text:
Ind. doctor denied bond in 4 Neb. slayings
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska judge denied bond Tuesday to an Indiana doctor charged in the killing of four people with ties to an Omaha medical school that fired him from a residency program more than a decade ago.
Dr. Anthony Garcia appeared in the Omaha courtroom wearing a yellow jumpsuit and with his hands and feet shackled. Observers watched the hearing from behind a window in a guarded room at the back of the court.
Garcia faces four counts of first-degree murder and four weapons charges. He is accused of killing Creighton University pathologist Roger Brumback and his wife, Mary, in May at their home. Garcia also is accused in the 2008 killings of 11-year-old Thomas Hunter, whose father William worked at the university, and his family's housekeeper, Shirlee Sherman.
Several observers who arrived at the courthouse wearing t-shirts that read "Shirlee Sherman" were told to remove the shirts or turn them inside out before entering the observation room. They declined to speak to reporters, but several audibly gasped or snorted derisively when one of Garcia's lawyers said prosecutors lacked evidence to support the charges.
"It's circumstantial and thinly veiled," Chicago attorney Alison Motta told the court.
Police and prosecutors contend that Garcia was motivated by revenge in the killings. Roger Brumback and William Hunter had been instrumental in firing Garcia from the Creighton pathology program in 2001. Both men subsequently sent letters to state medical licensing boards that prevented Garcia from becoming licensed in Louisiana, Indiana, Texas and California and from finishing other residency programs.
STORY: Police trace gun to doctor
The judge said Tuesday there was enough evidence to hold Garcia, of Terre Haute, Ind., without bail.
An arrest affidavit says investigators noticed similar stab wounds on all four victims, and that parts of a gun found at the Brumbacks' home matched the model of handgun that Garcia bought in Indiana in March.
Another Creighton Pathology doctor, Chhanda Bewtra, said that someone tried to break into her Omaha home — but was apparently thwarted by the alarm — the day the Brumbacks were killed.
"Part of me doesn't want to believe it was him," Bewtra told the Omaha World-Herald for its Tuesday editions. "But the coincidence is very strong."
Nothing was taken from her house, and Bewtra did not immediately call the police, she told The Associated Press on Tuesday. She called police several days later after learning of the Brumbacks' deaths and discussing the break-in with colleagues.
"It was disconcerting," she said. "I was very grateful (we weren't home). It would be very disturbing otherwise."
Motta complained that the Omaha jail where Garcia was being held was hindering their work together and that guards' insistence that they keep Garcia in sight at all times could be a breach of attorney-client privilege.
"Our conversations — the sound echoes and reverberates. We have no access to hand him documents," Motta said.
Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said he would talk to jail staff about those issues, and indicated the suspect was on suicide watch.
"They want to make sure he doesn't harm himself," Kleine said.
Jail director Mark Foxall declined to say if Garcia was on suicide watch, but said the yellow jumpsuit he wore Tuesday showed "he's being held away from the general population."
Garcia was arrested in Illinois last week and extradited to Omaha.
Nebraska prosecutors are weighing whether to seek the death penalty against Garcia. A conviction of first-degree murder in Nebraska brings a minimum sentence of life in prison without parole.


