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TruTV Brand Relaunch
The New TruTV Brand relaunch on-air campaign and package created by Loyalkaspar in 2014. See LK's case study:
The TruTV Brand Relaunch Campaign by Loyalkaspar.

For a few months this summer I got to work with some very talented people at Loyalkaspar on the channel (re)launch for the NEW truTV.
Check out the case study by Loyalkaspar for a full breakdown of the project, concept, etc.
Check out the promax review:
And the creative review review:
My role:
2D animation, toolkitting, color, compositing.
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 Nothing Ever Happened : David Godman
Nothing Ever Happened

Nothing Ever Happened

By David Godman

3 volumes

1297 pages

Published 1998 by the Avadhuta Foundation

ISBN 0963802259

A MASSIVE (OVER 1,200 PAGES) biography of Papaji, a disciple of Ramana Maharshi and one of the most influential advaitic teachers of modern times. In addition to the biographical narrative that spans more than eighty years of his action-packed life, there are teaching dialogues, extensive extracts from Papaji’s diaries and letters, along with many accounts by devotees who were utterly transformed by him. This is the definitive account of Papaji’s life.

US flagUS and outside India

This book and all of David Godman’s English-language books can be purchased from the Avadhuta Foundation in Colorado. This is a quicker option for customers in the US. However, if you order from Avadhuta and have a non-US address, the airmail costs will be very high. This is the fault of the US postal service, not Avadhuta. If you live outside the US and India and want to order books by David Godman online, it will be much cheaper to order them from this site with the “Add to Cart” button above. Postal charges are more reasonable in India, but delivery can take up to a month.

The Avadhuta Foundation also sells a large number of titles from Ramanasramam. Since Ramanasramam no longer ships books from India to foreign customers, this is a good alternative for non-Indian customers.

Indian flagIn India

For delivery in India, you can order from Satsang Bhavan in Lucknow.

EU flagEurope and elsewhere

This book can be purchased from InnerQuest in Paris. Postal rates for customers in Europe will be much better than books ordered from the US. InnerQuest accepts payment in euros, and delivery takes 3 to 10 days.

The following dialogue, between myself and Papaji, has been taken from volume three of Nothing Ever Happened. It appeared in the chapter entitled 'Guru and Disciple'.

Papaji in Rishikesh, 1972.

David: I want to ask you some questions about the power of your word. Gurus tell their disciples, ‘You are Brahman,’ and if there is sufficient power and authority in the words, the disciple actually becomes Brahman and experiences it directly. I believe that you have this power and this authority, and on a few occasions you have confirmed that this is so.

One thought has often occurred to me. When you tell people, ‘Keep quiet,’ I don’t think that you are asking people to practise being quiet. I think that you are giving a direct order to their minds. If the mind obeys the order, silence ensues. Is this a correct interpretation?

Papaji: Yes. This is the traditional way. The Sadguru tells his disciple, ‘You are Brahman’. If the disciple is pure in mind, he listens to this authoritative statement and at once becomes Brahman itself. Then he himself affirms, ‘Aham Brahmasmi,’ ‘I am Brahman’. The Sadguru has the authority and power to make this statement in such a way that the disciple immediately experiences the truth of it.

In satsang, when I say to a person, ‘Keep quiet,’ that person automatically becomes quiet. If the mind is pure, it obeys the order ‘Keep quiet!’ by stopping all its thought processes. As soon as the thought processes stop, one reaches the source of one’s thought and stays there. When I see that this has happened, I say, ‘Don’t make any effort,’ because any effort you make in this moment takes you away from this place. The mind always wants to be doing something. When it goes back to its origin and experiences the peace and silence that is always there, there is a tendency to think about it and evaluate it. It is such a nice state, people who are new to it want to make some effort to stabilise it and perpetuate it. This is a guaranteed way to make it go away because it covers up the experience with more thoughts. So, when I see that someone is trying to hold onto the experience in any way, I tell them, ‘Don’t give rise to any thought whatsoever. Don’t stir a single thought in your mind.’ This is not a state of mind that can be maintained by thinking about it. It is a state of no-mind that will only remain if you don’t think about it in any way. I have found that these three instructions work very well. That is why I use them all the time.

People have this experience of no-mind here, and then they go back to their families and friends in the West. All these people want to know, ‘What has happened to you in Lucknow?’ I tell people, before they leave Lucknow, that if anyone asks them questions like this, they should reply by keeping quiet. If they can stay in that no-mind state when people ask them what they have brought, then all those people will come to know what it is that has been brought back from Lucknow. This quietness can only be preserved and maintained by not thinking about it in any way. Only a few people have managed to keep this quietness that they experienced here because most people try to hold onto it with their thoughts.

For several months during the middle of 1995 Papaji read vedantic texts during his satsangs. Yoga Vasishta, Panchadasi, Advaita Bodha Deepika, Ashtavakra Gita, and Ribhu Gita were read in their entirety. For the most part, he read them without comment, even though many of the teachings on sadhana seemed to be directly opposed to his own ‘no method, no practice’ approach.

Most of the texts recommended the traditional advaitic sadhana of sravana, manana and nididhyasana. Sravana is hearing the words of truth from a qualified Guru; manana is reflecting on them and generating a conviction that they are true; in nididhyasana one experiences the truth of the words directly. The second stage, manana, is traditionally pursued by studying vedantic texts with the aim of convincing oneself that the mind, the body and the world are not real. I had heard Papaji say that the word of the Guru alone is enough to grant liberation and that thinking about his teachings is actually an impediment to having a direct experience of them. There are many examples in the previous chapters of devotees suddenly becoming aware of their true nature after hearing a few words from Papaji. No thinking or reflection was required.

David: Almost all the books you have been reading in the last few months have mentioned the traditional path of sravana, manana and nididhyasana. The author of the Ribhu Gita repeatedly asserts that sravana – hearing the truth from the Guru – is enough and that there is no need to think about it or convince oneself that it is true. Do you agree with him?

Papaji: Yes, I do agree with him, and I will tell you why. When you hear the word of truth directly from the mouth of a true Guru, that word will directly enter the Heart of the one who is hearing it. This word from the Guru will dissolve there and itself become the Heart of the listener.

David: You often say that the truth is not something one should try to understand, and that the effort to comprehend is an impediment to having a direct experience of it. So, is the process of manana – reflecting on the Guru’s words and convincing oneself that they are true – an aid or an impediment?

Papaji, teaching in 1991.

Papaji: Understanding will not help you because truth cannot be understood. Whatever you can understand belongs to the past. If you understand something, what you understand cannot be the truth because the mind can never reach the truth. When it tries to reach it, it gets lost in the attempt. It merges into truth itself and becomes truth. This cannot be explained or understood by the mind because when this happens, the mind has already gone. When the mind is there, truth cannot be known. There is no truth in the mind. Mind has to go for truth to reveal itself.

Mind can only speak and think of the things it has enjoyed in the past. These things can never give true enjoyment, true bliss.

David: Why does the mere hearing of the truth work in a small percentage of cases, but not with the vast majority? You heard the truth from your Master and it immediately worked on you. But those same words, which he repeated every day, didn’t work in the same way on the other people there. Some of them sat there for forty years and never experienced what you did.

Papaji: Why does hearing the truth only work in a small percentage of cases? The simple answer to that is that only a small percentage of people are really interested in the truth. How many people even go to the Guru to listen to his words? There are six billion people in the world right now. A hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty, are sitting here listening to what I have to say. Most of the others don’t want to come here because they want to enjoy sense pleasures instead. Such pleasures are easy to find, and even though no permanent happiness is derived from them, everyone still runs after them.

