Venezuela

Venezuela, officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela  República Bolivariana de Venezuela, is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its northern coastline of roughly 2,800 kilometres 1,700 mi includes numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, and in the north east borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela's territory covers around 916,445 square kilometres (353,841 sq mi) with an estimated population of 29,105,632. Venezuela is considered a country with extremely high biodiversity, with habitats ranging from the Andes mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east.

Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522, overcoming resistance from indigenous peoples. It became the first Spanish American colony to declare independence (in 1811), but did not securely establish independence until 1821 (initially as a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia, gaining full independence in 1830). During the 19th century Venezuela suffered political turmoil and dictatorship, and it was dominated by regional caudillos (military strongmen) into the 20th century. It first saw democratic rule from 1945 to 1948, and after a period of dictatorship has remained democratic since 1958, during which time most countries of Latin America suffered one or more military dictatorships. Economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which saw hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former career officer Hugo Chávez, and the launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.

Venezuela is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District (covering Caracas), and Federal Dependencies (covering Venezuela's offshore islands). Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital, Caracas, which is also the largest city. Venezuela is a founder member of the United Nations (1945), the Organization of American States (1948), the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) (1960), the Group of 15 (1989), the World Trade Organization (1995), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) (2004) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) (2008). Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak. The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending, although the fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis saw a renewed economic downturn.

Economy of Venezuela

The 20 Venezuelan bolívar fuerte banknote featuring a portrait of Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi.

Venezuela has a mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector, which accounts for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports and more than half of government revenues. It suffers high levels of corruption. Per capita GDP for 2009 was US$13,000, ranking it 85th in the world. About 30% of the population of the country live on less than US $2 per day. Venezuela has the least expensive petrol in the world because the consumer price of petrol is so heavily subsidised.

Manufacturing contributed 17% of GDP in 2006. Venezuela manufactures and exports heavy industry items such as steel, aluminium and cement, with production concentrated around Ciudad Guayana, near the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world and the provider of about three quarters of Venezuela's electricity. Other notable manufacturing includes electronics and automobiles, as well as beverages, and foodstuffs. Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 3% of GDP, 10% of the labor force, and at least one-fourth of Venezuela's land area. Venezuela exports rice, corn, fish, tropical fruit, coffee, beef, and pork. The country is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture; Venezuela imports about two-thirds of its food needs.

Due to petroleum exports, Venezuela usually posts a trade surplus. The United States is Venezuela's leading trade partner, whilst trade with the People's Republic of China has grown so rapidly since 1999 that in 2009 China was Venezuela's second-largest trade partner.

Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil, and it is a founder member of OPEC. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak. The 1990s also saw Venezuela experience a major banking crisis in 1994. The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending, although the fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis saw a renewed economic downturn.

Venezuela has some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world, and consistently ranks among the top ten crude oil producers in the world. The country's main petroleum deposits are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo, the Gulf of Venezuela (both in Zulia), and in the Orinoco River basin (eastern Venezuela), where the country's largest reserve is located. Besides the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela has non-conventional oil deposits (extra-heavy crude oil, bitumen and tar sands) approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil. The electricity sector in Venezuela is one of the few to rely primarily on hydropower, and includes the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world.

In the first half of the 20th century, US oil companies were heavily involved in Venezuela, initially on the basis of purchasing concessions. In 1943 a new government introduced a 50/50 split in profits between the government and the oil industry. In 1960, with a newly installed democratic government, Hydrocarbons Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the creation of OPEC, the consortium of oil-producing countries aiming to support the price of oil. In 1973 Venezuela voted to nationalize its oil industry outright, effective 1 January 1976, with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) taking over and presiding over a number of holding companies; in subsequent years, Venezuela built a vast refining and marketing system in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1990s PDVSA became more independent from the government and presided over an apertura (opening) in which it invited in foreign investment. Under Hugo Chávez a 2001 law placed limits on foreign investment.

The state oil company PDVSA played a key role in the December 2002-February 2003 national strike which sought President Chávez' resignation. Managers and skilled highly paid technicians of PDVSA shut down the plants and left their posts, and by some reports sabotaged equipment, and petroleum production and refining by PDVSA almost ceased. Activities eventually were slowly restarted by returning and substitute oil workers. As a result of the strike, around 40% of the company's workforce (around 18,000 workers) were dismissed for "dereliction of duty" during the strike.

Venezuela is connected to the world primarily via air (Venezuela's airports include the Simón Bolívar International Airport near Caracas and La Chinita International Airport near Maracaibo) and sea (with major sea ports at La Guaira, Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello). In the south and east the Amazon rainforest region has limited cross-border transport; in the west, there is a mountainous border of over 1,375 miles (2,213 km) shared with Colombia. The Orinoco River is navigable by oceangoing vessels up to 400 km inland, and connects the major industrial city of Ciudad Guayana to the Atlantic Ocean.

Venezuela has a limited national railway system, which has no active rail connections to other countries; the government of Hugo Chávez has invested substantially in expanding it. Several major cities have metro systems; the Caracas Metro has been operating since 1983. The Maracaibo Metro and Valencia Metro were opened more recently. Venezuela has a road network of around 100,000 km (placing it around 47th in the world); around a third of roads are paved.

Coach Inc

Coach, Inc.  is an American leather goods company known for ladies' and men's handbags, as well as items such as luggage, briefcases, wallets and other accessories belts, shoes, scarves, umbrellas, sunglasses, key chains, etc.). Coach also offers watches and footwear.


