Saturday, November 21, 2009

Almanacs “MU History Professor Emeritus Publishes World War I Almanac - HuntingtonNews.Net” plus 4 more

Almanacs “MU History Professor Emeritus Publishes World War I Almanac - HuntingtonNews.Net” plus 4 more

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MU History Professor Emeritus Publishes World War I Almanac - HuntingtonNews.Net

Posted: 21 Nov 2009 05:17 AM PST

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The Almanac - OfficialWire

Posted: 21 Nov 2009 03:30 AM PST

The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Venus, Mars, Saturn and Mercury. The evening stars are Neptune, Jupiter and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include French author Francois-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, in 1694; William Beaumont, pioneer U.S. Army surgeon, in 1785; British steamship company founder Samuel Cunard in 1787; jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins in 1904; dancer/actress Eleanor Powell in 1912 ; St. Louis Cardinals batting champion Stan Musial in 1920 (age 89); actor Laurence Luckinbill in 1934 (age 75); actresses Juliet Mills in 1941 (age 67) and Marlo Thomas in 1937 (age 71); TV producer Marcy Carsey and filmmaker/actor Harold Ramis, both in 1944 (age 65); actresses Goldie Hawn in 1945 (age 64), Lorna Luft in 1952 (age 57), and Nicollette Sheridan ("Desperate Housewives") in 1963 (age 46); and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman in 1966 (age 43).

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On this date in history:

In 1783, in Paris, Jean de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first free-flight ascent in a balloon.

In 1877, Thomas Edison announced his invention of the phonograph.

In 1938, Nazi forces occupied western Czechoslovakia and declared its people German citizens.

In 1974, The U.S. Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act over U.S. President Gerald Ford's veto.

In 1985, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a civilian U.S. Navy intelligence analyst and Jewish American, was arrested on charges of illegally passing classified U.S. security information about Arab nations to Israel.

Also in 1985, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ended a summit in Switzerland. They promised acceleration of arms-reduction talks.

In 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, making it easier for workers to sue in job discrimination cases.

In 1995, China jailed well-known dissident Wei Jing-sheng and charged him with trying to overthrow the government.

In 2001, a 94-year-old Connecticut woman became the nation's fifth anthrax victim, a death that mystified authorities since she rarely left home. Later it was discovered a family living a mile away had received a letter with anthrax residue on it.

In 2002, a new NATO was born as alliance leaders began the most radical transformation of the military bloc in its 53-year history.

Also in 2002, authorities questioned a senior leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network, a man believed to be the mastermind of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemen harbor.

And, in 2002, an earthquake with a 5.8 reading struck northern Pakistan, killing at least 25 people.

In 2003, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate conferees finished the final version of the approximately $400 billion, 1,000-page bill that would create prescription drug coverage for 42 million Americans on Medicare.

In 2004, Iraqi authorities set Jan. 30, 2005, as the date for the nation's first election since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

Also in 2004, Chinese authorities sought the cause of a China Eastern Airlines commuter jet crash seconds after takeoff, killing all 53 people on board.

And, Fred Hale Sr., believed to have been the oldest man on Earth, died less than a month before his 114th birthday at a DeWitt, N.Y., nursing home.

In 2005, General Motors Corp., the world's biggest carmaker, announced it was cutting its payroll by 30,000 and shutting nine major plants to stop a financial hemorrhage.

Also in 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon resigned as head of the Likud Party he founded to start a new organization called Kadima.

In 2006, Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon's industry minister and Maronite Christian leader, was assassinated by gunmen while riding in a convoy near Beirut.

Also in 2006, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a restoration of diplomatic ties with Syria, ending 24 years of strained relations.

In 2007, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan implicated U.S. President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in misleading the public on the identity outing of a covert CIA agent.

Also in 2007, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists reported they had reprogrammed human skin cells to behave as embryonic stem cells. The procedure bypasses ethical controversies caused by destroying embryos or cloning for stem cell research.

In 2008, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton accepted President-elect Barack Obama's offer to be the secretary of state nominee, although a formal announcement was delayed until after Thanksgiving.

Also in 2008, a measure to extend 13-week unemployment benefits by seven weeks was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush.

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A thought for the day: it was Voltaire who said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

 

Get your gloves for some economic gardening - Herald Tribune

Posted: 21 Nov 2009 03:37 AM PST

There might be a chance for you to do some tilling, too -- if you own or manage a company, that is.