Look what is happening here. There are many girls here who have recently got new husbands. That means the first husband did not provide permanent satisfaction. The same thing is happening with the men. Even in this satsang, the boys try out girl after girl, and the girls try out boy after boy. If you want true bliss you have to look towards your own Self, not towards other people. If you find it, you won’t want to exchange it for anything else because it will give you complete and permanent satisfaction.

You say that I heard the words of truth from my own Master and that they immediately worked on me, whereas others who had been sitting there for decades didn’t have this experience. You want to know why this is so. The Maharshi was available throughout the day. One could sit with him from early morning till lunch time, and from after lunch up till about 10 p.m. at night. The silent presence was available there all day for anyone who wanted it, but many people couldn’t stand the silence. They had desires to fulfil and they couldn’t sit there quietly without thinking about them. In the early morning, at a time when the Maharshi was freely available, many people would run off to the Arunachaleswara Temple with their coconuts to do a puja. And usually it would be a puja to fulfil some particular desire. The priests charged for these services, because that is their job, but the Maharshi never charged for his silence. If you have worldly desires that you want to fulfil, the Guru’s words will not work on you. And if you have these desires, running off to a temple to do a puja is not going to help you either. That is my experience.

In some of the big temples you can pay as much as Rs 1,100 just to have a darshan. I know a place in Vrindavan that charges this much. A long time ago I was friendly with the son of one of the priests who worked there. I heard from him what goes on in these places. This man was an engineer called Anand Alwar. During the period I lived and worked in Madras, he was one of my neighbours. He said the devotees would give all their offerings – fruit, money, etc. – to his father. The father would then draw a curtain across the shrine so that nobody could see what he was doing. He was supposed to be doing a puja to the deity so that all the devotees on the other side of the curtain could have their desires fulfilled. Instead, he would just sit there, smoking a beedi and having a rest. After about five minutes he would pull the curtain back and offer prasad. Everyone was happy because they all thought that he had performed some elaborate ceremony on their behalf. I don’t believe in temples and pujas as a means of fulfilling one’s desires. I know what goes on inside these places.

Your question is: why do the words of the Guru work in so few cases? It is because no one can stand the silence of the Guru. The mind or the body is always looking for an excuse to run away from it. Here too, no one can sit in silence. That’s why I ask some of the girls to dance and sing.

There was once a king who was looking for someone to take over his kingdom. He called his chief minister and said, ‘Make a proclamation. Tomorrow I am going to open the doors to my throne room. Make sure my throne is on display there. Anyone who wants to take over my kingdom can walk in and sit on the throne. All the people who come will be my guests, so make arrangements to look after them properly when they arrive.’

There were many courtyards in the king’s palace. During the night the ministers and the officials made extensive preparations for the guests they were expecting on the following day.

They thought, ‘These people are going to meet the king, and one of them may even become the king. We must make sure that they are clean, well dressed, well fed and happy before they go into the throne room.’

So, the next morning, when the first visitors arrived, they found that the outer courtyard had been converted into a beautiful bath house. Everyone was invited to bathe there and to cover his body with beautiful perfumes. The visitors could even have a massage if they wanted one. When the guests had been attended to there, they were invited to choose new clothes from the king’s own wardrobe. His courtiers had laid out hundreds of outfits that the king had ordered for himself and hardly ever worn. Many of the guests were so overwhelmed, they spent hours going through all the clothes, trying to make up their mind what they should wear when they entered the throne room. In the next courtyard tables had been laid with all the best foods that were available in the kingdom. Everyone was invited to eat as much as he wanted. At the end of the meal all the royal entertainers put on singing and dancing performances for the benefit of the guests.

One by one everyone forgot why he had come to the palace. The food, the clothes and the entertainment were so attractive, nobody felt like leaving to go into the throne room. At 8 p.m. the king, who had been waiting in the throne room for someone to walk in, called his chief minister and asked, ‘Where is everybody? Did you make the announcement that I was giving away my kingdom today? Didn’t anyone turn up to claim it?’

‘Yes, your majesty,’ said the minister, ‘but they all got side-tracked by the hospitality we provided for them.

Nobody was willing to give up the things they were enjoying to come here and see you.’

‘Very well,’ said the king, ‘since no one cares enough about the offer to walk straight in, I will withdraw it. Close the door. When they have all finished enjoying themselves, send them all home. If anyone had come here first, the whole kingdom would have been his. All the enjoyments would have been his for the rest of his life.’

This is how it is in satsang. People come here, thinking that they want freedom more than anything else. They even tell me that this is what they want, but they are not willing to give up all their other desires. The door to my throne room is always open, but no one walks in to claim the kingdom. Everyone is too busy following his wandering thoughts and desires.

If you want freedom, you must want it to the exclusion of everything else. You cannot keep your other desires pending while you try to win freedom. You must reject them completely. When the desire for freedom is strong enough, nothing will prevent you from walking into the Heart and claiming your kingdom. Imagine that your clothing has caught fire and you are about to burn to death. You know that there is a river nearby, so you race there with the intention of jumping straight in. On the way you meet an old friend who invites you in for a cup of coffee. Do you stop to chat to him? Do you accept his invitation? Further along the road you meet a beautiful woman who tries to entice you into her hut. Do you fall for her attractions, or do you carry on running towards the river? When your desire for freedom is burning like this fire, nothing slows you down or diverts you.

David: Sometimes you say that you trusted your Master and that is why you immediately accepted the truth of his words. But you weren’t very trusting on your first visit. You were annoyed that he had tricked you into coming to South India, and you were dissatisfied with him because he wasn’t exhibiting any signs of Krishna bhakti. With such a lack of trust, how did your Master’s words have such an immediate and lasting effect on you?

Papaji around 1990.

Papaji: This is a good question. I didn’t trust him on my first visit because he wasn’t showing any signs of Krishna bhakti. Afterwards, he appeared to me in Madras in the form of a vision and told me, ‘Krishna bhakti alone is true’.

I went back to see him and on that visit I saw him crying as he looked at a picture of Radha and Krishna. The tears of love and devotion that were flowing down his face trickled into my heart. I knew in that moment I had found a real Krishna bhakta who had just been hiding his devotion from me. From that day on I had absolute faith in him.

David: Occasionally you encourage people to cultivate the idea ‘I am free,’ or ‘I am freedom itself’. Sometimes you even tell people to repeat this phrase to themselves until they become convinced that this is the truth. This is classic manana – reflecting on the Guru’s words and generating a conviction that they are true. Since you also say that no effort and no practice can lead to liberation, how can the repetition of this phrase, or any other phrase such as ‘I am Brahman’, lead one to freedom?

Papaji: I tell people to repeat the phrase ‘I am free’ because everyone is saying, ‘I am suffering’. And because they say it, they believe it and suffer. It’s just a word or a thought, but because it is repeated again and again, it becomes the reality for the person who believes it. As you think, so you become. If you think, ‘I am bound, I am suffering,’ that becomes your experience.

So I tell people, ‘Try the opposite. Say to yourself, “I am not bound. I am not suffering. I am happy. I am free.”’

Say it with conviction. Start believing it and you will find that suffering disappears.

Two boys were once walking together. One of the boys put his hand in his pocket, took it out, brought it up to his mouth and then started chewing.

