Toyota Recall

Toyota says it will recall 3.8 million vehicles in the United States to address problems with a removable floor mat that could interfere with the vehicle's accelerator and cause a crash.

The company says it will be the largest recall in its history. Owners could learn about the safety campaign as early as next week.

Toyota and the government warned owners of Toyota and Lexus vehicles about safety problems tied to the removable floor mats. They say the mats could interfere with the vehicle's accelerator and cause a crash.

The recall will affect 2007-2010 model year Toyota Camry, 2005-2010 Toyota Avalon, 2004-2009 Toyota Prius, 2005-2010 Tacoma, 2007-2010 Toyota Tundra, 2007-2010 Lexus ES350 and 2006-2010 Lexus IS250 and IS350.

Owners should take out the floor mats on the driver's side and not replace them.

Grammar

Got to thank my dad (who is part Indian) for this one...


On his 60th birthday, he received a gift certificate from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man living on a nearby Indian reservation who was rumored to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction. After being persuaded, he drove to the reservation, handed his certificate to the medicine man and wondered what would happen next.



The old man slowly and methodically produced a potion, handed it to him, and with a grip on his shoulder, warned, "This is powerful medicine and it must be respected. You take only one teaspoonful and then say '1-2-3..' When you do that, you will become more manly than you have ever been in your life, and you can perform as long as you want."


He was encouraged. As he walked away, he turned and asked, "How do I stop the action of the medicine?"



"Your partner must say '1-2-3-4,'" he responded. "But when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon."



He was very eager to see if it worked so he went home, showered, shaved, combed his hair, put on lots of cologne, took a spoonful of the medicine, and then invited his wife to join him in the bedroom. When she came in, he took off his clothes and said, "1-2-3!"

Immediately, the glory of his manhood filled the room.. His wife was so excited that she began ripping off her clothes. And then she asked, "By the way, Honey, what was the 1-2-3 for?"



And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition!

Otherwise you will end up with a dangling participle...heh.

Direct to God....

A man in Topeka, Kansas decided to write a book about churches around the country. He started by flying to San Francisco and started working east from there.

Going to a very large church, he began taking photographs and making notes.

He spotted a golden telephone on the vestibule wall and was intrigued with a sign, which read 'Calls: $10,000 a minute.' Seeking out the pastor, he asked about the phone and the sign.

The pastor answered that this golden phone is, in fact, a direct line to heaven and if he pays the price he can talk directly to God.

The man thanked the pastor and continued on his way. As he continued to visit churches in Seattle, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and around the United States, he found more phones, with the same sign, and the same answer from each pastor.

Finally, he arrived in Georgia, upon entering a church in Alma, Georgia which is only about 30 miles from Waycross ....behold - he saw the usual golden telephone. But THIS time, the sign read 'Calls: 35 cents.'

Fascinated, he asked to talk to the pastor, 'Reverend, I have been in cities all across the country and in each church I have found this golden Telephone and have been told it is a direct line to Heaven and that I could talk to GOD, but in the other churches the cost was $10,000 a minute. Your sign reads only 35 cents a call. Why?'

The pastor, smiling benignly, replied,

'Son, you're in the South now, God's Country....It's a local call.'

American by Birth - Southern by the Grace of God.

heh

IBM masters teleportation like in Star Trek, kind of.

OK, so i figured that since the new Star Trek movie is out and doing well, I'd share a little info i had found a while back on teleportation from IBM. It's an interesting (ahem, boring) article that states it is possible and has been done and is coming soon to home (or tele-lab) near you!

Or does it? I guess you'll have to read it for yourself to see...

Quantum Teleportation

Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.

In 1993 an international group of six scientists, including IBM Fellow Charles H. Bennett, confirmed the intuitions of the majority of science fiction writers by showing that perfect teleportation is indeed possible in principle, but only if the original is destroyed. In subsequent years, other scientists have demonstrated teleportation experimentally in a variety of systems, including single photons, coherent light fields, nuclear spins, and trapped ions. Teleportation promises to be quite useful as an information processing primitive, facilitating long range quantum communication (perhaps unltimately leading to a "quantum internet"), and making it much easier to build a working quantum computer. But science fiction fans will be disappointed to learn that no one expects to be able to teleport people or other macroscopic objects in the foreseeable future, for a variety of engineering reasons, even though it would not violate any fundamental law to do so.