On Dec. 1, the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County and the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce are hosting the "CEO Nexus Forum" at State College of Florida's Lakewood Ranch campus.

This is the kick-off for Sarasota County's "Economic Gardening" program, an effort to stimulate growth in "second-stage" companies that qualify. To these economic developers, the term means a business that has 10 to 50 employees, generates annual sales of $1 million to $25 million and that has had increased sales and employment three of the last five years.

The good folks at the EDC and chamber maintain that the chief executives of second-stage companies face "common business challenges regardless of industry, and that fewer resources are available to many established companies than when those businesses were in their start-up stage."

The Economic Gardening program is aimed at providing resources to those business so that they can keep growing.

The meeting will be in a confidential setting -- yes, no press (sigh) -- where entrepreneurs can "meet and learn from CEO peers who have grown their companies into a more advanced stage of business development."

Headlining the event is a great source: Allen Carlson, CEO of Sun Hydraulics Corp., a company our economic gardeners rate as a Stage 3 success.

Other speakers include Mark Lange with Edward Lowe Foundation, which does research about and supports small business growth, and Steve Quello, a national economic gardening guru with CEO Nexus.

If you're in the mood to get your hands dirty and you believe your company is second stage, a free seat is waiting for you.

The event is from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. E-mail Brittany Brocious at bbrocious@sarasotachamber.com.

International exposure

We've probably got second-stage companies to burn, but how have we done in drawing businesses with an international play?

I took heart from a study recently conducted by the Tampa Bay Partnership, an economic development consortium covering Manatee, Sarasota, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando and Polk counties.

The partnership's "2009 Tampa Bay Foreign Direct Investment Study" identified 394 foreign-owned companies from 34 nations, operating across 18 industries in the broader seven-county region.

They have 824 sites in the Tampa Bay area, and 135 of those are headquarters.They employ 37,000 and have annual sales of $13.6 billion.

That's a far bigger tally than I would have guessed.

Revving USF research

How many entrepreneurial companies in this region began with research?

Lots.

So it also was heartening to see the Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac name the University of South Florida as the nation's fastest-growing university in terms of landing federal research money.

Using National Science Foundation data, the Chronicle determined that USF's research dollars grew by 213 percent, from $50.5 million in 2000 to $158.4 million in 2007.

Kudos to the Bulls from this Gator.

Matthew Sauer is the Herald-Tribune's business editor. He can be reached at 361-4870 or at matthew.sauer@heraldtribune.com.

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NDS Review - 'Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island' - WorthPlaying.com

Posted: 21 Nov 2009 12:59 AM PST

Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island is not your usual kind of RPG. The game stars Annie, the daughter of two famous alchemists, but she is far from a respectful daughter and is a bit of a disappointment. She's selfish, grumpy and lazy, and her ultimate goal is life is to find a rich man to marry so she never has to work a day in her life. Understandably, her family isn't very happy about this. One night, while Annie is asleep, they sneak her out of the house and transport her to Sera Island, which hosts an alchemy contest. Groups of alchemists have turned the sleepy little island into a successful resort town. The winner will get a tremendous cash prize, the chance to become Royal Alchemist, and she may even be able to marry the prince of a local kingdom. Annie may be a lazy gold digger, but she knows an opportunity when she sees one and sets out to learn alchemy and win the contest. Along the way, she'll interact with the various inhabitants of Sera Island and the other contestants. Maybe she'll even grow up a bit and learn that there is more to life than money and fun.

Atelier Annie is less of a game and more of a visual novel. It does feature gameplay, but that takes a back seat to the character interaction. Regardless of where you go and what you do, you're going to spend a lot of time watching the characters talk to each other. This is going to be what makes or breaks the game for players. If you enjoy watching the characters interact with one another, then you'll probably enjoy Atelier Annie. If you don't, then there isn't much reason to play. You can fast-forward through the game's numerous cut scenes, but without them, the game feels short, bland and empty. There is some satisfaction to be found in earning one of the game's numerous endings, but even that depends heavily on wanting to see more of the characters and what happens to them. A slightly awkward translation slightly sours the experience, although it is actually a step up from some of NISA's other recent attempts.

