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Archive for April, 2011

Figures released by the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) this morning for the month of March 2011 show that the flight of deposits from Irish banks shows no sign of slowing down. From an Irish perspective, possibly the most significant figure to watch is the total of private sector deposits in the six State-guaranteed financial institutions (AIB, Anglo, Bank of Ireland, EBS, Irish Life and Permanent and INBS). The total which represents businesses and households fell to €106.3bn in March 2011 from €108.6bn in February 2011 and is now down €23bn from a year ago, €11bn since the IMF/EU bailout in November 2010 and €2.3bn down over the course of just one month. The CBI and ECB continue to provide substitute funding for Irish banks which replaces this flight of deposits and Irish banks continue to provide extensive State-backed guarantees on deposits. It remains to be seen if the pace of decline in deposits slowed after the bank restructuring announcements made after close of business on 31st March, 2011 – Minister Noonan indicated the early signs were encouraging but since then our sovereign bond yields have sky-rocketed again.

So, looking at the deposit figures produced by the CBI. First up is the consolidated picture for all banks operating in Ireland including those based in the IFSC which do not service the domestic economy.

Next up are the 20 banks which do service the domestic economy and include local subsidiaries of foreign banks like Danske, KBC and Rabobank. There is a list of all banks operating in Ireland here together with a note of the 20 that service the domestic economy.

And lastly the six State-guaranteed financial institutions (AIB, Anglo, Bank of Ireland, EBS, Irish Life and Permanent and INBS)

(1) Monetary Financial Institutions (MFIs) refers to credit institutions, as defined in Community Law, money market funds, and other resident financial institutions whose business is to receive deposits and/or close substitutes for deposits from entities other than MFIs, and, for their own account (at least in economic terms), to grant credits and/or to make investments in securities. Since January 2009, credit institutions include Credit Unions as regulated by the Registrar of Credit Unions. Under ESA 95, the Eurosystem (including the Central Bank ofIreland) and other non-euro area national central banks are included in the MFI institutional sector. In the tables presented here, however, central banks are not included in the loans and deposits series with respect to MFI counterparties.

(2) NR Euro are Non-Resident European depositors

(3) NR Row are Non-Resident Rest of World depositors (ie outsideEurope)

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Take a look at the recent history of the financial performance of the Discretionary Fund in our National Pension Reserve Fund (NPRF), taken from the 2009 Annual Report

The Discretionary Fund is to be distinguished from Directed Investments which are investments the NPRF is directed to make by the Minister for Finance and have particularly applied to recent investments in the banks.

Add in the 11.1% return in 2010 on the Discretionary Fund and we have a simple total return of 45.9% over 10 years or a simple average of 4.59%. Hardly spectacular but we are assured by the NPRF that it has outperformed the average of private Irish pension funds during that period.

So a simple average return of 4.59% per annum. Yet this morning, the return on our 3-year sovereign bond is 12.4%. Sovereign bonds are one means by whichIreland borrows money so that it can fund the annual budget deficit (the difference between what the government takes in tax less what it spends, mostly on the public sector and social security). There has never been a suggestion, not even by Sinn Fein who possibly take the most contrarian view on bonds, that we should default in any way on our sovereign debt. That being the case, you might have thought that whatever funds we have left in the NPRF might be more productively used in buying our 3-year bonds (I have chosen three years because it is medium term debt – longer and shorter term funding is generally yielding returns in the same ballpark). After all, we would see a guaranteed return which was some 200% more than the simple average return achieved by the NPRF in the past 10 years.

The Irish Independent today reports thatGreece has been doing exactly as suggested above – buying back its own bonds, to the tune of €2.3bn since the start of this year. The Independent goes on to report “last night, National Treasury Management Agency sources said thatIreland had not made any such purchases this year.” It is unclear, to an extent, how much cash the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA, responsible for managingIreland’s debt and associated functions, including the oversight of the NPRF) has to play with at present. Our Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan seems to be performing the dance of the seven veils with recapitalizing the banks, which our stress tests last month showed would require €24bn. Possibly the Minister sees delaying the injection of the €24bn as one of the few remaining aces in Ireland’s hand as the country seeks to renegotiate the interest rate and terms of the bailout funding. However it would seem that we have a few billion euros available, at the very least.

So at the current rates, should the NTMA be buying Irish bonds? If not, at what rate does the purchase of Irish bonds become irresistible? 15%? 20%?

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The rationale for the decision by NAMA to appoint accountancy firm Grant Thornton as receivers to companies controlled by NAMA Top 20 developers, Ray and Danny Grehan, is slowly becoming apparent. Yesterday the Irish Independent claimed that NAMA had tried to install a non-executive chairman to Glenkerrin as a condition for the continued co-operation from the agency. And today the Irish Times reveals the identity of NAMA’s man – Harry Slowey (pictured here). The reporting suggests the Grehans were not happy with the appointment though it seems the matter did not get as far as to be discussed by the Glenkerrin board, Glenkerrin being the flagship company owned by the twoGalway developers.

Harry is a fellow of the Instituteof Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He is currently the chairman of Barnados charity in Ireland. He was a director of Bank of  Scotland (Ireland) for 13 years until he stepped down in 2006. He has held “senior positions” in the Guinness Peat group and KPMG. He is currently a director of Dublin-based financial services company, FinanceOne. He is a non-executive director of the Thornsett Group, the Irish owned property development group, which in 2006 had schemes in development valued at €400m inIreland, theUK and Belgium.

The NAMA tactic of forcing developers to employ a NAMA-selected individual slipped below the radar on here. In January 2011, the Irish Times reported that NAMA might seek a role in approving the appointment of staff at developers’ companies, but that seems to be weaker than its present position of apparently forcing the appointment of a specific individual.

Presumably at the root of the NAMA tactic is the desire to ensure that NAMA’s financial interests are protected. In the Grehan case, it seems that in addition to the reported €650m currently owing by the brothers, there was a request for additional funding by the Grehans from NAMA to complete an extension to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Shoreditch in east London. So NAMA has a very clear interest in ensuring the Grehans delivered on whatever plan was agreed.

NAMA’s reported choice of the role of “non-executive chairman” for their appointment seems puzzling as chairmen are typically removed from all but the most significant decisions of the company. Why didn’t NAMA seek appointment to the Finance Department or an executive directorship? Also puzzling is how NAMA justifies the appointment of any individual unless there has been some competition for the role.  And as there was no advertisement for the role on the NAMA website, how can NAMA ensure it has secured the best person for the role?

UPDATE: 29th April, 2011. A NAMA spokesperson has stated that the appointment of Harry Slowey as chairman was in fact agreed by the Glenkerrin group, which is at odds with the reporting in this morning’s Irish Times. It is also worth pointing out that FinanceOne where Harry is presently a director has an existing relationship with NAMA. According to NAMA’s tenders, the agency appointed Finance One (sic) Limited to provide services in connection with the review of developers’ business plans. This is confirmed on the FinanceOne website which says “FinanceOne Ltd has been appointed to a panel for the provision of Advisory Services in connection with the review and evaluation of Borrowers’ Business Plans to the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA).”

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The Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) report published yesterday showed that both capital values and rents were still declining in Ireland, though based on the experience of one quarter, the declines were moderating. There is a competing commercial property series for Ireland produced by Investment Property Databank (IPD) and the Society of Chartered Surveyors in Ireland (SCSI, the newly merged unit which brought together the old Society of Chartered Surveyors and the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute) and it has been published this afternoon and is available here. This blog uses the JLL reporting to produce the NWL Index at the top of this page because it is usually published before the SCSI/IPD’s. Both series are referred to in NAMA’s Long Term Economic Value Regulations (Schedule 2).

The SCSI/IPD index confirms prices are still dropping, at 2.3% overall for the quarter which ended on 31st March, 2011. This compares with JLL’s own reporting yesterday which suggested prices were down 1.5% in the quarter. I haven’t tracked the SCSI/IPD index historically but I believe it would show we are now down by ~62% from peak, compared with 61% with JLL’s index. So over time, both indices show a strong correlation with each other.

The SCSI last week published its Quarterly Commercial Property Review which reflected the views of its members on aspects of the commercial property market. The Review is a private publication for SCSI members and has been monitoring the market for the past five quarters. It showed that overall transactions volumes are dropping, as are enquiries. Vacancy levels continue to rise. Lease lengths are falling which might be considered good news for commercial tenants but inducements are also coming down. Of the three basic commercial segments (office, retail and industrial) it is the office segment which looks the most positive in the sense of transaction volumes increasing. Overall it paints a sector still facing challenges. And with an anaemic economic environment and uncertainty over Upward Only Rent Review legislation, it seems that the sector will remain challenging for the next quarter or two at least.

