you have what it takes to join us? Can you answer "YES" to each of the following 10 questions? If not we're not a match and you should not consider this opportunity.

1) Are you looking for excellent compensation plan with upside commission potential -- no cap?
2) Are you an individual with high self-motivation, a "can do" attitude and highly capable do-it-yourselfer?
3) Do you have an excellent telephone presence and telephone communication skills?
4) Do you have a fearless ability to cold call, able to establish rapport and engage the caller quickly?
5) Do you have drive to develop account relationships and close sales quickly?
6) Are you driven to try new ideas, move quickly, and learn from mistakes?
7) Do you enjoy the "hunt" and appreciate and prefer the convenience and power of the telephone?
8) Is cold calling a second nature to you?
9) Do you recognize that sales is significantly a "numbers game" and are not shy about maintaining a high daily call volume and going after the business?
10) Are you willing and driven to develop a new customer base from scratch... a fearless and persistent prospector?

-This position is responsible for the entire sales cycle; cold calling (outbound B2B to a targeted list), developing and qualifying leads, esatblishing rapport quickly and generating interest, demonstrating product value, closing and converting self-generated leads into sales quickly and providing regular contact with a book of self generated customers to generate ongoing reorders and overall growth.

-Prior sales experience can be helpful but not necessary. With our unique training program and competitive base salary and lucrative commission plan; entry level through seasoned sales veterans are all considered.

-This is a great opportunity for anyone looking to break into High Tech Sales. It provides opportunity for professional growth, training, and career advancement.

Are you ready for a refreshing change?

Do you want to join a people friendly environment?

Did you asnwer "YES" to all 10 questions above? If not we're not a match and you should not consider this opportunity.

Next Action:

Step 1. E-mail your resume and cover letter -- You’ll be glad you did! Reply to link at this posting above OR at our Web site link below --NOT to both--thank you.
Step 2. Check us out online at www.datafocus.net for more details
Step 3. If this posting describes someone that you know, by all means, please TELL A FRIEND! We offer a referral reward for a successful hire. Please forward his or her name, phone number, and/or email address so that we may contact them regarding this unique career opportunity.

A GREAT place to work…do you have what it takes?

Qualified applicants will be contacted within 48 hours for immediate interview

DATA FOCUS

CBS News

Huckabee Inavertently Argues For Health Insurance Mandate: 'Everybody Has To Live' Think Progress Offering support for the measure, President Obama has compared the idea to states' requirements that those who drive cars must purchase auto insurance. ... Health Care Reform and the Reid FamilyABC News (blog) Protests in Favor of Health Reform a Precursor to Massive Change in the ...Insurance News Net (press release) In our view: Questions that need answeringJoplin Globe Telegraph-Journal -Washington Post (blog) -FrumForum all 2,582 news articles »

CALGARY - A veteran Calgary police officer didn't commit a criminal offence when he shot and killed a suspect attempting to ram his way out of a car wash a year ago, but the head of the agency investigating the incident says it may not have been the best response.

"Our role isn't to determine whether or not the Calgary Police Service made the best decision...," said Clifton Purvis, the head of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.

"It may be the role of the chief of police of the Calgary Police Service to determine if it was the best decision."

On March 18, 2009 undercover Calgary police officers attempted to arrest Travis Douglas Oakes, 33, who was under surveillance in an auto theft investigation.

Oakes was driving a stolen car and when police tried to arrest him by hemming him inside a washing bay, he tried four times to ram his way out.

A sergeant with 18 years of experience fired four shots at the windshield and hit Oakes three times.

Purvis said officers were in an adjoining bay of the car wash while the officer who fired was directly in the path of the vehicle but outside the car wash doors.

"Really, for our mandate, we need to determine whether or not the officer that used lethal force here should be charged with a criminal offence and we have determined not," said Purvis but added.

"Not that it was the best critical incident decision being made but whether this specific officer committed a criminal offence."

Purvis has the authority to make recommendations based on his investigation but wouldn't tell reporters if he will do so. He said the report will be made available to Calgary police and he will discuss the matter with Chief Rick Hansen. A fatality inquiry is mandatory when police are involved in a shooting.

"The file will be provided to the Calgary Police Service to determine whether lessons can be learned from this tragic incident."

The investigation was forwarded to Alberta Justice and reviewed by the Crown before the decision not to lay charges was made.

Purvis said any time an officer is involved in a case where someone dies it is "disturbing" but this case is no different than any other.

He also didn't want to comment on why the officer fired four bullets at Oakes.

"I'm not going to speak to policies of police agencies. I can't," said Purvis.

"I know if there's a threat and if you're discharging your firearm to meet a threat you will probably discharge your firearm until the threat is no longer a threat."

I've dating this girl who transferred to my skool cuz as she told me she was raped (she has no disease) however i read on her fb profile a girl frm her old skool say dat my girl is spreading rumors and must not lie the same way she lied and say she was raped cuz she really wanted to have sex with the taxi driver and used rape as an excuse or when she sneaked out her house to meet a guy to have sex and told her mom she went to think. Now should i believe what this girl wrote on my girlfriends wall and if it is true what should i do? please help

The PyPy team announced the release of PyPy1.2 today. As you might know, I’ve been a long-time Python user so of course this news is certainly interesting to me from that perspective. However for this post, I’d like to focus less on the accomplishments of PyPy the compiler and focus on looking at the great “data experience” they have provided around the data PyPy performance.