In the past, the idea of teleportation was not taken very seriously by scientists, because it was thought to violate the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which forbids any measuring or scanning process from extracting all the information in an atom or other object. According to the uncertainty principle, the more accurately an object is scanned, the more it is disturbed by the scanning process, until one reaches a point where the object's original state has been completely disrupted, still without having extracted enough information to make a perfect replica. This sounds like a solid argument against teleportation: if one cannot extract enough information from an object to make a perfect copy, it would seem that a perfect copy cannot be made. But the six scientists found a way to make an end run around this logic, using a celebrated and paradoxical feature of quantum mechanics known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect. In brief, they found a way to scan out part of the information from an object A, which one wishes to teleport, while causing the remaining, unscanned, part of the information to pass, via the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, into another object C which has never been in contact with A. Later, by applying to C a treatment depending on the scanned-out information, it is possible to maneuver C into exactly the same state as A was in before it was scanned. A itself is no longer in that state, having been thoroughly disrupted by the scanning, so what has been achieved is teleportation, not replication.

As the figure to the left suggests, the unscanned part of the information is conveyed from A to C by an intermediary object B, which interacts first with C and then with A. What? Can it really be correct to say "first with C and then with A"? Surely, in order to convey something from A to C, the delivery vehicle must visit A before C, not the other way around. But there is a subtle, unscannable kind of information that, unlike any material cargo, and even unlike ordinary information, can indeed be delivered in such a backward fashion. This subtle kind of information, also called "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlation" or "entanglement", has been at least partly understood since the 1930s when it was discussed in a famous paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. In the 1960s John Bell showed that a pair of entangled particles, which were once in contact but later move too far apart to interact directly, can exhibit individually random behavior that is too strongly correlated to be explained by classical statistics. Experiments on photons and other particles have repeatedly confirmed these correlations, thereby providing strong evidence for the validity of quantum mechanics, which neatly explains them. Another well-known fact about EPR correlations is that they cannot by themselves deliver a meaningful and controllable message. It was thought that their only usefulness was in proving the validity of quantum mechanics. But now it is known that, through the phenomenon of quantum teleportation, they can deliver exactly that part of the information in an object which is too delicate to be scanned out and delivered by conventional methods.

This figure compares conventional facsimile transmission with quantum teleportation (see above). In conventional facsimile transmission the original is scanned, extracting partial information about it, but remains more or less intact after the scanning process. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is imprinted on some raw material (eg paper) to produce an approximate copy of the original. By contrast, in quantum teleportation, two objects B and C are first brought into contact and then separated. Object B is taken to the sending station, while object C is taken to the receiving station. At the sending station object B is scanned together with the original object A which one wishes to teleport, yielding some information and totally disrupting the state of A and B. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is used to select one of several treatments to be applied to object C, thereby putting C into an exact replica of the former state of A.

To learn more about quantum teleportation, see the following articles and links:

• C.H. Bennett, G. Brassard, C. Crepeau, R. Jozsa, A. Peres, and W. Wootters, "Teleporting an Unknown Quantum State via Dual Classical and EPR Channels", Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 70, pp 1895-1899 (1993)
(the original 6-author research article).
• Tony Sudbury, "Instant Teleportation", Nature .362, 586-587 (1993) (a semipopular account).
• Ivars Peterson, Science News, April 10, 1993, p. 229. (another semipopular account).
• Samuel Braunstein, A fun talk on teleportation
• Q&A on Teleportation by BBC News Online science editor David Whitehouse
• Wikipedia article
  
• Experimental Articles
  
• D. Bouwmeester et al. Nature 390, 575-9 (1997) (photons)
  
• D. Boschi et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1121-1125 (1998) (photons)
  
• A. Furusawa et al. Science 282, 706-709 (1998) (coherent light field)
  
• M.A. Nielsen et al. Nature 396, 52-55 (1998) (nuclear magnetic resonance)
• I. Marcikic et al. Nature 421, 509-513 (2003) (photons, long distance)
  