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Although the advertisement is not currently showing on the NAMA website under its recruitment section, the Irish Independent today reports that NAMA is, in fact, recruiting an unspecified number of “forensic managers and analysts” whose role will be to “verify and substantiate the credit standing of NAMA debtors”. The role will also involve liaising with unspecified third parties.

The roles will be based in Dublin and the principal duties are understood to include undertaking and overseeing “forensic and investigative searches to verify debtor credit positions”. The person specification for the role says that candidates are “likely to have a minimum of 3-4 years’ investigative/forensic experience”. Any prospective candidate must comply with section 42 of the NAMA Act which says:

“(2) Before employing or otherwise engaging a person to be assigned to NAMA under subsection (1), the NTMA shall ascertain to its satisfaction that the person—
(a) is of good character and has not been convicted of any offence likely to render him or her unfit or unsuitable to perform the duties that the person is required to undertake or is likely to be required to undertake,
(b) has not been disqualified or restricted from acting as a director under the Companies Acts, and (c) has no material conflict of interest, whether actual or potential

(3) Before the NTMA assigns a member of its staff to NAMA under subsection (1), the NTMA shall ensure that he or she provides a statement of his or her interests, assets and liabilities to the Chief Executive Officer of NAMA and the Chief Executive of the NTMA in a form that the NTMA specifies”

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News today that the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in Ireland is to start producing a new monthly house price series, will be welcome in a country where there is a dearth of real information on actual sales prices. The new series will be unveiled on 13th May, 2011 and will reportedly reveal data stretching as far back as 2005.

Details of the new house price series

(1) It will use data on mortgage draw-downs reported by eight financial lenders under Section 13 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 2002

(2) It will exclude cash transactions, though the CSO plans to include in the monthly release detail on the overall size of the residential property market based on Stamp Duty data supplied by the Revenue Commissioners

(3) The index will be hedonic, that is, it will take account of changes in price on a like-for-like property basis. The opposite of hedonic in an Irish house price series is the information published by the Department of Environment Heritage and Local Government which simply takes the sales prices of all property sold and divides that by the number of transactions to give you an average house price!

(4) There will be a monthly national index as well as three sub-indices (a) Dublin Houses (b) Dublin Apartments and (c) Rest ofIrelandHouses and Apartments

There is indeed a dearth of price information in Irelandwhich is preventing price discovery in what has been the collapse of an almighty residential property bubble. It is encouraging that NAMA is calling for the rapid implementation of a house price register , the legislation for which is wending its way through the Oireachtas at present but at a very slow pace.

The following are the current sources of house price information in Ireland at present

(1) Permanent TSB/ESRI quarterly mortgage-derived average prices. It’s hedonic, produced within a month of the quarter end but only applies to less than 4% of the mortgage market and excludes cash transactions.

(2) Department of Environment Heritage and Local Government series which is produced six months after the period end, isn’t hedonic but is apparently based on all mortgage transactions.

(3) DAFT.ie and Myhome.ie produce quarterly series based on asking prices from their property marketing websites.

(4) Sherry FitzGerald produces a quarterly series based on its valuation of a portfolio of properties.

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Britain’s Property Week today reports that NAMA has appointed property receivers to a major property in London’s Leicester Square. The property is the present site of the Odeon cinema and the adjoining Leicester Square Theatre which occupies a substantial part of the south western corner of Leicester Square. The site is owned by Steamboat Developments Limited, the Irish company to which NAMA appointed Kieran Wallace of KPMG as receiver on 25th March, 2011. Steamboat is most associated with rugby legend, Pat Whelan, his business partner Pat Chesser and solicitor Paul Hanby.

The site was assembled at a reported cost of GBP £58m and Property Week estimates that it might be worth GBP 200m (€225m) in its developed state. According to Property Week the site has planning permission for the development of a 245-bedroom hotel, 33 flats, four restaurants and a two-screen cinema. The planning application does not appear to be available online from Westminster City Council but an application in respect of an Environment Impact Study is available here.

The property receivers appointed are our new friends, Allsop, who ran a spectacularly successful auction inDublin’s Shelbourne Hotel two weeks ago. In the British context, Allsop are termed fixed-charge property receivers and the two gentlemen at Allsop handling the property are Jon Gershinson and Simon Davidson.

There is a little sting in the tail of this story. Property Week say that another company called Real Estate Resolutions bought part of the site in November 2010 and that the redevelopment cannot take place without the input of that company. Curiously Real Estate Resolutions which was founded by former Ballymore planning director, Tim Farrow, does not list the Leicester Square site as one of its developments on its website. Ballymore is Sean Mulryan’s company and the last I heard of Tim Farrow in connection with Ballymore was that he was suing the company for €4.5m after his dismissal.

UPDATE: 30th January, 2012. The property in Leicester Square has reportedly been sold to the Edwardian hotel group, no price has yet been disclosed. There is a press release by the NAMA receiver, Allsop, here. The Financial Times is reporting the site sold for “what is thought to be close to £100m”, which if confirmed,  would be considerably more than the GBP 58m thought to have been the cost of Steamboat assembling the site. The site is presently undeveloped and it has been estimated it might be worth GBP 200m in its developed state.

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NCSF on Twitter   Subscribe to the NCSF RSS Feed   NCSF Blog

Articles tagged with: vivienne

on Sunday, 03 May 2009. Hits 531

Want to know what we've been working on at the NCSF?  Here are the summaries from our departments!

INCLUDED: Vivienne - Treasurer, Tim Murray - Marketing, Klawdya Rothschild - Membership,Klawdya Rothschild - Newsletter/Web 2.0, Levi – Office,Vicki Ballinger - Outreach Coordinator,Susan Wright – Media Outreach

Vivienne- Treasurer

NCSF participated in an evening discussion at Leather Leadership Conference in Atlanta. Spearheaded by Richard Sprott, Executive Director of CARAS, representatives from LA&M, LLC National and NSCF joined Richard for an early dinner. The four organizations shared their current and future projects, issues of the day and explored the possibility of working together on a joint event.

Vivienne Kramer, Board Member, and Vicki B. Outreach Coordinator, spoke for NCSF and will continue to participate in any joint committee work. It was a productive discussion and was very encouraging to have all parties present and cooperative.

Our annual Coalition Partner meeting will be held in Dallas on June 6th and 7th of 2009.We will be at a hotel close to DFW to enable easy in and out transportation; the name will be disclosed as soon as the contract is signed. Room night rates are $89 plus tax and include hot breakfast both Saturday and Sunday. Please talk to your group about sponsoring your trip to Dallas. It is truly an amazing meeting that leaves activists renewed and re-energized for the coming year. The agenda for the weekend will be developed shortly but we typically meet 9:30-4:30 on Saturday and 9:30 am to 12 on Sunday. We are also trying to make arrangements with the local club for a Saturday evening entertainment option. NCSF has a working board that tries hard all year to keep the organization running but it's YOU - the Coalition Partners - that hold the power. There will be elections, budget review and many reports on activities. Please join us.

Tim Murray - Marketing

NCSF Fundraiser-In-A-Box:

Coming soon to the CP's will be a fundraiser template. A collection of best practices, resources and concepts complete with professionally designed flyers, posters & more for the CP's to easily throw fundraisers of various sizes. We want being a Coalition Partner to feel easy and beneficial to all parties involved. So let us take off some of the stress. Watch for it soon.

Klawdya Rothschild - Membership

In an ongoing effort to increase communications efficiency and maximize funds, the NCSF Memberships are going Paper Free! Not only with this increase membership process time, and save the NCSF thousands of dollars, but is also much more eco friendly! Following in the footsteps of the ACLU and AASECT, who converted to paper free memberships and renewals years ago, we will also link our paper-free membership system to Salesforce, which will help us organize and maintain better email lists, keeping our constituents better informed!

Klawdya Rothschild - Newsletter/Web 2.0

The Newsletter has been changed from bi-annual to quarterly and increased from 2 to 4 pages in an attempt to deliver more information, and serve the community better and more frequently. With that in mind, the NCSF has also embraced Web 2.0 with such things as the blog: http://ncsf.wordpress.comand http://www.twitter.com/ncsfto keep you up to date on news, both good and bag, that pertains to our mission and related communities! We aim to show the positive and strong aspects of our community as well as inform when tragedy strikes and alert when action is needed—with this in mind we have decided to accept article submissions from all members of our communities for both our blog and website. Email klawdya@ncsfreedom.orgto submit articles on events, books, art, news and more of interest to our communities and affiliate communities!