NOTE: You don’t need to know anything Python, PyPy to get something out of this post – just in interest in how others communicate their data

First, their performance data is provided at this site: http://speed.pypy.org/overview/

NOTE: You may have already noticed that I used FireFox for the screenshots. This was deliberate as the site looks better when rendered via FireFox (notice the rounded corners on all the shapes).

This overview page shows how PyPy compares the baseline performance of CPython across many benchmarks. You can clearly make out that overall they have made tremendous gains and are often faster than CPython.

 

What I like about this chart is that it’s easy to compare the difference between the two. They make good use of inline bar charts to make the data clear. The charts use a logarithmic scale (which I general avoid using), but otherwise this is a very clean and clear presentation.

Notice the up/down arrows on the columns …

Clicking on these will resort the data. One cool feature about this is that the resorting is fast and doesn’t appear to fetch data from the server again.

Here’s an example of the data sorted by “Time”

A common scenario when looking at data is that you want to share what you are seeing with others – for example you want to send a link (a url) via email that points to the view you are looking at. Fortunately, this site makes this easy by offering a “Permalink” that is accessible on the upper right. Pressing navigates to a specific URL that shows the same data you are viewing. You can then share that link instead of asking others to go to manually navigate to the view you are seeing.

 

If we are interested in a particular benchmark, we can click on it directly

 

Which will navigate to the Timeline tab …

And then you’ll see a trend chart for that benchmark

As you hover over the points in the chart, you’ll see the specific revision number association with that data point…

An extra-cool feature is that you select region by clicking and then dragging the mouse …

This will cause the chart to zoom into that area …

 

On the left of the timeline view, all the benchmarks are shown. The current one “richards” is selected. But we can select “Display all in a grid”

And this will show thumbnails of all the trends for all the benchmarks

 

 

PARTING THOUGHTS

• I’m really impressed with the way the PyPy speed center has been built. The site is clean and usable and useful. Someone clearly spent a good deal of effort thinking of this and the pays off in the experience.
• For those of you who work with data in (whether it be in ERP systems or other fields), you should look to this site as an example of an experience around data to which you can aspire.
• If anyone has other great examples of such analytic-oriented sites – they don’t have to be related compiler performance – please share.

Spencer Ackerman has a critical post about just how duplicitous Lindsey Graham is in his crusade to stop the 9/11 trials from going forward in federal courts. Graham has been working with Rahm Emanuel on this, promising that if he gets his way on no civilian trials, then he'll get Republicans to drop their opposition to closing Guantanamo.

On Friday, the White House said it was “weeks away” from any decision about whether to scrap a civilian trial for the man known as KSM — which could give Graham what he wants.

There’s just one problem. Graham’s rationale for why KSM needs to be tried in a military commission and not a civilian court has to do with the procedures in the commissions for protecting classified information. But the revisions to the military commissions approved by Congress last year — with significant input from Graham himself — removed any significant difference between how classified information is handled in military and civilian venues. Accordingly, Chris Anders, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Graham’s position was founded on “one big urban myth” — though whether that will affect Obama’s political calculation over the trial remains to be seen.

Asked to specify Graham’s objection to trying KSM in civilian court, Kevin Bishop, Graham’s chief spokesman, said that the senator is concerned about the potential for releasing classified information in open court. “Military justice and the military framework — a military commission — would allow us to better protect classified information,” Bishop said. Graham made a version of that argument on February 13 in the Republican radio address, referencing a 1995 terrorism trial and asserting, “valuable intelligence was compromised.”

But the military framework for handling classified information is almost exactly the civilian framework for handling it. The Military Commissions Act of 2009, which set procedure for the revised military commissions, explicitly instructs military judges to look to the civilian rules for protecting classified information, known as the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA. Under the Act’s fifth subchapter governing the “construction of provisions” for the “protection of classified information,” the text says that “the judicial construction of the Classified Information Procedures Act (18 U.S.C. App.) shall be authoritative,” except in certain specific cases that Justice Department officials said are legally arcane....

The ACLU’s Anders wondered whether the novelty of military commissions — especially as the legal rules under the commissions have changed three times since the Bush administration created them after 9/11 — might make them more likely avenues for inadvertent disclosure of classified information in a KSM trial. “Who is going to do a better job with applying the substantively difficult law protecting classified information,” Anders said, “federal judges who have regularly applied it in many cases, or military commission judges who have never even tried a complex criminal case, much less the most important international terrorism case in history?”

[Joshua] Dratel [one of a handful of defense attorneys to have taken on terrorism cases in the pre-9/11 civilian courts] agreed, citing a case he argued at Guantanamo Bay in which a judge blurted out that something stated in court “probably” ought to have been classified. ” Any preference for military commissions based on some purported danger of release of classified information in federal courts is like worrying about ships going too far toward the horizon because they’ll fall off the edge of the earth,” he said. “It is simply without any factual foundation, and ignores the 30-year history of federal courts handling classified information in the context of criminal prosecutions.” [emphasis mine]

Graham is purely playing politics on this, the more seemingly genteel side of the same game that Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol, and Chuck Grassley are playing with their attacks on the DOJ--undermining Holder and his Justice Department. Making this deal with Graham would be a disaster for the White House on many levels, not the least of which is that Graham isn't a position to fulfill the Guantanamo part of the bargain.