• M. Riebe et al. Nature 429, 734-737 (2004) (trapped calcium ions)
  
• M.D. Barret et al. Nature 429, 737-739 (2004) (trapped beryllium ions)
  
• R. Ursin et al. Nature 430, 849 (2004) (photons, long distance)
  
• Theoretical Articles
• G. Brassard Physica D 120 43-47 (1998) Teleportation as a quantum computation
  
• Gottesman and I Chuang Nature 402 390-393 (1999), teleportation as a computational primitive
• X. Zhou, D. Leung, I. Chuang Quantum gate constructions from teleportation-like primiitve
• L. Vaidman quant-ph/0111124 Using teleportation to measure nonlocal variables
  
• For recent experimental and theoretical articles, do a title search on "teleportation" in the ArXiv E-print Archive

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

If you like baseball, you ain't seen nothing yet!

I came across this article on espn.com about a guy who is a switch pitcher! Yes, you heard me right (and left). He throws both ways! You have to read this article...very cool. There's a picture there you have to see...

How do you beat a guy who throws righty and lefty? You don't.

You'll probably never witness an unassisted triple play in your lifetime, right? (There have been only 14.) Or see an intentional walk with the bases loaded. (Six.) Or watch one player hit two grand slams in an inning. (Once.)

But you can see something right now that hasn't been around in baseball since the late 1800s: a switch-pitcher.

His name is Pat Venditte, he's 23, and he's pro baseball's only ambidextrous pitcher. This living piece of history is more than a YouTube star; he's throwing almost daily for the Charleston RiverDogs, the Yankees' Single-A club. And he's not just throwing: He's blowing through hitters like a Cub Scout through Skittles. At one point in April, the closer's ERA was 0.00 in 6 1/3 innings, and he hadn't blown a save in five games.

Last season, he had 23 saves for the Staten Island Yankees, with a 0.83 ERA. And best of all, the kid can relieve himself!

He wears a specially made six-fingered Mizuno glove with two thumbs. (His Dominican teammates call him Pulpo, Spanish for "octopus.") When he warms up, he throws four pitches righty and four lefty. You should see the opposition when he does it. It's as if they had seen a ghost. Wait—did you just see that? If a righty is up, he throws righty, and vice versa. Whenever Venditte switches sides, everybody in the Charleston ballpark is encouraged to switch seats.

"I've got to remember to tell people which way he's throwing," says RiverDogs radio play-by-play man Danny Reed. "Never had to do that before."

There are a lot of "never befores" with Venditte. The pitching coach has to file two reports: Venditte the lefty and Venditte the righty. And he should; they're two different pitchers. The righty has a 90 mph fastball, a curve and a nice change. The lefty comes sidearm and has a murderous slider and a change. He's a five-pitch pitcher! Once, in Little League, the other team's coach came up to Pat Sr. and said, "Your twins pitched a heck of a game."

His college pitching coach called him Dexter, and opposing managers call him an ulcer. What's the point of saving your righthanded pinch-hitter for the ninth if Venditte is just going to switch to righty? Strategy is futile. Remember in The Princess Bride when, halfway through the sword fight, Inigo Montoya suddenly says, "I know something you don't know: I am not lefthanded!"?

All this was Pat Sr.'s idea. When his son was 3, Dad noticed Pat threw balls with both hands. So he fed it. He had him throw footballs both ways, punt both ways, kick field goals both ways. Pat was homeschooled by his mom, Jan, who had him write both ways and eat both ways.

We might be looking at the future here, people. "I get calls and letters from people wanting to know how they can do it with their kids," says Jan. "But you have to do it when they're very young. If you try it at 9, they won't listen."

For Pat Jr., it's meant a way to chase his dream of playing in the Show someday. "I know I wouldn't be this far without it," he says. "I don't have dominating stuff from one side or the other. I need both."

Not that it doesn't cause problems. If he walks a hitter, fans will start hollering, "Try the other side!" People want him to sign autographs with both hands. And switch-hitters will switch batter's boxes, making Venditte switch the glove, starting a cat-and-mouse game that can go on for 10 minutes. Minor league umps now have the Venditte Rule: At the start of an at-bat, the pitcher must declare his throwing arm, then the hitter can pick his side, with each man able to switch once. Phew.