History
Coach was founded in 1941, in a loft in Manhattan, New York. as a partnership called the Gail Manufacturing Company. Gail Manufacturing Company began as a family-owned business, with six leatherworkers who made small leather goods, such as wallets and handbags. In 1946, Miles Cahn and his wife Lillian joined the company. Miles and Lillian Cahn were owners of a leather handbag manufacturing business, and were knowledgeable about leatherworks and business. By 1950, Cahn had taken over the business and was running it mainly himself. The workers continued to manufacture small leather goods, like wallets, for small profits into the 1960s. In 1957 the Coach brand of wallets and other small leather goods was introduced. In 1961, Gail Leather Products, Inc. was formed. In the 1960s, Cahn did further research on leather and discovered a very complex method for processing leather to make it strong, soft, and durable. At the suggestion of his wife, a number of women's handbags were designed to be more affordable. In the early 1960s, handbags were added to the Coach lineup. Coach women's handbags were made out of sturdy cowhide, which was of much better quality than the thin leather pasted over cardboard material that was used to make other handbags at the time. This catapulted Coach to a prominent standing among high quality leather products.
Through the 1960s, Gail Leather Products also produced other brands, such as Red Lion and Westminster.
During the early 1960s, Cahn hired Bonnie Cashin to work for Coach. Cashin was already a well-known fashion designer prior to joining Coach; however, this deal proved to be one of her most well-known business alliances. Cashin worked for Coach from 1962 until 1974, and revolutionized their product design. Known as an innovator, she instituted the inclusion of side pockets, coin purses, and brighter colors (as opposed to the usual hues of browns and tans) onto the bags. Cashin also designed matching shoes, pens, key fobs and eyewear, and added hardware to her clothes and accessories alike, particularly the silver toggle that became the Coach hallmark, declaring that she had been inspired by a memory of quickly fastening the top on her convertible sports car. Due to the success that Cashin brought Coach, they ran their first ad in the New Yorker in 1963.
In the mid 1970s, production of handbags in New York City ended, and was moved to elsewhere in the United States. Around the same time, the company changed its name to Coach Products, Inc.
Business was strong throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Products were in high demand, and under a new vice president for special products, Coach had started a mail-order business. They had also owned specialty stores, and began to sell Coach bags outside of department stores. Sales increased, and soon demand was greater than the supply. Eventually, Coach would restrict sales to hand selected vendors. In 1979, Lewis Frankfort, Coach's current CEO, joined the company as vice-president of business development. In 1980, the company changed its name to Coach Leatherware Company, Inc.  In 1983, the Cahns purchased a 300-acre (1.2 km2) dairy farm in upstate New York that they operated under the name "Coach Farm". It was intended to be a vacation spot away from the New York Coach office, but instead they commuted 2 hours every week from New York City to their upstate farm. In summer of 1986, the Cahns decided to sell Coach. In July 1986, Coach was sold to Sara Lee Corporation for $30 million dollars. The Cahns retained ownership of the original corporate entity, Coach Leatherware Company, Inc., originally Gail Leather Products, Inc., which was now renamed The Coach Farm Corporation, and produced goat cheese under the Coach Farm trademark. The Coach Farm Corporation continued to be headquartered at the Coach headquarters at 516 West 34th Street in New York. Sara Lee took over the factories, the 6 boutiques, and its main store on Madison Avenue in New York City. Shortly after, new boutiques were opened in Macy's stores in New York and San Francisco. Additional Coach stores were under constructed in Denver and Seattle, and similar boutiques were to be opened in other major department stores later in the year. Coach also opened mall storefronts in New York, New Jersey, Texas, and California. By November, the company was operating 12 stores, along with nearly 50 boutiques within larger department stores.
Coach Inc. currently has distribution, product development and quality control operations in the United States, France, Italy, Hong Kong, China and South Korea.
Coach's International Sales Information in 2004.

Cheese

Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms.

Cheese consists of proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. It is produced by coagulation of the milk protein casein. Typically, the milk is acidified and addition of the enzyme rennet causes coagulation. The solids are separated and pressed into final form. Some cheeses have molds on the rind or throughout. Most cheeses melt at cooking temperature.

Hundreds of types of cheese are produced. Their styles, textures and flavors depend on the origin of the milk (including the animal's diet), whether they have been pasteurized, the butterfat content, the bacteria and mold, the processing, and aging. Herbs, spices, or wood smoke may be used as flavoring agents. The yellow to red color of many cheeses is from adding annatto.

For a few cheeses, the milk is curdled by adding acids such as vinegar or lemon juice. Most cheeses are acidified to a lesser degree by bacteria, which turn milk sugars into lactic acid, then the addition of rennet completes the curdling. Vegetarian alternatives to rennet are available; most are produced by fermentation of the fungus Mucor miehei, but others have been extracted from various species of the Cynara thistle family.

Cheese is valued for its portability, long life, and high content of fat, protein, calcium, and phosphorus. Cheese is more compact and has a longer shelf life than milk. Cheesemakers near a dairy region may benefit from fresher, lower-priced milk, and lower shipping costs. The long storage life of some cheese, especially if it is encased in a protective rind, allows selling when markets are favorable.

Ancient Greece and Rome

Ancient Greek mythology credited Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese. Homer's Odyssey (8th century BCE) describes the Cyclops making and storing sheep's and goats' milk cheese. From Samuel Butler's translation:

“ We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went inside and took stock of all that we could see. His cheese-racks were loaded with cheeses, and he had more lambs and kids than his pens could hold...

When he had so done he sat down and milked his ewes and goats, all in due course, and then let each of them have her own young. He curdled half the milk and set it aside in wicker strainers.