I'm back home and want to show you what I found in California! Actually first off, thank you so much to everyone who commented and gave us great suggestions, we found some wonderful shops because of you! We didn't get to do everything though, but I've saved up your recommendations for next time ;)

1. Our last day in Laguna Beach (my birthday) my mother gave me this darling little 1940s brooch, with a baby and mama bird :)

2. An 80s does 20s sailor dress, can't wait for summer to wear it! From Scuda Vintage

3. A pretty little 30s style blouse by French Connection, from Buffalo Exchange in Hillcrest. I've wanted a tie front blouse for a while, but all the ones I find are polyester. So I was pretty excited to find one in light cotton like rayon!

4. An early 50s novelty dress, from Liberty Vintage.

5. A 50s cotton shirtdress from Liberty Vintage (I've worn it three times already!)

6. 40s princess coat from Wear it Again Sam (I know, it's amazing)

7. 30s style sweater by J. Crew from Double Take, Encinitas.

8. Late 30s black wool dress from Flashbacks, Hillcrest.

Dodgers third base coach Larry Bowa was rushed to the hospital tonight with stomach pain:

Bowa, described alternately as feeling "stomach cramps" and "abdominal pain," was in Banner Estrella Hospital in late afternoon, undergoing examinations by the Dodgers' team physician, Kenneth Landis.

Interim manager Don Mattingly did not think the situation was serious. He said Bowa "felt pain during the whole game" before finally leaving Camelback Ranch.

The Dodgers are expected to update the media on Bowa's, 64, condition as soon as it is available.

donadony writes "After twitter, now it's Digg who's decided to replace MySQL and most of their infrastructure components and move away from LAMP to another architecture called NoSQL that is based in Casandra, an open source project that develops a highly scalable second-generation distributed database. Cassandra was open sourced by Facebook in 2008 and is licensed under the Apache License. The reason for this move, as explained by Digg, is the increasing difficulty of building a high-performance, write-intensive application on a data set that is growing quickly, with no end in sight. This growth has forced them into horizontal and vertical partitioning strategies that have eliminated most of the value of a relational database, while still incurring all the overhead."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dozens of tips have poured in after California authorities released more than 100 photos of women and children on Thursday that are believed to have been taken by a serial killer who appeared on the "Dating Game."

Venturing out for an afternoon meal, Natalie Portman was spotted grabbing up lunch in Venice, California on Friday afternoon (March 12). Accompanied by choreographer Benjamin Millepied, who is rumored to be her boyfriend, the 28-year-old actress got a bit camera shy after exiting A/X restaurant and heading to an awaiting car. In related news, it seems as if Miss Portman has quite the fan in "Twilight" actress Kristen Stewart - who admitted to being a bit starstruck after being introduced to Natalie at the Governor's Ball Oscar afterparty last weekend. Of the nerve-racking meet-up, Miss Stewart said, "I didn't want to be in the room anymore. I literally wanted to eat my own head with a fork and knife."

Been fiddling with my event calendar in the last couple of weeks. Local events, club events and international invitations. Can’t go to them all, alas. Only so many free days in a year I’ve put up a Google –calendar in a backdated post, so you can see where I’m suppose to go this year: Events I hope to attend in 2010. Or you can have a look on my Facebook page. throughout the year. Some of them are annual recurring events, like Kiel or Delta Lloyd Regatta, and some of them are new. I am invited to go to a World Tour Match Race Event in May and am looking forward to that. I also might have the opportunity to work with my mentor this year at the European Match Race Championship in Austria, also in May. By the time most of you read this I’m already at an event, on the water for Match Racing. On the Markermeer near Lelystad. If you Google the latter you’ll find it is one of the bigger city’s on reclaimed land, we call them ‘polders’. This city was named after ir. Cornelis Lely, a civil engineer who was responsible for developing the plan to ‘shorten’ the coast line of the Netherlands by building the ‘afsluitdijk’ and making it possible to reclaim all that land from the sea. He did not only help develop the plan, he was also later responsible as minister to get it through parliament so the dike could eventually be build. Since I was born in ENS, one of the smaller places in the first polder, the ‘Noordoostpolder’, I’m sort of glad he did that. Ooh, if you have aquaphobia, don’t go there, it’s five meters below sea level. Direct Link

Comments

There’s always debate about whether or not money can buy happiness. The problem: we’re not always clear on what we mean by “happiness.”It turns out there are different types of happiness. How can you decide if you’re happy with your life? Is it what you’re feeling right now, or is it a general sense of how things are?Experienced and RememberedDaniel Kahneman sees the two types of happiness, and thinks it’s important to make a distinction when we talk about happiness.Experienced happiness is a sense of well-being in the presentRemembered happiness is how we judge our life to dateThe two can influence each other, but they really are different. For a better explanation, see Kahneman’s TED talk: The riddle of experience vs. memory. Kahneman is an entertaining speaker who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.Does Money Buy Happiness?It depends. You’ve probably heard that money does not buy happiness above a certain level. The number Kahneman mentions in the TED talk is $60,000 per year of income in the United States of America, which is about what other studies find.Above that income level your happiness level may increase, but at a ...