There's been only one other such pitcher in the past century: Greg Harris, who threw one scoreless inning for the Expos, in 1995. More than 120 years ago, three guys are believed to have done it occasionally. The best was Tony Mullane, who stood on the mound with no glove and the ball cradled in both hands so nobody would know which way he was going to pitch until his windup. I've had bosses like that.

But Venditte, a four-year letterman at Creighton, has a chance to be the best. If the Yankees bring him up—and at this pace it could happen within three years—they won't need a pitch count. Venditte can throw every day! And when manager Joe Girardi needs to call the bullpen, he can say, "Okay, get a righty and lefty throwing. In other words, get Pat." Of course, how would Girardi signal the bullpen? Touch both arms? Either way, it's a steal for the Yankees. As one scout says, "This could be an economical two-for-one." (Hey, Pat, ask for two salaries.)

-Rick Reilly, espn.com

So over the not quite complete first 100 days...

OK - I am so over a bunch of crap. 1st I am still in shock that America voted in one of the most incompetent people to serve as President in recent memory. The first 100 days is almost up and most people I know who voted for him (including lots of things I see and read), wish they would not have voted for him. I mean really, who brags about being gifted in speaking but has to always read a teleprompter. He has no gift...he is a stooge that simply stands up and talks. I can't believe there is going to be 4 years of this....and when his teleprompter stops - so does he...and tells people to fix it...why can't he just keep speaking? Really, is he not intelligent enough to continue to inform people about 'his' policies and ideas? And to allow people to fly Air Force One to NYC for a photo op at Ground Zero...? I mean, really? And why are certain people still in Congress? I think there are more and more stupid people out there in the world who don't pay attention to politics or government affairs who shouldn't be allowed to vote. I think everyone should pass a test to demonstrate their knowledge of an ability to understand just how our country's government works, how we got here, and what makes this country the one country that everyone wants to come to.

I hope that in the next election in a couple of years that there is a big turnaround or this country is heading for a nose dive. Oh and another thing...read this article...even Democrats think this is wrong...

I'm so frustrated i can't even type anymore...

VP Joe "The Joke" Biden

read this link - enough said:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/17/bidens-list-political-blunders/

More Proof of my Chinese Takeover Theory...

So, for those of you who haven't heard about my theory on the Chinese's subtle attempt at taking over the US in an interesting and very possible way through Chinese foods and various other outlets, see my previous post dated Aug 7, 2007. Of course when I typed that I had no idea Obama would become President and that our country as a whole would fall into this whole socialist/communist mess, but my theory is still holding up and proving very plausible....even if it was initially a joke, or should I say genius?. ;)

Anyway, unless you've been under a rock, I'm sure you've heard of the huge [Chinese] GhostNet cyber-ring bust the super sly Canadians (who knew? eh?) found out about a few days ago. [[ see this and that...]] One thing that's interesting is that China does use "the web" as part of its military strategy... But let me get back to my main point back in 2007. I just saw another article today that falls right in line with the whole "chinese sell stuff to us to get us sick and then take over theory". Only this article is not about food...ummmm, it's about the house you or your loved ones are living in... enjoy.

Chinese Drywall Poses Potential Risks to American Homeowners, Apartment Dwellers

At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.

Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people. --------->>>read it all....

Google's new Autopilot for email is pretty nifty. You have to check this out!

So, this is some cool stuff...

Imagine getting some emails from people and you're away from the computer and they are answered for you by the computer in a natural language response... how awesome is that? You don't even have to be there...

Check this stuff out!

http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/landing/cadie/

Oh yeah, today is April 1st...I'm sure that has nothing to do with this... heh.

nice.

Beyonce fans 'among least intelligent but Beethoven fans are cleverest' - How dumb are you?

This is GREAT! I ran across this article reading the news (as I tend to do) and went and checked out the site/charts/graphics. It is really funny and cool. Think of your friends and what they listen to and how smart you think they are...this is really good. It has totally pegged people...hahahaha

Beyonce fans 'among least intelligent but Beethoven fans are cleverest'

the article



Could one's musical tastes say something about intelligence? How about SAT scores?
http://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/
the site

check it out...