”

By Roman times, cheese was an everyday food and cheesemaking a mature art. Columella's De Re Rustica (circa 65 CE) details a cheesemaking process involving rennet coagulation, pressing of the curd, salting, and aging. Pliny's Natural History (77 CE) devotes a chapter (XI, 97) to describing the diversity of cheeses enjoyed by Romans of the early Empire. He stated that the best cheeses came from the villages near Nîmes, but did not keep long and had to be eaten fresh. Cheeses of the Alps and Apennines were as remarkable for their variety then as now. A Ligurian cheese was noted for being made mostly from sheep's milk, and some cheeses produced nearby were stated to weigh as much as a thousand pounds each. Goats' milk cheese was a recent taste in Rome, improved over the "medicinal taste" of Gaul's similar cheeses by smoking. Of cheeses from overseas, Pliny preferred those of Bithynia in Asia Minor.

Eating and cooking

At refrigerator temperatures, the fat in a piece of cheese is as hard as unsoftened butter, and its protein structure is stiff as well. Flavor and odor compounds are less easily liberated when cold. For improvements in flavor and texture, it is widely advised that cheeses be allowed to warm up to room temperature before eating. If the cheese is further warmed, to 26–32 °C (79–90 °F), the fats will begin to "sweat out" as they go beyond soft to fully liquid.

Above room temperatures, most hard cheeses melt. Rennet-curdled cheeses have a gel-like protein matrix that is broken down by heat. When enough protein bonds are broken, the cheese itself turns from a solid to a viscous liquid. Soft, high-moisture cheeses will melt at around 55 °C (131 °F), while hard, low-moisture cheeses such as Parmesan remain solid until they reach about 82 °C (180 °F). Acid-set cheeses, including halloumi, paneer, some whey cheeses and many varieties of fresh goat cheese, have a protein structure that remains intact at high temperatures. When cooked, these cheeses just get firmer as water evaporates.

Some cheeses, like raclette, melt smoothly; many tend to become stringy or suffer from a separation of their fats. Many of these can be coaxed into melting smoothly in the presence of acids or starch. Fondue, with wine providing the acidity, is a good example of a smoothly melted cheese dish.Elastic stringiness is a quality that is sometimes enjoyed, in dishes including pizza and Welsh rarebit. Even a melted cheese eventually turns solid again, after enough moisture is cooked off. The saying "you can't melt cheese twice" (meaning "some things can only be done once") refers to the fact that oils leach out during the first melting and are gone, leaving the non-meltable solids behind.

As its temperature continues to rise, cheese will brown and eventually burn. Browned, partially burned cheese has a particular distinct flavor of its own and is frequently used in cooking (e.g., sprinkling atop items before baking them).

Health and nutrition

In general, cheese supplies a great deal of calcium, protein, phosphorus and fat. A 30-gram (1.1 oz) serving of Cheddar cheese contains about 7 grams (0.25 oz) of protein and 200 milligrams of calcium. Nutritionally, cheese is essentially concentrated milk: it takes about 200 grams (7.1 oz) of milk to provide that much protein, and 150 grams (5.3 oz) to equal the calcium.

Heart disease

Cheese potentially shares other nutritional properties of milk. The Center for Science in the Public Interest describes cheese as America's number one source of saturated fat, adding that the average American ate 30 lb (14 kg) of cheese in the year 2000, up from 11 lb (5 kg) in 1970. Their recommendation is to limit full-fat cheese consumption to 2 oz (57 g) a week. Whether or not cheese's highly saturated fat content actually leads to an increased risk of heart disease is a subject of debate, as epidemiological studies have observed relatively low incidences of cardiovascular disease in populations such as France and Greece, which lead the world in cheese consumption (more than 14 oz/400 g a week per person, or over 45 lb/20 kg a year). This seeming discrepancy is called the French paradox; the higher rates of consumption of red wine in these countries is often invoked as at least a partial explanation.

John Lennon

John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980 was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Along with fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved as a teenager in the skiffle craze; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into The Beatles in 1960. As the group disintegrated towards the end of the decade, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced the critically acclaimed albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine". Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to his family, but re-emerged in 1980 with a new album, Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release.

Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing, his drawings, on film, and in interviews, and he became controversial through his political and peace activism. He moved to New York City in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement.

As of 2010, Lennon's solo album sales in the United States exceed 14 million units, and as writer, co-writer or performer, he is responsible for 27 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth, and in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all-time. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Beatles

Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. They are one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. From 1962, the group consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll, the group later worked in many genres ranging from pop ballads to psychedelic rock, often incorporating classical and other elements in innovative ways. The nature of their enormous popularity, which first emerged as "Beatlemania", transformed as their songwriting grew in sophistication. They came to be perceived as the embodiment of ideals of the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.

Initially a five-piece line-up of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and Pete Best (drums), they built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960. Sutcliffe left the group in 1961, and Best was replaced by Starr the following year. Moulded into a professional outfit by their manager, Brian Epstein, their musical potential was enhanced by the creativity of producer George Martin. They achieved mainstream success in the United Kingdom in late 1962, with their first single, "Love Me Do". Gaining international popularity over the course of the next year, they toured extensively until 1966, then retreated to the recording studio until their break-up in 1970. Each then found success in independent musical careers. Lennon was murdered outside his home in New York City in 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in 2001. McCartney and Starr remain active.

During their studio years, they produced what critics consider some of their finest material including the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), widely regarded as a masterpiece. They are the best-selling band in the history of popular music, and four decades after their break-up, their recordings are still in demand. They have had more number one albums on the UK charts and have held the top spot longer than any other musical act. According to the RIAA, they have sold more albums in the United States than any other artist. The Beatles placed number one on Billboard magazine's fiftieth-anniversary list of all-time top Hot 100 artists in 2008.They have received 7 Grammy Awards from the American National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and 15 Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. They were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people.

