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Check back regularly here for Vinyl Gutters and home improvement tips and tricks to make sure you get the most out of your next Vinyl Gutters!

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You have to be knowledgeable regarding Vinyl Gutters in Majestic, KY. We will ensure that you understand what should be expected. That's the reason we make every effort to make sure that you are familiar with the steps and aren't faced with any surprises. Step one is to call by dialing 888-445-7870 to set up your work. We'll reply to all of your questions and concerns and arrange your initial meeting. We are going to work closely with you throughout the entire process, and our staff can appear on time and well prepared.

When you'd like Vinyl Gutters in Majestic, Wyoming, work with Supreme Vinyl Gutters

When you are arranging a process regarding Vinyl Gutters in Majestic, KY, there are several good reasons to work with Supreme Vinyl Gutters. Our materials are of the very best quality, our money saving solutions are realistic and successful, and our customer satisfaction scores are unrivaled. We're there to assist you with the most skills and practical experience around. When you need Vinyl Gutters in Majestic, contact Supreme Vinyl Gutters by dialing 888-445-7870, and we are going to be beyond glad to help you.

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FCS II Carver PC Tri Fins

Rated 5.0 out of 5
2 Reviews

Powerful, drawn-out turns. Excels on open face waves.

Find your local FCS Retailer
  • Overview

    • Designed for powerful, drawn-out turns with added hold.
    • Elongated template with high degree of sweep provides exceptional hold off the bottom and when carving on the open face.
    • Ideal for power surfers who like to push hard against their fins and draw out their turns.

    Ideal Conditions

    • Open face, down-the-line waves, particularly good in point and reef breaks.

    Board Types

    • Designed to fit the FCS II Fin System.
    • Recommended for boards with deep concaves and moderate-to-extreme rocker.

    Fin Family

    • Carver: Find Power. Powerful, drawn-out turns with added hold.
  • Performance Core

    Performance Core (PC) fins are made using a multi-layered resin transfer molding process. The flex pattern in PC fins extends progressively from the base through to the tip, helping the surfer to maintain drive and hold through a turn. This versatile fin material is light, and can be used in a variety of different conditions.

  • X-SMALL (Under 55Kg / 120 Lbs)
    SMALL (55Kg - 70Kg / 120 - 155 Lbs)
    MEDIUM (65Kg - 80Kg / 145 - 175 Lbs)
    LARGE (75Kg - 90Kg / 165 - 200 Lbs)
    X-LARGE (Over 85Kg / 190 Lbs)

  • We offer:

    • Express Shipping: Select Express 2nd Day Shipping at the Checkout for an additional fee of $4.95.
    • Tracking: Quick & easy online tracking.
    • Peace of Mind: All our deliveries are fully insured against damage.
    • Returns: 30 day exchange or refund for unopened items.

    average rating 5.0 out of 5
    Based on 2 reviews
    • 5 Stars
      2 Reviews
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    100% of reviewers would recommend this product to a friend
    2 Reviews
    Rated 5 out of 5
    Review posted

    Great product

    Love this item. Pretty much the mock fanning design but with more flex. Not really a fan of yellow but I love the product

    Was this helpful?
    Rated 5 out of 5
    Review posted

    Exelent fins work well in blakbox2 and monsta 8 . Love the smooth turns and drive in small to head high waves

    Was this helpful?

    Hi, it looks like you are in . Would you like to go to your local store?

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Exam Invigilation

Surrey Libraries offers exam invigilation for written and online exams.  Invigilation sessions are held at  City Centre Library on the second and last Friday of every month.  A library card is not necessary.  The cost is $60.00 per exam, up to 3 hours and $10 for each additional hour.

First Name/Last Name
Exams are only held on the second and last Fridays of the month.
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How will you be completing your exam? Note: Surrey Libraries cannot accommodate exams requiring specialized software.
For paper based exams only.
Personal information is collected for the purpose of providing exam invigilation services. Surrey Public Library is collecting this information under the authority of the Library Act and section 26(c) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. For questions regarding the collection of personal information, please contact the Manager of Administrative Services, 10350 University Drive, Surrey, BC V3T 4B8 604-598-7303.


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Recent Posts

Why Granite Is Perfect For Kitchens

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2020 Kitchen Trends

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How to Add Extra Shine to your Stone

When you’ve got guests coming for dinner or the whole family gathering for Christmas, you want your home to look its best. Here are 5 ways to make your stone floor, kitchen or bathroom sparkle.

1. Clean your stone

Polishing a stone floor or worktop should be the last step, after you’ve completed your usual cleaning rituals. Use a damp cloth or mop to ensure the stone is free of dust and dirt, clean with your usual cleaner. Rinse the cleaner away with water. Instead of allowing the stone to air dry, wipe it dry with a smooth, clean cloth. This will remove any water marks that may be dulling your stone.

2. Remove Greasy Residue

If your stone looks dull, particularly around cooking areas in the kitchen, you may have a build up of greasy residue. It’s important to remove the grease without damaging the polish of the stone, so start with a mild option. Dish washing liquid is designed to remove grease, so it’s a great place to start. If that doesn’t work, acetone is a very effective solvent for grease, but be sure to rinse the area thoroughly after use. Avoid highly abrasive cleaners, such as oven cleaners, as well as scouring pads and other rough cloths.

3. Remove Limescale

Limescale is made of the same basic elements as marble, so you have to be careful when removing it. Acids, like vinegar or lemon juice, are very effective ways of removing limescale, but can also damage stone or dull the polish on glossy marble. We recommend using a dedicated limescale remover that’s specifically formulated to work on stone. You may have to ask at a specialist kitchen or home care shop. Soaking the area in water, scraping or using detergents are unlikely to help.

4. Use Stone Polish

Each polish is aimed at a particular material, so don’t try and use your furniture polish on your granite worktops. Choose a polish that’s suitable for your particular stone, and follow the directions. Typically, you’ll have to clean the surface and remove grease and dirt, as described above. Most polishes are sprayed or spread on, and then let to sit for 3-15 minutes. When the time is up, use a clean, soft cloth to rub in the polish and buff up the surface. You can get an as-new sparkle this way, but there’s a bit of elbow grease involved!

5. Rent a Floor Polisher

There are mop-on, mop-off floor polishers available, but if you want to get a marble floor sparkling, you may want to enlist some mechanical help. Renting a floor polisher once or twice a year can be a very affordable way to quickly refresh your home. Any device you rent should come with complete instructions and the cleaning products you need. If you don’t want to do the work yourself, many companies will come and polish your floor for you.

Recommended Articles

We know that shopping for kitchen worktops can be extremely overwhelming as a consumer. There are so many different shapes, sizes, colours and surface types. At Surrey we pride ourselves on putting the customer first and would love to be your choice to help you decide upon what type of worktop is right for you.

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Read More

The assets of natural stone are gaining greater and greater prominence in innovative home design. Stones such as granite are becoming prominent features in modern homes, lending a charming shine and glossiness to modern bathrooms, and granite worktops for kitchens are not only beautiful but also sturdy and stain and scratch resistant. Granite tiles for bathrooms and floors are becoming a beloved choice in home renovations.

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Marble cladding and marble flooring can be primarily composed of one or more carbonate materials such as dolomite or calcite. The purest calcite marble is white, but there are usually patterns found in marble to give it its unique look in a marble worktop. The crystallisation process of marble gives it more solidity. Not only that, but it allows the stone to be polished up far more brilliantly than other materials.

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Hello From Ky!

Discussion in 'New Member Introductions' started by stjohn45, Dec 24, 2007.

  1. stjohn45

    stjohn45 Monkey+++

    Just found this site on another forum and wanted to check it out. I'll try to contribute what I can. Everyone have a save and Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

  2. Blackjack

    Blackjack Monkey+++

    Welcome to the Monkey!
  3. RightHand

    RightHand Maslow's Contradiction Moderator Founding Member

    Welcome Steve. We will look forward to hearing from you
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary


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Suzuki Genuine Leather Jacket

  • Price :
  • RRP £290.00
  • £261.00

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Suzuki Brown full zip leather jacket with 2 zip side pockets. Outer 100% genuine leather. Inner 100% polyester.

Brand New. Genuine Suzuki

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Scotts Valley parents rally community to pitch in for schools

Read about our Community Day program and other ways that SVEF works to help our local schools in this Santa Cruz Sentinel article.