Secret Message Found In Lincoln Pocket Watch

Now this is too cool. Something straight out of National Treasure...but without all the whizbang blow up romance stuff...hahahaha

from FoxNews

WASHINGTON — For nearly 150 years, a story has circulated about a hidden Civil War message engraved inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch. On Tuesday, museum curators confirmed it was true. A watchmaker used tiny tools to carefully pry open the antique watch at the National Museum of American History, and a descendant of the engraver read aloud the message from a metal plate underneath the watch face.

"Jonathan Dillon April 13 - 1861," part of the inscription reads, "Fort Sumpter (sic) was attacked by the rebels on the above date." Another part reads, "Thank God we have a government."

The words were etched in tiny cursive handwriting and filled the the space between tiny screws and gears that jutted through the metal plate. A magnifying glass was required to read them.

Jonathan Dillon, then a watchmaker on Pennsylvania Avenue, had Lincoln's watch in his hands when he heard the first shots of the Civil War had been fired in South Carolina. The Irish immigrant later recalled being the only Union sympathizer working at the shop in a divided Washington.

Dillon's story was passed down among his family and friends, eventually reaching a New York Times reporter. In a 1906 article in the paper, an 84-year-old Dillon said no one, including Lincoln, ever saw the inscription as far as he knew.

Dillon had a fuzzy recollection of what he had engraved. He told the newspaper he had written: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a president who at least will try."

For years the story went unconfirmed.

The watchmaker's great-great grandson, Doug Stiles, first heard the tale of the engraving from his great uncle decades ago. He said the story had reached extended family as far away as Ireland.

A few months ago, he used Google to find the New York Times story, and last month he passed the information along to Smithsonian curators, who knew nothing about the engraving.

On Tuesday, watchmaker George Thomas, who volunteers at the museum, spent several minutes carefully opening the watch as an audience of reporters and museum workers watched on a video monitor.

"The moment of truth has come. Is there or is there not an inscription?" Thomas said, teasing the audience, which gasped when he confirmed it was there. He called Stiles up to read his ancestor's words, drawing smiles and a few sighs of relief.

"Like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, this was the reaction he had (to the Civil War,)" Stiles said of the inscription.

Later, Stiles said he felt closer to the 16th president.

"My gosh, that was Lincoln's watch," he said, "and my ancestor put graffiti on it!"

Lincoln's family kept the watch until it was donated to the museum in 1958. It was Lincoln's everyday pocket watch, one of the president's only valuable possessions he brought with him to the White House from Springfield, Ill., said Harry Rubenstein, curator of the museum's politics and reform division.

"I think it just captures a bit of history that can transform you to another time and place," he said. "It captures the excitement, the hope of a watchmaker in Washington."

The watch will go back on display at the museum by Wednesday as part of the exhibit, "Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life." It will have a new label to tell Dillon's story and a photo of the inscription.

I must be part Japanese...hahaha b/c I think the iPhone is junk too.

Well, I get it now!! I have not gotten an iPhone, I've not really thought they were that super cool and have been in the minority with most phone people because I don't think they are all people crack them up to be...guess it must be because I'm either a) part Japanese or b) technically ahead of my time. hahaha

This also explains why my newest phone I have (LG) does mutlimedia texting, takes awesome pictures, makes movies and yes I can watch TV (live TV!) on it (and do email, games, blah blah blah all the other basic stuff)...all that plus I bought it off ebay without having a contract...wow. Oh yeah, and I can do it all with only one hand...heh.



http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/02/why-the-iphone.html



The article above is awesome! Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone...



My favorite quotes from the article:

"Japanese citizens possess high, complex standards when it comes to cellphones. The country is famous for being ahead of its time when it comes to technology, and the iPhone just doesn't cut it. For example, Japanese handset users are extremely into video and photos — and the iPhone has neither a video camera nor multimedia text messaging. And a highlight feature many in Japan enjoy on their handset is a TV tuner."

"So that would suggest that in Japan, carrying around an iPhone — an outdated handset compared to Japanese cellphones — could make you look pretty lame."

hahaha
sayonara

Parents Magazine...too funny.

I ran across this and just had to share it...classic.

Great Quote from John Adams

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
- John Adams

The all-encompassing power of facebook.

