In a feat not easily achieved on the automotive scene, Ford’s F-Series line of pick-up trucks managed to snatch, for the 33rd time in a row, the title of best-selling truck in the US. The feat is even more remarkable as the the line sold no less than 413,625 vehicles in 2009, outclassing the runner-up by some 97,000 units. And if you still this is not enough, the F-Series have become the best selling vehicles in the US overall, including cars, crossovers, SUVs, trucks or vans.
Whe… (read more)
Article Tags: John Ziraldo
The first week of January is the time for predictions for the New Year, so I would like to make my prediction about the Climate Alarmists next attack on our freedom.
You may recall that some of the Global Warming scientists started their careers warning us about the pending ice age in the 70s, but then when the weather began to warm they switched to warming.
Warming was not enough though. It had to be Man-Made Global Warming so that we would all feel guilty and want to pay up. Mankind was also implicated in the Y2K scare, since we created and programmed all those computers, and we had to spend lots of our hard earned tax dollars to pay for our mistakes.
So now after the revelations of Climategate and the failures of both Kyoto and Copenhagen what is the likelihood that the Alarmists might want to switch horses again and try a new boogeyman? With major snow falls all over North America and Europe during December, ongoing record setting cold spells now being experienced seemingly everywhere, and scientific predictions for at least a couple decades of cooling, this may be a good time to try to save some Alarmist credibility and get off the Global Warming horse.
Source: canadafreepress.com
Dal Forum Internazionale, PANAMA CITY | Revolution Tower | 243m | 52 fl | U/C
|
Originally Posted by Ni3lS
(Post 49636855) 
By CHI3 |
Happy Birthday :rock:
:party: :party:
Article Tags: ClimateGate, John O'Sullivan
John O’Sullivan is a legal advocate and writer who for several years has litigated in government corruption and conspiracy cases in both the US and Britain. He has made an important announcement at Climategate.com.
We are turning up the heat in pursuit of prosecutions against scientists involved in the recent Climategate scandal. Our dedicated group of volunteers working with Climategate.com are behind a plan to entice co-workers of discredited Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann to turn whistleblowers in return for millions of dollars in federal reward money. Mann is famous for his emails obtained from the East Anglia University server hacking, and for creating the widely disputed ‘hockey stick’ graph that is depicted in Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
An “inconvenient truth” for Mann is that an ally of ours, former CIA agent Kent Clizbe, has this weekend emailed the proxy professor’s co-workers with details of the tempting offer that could turn 2010 into quite a prosperous New Year. We hope someone at this premiere world research institution will come forward and substantiate the facts from evidence already uncovered from the government emails leaked on November 19, 2009. The emails, among other things, show correspondence between Michael Mann and British Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research, which discuss methods to “hide the decline” in global temperatures.
Source: mensnewsdaily.com
Renault’s budget-minded brand Dacia has just rolled out a new limited edition version of Logan, Sandero and Logan MCV that is exclusively available to French buyers. Marketed as Black Line, the new range is based on the Laureate equipment level but also adds a bunch of new features.
Getting straight to details, the Laureate comprises equipment such as electric front windows, central locking and power steering but the Black Line designation now adds metallic paint, black headlamp m… (read more)
Article Tags: You could not make it up
Global warming means prolonged periods of snowy weather are becoming less frequent
It’s one of those truisms of the media that the first snowflake in London triggers a near-hysterical response from news desks, who have totally ignored the fact that the rest of the country has been getting on with life in the snow for some time. It’s no different this time.
I’ve been talking to my old friend Philip Eden, a meteorologist and avid collector of arcane weather statistics. We have short memories. The current winter weather started on December 17th and if you live north of the Peak District you’ve been suffering, and living with it, for three weeks now.
The last time we had a similar spell of cold weather was the winter of 1996/97, when it lasted three and a half weeks; it was a lot colder but there wasn’t anywhere near as much snow.