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Search - Black Orpheus: The Criterion Collection on DVD

Black Orpheus: The Criterion Collection
Black Orpheus The Criterion Collection
Actors: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Marcel Camus, Fausto Guerzoni, Lourdes de Oliveira
Director: Marcel Camus
Genres: Indie & Art House, Drama, Science Fiction & Fantasy
PG     1999     1hr 40min

1960 Academy Award Winner and winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice against the madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With it...  more »

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Movie Details

Actors: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Marcel Camus, Fausto Guerzoni, Lourdes de Oliveira
Director: Marcel Camus
Genres: Indie & Art House, Drama, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sub-Genres: Indie & Art House, Love & Romance, Fantasy
Studio: Criterion
Format: DVD - Color - Subtitled
DVD Release Date: 06/08/1999
Original Release Date: 12/21/1959
Theatrical Release Date: 12/21/1959
Release Year: 1999
Run Time: 1hr 40min
Screens: Color
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Total Copies: 0
Members Wishing: 15
Edition: Criterion Collection
MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Languages: Portuguese, English
Subtitles: English
See Also:

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Movie Reviews

A strange and beautiful film
Dennis Littrell | SoCal | 01/25/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Do they clean the streets in Rio De Janeiro? Well, of course they do. When this carnival is over.

And if you watch this movie you will see that they do it very near the end of the last reel, as in the morning when the truck comes round spraying water, just one of a thousand little details that director Marcel Camus got right, and one of the most insignificant. But it is from a multiplicity of detail that an edifice of cinematic genius is constructed.

The true brilliance of Black Orpheus lies in the people who live on the side of the cliffs overlooking the harbor at Rio. It is their energy that prevails. Then there is the color, the costumes, the pounding rhythms, the spectacular vitality of life that is depicted as a carnival of dance and song in which we are driven along as on a wave. And yet there is the constant reality of death. And it strikes in ways we cannot comprehend, fatalistically, and we are helpless to do anything about it. And then Orpheus sings, a new Orpheus perhaps, and the sun rises again, and a little girl in white, looking like Eurydice in miniature, begins to dance as the little boy Orpheus plays his guitar, telling us that time has come round again.

Well, that's the plot as adapted by screen writer Jacques Voit from the play by Vinicius d Moraes as divined from the Greek mythology. Supporting this arresting conception is the music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfa. I recall the former as the composer of bossanova who gave us "The Girl from Ipanema" and made the samba international. Starring in the title role as the streetcar conductor who is loved by all is Breno Melo, who might be seen as the natural man and native of paradise. The very pretty Marpessa Dawn plays Eurydice, an innocent from the country who falls in love with Orpheus and his song. Lourdes de Oliveira plays his intended, Mira who is hot blooded, vital and beautifully ordinary. But the actress I recall most vividly from the time I first saw this in the sixties was Léa Garcia who played Serafina. Her exuberance and comedic flair struck me as something completely different from anybody I had ever seen before. And then there are the boys who follow Orpheus around and emulate his every move. With their torn shirts and unflagging optimism, they represent the new day that will dawn.

If you haven't seen this strange and beautiful film, you are in for a singular experience. There is nothing else like it that I know of. And it is as fresh today as when it was made almost half a century ago."
Wonderful interpretation of the classic
R. Gawlitta | Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA | 10/06/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)

"A lot of people were surprised when this won for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1959 Academy Awards. It hadn't been widely seen, except for winning at Cannes, it was a French director with a Portuguese-language film, with a black cast. (I've been to Rio and there's no racism, though some class-ism and other political nonsense). I saw this film in the 60's and loved it for its sincerity and profound lesson. I was in high school, and didn't really know much about the Orpheus legend. I was taken in by the narrative presented by Marcel Camus, and never forgot it. I subsequently visited Rio, and watching this film is most interesting, because it's about real people (not what the tourists see), but the exquisite photography not only shows vast vistas of Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches, but vivid colors, as well as how seriously the Cariocas regard "Carnaval". Bruno Mello (Orpheus) was a handsome soccer star, and a fine actor. Marpessa Dawn, as Eurydice, is really excellent (according to liner notes, she was from Pittsburgh). A real natural. An interesting thing to notice is that, even when looking though an open door, there are great shots of the beaches, Rio's finest feature. I also attended a Macumba ceremony while there, and the one depicted in the film let me know that mine wasn't a fake. Then there's the brilliant score by Jobim and Bonfa, which, by now, has become standard/classic. The music truly carries the film, the acting is first-rate, and the use of color by cinematographers Louis Stein & Rene Persin is breath-taking. This is indeed a great film with humor, a few scares, great love story, and just about everything anyone would want. The music alone will entertain; everything else is like a fine sauce over an excellent entree."
An Orpheus Oddessy
R. Gawlitta | 12/20/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)

"A wonder-filled whirl of color and sound, this movie will provide a boost for the hopeless romantic. The never-ending love story of Orpheus and Eurydice is regenerated in "modern" Rio during Carnival. Beautifully photographed with an excellent sound track, this movie is a must-see for any serious film connoisseur.Links to the original Greek tragedy will test your knowledge of mythology and the trip to "Hades" with its voodoo incantations will stick in your mind like a fever-induced dream. The beauty and rhythm of this film will make you think of your first true love, and, if you're one of the lucky ones out there, make you glad you never let that person go.I first saw Black Orpheus in New Orleans. One of my life's fondest memories is viewing this film at a local repertory theater. Whenever there were carnival street scenes, balcony-bound moviegoers would let loose with Mardi Gras beads and doubloons, adding to the carnival atmosphere.Also, although I have a copy of the subtitled Orpheu Negro, which I would never part with, I have seen a dubbed version, only once and then on television. I would very much like to acquire a dubbed copy. Can anyone out there help? I remember there being much more to the story line revealed with the dubbed version. (For example, when at the pawn shop, as patrons are passing the guitar down to Orpheus, they are saying, "This is for Orpheus. This is for Orpheus." This phrase is transposed from person to person into "This is Orpheus. Here's Orpheus.", giving the guitar mystical properties and seeming to make it the embodiment of the spirit of Orpheus. Inscribed on the guitar are the words "Orpheus is my master."I would give this film my highest recommendation and would encourage anyone to view it at least one a"
A classic of world cinema
Joe Sixpack -- | Middle America | 12/15/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)

"The classic film that brought Brazil's bossa nova music to the world outside, this was a wry modernist update of the classical Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridyce, the starcrossed lovers whose passion could not be denied, even by all the powers of Hell. The film is adapted from a bold stage play written by Brazilian poet Vinicius De Moraes, who enlisted a then-unknown Antonio Carlos Jobim to compose the classic bossa tunes that stud the films soundtrack. In this version, Hell is a blend of the futurist modernism that created Brasilia, the sterile and unappealing new capital of Brazil, and the heedless bacchanalia of Carnaval; Vinicius's vision of the lower rings of Hades as a bureaucrat's office is a stroke of pure genius. I first saw this film when I was in high school; viewing it again as an adult steeped in Brazilian popular culture, I certainly got a lot more out of it. Although some Brazilians (prominently, Caetano Veloso) chafe at the fact that this version was directed by a European, director Marcel Camus, I think it's still safe to say that it is a brilliantly made film. Heavy on the textual symbolism and, yes, a bit voyeuristic in its depictation of the happy natives dancing to their catchy samba rhythms, but brilliant nonetheless. It also captures a moment in time -- Brazil's transition into a modern nation, and the heady days before the 1964 coup -- in a way that is precious and ineffable."


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If you have any queries about pathology consumables – you need a new account or you have a query about your order
- please ring 020 8266 6827.

Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV-2 IgG EIA)

Test Information

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    2 x Microbiology/Serology SST 8.5ml (Gold)
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    2 x 5-10ml
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    TAT 1-3 days
  • Lab Tests Online UK

    Lab Tests Online - UK is a website written by practising laboratory doctors and scientists to help you understand the many clinical laboratory tests that are used in diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of disease.
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Free Shipping* across India. We ship Internationally too.

Tambour Red Hanging Lamp

Regular price ₹ 7,589.00 Sale

It says that behind every attractive room there should be a very good reason. Beautiful tambour lamp, made out of recycled material, gives you enough good reason to take it home.

Size: 10.5(H)X 11(D) inches

Color: Brown with Red strips

Package Contents
Package contains around 2 pin plug, holder, and 1-meter long cable. Based on the country mentioned in the shipping address, the plug shall be specific to the country. Likewise, the bulb holder shall also be specific. For example, US - E26 Holder, India - E14 holder.
We do not provide Edison filament bulb with the lamp. It needs to be purchased separately by the customer.

Cleaning Instructions
You can clean with a soft dry cloth, nylon brush,
blower or vacuum cleaner when required.

The lamp is completely handcrafted and recycled so there might be some difference in every lamp in term of color, size, and texture. Rest assured we give a very neat and clean look to it.

Customer Reviews

Based on 1 review


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T3 Agenda: LucidSound's new LS15X Xbox One In-Ear Contour Gaming Headset, the BenQ GS1 outdoor projector and more

T3's daily roundup of the best new announcements from the world of tech

In the final T3 Agenda of the week, we get ourselves ready for the launch of Project Scorpio with the launch of a new in-ear headset from LucidSound, BenQ's new outdoor-ready projector and more...