Nia Long

Nitara Carlynn Long, most known as Nia Long born October 30, 1970 is an American actress and occasional music video director. She is best known for her roles in the television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Third Watch, and the films Soul Food, Love Jones, The Best Man, Big Momma's House, and Are We There Yet?

Early years

Long was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Talita, a teacher and printmaker, and Doughtry "Doc" Long, a high school teacher and poet. Her family is of Afro-Trinidadian descent. Her name, Nia, is one of the seven days of Kwanzaa, which means purpose in Swahili. Long's parents divorced when she was two years old, and she and her mother moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where her mother studied fine arts. They subsequently moved to a South Los Angeles neighborhood when Long was seven, where her mother was supposed to get married. The wedding was called off, but Talita had fallen in love with L.A. and they stayed. Long's father currently resides in Trenton, New Jersey. Long's half-sister is comedienne Sommore, one of the stars of The Queens of Comedy.

Long attended the Roman Catholic school St. Mary's Academy and studied ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics, guitar, and acting. She graduated from Westchester High School in 1989. Due to the lack of employment opportunities in the arts in Los Angeles when Long and her mother first arrived there, Long's mother took various low-paying jobs (despite having two master's degrees). The family suffered through financial struggle for years.

Personal life

Long and her former long-time boyfriend and fellow actor Massai Z. Dorsey have a son, Massai Zhivago Dorsey II, born on November 26, 2000. Dorsey and Long were engaged to be married, but the pair have since ended their relationship.

With regard to being a working mother, Long says "she is up for the challenge so long as it does not require disturbing her family's well-being". "If I’m gonna hustle, I want to hustle in one place... I uprooted everything, moved to New York for two years, moved back and it was great but I really am enjoying the stability." //www.craveonline.com/entertainment/film/article/nia-long-all-grown-up-63427 Nia Long: All grown up, CraveOnline, April 6, 2007

It was announced on June 16, 2011 that Nia Long is pregnant with her second child on BET website. The baby's father is Long's boyfriend NBA Basketball player Ime Udoka.

Career

Long's acting coach was Betty Bridges, better known as the mother of Diff'rent Strokes star Todd Bridges. Her earliest role was in the Disney television movie, The B.R.A.T Patrol alongside Sean Astin, Tim Thomerson and Brian Keith. Her first notable role on television was a three-year contract role as Kathryn "Kat" Speakes on the soap opera Guiding Light. Long portrayed Kat from 1991 to 1994. From 1994 - 1995, she played Will Smith's girlfriend and fiancée Beulah "Lisa" Wilkes on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Jada Pinkett-Smith was originally supposed to play Lisa, but was too short for the role (opposite a 6'2" Will Smith), thus leaving Nia to take the part. In 2003, she joined the cast of the drama Third Watch, where she played NYPD Officer Sasha Monroe, continuing until the series finale in 2005. In 2005 and 2006, Long appeared on Everwood, and appeared on Boston Legal during its 2006-2007 season. Long also starred in Big Shots from 2007-2008 alongside Michael Vartan and Dylan McDermott.

Long appeared in supporting roles in a number of movies such as Boyz n the Hood, Friday, and Made in America. Long played a leading role, or a member of the primary ensemble, in several films, including Soul Food, Love Jones, Boiler Room, Big Momma's House, Are We There Yet?, and The Best Man. Ice Cube has starred with her in four films, while (fellow Westchester High alum) Regina King has starred with her in two. Long starred alongside Michael Beach in Soul Food and in the TV series Third Watch.

Long appears in the video for Kanye West's "Touch The Sky". She directed Yolanda Adams's music video for "This Too Shall Pass". Long was voted one of the 50 most beautiful people in the World 2000 by People. She won a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series in 2004 for her performance on Third Watch. Long co-directed and appeared in Ashanti's music video, "Baby". She also made a guest appearance on the successful sitcom Living Single during its first season. She then got in contact with Gina Wilson because she wanted to become an actress also.

Filmography

Year Film Role Notes

1990 Buried Alive Fingers

1991 Boyz n the Hood Brandi

1993 Made in America Zora Mathews

1995 Friday Debra also known as Debbie

1997 Love Jones Nina Mosley

Hav Plenty Trudy

Soul Food Bird

1998 Butter Carmen Jones

1999 In Too Deep Myra

The Best Man Jordan Armstrong

Stigmata Donna Chadway

Held Up Rae

The Secret Laughter of Women Nimi Da Silva

2000 The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy Leslie

Boiler Room Abbie Halpert

Big Momma's House Sherry Pierce

2003 BAADASSSSS! Sandra

2004 The N-Word herself Documentary

Alfie Lonette

2005 Are We There Yet? Suzanne Kingston

2006 Big Momma's House 2 Sherry Pierce-Turner

2007 Premonition Annie

Are We Done Yet? Suzanne Kingston-Persons

2008 Gospel Hill Mrs. Palmer

2009 Good Hair Herself Documentary

2010 Mooz-lum Safiyah

Golf course

A golf course consists of a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick (pin) and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes. Some, however, only have nine holes and the course is played twice per round, while others have 27 or 36 and choose two groups of nine holes at a time for novelty and maintenance reasons. Additionally, par-3 courses also exist, consisting of nine or 18 holes, all of which are a Par 3. Many older golf courses, often coastal, are golf links, of a different style to others. For non-municipal courses, there is usually a golf club based at each course, and may include a pro shop.