Source: channel4.com
American manufacturer GM is at it again (rebadging and all) and announced that the European Opel Insignia OPC got rebadged, equipped with a new engine (a less powerful one than on the Opel, as we will see) and unveiled today as the "21st century successor to Buick’s Gran Sport heritage": the Buick GS.
The Buick GS packs, as said, a 2.0l turbocharged four-cylinder engine, smaller than the 2.8l V6 turbo powerplant found on the OPC. As a consequence, the unit on the GS dev… (read more)
If you happen to be in Cairo the main focal point of celebrations is apparently Saint Mark Cathedral where a Midnight Mass is held.
The above photo was taken at St Anthony’s Monastery in the Eastern Desert.
Here’s an extract from a recent article by Jill Kamil on Al Ahram Weekly entitled The Biblical story of Jesus in Egypt on the Al Ahram Weekly website (dated 24th – 30th December 2009):
Despite the biblical references to the Holy Family’s journey to Egypt: Take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt [Matt: 2:13], and Out of Egypt have I called my son [Matt: 2:15], outside of the Coptic communities around the world, the early years of Jesus are not as widely known as the Nativity, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Is it not time to stage a three-act play in Coptic churches that combines the Nativity with the Flight into Egypt? It should be borne in mind that, apart from Copts in Egypt and the Middle East as a whole, there are more than 500,000 in the United Sates, 100,000 or in Canada, 300,000- odd in Australia, and more than a million residing in Europe, Latin America, Africa and New Zealand.
If the children of Coptic doctors and academics, engineers and businessmen — and I should mention that Copts in the diaspora have built impressive Coptic Orthodox churches and the bulk are regular church-goers — took part in or attended such a play, I wager that soon enough the schools that they attended would come to know about the three-act “Christmas Story”, and perhaps it would then be enacted in churches of other denominations. What a boost to tourism that would be!
The Coptic Question. The future of the Copts and their role in Egypt is discussed in this artcile by Samir Morqos.
THE COPTS AND CITIZENSHIP: This approach to the Coptic question is based on the premise that the Copts are, first and foremost, citizens and members of the Egyptian national community. The Copts are not a separate group or closed entity. Nor are they sociologically or politically homogenous. They are spread across the social scale, include labourers, peasants and craftsmen, practitioners of the liberal professions and businessmen. They are bound only by their affiliation to Egypt and their religious affiliation, with regard to both of which their interests, attitudes and opinions will vary. Citizenship is thus the prime governing factor for all Egyptians, regardless of the differences between them. Citizenship, here, can be defined as people’s daily collective exercise and pursuit of their social, economic, cultural and political rights on the basis of equality, without discrimination of any sort. It also involves inclusion in the electoral processes that determine how public resources and national wealth are shared.Four decades of religious tension have precipitated many problems. Their combined result has been to demote citizenship in favour of religious affiliation. Egyptian society has been re-categorised on a religious basis, and public and political spaces have become an almost entirely religious sphere. We should not, however, allow these protracted tensions to divert us from our approach to the Coptic question based on the definition of citizenship outlined above. We need to look at current trends as the product of socio-economic causes and as a deviation from the concrete achievements Egyptians have made together, proceeding from the notion that existing tensions oblige us to consider the Coptic question in a context that includes the problems of the Egyptian people as a whole. It is, after all, impossible to speak of the citizenship of one class of people without conditions of citizenship first being established for the people as a whole.
On December 16th, Google formed a new subsidiary in Delaware known as Google Energy. They then requested permission from federal authorities to buy and sell wholesale electricity. What could Google want to do with this?
In all likelihood, according to Cnet, Google doesn’t want to give us free power, but rather they want their operations to be carbon neutral, maybe they want to do some research on the side. In the past, Google has helped to develop power monitoring software, looked at using electric car batteries to stabilize power grids and hinted at getting involved in renewable energy.