Xbox 360 Games offer some of the most incredibly immersive experiences anywhere, online or off. With blockbuster titles like Halo, Fallout, Call of Duty, and Panzer General: Allied Assault, it's hard to see what else could possibly improve game play any more than the long way it's already come. After all, it wasn't but a few years ago that clunky old-school controllers were still being used. Nowadays the user interface has improved noticeably, with on-board accelerometers to process spatial data for human kinetics in gaming. But something on the horizon may be the most revolutionary thing to hit video gaming at home in our time.

Xbox 360 games can be closely matched to Xbox 360 Accessories for the most seamless experience of truly immersive game play. But what if there were no need for any Xbox 360 accessories except one? One uber-accessory to replace them all? Long the stuff of science fiction and comic books, this latest of Xbox 360 accessories would also be the last. It would be the only thing needed to play all the Xbox 360 games made from then on.

Never heard of it? That's because it was only recently announced by Microsoft. It's an electronic eye of sorts that will obliterate the need for physical controllers, hardware that is held in one's hand. This new soon-to-come electronic eye will sense player movements in space, so hand-held controllers with built-in accelerometers will no longer be necessary. This latest advance in gaming technology is due out within the next year or two, and will be mounted separately from the console. But all user movement data will be provided to the console just the same. Try to imagine playing videogames with nothing more than your own body and body movements!

This veritable magic eye that Microsoft has been developing will even track eye movements to change point-of-view in a first-person shooter. Imagine Halo or Call of Duty or Medal of Honor without pesky controllers but with instead a light gun and your own body and your own eyes! As you turn right the screenshot reveals scenery to your right side, and as you turn left the panorama shifts with you!

So while today's Xbox 360 games are quite advanced, the Xbox accessories to come will require software that rethinks the whole notion of onscreen and off. Hardware and software exist in a symbiotic relationship, and it will be interesting to see what transpires next now that the hardware has taken a quantum leap forward!

It was probably only a matter of time before this happened, given that Benedict, aka Cardinal Ratzinger, was the author of the Vatican instruction to bishops to hush up the cases.  Now scores of abuse charges have surfaced Germany and Austria, including the diocese where he used to preside as archbishop--while he was in charge there.

The Times has front-paged the story http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03...  And the lead paragraph says it all.

A senior church official acknowledged that a German archdiocese made "serious mistakes" in reassigning an abusive priest during the pope's  tenure as its archbishop in the 1980s.

It makes for very juicy reading.  Do check out the full story.  Evidently there is no Latin for "It happened on my watch, and I take full responsibility."  I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before Benedict tries to defend himself with "I was only following orders."

The story notes that this could undermine the pope's "moral authority" (as if he had any) and undo his program for the "re-Christianization of Europe" (make your own joke).  It should all be heaps of fun to watch as it develops over the next few months.  There have to be smoking guns, and we can count on the European tabloids, if not the MSM there, to find them.

***

NOTE FROM PAM:

(Huff Post): The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret.

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes - a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

the Munich archdiocese admitted that it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict was archbishop. It stressed that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger didn't know about the transfer and that it had been decided by a lower-ranking official.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement late Friday noting that the Munich vicar-general who approved the priest's transfer had taken "full responsibility" for the decision, seeking to remove any question about the pontiff's potential responsibility as archbishop at the time.

Victims' advocates weren't persuaded.

"We find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Ratzinger didn't reassign the predator, or know about the reassignment," said Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Over at Newser, the coverage is even more blunt -- "Is the Pope Toast?"

Trouble, trouble. Not-going-away trouble. Run-out-of-office trouble. It's a potentially transformative moment in matters of religion and of power, wherein even the infallible turns out to be vulnerable. Some of us live for such moments.

So far, it's been an American thing which the Vatican has been remote and rather haughty about: vulgar American media. But now the story is everywhere in Europe and it includes the Pope's brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger.

It's got all the elements: boarding schools, choirs, boys, yum. Msgr. Ratzinger was the choir master, of course. At the school in question, in Bavaria, where Pope Benedict was the Archbishop and his brother the choir master, there was, according to one of the accusers, an "elaborate system of sadistic punishments combined with sexual lust." Indeed. While Msgr. Ratzinger, now 86, professes to have no knowledge of the lust, he is now apologizing for slapping students: "I, too, slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience about it."

...The truth will out. What is buried comes up. Even the Pope, quite possibly, is accountable. A development which may be bigger than we know.

Related:
* Papal aide and elite men's Vatican choir caught in gay prostitution ring

Last month I called Michele Strobel a single-issue candidate because she said her reason for running for the Washington State legislature this fall was her disdain for incumbent state Representative Norm Johnson's (R-Yakima) vote for a comprehensive domestic partnership bill.  Strobel has allied herself with Larry Stickney, the perennial campaign loser who has dedicated much of his life recently to undermining gay and lesbian families.