Teeing area

The first section of every hole consists of what is known as the teeing ground, or tee-box. There is usually more than one available box for a player to place their ball, each one a different distance from the hole. They are generally as level as feasible, and most are slightly raised from the surrounding fairway. The most common tee areas, in increasing order of length from the hole, are the ladies' tee, the men's tee, and the championship tee. Other common tee-boxes include the junior tee, closer to the hole than the ladies' tee, and the senior tee, generally between the ladies' tee and the men's tee. In tournaments, golfers generally tee off from the box one level further from the "normal" box for their class (men use the championship tee, ladies use the senior or men's tee, and juniors use the ladies' tee).

Each tee box has two markers showing the bounds of the legal tee area. The teeing area spans the distance between the markers, and extends from two-club lengths behind the markers up to the markers themselves. A golfer may play the ball from outside the teeing area, but the ball itself must be shot from within the area.

After the first shot from the tee (teeing off), the player hits the ball from where it came to rest toward the green. The area between the tee box and the putting green where the grass is cut even and short is called the fairway and is generally the most advantageous area from which to hit. The area between the fairway and the out-of-bounds markers and also between the fairway and green is the rough, the grass of which is cut higher than that of the fairway and is generally a disadvantageous area from which to hit. On par three holes the player is expected to be able to drive the ball to the green on the first shot from the tee box. On holes longer than par threes players are expected to require at least one extra shot made from the fairway or rough.

While many holes are designed with a direct line-of-sight from the tee-off point to the green, some holes may bend either to the left or to the right. This is called a "dogleg", in reference to a dog's knee. The hole is called a "dogleg left" if the hole angles leftwards, and a "dogleg right" if the hole angles rightwards. Sometimes, a hole's direction can bend twice, and is called a "double dogleg".

Just as there are good quality grasses for putting greens, there are good quality grasses for the fairway and rough. The quality of grass influences the roll of the ball as well as the ability of the player to 'take a divot' (effectively, the ability to hit the ball into the turf and compress it). 

Hazards

Many holes include hazards, which may be of three types: (1) water hazards such as lakes and rivers; (2) man-made hazards such as bunkers; and (3) natural hazards such as dense vegetation. Special rules apply to playing balls that fall in a hazard. For example, a player may not touch the ground with his club before playing a ball, not even for a practice swing. A ball in any hazard may be played as it lies without penalty. If it cannot be played from the hazard, the ball may be hit from another location, generally with a penalty of one stroke. The Rules of Golf govern exactly from where the ball may be played outside a hazard. Bunkers (or sand traps) are shallow pits filled with sand and generally incorporating a raised lip or barrier, from which the ball is more difficult to play than from grass. As in any hazard, a ball in a sand trap must be played without previously touching the sand with the club.

Putting green

To putt is to play a stroke on the defined putting surface. Usually, this stroke is played on the green with a putter where the ball does not leave the ground. Once on the green, the ball is putted (struck with the eponymous flat-faced club to roll it along the ground) toward the hole until the ball falls into the cup.

The grass of the putting green (more commonly just green) is cut very short so that a ball can roll long distances. The most common types of greens for cold winter, but warmer (not extremely warm i.e. Southern United States) are bent grass greens. These are considered the best greens because of their ability to be cut to extremely low heights, and their ability to be grown from seed. Bent grass does not have grain, which makes it superior as a putting surface; however, bent grass often gets infested with poa annua, which is a costly and time consuming weed. Augusta National is one of many golf courses to use these types of greens; the original design of Augusta National did not have bent grass greens, however, in the 1980s, the controversial decision was made that changed the greens to bent grass, from Bermuda. This has affected the speed and playing of Augusta National. Many putting greens nowadays have made the decision to change to Bermuda Greens. Most Golf courses made the decision to change when they saw how much business the other courses were bringing in.Another type of grass common for greens is TifDwarf Hybrid Bermuda (other variants exist, but TifDwarf is one of the most common), or simply Bermuda grass. This type of grass is more common in places that do not have cold winters, yet have very warm summers (such as the southern portion of the United States, and the southwestern states). A green is generally established from sod which has had the soil washed off of it as to avoid soil compatibility problems and then laid tightly over the green, rolled and topdressed with fine sand. Another common and more economical approach for establishing a putting green is hybrid Bermuda spriggs, which are the stolon of the grass which are raked out at the sod farm and laid out on the green to establish. The best greens are always established vegetatively and never from seed.

A downside to Bermuda greens is the cost of maintenance, and the existence of grain (the growth direction of the blades of grass affects the ball's roll and is called the grain of the green). The slope or break of the green also affects the roll of the ball. The cup is always found within the green and must have a diameter of 108 millimeters (4.25 in) and a depth of at least 10 centimeters (3.94 in). Its position on the green is not fixed and is normally changed daily by a greenskeeper in order to prevent excessive wear and damage to the turf. 

Other areas

Some areas of the course are designated as ground under repair ("G.U.R."), where greenskeepers are making repairs or where the course is damaged. A ball coming to rest in this spot may be lifted, then played from outside the G.U.R. without penalty. Certain man-made objects on the course are defined as obstructions (i.e. distance posts, gardens, etc.), and specific rules determine how a golfer may proceed when their play is impeded by these.

Driving range

Often, there is a practice range or driving range, usually with practice greens, bunkers, and driving areas. Markers showing distances are usually included on a practice range to benefit the golfer. There may even be a practice course (often shorter and easier to play than full-scale golf courses), where golfers practice to measure how far they can hit with a specific club or to improve their swing technique.

Design

A specialty of landscape design or landscape architecture, golf course architecture is its own field of study. Some golf course architects become celebrities in their own right. The field is represented by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the European Institute of Golf Course Architects and the Society of Australian Golf Course Architects.

While golf courses often follow the original landscape, some modification is unavoidable. This is increasingly the case as new courses are more likely to be sited on less optimal land. Bunkers and sand traps are almost always artificial, although other hazards may be natural.