In any case, it will be interesting to see where the Silicon Valley giant goes with this one. [Cnet]
Hyundai will sell the electric i10 initially to governments, Saxena said without elaborating. The company doesn’t plan to sell the car India because of the lack of necessary infrastructure, according to Saxena.
Hyundai Motor India aims to maintain its growth rate this year after boosting sales 14 percent to 559,880 vehicles in 2009, he said. Exports may be little changed this year as incentives on new car purchases from European governments disappear, he said.
Apart from Hyundai i10 electric, the company has also showcased three other models at Auto Expo 2010. Hyundai displayed i-mate, H1 Wagon and Genesis Coupe.
The Bollywood stars paid visit to Auto Expo on the second day. After Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan launched his favourite SUV Mahindra Scorpio.
M&M launched Mahindra Scorpio and Mahindra Navistar Trucks on Wednesday.
Bike crazy actor John Abraham was also present at the Auto Expo and he launched Yamaha’s 2010 version of the YZF-R1 bike and YZF-R15 bike at the Auto Expo.
Previously, in 2007, Hyundai had launched the Hyundai i10 with internal combustion engine in 2007.At present; HMIL is the country’s largest car exporter and the second largest car manufacturer with a line up of alternate fuel technology in vehicles like the CNG and LPG versions of its small car Hyundai Santro. This would be followed with its sedan Accent and small car Hyundai i10.
Currently, only Reva produces electric cars for the Indian market but recently Tata Motors also announced its plans to bring in the Tata Indica Vista electric in collaboration with a Norwegian company to ply it here in India after studying the feasibility.
Hyundai Motor India’s pavilion displayed its futuristic technology in the form of concept vehicles to highlight the superior and advanced technology that the company has pioneered. The company also showcased the sports variant of its luxury sedan Genesis at the auto show.
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mine –
Best Picture (10 nominated this year)
1. Avatar (der)
2. District Nine (should get nominated for its originality)
3. The Lovely Bones (should get nominated cause its a good movie lol, dicks)
4. Samson and Delilah (random arty one… don’t know if they’ll notice it in usa tho)
5. Nine (only musical this year, so will get nominated to add interesting diversity)
6. Julia & Julie (stupid, but so are americans, they loved it :S)
7. Up (again stupid, but only reasonable animation beside avatar)
8. Precious (oprah can’t stop banging on about it, will get nominated as a reward for supporting obama)
9. Public Enemies (got lots of hollywood cocks, they vote for each other)
10.Sherlock Holmes (well recieved, will get nominated)
Best Director
1. James Cameron (avatar, tis a dick, shouldn’t win, but probably will)
2. Rob Marshall (nine, should have won for chicago, but might get a delayed reward with this one)
3. Peter Jackson (probably should win, but too many people didn’t like the movie)
4. Guy Ritchie (Sherlock – noticed how he didn’t feature in any promotions about the film tho, won’t win, but will get nominated for getting rid of madonna)
5.
Best Actress
1. Saorise Ronan (She’s great, should win, but probably won’t)
2. Meryl Streep (Julia & Julia – didn’t loik it tho.)
3.
4.
5.
Best Actor
1. Robert Downey Junior (sherlock -they love him, meh)
2. Johnny Depp (public enemies, popular filler)
3. Sam Worthington (Avatar – will get nominated cause of body of work this year, mr popular)
4.
5.
Best Supporting Actress
1. MoNique (Precious – again because of oprah)
2. Sophia Loren (Nine, she’s fabulous, will get nominated to encorage her to come out more)
3. Rachel Weisz/Susan Sarrandon (Nine, one or the other, but not both)
4. Penelope Cruise (nine/broken embraces – maybe nominated since she won last year – they like to nominate in pairs)
5.
Best Supporting Actor
1. Jude Law (cockhead, but in reasonably received role)
2. Christian Bale (how non descript can you get, will get nominated because people like his name)
3.
4.
5.
Can’t think of the blank ones yet… i’ll come back to them
what yousguys think.