The other boy couldn’t see what he was eating so he asked, ‘What are you eating? Why don’t you offer me some?’

‘I am eating chick peas,’ he said, ‘but I’m not going to give you any.’

The second boy begged and begged until the first boy laughed and said, ‘I was just joking. I am not really eating anything. I was just putting my hand in my pocket and pretending to eat chick peas to see what your reaction would be. Look. There is nothing in my pocket at all.’

The second boy looked and saw that what he said was true.

When he had convinced himself that the first boy really had nothing to offer him, he said, ‘But why were you pretending to eat chick peas? If you are going to pretend like this, why don’t you pretend to eat something tasty, such as almonds?’

Similarly I tell people, ‘If you are going to pretend, why pretend that you are suffering? Why not pretend instead that you are free? It doesn’t cost you anything extra.’

It doesn’t even cost you Rs 10 to say, ‘I am free,’ but if you start saying that instead of ‘I am bound,’ what a difference it will make to your life. ‘I am free’ is an idea, and ‘I am bound’ is an idea. But if the former idea makes you happier, why not believe in it?

You are saying, ‘This is classic manana, reflecting on the Guru’s words and generating a conviction that they are true’. And you are also asking me, ‘How can this work since I also say that no effort and no practice can lead to liberation?’

The simple answer is, ‘It doesn’t work’. No amount of effort or practice can lead one to liberation. I tell people, ‘Don’t waste your time making efforts to get enlightenment. You are already free.’

Neither your effort nor your lack of effort will make any difference to this fundamental truth. I don’t advise people to waste their time trying to get enlightened because the results of such efforts can never be enlightenment. Anything you gain by your practice will be something that you have attained by mental or physical effort. You can attain mental and physical states by mental and physical activity, but you cannot attain enlightenment this way because it is not a physical or mental state. It cannot be attained or discovered by the mind, the body or the senses.

So I simply tell people, ‘Don’t make any effort. Don’t practise, and keep quiet just for one second.’ That’s all you have to do. You can try it now. For one second keep absolutely quiet and tell me what you find? Who are you in that moment? I offer a challenge to everybody here today: be absolutely silent for one second. Then, if in that moment you don’t see who you really are, come and tell me, ‘I did it, but it didn’t work’.

In that one second you have to discard everything that belongs to the past. Every thought you have ever had belongs to the past. And don’t think about the future. Don’t sit there thinking, ‘If I sit here quietly, I will find out who I am’. That is a thought about the future. The expectation of any result is a thought, and while that thought is there, you are not being truly quiet. And don’t think that you are sitting in front of me, trying to find out who you are. That is also a thought. Your perceptions are all thoughts. If you are aware of your body or the world, these are perceptions, and all perceptions are thoughts. In that one second of true silence you must have no perceptions at all. Whatever you can see, think, taste, comprehend or experience is not the truth because the truth cannot be registered or experienced by any bodily or mental faculty.

No one has ever tasted truth. No one has ever experienced it. Tastes and experiences are all thoughts that belong to the past, and what I am speaking of is absolutely fresh, absolutely untainted by thought or by anything that belongs to the past. In that moment of silence, the one who wants to taste truth disappears. In fact, in that moment, he becomes the tasted, not the taster.

The fate of those who become the tasted was brought out in an entertaining exchange in one of his 1995 Lucknow satsangs:

Question: Yesterday I was reading the chapter about your life in the Papaji Interviews book. I got to the part about your wanting to taste the chocolate instead of being the chocolate. That’s where I am now. What should I do next?

Papaji: First you tasted the chocolate. It was very sweet, very good, very delicious. Then you thought, ‘Why not become it?’ If you accomplish this, you can let others enjoy. Chocolate is for others. They will enjoy you.

Question: What do I do next?

Papaji: [laughing] There is no next for chocolates. They just get licked and tasted by other people.

Though Papaji happily concedes that a few people get a direct experience in the Guru’s presence while the others do not, he is not willing to admit that the ones who get it are in any way more qualified for enlightenment.

David: Do you accept that there are mature seekers who attain freedom on hearing the truth once and immature ones who need a period of manana, of practice? Usually you reject such distinctions, but you still encourage those who have not had a direct experience of the Self to generate the conviction ‘I am free’ until the conviction matures into direct knowledge.

Papaji shopping in Lucknow.

Papaji: I don’t accept that some are mature seekers and some are not. There are those who can listen attentively to the Guru’s words and there are those who can’t pay full attention to what he is saying. That is the only difference I accept. When the teacher speaks, your whole attention should be on his words.

In a class at school the teacher may be talking, but nobody is really listening to him. Some students are daydreaming, some are gossiping and some are thinking about the football match they are going to play after school. If you don’t listen to the words of the teacher, his words will not benefit you.

Here in satsang you have to listen to my words with full attention and full devotion. If you do, they will work, and if you don’t, they won’t. It’s as simple as that. As you listen to my words, you have to keep your Heart open, not your ears. When the word is uttered it must enter your Heart, not your mind. I will tell you a story about a saint who lived in Maharashtra a few hundred years ago. Those of you who have come from Pune have probably heard of the place. There is a town called Panchgani near Mahabaleshwar, and near it there is a small village where this saint lived. Many people used to go in him to listen to his talks. About 500 people used to attend his satsangs between five and seven in the morning. His devotees were keeping a record of what he was saying by writing it down. Many people were coming but the teacher knew that none of them was really listening to what he was saying. He decided to play a trick in order to show them what real attention is. He scattered the pages of his book all over the floor and then announced during the satsang the following morning that the wind blowing in the window during the night had disarranged the papers.

‘I want them all to be arranged in the order they were yesterday,’ he said. ‘That is the order in which I said these words, so it should be easy for you to remember. You all come here every day, so all you have to do is remember which set of teachings came first, second, and so on.’

Many learned people had been attending the talks, but none of them could remember the exact order. Most of them couldn’t even remember what had been said the previous day. The words had been washed away in less than a day. If you hear something really important, those words leave an indelible mark in you. You remember them for the rest of your life.

Finally the teacher, whose name was Ramdas, said, ‘There is only one person left in the ashram who has not been consulted. Kalyan, that man who cleans out the cowshed. Call that man and see if he knows the correct order.’

One of the disciples said, ‘It’s a waste of time calling him. He never attends the satsangs. He is illiterate, and he spends all day carrying cow dung. How can he remember what has been happening here if he has not even been in the room?’

Ramdas replied, ‘He is the only person left who has not been asked. Bring him in and see what he has to say.’

Kalyan was brought in and the situation was explained to him. Much to everyone’s surprise Kalyan said, ‘Yes, I can help you. I know the exact order of all the pages. I will dictate the whole book to you.’

It was no idle boast. He began at the beginning of page one and recited the whole book from beginning to end. As he was speaking, the pandits sorted out the papers and put them in the proper order. Everyone was astonished. They all wanted to know how an illiterate man who had not attended a single satsang could recite the whole book from beginning to end. Kalyan told them the secret.

‘I cannot attend satsang because of my duties in the cowshed, but I can hear his words by keeping my ears close to his Heart. I don’t need to be near him for this to happen. Whenever a word comes from his lips, by his grace it directly enters my Heart and stays there. All his teachings are stored there because I listen to them with my Heart.’

This is the correct way to attend satsang. This is the correct way to listen to the Guru’s words. Sitting close to the teacher is not good enough. You have to listen in such a way that his words enter your Heart and become your own reality. This is called ‘attending with the Heart’.

