text: Certainly what is loud and clear is that in his 4 years practicing as a dictator, artifice has become his asset.
  What of our country, as it surfs its way to cultural genocide, bankcruptcy, economic, social and political isolation ?
  No, all he is concerned about is the boast that he has treated the the church and the chiefs with contumely and has silenced them;- and that it really really bothers him that the Fiji Times never addressed him as Prime Minister, and thats why HE is glad they are going.
  And finally, did anyone else notice that whatever this man said to the photo jounalist was always panegyric to himself ?
  No mention of course how he and his cronies are robbing the country blind? Or of the $180K back pay he paid himself - or how he pardoned his murderous brother in law?
  One positive however that no amount of Smith-Johns spin could overcome was that he came across as the arrogant mean spirited no school dickhead he really is.
  Excuse moi! Would you guys pls not compare the pig with a toad! Toads are actually clean creatures, have you seen how they'll take any opportunity to frolic in little pools of water? The pig, true to his dirty nature, likes to roll in mud!
  He, voreqauri is all the definition of a pathological liar.....yeah he says it like a liar...that he doesn't trust the people, so what the fuck is he doing talking on behalf of the very people he doesn't trust.
  
  The Cleveland Clinic, which is ranked among the top four U.S. hospitals, is making layoffs and cutting its budget more than $100 million as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the Daily Caller has learned.
  “The cuts for 2014, about half of those are related to the Affordable Care Act…We anticipate a reduction in workforce” Cleveland Clinic executive director of communications Eileen Sheil said in an interview with TheDC.
  “We offered early retirement to 3,000 employees,” Sheil said, but noted that the early retirement option recently offered to staff was “voluntary” for eligible employees.
  “The $330 million cut is not all layoffs,” Sheil said, noting that the Clinic is also cutting operating-room expenses and paying less to vendors.
  “We’re taking money out of vendors, renegotiating contracts, looking at where we can reduce duplications, improve supply chain efficiencies…how we can scale back and use less. How we can take costs out of our operating rooms,” Sheil said.
  
  It's that time of year again: Sugar Shack season is upon us! We like the yearly tradition of going to get our sugar fix, it's the ultimate Canadian spring activity. I obviously wore plaid because there is no better time to wear it than during a rustic activity in the bush. Rubber boots are also a great call because springtime is muddy out in the country and you want to be prepared. It was actually quite nice the day we went but I wore a quilted vest over my shirt because the weather can change very fast this time of year and I didn't want to get cold. The mustard scarf, burlap headband and fleur-de-lys earrings were a nod to the quintessentially Canadian activity. I grabbed a trusty Longchamp tote to keep the necessities on hand and to have somewhere to stash all the maple goodies!
  
  We accept Cash, Checks, and Credit Cards as payment. Please note that if you will be paying by check it must be received 14 days prior to arrival to allow time to clear the bank.
  Rest, Relax, and Have Fun while you’re here! Maybe check out the view from the new Zip Line while you go flying over Adventure Zone.
  Smoking is not permitted in the cottages. You may smoke outside or on the porch. Ash trays have been provided for your convenience.
  Unless otherwise agreed upon in advance while scheduling your stay, Check In Time is 2pm and Check Out is 11am. Please call in advance if other arrangements are necessary.
  When checking out, we asks that guests leave the property in clean and neat condition, remembering to turn off all electronics and lock the doors.
  
  "Kids black out curtains can create a good environment to kids. The bears patterns are very cute and color is bright, which can may give kids good moods. The print technology is eco-friendly that is good for kids’ health."
  
  Winemakers from Jaroslavice municipality together with the Quaiss family from the 19th century invite you to Wine Cellars Opening, celebration of Saint Donatus Day. Organized in winecellars around Jaroslavice, municipality at the border with Austria and surrounded by vineyards, the event offers you degustation of selected local wines.
  
  Drawn! had a link a couple of days ago pointing visitors toÂ “Bill Watterson’s Rarest” – a site dedicated to chronicling artwork produced by Bill before and during the Calvin and Hobbes years. They also point to another site Calvin & Hobbes: Magic on Paper which is much of the same, perhaps even more detailed.Â If you’re a Calvin and Hobbes fan, these are great sites to check out.