Hyundai will sell the electric i10 initially to governments, Saxena said without elaborating. The company doesn’t plan to sell the car India because of the lack of necessary infrastructure, according to Saxena.
Hyundai Motor India aims to maintain its growth rate this year after boosting sales 14 percent to 559,880 vehicles in 2009, he said. Exports may be little changed this year as incentives on new car purchases from European governments disappear, he said.
Apart from Hyundai i10 electric, the company has also showcased three other models at Auto Expo 2010. Hyundai displayed i-mate, H1 Wagon and Genesis Coupe.
The Bollywood stars paid visit to Auto Expo on the second day. After Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan launched his favourite SUV Mahindra Scorpio.
M&M launched Mahindra Scorpio and Mahindra Navistar Trucks on Wednesday.
Bike crazy actor John Abraham was also present at the Auto Expo and he launched Yamaha’s 2010 version of the YZF-R1 bike and YZF-R15 bike at the Auto Expo.
Previously, in 2007, Hyundai had launched the Hyundai i10 with internal combustion engine in 2007.At present; HMIL is the country’s largest car exporter and the second largest car manufacturer with a line up of alternate fuel technology in vehicles like the CNG and LPG versions of its small car Hyundai Santro. This would be followed with its sedan Accent and small car Hyundai i10.
Currently, only Reva produces electric cars for the Indian market but recently Tata Motors also announced its plans to bring in the Tata Indica Vista electric in collaboration with a Norwegian company to ply it here in India after studying the feasibility.
Hyundai Motor India’s pavilion displayed its futuristic technology in the form of concept vehicles to highlight the superior and advanced technology that the company has pioneered. The company also showcased the sports variant of its luxury sedan Genesis at the auto show.
Related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Unnecessary fire alarm pulls bring a hefty fine, and a few Row houses have felt the effects this year: During fall quarter, several houses, including Sigma Nu and Mars, had alarms pulled, each of which produced a $500 fine from Stanford.
While some alarms are caused by late-night pranksters, the majority of the problems are caused by intoxicated partygoers who activate the alarms. Not only does this cause a fine, but it also breaks up the party as students are forced to evacuate.
“It tends to happen at frat parties or parties at general,” said Natasha Chu ‘10, a kitchen manager at Kairos House.
Fire crews always respond to these alarms, but the fines are not handed out through the office of the University fire marshal. “This is not a policy of the fire marshal; this is a policy of the housing department,” said Marshal Joseph Leung.
Nate Boswell, associate dean of residential education and dean of the Row houses, independent living and Greek life, said the fines are on par with those given for tampering with fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems. He said he was aware of the occurrence of false fire alarm pulls.
“I do not have hard statistics and would hesitate to speculate,” Boswell wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “Anecdotally, alarms go off unnecessarily periodically throughout a given academic year and more often than not are the result of human rather than systems error.”
In order to avoid further problems, houses are taking steps to protect their fire alarms. While some smaller houses do not have to worry about as many guests, fraternities in particular have had to increase their vigilance of the alarms.
Sigma Nu has instituted a policy of guarding its fire alarms during every party. Each resident chooses a shift, and every alarm is guarded for the duration of the event.
“For the entire night . . . we all have shifts, and we have to leave the party to sit there and guard it for 45 minutes,” said Eric Knudson ’12, a Sigma Nu resident.
The policy has been effective, and Sigma Nu has not had an alarm activation during any of its parties this year, The one alarm the fraternity had to deal with was caused instead by a late-night prank. Early in the morning, someone broke into their house and pulled the alarm.
“Personally I think it’s great when Stanford gets into its school spirit with these healthy rivalries — I love that,” Knudson said. “But breaking into a house and pulling an alarm and making fire fighters come here at two o’clock in the morning and making us pay all this money — it’s not in anybody’s interests.”
The story at Mars is similar, with its first fine related to a third-floor alarm that was pulled during an all-campus party in the early morning hours. Its second alarm activation was a break-in through the rear kitchen door.