Bring yourself close to the action with LucidSound's new LS15X Xbox One In-Ear Contour Gaming Headset

With Project Scorpio set to be unveiled as the next step for Xbox on Sunday, gaming accessory firms are gearing up to show how their tech will be compatible. That includes the new in-ear gaming headset from LucidSound, offering everything from surround sound-ready earbuds to a comfortable neckband.

The LS15X features the same Xbox Wireless technology as the Xbox Wireless Controller, automatically configuring for hassle-free setup and providing continuous compatibility across the Xbox One family of devices, which includes Xbox One, Xbox One S and Project Scorpio.

The LS15X also features dockable earbuds which can be used in either mono or stereo configuration, comfortably sitting in the ear, and offering impressive levels of audio fidelity for an in-ear gaming headset. In addition, the earbuds are ‘Surround Sound Ready’ with Windows Sonic for Headphones, as well as Dolby Atmos for Headphones providing optional surround sound, too.

No word on price yet, but LucidSound will be showing them off at E3 2017 so expect more details to drop shortly.

Take your films and games outdoors with the BenQ GS1 portable projector

Projector specialist BenQ has launched its latest compact, portable and versatile device - the GS1. Designed to work both indoors and outdoors, its cable-free design offers the ability to play your favourite films, TV shows and more anywhere at any time.

The BenQ GS1 palm-sized portable LED projector with built-in USB readers has a three-hour battery and can project a 60-inch screen at just 1 metre. And considering it weighs just 1kg, it's not going to take up much room while you're out camping.

Even in low light, the GS1 will project against your backyard wall, tent or caravan and delivers superb image quality every time. GS1 has several picture modes: Camping is the default which is brighter than Movie mode to take into account the light outdoors at night. In addition, there is Vivid mode so at home you can use this palm sized projector again and again and adjust the mode with one touch to suit you.

The BenQ GS1 is available now to buy from BenQ direct or from such reputable online retailers as Amazon. It comes with a price tag of £549.

Log onto Steam and grab a free copy of Payday 2 (and keep it forever)

We all love a freebie, especially when said freebie comes in the shape of a game.   So how about getting your hands on a copy of Payday 2, gratis? Swedish developer Starbreeze is offering five million people the chance to play its brilliant heist simulator in full (and you get to keep it forever).

There's no catch, you just click on the 'Install Now' button on the Payday 2 splash page on Steam. The special offer is running until the 21 June, but we imagine those five million copies are going to disappear pretty fast so log into your Steam account today and grab your free copy of Payday 2.


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The best underwater drones 2020: determine which drone is right for you

Underwater drone tech explained and the top models ranked

Drones are going to be practically everywhere before too long. Perhaps you’ve spotted a few yourself, making deliveries in your city or maybe doing laps across your local park while its pilot watches from a distant vantage point.

There’s no way around it — drones are lots of fun! But the funny part is, while most of us are still saving our pennies for our own sky-patrolling aircraft, the next major step for drones is already happening … underwater.

That’s right: underwater drones are finally coming of age. What’s the state of this technology? And which models are the right ones for developing your inner Captain Nemo? To find out, keep reading our complete guide to buying underwater drones!

Why underwater drones are massively taking off

Drones tickle a nearly primeval desire in the human mind to explore and learn about our environment. Who wouldn’t want to elevate themselves to a bird’s-eye view of the world? This technology, ahem, took off in large part because of our insatiable curiosity.

But consider how much less we know about the seas and oceans than we do about the skies and the clouds. Scientists with the National Ocean Service estimate that more than 95 percent of the earth’s oceans have so far gone unexplored.

So is it any wonder why underwater drones are taking the consumer tech world by storm? We’re not saying you’re going to catch giant squids or discover new species on your days away from the office, but merely treating ourselves to a fleeting glimpse of this underwater kingdom is privilege enough for us land-dwellers — and an outlandish level of luxury that can surprisingly be relatively affordable.

What you should consider when buying an underwater drone

You'll likely remember the earliest airborne drones — they were little more than novelties or kids’ toys. Many of them still are. But in just a short while, we watched as this burgeoning technology matured to the point where amateur hobbyists can now fly aircraft that require oversight from the FAA. For a few hundred dollars, you can get a highly capable flying drone, spare batteries and propellers and just about everything else you need to get flying.

Some of the underwater drones below require physical tethers because radio signals don’t travel well through water — this is a unique challenge airborne drones don’t have. Recording low-quality, compressed video to stream it wirelessly could make the whole endeavour kind of pointless. If video quality is your major concern — if you’re a filmmaker or a salvage operator, for example — tethers are going to be here for a while.

Also, the cleanliness of the camera lenses and sensor apertures is something else to consider. If a drone is submerged beneath hundreds of feet of water, the whole operation has to grind to a halt while the operator retrieves the drone and attends to the problem.

Naturally, some or all of these challenges apply to “regular” drones as well. They’re not tethered by a cable, but the range of our remotes and the finite lives of our lithium-based batteries still mean operating a drone comes with a limited operational window.

The top 4 underwater drones on the market

The perfect drone for those who love to fish

Dimensions: 465x270x126mm
Weight: 3.8 kg
Depth capacity: ≤30m
Operating temperature: 14℉~122℉（-10℃~50℃）
Max cruise speed: 3~4Kn(2m/s)
Max ascend speed: ~0.78Kn(0.4m/s)
Max descend speed: ~0.58Kn(0.3m/s)
Max run time: 4 hours
Reasons to buy
+Records video at 4K+Excellent for finding fish

Fishing and high technology don’t sound like an obvious match, but our first entry combines them for interesting results. That’s right — PowerVision’s PowerRay is a drone for fishermen.

Sensors and sonar equipment aboard the drone can feed you all kinds of data points, including the temperature of the water, what the submarine landscape looks like and whether there are any fish about. A high-powered camera can record video in 4K or stills at 12 megapixels.

Price: $1,199 | Get PowerRay underwater drone

The best underwater drone for VR enthusiasts

Weight: 8 kg
Depth capacity: 150m
Max cruise speed: 3~4Kn(2m/s)
Max run time: 2 hours
Thrusters: 3 x 350 W
Reasons to buy
+1080p wide-angle camera+WiFi connectivity+Compact design

Blueye is an underwater drone developed in Norway — home of striking coastlines and a hotbed of nautical research. Pioneer is billing Blueye as the “world’s finest” undersea drone for exploration purposes. The drone can reach depths of up to 150 meters, uses Wi-Fi connectivity and offers two hours of battery life.

Using your VR goggles or any conventional mobile device, Blueye is easy to control and offers nearly seamless uploads of stills and video (30 fps, 1080p) to your favourite social networks.

Pioneer is offering a 15 percent discount off the anticipated sticker price of $3,550 when you purchase through their website. The drone goes on sale in 2018.

Price: $3,550 (£2,745) | Get Blueye underwater drone

DTG2 Series

Fantastic for underwater exploration

Dimensions: 325x258x279mm
Weight: 8.5 kg
Depth capacity: ≤30m
Operating temperature: 23℉~104℉（-5℃~40℃）
Max cruise speed: 2.5Kn
Max run time: 8 hours
Reasons to buy
+Long run time+Lots of variants to choose from+Top rate sensors

Believe it or not, drones developed by Deep Trekker have been used in underwater search and rescue tasks for years. These are definitely not toys!

Four models of the DTG2 are available: Starter, Pro, Smart and Worker. The differences mostly have to do with the drones’ depth capabilities and the lengths of the included tethers:

The Starter model has a 50-meter tether and a depth rating of 100 meters.

The Pro model has a 75-meter tether and a depth rating of 100 meters.

The Smart model can dive to 150 meters on a 75-meter tether.

The Worker model has a 100-meter tether, grabber arms, “intelligent” sensors, auto-depth features and more.

The Starter model carries a price of $3,899 and is available now. The Worker model will set you back almost 10 grand, but this model won’t likely appeal to you unless your line of work concerns undersea retrieval, maintenance or something similar. It looks like something out of a James Cameron film!

Price: From $3,899 | Get DTG2 Series underwater drone

The perfect drone for diving fanatics

Dimensions: 50x35x25cm
Weight: 5 kg
Depth capacity: 60m
Max cruise speed: 1 m/s
Max run time: 1 hour
Reasons to buy
+Automatically follows you+Impressive maximum dive depth+Adjustable filming modes

And now for something just a little bit different. The iBubble Camera is perhaps unique — it’s a hands-free, entirely autonomous drone that will follow you as you swim and dive, recording high-quality video the whole while.

The unit has a 196-meter max dive depth and can run for a solid hour. It also comes with a bracelet so you can adjust the drone’s film modes and angles without a lot of fuss. An optional tether extends the reach of iBubble and makes it suitable for more ambitious exploration.

You can pre-order iBubble on IndieGoGo for a discounted price of $1,999. The anticipated shipping window is summer 2018.