  Bill did quite a bit of drawings that are out in the wild if you’ve got some cash (lots) and are lucky to pick out the genuine article.Â The Magic on Paper site has a list (with images) of known fakes out there (scroll to bottom).Â I remember seeing one just last spring on eBay. I was tempted to bid on it, but when the seller couldn’t produce proof of authenticity, I let it go. Unfortunately someone else didn’t and it sold for over $900. Ouch.
  Speaking of eBay and Calvin and Hobbes stuff, I just looked to see if there were any of the fakes available, and came across this “It’s a Magic World” book that is purported to be a genuinely autographed copy.Â Nobody has bid (starting bid is $375) and it closes tomorrow at noon.Â Buyer beware. That’s for sure.
  My frustration over Wattersonâ??s licensing battles with Universal Press have been renewed. Never have I witnessed such egocentrism on the part of a cartoonist. Quite simply, he should have read his contract carefully before he signed it.
  I developed a strip with Universal Press shortly after the aforementioned dispute took place. They were nice enough to fly me to Kansas City to show me around and meet their staff. As I toured the offices, the frustration and bewilderment was palpable. It was apparent that I was stepping through a still smoldering battlefield. I felt bad for them.
  If Watterson had no intention of having his characters licensed, he shouldâ??ve went the self-syndication route. Perhaps then he wouldâ??ve had a better appreciation of all the things syndicates do for cartoonists.
  I do have to commend Universal Press for not grinding Watterson into a legal pulp. The battle went on for years and it appears they did everything they could to keep a good relationship going. That takes character and integrity.
  Are you the same Mark Buford of “Meatloaf Night”? Whatever happened to that strip? I used to read it on comics.com
  To Charles: Yes, thatâ??s me. â??Meatloafâ? lasted a few years, and was a rollicking good time, but ultimately did not stay hot enough to keep a pulse. I now sell panel gags and illustrations to magazines and alternative weeklies.
  To Alan: Good point. I suppose if Universal had made things unpleasant for Watterson we wouldâ??ve missed out on years of wonderful work.
  Although I personally would’ve licensed the Hell out of a strip like C&H, I fully respect and support the rights of creators to control their creations and what is done with them. Watterson took an ethical stand in this regard and for whatever reasons he had not to license his work, it is fully his right to do so.
  Actually, based on the standard syndicate contract (which is the one he signed), it was UPS’s right to license the hell out of it however they wanted. They only needed to give Watterson his 50% – they didn’t need his approval, input or anything else, and he had no legal way of stopping them. The only thing he could do was refuse to draw the strip, which would have killed it.
  But as I understand it, he asked them not to, and they agreed because the strip was so popular, which is infinitely generous on their part, as they had no legal reason not to and lost millions, I’m told.
  Then I read his rationale for not licensing in an interview, and I lost all respect for his side of the argument. Basically it’s his belief that the characters exist in comic strip form and to put them even on a mug or a t-shirt (or even a calendar – there was only one) was to fundamentally change their nature such that they were no longer what he had intended. Now, I can see that reasoning for animation or toys or illogical products like bubblebath and toothpaste, but I don’t see how taking an image from the strip and putting it on a T-shirt is fundamentally changing anything. How is it different from putting it on the cover or frontspiece of a book?
  I’ll agree that his position was rather extreme, but perhaps to keep any control over the licensing he had to draw a line at nothing, otherwise he’d risk the slippery slope of only calendars this year, then next year it was calendars plus t-shirts. With each year’s success and public demand for products it would be very difficult for him to have any control and harder to keep the syndicate from over-riding him. Just speculation on my part.
  Back in the day( pre 1995 or so) the only way to get a syndication deal was to sign these antiquated all rights grabbing boiler plate contracts. Most cartoonists had to sign away their own copyright to the syndicates in order to get published. The only way to fight this abominable practice was to either wait out the 20 years and jump to a new syndicate while requiring ownership of your creation or hope that your strip is a blockbuster and demand input on how your creation is marketed. The only leverage the creator had was to stop the feature altogether. Even then the syndicates could hire a salaried ghost and still produce the feature and cut out the creator altogether.
  Say what you will about Watterson’s personality and unfriendliness to his peers and fans but in this instance he was a risk taker and started the change in how syndicates interacted with creators.