The layout of fairways follows certain traditional principles, such as the number of holes (nine and 18 being most common), their par and number of chosen par types per course. It is also preferable to arrange greens to be close to the tee box of the next playable hole, to minimize travel distance while playing. Combined with the need to package all the fairways in a compact square or rectangular land plot, they tend to form an oppositional tiling pattern. In complex areas, sometimes two holes share a single tee box. It is also common for separate tee-off points to be positioned for men, women, and amateurs, each one respectively lying closer to the green.

A successful design is as visually pleasing as it is playable. With golf being an outdoor form of recreation, the strong designer is an adept student of natural landscaping, understanding the aesthetic cohesion of vegetation, water bodies, paths, grasses, stonework and woodwork, among other things.

Executive golf course

A special design of golf course is the "executive" golf course (also known as a "par-3" course). This course differs from standard courses in that the majority of holes are Par 3 holes, with one or two Par 4 holes added and sometimes (though rare) a Par 5 hole. The executive course is designed for beginner or older golfers and those who lack the time to play a round on a standard course.

Coffeehouse

Coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks. Many coffee houses in the Middle East, and in West Asian immigrant districts in the Western world, offer shisha (nargile in Turkish and Greek), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah.

From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups of 2 or 3.

In the United States, the French word for coffeehouse (café) means an informal restaurant, offering a range of hot meals.

History

The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports the opening of the first coffeehouse in Istanbul:

Until the year 962, in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffee-houses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus came to the city; they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtakale, and began to purvey coffee.

Various legends involving the introduction of coffee to Istanbul at a "Kiva Han" in the late 15th century circulate in culinary tradition, but with no documentation.

Coffeehouses in Mecca soon became a concern as places for political gatherings to the imams who banned them, and the drink, for Muslims between 1512 and 1524. In 1530, the first coffee house was opened in Damascus, and not long after there were many coffee houses in Cairo.

The 17th Century French traveler Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse scene:

People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games... resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose. The narrations by the mollas and the dervishes are moral lessons, like our sermons, but it is not considered scandalous not to pay attention to them. No one is forced to give up his game or his conversation because of it. A molla will stand up in the middle, or at one end of the qahveh-khaneh, and begin to preach in a loud voice, or a dervish enters all of a sudden, and chastises the assembled on the vanity of the world and its material goods. It often happens that two or three people talk at the same time, one on one side, the other on the opposite, and sometimes one will be a preacher and the other a storyteller.

Coffee in Europe

In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established and quickly became popular. The first coffeehouses reached Western Europe probably through the Kingdom of Hungary, (thus this was the mediator between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire) and appeared in Venice, due to the trafficks between La Serenissima and the Ottomans; the very first one is recorded in 1645. The first coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford in 1652 by a Jewish man named Jacob at the Angel in the parish of St Peter in the East in a building now known as "The Grand Cafe". A plaque on the wall still commemorates this and the cafe is now a trendy cocktail bar. Oxford's Queen's Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is also still in existence today. The first coffeehouse in London was opened in 1652 in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the Armenian servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England. Pasqua Rosée also established Paris' first coffeehouse in 1672 and held a city-wide coffee monopoly until Procopio Cutò opened the Café Procope in 1686. This coffeehouse still exists today and was a major meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Denis Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia. America had its first coffeehouse in Boston, in 1676.[12] A rebuted tale of Vienna's first cafeteria said that it was founded in 1683 by a Polish resident, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki. In general, the first Polish cafes where founded in Warsaw in 1724 by one of the courtiers of Polish King August II Sass. 

The banning of women from coffeehouses was not universal, but does appear to have been common in Europe. In Germany women frequented them, but in England and France they were banned. Émilie du Châtelet purportedly wore drag to gain entrance to a coffeehouse in Paris. In a well-known engraving of a Parisian coffeehouse of c. 1700, the gentlemen hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffeepots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present presides, separated in a canopied booth, from which she serves coffee in tall cups.

The traditional tale of the origins of the Viennese café begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki. Kulczycki began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard. However, it is now widely accepted that the first coffeehouse was actually opened by an Greek merchant named Johannes Diodato.

Coffee in the United States

Coffee shops in the United States arose from the espresso- and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities, notably New York City's Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, and San Francisco's North Beach. From the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also served as a venue for entertainment, most commonly folk performers during the American folk music revival. This was likely due to the ease at accommodating in a small space a lone performer accompanying himself or herself only with a guitar. Both Greenwich Village and North Beach became major haunts of the Beats, who were highly identified with these coffeehouses.

As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffeehouses. The political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their association with political action. A number of well known performers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan began their careers performing in coffeehouses. Blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins bemoaned his woman's inattentiveness to her domestic situation due to her overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing in his 1969 song "Coffeehouse Blues". Starting in 1967 with the opening of the historic Last Exit on Brooklyn coffeehouse, Seattle became known for its thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; the Starbucks chain later standardized and mainstreamed this espresso bar model.

From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, many churches and individuals in the United States used the coffeehouse concept for outreach. They were often storefronts and had names like The Gathering Place (Riverside, CA), Catacomb Chapel (New York City), and Jesus For You (Buffalo, NY). Christian music (guitar-based) was performed, coffee and food was provided, and Bible studies were convened as people of varying backgrounds gathered in a casual "unchurchy" setting. These coffeehouses usually had a rather short life, about three to five years or so on average. 

Cafes may have an outdoor section (terrace, pavement or sidewalk cafe) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially the case with European cafes. Cafes offer a more open public space compared to many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male dominated with a focus on drinking alcohol.