Since then, Strobel clearly has cast about for a real issue plaguing the Yakima valley that she can champion, and she has finally identified the worst of the worst: bikini baristas!  Not gangs, not failing schools, not drugs, not poverty, not water supply, immigration policy or the apple maggot.  No, scantily-clad women serving up joe at drive-though coffee stands are the root cause of all that ails Washington's 14th legislative district.
Although Strobel doesn't live in Yakima, she debuted her new cause by speaking during the public comment section of the February 18th Yakima City Council meeting.  Yakima is the largest city in the legislative district that she's gunning for.  The Council was thinking about changing their adult entertainment ordinance to include bikini barista coffee stands, and Strobel showed up to state her disapproval of those businesses.  Certainly to her chagrin, the Council voted against making the proposed changes.

The clear signal from Yakima City Council that bikini baristas are not a priority for the city was not enough to cause Strobel to reassess her choice of issues.  Strobel went ahead and staged a p.r. stunt by attempting to "save" some women working at local stands.

"We think these girls are being exploited and we're worried about it," she said. "As a woman, I'd be mortified if my child would do that."

Strobel talked with two baristas Tuesday as part of a broader effort to close the stands, which she said are giving downtown Yakima a black eye.

But guess what, these "girls" (how condescending can you get?) rejected Nanny State Strobel's "help".

[O]ne of the baristas at Dream Girls on Yakima Avenue said she was offended and felt demeaned by the conversation, which lasted about 10 minutes.

"She basically kind of made me feel like what I was doing was wrong. She kept asking me if I felt what I was doing was wrong. I said no -- I go to work, make coffee, and go home. I don't do anything else, said 24-year-old Alisha Perez, who manages the coffee stand.

"I felt like she was trying to belittle me," said Perez, who said she told Strobel that she was "perfectly happy with her job."

"I assumed that maybe she wasn't happy working there," Strobel said. "I found out otherwise."

Clearly it never occurred to Strobel or her handlers to check their assumptions about bikini baristas before moving ahead.  This is what happens when you select a legislative agenda based on what your inner circle of radical-right buddies obsesses about, rather than check in with the real world.  "Due diligence" is the magic term, and Michele Strobel apparently has no clue what that is.  What she does have in spades is a personal agenda of encoding her harsh judgment of others into law.  Responsible governance of a diverse population means opening your mind wider than the philosophical confines of Selah Covenant Church.

Perhaps most disastrous for Strobel is that this debacle didn't just piss off a few baristas.  She has essentially told her core constituents, pro-business fiscal conservatives, that a) businesses need more regulation, and b) they themselves are scum for patronizing these businesses.  How many of those tea baggers that Strobel was trying to suck up to last month do you suppose get their jollies by buying coffee from DejaBrew or Dream Girls Espresso or similar businesses?  By the looks of the extensive comments in the Yakima Herald and Yakima's online public forum, I'd say lots.

Btw, is it any coincidence that Larry Stickney's Referendum 71 ally Russell Johnson, former employee of Family Policy Institute of Washington and current executive director of Youth Revolution, also finds bikini baristas of burning importance?  One does get the impression that Strobel moves within and represents a very narrow circle.

Related:
* Anti-gay candidate Michele Strobel hitches her wagon to campaign loser Larry Stickney
* Yakima County republicans support the reelection of pro-equality legislator

 

Andy S wrote to say:

I'm interested in the Americanism off of which sounds very odd to British ears. I'd be interested to know more about it.

Indeed, Americans would often get off of a [much more common in AmE--in BrE it can have a more restricted meaning] couch, whereas British folk would get off the [available in AmE, but I suspect that the frequency varies regionally] sofa.  That's not to say that off of is the only way we put it in AmE, as evidenced by  Paul Simon's admonition to Gus to hop off the bus.  And Americans didn't make it up.  In the OED, one can find the following examples:

a1616 SHAKESPEARE Henry VI, Pt. 2 (1623) II. i. 98 A fall off of a Tree.
1667 A. MARVELL Corr. in Wks. (1875) II. 224 The Lords and we cannot yet get off of the difficultyes risen betwixt us.

 Nevertheless, it came to be regarded as 'non-standard' in Britain. In AmE (according to Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1991 [via Fowler's Modern English Usage, 3rd edn]), off of is 'widespread in speech, including that of the educated . . . but is rare in edited writing'.

But, in a weird twist, AmE speakers are more likely to say go out the window/door than BrE speakers, who more typically go out of the window.  According to a corpus study by Maria Estling published in English Today (1999; 15:3.22-7; via John Algeo's British or American English), when going through windows or doors, BrE uses out of twice as often as out and AmE uses out more than six times as much as out of in this context.  But BrE differs a lot in spoken (72% out) versus written (80% out of).  Algeo investigated this further and found that both BrE and AmE prefer out more strongly with door, but Americans 'more strikingly so'.  BrE users are twice as likely to say out with door but AmE speakers are nine times more likely to say out the door.

