This pair of stackable cast stone planters has six tiers so you can use all six or remove one or two to achieve your desired height. Unusual in form and style, they would be the perfect accompaniment to a Tudor or Gothic Revival home or garden. Please note that they are hollow inside down to the bottom, so you can leave them as is and fill with soil or we can have a bottom poured for you for a modest up-charge. In lovely condition, with some lichen and greening, they have a few scrapes to some corners incurred in shipping, but these will weather over in no time. They are durable in all climates and very thick-walled, so no worries about leaving these outside over winter. Please note that each section (excluding the base) measures 8 inches high and the hexagonal base is 22 inches in diameter, with the overall height at 44 inches. We also have another complimentary pair that is slightly larger but one tier shorter (CPL 1131 B).
We are thrilled to announce that we will once again be throwing a kids' cardio dance party at The Northshore Mall Annual Boo Bash event on Thursday, October 26th!
The Boo Bash is a great family event where your costumed kids can safely enjoy treats, Halloween-themed crafts, costume characters, a costume parade, a professional Halloween-themed photo area and of course, AN EB CARDIO DANCE PARTY!
Oh my gosh, we have the same anniversary!!! I just got married May 9th as well :D You look absolutely stunning in these pictures. Congratulations!
Congrats! I love the dress you wore to the rehearsal dinner! And your wedding looked absolutely beautiful. Stunning pictures. Happy Anniversary!
Listen, I don’t do numbers. As you may have read by now, my brother and I are a good balance, like yin and yang. I like colors and flowers. He likes numbers and metrics. So when it comes to tools to help benchmark your journey to FI, I don’t tend to get them fully. But what keeps me motivated on my journey? There has to be little wins because the road can be long and it is very easy to fall off the bandwagon of freedom.
My husband and I opened a Vanguard account a few months ago. We sold our first home and had a lump sum of money we were not sure what to do with. This is when I asked my brother his suggestions and the rest is history. They say to pretend you don’t have the money in the account and to just “forget” about it. I am not good at forgetting. I like to look at the account every few days and watch it grow.
It’s like raising a child and its name is Van. Van is small at first and needs lots of attention, but does not contribute a whole lot. You research schools and decide which is best for your family; the account. Then Van goes to that school, gets a report card, and a good student reward 4 times each year; dividends. You can decide if you teach Van to put that money back into his schooling or if he wants to use it for a new toy. As Van grows you start noticing his rewards are larger and he is contributing to the family more and more.
Sometimes Van surprises you, really does great in school and grows a lot. These times can be exciting and you really get to see him grow. Sometimes Van gets in a fight and loses. He might disappoint his parents, but in the end you still love him. You have to stick with it, because you know that Van will rebound and grow from his low points.
Then someday, Van is big enough that he can take care of his parents on his own. All their hard work paid off. All the sacrifices they made no longer seem so big. Van now is able to give back to his parents and pay them back for their sacrifices.
Like raising a child, investing for early retirement can be hard. It's a lot of work and is not always cut and dry. It takes time and commitment, but the growth as a family you receive in return will be worth it in the end.
Whether you have a sticky note on your desk with your 2080 number or you picture a little baby named Van, perception can make all the difference on your FI journey.
Area code 701 is an area code used to address long distance calls to and within the state of North Dakota in the North American Numbering Plan. 701 was one of the original area codes created by AT&T in 1947 and still refers to the entire state.
Area code 701 is divided between the Bismarck LATA and the Fargo-Brainerd LATA; it is the only area code in the North American system to be broken into two LATAs.
The code is somewhat over half full, with about 500 of the about 800 theoretically possible exchanges in use; however the two-LATA structure of the area code eliminates from 701 the use of many exchanges from northern Minnesota's area code 218. As a result, discussions are underway for a potential split or overlay of North Dakota between area code 701 and a new area code sometime in 2010 or 2011.
The drug policy of the United States is currently well represented by the declaration of a War on Drugs by President Richard Nixon in June 1971. The "war" has been continued by every one of his successors to date. Indeed, drug policy has changed little in this time.[1] President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1973 to focus the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act (passed by the United States Congress in 1970). In May 2009 the Obama Administration indicated that it would not use the term "War on Drugs," as it believed that it was counter-productive and was contrary to their policy favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce drug use.[2]
In addition to prison or jail, federal law provides for the deportation of many non-citizens convicted of drug offenses.[3] Federal and state policies also impose collateral consequences on those convicted of drug offenses, such as denial of public benefits or licenses, that are not applicable to those convicted of other types of crime.[4] These policies have since been linked to the exceptional incarceration rate in the United States.[5] U.S. population grew by about +25% from 1980 to 2000. In that same 20 year time period, U.S. prison population tripled. Among the prisoners made the drug offenders up the same percentage of State prisoners in both 1997 and 2004 (21%). The percentage of Federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses declined from 63% in 1997 to 55% in 2004.[6]
Drug use has increased in all categories since prohibition[7] except that opium use is at a fraction of its peak level. The big decline in use of opium started already after the Harrison Act of 1914.[8] Use of heroin peaked between 1969 and 1971, cocaine between 1987 and 1989 and marijuana between 1978 and 1979.[9]
By 1937, the use of marijuana, once an activity seemingly limited to Mexican immigrants and jazz musicians,[10] has become one undertaken by up to 50% of the youth of the United States.[7] The big growth in use of marijuana happened however in the 1960s, well before the start of the war on drugs in 1971. President Richard Nixon stated that the increased drug use and drug related crime in the decade before 1971 was the cause for the war on drugs.