Levi – Office

It’s spring, and lots of change is in the air at our national office!

We have received our t-shirts from the printer – same great design, now with the NCSF logo on the front (so you can wear our colors proudly, even under a bar vest or jacket!). Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to place your order.

If you have not yet emailed the office to confirm your contact info, alternate rep (and their contact info), please do! We still have many question marks on our contact list, and want to make sure that all of your information is going to the right place.

Levi will be moving to California later this summer, and NCSF is looking to hire a new part-time Office Manager to run the Baltimore office. Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to request a copy of our advertisement for the position if you or someone you know would be interested. Note: the office manager must be local or within reasonable driving distance of Baltimore, MD.

Vicki Ballinger - Outreach Coordinator

There are several events happening across the country worth mentioning

May 1-2

Kinko De Mayo - Ohio

May 1-3

Seattle Erotic Art Festival - Washington

May 1-3

Tribal Fire - Oklahoma

May 7-10

Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality Western Region Conference - California

May 13-17

ASSECT Annual Conference - Arizona

May 21-26

Camp Crucible - Pennsylvania

May 22-25

International Mr Leather, Illinois

May 22-25

Shibaricon - Illinois

If you are having an event, please consider including the NCSF in your event. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is the only national organization devoted to creating a political, legal, and social environment in the United States that advances the rights of consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression. We depend on support from events like yours to operate, so that we may continue to serve our constituents - like you! As a grassroots, volunteer driven organization primarily focused on the rights of consenting adults in the SM-leather-fetish, swing, and polyamory communities, we are always looking for ways to increase awareness of our projects and funds to continue operating. There are a number of ways that we can work together to make this happen. Write This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you would like NCSF info at your event!

Thank you for considering adding the NCSF to your plans!

Susan Wright – Media Outreach

Susan worked with NY Times reporter Jennifer Mascio on an article about the false arrests of professional Dominatrices for prostitution in NYC, arranging and sitting in on the interviews with several pro-Dommes, as well as getting a statement from one pro-Domme who was arrested. Jennifer says the article will be published at the end of April. So far, Susan has received over 20 inquiries about the pro-Domme arrests. This month she wrote to Police Commissioner Kelly asking for a meeting to discuss the issue.

Along with the interview to the NY Times, Susan gave 6 interviews to reporters with The New York Times Magazine (DSM and the paraphilias), Boston Phoenix (about the persecution of the BDSM community in Boston), NY Blade (regarding the murder of WABC host George Webber), Hustler (about Dressing for Pleasure and BDSM in general), SF Chronicle (on whether Obama will be a pro-sex president), and a Swedish journalist researching child custody and poly issues. Susan's letter to the editor about the top 50 influential people in the sexual freedom movement was published in the March issue of Playboy.

Susan is coordinating people and groups in NYC who are interested in working with the NY Health Department to obtain waivers for sex clubs that incorporate safe sex and harm reduction activities as part of their operation, including counseling and free HIV testing. The first meeting was at the Queer Justice League's April 2nd meeting, and the next will be at Paddles at 8pm on May 7th .

This new working group is an outgrowth of the Stop the Arrests Coalition.

Susan did website reviews for Ohio SMART's Kinko de Mayo, smOdyssey's Northeast Leather Celebration, and The Mark by CPI in Tennessee.

Lisa Vandever put out an Entertainment Media Update on American Swing, in which she said, "Though the 1970s styles and sensibilities on display in "American Swing" inspire some easy mockery, overall the documentary takes a respectful and even-handed stance towards its subject and the individuals involved--and towards swinging on the whole. In recounting their experiences at Plato's Retreat, many of those interviewed seem nearly reverential as they recall the sense of sexual freedom they discovered at the club, a good thirty years prior."

NCSF also received a thank you, as did many people who assisted in Brad Saragin's research on "Hormonal changes and couple bonding in consensual sadomasochistic activity," which is published in the current issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior. A PDF of the article can be found at http://www.niu.edu/user/tj0bjs1/papers/scclm09.pdf. The full reference is as follows:

Sagarin, B. J., Cutler, B., Cutler, N., Lawler-Sagarin, K. A., & Matuszewich, L. (2009). Hormonal changes and couple bonding in consensual sadomasochistic activity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, 186-200.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your look into the activities of the NCSF. Please look for another edition of the NCSF Tickler in May.

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My allocation seemingly had 3 options: one was completely unsuitable, one was desirable, and the third was where I ended up. I obviously chose the desirable allocation.

Unfortunately, two days into working at google, I was informed that my entire team was going to physically relocate in a few months and leave me with an 80-mile commute each way. So I said that was unacceptable and ended up with the third project, which I've already described elsewhere.

Do not let them do this to you. Hang tough.

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text:
Introducing Music Education Network for the Visually Impaired
by Richard Taesch

From the Editor: In general education circles in recent years, people have become increasingly aware of the importance of music education to the entire child, particularly with respect to developing skills in mathematics and logic. This discovery or rediscovery has obvious implications for blind youngsters as well. (See the article "Music Education: Not Just a Frill" in the Summer, 1997, issue of Future Reflections, the quarterly magazine of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children.)

The following article first appeared in the MENVI (Music Education Network for The Visually Impaired) Fall/Winter, 1997, newsletter. Richard Taesch is the director and founder of the Braille Music Division of the Southern California Conservatory of Music near Los Angeles and has chaired the conservatory's Department of Guitar since 1976. He also serves as Music Specialist for CTEVH (California Transcribers and Educators of The Visually Handicapped) and writes for their journal.

MENVI is a coalition of parents, educators, and students. Its advisory committee is made up entirely of blind musicians and teachers. MENVI exists for and is managed by blind musicians. It is committed to the principle that the needs of blind students of music are unique. Parents have a right to know what is available for their children in music education, and educators must have access to specialized materials and know how to use them. Not all teachers of music know the Braille music code. They should, however, encourage Braille music literacy at the earliest opportunity. MENVI provides a network of information as well as a resource guide to Braille music and the teaching of blind children and adults. Here is Mr. Taesch's article:

Teaching For Tomorrow

We have learned much about academic development through the teaching of music. At the Southern California Conservatory of Music, Braille Music Division, we have seen youngsters begin new lives in the world of literary Braille by means of their own natural musical gifts. We must, however, continue to look well beyond the obvious advantages of providing music to our children and beyond merely providing the opportunity to play a musical instrument.

Whether a youngster will plan to pursue music studies in college or simply to play a band instrument in middle or high school, we have a serious obligation to see that proper groundwork is done at the most basic levels. Care must be taken to see that music fundamentals are established as real academic skills that can be built upon by future teachers. Perhaps no subject is more difficult to re-teach than music. It is for this reason that music classes are the one subject area in which most universities and conservatories will not allow direct transfer of credits. Normally students must either test out of a subject or re-take it. In music, unlike other academic subjects, you must be able clearly to demonstrate skills required—you can't simply fake it!

The SCCM Braille Music Division has the opportunity to advise about and serve the music-transcription needs of at least eight middle schools and several universities. From this vantage point we are able to observe the weaknesses in Braille music disciplines. Schools are becoming aware that blind students can use written music just as sighted students do and are requiring these skills at an accelerating rate. They are no longer forced to treat VH students differently, other than procuring the specialized media required.

We must, therefore, insist on requiring and providing specific approaches and good pedagogy for even the youngest children. The educational consequences of weak fundamentals for a musical blind child can be just as devastating as the inability to read or write.

For more information contact Richard Taesch, SCCM Braille Music

Division, 8711 Sunland Blvd., Sun Valley, California 91352,

Phone: (818) 767-6554, e-mail: <>


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Future Reflections Winter 1996, Vol. 15 No. 1

by Eric Duffy

Editor's Note: Eric Duffy is Director of Field Services for the National Federation of the Blind of Ohio. He and his wife Tracy live in Columbus and are expecting their first child. Braille is deeply important to both the Duffys, but there was a time when it looked as though Eric would be denied the right to learn it. Here is his story:

As a young child I enjoyed being read to. Whenever I could persuade anyone to sit down with me and a book, I was delighted. I particularly remember Peter Rabbit; The Cat in the Hat; and of course the classic, Mother Goose. When we were very small, my little sister Barb and I would pick up our books and pretend that we were reading. Sometimes we read to ourselves, and sometimes we read aloud to anyone who would listen.