Algeo goes on to list several more cases in which BrE uses out of and AmE either doesn't, or is less likely to:

1. Algeo reports that he's found equal numbers of from King's Cross ([BrE] railway station/[AmE] train station) and out of King's Cross, but no cases of out of Grand Central.  I'm not sure if he checked more than just Grand Central though...and whether he knows that Penn Station would be a better test case (because NY Penn Station gets more than four times the traffic of Grand Central, and there are Penn Stations in other cities too).  Checking on the web, I find that trains out of Penn Station gets 901 hits, while trains from Penn Station gets 18,100, backing up Algeo's evidence for a difference.
2. BrE says out of hours to mean 'outside normal business hours', while AmE would use after hours in most similar contexts.
3. BrE kicks people out of the team 96% of the time in Algeo's data (versus off the team) AmE always kicks people off the team.
4. BrE sometimes (28% of the time in A's data--the Cambridge Intertnational Corpus) has things being out of all recognition instead of beyond all recognition.  AmE always uses the latter.

Why would anyone ever use a compound preposition with of if they don't need to?  When I want to give my students an example of a really meaningless word, I use of.  I mean, what does it add to anything?  Well, it adds a preposition, and we need prepositions to glue bits of sentences together and tell us which parts go with which parts.  For instance consider the phrase:

The Chairperson of the Committee of Ministers welcomes the deposit, by the Russian Federation, of its instrument of ratification of Protocol.  [Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers]

 And without the ofs:

The Chairperson the Committee Ministers welcomes the deposit, by the Russian Federation, its instrument ratification Protocol.

The ofs tell us to process the sentence like this:

The Chairperson

of the Committee

of Ministers

welcomes

the deposit

of its instrument

of ratification

of Protocol

 by the Russian Federation

(That's my attempt at lazy [AmEish] sentence-diagramming on Blogger.)

So, why do you need the glue of of if you've already got a workable preposition?  Probably (in part) because there's some ambiguity about whether out and off are prepositions.  In many situations, they are adverbial.  You can tell the difference in that prepositions require objects--i.e. noun phrases--to go [usually] after them, but an adverb modifies the verb, rather than gluing a noun to a sentence.  So:

I jumped off  [adverbial; tells something about the direction of your jumping]
   versus
I jumped off the table [preposition; indicates a relationship between the me-jumping and the table]

(For the record, the AmE part of my brain is screaming for an of in the second example.) 
If we understand the off to be an adverb, then we'd need a preposition in order to glue the table onto the sentence.   But wait one (AmE) gumdanged minute!  There are other adverb/preposition pairs that don't have an of variant.  What's up with that? 

Well, I don't know--I've not researched this, so this is middle-of-the-night rambling, but notice that we don't get *in of or *on of.  (* is linguists' way of marking an impossible grammatical construction.)  The of seems to signify a movement away, a 'from' meaning. (Notice we do get into and onto-- a 'toward' meaning matches on or in--so we do make compound prepositions with them too.)  Why do off and out allow of, while other 'away'-meaning preposition/adverbs, like away, down and up, use from instead? Oh, I don't know...it's past 2 in the morning--stop with the questions already!  The most likely answer is 'because that's the way people have started saying it', but I'm tempted to think it's because the others are further to the adverbial side of the preposition-adverb continuum than off and out are and that they therefore need a stronger prepositional support.  But then again I don't know that I actually believe it, so I'm going to shut up already [final positioning of already is AmE, influenced by Yiddish].  Good night!

Folks who have long been looking forward to the Plastic Logic QUE proReader that was supposed to come out sometime in the middle of next month will be disappointed since it has been delayed to an unspecified date in the summer. There were no exact reasons behind the delay, but apparently it was meant to "fine-tune the features and enhance the overall product experience." How will this shape the battlefield of the e-reader market? Will the iPad's head start (albeit it not being a dedicated e-reader) prove to be too monumental a task for the QUE to overtake later on?

Permalink: Plastic Logic QUE proReader delayed from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

*
In a Green Room commentary for Hot Air, Doctor Zero looks beyond the obvious to find a reason behind the intensity of liberal rage projected at Sarah Palin:

Palin’s admirers often marvel at how the charges leveled against her are far more applicable to the current President. People who voted for an undistinguished junior senator from Illinois with few accomplishments are quick to assault Palin’s “lack of experience.” The same folks who instruct us that Barack Obama is a physical paragon, and Michelle Obama is the most beautiful woman in the world – a goddess who causes fashion models to slink from her path in shame – belittle Palin for her good looks. Defenders of the most fabulously corrupt administration in modern history mumble about the murky details of obscure “scandals” manufactured by Alaskan bloggers. They turn away from the sad spectacle of a manifestly incompetent President to sneer that a woman who alters the course of legislative battles with blog posts is some kind of an idiot.

They dismiss Going Rogue as “ghost written” while ignoring the specter of Bill Ayers plodding through Obama’s books, a sputtering bomb clutched in its skeletal fingers. A few lines scribbled on Palin’s palm glow more brightly in their imaginations than terabytes of data flowing across the screen of Obama’s teleprompter. They accuse Palin of being a “divisive” and “polarizing” figure, while Obama launches Taxi Driver rants against evil insurance companies, cops acting stupidly, tonsil-stealing doctors, and everyone else who crosses his path.

[...]