  Well, the fact that the syndicate didn’t do ANYTHING when they could legally have makes me think that they would have stopped at whatever he wanted. After all, they stopped at basically zero.
  And as a result he ended up with NO control over the licensing because it invited every bootlegger and his sister to fill the void and make millions off of unofficial C&H merchandise. If he thought designing a T-shirt himself would bastardize his creation, I can’t imagine he thought someone else doing it (and not giving him any money for it) was such a great idea. But that’s what happened. He inadvertantly created a cottage industry in pirated C&H crap, cheating himself and the syndicate out of a ton of money and cheating his fans out of quality-controlled and well-executed merchandise.
  Does creators own the copyright these days? I notice in comic-strips these days that the copyright line reads as a variation of “(C)2006 Name of cartoonist, distributed by A Syndicate”. Or is the copyright split?
  I think some strips, like “Garfield”, is controlled entirely by creator (or Paws, Inc.), since I never see Universal Press’s name in any Garfield material except the strips themselves (older merchandise had United Features’ name, though).
  My understanding is now-a-days the creator owns the feature outright (though I think there are stipulations that say if the contracts gets broken before its natural sunset, the creator can’t use the feature elsewhere). When you see copyright assigned to the syndicate, it usually means the strip is old and the syndicate has never relinquished the rights back to the creator OR the creator had a really bad lawyer going into the contract.
  Dave…almost every pop culture phenom will have it’s bootleg element…look at how the simpsons were ripped off and they were licensed to the hilt. Whenever any bootleg operations were discovered Universal shut them down.
  The bottom line is, Watterson didn’t want to license his creation and as a fellow creator who believes that the last say about these things should lie with the guy who created it I respect that and don’t hold it against him. Sounds like some people are very upset that they never got a chance to wear a Calvin shirt or hug a stuffed Hobbes doll. Tough , life sucks…get a helmet.
  I wasn’t very clear on that. I meant to say that whenever any bootleg Calvin merchandise was discovered, Universal was very quick to shut them down. Daves claim that bootleg Calvin merchandise made “millions” is a bit of an exagerration. More like “hundreds”…
  I respectfully disagree. When combined with spicy mustard and romaine lettuce, the roast beef will exude a zestiness that can do nothing but augment…oops, I’m sorry. I thought I was logged onto “The Daily Sandwich.”
  Well, that’s a very good point about the Simpsons. But, while Universal may have shut down what C&H it found, I’m sure it only “found” the tip of the iceberg. And I doubt adding together all the C&H bootleg stuff that was sold all over the world over all the years that it was hot enough to bootleg, that it amounted to “hundreds” of dollars. That’s just silly. Seeing as how Universal themselves estimate that they lost at least $300 million on plush toys alone, I’m guessing all those bootleggers made at least $1 million combined. Or, maybe just a couple hundred bucks. You could be right.
  And while I agree that the creator should have the right to control his own creation (as a fellow creator myself) and I respect Watterson’s choice not to license C&H, I guess I just don’t respect his reasoning not to. It sounds like he could have controlled the output of licensing even though he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. The syndicate wasn’t going to do anything he didn’t want to do – period.
  I guess what I don’t respect is over-intellectualizing commercial art and making it into something it’s not. To say that putting an image of Calvin & Hobbes on a T-shirt makes it no longer a comic strip is overthinking it to the extreme. After all, people DID put it on T-shirts, and it actually DIDN’T stop being a comic strip, so he was effectively proven wrong anyway. Whatever, just a bete noir, I guess. I survived without a T-shirt because I wouldn’t on principle buy any bootlegged stuf (“Get a helmet”? Is that your little thing that you say? I’m guessing you’re from somehwere in between California and New York).
  And as far as copyright goes, it’s basically meaningless. The contract states that the creator and the syndicate share the rights 50/50. As long as one of them is listed in the copyright line, it’s copyrighted. What it says in the contract means more than what it says in the copyright line.
  I agree with Dave. Watterson’s specious reasoning concerning merchandising spawned a bootlegging ogre bigger than any dinasaur he ever inked. Sure, there’s bootlegging involved with any sucsessful character, but it certainly would’ve been diluted quite a bit with the introduction of legal merchandising. Universal had to play watchdog and shut down illegal bootlegging operations? Great. How much wasted time and money did that take?