Price: $1,999 (£1546) | Get iBubble underwater drone


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The Atari Pong®  Coffee Table

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Last week, Jewish hip-hop icon Drake announced to a Detroit audience that he was about to bring out the “greatest rapper to ever get on the…microphone.” Imagine the crowd’s shock when it was Eminem who rose out of the floor of Joe Louis arena—not that a Motor City crowd would rather see Gift of Gab or Big Boi or a Tupac hologram than one of their city’s biggest musical exports, mind you. And when the two performed their 2009 song “Forever,” the crowd went nuts.

Eminem is not the greatest rapper of all time. But he is the author of one of the greatest Jewish rap songs of all time. I am of course referring to 1999’s “My Name Is,” his sublime first single and one of the most full-throated celebrations of neuroticism ever to hit the airwaves.

I challenge you to name a single existential anxiety that this song does not cover. Here’s a sampling:

— Fear of the future, and of one’s own aimless and unquenchable urges: My brain’s dead weight / I can’t get my head straight / I can’t figure out which Spice Girl I want to impregnate

— Fear of the unknown, of the vast cosmic void that threatens to envelop us, of the possibility that peace and friendship and love are a lie: Extraterrestrials, running over pedestrians / from their space-ship screaming “let’s just be friends!”

— The disorienting pendulum-swing of alienation and attachment at the core of familial relationships: I promised [my mom] I’d grow up to be a famous rapper / Make an album about doing drugs and name it after her.

— The fear of death, and that uncanny simultaneous feeling of its closeness and its incomprehensibility: I don’t want to leave, it’s too scary to die…am I coming or going? I can barely decide.

 The fear that acceptance and intimacy are impossible: I haven’t had a woman in years…

— …And the fear of this fear’s traditional cure: …and my palms are too hairy to hide

— The Oedipal impulse: …how you gonna breast-feed me mom? / you ain’t got no tits

It would be reductive to identify these as exclusively or even characteristically Jewish neuroses. These are human neuroses; Jews, being a group of humans that have existed for most of recorded history, have just had more of an opportunity to incorporate them into a shared culture. We can trace Jewish neuroticism all the way back to the great darkness that descended upon Abraham in Chapter 15 of Genesis. Indeed, Jewish neuroses had had centuries to fester by the time we even get to the Dueteronomic obsession with ritual purity. That’s a hell of a head start.

What is characteristically Jewish (or at least more characteristically Jewish) about “My Name Is” is the way it echoes the willingness or the urge—and at certain points in the year, the religious obligation—to share these neuroses in wrenching and cathartic detail. Repentance on Yom Kippur has to be public and communal. The Yom Kippur service can feel like a numbingly repetitive cycle of al chets; by the time the holiday ends you’re likely to have every possible human sin committed to memory. The Torah, which we read in its entirety every single year, is a chronicle of communal and individual faults; no national epic is quite as hard on its own people, who were, and perhaps remain, a total pain in the ass. Great works of American Jewish culture have that same confessional quality, and that sense that even when Jews actively suppress their neuroses, they’re suppressed in front of everyone, in a way that beckons attention and scrutiny: Think of the solipsism of a Seinfeld, the autobiographical self-reckoning of a Nick Kroll, or the complaint of one Alexander Portnoy.

And this is what makes “My Name Is” one of the great Jewish rap songs. It lays it all out there. It’s encyclopedic in its psychological scope, bracing in its honesty, and about as public as it gets. The hurt and confusion it encapsulates are all too real. This song is only kind of an act—Eminem’s mom even sued him for slander over its lyrics. Eminem might not be the greatest rapper to rock a microphone, but in his ability to face down an entire Gehenna’s worth of psychic demons in full view of the entire world, he was, for four minutes at least, an honorary member of the tribe.

Previous: I Got Ripped Off by Drake’s Pop-Up Shop, and I Liked it


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Steinbeck kin gets break in court penalty, but stern warning

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal appeals court has thrown out $8 million in punitive damages against the daughter-in-law of author John Steinbeck in her long-running copyright spat with the late author's stepdaughter.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a $5 million verdict against Gail Steinbeck and told her it's time to end her legal saga.

Waverly Scott Kaffaga, whose mother, Elaine, was married to Steinbeck when he died in 1968, won a lawsuit two years ago showing Gail Steinbeck meddled with plans to make money off his most famous works.

Kaffaga said Steinbeck helped kill plans to remake films of the "The Grapes of Wrath" and "East of Eden."

The 3-0 ruling said a lower court could issue an injunction to end what it called Steinbeck's "recidivist litigation."


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Chasing Ice

Close Up Shared Planet
Director: Jeff Orlowski | Countries of production: United States | Year: 2012 | Length: 75 min
Language: English | Certificate: 12A Cert

In the breathtakingly beautiful documentary Chasing Ice, filmmaker Jeff Orlowski follows National Geographic photographer James Balog as he brings to life the Extreme Ice Survey, a massive photography project that placed 30 cameras across three continents to gather visual evidence of the earth’s melting ice.

Chasing Ice is the story of a visionary artist who, in facing his own mortality, bequeaths the magic of photography and the adventure of the expedition to a new generation and captures the most visible sign of climate change on the planet today.

“Stunning…Timely…A solitary quest with global implications.”
The New York Times

“Amazingly beautiful.”
The New York Daily News

Sundance Film Festival 2012, Winner, Best Cinematography
SXSW 2012, Winner, Documentary Feature

Ways to Watch

Watch paid online

Watch paid on Netflix Watch paid on Amazon

Purchase film

Purchase film


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Beauty fans will try anything at least once.

Joshua Crum's hands used to ache from his work as a lineman for years in Wakulla County and across the country.

Mornings greeted the 39-year-old with pain. He was introduced to products infused with cannabidiol or CBD, and his pain and mood improved. Crum said his experience, along with a visit to a CBD retail store in Lakeland, prompted him to open his own business called Your CBD Store Tallahassee.

More: CBD products are popping up in stores near you. Here's what you need to know about them

It opened on May 3 next door to Honey Baked Ham on Capital Circle Northeast. Crum said he’s done very little marketing yet the store has had heavy foot traffic from customers. So much so that he is scouting a second location for expansion, possibly in Wakulla County.

The retail store is inviting with a boutique decor akin to stores in Midtown and Market Square. Wall-mounted shelves on aqua walls and display tables showcase a wide selection of CBD products, including water solubles, oil, tinctures, edibles, vape products, pet care, collagen-infused cream and bath bombs.

The store exclusively sells SunMed products, which are third-party tested for purity and are free of THC, the euphoric component that creates the "high" in marijuana.

Crum said the products are organic, made of 100 percent non-GMO industrial hemp and do not require a prescription or appointment to purchase.

"When you look somebody in the eye, you want to make sure you’re giving them the best product you can offer,” Crum said. “That’s why I only carry SunMed products, because I feel it’s the best product on the market.”

More: North Carolina great-grandmother, 69, arrested at Disney World over CBD oil in her purse

What is CBD? It's not the same as THC.

Interest in the CBD products soared after Congress passed the Farm Bill last year, making some cannabis plants legal, according to an April 4 article in USA Today

CBD is non-psychoactive and shouldn't contain THC. In addition, CBD and THC, which stands for tetrahydrocannabinol, are both chemicals that can be found in hemp or marijuana plants, the article said.

Both are technically "cannabis" but hemp must have less than 0.3 percent THC present. Retailers nationwide are hopping on the CBD train, including CVS, Walgreens, Sephora, Ulta Beauty and Bed, Bath and Beyond. According to the Mayo Clinic, side effects may include dry mouth, diarrhea, reduced appetite, drowsiness and fatigue.

More: CBD products are popping up in stores near you. Here's what you need to know about them

In addition, the chemical can also interact with other medications, USA Today reported. If you have a heart condition or take blood thinners, some doctors recommend staying away from CBD.

Crum's best sellers at Your CBD Store Tallahassee are the 1,000 milligram tincture and the topical cream. The price range for his CBD-based inventory ranges from $30 to $300.

Crum said he's had customers come in and be pleasantly surprised by the results. One customer, for example, came in with his wife and had on double knee braces. His pain level was at a 12, Crum said.

More: Walgreens will sell CBD products in nearly 1,500 stores

It took some convincing for the skeptical husband to try this alternative form of pain relief. Crum said the customer applied topical cream on his legs and the three sat in the store's lounge area.

“Within about three minutes of him putting the cream on his knees, he stopped mid-sentence," Crum said. "He kind of looked at his wife with a kind of dumbfounded look on his face and looked at me and said, ‘I don’t want to sound stupid or anything, but the pain is going away in my legs.'”

Your CBD Store is a franchise that has almost 300 franchises nationwide, 45 of them in Florida.

Contact TaMaryn Waters at or follow @TaMarynWaters on Twitter.

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Tuesday, November 5, 2019

US Formally Withdraws From Global Climate Pact

This has to be considered one of the standout accomplishments of the Trump administration.

The US has officially asked to pull out of the Paris climate agreement.