“A resident in Columbae saw what happened,” said Matt Sprague ’10, financial manager for Mars. “He saw possibly two people dressed in black walk up to the back door, throw it open, pull it and sprint away.”
The resident reported seeing a similar event the night of the Sigma Nu fire alarm activation. Staff members at Mars have taken steps to permanently lock the rear door, as well as enforce stricter policies on the locking of exterior doors and windows.
Particularly at Mars, some were disappointed that there was not a further investigation into the pranks in order to find the person responsible. Some had hoped that fingerprints could be taken to find the culprit and to discover the reason why the alarms were being activated.
“I don’t know what really possesses people to pull it — it’s just really shallow, short reasons . . . [It’s] a brief amount of fun and screws people over in the long run,” said David Geeter II ’11, a Mars resident.
Although the total of $1,000 in fines only accounts for roughly two percent of the Mars budget, the alarm incidents mean the house is spending money that was originally budgeted for other purposes.
Boswell said a review process is in place to help houses whose alarms are pulled, despite those houses’ own prevention efforts.
“The University takes all alarms, legitimate or not, very seriously,” Boswell said. “By default, houses such as Sigma Nu are responsible for regulating access to their building, and if an alarm is pulled, regardless of who pulls it, the house is generally fined.
“If alarms are repeatedly pulled and a culprit cannot be identified or the house has been doing what it is supposed to — keeping doors and windows locked, monitoring guests, etc. — and someone broke in, then the house has an opportunity to file a police report and refute the fine through Student Housing.”
Approved unanimously by the GSC, Farah Abuzeid ‘10 was not confirmed by the Undergraduate Senate as ASSU co-joint chief of staff, launching the graduate council into a discussion on Wednesday of the appointment process. (DYLAN PLOFKER/The Stanford Daily)
The first Graduate Student Council (GSC) meeting of the new year kicked off Wednesday night with discussion of the Undergraduate Senate’s failure to confirm Farah Abuzeid ’10 as ASSU co-joint chief of staff. Abuzeid was approved unanimously by the GSC in November, and last night’s announcement led to a critique of the lack of appointment process literature in the constitution.
Continuing with ASSU updates, Vice President Andy Parker ’11 reported that Old Union room reservations, previously completed via scheduling on door calendars outside rooms, and the ASSU book exchange will now be available online (at assu.stanford.edu/oldunion.) ASSU President David Gobaud ’08, M.S. ’10 said 450 students have used it so far to make 600 reservations.
The meeting concluded with new goals for this year on the GSC agenda in various aspects of student life, such as housing and health care, and listing the necessary accomplishments for each.
Appointments in the Constitution
Discussion arose as Andy Parker ’11 announced that Farah Abuzeid ’10 had not been confirmed as ASSU co-joint chief of staff in the Undergraduate Senate. The Senate voted 8-5 in favor of Abuzeid; however, because she failed to receive two-thirds of the votes, she was not confirmed.
GSC members were surprised at the news as Parker went on to explain that he will retain his duties as co-chief of staff while in his new position.
“I’m sorry, but that sucks,” said Chief Financial Officer Ryan Peacock, fourth-year graduate student in chemical engineering. “For the record.
“We don’t want to discourage participation in the ASSU,” Peacock added. “We want to make it open.”
Concerns were raised about the ambiguity of the constitution regarding cabinet appointments. According to Robert Hennessy, a fifth-year student in electrical engineering, it takes two-thirds of the Undergraduate Senate to remove a person from the cabinet, but there are no details regarding the appointment process.
GSC members considered the possibility of asking the constitutional council to rule on whether an appointee needs two-thirds vote for confirmation or a simple majority. Others just wanted the rule set firmly in preparation for possible future occasions.
“We should either put it in the joint bylaws or propose a constitutional amendment so that appointment laws are clear,” Hennessy said.
The GSC previously confirmed Abuzeid unanimously at its Nov. 18 meeting.