Your goal in Atelier Annie is not to save the world, solve a mystery or anything that epic; your goal is to turn Sera Island into a thriving resort. To do so, you'll have to build various shops, amusement parks and museums to attract visitors to the island. Increasing your supply of buildings is fairly easy. Every few months, the game will give you a contest, which is a special request from the island committee, and winning this contest earns you money that can only be used to buy new attractions for Sera Island. Once you've built an attraction, you can visit it at any time and take on assignments from the owner. Completing the jobs raises the overall fame of your attraction, and if the Fame is high enough, you'll be able to pay extra money to upgrade the building.

Aside from that, the buildings are generally self-sufficient. The owner may sometimes require you to play a stylus-based mini-game if you visit, but that is simply a chance to earn extra Fame. At the end of every month, your building's fame will be measured, and you'll earn additional money based on the Fame and level of your building. The real challenge is that you're on a time limit. Every action you take, whether it's visiting one of your shops or creating items to fulfill their requests, takes time. The entire game is on a time limit, so you must make careful use of each day. If you waste too much time wandering around, you won't have time to finish everything.

Atelier Annie's biggest problem is that the sim elements are not very interesting. Your customization options are woefully limited. You can assign a single clerk to run your shops, and he or she can help you improve the profits from a certain kind of resort attraction. For example, Hans is really good at art attractions, while Fitz can run a shop well but hates anything involving small children. You can technically issue orders that make them function better at their weaknesses, but there is no reason to. It makes the clerk like Annie less, so you're better off switching to another clerk because character friendship determines your ending. For a game so heavily built on synthesis and item creation, there isn't anything to it as far as the shops go. As long as you're completing the quests for your various attractions, they'll get better. There's no real simulation element, despite billing itself as a simulation RPG. You can't improve your shop's selection through clever synthesis, create special rare items to display in the museum or even make better rooms for the hotel. All you can do is complete seemingly arbitrary jobs and watch your numbers go up with minimal input from you.

Atelier Annie is technically an RPG, but only technically. In order to get items for synthesis, you have to venture out to parts of the island, and while you're out gathering items, you'll occasionally be attacked by random enemies. The combat system feels like an afterthought and is very mind-numbingly basic. You and the enemy hit each other until one of you falls down. The only real "gimmick" involved is that you can position units in the front row or back row. Characters in the front row do more damage and take more damage, and the opposite is true for the back row, where you have greater defense and less attack power. This is the extent of the combat system that you'll need to know. Indeed, most combat in the game can be easily won by holding the Y button, which automatically fast-forwards through combat by repeatedly choosing attack. Even enemies who were drastically above my character's levels could be defeated this way, and the only reason I noticed that I was in a dangerous area was because I gained six levels after defeating an enemy. There's really no reason to buy Atelier Annie for its RPG element, which resembles more of a tacked-on mini-game than any sort of combat engine; the game would have been better off without it.

Instead, most of your time in the game is going to be spent on synthesis, which is exceedingly simple, although it has some interesting nods toward complexity. Once you find a recipe for an item, either as a purchase or gift, you can create it. You go to your workshop, select the recipe, and if you have the correct items, you can make the item. However, there is a degree of success to the item you create. The more complex the item, the more likely it is that you'll fail to make the item and end up generating something nearly worthless instead. Fortunately, you can alter your success rate by changing the alchemy tool used to create the item. A cauldron may be good for certain items, but you may want to use a magical alchemist egg for another. Depending on the item you use, your chance for success goes up or down. Every time you successfully use an item, both Annie and the item gain experience. Earn enough experience, and Annie or the item may level up. Leveling up improves the success rate of your alchemy and gives you a chance to make extras of the item you're attempting to create. Each item you create takes a certain number of days, depending on the item's quality and quantity.

The real complexity comes in the form of trying to add "traits" to items. Most items begin with the "Normal" trait, but there are 16 other traits that you can add, ranging from colors like red and blue to more unusual attributes, like powerful or big. Adding a trait to an item is a bit confusing. You can attempt to create the item by using synthesis material that already has that attribute. Using a big item increases the chance that your created item's attribute will be big, for example. You can also create supplements, which can be added to a synthesis to change the eventual trait. Finally, you can use an almanac item, which allows you to add a trait if you have the corresponding almanac.