Washington formally notified the UN of its intention to withdraw on Monday, more than two years after President Donald Trump announced that the US would exit the accord.

“Today we begin the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement,” US secretary of state Mike Pompeo wrote on Twitter. “The US is proud of our record as a world leader in reducing all emissions, fostering resilience, growing our economy, and ensuring energy for our citizens.

Of course, the real problem is, and Trump appears to understand this, the evidence that near-term climate change is going to damage the planet is sketchy at best.

The US is the first country to pull out of the accord, which went into effect in 2016 and was a top policy priority for the Obama administration.

The statists are not happy. They love inflicting pain on the masses.

“Abandoning the Paris Agreement is an abdication of leadership that the vast majority of Americans oppose,” said Michael Bloomberg. the statist who once tried to ban jumbo soft drinks.

  1. Even the UN reported that the Paris agreement will provide only a third of the cuts in greenhouse gas that environmentalists claim is needed to prevent catastrophic warming. If every country involved in those accords abides by their pledges temperatures will still rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. The goal of the Paris agreement was to keep the global temperature increase to under 2 degrees.

    Only seven of the 197 signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement are meeting its goals. Ten of the signatories have not ratified it.

  2. Wait. What?! I thought this was a done deal. What have the US bureaucrats been doing for the past two years? And Pompeo's statement "...begin the formal process of withdrawing..." This sounds more like the travails of BREXIT! No kudos to Trump until he actually exits this god awful conglomeration of central planners. Here's to unilateral withdrawal right now...today...pick up the phone and tell Paris goodbye...no more financial support...no more bureau support...no more propaganda...no more discussions...period. END IT!

  3. Well it does take a scammer to recognize a scam and extract himself from said scam!

  4. Does anyone know how this would change our day to day lives here in the US? I just don’t know a lot about the Paris agreement as far as what it was going to do to Americans beyond what environmental regulation stupidity we already have here.


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TF Gear Airflo 1 Man Bivvy MK2

TF GearSKU: 053163343880

Tax included

Only 2 units left

Set to revolutionise carp fishing shelters, the TF Gear Airflo Bivvy uses quick inflate ‘air poles’ in place of conventional metal poles allowing you the most rapid set-up possible.

Erected in less than one minute by simply inflating the super tough puncture resistant ‘air poles’, Airflo will provide you with a rock solid, super stable bivvy far quicker and easier than traditional shelters.

The structure of the Airflo Bivvy is formed by strong, rigid ‘air poles’ that are designed to withstand the strongest winds and will remain firm and unmoving in the most extreme conditions; in tests the Airflo has proved to be at least as stable as any conventional pram hood bivvy.

The Airflo Bivvy is incredibly quick and easy to set up, simply insert the quick action pump provided to inflate; within seconds your bivvy will take shape and you will be ready to begin fishing.

The Airflo Bivvy has been manufactured to the highest standards for the angler who demands the best performance, for the specialist who requires the toughest most reliable protection, and for those who need the fastest easiest erection possible.

  • Erected in under one minute
  • Super tough puncture resistant ‘air poles’
  • Rock solid in the windiest conditions
  • Offers incredible all season protection
  • Durable and tough will withstand years of use
  • Available in one and two man versions
  • 8,000mm Hydrostatic head
  • Pegs not included with overwrap

1 Man
Width = 290cm
Height = 135cm
Depth = 250cm
Weight = 11kg
100% waterproof nylon
Approx pack down size = 75cm x 38cm
Hydrostatic head = 8,000mm
Built in heavy duty groundsheet

2 Man
Width = 350cm
Height = 162cm
Depth = 290cm
Weight = 14kg
Approx pack down size = 80cm x 43cm
Hydrostatic head = 8,000mm
Built in heavy duty groundsheet

TFG Airflo overwrap
To compliment the Airflo bivvy we have launched this superb new overwrap; with the overwrap fitted you will have the complete all season system, a shelter that will withstand all weather. During freezing winter sessions the overwrap creates an insulating barrier to retain precious warmth and when battling prolonged torrential rains the overwrap will provide an extra rain shield. In spring and autumn the twin skin effect will significantly reduce condensation while in the summer the overwrap will help keep your living area cool and comfortable.

The Airflo overwrap also creates an extended porch that provides an invaluable storage area for wet clothing, boots and other items you wish to keep separate from your clean living area, whilst still ensuring they are close to hand and safe during your session.

  • 100% waterproof
  • Provides twin skin protection to improve warmth and reduce condensation
  • Extended porch delivers valuable extra storage
  • Mosquito mesh door and clear storm door included

1 Man

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Daily food & travel inspiration in your inbox

Laura Miller

Grab your chopsticks! We're making sushi, Laura-Miller-style. Domo arigato.

  • 6 cups roughly chopped jicama

  • 1/2 cup almonds

  • 1/4 cup rice vinegar

  • 3 Tablespoons agave

  • 1 Tablespoon salt

  • 8 sheets nori

  • 1 cucumber, julienned

  • 1 carrot, julienned

  • 3 thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms

  • 1 bunch sprouts

  • 3 scallions, thinly sliced

  • 2 avocados

  • 1/2 cup nama shoyu (soy sauce/tamari) for dipping

  1. Place the jicama in a food processor a little at a time and pulse until it looks like rice.

  2. Add almonds to food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add to your bowl of jicama and mix together.

  3. Pour mixture onto a dry, clean towel and press another towel on top to remove excess moisture.

  4. Pour mixture back into a large bowl, and add rice vinegar, agave, salt and mix.

  5. Place a sheet of nori on your cutting board or sushi rolling mat (smooth side down), add 1/3 cup of rice leaving about an inch around the edges, add filling ingredients.

  6. Fold the nori up and over the filling and roll tightly, wetting the top edge of the nori with a little water or rice vinegar to seal it.

  7. Cut the roll into little pieces wiping your knife with a damp towel between cuts

  8. Serve with nama shoyu and wasabi.

Daily food & travel inspiration in your inbox

Daily food & travel inspiration in your inbox

- Sushi chefs will not be impressed with this recipe. But if you're raw, you might really like it, so let's go make it. So first, we're gonna make our sushi rice, which actually is made out of jicama. So, I've just cut my jicama into little cubes here and throw a little bit at a time into the food processor and blend it up So we're basically just going to try to get it into little rice sized pieces. So, it'll look a little bit like shredded coconut. So, I'm just doing this a little bit at a time because it won't all fit in my food processor at the same time Jicama is awesome because it's like a mix between a pear and a potato almost, but it's delicious, it's really high in vitamin C, fiber, miscellaneous vitamins. Oh yeah, this one, there's a little less in here, so I'm just going to add the almonds in because we have to grind them up too. You could also do the almonds separately after you're done with all the jicama, but I'm just skipping that step right here. The almonds just add a bit of texture, flavor, protein, a little bit of fat. And once we get this in, I'm just gonna make sure everything's nice and mixed up. Now we're gonna pour all of this onto a dry cloth, and put another cloth on top of it, and just press down to remove all of the excess water because nobody likes soggy rice. Stick another rag on top, and press. And you can see all the moisture start to come out. And now, I'm gonna add it all back into the bowl and add in my other ingredients. So, kind of hard to do this gracefully, but I'll do my best. You could also just use rice. If you do it this way you're getting more vegetables. Some people don't digest grains very well, so this is just a nice option. We're going to add some rice vinegar, some agave. In a lot of sushi rice they'll use sugar to make it a little sweeter. And some salt, now I'm just gonna mix it all up. Alright so this looks great. Now I'm just gonna grab all the rest of my ingredients. So now let's roll out some sushi. I'm gonna use a little rolling mat, 'cause that tends to make it a little bit easier. Disclaimer, I don't know what I'm doing! Feel free to leave plenty of comments about how much you hate my sushi wrapping skills, I'll read all of them. Then grab a piece of nori, so it's usually got a rough side and a smooth side. We're gonna use it smooth side down, and then we're gonna spread our rice mixture, in kinda like a square, rectangle perhaps. All over the nori. Just make sure that you leave a little bit of room on each side. Okay and I have all of these veggies cut up already. I've got some scallions, carrots, cucumber, avocado, shitakes, and some sprouts. I'm just gonna stack it up with whatever I want, which will be everything because I like all of these things. I like to cut my veggies so that they go all the way across. Putting a little avocado in here, some mushrooms, some sprouts. So what I'm gonna do now, is roll it up. I'm gonna just kind of, creep this over and roll. Once you get to the edge, a lot of people will wet this part with water. I'm gonna actually use a little bit of rice vinegar just with my finger, and this is gonna help it to stick to the other end. So, I'm gonna roll that side up. This will probably not be the prettiest sushi you ever seen, If it is, this will be a miracle. Oh, look, it worked, its sushi! I'm gonna get a plate, and so now I'm gonna show you, and now I'm gonna show you how to cut your sushi roll. Wiping off your knife with a damp rag in between cuts helps it from smooshing down. Okay, typically you would dip in soy sauce. I'm using, I'm gonna show you, you can use tamari if you need a gluten free option. It's actually really good. So there you go, I just showed you how to not really make sushi, you're welcome.