I continue to be amazed at how facebook works. Here is the latest, fairly humorous, thing I have observed. First, let me state that this actually happened to me...not some random story from somewhere on the web.

Everybody is on facebook and everybody has friends on facebook and most people have friends that are shared with other friends, etc...blah blah blah. Well, I posted a status update that was seen by friends and got a couple of comments. One from a friend who I haven't seen since elementary school, who is a host/reporter for a certain radio station in a college town and the other friend of mine I met through a statewide leadership program who is a media relations coordinator for a university. I'm sure you can figure out what happened...

Well, here are the comments...

is scientifical...yeah, that's right. Scientifical. 11:08am - Comment

at 11:11am January 14

Really, now...

at 11:17am January 14

If that's the case then being a science writer makes me super-scientifical. Or even... scienterrific? I'm stopping now.

at 11:51am January 14

Scientifilicious.

at 11:57am January 14

Are you the same ***** who works one floor above me in the communications building at **? Because if so, Facebook has officially made the world more ridiculously small. And that would indeed be Scientifficacious.

at 4:35am January 15

I am the same. Crazy Facebook...
How do you know ***?
(He and I went to the same elementary school ...)

at 2:37pm January 15

SO...I'm not sure which is crazier...the fact that you two actually know each other or the fact that you two are communicating with each other through comments on my status...hahahaha ;)

at 2:42pm January 15

Oh, we've now opened up our own line of communication... we've left you in the dust, I fear.

Just another day in the life of facebooking...hahaha

I'm glad I could "re-introduce" you two...hahaha

Even Microsoft Uses Apple Products

I came across this picture while being amused at other failures just like it...too funny! Check out the site when you get a chance...

Fastest gun in the west...make that world!

I was stumbling through the internet and happened to run into, what may be, the coolest video I have ever seen. I wish I could find the whole show, but this segment is pretty darn good. You have to watch it all...you get past the guy's cockiness really quick when you see him back it up. Insane!!

Remembering Goody's Family Clothing

S0, I heard this story today on the radio as I was heading into work and it made me a little sad. Especially since Goody's is HQ'd in Knoxville TN (go vols). They carried decent stuff fairly cheap, but the sad thing is, I remember getting an AWESOME KICK-ASS Sweater Vest from there one year (well, maybe not kick-ass or awesome, but I thought I was cool) way back in the day. I guess since people aren't buying that many sweater vests anymore, the company just couldn't hold up. I knew I shouldn't have stopped shopping there...

Goody's Family Clothing to liquidate stores

Tue Jan 6, 2009 12:12pm EST

]

By Chelsea Emery

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goody's Family Clothing, a privately held apparel retail chain which emerged from bankruptcy in October, plans to liquidate its remaining stores as the U.S. economic recession has undermined its ability to continue operating.

"The company is in the processes of obtaining bids to liquidate substantially all collateral and inventory," said Cathy Hershcopf, a bankruptcy partner at law firm Cooley Godward Kronish LLP. "The retail environment is very difficult and they did not have sufficient capital to weather the bad times."

The law firm is acting as a liaison between Goody's vendors and the company and Prentice Capital Management. PGDYS Lending LLC is Goody's parent company, and Prentice is the manager of PGDYS.

Bob Carbonell, chief credit officer for retail credit rating service Bernard Sands, confirmed that the company plans to liquidate.

Going-out-of-business sales will begin as early as Friday, said Hershcopf.

When the company emerged from bankruptcy, it operated 287 stores in 20 states.

The Knoxville, Tennessee-based retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 9, hurt by high gasoline and food prices that have forced consumers to cut back on nonessential purchases. It emerged from bankruptcy protection in October after cutting operating costs and closing at least 69 underperforming stores.

(Reporting by Chelsea Emery, editing by Matthew Lewis)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Super Mario Game 4

I found this online and thought, how neat...but how relevant?

Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer's Shortcut to Stronger Writing

Copyright © 1995 by C.J. Cherryh

Copy and pass "Writerisms and other Sins" around to your heart's content, but always post my Copyright notice at the top, correctly, thank you, as both a courtesy and a legal necessity to protect any writer.

Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find 'em, root 'em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush.

1. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been … combined with "by" or with "by … someone" implied but not stated. Such structures are passives. In general, limit passive verb use to one or two per book. The word "by" followed by a person is an easy flag for passives.

2. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been … combined with an adjective. "He was sad as he walked about the apartment." "He moped about the apartment." A single colorful verb is stronger than any was + adjective; but don't slide to the polar opposite and overuse colorful verbs. There are writers that vastly overuse the "be" verb; if you are one, fix it. If you aren't one---don't, because overfixing it will commit the next error.

3. florid verbs. "The car grumbled its way to the curb" is on the verge of being so colorful it's distracting. {Florid fr. Lat. floreo, to flower.}

   If a manuscript looks as if it's sprouted leaves and branches, if every verb is "unusual," if the vocabulary is more interesting than the story … fix it by going to more ordinary verbs. There are vocabulary-addicts who will praise your prose for this but not many who can simultaneously admire your verbs as verbs and follow your story, especially if it has content. The car is not a main actor and not one you necessarily need to make into a character. If its action should be more ordinary and transparent, don't use an odd expression. This is prose.

   This statement also goes for unusual descriptions and odd adjectives, nouns, and adverbs.

4. odd connectives. Some writers overuse "as" and "then" in an attempt to avoid "and" or "but," which themselves can become a tic. But "as" is only for truly simultaneous action. The common deck of conjunctions available is:

   • when (temporal)
   • if (conditional)
   • since (ambiguous between temporal and causal)
   • although (concessive)
   • because (causal)
   • and (connective)
   • but (contrasting)
   • as (contemporaneous action or sub for "because") while (roughly equal to "as")

   These are the ones I can think of. If you use some too much and others practically never, be more even-handed. Then, BTW, is originally more of an adverb than a proper conjunction, although it seems to be drifting toward use as a conjunction. However is really a peculiar conjunction, demanding in most finicky usage to be placed *after* the subject of the clause.

   Don't forget the correlatives, either … or, neither … nor, and "not only … but also."

   And "so that," "in order that," and the far shorter and occasionally merciful infinitive: "to … {verb}something."

5. Descriptive writerisms.

   Things that have become "conventions of prose" that personally stop me cold in text.

   • "framed by" followed by hair, tresses, curls, or most anything cute.

   • "swelling bosom"

   • "heart-shaped face"

   • "set off by": see "framed by"

   • "revealed" or "revealed by": see "framed by." Too precious for words when followed by a fashion statement.

   • Mirrors … avoid mirrors, as a basic rule of your life. You get to use them once during your writing career. Save them for more experience. But it doesn't count if they don't reflect … by which I mean see the list above. If you haven't read enough unpublished fiction to have met the infamous mirror scenes in which Our Hero admires his steely blue eyes and manly chin, you can scarcely imagine how bad they can get.

   • limpid pools and farm ponds: I don't care what it is, if it reflects your hero and occasions a description of his manly dimple, it's a mirror.

     As a general rule … your viewpoint characters should have less, rather than more, description than anyone else: a reader of different skin or hair color ought to be able to sink into this persona without being continually jolted by contrary information.

     Stick to what your observer can observe. One's own blushes can be felt, but not seen, unless one is facing … .a mirror. See above.

   • "as he turned, then stepped aside from the descending blow … " First of all, it takes longer to read than to happen: pacing fault. Second, the "then" places action #2 sequentially after #1, which makes the whole evasion sequence a 1-2 which won't work. This guy is dead or the opponent was telegraphing his moves in a panel-by-panel comic book style which won't do for regular prose. Clunky. Slow. Fatally slow.

   • "Again" or worse "once again." Established writers don't tend to overuse this one: it seems like a neo fault, possibly a mental writerly stammer---lacking a next thing to do, our hero does it "again" or "once again" or "even yet." Toss "still" and "yet" onto the pile and use them sparingly.

6. Dead verbs. Colorless verbs.

   • walked
   • turned
   • crossed
   • run, ran
   • go, went, gone
   • leave, left
   • have, had
   • get, got

   You can add your own often used colorless verbs: these are verbs that convey an action but don't add any other information. A verb you've had to modify (change) with an adverb is likely inadequate to the job you assigned it to do.