Traits are essential to getting good endings in Atelier Annie. Your overall goal in the game is to complete jobs. Some jobs are given to you by the local Adventurer's Guild, some by the businesses you create, and others by the island's contest committee. Almost all of these jobs require you to create a certain item with a certain trait. You can technically succeed at these requests just by giving them the default item, but you'll receive a lesser reward. In order to succeed at the game and earn the best possible endings, you have to make sure you're giving the correct traits instead of the default item. Traits also have a minor influence on combat. Instead of the usual elemental weaknesses found in RPGs, each enemy in the game has a weakness to a specific trait, so equipping a "quality" sword or a "red" sword can make it easier to kill certain enemies. Combat is so easy that you'll probably never bother with this, though. Killing enemies faster is only a benefit if you're going into areas that are way above your character's level.

Atelier Annie is not a very impressive-looking game. Most of the visuals are static pictures that change from time to time, and none of them are as charming or detailed as other Nintendo DS titles. Far more disappointing are the character sprites. Atelier Annie uses a "super deformed" style that is so deformed that they're almost unrecognizable, and their combat and movement animations are extremely boring and poorly done. Considering that there are other Nintendo DS games that use the SD art style much better, it's really surprising that the normally lovely Gust sprites are replaced by these extremely bland visuals. The entire game looks like an early SNES title, but not in the good retro sort of way.  The soundtrack is better, although it doesn't stand out very much. Like Atlus' recent Endless Frontier, Atelier Annie doesn't feature an English dub option, although the game is almost fully voice-acted. This means that all the voice acting is in Japanese, which could be a plus or a minus, depending on your personal preference.

Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island doesn't really feel like a full-fledged game. It has gameplay elements, but they almost universally feel like mini-games instead of parts of an actual game. Everything, from the combat to the alchemy, feels very simplistic, and seems to exist as an excuse to give you wacky cut scenes. There is a certain addictive quality to creating the perfect item, but once you master the game's alchemy system, you'll find that it quickly loses its charm. Atelier Annie's is mostly a game for those who want to watch silly anime-style characters interact in a zany manner for 10-15 hours. If Atelier Annie manages to grab you, it offers a substantial amount of content, including a significant number of endings. Anyone looking for an actual game can find much better on the Nintendo DS, and Atelier Annie has little to recommend it to anyone but die-hard NISA fans.

Score: 6.5/10

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What can we do now? Broadening our Thanksgiving - Freeport Journal Standard

Posted: 21 Nov 2009 01:42 AM PST

Freeport, Ill. -

The accounts and the legends surrounding the Pilgrims and Indians and the first Thanksgiving take us back to a time in our country that is very different from today. The stories from this time portray a people who had worked hard just to stay alive and had graciously received help from friendly native people. There was surely no doubt in their minds where their food came from. Most of us today work hard at our jobs, but, for the most part, our jobs don't get us in touch with where our food comes from or how it gets to us.

A recent article about making preparations for Thanksgiving dinner says it all, "Begin by making a shopping list." In A Sand County Almanac published in 1949, Aldo Leopold warns us about taking our food for granted. He says that the danger in not being a farmer is supposing that our food comes from the grocery store.

Each item of food in our Thanksgiving dinner came into being with energy from the sun. Plants convert the sun's energy to a form that humans and animals can use. Air, water and soil, natural resources of our earth, must be present in the right amount and under the right conditions to grow the food we eat, whether plant or animal. Different kinds of food come from different places according to the conditions they need to grow. Nevertheless our Thanksgiving dinner can be traced back to energy received from the sun and to the resources found on the earth.

To be thankful for the food we eat we need to consider not only where each item comes from, but also all the people along the way that helped to get it to us. Each food item on our dinner table has its own story.

Growing food is only the beginning of the story. Packing boxes must be used to ship it. Using boxes takes us into the whole story of paper making and raising and harvesting trees for pulp. Shipping has its own story of mining metals, manufacturing vehicles, and operating them. The fuel required for shipping has people and processes associated with it. If canned foods are considered there is the whole story of the canning process. The cans themselves have their own story connected with them. Now add to this the grocery store tale.

As we gather at the dinner table let's be thankful for energy from the sun, for soil, air, water and all of earth's resources, and for farmers who labor on our behalf to produce our food. When we are giving thanks let's also remember all the people along the way that worked behind the scenes so that we can say, "Dinner is served."

Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 11/18/09 for publication on 11/21/09 in the Journal Standard, Freeport, Illinois) Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org

 

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