  I have to disagree with the theory that Watterson was somehow to blame for the bootlegging. True, his refusal to license the characters spawned more illegal stuff than probably would have otherwise existed … but that doesn’t mean he should have comprimised his principles to prevent others from doing the wrong thing.
  Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit that in the end the strip remained pure. Calvin & Hobbes ended before it became stale and unfunny, and it never suffered the over-merchandising death that other strips have.
  C&H was an extremely lucrative in those short 10 years even without merchandising … They may have MISSED OUT on millions … but they didn’t LOSE anything.
  I’m not saying he should have done it only to stop bootleggers. Based on interviews I’ve read he didn’t want to license it because he felt it would be ruined even if it were licensed to death. All I was saying was that other people made relatively innocuous merchandise like t-shirts and mugs and posters (which were hack jobs) and the strip wasn’t destroyed and the chraracters didn’t die. That should have shown him that it was possible to do some classy stuff with restraint, and not compromise the integrity of the strip. That’s all. I respect his integrity, and I repect Universal Press for letting him make the call, because I think creators should have contorl of their creations. And I think you’re right that he stopped at the right time, and it definitely benefitted from not being over-merchandized. But it WAS merchandized, just not by him. All I’m saying is that if he had allowed SOME merchandizing it would have given the world GOOD t-shirts or posters, would have smoothed things over with the syndicate and taken money out of the hands of scummy bootleggers. I respect his integrity, but I don’t think his total freeze-out had a net positive result in the world.
  Rather than shoot from the hip, it might be beneficial to spend a few moments reading why Watterson refused to commercialize.
  Anyone know what the Watterson signed and numbered Calvin and Hobbes lithograph (numbered 1 – 1000) that was sent to newspapers might be worth?
  
  It is already known for a long time that the electric grid can be used for the transmission of signals. The signal frequency must be higher than the mains frequency (50Hz), so that the mains have sufficient impedance for it and lower injection current is needed. For the transmission over short distances (within a house or apartment) the suitable frequency of about 1 to 25kHz. In our case, the transmitter has frequency about 5kHz, which is 100x more than the power line and can therefore be easily separated by highpass filter. The oscillator consists of an integrated circuit 555 and power amplifier with two transistors, which are protected by diodes against the voltage surges. The output is connected to the phase voltage via the capacitor with the capacity about 220n to 470n, which must be rated for sufficient voltage, ie 250V AC, Class X2. The transmitter can be powered from battery or the AC/DC adapter, or through simple supply using capacitor reactance to reduce the voltage. The transmitter is controlled either by switching its power supply or by logical 1 to the 4. pin of 555.
  The remote control over power line receiver has highpass filter at the input. This separates the signal with a small amplitude from the much larger mains voltage. The transistor is permanently open via the base resistance 220k. This transistor is shorting the current of the triac gate and triac is thus closed. When receiving a signal the transistor is closing for some part of the signal period and thus via two resistors 820R the capacitor 470u is charged and triac opens. The triac operates in II. a III. quadrants. Directly to the triac can be connected lamp or another load with 4A maximal current. The receiver is powered directly from the mains via 330n capacitor. It has also a 330k discharging resistor and 470R resistor, which limits the current peak at power on.
  The signal of the remote control over power line transmitter must not reach out of an apartment or house, but it is usually not necessary to use any filters, as the coil of electricity meter attenuates the higher frequencies significantly. The problem can mean the classic fluorescent lamps (not talking about compact saving ones) as they have power factor capacitor (if they have one :-)). This capacitor could absorb signal. The simplest solution is to disconnect it (it only reduces current flowing, but not the power, for which you pay). Another solution is to connect a serial RF chokes.
  Warning - the whole transmitter and receiver are electrically connected to the network, and hence it is necessary to treat them accordingly. To ensure safety, use suitable fuses in power inputs. Everything you build at your own risk. For your possible injury or harm I do not take any responsibility.
  
  This week is the final episode of 2017 and the final episode of Season 1. We take a look at some of the folklore behind Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas and specifically, his band of little helpers, who have a much darker history than the elves of today might let on.