Between 1972 and 1988 the use of cocaine increased more than fivefold.[11] The usage patterns of the current two most prevalent drugs, amphetamines and ecstasy, have shown similar gains.[7]
A basic economic problem of unintended consequences: Large profits and markups associated with the very illegality of illicit drugs, helps fuel the business which the "war on drugs" was constructed to stop. In this way, the war on drugs assists illicit drug trade. UK Govt report
US drug policy, however, successful in reducing the amount of marijuana being illegally imported into the United States. Unintended consequences of the War on Drugs include increased potency and growth of marijuana crops within the United States, and an increase in cocaine smuggling which is easier to move and yields a higher profit margin.
Despite the Reagan administration's high-profile public pronouncements, secretly, many senior officials of the Reagan administration illegally trained and armed the Nicaraguan Contras, which they funded by the shipment of large quantities of cocaine into the United States using U.S. government aircraft and U.S. military facilities.[12][13] Funding for the Contras was also obtained through the illegal sale of weaponry to Iran.[14][15] When this practice was discovered and condemned in the media, it was referred to as the Iran-Contra affair.
Regardless of public opinion, marijuana could be the single most targeted drug in the drug war. It constitutes almost half of all drug arrests, and between 1990–2002, out of the overall drug arrests, 82% of the increase was for marijuana. Less than 1% of all state prison inmates are serving time for personal marijuana possession, not sale.[16]
As of 2006, marijuana has become the United States of America's biggest cash crop in terms of revenues.[17] Because of scarcity caused by illegality, the street price of marijuana has reached a point where it is now "worth its weight in gold".
In the first-ever government study of its policy on drugs, the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs published its findings in 2001. The NRC Committee found that existing studies on efforts to address drug usage and smuggling, from U.S. military operations to eradicate coca fields in Colombia, to domestic drug treatment centers, have all been inconclusive, if the programs have been evaluated at all: "The existing drug-use monitoring systems are strikingly inadequate to support the full range of policy decisions that the nation must make.... It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether and to what extent it is having the desired effect."[19] The study, though not ignored by the press, has been ignored by top-level policymakers, leading Committee Chair Charles Manski to conclude, as one observer notes, that "the drug war has no interest in its own results."[20] Such apathy toward drug policy has continued despite wide support for reform by the economics profession. A meta analysis of surveys conducted from a sample of professional economists, including Nobel laureates, concluded that, "The general consensus that does exist among drug policy researchers and economists as a whole could be characterized as anti-prohibition, but only timidly pro-decriminalization and even less so about the prospects of legalization." Moreover, most economists who publish judgments on the issue favor liberalization.[21]
1914: The first recorded instance of the United States enacting a ban on the domestic distribution of drugs is the Harrison Narcotic Act[23] of 1914. This act was presented and passed as a method of regulating the production and distribution of opiate-containing substances under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, but a section of the act was later interpreted by law enforcement officials for the purpose of prosecuting doctors who prescribe opiates to addicts.
1925: United States supported regulation of cannabis as a drug in the International Opium Convention.[24] and by the mid 1930s all member states had some regulation of cannabis.