It’s very important for liberals to deflect those suspicions onto a designated, culturally approved target. Sarah Palin is a convenient hate fetish for increasingly nervous and confused Left, because she embodies the qualities of the red-state America they loathe… and serves as a voodoo doll for uncomfortable criticisms of Obama, which they project onto her. As events continue to demonstrate those criticisms were far more important than any of the superficial or imaginary reasons they voted for him, they’ll jab pins into that voodoo doll with increasing fury, even though the object of their anger now spends her days working for a news network none of them would be caught dead watching.

The pitfall of an insular, heavily biased media culture is that it doesn’t process negative feedback well. Those of us who never joined the Obama cult can only frown at the chunks of bile strewn through discourse that should have nothing to do with politics, and laugh when people who voted Joe Biden into office sputter about what a lousy vice-president Sarah Palin would have made.

A thought-provoking diagnosis by the good Doctor, and you can read it all here.

- JP

I found this at a webpage that was dated 2 years ago. Who makes it, where can I buy it?

9 pm: @ Music Gallery (with Julie Fader and Brian Borcherdt ) If you're looking for a way to get you pumped for a crazy night of music...well, Postdata's ghostly folk probably is the antithesis of that. If,… (in post Who to see at CMW, Day 3 from i (heart) music. )

9 pm: @ Music Gallery (with Julie Fader and Brian Borcherdt ) If you're looking for a way to get you pumped for a crazy night of music...well, Postdata's ghostly folk probably is the antithesis of that. If,… (in post Who to see at CMW, Day 3 from i (heart) music. Download this at iTunes)

9 pm: @ Music Gallery (with Julie Fader and Brian Borcherdt ) If you're looking for a way to get you pumped for a crazy night of music...well, Postdata's ghostly folk probably is the antithesis of that. If,… (in post Who to see at CMW, Day 3 from i (heart) music. Download this at eMusic)

9 pm: @ Music Gallery (with Julie Fader and Brian Borcherdt ) If you're looking for a way to get you pumped for a crazy night of music...well, Postdata's ghostly folk probably is the antithesis of that. If,… (in post Who to see at CMW, Day 3 from i (heart) music. Download this at iTunes)

CA-Alameda, Wind River Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel, has an exciting opportunity for an experienced Software Engineering Professional. The selected candidate will join the growing Certified Platforms test team, which validates cutting edge Wind River products designed for safe and secure markets, such as Aerospace and Defense, Industrial and Medical. Responsibilities: Participate as an Individu

CA-Tustin, We are seeking a self-motivated, hands-on test test technician/engineer who will lead a small team in testing a wide variety of complex analog and digital products. Job Purpose: Validates complex electronic product manufacturing by designing tests, conducting tests, troubleshooting failed products and validating repairs. Duties: * Meets testing operational standards by contributing test engineerin

CA-Alameda, Wind River Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel, has an exciting opportunity for an experienced Software Engineering Professional. The selected candidate will join the growing Certified Platforms team and provide technical leadership for validating cutting edge Wind River products. Responsibilities: - Provide hands-on technical leadership and guidance to the test team - Participate in proje

Internet Marketing Intern

LA Vintage is looking for an “INTERNET MARKETING” Intern

Our preferred candidate will have the following experience:

- Must have strong knowledge of computers and the Internet
- Must have strong communication skills
- Must be organized and very detail oriented

In this position you will:

-Learn the ins and outs of SEO and link building
-Research and build relationships with bloggers (blogger relations)
-Research and build relationships with potential partners
-Content Development (write blogs)
-Research and report on competitors


In addition, the ideal candidate will be outgoing and proactive in coming up with new ideas to help further the goals of LA Vintage and help follow-through with the implementation of the ideas. If you’d like the opportunity to join an exciting and dynamic marketing team, please forward your resume to tia@lavintage.com

If your resume’s lookin’ kind of skimpy, but you have practical Internet experience, (experience surfing the web and knowledgeable of all search engines) you should definitely apply!

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http://www.lavintage.com
http://www.lavintage.com/blog

IQstor Networks, Inc. is a SAN storage solution provider that delivers a wide range of enterprise level data service features including storage virtualization, snapshot, mirroring, remote replication, and policy-based storage provisioning affordable for the entry and mid-size market, enabling storage administrators to benefit from greater ease of integration and improved cost-efficiencies as they manage their storage growth requirements. For more information about iQstor, please visit our website at www.iqstor.com.

We are looking for a junior development engineer who has programming knowledge in an embedded software environment. The successful candidate will be a motivated engineer and is proficient in C/C++, knowledge in HTML, Windows, DOS and UNIX environments. Candidates with SAN storage systems and protocols would be a big plus.

Responsibilities
Embedded Software Development

Education/Qualifications
BS in Computer Science is required. Programming experience in a Storage systems environment is a plus but not required. Good analytical skills and ability to work successfully as part of a team and good communication skills are expected.

The LANAIR Group
www.lanairgroup.com

Who We Are:

LANAIR Group, LLC is a premier IT Services Consultant firm that has grown rapidly since 2006.

LANAIR integrates the industry's best technologies and practices for each customer's specific need and delivers it as a service via the company's commitment of client service.