I memorized things quickly, so pretending to read was easy for me. Barb could pick up any book and, by looking at the pictures, tell the story. I knew, however, that it wouldn't be long before Barb would no longer be pretending. She would be able to read books, newspapers, and everything elseþjust as the rest of our family could.

Eventually the day came when Barb began to read. She began to recognize the letters of the alphabet and then to sound out words. That is when I began to recognize that my blindness really might be a problem. I was the big brother, and I should have started reading before she did. I began asking my parents a lot of questions: how am I going to read? Am I going to go to school?

My parents explained that I was going to go to a special school for blind children. They said that I would learn to read and write Braille. Of course, I had no idea what Braille was. In order to give me some notion of the code, my mom punched small holes into a sheet of paper with a pencil. Obviously, these holes made no sense to either of us, but at least I was comforted by the knowledge that I was going to learn to read.

The time came when my mother took me to the Ohio State School for the Blind. I was given a variety of tests, most of which I do not remember. However, what my parents and the school officials did with the results of these tests might well, under other circumstances, have had a dramatically negative effect on the rest of my life. Because I have mild cerebral palsy, my parents were told that I would probably never learn to read and write Braille.

But when I started school, I did not know that I was not supposed to be able to read and write Braille. No one bothered to tell me what I could not or would not want to do, and I can only assume that my first-grade teacher chose to ignore the pronouncements of the experts. She simply gave me the opportunity to learn to read and write with the rest of my class. I started school in April, and by June I was reading and writing as well as anyone else in my class.

Today I use Braille in every aspect of my life. At home I label food items, cassettes, and compact discs. Braille reading is essential for playing board games such as Scrabble and card games such as Euchre. On the job I use Braille for note taking, writing down telephone numbers, and labeling file folders. I cannot even begin to name all the ways in which I use Braille at home and on the job.

Today I take my ability to read and write Braille for granted. But it frightens me to realize that I was almost denied the opportunity to learn it. What follow are the comments of the clinic evaluation team of the Ohio State School for the Blind: "Eric was a very cooperative boy who had difficulty walking. Although he has some vision, it does not appear to be adequate for reading any fine print. Developing usable Braille skills may be rather difficult for Eric because of his poor manipulative skills. His chief channel of learning will most likely be the auditory channel. Eric exhibits readiness for a beginning program for visually handicapped children." Educational Specialist

This evaluation almost led to my not learning Braille. I know for certain that there are blind students today who are not learning Braille because of evaluation results like mine. My plea to parents and educators alike is this: give your children a chance to learn Braille. It is better to err on the side of Braille instruction than to deny any child the opportunity to read.


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Shooting… the Independent Way

14 06 2008

Stu Maschwitz, author of the great book, DV Rebel’s Guide and filmmaker, blogger (over at Pro Lost), techno geek, has a really interesting blog about “clipping.”  For those of you who know little but could care more, that term refers to the point when video (or audio) reaches a saturation point and can no longer take any more light.  Stu refers to it this way:

Throw enough light at a piece of color negative and eventually it stops being able to generate any more density. Clipping, i.e. exceeding the upper limits of a media’s ability to record light, happens with all image capture systems.

In the posting, titles “On Clipping, Part 1” Stu gets into quite a bit of detail about how our eyes perceive light, as oppose to our digital capture systems (read that as “cameras”) and, at times, it went clean over my head.

But he makes the good point that film treats clipping much more forgivingly than video and digital capture does.  DPs have learned to expose for the whitest whites as much as possible, and to let the color timing bring the image down to respectful levels. This approach works fine, according to Stu, but falls apart when images clip, because bringing down a clipped image leaves you open to many digital imperfections — including milkiness and noise.

Editors have dealt with this for years, especially as more and more of us are pushed into the realm of color correction (way beyond most of our skill sets, I should point out, and that’s a topic for another post). But Stu lays it out in a great way.  And, along that way, he points out that clipping isn’t always bad.

And that’s OK. While HDR enthusiasts might disagree, artful overexposure is as much a part of photography and cinematography as anything else. Everybody clips, even film, and some great films such as Road to PerditionMillion Dollar Baby and 2001: A Space Odyssey would be crippled without their consciously overexposed whites.

Go check out the posting, and while you’re at it, take a look at the other postings on Stu’s blog.  You’ll find it way worth your while.

Fun Red One Demo

12 06 2008

Red One cameraTed Schilowitz, public face of the RED CINEMA Digital Camera, knows how to put on a show. He, and Michael Cioni (Plaster City Digital Post), put on a short demo of shooting with the RED, and playing it right on a Final Cut Pro system.

There’s nothing really special about that.  FCP can do that with the P2 cameras. Avid can too. But the way that Ted does the demo is really fun. He and Michael have two red cameras (take THAT, Red Camera fanatics) and shoot a little mini show called “Mythbusters.”  While still rolling both cameras, they walk into the next room, which has a spiffy 27 foot screen, plug one of the cameras into a second Mac (eight-core) system, and immediately project the footage onto the screen.  Frankly, it’s a demo that Sony and Panasonic could do as well, with their technology.  The cool thing is that Mike is demonstrating it using the 2K movie files right out of FCP (something that Ted advises you not to do, by the way). And there are some occasionally funny titles laid over the picture.

There are 4K and 2K versions of the film posted on the Red Cinema bulletin board.

3D Movies and Theaters

15 02 2008

MarketSaw, a blog which focuses on 3-D movies, has a list of theatres which screen 3-D films in the Real D technology. There are more and more of them each time I check back it seems — actually the list was last updated at the beginning of December, but we know it will continue to grow.

Grand Central Freeze-In

1 02 2008

ImprovEverywhere loaded a video on Vimeo which documents mass event in which 207 people stopped at exactly the same time in Grand Central Terminal in NYC. They didn’t move despite being poked by curious onlookers or being honked at by workers in vehicles trying to get by. The way the video is edited it creates a real shape to their event, including applause when they broke their poses after five minutes.

By the way, from ImprovEverywhere has a whole bunch of these events captured on Vimeo, including a pretty cool synchronized “swimming” event in the Washington Square Park fountain.

iTunes video and the future of distribution

30 12 2007

Ira DeutchmanTwo recent news items and a fascinating podcast interview with Ira Deutchman have combined to get me thinking about how Steve Jobs and Apple can have a role in the future of filmmaking rather than tagging along on the sidelines.

The Financial Times had an article a few days ago about an about-to-be-signed deal between News Corporation and Apple in regards to renting Fox Films through the iTunes store.

In a deal struck between the maker of the iPod gadget and News Corporation, the parent company of The Times and owner of Fox, consumers will be able to rent the latest Fox DVD releases by downloading a digital copy from Apple’s iTunes platform for a fixed period.

It is understood that Apple has been trying for months to persuade Hollywood studios to sign up to a digital rental model, in which subscribers would be able to download and view films for a set period, but until now no studio has agreed to a deal. Studios are understood to have had concerns over issues such as pricing and piracy.

I would assume, by the way, that Disney is soon to follow.

I’m going to omit any discussion on how this reflects a change in Apple’s business model that’s been a-long time comin’. Most people don’t want to own films. The main reason why they buy DVDs and download films for storage is so that they can watch them whenever they want without a trek to a video store. But that ground has been over covered by many bloggers much better than I. Instead, I’d like to combine it with another news story, one from last month. In an interview with George Sirois on 411Mania, among a zillion others, Ed Burns described how he was releasing his new film, PURPLE VIOLETS, directly to iTunes, rather than take any number of half-assed theatrical releases.

We got a couple of half-assed theatrical offers, but the last couple films I’ve done I’ve done that and, you know you do all this publicity and then the movie’s released in New York and LA, and maybe Chicago and San Francisco, and if you’re anywhere outside of those four major cities, your audience can’t find it. So, we’re gambling and we’re gonna be the first film that is released exclusively through iTunes. It’ll be available for four weeks exclusively, and the idea is we’ll promote it the same as you would a theatrical release and we’ll see what the numbers are. If the attendance, if the downloads, which we expect to be a much higher numbers than the attendance, I think it’ll be the way I would go in the future for small movies like this. You know, and then we’ll do more festivals than you might normally, so you can hit kinda smaller markets for the theatrical experience, but for everyone else it’s available, kinda like what people do…

Then, just this morning, I was listening to a fantastic interview with Emerging Pictures CEO Ira Deutchman on the usually interesting TCIBR (This Conference Is Being Recorded) from The Workbook Project, a really interesting website which has, as its slogan, “An Open Source Social Experiment for Content Creators.” Deutchman, who is somewhat of an articulate visionary in regards to distribution, makes a number of really great points about what is broken with theatrical distribution today, much of which has been said before. On the other hand, he talks about the things that Emerging is doing to move in new directions. With digital distribution, his company has set up a series of monthly screenings of films that play simultaneously in all of the 40 theatres that they have deals with, called “Undiscovered Gems” in which unreleased films are run. Deutchman also is interested in creating “events” for distribution, allowing press to get excited about a film that would normally disappear into the vast morass of unreleased or small released projects.