1935 President Roosevelt hails the International Opium Convention and application of it in US. law and other anti-drug laws in a radio message to the nation.[25]
1969: Psychiatrist Dr. Robert DuPont conducts urinalysis of everyone entering the D.C. jail system in August 1969. He finds 44% test positive for heroin[26] and start the first methadone treatment program in the Department of Corrections in September 1969 for heroin addicts.[9]
May: Congressmen Robert Steele (R-CT) and Morgan Murphy (D-IL) release an explosive report on the growing heroin epidemic among U.S. servicemen in Vietnam.[26]
Some Congressmen and police who prosecuted the War on Drugs now believe it caused a large increase in the United States incarceration rate.[27][28] See also: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
June 17: Nixon declares war on drugs.[26] He characterized the abuse of illicit substances as "public enemy number one in the United States". Under Nixon, the U.S. Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This legislation is the foundation on which the modern drug war exists. Responsibility for enforcement of this new law was given to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and then in 1973 to the newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration. During the Nixon era, for the only time in the history of the war on drugs, the majority of funding goes towards treatment, rather than law enforcement.[26]
Later in the month the U.S. military announces they will begin urinalysis of all returning servicemen. The program goes into effect in September and the results are favorable: "only" 4.5% of the soldiers test positive for heroin.[26]
1972, March 22: The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommends legalizing possession and sales of small amounts of marijuana. Nixon and the Congress ignores the suggestion[29]
1974: A Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. James O. Eastland on The Marihuana-hashish epidemic and its impact on United States security invited 21 scientists of the first rank from seven different countries to testify, including Gabriel G. Nahas and Nils Bejerot. The testimony of these experts showed that the evidence accumulated by scientific researchers on marijuana had turned dramatically against this drug.[30][31]
1979: Illegal drug use in the U.S. peaks when 25 million of Americans used an illegal drug within the 30 days prior to the annual survey.[32]
2001: The National Research Council Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs is published. The study reveals that the government has not sufficiently studied its own drug policy, which it calls "unconscionable".[19][20] (see more under Efficacy of the War on Drugs)
2008 Several reports state the benefits of drug courts compared with traditional courts. Using retrospective data, researchers in several studies found that drug courts reduced recidivism among program participants in contrast to comparable probationers between 12% to 40%. Re-arrests were lower five years or more later. The total cost per participant was also much lower.[33] Office of National Drug Control Policy reports that the Actual youth drug use, as measured as the percent reporting past month use has declined from 19,4% to 14,8% among middle and high school students between 2001 and 2007.[34]
2009 Gil Kerlikowske, the current Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, signaled that the Obama Administration would not use the term "War on Drugs," as he claims it is counter-productive and is contrary to the policy favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce drug use.[2]"Being smart about drugs means working to treat people who go to jail with a drug problem so when they get out and return to the communities you protect, you will be less likely to re-arrest them"[35]
^ Marihuana-hashish epidemic and its impact on United States security: hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-third Congress, second session [-Ninety-fourth Congress, first session] .. (1974)
Hidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from March 2009 | Articles with unsourced statements from May 2008 | Articles with unsourced statements from October 2009
Human Rights Watch - United States - Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs
National Institute of Justice:Do Drug Courts Work? Findings From Drug Court Research,May 12, 2008 - Do Drug Courts Work? Findings From Drug Court Research | National Institute of Justice
Battlegrounds on the Drug Policy War, Institute For Behavior and Health - Institute For Behavior and Health
Categories: Publications established in 1989 | British film magazines | Bauer Group (UK) | Monthly magazines
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain, consistently outselling its nearest market rival Total Film and is also published in Australia, Turkey and Russia. Empire organises the annual Empire Awards which were sponsored by Sony Ericsson until 2009 and are now sponsored by Jameson[1]. The awards are voted for by readers of the magazine.
In common with most British film magazines, Empire is populist in both approach and coverage unlike less irreverent and more 'serious' magazines such as Sight and Sound. It reviews both mainstream films and art films, but feature articles concentrate on the former.
As well as film news, previews and reviews, Empire has some unique regular features. Each issue (with the exception of issues 108 - 113) features a Classic Scene, a transcript from a notable film scene. The first such classic scene to be featured was the "I could have been a contender" scene from On the Waterfront.
The regular Top 10 feature lists Empire's choice of the top ten examples of something film-related. For example 10 Best Chase Scenes or 10 Best Movie Gags in The Simpsons. Readers are encouraged to write in if they disagree with the choices made.
The At Home section covers DVD news and releases; Empire's editors consider this section to be of sufficient quality to term it a magazine in itself, which is also relevant to the growth and importance of the DVD market, where sales can often outstrip that of box-office.
Pint of Milk presents celebrities' answers to silly or unusual questions, including the question "How much is a pint of milk?" This is intended as a guide to the Chosen Celebrity's contact with reality, and as such can be more informative than a direct interview, often reporting some surprising responses.
Kim Newman's DVD Dungeon is a regular feature in the At Home section, in which critic Kim Newman reviews the most obscure releases, mostly low budget horror movies.
Celebrity Mastermind is another regular in which a celebrity is given questions about the films they were in or they directed. Celebrities range from Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Lee (who are at the top of the scoreboard) to John Carpenter (who is at the bottom of the scoreboard).
A regular feature since issue 167, the masterpiece feature is a two page essay on a film selected by Empire in the At Home section. The selection of the films seem to be quite random and follow no specific pattern. Only a few issues since the first masterpiece feature have not featured one - 169, 179, 196, 197, 198 and 246.
The latest list was selected in September 2008 by over 10,000 Empire readers, 150 film makers and 50 film critics. Here are the top 30 films chosen:
The previous poll, done by Empire readers solely, was a little different. It was done in March 2006 and had this top 30:
In June 2005, a poll of 10,000 readers was asked to name the greatest film director of all time. In a list of twenty directors, Steven Spielberg was granted the honour of greatest director, while the total list was:
Colin Kennedy (162 - 209) (Will Lawrence acted as editor for 12 issues while Colin Kennedy was absent)
Mark Dinning (210 - present. Dinning was formerly Associate Editor on the magazine leaving to take up the position of Editor of Total Film for a period, he then returned to take up the same role for Empire)