We serve as an extension of our customers' IT departments, enabling them to focus on their core business.

What We Want:

Our interest is adding a Senior Network/I.T. Consultant to our Consulting Practice with the following credentials:

• 4-year Bachelor's Degree from Accredited University - Computer Science, MIS, or Engineering/Technical degree preferred
• Current active Microsoft Certification or Cisco Certification, minimum MCSE, MCDBA or CCNA. Additional Microsoft, ITIL and Cisco certifications preferred
• Minimum 5 years of experience in IT support and networking with Microsoft server systems and applications
• Technology consulting and field-support experience
• Project Management Skills

Specific Duties and Responsibilities

• Learn our clients' businesses and how technology facilitates (or interrupts) realization of their business objectives.
• Proactively manage clients' networks using our methodologies.
• Manage Databases and Disaster Recovery systems
• Provide on-call and reactive support service.
• Document network environments configurations, policies and procedures.

Interpersonal Skills

• Must be excellent at managing multiple tasks and projects simultaneously.
• Must be able to spend a great deal of time in the field with clients.
• Must possess strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Must possess strong time management and organizational skills.
• Must be able to provide guidance and innovative technical leadership for all members of the team.
• Technical writing experience and/or education preferred.

Required Software Skills (Installing, Configuring, and Troubleshooting)

• Active Directory Management and Policy Creation
• Microsoft Windows Desktop Management
• Microsoft Server 2008
• Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise
• Experience with Data Storage Solutions (EMC, NetApp, Dell)
• Enterprise Backup
• Enterprise Antivirus
• IT Security
• Server Farms

Technical Skills

• Designing Systems Architecture for Application Deployment
• Performance Tuning of Database Applications
• Commissioning and Installing new Applications
• Developing, managing and testing backup and recovery plans
• Writing database documentation, including data standards, procedures and definitions for the data dictionary (‘metadata’)
• Working with technical-support services to develop solutions to problems with various products' support departments, including ISPs and hardware & software manufacturers
• Systems Monitoring

Skills that you may have:

• GIS/ESRI
• Project Management (PMP)
• Wireless Networking
• Military or Law Enforcement Experience
• Construction Management
• Virtualization

Other
Applicants must agree to and have a successful background check completed.
Applicants must be able to travel daily to various locations as required in the Greater LA area.
Applicants must stay current on industry trends and technology, which may affect operations or customer expectations.

What’s so Great about LANAIR?

We are an I.T. Services Company – run entrepreneurially by I.T. Service Engineers, so we understand the job and what it takes. As a fast growing organization with aggressive growth targets we offer the following:

• An organization where you will be immersed in an IT Consulting Practice, where you will gain valuable “breadth” and “depth” experience.
• Upside growth and opportunities – a place to be recognized and rewarded for your contributions.
• Above Average Compensation Plan.
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What’s Next?

Please carefully read above, “What We Want” and “Requirements” regarding this opportunity. The successful team member will have to get up to speed quickly. If all of the above makes sense to you, we will want to meet you.

Email your resume addressed as Senior Network/I.T. Consultant in the subject line, including your salary expectations to careers@lanairgroup.com


“Principals only – no agencies, please”

Paralegal/Litigation Secretary-Civil litigation and pre-litigation claim handling with experience of at least 5-years. This is a full-time position. Candidate must be reliable and possess superior written and oral communication skills. Must be a self-starter who is organized, detail oriented and a team player. Experience in conducting legal research. JD is a plus, but not required. Candidate must be able to handle multi-task projects, especially during deadline intensive periods. Please submit resume including salary history and references. Salary commensurate with experience.

POSITION SUMMARY: Primarily responsible for various payroll functions within the Accounting Department which typically occupies about 3 to 4 days every two weeks. The remainder of the time would be to provide GL support to the department, including but not limited to coding and data entry; bank and other account reconciliation and other duties as assigned. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to participate in miscellaneous projects, other position-related tasks and learn a variety of functions within the Accounting Department.

REPORTS TO: Finance Manager

FLSA STATUS: Non-Exempt
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES: None

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:
Required: An Accounting or Business degree from a 4-year institution; a minimum of three years accounting/payroll; excellent communication, problem-solving, and organizational skills; ability to work with complex account structure; at least 1 year of ADP or other payroll system experience; the ability to honor and maintain a strict level of confidentiality.

Useful: Knowledge of PeopleSoft GL.

Our ideal candidate will be a dynamic multi-task oriented individual who is organized, accurate, fast, and detail-oriented with a professional, can-do attitude. Must have strong communication and interpersonal skills, excellent phone and customer service skills, and maintain a positive attitude under pressure. Must be a team player and enjoy working with others in a close-knit, fast paced office environment. Must be able to work overtime when required.

DUTIES:
1. Compile payroll data from timesheets; Input time, process payroll and distribute checks / reports using ADP system. Prepare and issue manual payroll checks.

2. Reconcile errors to maintain payroll records to ensure accuracy of payroll.

3. Data entry of payroll and other GL transactions in PeopleSoft, including prorating payroll related expenses to be debited or credited to each department for cost accounting purpose.

4. Reconcile payroll related GL accounts.

5. Other duties related to Accounting functions as assigned.