But What If We Put Them All Together?

We know that Apple has now accepted the idea of a rental model for some of its films. We also know that they distribute music and movies for free, when prompted. If you look at podcasts, for instance, most of them are free I would note that they have worked with studios to allow free downloads of episodes of “The Office” and others for TV Academy members and readers of the Hollywood trade newspapers. All we needed was a passcode.

What would happen if they moved just slightly further and started looking towards sliding scale rentals? In fact, what if they decided to become the corporate sponsor of something like Emerging’s “Undiscovered Gems” or took on that task themselves. In a flash, Apple could become a film distributor for films that don’t have other distribution channels. In short, they could become a broadcaster. Singlehandedly, they could become a viable channel for all types of popular and niche films and television. We wouldn’t have to disguise them as video podcasts anymore (and house them on our own servers). In one bold stroke, Apple could become the dominant force in independent (for now) film distribution. Rather than simply being a retailer (the way they are with the record, film and television distributors) they would be a distributor.

And maybe that’s where it’s all going anyway — back to the days when the film distributor and retailer were one and the same (until the Paramount Consent Decree of 1948 outlawed the ownership of movie theaters by the studios).

And that, my friends, is probably studios like NBC/Universal are out to kill iTunes That is a future that they don’t like at all.

Standards Standards Standards

10 12 2007

When I first started doing consulting in the music field the one thing that I discovered was that the only standard was that there was no standard.

And that was before HD-DVD and Blu-Ray started duking it out.

One hopeful sign (though not really, and I’ll tell you why in a moment) is the adoption of the H.264 compression standard for video (sometimes known as AVC).  This is an MPEG video compression that has been around since mid-2003 and has become a standard of sorts, ever since its adoption by Apple for the iPod video.

It’s easy to see why.  Despite its small file size, the pictures it presents are pretty damned good, with some great gradations of tone and color and a suspiciously good lack of motion artifacts.

There’s only one small problem, and this is one that I didn’t know about until I heard about it on the podcast This Week In Media.  In order to get widespread acceptance of H.264, the group that started it, agreed to allow content creators to use it for free until 2010.  That’s for free.  As in “no money need exchange hands.”

And, in case you missed it, that deal ends in 2010.

What this means is that every podcast or iTunes download that uses H.264 will have to start paying a royalty of some undetermined amount in a little over two years.  I have no idea how much that will add to the media creators’ costs, but you can bet that this cost will need to be made up in some way.  For Apple… they might finally have to charge a bit more for their downloads.  For podcasters, they might need to… well… start charging.  Or get more ads.  Or stop creating.

I’m not saying that all media should be free.  Lord know, that would certainly put a crimp in my lifestyle.  But in a world where the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are stopping charging people for access to their content, it worries me that the costs of creating media is going to go up.

Tell me I’m being paranoid.

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Still Photos Make A Film

27 10 2007

Last year there were a slew of films up on YouTube in which people took a picture of themselves in more or less the same position for a year or more and strung them together in a film. The first one that I was aware of was from Noah Kalina, but a slew of them (both serious and parodies) started cropping up soon aterwards.

Here is an interesting variation on this version of the old Eadweard Muybridge using, gasp, stills. It’s called The Arrow of Time and it is pretty haunting in a way that Kalina’s never was.

What is it about the simple arrangement of still photos in sequential time that causes an effect on us? I am convinced that this is at the very heart of cinema.

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April 6, 2010

Clairton's Green takes another visit to Pitt

Clairton (Pa.) defensive end Desimon Green made another trip to Pitt recently, this time to watch the Panthers in their first scrimmage of spring on Saturday. Green spoke to PantherLair.com about his most recent visit and his thoughts on Pitt.

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You may also like

problem icon

Taking a Die for a Walk

Investigate the numbers that come up on a die as you roll it in the direction of north, south, east and west, without going over the path it's already made.

problem icon

Lawn Border

If I use 12 green tiles to represent my lawn, how many different ways could I arrange them? How many border tiles would I need each time?

problem icon

Amazing Alphabet Maze

Can you go from A to Z right through the alphabet in the hexagonal maze?

Domino Patterns

Stage: 1 Challenge Level: Challenge Level:1

We love playing with dominoes!
There are so many patterns you can make with the dots on them.

You could ask some questions:
  • how many are there where both ends are the same?
  • can we make lines of the ones that add up to different numbers?
  • what's the longest chain I can make where the ends of two dominoes match?
Once you've got to know all about the dominoes, make some patterns with them on the table or floor.
What ideas do you have? Send them in - you could describe them in words or take pictures and send them to us.

If you haven't got any dominoes you could print a set of your own from here


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A family business since 1929

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Taro Root Powder Mix

Our Customers Thought

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June 23, 2014

sugar, non dairy creamer, non fat milk, N&A flavors Packaged in the same facility as peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, and milk products.

Nutrition Facts

Serving size 14g (~0.5 oz.)

Amount per serving
Calories 65
Calories from Fat 30
Total Fat 3g 5%
Saturated Fat 0g 0%
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 15mg 1%
Total Carbohydrate 10g 4%
Dietary Fiber 0g 0%
Sugars 6g
Protein 0g
Vitamin A 0%
Vitamin C 1%
Iron 0%

Store at room temperature for up to 1 year.

Found In

Asian (30) Bubble Tea (17)

ID: 7319

Country of origin: Taiwan


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West Brom striker Odemwingie upset for sacked Chelsea manager Di Matteo

tribalfootball.com November 24, 2012, 8:05 pm

West Bromwich Albion striker Peter Odemwingie is upset for Roberto di Matteo after his dismissal by Chelsea.

He was signed by Di Matteo from Lokomotiv Moscow and justified that faith with 15 goals in his first full season.

Odemwingie told The Sun: "We had some good times together and, when I got my first player of the month award, Roberto was manager of the month at the same time.

"I was sorry about what happened to him at Chelsea so soon after he had won the Champions League.

"But we could see when we played Chelsea that there was something wrong, something missing about their team. They were not the same Chelsea we were used to playing.

"We thought we could win. But it made it easier that they were not right.

"Maybe Roberto got the Chelsea job earlier than he expected and it was always a bit of a fight for him."

For all the latest football news go to tribalfootball.com.


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Present Meets Past

6 Nov

Thursday, October 25th, the Old Capitol Museum hosted its annual “Present Meets Past,” an event in which the visitor was able to interact with individuals from the building’s and the state’s history, as performed by several volunteer actors. This event drew in a record 132 visitors to the OCM. It was made successful through the collaborative work of the Old Capitol staff and volunteers and is a perfect example of the field of public history. It effectively tells the story of these individuals and their connection to history in an interactive and unique manner.

However, one of the most popular attractions of the night was one of non-human origins. That attraction was the mummy that was recently accessioned into the MDAH’s collection, although it has been in its possession since the early 1920s as part of a donation of Native American artifacts. For several years, it was thought that this mummy was of human origins until an x-ray examination revealed that it contained various random items—such as a heart full of nails. Nevertheless, the MDAH has retained the mummy and the mummy has always drawn a crowd and continues to do so as it is brought out for special occasions. The mummy truly is an example of the present meeting the past at the Old Capitol Museum.

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There’s something about stories

I don’t know about you, but I like fairy tales. I still do. Even after all these years. And no, not just because of the pretty, pretty dresses worn by the princes and the princesses, the grandiose castles—almost always looking as if they needed redecorating—or the heavenly creatures that roam the vast land endlessly.

And they make quite a bedtime story, too.

When it was still the ‘80s or the ‘90s, it was not too difficult to find “real” bedtime stories. There was that Sanggar Cerita cassette series in its thick, bulgy, white plastic casings that set it apart from other tapes. An older version of the series also came with the ordinary see-through plastic cassette casings used for the packaging of music albums and are, apparently, less likely to swell oversize to the brink of no clicking upon closing like the white plastic ones in the heat.