David: A couple of months ago a boy came up to you in satsang to tell you about an experience of emptiness he had had when he was ten years old. The experience later wore off. Later that morning, as you were reading the Panchadasi, you read out a verse that stated that one should do sravana, manana and nididhyasana if one wanted to become stabilised in the truth.

You stopped and said to the boy, ‘You should have done this when you were ten. If you had done this, the experience would not have left you.’

Papaji: When you get this kind of experience, you should not reactivate the mind by thinking about the truth. If you want it to stick, you should go to a true teacher who has established himself in the truth. Such a teacher will not tell you to do anything else or anything new.

He will tell you, ‘You don’t have to hear anything from anyone else. There is nothing more you need to do. Stay where you are and be as you are.’

This boy didn’t know what the experience was, nor did he have a competent teacher who could evaluate it for him. The same thing happened to me when I was six years old. I had a direct experience, but no one there was able to tell me, ‘This is the truth. You don’t need anything else.’

Instead, everyone told me, ‘The peace you enjoyed in that state came because of Krishna. If you start worshipping him, he will appear before you and make you happy.’

I was already happy but somehow, these uninformed people made me do sadhana because they thought that I needed new experiences. Because I had no one who could say with authority, ‘You need nothing else. Stay as you are,’ I ended up spending years looking for external gods.

Papaji, 1993.

There has been no change in my understanding, my experience and my conviction since I was six years old. From the age of six till now, when I am over eighty years old, there has been no change, but this truth, this understanding, was not fully revealed to me till I met the Maharshi. That is the role of the true teacher: to show you and tell you that you are already That, and to do it in such an authoritative way that you never doubt his words. Over the last few months I have been reading out books by some of the great teachers of the past. Again and again they say, ‘You are That. You are Brahman. This alone is the truth.’

All the teachers are saying this because they want their students to have the firm conviction that this is the truth, that this is who they truly are. This is the function of the true teacher: to remove your doubt that you are not Brahman and by doing so to allow you to see who you really are.


text:
Monday, 7 July 2014

Satanic feminists

George Eliot, in Silas Marner:

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that  the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

There is no shortage of dull minds behind the world's most astonishingly prolific and successful publishing enterprise. A billion copies sold every year of their flagship publication. It's the most widely distributed magazine in the world, appearing in 240 languages and with a monthly print run of 60 million copies. The Watchtower (less well known by its full title The Watchtower - Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom) is an evangelical publication produced in Brooklyn, New York, headquarters of The Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania - better known to the world as the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Now read this:

Throughout the developed world, an increasing number of people, inspired by feminist movements and disenchanted with mainstream religions, seek spiritual fulfilment in various forms of witchcraft.

It comes from The Watchtower, and is the only reference to feminism I can find in their online archives. To test a theory I went online to confirm a hunch by comparing citations. This rough list of lexical frequency in the Society's publications (including their version of the Bible) only covers the period 2000-2012, but is nevertheless suggestive in its bizarre priorities, its unequal weightings. Here's what I found:

Subject            Mentions

Jehovah           8,392
Jesus                5,464
Faith                2,912
Truth               2.549
Power              2,433
Fear                 1,666
Jews                1,479
Blood              1,409
Satan               1,357
Followers        1,169
Salvation            818
The Devil           766
Mercy                 652
Obedience          603
Sex                     586
Afraid                 557
Illness                 498
Crime                 490
Discipline           465
Demons              438
AIDS                  431
Alcohol              389
Eternal life          318
Adultery             302
Caesar                285
Evolution           253
Armageddon      244
Homosexuality   122
Hitler                  114
Masturbation        34

This blog is prompted by the recent appearance of members of this cult on the streets where I live. No longer diligently knocking on every door they now operate mobile bookstands, displaying their publications (which appear these days to be free) at busy traffic junctions.

I don't like to see religious hucksters of any denomination promoting their dim bigotry in public spaces, unchallenged. So I wrote a letter to the local Council and received a phone call the other day saying that there was nothing they could do about it and in any case when they sent an inspector he couldn't see any evidence of the bookstand or its attendants so there was clearly no problem.

But why on earth should we have to tolerate religious pedlars on our street corners promoting homophobic, misogynist, creationist, anti-intellectual, bug-eye'd nonsense? If you doubt their toxic priorities look again at the archive lexicon above.

More on this tomorrow.

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HOME Module List Site Index About This Site Glossary Resources Innovative Technology Center UT Statistics Courses
Using SAS Choose Design ANOVA Compare Means Regression Examples
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First, print this pdf outline of module
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Then, begin SAS Analysis of Incomplete Block with Repeated Measures

Check that experimental setup conforms to a Incomplete Block with Repeated Measures

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Friday, June 11, 2010

American teenager is sleepy...and remembering.

Date: 6/11/10
Time: 9:19 pm
Current style: Theme park
Current Food-Obsession: Cotton Candy
Song of the Day: Solo, I-Yaz
Today we went to a theme park for the end of school... and IT WAS soooo TIRING!
But... I'm really here to chronicle one of THE best nights of my life. I got a call from one of my classies, and she got tickets to a huge concert that has been sold out for months, and it was on a school night, my mom would never let me go except for the fact we had BACKSTAGE PASSES!!!!!! So i went with her and another classy to a local hotel where we met _____'s manager!! he gave us the passes and when we were leaving, we got a flat tire... :( But we made it there eventually, and it was soo cool! ____was so nice and we got pictures with him and a bunch of other stars. we ended up staying way late, like 11 o clock, but it was well worth it :)
The American Teenager.

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Viewing Single Post From: Sonny Learns the Truth about Gabi!

Dec 17 2012, 05:31 PM
But hasn't Nick given the reason already? I thought when he and Gabi had the discussion when Nick first showed resistance to being around Will and Sonny, Nick said that he just felt being gay was wrong. That was his opinion. Does more really have to be stated? I mean, his grandmother was a nun for quite a while. Religion could have been a big thing in Nick's growing up. If that's the case, I don't think it's that much of a stretch that Nick could possibly still believe the "right" thing is a man and woman. Nothing else.
Yes, Nick has already given a reason. That doesn't necessarily mean that he was telling the truth, though.

Re: the bolded...does more need to be stated? Of course not. However, some viewers do seem to want more to be stated. Other viewers simply suspect that there is more to the story. Blake Berris has sent out at least one tweet that has fueled this fire of speculation, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

To be clear, I don't necessarily believe that there is more to the story -- I just find it hard to believe that Nick is religious. In the end, that doesn't really matter -- if the writers tell me that Nick is religious, then I have to believe it -- but it still seems dumb to me. People like Nick (who was previously portrayed as a man of science) usually don't just blindly accept something just because "that's how they were raised". My entire family is religious, and I am not the least bit religious. That doesn't mean that Nick has to be "like me" -- I'm not suggesting that. I'm simply saying that, for a character like Nick, the religious angle doesn't ring true to me, and it probably never will. It's a personal issue -- nothing more.

In any case, I don't believe that Nick was raped in prison. Nothing has been shown or said on-screen yet that would make me think that. As I said before, at this point, the speculation that Nick was raped in prison is nothing more than fan fiction.

That doesn't mean that it won't one day be more than fan fiction, though.
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Sonny Learns the Truth about Gabi! · DAYS: News, Spoilers & Discussion


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apache > db
Apache DB Project
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Implements BTree access method, which is the basis for SQL indexes.