  Dating back to 1823, the American Christmas Elf is an immediately recognisable character in modern, Anglo-American Christmas traditions. They are a short, enthusiastic little helper, who make toys, take care of the Reindeer and check in on children’s behaviour. The Christmas elf carries very little threat and aligns with the benevolent nature of Santa Claus himself.
  In a more distant past, tangled among European Folklore where the Elves roots are firmly buried in the frozen winter ground, their origins are far from friendly little cherubs making wooden trains, however.
  Elves have a long tradition in Folklore dating back over a thousand years. Largely independent of Christmas, it wasn’t until 1823, with the publication of the classic Christmas poem, attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, “A visit from St. Nicholas” more commonly known today as “The night before Christmas” that the mention of Elves in relation to Christmas and the Anglo-American version of the Santa Claus figure was born. In the poem, Santa Claus himself is actually mentioned as a “jolly old elf”.
  In 1857, this was extended when Harper’s Weekly, an American political publication printed a poem called “The wonders of Santa Claus” that referred to his helpers as elves who would make toys and fill the stockings of children on Christmas Eve night. Disney released a short film in 1932 called Santa’s Workshop that had the elves helping out prepping Santa for his journey delivering presents as well as doing tasks around the workshop.This is. more or less, a depiction of Santa’s Elves that still holds true today and has gone mostly unchanged in popular media and entertainment for almost a hundred years.
  The concept of “Santa’s little helper” is not entirely modern, however, and long before he was depicted as a rosy-cheeked man full of cheer, with a white beard and red costume, Santa had the help of a different kind.
  Prior to the insertion of Christianity, the tradition of a gift-bringer during Winter festivals was widespread throughout Europe. In Germanic Paganism, the midwinter festival of Yule had Wodan, or Odin, the leader of the wild hunt, a ghostly visage of a supernatural horde of huntsmen depicted in Folk Mythologies throughout Northern Europe that would tear across the land on midwinter nights.
  Odin was often depicted as an old man, wearing a cloak. He had only one eye and a long white beard. He lead the hunt on a white, eight-legged horse named Sleipnir and wielded Gungnir, a legendary mythological spear. He was feared and loved in folklore. The wild hunt was said to bring raucous scenes to villages and as he rode past in the sky on Sleipnir, Odin would leave gifts of fruit and sweets in children’s boots along with weapons for the adult men.
  There are some scholars who claim Odin was the original inception of the gift bringing figure we have today, though it is debated, alongside the theory that Sleipnir shows some parallels with Santas sleigh or perhaps the magical reindeer. Though again, these links are debated. The history itself is mired in folklore and varies so much that making any solid links between the two would be a very difficult task.
  Although having some earlier presence in Europe, it wasn’t until later, after the widespread introduction of Catholicism, that a more prominent version of the modern Santa Claus emerged throughout Europe and took the primary position for a midwinter festival. Among several other things, Saint Nicholas was the patron saint of Children and was celebrated on St Nicholas’ Day, the 6th of December. Gifts were given in celebration and thanks for the miracles he had worked throughout his life, such as bringing back from the dead three children who had been murdered by a butcher and saving a young family of child prostitutes. He was celebrated for his benevolence and good cheer and in recognition of his miracles and status as a protector. After the Protestant Reformation, Christmas Day was worked into the annual calendar to bring the midwinter festival to focus more on the birth of Jesus, however, the traditions of Saint Nicholas Day remained and many of the traditions merged with Christmas Day and Saint Nicholas as a gift-bringer was one such tradition that shifted to the newer holiday, though his life as a saint was diminished to a sideline, in favour of the nativity tale.
  Saint Nicholas, much like Santa Claus today, did not work alone. Just like the Santa Claus figure of today, he too judged the behaviour of children and gifted to them accordingly, and just like with the elves today, he too had a band of helpers. Throughout Europe, there are folk tales of several figures who helped him to judge whether or not children had been good or bad. Some are widely known, whilst others are regional variations and some are more forgiving than others, though they all hold a similar role, that of the judge and jury and as a child in 17th Century Europe, you’d best hope you have behaved well.
  First appearing in Germany during the 17th Century, Knecht Ruprecht, or “Farmhand Rupert” is one of Saint Nicholas’ most widely known helpers. In some countries, he was working alone as both benefactor and punisher, whilst in others, he acted as an assistant to Saint Nicholas, doling out punishment to naughty children.