“I think the whole thing is absurd,” said GSC Co-Chair Eric Osborne. “Those who voted no in the Undergraduate Senate didn’t have a reason to do so. A qualified person like Farah [Abuzeid] should at least get the reasons for why they were voted against.”
New Confirmations
The GSC confirmed three people as new Undergraduate Senate chairs. Jen Hawkins’11 was confirmed as co-chair of Undergraduate Health and Wellness.
“The workload was getting a little heavy for the chair,” Parker explained. “We wanted to put a little more emphasis on mental health.”
Gobaud said that Alisha Tolani ‘10, the current chair of health and wellness, will now be focusing on the executive’s ongoing campaign to reduce sexual assault and relationship abuse, while Hawkins will be focusing on mental health.
“We wanted to make sure both issues would receive the attention they deserve,” Gobaud said.
Cisco Riordan ‘10 and Vincent Chen ‘12 were confirmed as co-chairs of marketing and HCI.
“They will be working on online marketing, especially in Web site design, e-fliers and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter,” Gobaud said. “They will work with every member of the team to create electronic marketing material.”
GSC Resolutions for the New Year
The GSC also recommitted themselves to previously proposed goals heading into the new year.
Nanna Notthoff, a second-year graduate student in psychology, said the GSC has compiled all possible goals to pursue and steps needed in order to accomplish them. “We will be figuring out what is most important to accomplish before winter quarter ends and elections come again,” she said.
Committees will be formed to follow the steps proposed to accomplish the goals.
Items on the GSC winter quarter agenda include GSC operations awareness, health care, housing, dining and related issues, parking and transportation, “academics and beyond” and social/programming.
Pertaining to operations, the GSC will seek a humanities representative, present a clear breakdown of GSC funding to the public and clean up the funding Web site.
For health care, the GSC plans to educate students about various Vaden resources. “Grad students don’t know much about health promotion services,” Notthoff said.
In housing and dining, the GSC will be working to improve housing options, lower housing rates and provide cheaper options in places like the Market at Munger.
As for parking and transportation, the GSC will pursue more parking options for off-campus students.
“We want to survey to see if there can be more room for off-campus students to park so that they would be more encouraged to come to this building,” Notthoff said of the Graduate Community Center.
Notthoff also said there will be more social programming for the off-campus community and professional development workshops to advertise jobs for life after Stanford.
Notthoff was optimistic about accomplishing the goals she named. “We used to make a long list of goals,” she said. “But that was really abstract. That’s why we’ve decided to make small steps to accomplish them. That way, we would really make some progress.”
A $2,000 funding request for Graduate Family Events to take place winter quarter was approved, and $400 was also requested to provide incentives for students to take a survey on the graduate budget. The Black Graduate Student Association also received funding allocations for an event.
It was announced that $2,205 was left in general discretionary funds.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently named eight Stanford scientists as members of their newest group of fellows. Stanford’s diverse cohort has contributed to spheres of science ranging from immunology to physics to gender studies.
The AAAS, an international non-profit dedicated to scientific advancement in all fields, will honor Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj, Ann Arvin, Karla Kirkegaard, Peter Sarnow, David Hand Coward, Michael E. Peskin, Cecilia Ridgeway and JoAnne L. Hewett in a ceremony on February 20th in San Diego.
“I am pleased not only for myself, but also to see a number of fellowships being awarded this year in elementary particle physics,” said Peskin, a particle physics and astrophysics professor at SLAC. He attributes his award to work he completed in the 1990s, which improved understanding of weak particle interactions and codified constraints on models of physics at higher energies.
Arvin, Kirkegaard and Sarnow, all professors of microbiology and immunology, have each contributed valuable efforts towards cellular research. Arvin, currently vice Provost and dean of research, has conducted molecular research on several viruses and vaccine immunity that garnered her the attention for the fellowship. Kirkegaard’s research on polio, hepatitis C and RNA viruses enhanced the possibility of preventing these viruses from developing drug resistance. Sarnow also focused on polio and hepatitis C, examining cellular and viral translation.