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Hot Tips & Topics

We are dedicated to providing you with a comprehensive collection of relevant and up-to-date K-12 education news and editorials. For teachers, by teachers.

Taking School into the Real World with Big Picture Learning

TeachHUB Interview

Taking School into the Real World with Big Picture LearningFor the past 15 years, Big Picture Learning have taken a revolutionary approach to education that individualizes study for each student and sends them out into the real world for work experience.

Their efforts have gained them the respect and funding of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, being named Bill's favorite school in America.

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Big Picture Learning co-founder Elliot Washor and Kari Thierer, Director of School & Network Support, give us the inside scoop on how their innovative approach to education.

What does the schedule for a typical day at a Big Picture school look like?

Each of our schools is a little different in how they structure their day and week. However, all schools have an advisory period of some kind that sets the tone for the day and week. Students meet as a group to plan their day/week, discuss any relevant issues that have come up (personal or community), plan as a group, some of their interest-exploration is also done in this time period, Learning Through Interests work (looking for an LTI, etc.).

The rest of the day is customized based on the needs of the student. It will include some independent work time where the student focuses on their project work and individual learning plan, it may also include small or large group instruction based on what students need. At our high schools, students are usually out on internship experiences two days a week, as well as taking dual-enrollment classess at local colleges and universities. Each students schedule is customized based on their needs and their individual learning plan.

What are some specific examples of community internships and mentor projects Big Picture students engage in?

There is a huge variety around the network because students interests are so varied. We've had students intern at veterinary offices, hospitals, small shops (entreprenuer), mechanics, radio stations, unviersities, social service agencies, etc.

The projects students do serve two purposes. It must be an authentic project that serves the internship site, and then will also be embedded with some academic learning that students need to demonstrate. For example, a student was working with a pediatric cardiologist - she had the opportunity to observe surgery, and work with the patients and the family. A gap was that so many parents had questions about a specific procedure that was a common practice. The student researched the procedure and created an informational brochure for patients. Now, the doctor gives the patient the brochure first and then answers additional questions as needed.

Academically, the student had to learn a ton about the anatomy involved with the procedure, practice technical writing skills combined with ensuring her audience received the information needed, and had to learn the technical aspects of creating a brochure. That is just one example - every project is individualized because it is based on the needs of the mentor and the student.

Now 15 years into this project, how has the response from mainstream education, policy-makers, colleges and parents changed (or has it)?

I wouldn't classify this as a project. This is a mission to change public education to better serve students.

The reponse has been overwhelmingly positive. People continue to question us and how we can get such impressive data, but our design serves students and families at an individual level and that is the only way to truly serve students. Mainstream education is our partner - we want to influence they way they are working with kids and to learn from our best practices.

Our way of personalizing education for students makes sense to everyone, sometimes the practice is hard for people to grasp. What we do is so different than traditional education, and so different than most people's personal experiences in education, that they find it hard to understand until they see it. Once people visit a school and talk with kids, they get a better understanding, but even then, putting it into practice requires a lot of dedication and challenging the status quo of the way the education system has been developed.

You note that Big Picture Schools have impressive 92% graduation rates. Do you have any attrition problems before students hit senior year? Are there any entrance requirements to attend?

Our attrition rates are much lower than traditional schools. We work with families over a long period of time, so when a student is trying to leave, we can intervene more effectively than a traditional system, and encourage them to stay.

We do not have any entrance requirements to attend - all schools have an application process, mostly to ensure that students and families understand the commitment they are making. This is such a different way of learning, and students must take on more responsibility for their own education - so we want them to make an informed decision about where they choose to attend school.

How do you foster parental involvement? How big a role does that play in student success?

Parents are huge partners in our education of students. From the very beginning, parent involvement has been one of our 10 distinugishers. Advisors know the parents and work with them as partners in their students education.

  • Parents are a member of the learning plan team - helping to create the individual learning plan for their student.
  • They attend the quarterly exhibition of learning where students demonstrate their work.
  • They help out at school when possible.
  • They chaperone events.
  • They help during recruiting to talk with other parents.

Parents are an active part of our community and we encourage them to be on-campus when possible, but even if they can't be on-campus, the advisors are in touch regularly to talk about good things their students are doing, but also to talk about challenges and work together to support students.

How has the support of the Gates Foundation help to develop and expand Big Picture Schools?

The Gates Foundation was instrumental in providing financial support so we could focus on developing a system for scale-up. They helped by providing professional development funds for us and our schools so we could do the training and support in the right way. They pushed us to be specific in our documentation of what was working and what challenges we had, and they pushed us to clarify our work and data to help us continue to improve. They've been huge partners in our success and allowed us the financial independence to do the work correctly without having to spend time and resources on funding.

What is a Big Picture School budget compare to the average public school budget?

All of our schools operate within the same school budget as their peer schools.

The 15:1 student teacher ratio and 140 student cap on school size is impressive, but do those numbers make large-scale expansion across public schools impossible? Why or why not?

The purpose of the 15:1 is that we know relationships matter. There have been a number of stories that talk about students getting missed - making it to high school without being able to read or write. That only happens when teachers are seeing too many students to be able to know them well.

The numbers do not inhibit large-scale expansion, but they do force the system to re-evaluate the way schools are set-up and run. Schools are run the same way they've been run for the past 100 years, but kids have changed, society has changed. Schools need to look at structures and space in a different way so they are better serving students. It's time consuming, and forces conversations, but it is possible.

How do Big Picture Schools address deficiencies in basic skills (like reading, writing and consumer math)?

Almost all students have gaps in their education somewhere. Because teachers teach in different ways and students learn in different ways, all students have a gap. Big Picture Schools are individualized, so students gaps are assessed and a plan to address them is put into place.

We don't assume that a student should be following a specific curriculum based on their age, we look at the individual student, where the gaps are, where the strengths are, what they want to do post-high school and create a plan. That plan may include one-on-one instruction, small group instruction, on-line support, etc. It is a plan that is put in place one student at a time based on their own needs.

How has the involvement of students in the community helped to shape the community for the better? Any specific examples?

When we work in a school, we know we are also serving that community. We've had mentors tell us that the internship program has saved their business - having an extra set of hands during an economic downturn has been helpful, but also because it allows the business to grow and focus on innovations because there is someone else helping with that.

We've also seen our schools become community centers - serving parents and the general community. Providing job placement support, technology training, social service connections, etc. Because parents are a welcome part of the school community, that means we help them when they need it as well. All of our schools do community engagment activities including community service. These range from volunteering in community run activites, to planning and implementing community resource fairs. There a lots of different ways our schools impact the community - some in small ways and some in huge ways.

Some general thoughts on Personalized Learning by Elliot Washor

At Big Picture Learning we make a distinction between complicated and complex. Brenda Zimmerman author of Complicated and Complex Systems: What Would Successful Reform Medicare Look Like? states:

"It’s complicated to send a rocket to the moon -- it requires blueprints, math, and a lot of carefully calibrated hardware, and expertly written software. Raising a child, on the other hand, is complex. It is an enormous challenge, but math and blueprints won't help… To run a system that is complex, it's not enough to get the right people and the ideal equipment. It takes a set of simple principles that guide and shape the system."

Big Picture Learning schools have a simple set of principles and structures that are innovative and different, allowing us to carry out a design for highly personalized schools. Our 'one student at a time' approach starts with each and every student’s interests and needs followed by the creation of a learning plan that is reviewed on a quarterly basis and developed by the students, teachers, and parents. Every student is in an advisory built on a human scale. Each student is known well by teachers/advisors and their mentors. Our students are surrounded by adults. This is where a school culture is created with supportive adult relationships for every student in and outside of school.

Our BPL system has developed an aesthetics of relationships that leads to rigorous learning. Here are a few of the simple observations you can make at our schools to understand that a high degree of personalization is being carried out.

• There is sophisticated and nuanced language used between student to student and student to adult.
• There are objects that both find interesting and that both are trying to understand more about themselves through the objects.
• There is a sense of trust and respect. There is give and take.
• Parents, advisors/teachers, mentors all know one another through the students work.

Big Picture Learning schools have created a personalized school culture for the next generation of learning.

What do you think of BPL's approach to school? Share in the comments section!

Today's Poll

Which types of articles would you like to see from us in 2020?
Classroom Management
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Total votes: 108


text:
Reading Olympics -- Silver and Gold....FINALLY!

The Reading Olympics is something that I find to be a motivating force in my room.  My kids just like to read now because of it.  Something about earning a medal and having some sort of recognition just makes reading all that much better for them.

In the past, I have told you about the various levels, how I implement it, and all of that good stuff...but I never shared with you the Silver and Gold levels.  That is mostly because I didn't make those leveled brochures myself.  My amazing teammates Kristi and Debbie did...and I didn't have a jpeg scanned on my computer.