Another thing is that the bedtime stories didn’t usually come with a transcript of the story, and this sometimes (and only sometimes) has made it a witty bit frustrating for the curious sleepyheads who didn’t quite catch the difficult words inside the tale. There were quite a few “Apa?” instead of the glorious A-ha moments, as a result to that.

The collection includes an assortment of stories with a lineup of bizarre, if not freaky, characters. There was Si Kancil, a tiny deer in his attempts to find juicy, tasty cucumbers to legendary characters that are either turned to national treasures (Malinkundang was turned to stone), forced to marry (Siti Nurbaya) or just plain legendary, like the want-it-all Roro Jongrang.

These and other given characters with names the like of Putri Angsa Putih, Putri Kecapi, superhero names (there was one, at least, that included Superman’s kicks) and even pets, like Ular Sang Pangeran, have helped children all over the country get some quality sleep. These characters are usually flaunted on the two-fold cassette covers that looked really dandy, as if they were hand painted, each and every one of them, for that specific story.

Each side of the tape contains, usually, one story for the A-side and another one for the B-side. When you’re lucky, however, you’ll find a story that continues to the other side. When that happens, regardless of having made to endure the opening jingle twice, it sure feels more than good.

But that was before the illustrated children’s story books came along, before being “properly” introduced to Rapunzel, the Tweedle brothers from “Alice in Wonderland” or Jiminy the cricket. And before I realized that when you leave the tapes in the open and don’t play them quite often, they’re bound to grow fungus. And when that happens you just need to be kind, and rewind.

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6 Responses to “There’s something about stories”

  1. Cynical Says:

    Sounds like a piece for an infotainment. Just a thought.

    • lovelli Says:

      A piece for an infotainment, Cynical? Do I hear sarcasm there or are you just expressing concerns over how/what information is presented on television nowadays? There is nothing wrong about a television show about a radio show, I would say.

      If this were to be aired on TV, then it could be hilarious and entertaining (the Airhead style) or serious but funny, like the Muppet Show, or seriously funny, a bit like…er, well, something like Flight of the Concords. Or something that even remotely resembles the ever popular “Olga & Sepatu Roda” book series.

  2. Jenna Says:

    There’s not something about bullshit.

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text: Strawberries Clipart A media feed of Strawberries clipart. en-US Strawberries Clipart 144 144 Ana 3er Strawberry Icon with chocolate Fri, 15 May 2015 16:25:05 -0400 Ana. Strawberry Plant Mon, 27 Apr 2015 08:41:49 -0400 Fractalbee A strawberry plant with flowers and fruits. Coffee and pancake Wed, 22 Apr 2015 03:18:44 -0400 yamachem The image of "The table with snacks prepared for three persons" The content of them is three cups of coffee with its saucer and three pieces of pancakes on a white plate.?????????? I used OCAL clipart called "white plate" uploaded by "hrum" and "cup of black coffee" uploaded by "presquesage".???????? Thanks. Goat Eats Film from Camera Tue, 20 Jan 2015 01:30:41 -0400 j4p4n This goat is eating the film out of the camera. I'm not expert, but I think that wont be good in her digestion. Yuck! But I haven't ever munched on film, maybe it tastes like strawberries? Food Strawberry Sat, 23 Nov 2013 17:31:00 -0400 glitch This glitch clipart is about food, strawberry. glitch was a computer game whose visual assets were released into the public domain domain after the game failed commercially. The entire collection is about 2,000 clipart. The glitch assets were converted to svg format by Bart from berry snowman Thu, 11 Dec 2014 01:56:36 -0400 yamachem a snowman . guessing from the size of the strawberry, he is not so big. his eyeglasses are supposed to be made of chocolate. Indeed, he was a part of something like a cake. at first ,I named him "berry goodman" but ,already there was a group mucisian called "berry good man" in Japan. So,I named him"berry snowman" dessert with berry Wed, 10 Dec 2014 09:19:57 -0400 yamachem How about a cold dessert after taking a hot shower ? today's kanji_145_ichigo Sun, 23 Nov 2014 02:23:23 -0400 yamachem a kanji which is read as "ichigo" and means "strawberry" and includes a radical or bushu called "kusakanmuri". Jam Label Thu, 14 Aug 2014 06:50:57 -0400 martinaledermann Jam label for people who like to make jam. Take an adhesive label, adjust the print size of the image and print it on the label. Then you can write which sort of jam you made. s Strawberry Fresa Sun, 20 Jul 2014 14:22:59 -0400 NewAeonDesign Flat fresh fruit strawberry design. strawberry ?????? Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:50:05 -0400 strawberry ?????? Fraise strawberry Wed, 19 Feb 2014 11:04:46 -0400 Martinfruity A cloud talk with a strawberry Strawberry Fri, 07 Feb 2014 15:21:43 -0400 casino Strawberry fruit Sun, 20 Oct 2013 18:17:27 -0400 johnny_automatic From Italian Cooking by Dorthy Daly. Stated as NOT IN COPYRIGHT Strawberries on a plate Thu, 13 Jun 2013 03:05:48 -0400 Snus_Murka Let it be summer! strawberry Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:20:59 -0400 estitic A strawberry. Strawberry Sun, 03 Mar 2013 15:06:41 -0400 warszawianka This image was donated by Pearson Scott Foresman, an educational publisher, to Wikimedia Commons, and is thereby in the Public Domain. --- See healthy Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:04:19 -0400 amyleerobinson all images found on :) Ice cream cool and refreshing, chocolate and strawberry taste with bite Sun, 05 Jun 2011 11:03:22 -0400 palomaironique Ice cream cool and refreshing, chocolate and strawberry taste with bite - Glace fraîche et rafraîchissante, au goût chocolat et fraise avec morsure - Eis kühl und erfrischend, Schokolade und Erdbeer-Geschmack mit Biss - Gelato fresco e rinfrescante, al gusto cioccolato e fragola con morso strawberry punch Tue, 10 May 2011 00:05:52 -0400 Rents strawberry punch.


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Org Prep Daily

August 26, 2008

Filed under: procedures — milkshake @ 12:35 am

meta-Hydrazinobenzoic acid 1.552g (10 mmol) was suspended in concentrated HCl 50mL. Arnold hexafluorophosphate salt 7.10g (15 mmol) was added, followed by acetic acid 100mL. The mixture was stirred for 10 min, then placed on a 100C oil bath and stirred under reflux for 3h 30 min. The reaction mixture was cooled to room temperature, filtered (the insoluble fraction was washed with water) and the combined filtrates were evaporated to dryness. The residue was suspended in water 100mL and stirred on ice bath for 1 hour, the precipitate was collected by filtration, washed with ice-cold water and dried by suction. The crude product was dissolved in a mixture of ethanol 45mL and water 140mL at reflux, charcoal 0.5g was added and refluxed for 5 min, then filtered while warm, the charcoal was washed with 3:1 (v/v) water-ethanol mixture (2x15mL) and the combined filtrates were allowed to cool to ambient temperature, filtered again from a small amount of oil, and the filtrates were stirred vigorously on ice bath for 1 hour. The precipitated product was collected by filtration, and re-crystallized for the second time (from a mixture of ethanol 100mL and water 200mL, 0C, fridge overnight) to provide 1.176g of a 95% pure product as a yellow-white solid (54.5% th)

LC/MS(+ESI): 217(M+1); 1H(d6-DMSO, 400MHz): 13.340(br s, 1H), 9.927(s, 1H), 9.370(s, 1H), 8.437(br t, 1.8Hz, 1H), 8.308(s, 1H), 8.176(ddd, 8.1Hz, 2.3Hz, 1.0Hz, 1H), 7.959(dt, d:7.8Hz, t:1.3Hz, 1H), 7.690(t, 7.9Hz, 1H)

Note: In the absence of conc HCl, the main product is the m-carboxyphenyl hydrazone of the pyrrole aldehyde (= 2:1 condenzation product of arylhydrazine with triformyl methane). HCl slows down the hydrolysis of the iminium groups. Arnold salt preparation was posted here on Feb 24, 2008.

  1. Nice scaffold

    Comment by horks — August 27, 2008 @ 10:45 am

  2. Cool post. This rxn with Arnold Reagent reminds me of the (H.)Gold Reagent that reacts with hydrazines to give triazines but having the aldehyde functionality is indeed a nice handle to do more things.