Hewett, a professor at SLAC along with Peskin, focuses her work on theoretical particle physics. Coward’s help on experiments that illuminated the quark structure of the proton and neutron called him to AAAS attention, even several years after his retirement.
“Coward played an important role in many of the original SLAC experiments,” Peskin said. “His contributions were deep . . . but they did not get much public recognition. I couldn’t tell you how his name came to the top now . . . but it is very appropriate and pleasing to me that he is recognized in this way.”
Ridgeway is the only new Stanford fellow whose work steps outside of the hard science category. A social science professor in the sociology department, Ridgeway’s interests lie in gender and social hierarchies. The AAAS honored her as one of its few fellows in the Section on Social, Economic and Political Sciences for her work in gender inequality and the role of gender in social organizations.
All are new members of the AAAS with varying degrees of connection to the organization, although few truly understand how the fellowship selection process took place.
“Frankly, I don’t know how they make the decisions,” Ridgeway said.
“The process is opaque to me,” added Peskin,
The Section on Biological Sciences saw the most new fellows this year, while Dentistry and Oral Health Sciences gained only one. The AAAS, founded in 1848, lists 94 total fellows from Stanford. The AAAS will award the new Fellows with a certificate and a blue and gold rosette during next month’s ceremony.
The Stanford men’s swimming and diving team has been whizzing past competitors, earning the title as one of the top swim and dive teams in the nation.
Stanford Daily File Photo
The Cardinal has the No. 1 ranked recruiting class, including a total of 16 All-American swimmers. Stanford looks to ratchet up its training in the coming weeks in order to prepare for the more competitive spring season.
“The first part of the season is being more focused on the spring. It’s not about how fast you can swim in the fall but how fast you can swim in the spring,” said junior swimmer David Mosko. “We don’t have to do a whole lot of qualifying in the beginning of the year.”
Many of the major competitions occur in the spring, including the NCAA championship and Pac-10 championship. But while its focus lies forward, the Cardinal already has built up an extremely impressive record so far this year.
“We are right there,” said Coach Skip Kenney. “We are going to battle for the Pac-10 championship and the NCAA championship. We don’t know what kind of teams we’ll be facing.”
In the Stanford swim team’s first meet in September against the University of New Orleans, the Cardinal men swept UNO and took first place in almost every event.
In the beginning of October, the Cardinal hosted its first meet of the 09-10 season against the University of Hawaii. The men’s swim team was stacked with a total of sixteen All-American swimmers and senior Dwight Dumais was victorious at both diving events. At the Pacific Invitational in Stockton in mid-October, Stanford won eight out of the ten events against Air Force, Brigham Young University, Cal and Pacific.
In early November, senior Carmen Stellar took first in the three-meter against Florida and Michigan at the tri-meet in Gainesville, Florida.
The Cardinal dominated the rest of November as Stanford swimmers swept through the Tri-Distance Meet, hosted by Cal. Senior Eugene Godsoe won the 50-meter back (22.58), 100-meter back (48.26) and 200-meter back (1:47.00), giving him a win in each of the backstroke events. La Tourette also had a successful meet as he won the 500-meter freestyle (4:29.48) and 1000-meter freestyle (9:09.14).
In addition, La Tourette recently returned from the Dual in the Pool, a competition where athletes from Britain, Italy and Germany come together and form a team to compete against the USA, hosted in Manchester, England in mid December.
“I was really pleased with my performance. It was actually the last time we wore body suits in a competition,” La Tourette said.
While the team’s performances so far may inspire confidence, the Cardinal swimmers may be facing some unfamiliar faces when they dive back into the pool this spring. Many schools, including Cal, Auburn and USC, bring in freshmen after the fall competitions, leaving many schools like Stanford in suspense about potential spring surprises.