  He was depicted as an old man who walked with a limp. He wore tatty and torn robes of black or dark brown and carried a bag of ashes and a long wooden staff. He would approach parents to ask if their children had been good or not, often asking if they had been praying. If the children had been good and had diligently prayed throughout the year, he would give them gifts of fruits, nuts and gingerbread, however, if the children had neglected their religious duties, he would beat them with the bag of ashes. In some stories, he gave them gifts of coal, sticks or stones and in Austria, there were tales that he would take the worst offenders into the darkness of the winter woods and beat them with Birch sticks before stuffing them into a hessian sack and tossing them into the river, never to be seen again.
  In Southern Germany, the character of belsnickel is a common associate of Saint Nicholas. There are some scholars who believe him to be a regional variant of Knecht Ruprecht, however, unlike Knecht Ruprecht, belsnickel operated solo rather than working alongside Saint Nicholas. His name is derived from “Belzen” the German word for “Wallop” and “Nickel”, a diminutive form of Nicholas.
  Belsnickel was also depicted as wearing tatty robes and walking with a limp. He wore fur clothing carried a large stick and painted his face or wore a mask. He watched children throughout the year, monitoring their behaviour for Saint Nicholas and on the night of Saint Nicholas Day, shortly after children went to bed, he would knock on their windows to enter their rooms. If the children were deemed by Belsnickel to have been good, he would leave them gifts of snacks and caked which he carried in his pockets, however, if the children were judged to have had bad behaviour throughout the year, he would beat them with his stick. That’s if they were lucky. Some stories told of how he would drag the bad children out of their rooms and off into the forest, where they would never be seen again.
  Interestingly, due to German migration to the USA, Belsnickel has some folk history in Pennsylvania and Indiana, where celebrations still told stories of his work and legends of his judgements were still told to some children right up until modern times.
  Perchta was one of Saint Nicholas more troubling associates. Originally, she was a Pagan goddess, depicted in two forms as both a pale, young woman of immense beauty and a haggard old lady. In her haggard form, she wore black robes, torn and roadworn and had a hooked nose. Some scholars date Perchtas activities during midwinter as far back as the 10th Century and her presence still holds a central role in celebrations today in Austria and many other southern European countries.
  Perchta roamed the land during midwinter, followed by either a band of tiny demons or sometimes, unbaptised babies. Throughout the twelve days of Christmas, she would enter the houses of families and ask the children and young servants if they had been good and worked hard throughout the year. If they had been good, she would lay a silver coin in their boots and no doubt a sigh of relief in their hearts, as if they had been deemed to have been bad, Perchta would slit open their stomachs, remove their innards and stuff them with straw and pebbles.
  There are still many more of Saint Nicholas little helpers. Most are all variations of the previous, dolling out punishments to naughty children and working alongside the benevolent saint. There is one, however, whose name is perhaps a little more famous in modern times, even outside of traditional folklore. That of the Krampus.
  Deriving from “Krampen” the German word for claw, Krampus was a horned, demon-like figure, walking upright on two legs, with the lower half of his body taking on goat-like appearance, complete with cloven hooves. His body is often depicted covered in dark fur and he often had a tail. He had large fangs and a long tongue and was, for all intents and purposes very close to the classical depiction of a devil figure, though he also held many similarities with earlier folk creatures, such as fauns from Roman mythology and Satyrs from the Greeks. By the 17th Century, Krampus was fully integrated into the midwinter festivals and a staple by the side of Saint Nicholas.
  One of the scarier elements of the Krampus character are the chains he carried with him, dragging them behind him as he walked into towns and villages, at times thrashing them about to let the children know, Krampus was coming.
  He was always depicted as carrying bundles of Birch sticks and often with a wicker basket strapped to his back. These were, in typical fashion, the tools of which Krampus used to punish the bad children.
  Krampus also differed from the previous associates of Saint Nicholas in that he had a night dedicated solely to him. The 5th of December, one day before Saint Nicholas Day, was the festival known as Krampusnacht. On Krampusnacht, the horned helper appeared to take care of the bad children, leaving the good for Saint Nicholas on the next night. As night fell, children would clean their boots and place them on the porch or by the front door of their houses and in softer versions of the tale, Krampus would roam the streets, simply placing birch sticks within the boots of the children he had judged as having misbehaved, though in other versions, he would use the Birch sticks to beat the children. In more extreme folk tales, Krampus used his wicker basket to scoop up the children and transport them away, either into the woods or down to his chambers in the underworld, where he would chain and beat them, lost forever.