One of the original uses of the cafe, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet café or Hotspot (Wi-Fi). The spread of modern style cafes to many places, urban and rural, went hand in hand with computers. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary-styled venue helps to create a youthful, modern, outward-looking place, compared to the traditional pubs or old-fashioned diners that they replaced. Coffee shops like The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Peet's now offer free Wi-Fi in most stores.

International variation

In the Middle East, the coffeehouse (مقهىً maqhan in Arabic, قهوه خانه qahveh-khaneh in Persian or kahvehane or kıraathane in Turkish) serves as an important social gathering place for men. Men assemble in coffeehouses to drink coffee (usually Arabic coffee) or tea, listen to music, read books, play chess and backgammon, and in many coffeehouses around the Middle East, hookah is traditionally served as well.

In Australia, coffee shops are generally called 'cafés'. Since the post-World War II influx of Italian immigrants introduced espresso coffee machines to Australia in the 1950s, there has been a steady rise in café culture. The past decade has seen a rapid rise in demand for locally (or on-site) roasted specialty coffee, particularly in Melbourne due in part to the hipster, student, or artist population, with the 'Flat-White' (an Auckland, New Zealand invention) a popular coffee drink.

In the United Kingdom, traditional coffeehouses as gathering places for youths fell out of favour after the 1960s, but the concept has been revived since the 1990s by chains such as Starbucks, Coffee Republic, Costa Coffee, Caffè Nero and Prêt as places for professional workers to meet and eat out or simply to buy beverages and snack foods on their way to and from the workplace.

In France, a café also serves alcoholic beverages. French cafés often serve simple snacks such as sandwiches. They may have a restaurant section. A brasserie is a café that serves meals, generally single dishes, in a more relaxed setting than a restaurant. A bistro is a café / restaurant, especially in Paris. After the enlightenment era however, coffee houses became increasingly difficult to distinguish from taverns as they ceased to be popular meeting places for scientists and philosophers and were replaced by a growing number of tea gardens which served a drastically different purpose.

In China, an abundance of recently-started domestic coffeehouse chains may be seen accommodating business people. These coffee houses are more for show and status than anything else, with coffee prices often even higher than in the West.

In Malaysia and Singapore, traditional breakfast and coffee shops are called kopi tiams. The word is a portmanteau of the Malay word for coffee (as borrowed and altered from the Portuguese) and the Hokkien dialect word for shop (店; POJ: tiàm). Menus typically feature simple offerings: a variety of foods based on egg, toast, and coconut jam, plus coffee, tea, and Milo, a malted chocolate drink which is extremely popular in Southeast Asia and Australasia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia.

In parts of the Netherlands where the sale of cannabis is decriminalized, many cannabis shops call themselves coffeeshops. Foreign visitors often find themselves quite at a loss when they find that the shop they entered to have a coffee actually has a very different core business. Incidentally, most cannabis shops sell a wide range of (non-alcoholic) beverages.

Espresso bar

The espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in coffee beverages made from espresso. Originating in Italy, the espresso bar has spread throughout the world in various forms. Prime examples that are internationally known are Starbucks Coffee, based in Seattle, Washington, U.S. and Costa Coffee, based in Dunstable, UK (the first and second largest coffeehouse chains respectively), although the espresso bar exists in some form throughout much of the world.

The espresso bar is typically centered around a long counter with a high-yield espresso machine (usually bean to cup machines, automatic or semiautomatic pump-type machine, although occasionally a manually-operated lever-and-piston system) and a display case containing pastries and occasionally savory items such as sandwiches. In the traditional Italian bar, customers either order at the bar and consume their beverages standing or, if they wish to sit down and be served, are usually charged a higher price. In some bars there is an additional charge for drinks served at an outside table. In other countries, especially the United States, seating areas for customers to relax and work are provided free of charge. Some espresso bars also sell coffee paraphernalia, candy, and even music. North American espresso bars were also at the forefront of widespread adoption of public WiFi access points to provide Internet services to people doing work on laptop computers on the premises.

The offerings at the typical espresso bar are generally quite Italianate in inspiration; biscotti, cannoli and pizzelle are a common traditional accompaniment to a caffe latte or cappuccino. Some upscale espresso bars even offer alcoholic beverages such as grappa and sambuca. Nevertheless, typical pastries are not always strictly Italianate and common additions include scones, muffins, croissants, and even doughnuts. There is usually a large selection of teas as well, and the North American espresso bar culture is responsible for the popularization of the Indian spiced tea drink masala chai. Iced drinks are also popular in some countries, including both iced tea and iced coffee as well as blended drinks such as Starbucks' Frappucino.

A worker in an espresso bar is referred to as a barista. The barista is a skilled position that requires familiarity with the drinks being made (often very elaborate, especially in North American-style espresso bars), a reasonable facility with some rather esoteric equipment as well as the usual customer service skills.

Expresso bar in the United Kingdom

Haunts for teenagers in particular, Italian-run espresso bars and their formica-topped tables were a feature of 1950s Soho that provided a backdrop as well as a title for Cliff Richard’s 1960 film Expresso Bongo. The first was The Moka in Frith Street, opened by Gina Lollobrigida in 1953. With their ‘exotic Gaggia coffee machines,...Coke, Pepsi, weak frothy coffee and...Suncrush orange fountains’ they spread to other urban centres during the 1960s, providing cheap, warm places for young people to congregate and an ambience far removed from the global coffee bar standard which would be established in the final decades of the century by chains such as Starbucks and Pret A Manger.

Good Cafe Guide:Wake up and smell the coffee

Brisbane's coffee culture has accelerated from practically zero to hero over the past few decades as new cafes seem to open almost weekly and the hit rate for finding a great coffee has increased proportionally.