“You can go to some school for [just a few] weeks then go to NCAAs, ” Kenney said about the practice of racing freshmen in their first year. “That doesn’t happen here. You have to be a student athlete, which is the way it should be.”
The Cardinal still holds a few goals in mind to achieve before competition starts.
“We have to work on speed,” Kenney said. “As our speed gets better, our turns should get better.”
Many of the Stanford swimmers have already earned outstanding achievements this past year and they look toward the spring season as an opportunity to boost their records.
La Tourette has won two All-Americans in the 500-meter and 1500-meter freestyle in 2009 and was also the Pac-10 Champion in the 1650-meter freestyle in 2009. In December, La Tourette set an All-American in the 800-meter freestyle while at the Dual in the Pool in England. Mosko holds six All-Americans in the 200-meter butterfly in 2009, 800-meter freestyle relay in 2008, 500-meter freestyle in 2008 and 2009, the 1500-meter freestyle in 2009 and the 1650-meter freestyle in 2008.
This season should be one of success, starting with a meet against Pacific this Saturday, January 9 at 1:00 p.m. at the Avery Aquatic Center.
Julie Chen, who is co-host on “The Early Show” (7 a.m. weekdays on CBS), turns 40 today.
She also hosts the CBS reality series “Big Brother” (Season 12 starts in summer). And she spent a day working at a yogurt shop for the new CBS special “I Get That A Lot” premiering at 7 p.m. today (Jan. 6) on CBS
On tonight’s episode of I Get That A Lot, Julie – who seemed to still be pregnant with her first baby at the time – pretended to be a wacky yogurt shop worker who looks a lot like Julie Chen. Julie (while playing her own lookalike) even imitated herself when one fooled customer said that Julie Chen tends to be robotic when delivering her lines on Big Brother.
Julie Chen hosts the new episode of CBS show I Get That A Lot. “I Get That A Lot” features celebrities pulling pranks on everyday people.
The first episode aired on April Fool’s Day 2009. Watch the latest “I Get That A Lot” with Julie Chen on Wednesday, January 6, at 8 p.m. on CBS.
Julie Chen also hosts the CBS reality series “Big Brother.”
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What do geophysics and space sciences have to do with dog fighting and gang activity? Not much at first glance. Nevertheless, Stanford Solar Center director Deborah Scherrer has become an active part of the campaign against dog fighting and animal abuse in the Bay Area.
The Stanford Solar Center recently formed an unusual alliance with Knock Out Dog Fighting (KODF), a program that works with juvenile detention facilities, alternative schools, community centers, law enforcement and gang prevention groups to stop animal cruelty and abuse by engaging at-risk youth in alternative activities. KODF was created out of the pit bull advocacy group For Pits’ Sake (FPS), a non-profit organization founded in 1997 by Bay Area local Kris Crawford.
The most recent addition to KODF’s repertoire of programs is Fun Science, run by Scherrer, a longtime pit bull owner and rescuer.
Scherrer and Crawford began collaborating on Fun Science in June of 2009 and it has since become an integral component of KODF. The program includes a number of hands-on activities intended to educate children about scientific processes in an engaging and positive way. Activities have included bottle rockets, dry ice and sublimation and to-scale models of the solar system.
According to Scherrer, one of the largest problems with the education of at-risk youth has little to do with the students’ learning abilities. Rather, in an educational system dominated by lectures and presentations, material is rarely presented in an engaging or motivational way.
“Many of the kids we’ve worked with are very bright. They’ll come up to me and tell me that they’ve heard of string theory, alternate universes and whatnot. It’s incredible,” Scherrer said.
In December, KODF was featured as part of the Stanford Solar Center’s exhibit at the 2009 American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, in the Education and Public Outreach section. Attendance was over 16,000 and Scherrer said she feels the project was very well received.
“We help [these kids] learn to make decisions based on discovery, analysis and understanding,” Scherrer said. “These are exactly the skills needed for them to move from inappropriate, emotion-driven behavior toward better, more productive choices.”