BUT, I have since entered the 21st century and now have an actual scanner on my printer!  I know, I know...about time right?  Well, now that I have it, I have scanned those brochures in and now....without further they are!

All you have to do is click on the picture and it will enlarge enough for you to read the projects.  Are you implementing the Reading Olympics in your room?  How is it going for you?

  1. Every time I come here, I find some other awesome thing to try. Curse you! Off to figure out how to fit this in :)

  2. Is various levels and how you implement it suppose to be a link? I am very interested in doing this with my gifted third grade class. I also cannot find the screen shots for the Olympian and Bronze brochures. I think this will be a great addition to the second half of my school year. Thank you so much for sharing!

    1. OK...I fixed the link for you! Sorry about that :) The Olympian and Bronze levels are in the first link.

    2. The silver and gold screen shots are so easy to see! I just can't find the Olympian and bronze screen shots. I can only see one side of the Olympian level brochure on your previous post that is linked. Is there a place where I can see the other side of the Olympian and both sides of the bronze? Thank you SO MUCH for sharing!

  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

Please leave a comment! I love to hear what you think about what is posted :)

Back to Top


text:
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text:
Game Of Thrones On Track To Be Most Pirated Show Of 2012; Pirates Still Asking HBO For Legitimate Options

from the blame-matthew-inman? dept

Much like the North, Game of Thrones cannot be held—it's too big and too wild. Matthew Inman warned HBO that they should make their content more accessible or risk driving people to piracy, but that isn't really HBO's style. Now jilocasin points us to the news that Game of Thrones is well on track to be the most torrented show of 2012, and nobody can deny that HBO's foolish subscriber-only distribution is a primary reason for that. Approximately 25-million times have people decided to pay the iron price for the show, and as the comments on Reddit attest, it's often because the gold price wasn't even an option. Others pay for the show but still pirate for the sake of occasional convenience:

Sometimes I just want to fire up an episode and watch it on my laptop immediately and with mobility as I'm wandering around the house, and not worry about streaming/quality issues or finding a disk, setting up the DVD player etc. I am truly lazy.

Meanwhile, Game of Thrones continues to have great ratings. And the torrent piracy count doesn't include streams, which are also hugely popular, so it only represents a fraction of the pirate world. Why not create new ways to legitimize some of those viewers, especially considering so many of them have said they want to be legitimized? I still contend that HBO-style shows owe a lot to piracy for their cultural dominance, because, if they were actually as exclusive as HBO wants to pretend they are, they would have had a much harder time gathering fans. But HBO co-president Eric Kessler thinks cord-cutting is a fad, so like most characters in the show, he's fighting silly battles while ignoring what's really going on.

Filed Under: eric kessler, game of thrones, piracy, television, torrent
Companies: hbo

Reader Comments

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  1. identicon
    bob, 11 May 2012 @ 10:38am

    Re: Re: Legitimate versions? Try getting a cable subscription!

    Pray, tell, where can I purchase a legit copy of your diaries, journals, tax records, or unfinished novel? What? You think it's your right to do what you want with your papers? Oh my. You probably think that it's wrong for the government to spy on your communications too.

    My feeling is that it's their choice. They made. They put the money up. They can choose to do what they want. Just like you can choose what to do with your creations.

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text:
IT Tier III Desktop Support (Los Gatos)

Addison Group, San Jose, CA (United States)

Category: Support

Posted on: 08 Oct 2019

This job post has expired

But wait! We have similar jobs for you!

  • iOS
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Job Code: #424305
Title: IT Tier III Desktop Support (Los Gatos)
Job Type: Contract To Hire
Job Location: Los Gatos CA

Job Description:

Job Title: IT Tier III Desktop Support (Los Gatos)
Type of Role: Contract
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Industry: Information Technology
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text:
Tech Policy

Technology exposed Syrian war crimes over and over. Was it for nothing?

Activists on the ground and digital sleuths have spent years documenting chemical attacks and barrel bombs. Now they’re facing a brutal truth.

Oct 18, 2019
Photo collage
Illustrations By Emily haasch; illustration source imagery courtesy of the author

Tech Policy

Technology exposed Syrian war crimes over and over. Was it for nothing?

Activists on the ground and digital sleuths have spent years documenting chemical attacks and barrel bombs. Now they’re facing a brutal truth.

Oct 18, 2019
Photo collage
Illustrations By Emily haasch; illustration source imagery courtesy of the author

On April 23, 2014, Houssam Alnahhas slid into the back seat of a car in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep and headed for the Syrian border, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away. A tall 26-year-old medical student with striking gray eyes, he had escaped Syria two years before and was working for a task force training medical personnel in opposition-held areas. But now he was heading back with a mission: to collect evidence of war crimes.

Two weeks earlier, Alnahhas had started receiving reports that barrel bombs were being dropped on towns in the country’s rural northwest. He was used to such news in his work, but this time was different. Usually the crude devices were packed with explosives and shrapnel. But doctors were telling him these latest bombs were releasing poisonous clouds of chlorine gas.

Chlorine gas had rarely been used as a weapon since World War I, and its use in Syria would be a major violation of international norms. Western governments wanted to know if there was proof. And so, over the next two days, he and two of his friends visited two villages that had allegedly been hit—Kafr Zita and Talmenes—to see what had taken place.

The trip was dangerous. They were close to the front lines of the civil war, where rocket, mortar, and sniper fire were common. If agents of the Syrian regime got word of what they were doing, their lives would be in peril: Alnahhas had heard rumors that someone who’d collected evidence from a chemical attack a year earlier had been assassinated while attempting to bring it to Turkey.

But the threat of violence wasn’t the only thing weighing on his mind. Alnahhas knew that many groups—supporters of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the Russian and Iranian governments, online conspiracy theorists—would use any opportunity to insist that chemical--weapons attacks were false-flag operations or outright hoaxes. And since he was acting on his own, without institutional backing, he wanted to make sure the evidence he collected was unimpeachable.

As soon as he crossed the border, Alnahhas started tracking his coordinates using GPS and recording the trip on video. In the two villages, residents described witnessing yellowish-orange smoke rising after helicopters dropped barrel bombs. Doctors explained how they treated victims—women, men, young and elderly people—who were terrified, coughing violently and struggling to breathe. They handed over blood, urine, saliva, and hair samples they had collected.

At the spots where the bombs had fallen, Alnahhas recorded 360-degree video of the surroundings, focusing on identifiable landmarks so the locations could be independently verified. He collected soil samples in small plastic containers, triple-sealing them in clear plastic bags and labeling them in front of the camera.

In Kafr Zita, he gathered pieces of shrapnel and measured heavy, rusted barrels bent, mangled, and peeled apart by the impact and detonation. There were three long canisters, two still lodged inside the barrels, covered in chipped yellow paint, the color often used to mark industrial chlorine gas. The chemical symbol Cl2 was still clearly visible on the ruptured nose of one.

In Talmenes, in the dimming evening light, Alnahhas filmed an impact crater in the backyard of a house. There were dead birds scattered across the ground, and the leaves on the plants and trees were dead, even though it was springtime. The smell of chlorine still hung in the air, causing him to cough and his eyes to water.

“To be honest,” Alnahhas says, “this was the scariest time of my life.”

Syria was one of the first major conflicts of the social-media era. Local access to Facebook had been restricted since 2007 as the government tried to limit online political activism. But by February 2011, when the Assad regime unblocked many social-media sites—either as a nod toward reform or as a way to track its opponents—they had become major forces across the globe, and many Syrians had cell phones with cameras and access to high-speed internet.

Soon afterwards, protests broke out in the south of the country and quickly spread. The government cracked down brutally, and activists, lawyers, medical workers, and ordinary citizens started using Facebook and YouTube—often at great personal risk—to record the violence and show it to the world.

Initial efforts were haphazard, and mostly involved people uploading shaky cell-phone video and using accounts with fake names to protect themselves. But before long the push to document what was happening became more organized and sophisticated. Media offices and local news agencies mushroomed. By early 2012, international organizations had begun training local activists on professional production standards and online security and helping them to record their videos. The idea wasn’t just to release clips to the media, but to gather evidence that could be used to pursue justice in the future.

Volunteers took videos and photos at the scenes of attacks and potential war crimes, compiled detailed medical reports, recorded victim and witness statements, and smuggled reams of documents out of captured government buildings. Civil society groups such as the Syrian Archive and the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre collected millions of pieces of potential evidence—some of it made public, some filed away in protected archives.

The material collected by Syrians allowed people far away from the actual fighting to take part in the investigative efforts too. In 2012 Eliot Higgins, then an unemployed British blogger, began sifting through videos and photos posted from Syria, trying to identify the weapons being used; later he started a website, Bellingcat, and assembled a team of volunteer analysts.