Derby implements secondary SQL indexes as BTrees. The high level features of the BTree implementation are:

  1. Derby implements the standard B+Tree algorithm, in which all keys are stored in leaf pages, and the upper levels are organized as a redundant index for enabling rapid location of a particular key. See The Ubiquitous B-Tree, Douglas Comer for a definition of the B+Tree.
  2. The BTree implementation supports concurrency using page level latches, and recovery using a Write Ahead Log.
  3. Derby uses data only locking for its logical row level locking.
  4. Derby supports all four SQL isolation levels, serializable, repeatable read, read committed and read uncommitted.
  5. Derby uses logical key deletes. This enables it to perform undos during rollbacks and restart recovery as single page operations.

High level structure of the B+Tree

  • The first row in all pages, branch or leaf, is a control row. In branch pages, this is a BranchControlRow and in leaf pages, it is a LeafControlRow.
  • In addition to the BranchControlRow, branch level pages contain BranchRows.
  • At branch level, a page is linked to is left and right siblings, parent, as well as children. The number of child pages is 1 greater than the number of BranchRows in the page. The leftmost child pointer is stored in the BranchControlRow itself. Each BranchRow contains a child pointer as its last column.
  • At leaf level also, a page is linked to its left and right siblings, and the parent. In addition to the LeafControlRow, leaf level pages contain IndexRows. The last column in an IndexRow is a RowLocation.
  • IndexRows are generated by the IndexRowGenerator.

Latching implementation

Derby uses latches on pages to get exclusive access to the page while reading or writing the page (Derby only uses exclusive latches, no shared latches are used). In order to prevent deadlocks latches requested while holding other latches are always requested top/down and left to right. Btree splits are always left to right. If for any reason the code needs to break this protocol then it will first request the latch NOWAIT and if it can't get the latch it will release all current latches and wait for the latch it is trying to get, and then after obtaining it go about getting the other latches it needs for the particular operation. While traversing down the tree Derby may hold 2 latches: one on parent and one on child. It then continues doing "ladder" latching down the tree releasing the highest node when it has successfully got a new lower node latch. Latches are short term, only held while reading/modifying the page, never held while an I/O is happening. Structure modifications are all isolated from other operations through the use of latches.

Locking and Isolation Levels

Derby uses data only locking for its logical row level locking. All isolation level implementation is done using logical locks (Derby does not support non-locking isolation such as multi-versioning).

In data only locking the key for all locks whether obtained in the BTree or in the base table is the address of the base table row. In the BTree case the address of the base table row (RowLocation) is always the last column of the leaf index entry (IndexRows).

Derby uses "previous key" locking to prevent phantoms from being inserted into a range being accessed by a scan. A scan always locks the index row just "previous" to the first entry that satisfies the scan condition and then all index entries going forward until the end of the scan. All row locks are held until end of transaction. Inserts also get previous key locks, which will block if the existing row is locked.
Repeatable Read
Same as serializable except that no previous key locking is done.
Read Committed
Write locks are held until end of transaction. Read locks are released once the query in question no longer needs them.
Read Uncommitted
No row locks are acquired. The code still gets table level intent locks to prevent concurrent DDL during the query.

BTree Structure Modifications

In Derby, SMOs (structure modification operations - ie. page splits), only happen top down. This is not as concurrent as bottom up in ARIES/IM, but is simpler. As in ARIES/IM Not more than 2 index pages are held latched simultaneously at anytime. In order to improve concurrency and to avoid deadlocks involving latches, even those latches are not held while waiting for a lock wich is not immediately grantable. No data page latch is held or acquired during an index access. Latch coupling is used while traversing the tree - ie. the latch on a parent page is held while requesting a latch on a child page.

In the case of a simple split, exclusive latch is held on P (parent), and C (child). If there is room in P, then new page C1 (child right) is created, new descriminator is inserted into P, and rows moved to C1. Latches are held on P and C for duration of split, and then released.

The hard case is when P does not have room for descriminator key. In this case all latches are released, and Derby does a split pass from top to bottom, and will split the internal nodes that do not have room for the decrimator key. Note this may result in more splits than necessary for this particular insert, but the assumption is that the splits will have to happen eventually anyway. After this split pass is done, the search for the insert starts again from top down, but it must once again check for space because it has given up all its latches and some other transaction may have acquired the space in the meantime.

Optimization is possible to remember C and see if it is right location, and/or use sideway pointers to search right rather than do research of tree.

Logical Key Deletes

In both the BTree and the Heap, deletes are first executed by marking a "deleted" bit. This is to insure space on the page for abort, since row level locking will allow other rows on the page to be modified conncurrently with the transaction executing the delete. The system uses a background daemon to schedule work after commit to reclaim the space of the deleted rows. A row marked deleted can be "purged" if one can obtain a lock on it (if it was an uncommitted delete then the transaction doing the commit would still have an exclusive lock on the row).

Garbage Collection of deleted keys

Since rows are only marked as "deleted", and not physically removed, it is necessary to perform space reclamation on deleted rows.

Online during BTREE split

Whenever there is not enough room on a leaf to do an insert the code attempts to find space on the leaf, by checking if it can reclaim any committed deletes on that leaf. That work only requires the latch on the leaf and NOWAIT row write locks. It is expected that most of the space reclaim done in the BTree goes through this path. Most of this work is done in {@link org.apache.derby.impl.store.access.btree.BTreeController.reclaim_deleted_rows}.

BTREE post commit work

Whenever a delete operation deletes the last row from a leaf page then a BtreePostCommit job is queued to be executed after the transaction which did the delete commits. This work currently requires a table level lock as page merges have not been implemented to be allowed concurrent with other operations. Many DBMSes don't even try to do page merges except when called from some sort of reorg utility. If all rows on page are purged, then the page will move to the free list and perform a merge to the tree.

It is expected that the normal space reclamation happens with row locks during btree split, which is why not much work has been done to optimize btree post commit path

Logging and Recovery

Derby uses physical redo and logical undo for BTree inserts and deletes. Logical undo is simplified as a result of using logical key deletes. If keys were physically removed during deletes, then the undo of a key delete would have required an insert operation which can potentially lead to page splits at various levels within the tree. Since the key is not physically removed, but only marked as "deleted", undoing a key delete is accomplished easily. However, since the page where the insert or delete should take place may have moved, it may be necessary to search for the page.

Structure modification operations (SMOs) are handled as independent internal transactions and commit separately from the transaction that initiated the SMO. Once an SMO has been completed successfully, it is not undone, even if the transaction that caused it decides to abort. During restart recovery undo phase, incomplete internal transactions are undone BEFORE any regular transactions. This ensures that the BTrees are structurally consistent before normal undo begins.


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Deal of the Week: Under $300/Square Foot on Capitol Hill

by UrbanTurf Staff

1233 F Street NE, Unit B

This installment of Deal of the Week lies at the intersection of Capitol Hill, the H Street Corridor and the neighborhood that has been coined Hill East. The 1,780 square-foot two-bedroom plus den listing has a two-level floor plan with a large main level that includes a living/dining area, a fireplace and a patio, and an upper level with two bedrooms and a den, plus a balcony. In addition to a price per square foot of just $298, the listing has low monthly fees and comes with a parking space.

Living Area

There aren’t many condos in the vicinity to compare this unit to, but an 1,130 square-foot two-bedroom unit a few blocks to the west sold for $535,000 not too long ago. Two-bedroom homes nearby that have less square footage and interiors in need of updating have also been selling for $30,000 to $40,000 more than what this listing is asking.