7. Colorless verb with inadequate adverb: "He walked slowly across the room."

   More informative verb with no adverb: "He trudged across the room," "He paced across the room," "He stalked across the room," each one a different meaning, different situation. But please see problem 3, above, and don't go overboard.

8. Themely English

   With apologies to hard-working English teachers, school English is not fiction English.

   Understand that the meticulous English style you labored over in school, including the use of complete sentences and the structure of classic theme-sentence paragraphs, was directed toward the production of non-fiction reports, resumes, and other non-fiction applications.

   The first thing you have to do to write fiction? Suspect all the English style you learned in school and violate rules at need. Many of those rules will turn out to apply; many won't.

   {Be ready to defend your choices. If you are lucky, you will be copyedited. Occasionally the copyeditor will be technically right but fictionally wrong and you will have to tell your editor why you want that particular expression left alone.}

9. Scaffolding and spaghetti. Words the sole function of which is to hold up other words. For application only if you are floundering in too many "which" clauses. Do not carry this or any other advice to extremes.

   "What it was upon close examination was a mass the center of which was suffused with a glow which appeared rubescent to the observers who were amazed and confounded by this untoward manifestation." Flowery and overstructured. "What they found was a mass, the center of which glowed faintly red. They'd never seen anything like it." The second isn't great lit, but it gets the job done: the first drowns in "which" and "who" clauses.

   In other words---be suspicious any time you have to support one needed word (rubescent) with a creaking framework of "which" and "what" and "who." Dump the "which-what-who" and take the single descriptive word. Plant it as an adjective in the main sentence.

10. A short cut to "who" and "whom."

    • Nominative: who
    • Possessive: whose
    • Objective: whom

    The rule:

    1. treat the "who-clause" as a mini-sentence.

       If you could substitute "he" for the who-whom, it's a "who." If you could substitute "him" for the who-whom it's a "whom."

       The trick is where ellipsis has occurred … or where parentheticals have been inserted … and the number of people in important and memorable places who get it wrong. "Who … do I see?" Wrong: I see he? No. I see "him." Whom do I see?

    2. "Who" never changes case to match an antecedent. (word to which it refers)

       • I blame them who made the unjust law. CORRECT.
       • It is she whom they blame. CORRECT: The who-clause is WHOM THEY BLAME.
       • They blame HER=him, =whom.
       • I am the one WHO is at fault. CORRECT.
       • I am the one WHOM they blame. CORRECT.
       • They took him WHOM they blamed. CORRECT---but not because WHOM matches HIM: that doesn't matter: correct because "they" is the subject of "blamed" and "whom" is the object.
       • I am he WHOM THEY BLAME. CORRECT. Whom is the "object" of "they blame."

       Back to rule one: "who" clauses are completely independent in case from the rest of the sentence. The case of "who" in its clause changes by the internal logic of the clause and by NO influence outside the clause. Repeat to yourself: there is no connection, there is no connection 3 x and you will never mistake for whom the bell tolls.

    The examples above probably grate over your nerves. That's why "that" is gaining in popularity in the vernacular and why a lot of copyeditors will correct you incorrectly on this point. I'm beginning to believe that nine tenths of the English-speaking universe can't handle these little clauses.

11. -ing.

    "Shouldering his pack and setting forth, he crossed the river … "

    No, he didn't. Not unless his pack was in the river. Implies simultaneity. The participles are just like any other verbal form. They aren't a substitute legal everywhere, or a quick fix for a complex sequence of motions. Write them on the fly if you like, but once imbedded in text they're hard to search out when you want to get rid of their repetitive cadence, because -ing is part of so many fully constructed verbs {am going, etc.}

12. -ness

    A substitute for thinking of the right word. "Darkness," "unhappiness," and such come of tacking -ness (or occasionally - ion) onto words. There's often a better answer. Use it as needed.

    As a general rule, use a major or stand-out vocabulary word only once a paragraph, maybe twice a page, and if truly outre, only once per book. Parallels are clear and proper exceptions to this, and don't vary your word choice to the point of silliness: see error 3.

CHERRYH'S LAW: NO RULE SHOULD BE FOLLOWED OFF A CLIFF.