Pioneering the technique of “open-source investigation,” Higgins and his team pieced together evidence suggesting that Syrian government forces were using chemical weapons and cluster bombs, that Russian forces had attacked hospitals in the country, and that ISIS was using small, commercially available drones to drop 40mm grenades onto targets.

Back then, many people working at the intersection of technology and human rights shared a belief in the power of social media and digital connectivity to do good, according to Jay D. Aronson, head of the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University. People thought that “if we’re able to document these war crimes and these human rights violations and we’re able to share them with the world, then that will create political will that will lead countries to intervene and protect vulnerable populations,” he says.

Spurred on by such optimism and the encouragement of Western politicians, such efforts made the Syrian conflict the most thoroughly documented in human history.

Thanks to frontline investigators like Houssam Alnahhas, local outfits like the Syrian Archive, and online analysts from Bellingcat, detailed information about what was happening on the ground was there. Someone just needed to act on it.

When Alnahhas returned to Turkey with the evidence he’d collected in Kafr Zita and Talmenes, he met up with a British chemical weapons expert who tested some of the samples. The analysis confirmed that they contained a high enough concentration of chlorine to kill people. The evidence clearly showed that the Syrian government, the only fighting force with helicopters at the time, had indiscriminately bombed civilians with chlorine gas—a war crime.

International media picked up on the story; human rights organizations published reports; the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons launched a fact-finding mission. The remaining samples were given to the Western governments who were interested, and then Alnahhas waited.

Last summer I met Ahmad al-Mohammad, a soft-spoken activist and communications director of the Syrian Institute for Justice, in Istanbul. He had been a 19-year-old agriculture student at Aleppo University when the uprising began in 2011.

The Syrian protesters were optimistic back then. The US had just led an international military intervention to protect civilians in Libya from the advancing army of former leader Muammar Qaddafi. “We listened to a lot of speeches from the president of America, Obama,” said al--Mohammad. “We had hope, honestly, that the West would intervene and remove Bashar al-Assad.”

And in 2012, Obama declared the use of chemical weapons in Syria a “red line.” “The world is watching,” he warned Assad. “If you make the tragic mistake of using [chemical] weapons, there will be consequences, and you will be held accountable.”

Obama’s resolve was put to the test on the morning of August 21, 2013. Syrian government forces launched rockets loaded with sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent, at the rebel-held enclave of Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus. It was by far the deadliest and most visible chemical attack of the war. Syrian activists quickly uploaded photos and videos of the casualties, many of them women and children, their faces blue from suffocation. The estimated death toll ranged from around 350 to more than 1,400.

Emily Haasch

The US—driven forward by the “red line” rhetoric—prepared to launch military strikes. The regime hunkered down. But at the last minute, Obama pulled back. Instead of using force, he opted for a deal brokered by Russia, which resulted in the Syrian government’s signing on to the Chemical Weapons Convention and agreeing to declare its stockpiles and destroy them by mid-2014.

For people in opposition-held areas, the decision was crushing. “We lost hope that anyone would [stand] up and say enough … killing civilians inside Syria,” Mohammed Abdullah, a Syrian photographer who goes by Artino and who was in Eastern Ghouta at the time of the attack, told me.

And then, despite its promise to dismantle its chemical weapons program, the Syrian government launched chlorine gas strikes in April 2014—the ones Alnahhas documented. They were another clear violation of Obama’s red line. When the outside world again failed to take strong action, Assad’s government continued to push the envelope. According to a report by the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), a think tank in Berlin, this was when the Syrian government began integrating the use of chemical weapons, especially chlorine gas, into its “arsenal of indiscriminate violence.”

Assad’s strategy was directed against civilians living in opposition-held residential areas far from the front lines. Life-sustaining social institutions—bakeries, hospitals, and markets—were often targeted with a brutality that forced people to choose between surrender, exile, and death. Tobias Schneider, one of the GPPi report’s authors, refers to it as the “military utility of crimes against humanity.” The use of chemical weapons was “the last couple of meters,” he told me.

Heavier than air, poison gas sinks into basements and bunkers, suffocating and terrifying people sheltering from conventional bombs and weapons. Even if the chemical attacks often didn’t kill large numbers of people, they showed that “there is absolutely nowhere you can hide and there’s absolutely nothing [the regime] can do that will make the international community stop [the violence],” Schneider added.

The Syrian government has used chemical weapons more than 330 times so far, according to data collected by GPPi. The vast majority of these incidents—more than 300 of them—took place after the attacks in Ghouta, Kafr Zita, and Talmenes.

For Alnahhas, the lesson was clear.

“After providing evidence all the time, at a certain point you stop to believe that it will be effective,” he said. “The main thing that I know is that neither I nor the people inside Syria trusted the international community anymore.”

Many people who had been documenting the war were forced to leave Syria as it grew more violent. Some decided to focus on putting their lives back together, to finish their studies or start families. For many of those who remained in Syria, the work of documentation became too dangerous as the areas they were in fell under regime control.

But other activists have decided to take a longer-term view. Although the documentation efforts have failed to shift the course of the war, Syria has produced arguably the largest evidence base on war crimes ever recorded. Civil society organizations are sifting through the data, organizing it, and using it to build case files for prosecutions. Courts in Germany, France, and Sweden are already trying cases. Arrest warrants have been issued for several high-ranking members of the Assad regime, and charges have been brought against European companies for violating sanctions imposed on the Syrian government. The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a human rights litigation team, is working with the Syrian Archive to develop case files on a number of attacks, including the attack in Talmenes that Alnahhas documented.

“Open-source information has radically transformed how we investigate, collect, and analyze information,” Steve Kostas, a lawyer with OSJI, told me by email. “We use it to establish a factual narrative of the attacks, to identify possible witnesses, [and] to identify and learn about suspected perpetrators.” Still, says Beth Van Schaack, a visiting professor at Stanford Law School who previously worked on Syria at the US State Department, the prosecutions so far have been “mostly against lower-level individuals, opposition figures, [ISIS] members, and not the kinds of war crimes that have really come to characterize this war.”

Holding the true architects of the Syrian government’s war strategy responsible would require unity from other governments. But Russia has repeatedly blocked efforts to start an international process of justice and accountability; for example, it vetoed a 2014 UN Security Council resolution referring Syria to the International Criminal Court. The UN created a body called the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism to gather evidence for future cases, but “until this moment, we don’t have any court or entity that has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Syria,” says Deyaa Alrwishdi, a Syrian lawyer who has been involved in accountability efforts since 2011.

It now seems all but inevitable that the Assad regime—helped by Russia and Iran—will emerge victorious from the war. It may be decades, if ever, before it’s truly held accountable.

“We get hope when we look at the former Yugoslavia and how victims and survivors from Bosnia and Herzegovina did eventually get justice. That gives us hope to keep holding on,” al-Mohammad, from the Syrian Institute for Justice, told me in Istanbul.

He has scars on his face from having his jaw fractured in seven places when security forces threw him from the second story of a building during a protest in 2012. Two members of the documentation team he manages in Syria were killed while carrying out their work. And he has watched countless hours of video showing one brutal atrocity after another, giving him nightmares. His family is still in Syria, and he worries that they will be punished by the regime as retribution for his actions.

Activists in Syria have documented the presence of chemical weapons’ shell casings with photos like this one, in the hope that they'll provide evidence of war crimes.
Emily Haasch; illustration source imagery courtesy of the author

It’s hard for him to see a path forward or a way to return home. “Me and my friends, we sit down and we talk about it a lot … we don’t really know where we are going,” he says. “At the end of the day, people like us—our future in a Syria without justice is just death or prison.”

Yet al-Mohammad and others have continued to record evidence of the crimes taking place. At some point, he says, it stopped being about what the international community would or wouldn’t do; it became about Syrian people taking control of their own stories. “My goal became to document my country’s history,” he says.

When I met Alnahhas in Gaziantep earlier this summer, he told me he felt the same way. We talked at an outdoor café, surrounded by the mundane bustle of a busy town. Syria, just a few miles down the road, seemed far away. In the years since his dangerous trip to document the chemical weapons attacks, he had gone to a Turkish university to finish his medical degree, married, and started a family. He couldn’t imagine returning home.

He told me about three of his friends, young students who had volunteered to provide care to injured protesters in the early days of the uprising. They were stopped at a regime checkpoint, and medical supplies were found in their car. Days later, their bodies were returned to their families, burned beyond recognition. Years later, his efforts to document the chemical attacks in Kafr Zita and Talmenes hadn’t changed anything; people were still being murdered with impunity.

“At the same time,” he said, “you cannot simply say that I’ll not continue.” If nothing else, documenting has given him and others like him a certain mission. “History is written by the strongest,” he said, echoing the familiar adage. “Without proper evidence … the regime will be able to, at a certain point, say ‘No, this never happened’; [it] will be able to manipulate the history of the Syrian crisis maybe to avoid punishment. So this is our responsibility.”

Eric Reidy is a journalist based in the Middle East.


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