  Throughout history, across physical borders and spiritual eras, we see time and again similar depictions of these characters that closely resemble one another. In Iceland, there are the yule lads, whose depictions over time have varied from a band of young pranksters to demonic monsters that eat children, though their role as both judge and gift bringer to children over the Christmas period has remained the same. Iceland too has the myth of the Yule Cat, a feline stalker who visited children on Christmas Eve and would bring either gifts or punishment, depending on their work rate throughout the year, a criteria which was symbolised by the state of their clothing, as only the well-dressed children or workers with new clothes would have been the ones who had worked hard during the cotton harvest in the run-up to Midwinter with a successful harvest being rewarded with clothes made from said cotton.
  In some areas of France, there was Hans Trapp, a man who disguised himself as a scarecrow to capture poorly behaved children who was struck down by God and now returned on Christmas Eve to punish poorly behaved children. France also retains the legend of Pere Fouttard, the very butcher who killed the children Saint Nicholas was said to have brought back to life. After the miracle was performed, Pere Fouttard was brought into the service of Saint Nicholas to punish naughty Children on Christmas Eve.
  Despite the at times, extreme depictions of Saint Nicholas’s helpers, they are not necessarily evil spirits or demons themselves. Saint Nicholas himself was a benevolent character, he brought happiness and positivity and so, these helpers represented the darker sides of the festivals to allow Nicholas to maintain his benevolent figure. Krampus and Co. were necessary punishers, working together, they were manifestations of a duality as a manner of teaching people right from wrong, good from bad and fostering a fear to keep children in line with the societal expectations of the times. We still use a similar, yet much-softened version of the same folklore in modern society, if you misbehave Santa won’t bring gifts and in some cases will only bring coal, for example. Over time the folklore of the winter gift-bringer has become much more mild, though the end result is the same.
  Nowadays, Krampus and various other companions of Saint Nicholas are still celebrated today, though again, their presence is much softened. They have become mythological figures in old folk tales and characters to dress up as and celebrate the Winter Solstice or the holiday season in a time for cheer and as a reaction to the commercialism of Christmas itself. Midwinter remains a period of the year when the darkness surrounds us and we look to celebrations and festivities to see us through and bring us together.
  
  The SST39SF010A / SST39SF020A / SST39SF040 are CMOS Multi-Purpose Flash (MPF) manufactured with SSTs proprietary, hig performance CMOS SuperFlash technology. The split-gate cell design and thick oxide tunneling injector attain better reliability and manufacturability compared with alternate approaches. The SST39SF010A / SST39SF020A / SST39SF040 devices write (Program or Erase) with a 4.5-5.5V power supply. The SST39SF010A / SST39SF020A / SST39SF040 devices conform to JEDEC stan- dard pinouts for x8 Memories By Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.
  This is one package pinout of SST39SF010A,If you need more pinouts please download SST39SF010A's pdf datasheet.
  
  This website is in the process of being moved. In the near future you will be redirected to Eaton.com. If you are ready to start exploring, get started with these popular links.
  Eaton is a leader in power management solutions for customers in more than 175 countries worldwide. Eaton has a strong heritage of innovation marked by quality, market expertise, unparalleled service and a commitment to our customers. The brands you know and rely on have evolved. While they may have a new look, the products and technology you trust remain unchanged. Eaton has united pioneers in the industry to offer a broad solution set to meet today’s most critical electrical power management challenges.
  
  Four whiskies today, all from the recently repackaged range Carn Mor from Morrison & Mackay. I quite liked the old packaging too, with the sideways labels that you couldn’t really read but oh well. I’ve tried a few of these now and they are always very good-great with the standout being the Chariman’s Legacy Bowmore.
  These samples were very generously poured for me by all round legend Graeme Mackay at Limburg whisky fair.
  Nose: Fruity and musky, aromatic, very fresh fruit, melon and pineapple, fruit salad, lots of 'super' pear, green apple, old wood.