More details and photos below.

  • Address: 1233 F Street NE, Unit B (map)
  • Price: $529,990
  • Bedrooms: Two
  • Bathrooms: 2.5
  • Square Footage: 1,780
  • Price Per Square Foot: $298

Here are some monthly payment calculations based on a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at 4.8 percent.

  • Loan Amount: $423,992
  • Principal and Interest: $2,225
  • Condo Fees: $188/month
  • Total Monthly Payments: $2,413
Living Room Into Kitchen
Rear Balcony

Photos courtesy of Chris Zimmer Photography

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/deal_of_the_week_under_300_square_foot_on_capitol_hill/3194

  1. Kimee said at 4:31 pm on Tuesday March 22, 2011:

    I went to this Open House this weekend.  It is lovely, more lovely than the rowhouse down the street selling for $70k more.  But condo fees are $500+ per month, which doesn’t include anything but a parking space.  It is unbelievable that “Hill East” is selling for this price.  Didn’t this area have a problem with carjackings and gang activity recently?

  1. DCRealtor said at 5:18 pm on Tuesday March 22, 2011:

    to Kimee:  Where in the world did you get that the condo fee is $500+ per month???  It is $188 per month.  Try to double-check before posting information that may be incorrect!  Thanks!

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text:
English Language Proficiency Test and Biryani Fiesta !!

Everybody is enjoying the own plate of biryani

More to come. More than never.
It's the egg that makes a lot of different.

After 3 handsome full plates of Biryani, champions have given up.

Wondering what are they discussing.

Is that Haji Yassin.

Hello again,

In order to conform with ICAO Language Proficiency requirements, Air Traffic Controllers and all others who use English in RT 2-way communication on international routes must be at ICAO English Language Level 4 (Operational) or above. This must be confirmed by successful completion of an assessment and  approved test.

Those who are assessed at ICAO Level 4 must be re-tested every three years. Those who fail may not be licensed to operate on their respective positions. There are few descriptors that are to be assessed. Those are pronunciation, structure, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and interaction.

Been there and done there.

And their next stop was the 'official restaurant' of Sandakan staff. Zakaria Curry House. Yea, I say again, Zakaria Curry House.

We were all treated with such a mouthwatering chicken biryani. Is this some sort of obsession with Indian foods all of a sudden or the awakening of Indian blood in us. After all, when you patronize an outlet with more locals than foreigners, you know it's gotta be good. It was a good choice !!

Till then, cheers everyone!!

Congratulations And Best Wishes!

Congratulations to Muslijan Paskuar and his wife. DCA Sandakan wishing you marriage filled with love and joy. No more play play ha!

DCASandakan Corporate Shirt Unleashed

DCASandakan boys/girls are great in creating new ideas and concept. And this time, it's corporate shirt initiative. When the idea was mooted in early 2011, the whole department praised the design as something that was extremely elegant and stylish. Now the DCASandakan Corporate Shirt is all-set to challenge the design limits of T-Shirt by refining the color features of the ready made in the market. And from the looks of this corporate shirt, the color is set to be the most stunning T shirt that we have all seen in ages!

It comes with a neat stitched-name and logo on upper part of the pockets and department's name behind the shoulder. Attached are photos taken of the shirts.

See ya!!

Front View
Name is perfectly stitched and logo
Collar and logo
Stitched name and logo


text:
Saturday, August 30, 2008

Is It Possible We Crossed Paths in Alaska?

Sunday, August 10, we were in Juneau, Alaska -- walking around the town, eating in the Red Dog Saloon, and participating in an exciting whale watch. Getting to the bay where we boarded the boat, we passed the new Wal*Mart which our hostess was so proud to point out. This bus ride was about 5 miles away from the city center. Is it possible we crossed paths with Sarah Palin, the newly announced vice presidential candidate, by presidential candidate John McCain that day? Could be.

Or, is it possible we walked past Sarah and her husband while we were docked in Skagway on Monday, August 11? After all, her parents moved to Skagway in 1964 to teach school. Perhaps they still live there. Who knows?

It's fun to wonder. . .

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Happy 1st Birthday, Aurelia!

Tonight I was privileged to attend Aurelia's 1st birthday and oh, what fun it was! She is such a sweet, happy, smart little girl. It seems like she is older than one as she has been walking - walking very well - for over three months. For darling photos and an excellent video of her first year, check out Sarah's blog here.

Aurelia loved opening her gifts, especially the toys. She had pizza for dinner and ate a good-sized piece of cake all by herself.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Sarah to the Rescue!

A big THANKS to Sarah for solving my problem with getting my blog entries in the order I want them to appear. I wish I would have talked to her before this project because then I would have our cruise in chronological order. Oh well.

I sure enjoyed our trip and it has been fun to relive it by journaling the daily events.

Pike Place Market

Candied apples

So pretty

I can't imagine catching one of these!
Original Starbuck's

Linda and Heidi

Top row, small covered dish in the front center is now proudly displayed in my home.

Today, even though the temperature was 94 degrees, Janet, Linda, Heidi and I went to downtown Seattle to stroll through Pike Place Market. This was Linda's first visit to Seattle, so we thought she would enjoy seeing this.
As always, there were crowds of people and the shops were busy. I am always amazed at the gorgeous bouquets of flowers and their very low prices. It's fun to watch them being put together so effortlessly. Linda also wanted to see the original Starbucks store, which is directly across the street from the market.

Do they still throw the fish at the fish stand? Yes. It draws quite a crowd.

Even though we didn't buy any candy or candied apples, it's always fun to look.

My favorite store in the market is the Polish Pottery store. As I always say, "You can never have too many dishes!" Anyway, I bought one piece. This I added to my small collection of 5 pieces total. I bought my first piece here, one piece in Salzburg, and 2 in Germany. Each piece I have is a different shape and pattern.

Fun Find in Seattle

This is primarily for Rachel's information, but Friday Heidi took Jerry, Janet, Linda and me to a Japanese store called Daiso - the same store as in Yokosuka. In Japan it was referred to as the 100 Yen store (the same as our dollar stores). Here everything is priced $1.50 in American money. It was so much fun, and we three gals bought things. Three things I was excited about were paper weights: 2 polar bears and one oval shape (like an egg) with bubbles inside. They are beautiful! And such a bargain. I bought some little cobalt blue glass cups too.

Linda asked if there was a store like this in Chicago and the clerk said no, only in Seattle and Los Angeles.

Jerry had one of my polar bears in his carry-on and it set off the signal at security in the Seattle airport on Sunday. Could the bear contain lead? No one knows. But once the guard checked it, Jerry was allowed to bring it through. Poor Jerry.

Random Photos

Sandy and Jim

Jim and Lil

Aunt Liz, Linda, Sarah, and Barb

Sarah's parents, Barb and Ken

My dinner mates part 1:
Darcy, Gloria, Jim, Sandy, Jim, Lil

My dinner mates, part 2: Denny, me, Pat, Jerry, Darcy, Gloria

Yours truly, Heidi, and Janet

My first "hands-on" with a Bald Eagle

Peder and Aurelia

Sunrise over the Pacific Ocean

Jerry with one of the many towel creations made by the crew.

Aurelia enjoying a piece of pizza.

Pat said, "This dessert is so delicious, I could lick the plate!" I told her to go ahead. :-)

Day 7 of Our Cruise

Aurelia was not fond of her birthday hat.