    Comment by CMC guy — August 27, 2008 @ 11:04 am

  3. the other alternative would be to make the plain pyrazole, with (MeO)2CHCH2CH(OMe)2, then do Vilsmeyer formylation on pyrazole etc – but the carboxyl would have to be protected.

    Comment by milkshake — August 27, 2008 @ 3:51 pm

  4. I am curious: does charcoal really help? I have been told that it just removes traces of colored (polymeric?)impurities. But if I don’t care about the color, does it bring something else? Can it really adsorb NMR-visible amount of impurities? Is it easier to recrystallize a purified with charcoal product?

    Comment by Alexey — August 28, 2008 @ 6:36 am

  5. I can only imagine what kind of a dark-brown mess was it before you came in with your crystallization skills…

    Comment by LiqC — August 28, 2008 @ 7:59 am

  6. milkshake if you went Vilsmeyer route do you think it would be clean? I would have to push the arrows but wonder if you could lack exclusive regiochem control to a degree and also prevent multiple additions. Vilsmer is one reagent/rxn where I have had great results followed by complete mess even though the substrates where similar.

    Alexey can’t speak to this case but I have found charcoal treatments can be very useful for more than colour removal although sometimes you need to just get the correct charcoal as there is variability (acidified, neutral, etc.). I used routinely and not sure if it helped but I did lots of successful recystalliizations. Think there was a OPRD paper on this a few years ago.

    Comment by CMC guy — August 28, 2008 @ 11:16 am

  7. Charcoal is nature’s own reverse phase, I use it quite often. It is nice for removing a smal amount of oil emulsion in polar media like water or alcohol – the oil sticks to charcoal and does not pass through the filter. I suppose I could have poured there C18 reverse phase instead but charcoal is cheaper. The mix was not too colored but there were some greasy impurities I wanted out, the hydrazone for example.

    Normally one would column such a reaction mix but the presence of unprotected carboxyl made it harder to purify it on silica.

    I have not done Vilsmeyer on pyrazole (only on pyrrole) but I know that pyrazoles halogenate or nitrate (with Ac2O+fuming nitric) into the 4-position reasonably cleanly.

    Comment by milkshake — August 28, 2008 @ 3:40 pm

  8. to CMC guy and milkshake: thanks for the hints.

    Comment by Alexey — August 28, 2008 @ 10:35 pm

  9. Does Celite have a similar role like charcoal (absorb greasy impurities)?

    Comment by pmgb — September 7, 2008 @ 3:23 pm

  10. pmgb I think Celite has some ability to absorb certain things but would guess not strong relative to Carbons (think it is component in Kitty Liter although role may be just to soak up water). Recall mainly silicate although think somewhat different than silica gel so not as powerful for chromo. I have mainly used for “physical” separations to remove catalysts and polymeric junk and obsreved did get rid of “baseline” crap and since cheap is good for scale if it works. If compound sensitive to acid or base can prewash with opposite to aid the stability. Best suggestion is to TLC before and after running through a Pipette Plug and see if it helps.

    Comment by CMC guy — September 7, 2008 @ 5:16 pm

  11. Celite is a brand of filtration material made from diatomaceous earth, it is mostly fossilized silica shells left after plankton and it is hydrophilic. (You can actually remove dropplets of water in nonpolar solvents by filtering the emulsion through Celite but MgSO4 works better). Celite does not have strong absorbtion properties like silica gel towards organic molecules – so absorbents based on diatomite (such as Kieselguhr) are rarely used nowadays. The main use of Celite is removal of fine colloids that would normally pass through Buchner funnel filter or gunks that would clog it. (Of course one has to make sure to use fine porosity filter with Celite because it has quite small particle size).

    Comment by milkshake — September 8, 2008 @ 1:51 am

  12. Stumbled across the cite for article mentioned in 6 in case anyone interested: OPRD 2000, 4, 43-45 “Observed Acidities of Charcoals, Clays, and Common Laboratory Purification Reagents in Aqueous and Organic Solutions”

    Comment by CMC guy — September 9, 2008 @ 11:26 am

  13. Iam strugling to protect the carbonyl of the codeinone either using ethylene glycol or triethyl formate using ptsa or ppts or fumaric acid under dean stork conditions. I see lot of michael addition of alcohol or migration of the double bond, etc. one could use oteras tin based catalyst. but on a grand scale they might be a pain in terms of cost and disposal. could u suggest a method to protect the carbonyl on the codeinone.

    Comment by pashu — September 24, 2008 @ 12:12 am

  14. I dont know, there must be a huge literature precedent on the subject and I am not familiar with it – I just faintly remember that morphine is quite acid-sensitive and likes to re-arrange to apomorphine.

    I would suggest to use something mild, like TMS-OCH2CH2O-TMS with a catalytic Lewis acid like ZnBr2 – but I don’t know. You need to do a literature search first.

    Comment by milkshake — September 24, 2008 @ 1:50 pm

  15. thx a ton

    Comment by pashu — September 25, 2008 @ 2:55 am

  16. This one added here:

    Comment by ChemSpiderMan — March 25, 2009 @ 9:35 pm

  17. Hi MS,

    I am struggling to make acid chloride of cyclopropyl acetic acid. I used few conditions, 1. Oxalyl chloride, cat DMF 2. thionyl chloride, DCM rt stirring..but I failed to get the yellow solid (as mentioned in the literture)..I really dont know wahts happening in the reaction mixture..What i get is a colurless oil (very low amount) to find out whether acid chloride was generated or not?

    I removed the solvents after the reported time (4 h) in rotavap under argon atmoshpere..I was planning to use the residue for the cyclization reaction to form triazoles..please help me..i have to meet the timeline for this compound..

    Comment by marto — May 15, 2009 @ 9:43 am

  18. cyclopropylacetyl chloride is a liquid, no melting point is reported in Beilstein/Crossfire. It is quite low-boiling, bp = 120C at atmospheric pressure. It is probably not very stable, because of the cyclopropyl ring acid-catalyzed opening.

    I would recommend preparing it and using it in situ, for example method is here: JOC (1994) 59, 4791. You could probably replace benzene solvent in the preparation with another similar-boiling solvent, such as 1,2-dichloroethane. If you absolutely need to isolate the acyl chloride in neat form, I would recommend doing a fractional distillation at 50-100 Torr (it should boil at around 60C at these pressures).

    Please note that benzene and dichloroethane are slightly higher-boiling than oxalyl chloride – a good thing if you want to remove oxalyl chloride. Use only the slightest excess of oxalyl chloride, like 1.05 equiv., and concentrate your reaction mix only to one half of the original volume, that way you remove most of the unreacted oxalyl chloride without losing too much of your product on the rotovap.

    You can also use chloroform (stabilized with amylene) as a solvent. That way you can directly sample your reaction mix and take NMR in CDCl3, to watch the progress of acylchloride formation – and to confirm its purity. But I never had to to this, usually when the bubbling stops I would stir for few more hours then concentrate

    Comment by milkshake — May 15, 2009 @ 5:35 pm

  19. Hi MS,

    Thanks very much for your timely help..

    Comment by marto — May 16, 2009 @ 1:36 am

  20. Dear Ms,

    I prepared 3-halo piperazine from the corresponding 3-halo aniline and bis (2-chloroethyl) amine hydrochloride in n-butanol at > 100 C. (Sodium carbonate) for 4 days with ~ 50 % yield (10 % Sm remains). I tried many conditions (including aq / other polar solvents) but the reaction is sluggish and also the base is added after 48 h for the better convesrion. The first reaction is intermoelcular and second is intramoelcuar and I am yet to find the optimal volume for the better conversion and also the stability of bis (2-chloroethyl) amine hydrochloride need some undertstanding. My target yield is ~ 65% with the reaction completion in two days time (multi Kg scale), it would be helpful if you could throw more light on what needs to be addressed for these improvements.

    Comment by marto — August 28, 2014 @ 10:52 am

    • First, I don’t have any experience with this particular system, but it does seem messy. If you want the reaction to proceed faster, I would add maybe half equivalent of lithium bromide to it as a catalyst (to do Finkelstein halogen exchange reaction in situ). I would consider using a less basic inorganic base: I think solid KHCO3 (or NaHCO3) should work fine for your purposes – KHCO3 has a slightly better solubility in alcohols than NaHCO3. Maybe with bicarbonate you could load the base all at once, and would have less problem with decomposition. Also Ca(OH)2 is quite nice, and cheap. There is one good solvent that I like, and is relatively under-used: 1-methoxy-2-propanol aka Dowanol PM. It is a less-toxic version of cellosolve. It is water soluble, dissolves inorganics better than n-butanol, its hydroxy group is less reactive, the boiling point is reasonable (120C) and its odor is not bad. It is also nearly invisible on HPLC with UV detection, which makes monitoring the reaction easy. I would give it a try, in your system. Also, I would re-distill the starting aniline and run the reaction under nitrogen, just to limit the light-catalyzed oxidation with air.