Where those great coffees are to be found is a subject for much heated debate.

Everyone has their own particular favourites that they will defend with passionate intensity.

But there is a generally agreed criteria for good coffee. It should be well-balanced if taken with milk, which should not overwhelm the flavour of the coffee beans.

Good-quality milk must always be used.

Bitterness is undesirable, as is a burnt flavour.

effort to track down who in the city was getting it right, we took two days, 20 cafes and by the end of it , four very jittery judges and visited each cafe unannounced.

It was all about the coffee, with contenders chosen for a strong emphasis on coffee, rather than cafes with an equal balance of food and coffee.

There were no judgments on a cafe's decor we focused entirely on what was in the cup. We ordered one of the most popular ways to take coffee a flat white and rated them on their appearance, smell and flavour.

It would have once been difficult to find even 10 top cafes a decade ago.

Paring down our list to 20 top cafes was the first step of what was to prove a very difficult mission. Of course, there will be cafes we have missed out, and not every one will agree on our findings.

However, it was gratifying to discover a uniformly high standard something you would not have found 10 or even five years ago.

One notable change seems to be in the cup size and shape, with a move towards smaller, thicker, more European-style coffee cups that keep the coffee hotter longer, as well as producing a richer, less diluted brew.

Another change was that as well as ``house brews'', many cafes were also offering single-origin blends and different brewing methods.

Melbourne has always been a serious café city, the legacy of its European migrants, but Sydney has –as Sydney does - completely embraced the idea of coffee culture and made it work in its own way, with great coffee a daily necessity of life.

We’re beginning to treat it as we do food and wine; demanding freshness, flavour, and a fair go for the farmer. We’re learning to appreciate the unique flavours of single origin beans, and to enjoy the new, softer brewing methods almost as much as our beloved espresso. (If you’re not yet fluent in new brew technology, there’s a feature on it in the Guide, and a handy glossary of terms to help you get the techy side of the business.)

So a big thank you to the café owners, managers and baristas who have built such a strong coffee and café scene in Sydney; something unrecognizable twenty or even ten years ago. Its brilliant to see a new generation of cafes starting by sourcing the beans themselves, roasting them themselves, investing in ever better technology, investing in training ever better staff, ever better food.

We hope the new Sydney Morning Herald Good Café Guide will build the café culture in this town, helping encourage good coffee practices and discourage bad, and primarily to steer people in the direction of great coffee.

started with the belief that cafes are more important to the life and soul of a city than its restaurants, which I’ve blogged about before now. You eat in restaurants, but you live in cafes. They’re cheaper. They’re more fun. They’re closer to home. They have better coffee. More interesting people go there. They don’t do 24 course degustations.

A good café humanises its neighbourhood, it’s the village square. A good café has no rules (unless its Bar Italia in Leichhardt with its no soy, no skim, no decaf). If you want eggs benny at three in the afternoon having just woken up, you can. If you want to read the newspaper or do business or swap recipes, you can. Good cafes have their own identity. Good cafes have a conscience, making an effort to be more sustainable, sourcing their beans ethically, supplying free tap water and glasses.

Good cafes don’t serve tea in cups that smell of coffee. They don’t treat coffee like a commodity. They’re interested, obsessed, fascinated with coffee in all its forms, new and old. And they don’t send your toast out with the butter already on it and melted into it; an appalling habit that must be stamped out immediately.

Economy of Arizona

2006 total gross state product was $232 billion. If Arizona (and each of the other U.S. states) were an independent country along with all existing countries (2005), it would have the 61st largest economy in the world . This figure gives Arizona a larger economy than such countries as Ireland, Finland, and New Zealand. Arizona currently has the 21st largest economy among states in the United States. As a percentage of its overall budget, Arizona's projected 1.7 billion deficit for '09 is one of the largest in the country, behind such states as Texas, California, Michigan, and Florida, to name a few.

The state's per capita income is $40,828, ranking 39th in the U.S. The state had a median household income of $50,958 making it 22nd in the country and just shy of the U.S. national median. Early in its history, Arizona's economy relied on the "five C's": copper (see Copper mining in Arizona), cotton, cattle, citrus, and climate (tourism). At one point Arizona was the largest producer of cotton in the country. Copper is still extensively mined from many expansive open-pit and underground mines, accounting for two-thirds of the nation's output.

Employment

The state government is Arizona's largest employer, while Wal-Mart is the state's largest private employer, with 17,343 employees (2008). As of June 2010, the state's unemployment rate is 9.6%.

Nearly 70 percent of the land in Arizona is owned by the U.S. government, which leases a portion of the public domain to ranchers or miners.

Taxation

Arizona collects personal income taxes in five brackets: 2.87%, 3.20%, 3.74%, 4.72% and 5.04%. The state sales tax is 6.6%; however, county and municipal sales taxes generally add an additional 2%.

The state rate on transient lodging (hotel/motel) is 7.27%. The state of Arizona does not levy a state tax on food for home consumption or on drugs prescribed by a licensed physician or dentist. However, some cities in Arizona do levy a tax on food for home consumption.

All fifteen Arizona counties levy a tax. Incorporated municipalities also levy transaction privilege taxes which, with the exception of their hotel/motel tax, are generally in the range of 1-to-3%. These added assessments could push the combined sales tax rate to as high as 10.7%.

Single          Tax Rate        Joint        Tax Rate

0 – $10,000 2.870% 0 – $20,000 2.870%

$10,000 – $25,000 3.200% $20,001 – $50,000 3.200%

$25,000 – $50,000 3.740% $50,001 – $100,000 3.740%

$50,000 – $150,001 4.720% $100,000 – $300,001 4.720%

$150,001 + 5.040% $300,001 + 5.040%