"Birthday Cakes" at Aurelia's little birthday party on the ship.

I love this photo of Peder!

Heidi was treated to a pedicure. Isn't she cute?

Me with two of my favorite people

Before we cruised, someone suggested we should give Aurelia a birthday party on the ship. Sarah got wind of it and said it would be fine, but she didn't want Aurelia to have any cake until her actual birthday, which is August 23.

Pat and Linda decided they would like to host it and gave invitations to everyone on Tuesday. The party would be Thursday in the Champagne Bar, where we held Heidi's surprise baby shower.

The two hosts got pretty creative. They borrowed the ceiling decorations I had used for the shower. For a "cake," Pat stuffed into her purse 20 cups of yogurt from the Windjammer lounge after breakfast. She arranged them on the tray from our room which held our ice bucket. Poked into each cup top was a plastic candle holder and candle that Pat bought at the dollar store the day before in Prince Rupert, B. C. It was really a cute "cake."

Another scheme they came up with was a gift bag for everyone. Pat raided the room service cart in our hallway, taking bars of soap and chocolates, which she stuffed into feminine disposal paper bags. She also deposited a questionable candy in each: a mint wrapped with cellophane, picturing a donkey and stating VOTE DEMOCRAT. My friend, Lil, said, "I'm not sure I can eat this." While at the dollar store in Prince Rupert, she also bought a Pin the Tail on the Donkey game (I'm seeing a theme here.) and party hats. Jerry won the game and his prize was a roll of toilet paper - also taken from the cart.

Aurelia seemed to have fun opening her gifts. It's hard to believe she is turning one already.

Rainy Day in Prince Rupert, B. C.

Our ship at pier in Prince Rupert, B.C., Canada.

Kitchen inside Prince Rupert Train Museum.

Waiting for the show to start.

Roel, from The Phillipines, our waiter in the Edelweiss Dining Room.

Julia, from Russia, our head waitress in the casual dining lounge.

This day we woke to a chilly, rainy setting in Prince Rupert, B. C., Canada. There really weren't any excursions here that we felt like doing, so Jerry and I decided to brave the elements and walk around the town a little. He had a desire to tour the train museum, so that sounded good to me. We found it to be a charming little building with a small waiting room for guests and a kitchen, dining room, and a bed room for the workers. I especially liked the kitchen. It was cheerfully painted which we learned was important since Prince Rupert is the 3rd rainiest city in all of Canada. Jerry has loved trains most all of his life. I think it makes him happy that Josiah also shares this interest.

From the museum we walked up a long hill to the mall. This small city reminded me of Duluth with its hills. The mall ended up being a big disappointment. The only store I would have like to have seen was now closed. So we headed up the hill a bit further to the dollar store. Funny, but we didn't run into Pat there. We did see Sarah's parents on the sidewalk outside the store, however. It's hard to believe that I was in a foreign country and couldn't find one single thing I want to buy - not even in the Salvation Army store. If there were nicer stores, we didn't see them.

But I felt like my luck changed when we finally found the public library. Shaking out my umbrella, which had blown inside out three times, and hanging up my wet coat and purse on a chair, I was ready to sit at a real live computer to check email, a couple of news sources, stocks, and perhaps make an entry on my blog. I learned the first half hour was "free" and each additional half hour only $1 - a bargain.

Jerry and I found a great little restaurant right down the sidewalk from where our ship was tied up. It was called Peg Leg and had a pirate theme. We each had delicious burgers and fries. What a treat.

On a different note, we had extremely nice waiters in the dining rooms. Two of my favorites were Roel and Julia. I loved it when Julia would say in her darling Russian accent, It's my pleasure. She was a delight to talk to.

The Cast

This was one time when everyone from our reunion gathered for a group photo. Missing is Lil's husband, Jim. On a big ship such as this, there were always many events happening simultaneously. Perhaps Jim was in the pool or taking a nap. You will need to double click on the photo to enlarge it.

Endicott Glacier

Approaching the glacier.

Crew member watching for large chunks of ice.

Endicott Glacier

The ice here is about 100 feet high.

On our itinerary, we were to sail through the Tracy Arm fjord, but due to huge chunks of ice, it is too dangerous. The captain instead took us to the Endicott Glacier in Endicott Arm. He directed the ship in very well, moving slowly. The water in this area is 1,000' deep and of course, very cold. Once we got in as close as safety would allow, the captain turned the boat about 90 degrees to give everyone a good chance to see it. A small rubber boat with crew members tried to capture a big piece of ice to bring on board for all to see and touch, but the current began to get too swift so the captain gave the order for them to return to the ship. It was a beautiful sight.

Outside gift shop in Skagway.

Heidi outside gift shop.

Wonderful setting for our special lunch.

Note the glass leaves among the flowers.

Blow, Donna. Blow!

Janet's paper-weight, getting the final spurt of white-hot glass for its base.

This entire port was fun - and beautiful - from beginning to end.

This was probably my most favorite excursion on this trip. Heidi has a friend named Heather who decided to take a summer job at the Jewel Gardens in Skagway, Alaska. When she learned we were coming to Alaska on a cruise and stopping in Skagway, Heather invited Heidi to bring two guests to have lunch in the tea room, tour the gardens, and partake in the glass-blowing. I have always wanted to watch a glass blower, but never dreamed I would get the chance to try it myself.

First we had lunch. It was incredible! Everything they serve was grown on the property. We had cream of cauliflower soup garnished with nasturtiums. Next we were served spinach pie and salad greens. For dessert we had delicious rhubarb cake with rhubarb sauce. It was all beautifully presented.

Next we went to the glassblowing where 9 other tourist joined us. I volunteered to go first. I decided to make a paper weight in cranberry glass. It was really fun. After all 12 had made their paper weight/ornament, the glass blower informed me mine had cracked. He noticed it as he was quickly placing it in the cooling chamber. So he asked me if I would like to make another. I jumped at the chance. While watching the others, I had changed my mind and thought I would rather have an ornament. I changed my colors to white and cranberry. With my experience from the first attempt, I knew to blow more air into my second globe.

The ornaments or paper weights were mailed to us. Mine was delivered this past Monday and it is beautiful.

Feeling elated from that experience, it was hard to imagine anything else could top this day, but then we walked through the gardens. I have included only a few of the photos I took. It was just so beautiful. I never expected to see flowers like this in Alaska.

If you ever go to Alaska, try to go to Skagway. And don't miss the Jewel Gardens.

Whale Watching

A pod of about 12 whales surfacing 25 feet from our boat.

This whale was 10 feet from my open window. My, did he have bad breath!!

For this day, Chad, Peder and I had booked a helicopter to land on an ice berg where for 30 minutes we would don boots with cleats and walk around on the surface. We may even fly over some whales if any were spotted. Well, to our dismay, while waiting for the bus to pick us up, we learned the excursion had been canceled due to the nasty weather. It was drizzly and foggy - not a good day to fly. So what to do? Heidi, Chad and I decided to walk into town - Juneau - to see what we could find. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a Golden Retriever next to a whale excursion booth. I pointed him out to Heidi and Chad, and since they missed their dog, Brian, they walked over to see him and talk to his owner. The dog's name was Echo. His master told us about the boat and the experts who are the commentators for it. The driver and the narrator have studied whales for years. They have been featured on the Discovery Channel and other national programs. He went on to tell us we would be guaranteed to see whales or our money would be refunded. Well, it didn't take much for us to decide to book it.