      Comment by milkshake — August 28, 2014 @ 12:08 pm

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[ Source: lapack  ]

Package: liblapack-dev (3.4.1+dfsg-1+deb70u1)

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Library of linear algebra routines 3 - static version

LAPACK version 3.X is a comprehensive FORTRAN library that does linear algebra operations including matrix inversions, least squared solutions to linear sets of equations, eigenvector analysis, singular value decomposition, etc. It is a very comprehensive and reputable package that has found extensive use in the scientific community.

Tags: Software Development: Libraries, Role: Development Library

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Download Page for dict-freedict-nld-deu_1.3-4_all.deb

If you are running Debian, it is strongly suggested to use a package manager like aptitude or synaptic to download and install packages, instead of doing so manually via this website.

You should be able to use any of the listed mirrors by adding a line to your /etc/apt/sources.list like this:

deb squeeze main

Replacing with the mirror in question.

You can download the requested file from the pool/main/f/freedict/ subdirectory at any of these sites:

North America

South America

If none of the above sites are fast enough for you, please see our complete mirror list.

Note that in some browsers you will need to tell your browser you want the file saved to a file. For example, in Firefox or Mozilla, you should hold the Shift key when you click on the URL.

More information on dict-freedict-nld-deu_1.3-4_all.deb:

Exact Size 444758 Byte (434.3 kByte)
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[ Source: namazu2  ]

Package: namazu2-common (2.0.21-6)

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full text search engine - documentation

Namazu is a full text search engine which is usable via CGI. It features a simple and easy setup, and is written in C and Perl. Namazu uses the text utilities nkf, kakasi or chasen.

This package including only document files, also message catalogue.

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Check it out!

2 Nov

Check out our new page on How to Make a Zine! I found an awesome video on You Tube from Sam Proof that shows you how to make a zine with only one sheet of paper.

13 Sep

Hello, everyone! Jenn here. I am spending the morning with coffee and all these wonderful packages I have received in the mail the last couple of days. We have some awesome zines that have been donated – you all rock! The best thing about being involved with this project is getting to see all of these zines as they come in. I can tell a lot of love has been put into each one. Thank you again to all who donated!

4 Sep 104198002

Hello! Welcome to the blog for the Paper Airplanes ‘Zine Project. Grab a beverage and stay awhile. We will be posting our progress on library here and on our Facebook page.

As of today, we have a generous portion of ‘zines to add to our library. Next week, we will begin organizing and setting up the library. Also, planning is going on as we speak for the first SWMO Zine Symposium.

If you or anyone you know would like to donate a zine, please feel free to contact us at

Stay tuned! There is so much more to come. ;)

jenn k

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… It's everywhere …

People as paintings: Alexa Meade at TEDGlobal 2013

with 2 comments

Originally posted on TED Blog:

When you’re an artist, everything you see can seem like a canvas, a blank page with the potential for something beautiful. Alexa Meade sees this quite literally, using actual people as both subject and canvas. Painting on a 1-to-1 scale, Meade takes real-life subjects and turns them into paintings, playing with the shadow and light of the human form.

Look closely.

And again:

Meade graduated with a degree in political science and thought she’d get a government job, but when she found this way of creating a portrait late in her college career, it changed the direction of her life. So, instead of moving to Washington, DC, and taking a desk job after graduation, she moved into her parents’ basement and began teaching herself to paint. Her first models were grapefruit, eggs, toast … then moving on herself and her neighbor.

Onstage, she shares a new series of collaborative portraits…

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Written by paranoiasnfm

13 de Junho de 2013 às 19:05

Na categoria Paranóia

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  1. I love the brush strokes. such depth.

    Master's Slave

    13 de Junho de 2013 at 20:25

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Things people complain about

Has Obamacare made it un-P.C. to be concerned by a serious burden on my family’s well-being?

via Daring to Complain About Obamacare –

What Gottlieb is discovering, belatedly, is how much it costs to buy real health insurance rather than fake health insurance.

via Psychotherapist Is Unable to Understand What Medical Insurance Is.

And… lederhosen are silly.

…it demonstrated Germany’s unfortunate tendency to respond to any criticism of its economic policies with cries of victimization.

via Those Depressing Germans –

Has Europe’s strongest nation really chosen to become the world’s biggest Switzerland?

via Rethinking German Pacifism –

Turn your head and cough.

“It was heartbreaking to see the pain on his face,” Dr. Gibson told me. “It got me very angry with people who insist that Obamacare is a train wreck, when the real train wreck is what people are experiencing every day because they can’t afford care.”

via This Is Why We Need Obamacare –

Take, for example, a patient with colon cancer whose oncologist is considering prescribing Avastin. Most physicians would go out of their way to warn that this drug could harm a patient’s heart; the data show that it carries a 2 percent risk of cardiovascular toxicity. But few physicians would discuss the price, even though Avastin can cost more than $50,000 per patient

via Doctor, First Tell Me What It Costs –

‘A sterile,’ and presumably better-smelling, end to the series.

…something primal is lost when the boozy, sweaty chaos of a clubhouse has been replaced by a planned postgame event with players and team personnel milling on the field.

via On Fox, a Sterile End to a Series –

Something to put his pearly white teeth a-grinding.

Mr. Biden, who may run for president in 2016, is viewed warily by Mr. Obama’s circle not only for being a gaffe-prone “Uncle Joe,” but also for, in their minds, being overly consumed with his own political future.

via Book Details Obama Aides’ Talks About Replacing Biden on 2012 Ticket –

What opinions are worth.

“Those consultations confirm our view that the underlying economy remains sound.”

via STOCKS PLUNGE 508 POINTS, A DROP OF 22.6%; 604 MILLION VOLUME NEARLY DOUBLES RECORD – New York Times, Published: October 20, 1987 .

Is that the good news or the bad news?

…even with the two-quarter slowdown is still adding digital subscribers at a rate of about 100,000 a year.

via The NYTs $150 million-a-year paywall : Columbia Journalism Review.

Lessons 1 and 2 on how to keep things in perspective.

“It’s been terrible,” Jeter said. “It’s been a nightmare.”

via A Reminder of the Yankees’ Failed Plan Deals Them Another Defeat –

“I will be cross-examined by the man who shot me.”

via Victims to Again Face Gunman in Fort Hood Trial –

“A child. Fourteen years old. Fourteen years old. Gone. Shot in the head. By police.”

via Teenager Is Shot and Killed by Officer on Foot Patrol in the Bronx –

Crosswords and conspiracy theories

Twice this week, The Times ran corrections for clues in the crossword. That is the first time in (as far back as I was willing to search in five minutes) that that has happened. Today’s correction was the third this year. There were none in 2012. How to explain it?

  • The crossword puzzle on Wednesday provided an erroneous clue for 25-Across, seeking the answer “iOS.” The clue should have read “iPhones and iPads run it,” not “Macs run it.” Macs run OS X, a different operating system. via Corrections – July 12, 2013 –
  • The crossword puzzle on Friday provided an erroneous clue for 29-Down, seeking the answer “Yacht.” The clue should have read “Entry in an international sports competition since 1851,” not “Entry in an annual international sports competition since 1851.” The America’s Cup, to which the clue referred, is held every few years. The last Cup, the 33rd, was held in 2010, and the 34th Cup will be held this September. via Corrections – July 9, 2013 –
  • The crossword puzzle on Tuesday provided an erroneous clue for 26-Across, seeking the answer “Gee whiz.” The clue should have read, “Wow, you’re a regular expert at turning right!” not “Wow, you’re a regular expert at turning left!” via Corrections – March 28, 2013 –
  • The crossword puzzle on Friday provided an erroneous clue for 30-Across, seeking the answer “Ute.” The clue should have read, “Subject of a museum in western Colorado,” not “Subject of a museum in eastern Colorado.” via Corrections –


text:
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Community Information Services

Castine Memorial Day Slideshow 2013

Castine pays tribute on Memorial Day

Under blue skies and bright sunshine, the annual town Memorial Day observance wound its way through the Castine Cemetery, to the town common and finished at the town dock, led by flag bearer Bess MacArthur. Photos by Anne Berleant