The time of the excursion was 3 pm, so that meant we had time to eat and shop a little. Echo's master recommended the Red Dog Saloon. We walked right to it, and as luck would have it, we got 3 of the last stools at the counter. The saloon was loaded with memorabilia - and I mean LOADED. Saw dust covered the floor. Huge mirrors had dollar bills mounted all around them with signatures written on them. There was a honky-tonk pianist who sang lots of fun songs. The handles on the beverage taps were dolphins. And the food - I ordered batter-fried halibut and Cole slaw and it was DELICIOUS! Plus, the servings were huge. This was really fun.

After shopping a little while, it was time to get to the meeting place to start our whale expedition.
We rode in a bus about 5 or 6 miles away from Juneau. I enjoyed that too as it was really the first time I had been "in Alaska." Somehow this made it feel "real."

The tour boat held about 24 passengers plus the driver, a crew member, and the narrator. We left the pier and sailed about 15 or 20 minutes when we spotted about 5 signals of whales blowing. Our driver slowed down the engine and we continued to see more spouts rising. Then there were tails coming from the water. We watched and watched, and then we saw many heads rising. Our narrator told us they had been watching this particular pod of 12 whales for the past 5 weeks. They estimated the pod would stay near this location for another week and then start the long journey to Maui, Hawaii, where they will mate and give birth to a calves.

Our driver cut the engine and we drifted in the area for about an hour. It was chilly because we had all of the windows open. I was lucky to be sitting right next to one while several of the whales neared our boat. They were about 25 feet away when their heads surfaced. They were huge! Our driver dropped a microphone into the water and we got to hear the whales communicating. When they got within 15 feet, he pulled the microphone up and we could hear the whales on our own. They were swimming toward our boat. I was concerned they would capsize our vessel. If successful, would they try to eat us?! The narrator calmed my fear when he said the whales know where we were and would leave us alone.

All of a sudden, I saw the back of a large whale surface really close to my open window! He was no more than 10 feet away. Wow! Did he stink. Our entire boat could smell him.

This was an awesome trip. Chad, Heidi and I loved it. When we returned to the ship later that night, we learned my cousin Linda was on a boat about 25 yards from us. She was witnessing the same whale display! How cool is that?!

Baby Shower for My Next Grand Child

Centerpiece Cake (made with Pampers)

Heidi's first glimpse of the shower.

I love her smile.

Aurelia's other grandma - aka Nana

My Aunt Liz

Me and my baby.

Saturday morning at 9:30 we began decorating the Champagne Bar for Heidi's baby shower. No, we did not serve champagne. At 10 the guests began to arrive. Peder was to fetch Heidi and Chad at 10:15 and persuade them to join him in an activity. A little after 10:30, Peder and Heidi arrived - but no Chad. Some how he managed to duck out. The first thing I remember Heidi saying was, "I knew my mom would do this at some point during the cruise." Why can't I surprise my kids??

Heidi and Chad got so many nice gifts. It was the first time our group had actually joined together since we embarked, so that was nice.


text:
On the heels of a strong start of its first fall edition, NBC‘s reality series The Voice has been renewed for a fourth and fifth cycle. The fourth-season pickup for next spring is a formality as The Voice was already on the NBC midseason schedule presented to advertisers in May, and the network recently set a celebrity coaching team for it. But the early pickup of a fifth season to air in fall 2013 represents a vote of confidence for the unscripted series and indicates that the network is sticking with the current setup of two Voice cycles a season.

As recently announced, Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green will take Season 4 off, with Usher and Shakira taking their spots alongside original coaches Adam Levine and Blake Shelton. “With the addition of Usher and Shakira as rotating coaches to join Christina, , Adam and Blake in the next cycle, we know that this incredibly addictive program will remain even more relevant as we move forward through this exciting season,” NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt said. “My hat is off to John de Mol, Mark Burnett, and everyone who produces this classy and highly entertaining show for us.” In its first fall installment, The Voice is averaging a 4.5 rating through its first two Mondays in adults 18-49 and a 4.3 on its opening two Tuesdays. The Voice hails from Burnett’s One Three, Talpa Media USA and Warner Horizon Television. The series is created by de Mol, who executive produces with Burnett, Audrey Morrissey, Stijn Bakkers and Lee Metzger.


text: Oprah Winfrey hosts the Emmy-winning husband and wife team behind the History Channel hit The Bible Sunday night on her primetime show Oprah’s Next Chapter. One topic the pair will address is the controversy-sparking resemblance between Satan actor Mehdi Ouzaani and President Obama. “I honestly was horrified,” Downey tells Winfrey. “We love the President, we have nothing but respect for the President. We felt somehow hijacked.” And, on The Bible’s ratings coup: “We were delighted throughout the run of the series we saw various headlines — ‘God Beats Zombies’ — was my particular favorite”. The interview airs Sunday at 9 PM ET/PT on OWN.


text:
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: HGH testing in the NFL can't come soon enough for McCain.

John McCain joined KTAR in Phoenix with Doug and Wolf to discuss his disappointment in the NFL to delay implementing HGH testing, the concerns that the players have put forth, the players' concerns about how the testing will work, his worry that HGH falls into the hands of young athletes and sports bringing their problems to Congress.

On his concerns about HGH testing:
"I've been involved with this issue for a long, long time and I'm very disappointed in the NFL union and what they're doing here. … I'm sure you saw the AP story that two dozen scientists and lab directors around the world signed a letter sent to the NFL and players association stating that current tests for Human Growth Hormone is safe, scientifically reliable and appropriate for use in professional sports leagues. Look, these athletes, these NFL players, owe it to the fans to implement these tests right away."

Do you understand the concerns of the players who worry that the tests won't be reliable and that their careers will be affected?:
"I would totally agree if it were not for the fact that dozens of scientists from all over the world have testified and put their reputations on the line. … The letter was signed by 23 scientists and lab directors saying, ‘Any suggestion in the press that its accuracy is a matter of debate is incorrect.'"

It seems as though players are also concerned about how the test will be administered and its guidelines:
"Should that take six months to be worked out? I know that science is very slow. After all, it's not the Congress. They do something. … I understand their concern, but if you've got every top scientist and every top lab expert that it's safe, reliable, accurate, etc., it shouldn't be too hard to arrange a schedule of these tests that would meet the players' schedules and not inconvenience people."

On his concerns over young athletes using HGH:
"If somebody had come to me when I was playing football in high school and said, ‘If you take this, you can be a starting linebacker at the Naval Academy.' … I can't tell you how I would have decided. When you're 17, you know you're going to live forever, no matter what. My concern is that they get this done … so that college and high school football players will know they're going to get caught."

How do you feel about problems in sports, like the BCS, get brought to Congress to discuss being fixed?:
"First of all, I'm embarrassed that Congress would have to get involved in something like this. There's neither the talent nor the expertise residing in Congress. Second of all, I'm disgusted with these institutions that call themselves higher learning and education because it's all about money. … It's all about money and your own television network and your own players and then they expect these players to adhere to a very high code of conduct. And I do, too, but come on. This is destroying, really, any semblance of the word amateur in college sports."

More thoughts on college football and realignment:
"I still think a playoff system is probably the best, but that doesn't address this huge consolidation. They're basically forming up major leagues, right?"

This post, written by Eric Schmoldt, appears courtesy of Sports Radio Interviews. For the complete highlights of the interview, as well as audio, click here.

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