text:
Azusa Scholarship Program
In 1998, Azusa City Council member1 and mayor pro-tem Joe Rocha approached Azusa Pacific University administrators and suggested the university establish a scholarship program aimed at attracting the best graduating seniors from Azusa and Gladstone high schools. The partnership between APU and Rocha resulted in the university launching the Nancy Moore/Celebrate Azusa Citizens Scholarship Program, which awards APU freshmen $5,000 scholarships. All recipients won accolades for their community-minded involvement and impressive academic records.
2011-12 Recipients
- Seleni Alcantar
- Emily Ayala
- Linda Cornell
- Maria Marin
- Koral Valdez
- Shasteen Velasquez
2010-11 Recipients
- Marcela Aguilera
- Adrianne Camacho
- Analiese Camacho
- Steven Mercato
- Maira Nava
- Lauren Ramirez
- Sameer Sedam
- Priscilla Ulloa
- Stephanie Vasquez
2009-10 Recipients
- Jenna Alvarado
- Jessica Esparza
- Luis Marin
- Nathan Martinez
- Marie Adelaide Millares
- Ariana Paredes
- Kimberly Rio
2008-09 Recipients
- Christa Simpson
- Sellika Velasquez
- Cecilia Camarena
2007-08 Recipients
- Florenz Asucan
- Nathalie Martin del Campo
- Jacob Scherf
- Ahmed Sedam
- Joshua Vergara
- Kristina Wolford
2006-07 Recipients
- Teresa Demara
- Consuelo Machuca
- Ever Valenciano
2005-06 Recipients
- Ruby Carreon
- Diana Perez Gutierrez
- Josh Pollard
- Naomi Spinella
2004-05 Recipients
- Elizabeth Denny, Gladstone High School
- Christopher Richards, Gladstone High School
- Stephanie Roldan, Gladstone High School
- Anna Simpson, Gladstone High School
- Abigail Badillo
2003-04 Recipients
- Valerie Arzate, Gladstone High School
- Ilda Gaeta, Azusa High School
- Andrea Garcia, Gladstone High School
- Jessica Harris, Azusa High School
- Timothy Wall, Gladstone High School
2002-03 Recipients
- Caleb Badillo, Azusa High School
- Elba Gomez, Azusa High School
- Heather Mendoza, Gladstone High School
- Kimberley Standley, Azusa High School
- Trianne Castro, Azusa High School
2001-02 Recipients
- Rosa Gaeta, Azusa High School
- Monica Flores, Gladstone High School
- Jessica Latier, Gladstone High School
2000-01 Recipients
- Joseph Denny, Gladstone High School
- Lidia Badillo, Azusa High School
In order to maintain the $5,000 renewable scholarships, recipients must maintain a 2.7 grade point average, take at least 12 units a semester, and devote 10 hours a week to community service.
If interested in applying for this scholarship program, please contact APU's Office of Undergraduate Admissions at 1-800-TALK APU.
- To learn more about the Azusa City Council visit http://www.ci.azusa.ca.us/index.aspx?NID=71. ↵

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Is tea the new coffee? Damned if I know, but that's a question that people seem to be fond of posing over and again. A recent example pops up in the Business Edge, an Ontario publication that took a look at Canadian coffee drinkers and their increasing interest in tea.
We've written about the Charleston Tea Plantation - America's only such creature - several times over the last month or so. It's been featured in several major newspapers lately, with the Chicago Tribune the latest to take a crack at writing about it. Also appearing in this Sunday's papers was an article on the plantation that originally ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
tea, food, food and drink, coffee, Charleston Tea Plantation
Shop at Dragonwater Tea
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Tea Plantation & The New Coffee
2 comments:
- KFM said...
We're in the opposite situation here in Ireland with coffee becoming the new tea! It's a nation of tea drinkers marching toward the bean.
Still, perhaps such experience will open people's mind and when they return to the leaf, perhaps they will search out more interesting teas and experiment beyond the generic stuff drowned in milk.
Thanks for keeping up your blog! It's always an interesting read.
- William I. Lengeman III said...
Thanks, Ice Cream Man.
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text:
Dermatomyositis is a rare disease that causes inflammation of the
skin and muscles. The inflammation can cause an itchy rash and skin thickening,
as well as muscle weakness and pain.
Dermatomyositis is an autoimmune disease, in which the body
produces antibodies that attack its own tissues. The disease mainly affects
middle-aged women. It is treated with medicines to control inflammation and
with physical therapy to help relieve muscle problems.
Some people who have dermatomyositis may get better within a few years.
Others may have persistent problems that, in some cases, may affect other
organs and become severe.
Last Revised:
June 27, 2011
Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:
Adam Husney, MD - Family Medicine & Peter J. Kahrilas, MD - Gastroenterology
This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use. How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions.
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
© 1995-2012 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated.


text:
This information is produced and provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The information in this topic may have changed since it was written. For the most current information, contact the National Cancer Institute via the Internet web site at http://cancer.gov or call 1-800-4-CANCER.
Note: Separate PDQ summaries on Stomach (Gastric) Cancer Screening, Gastric Cancer Treatment, and Levels of Evidence for Cancer Screening and Prevention Studies are also available.
Who Is at Risk?
People at elevated risk for gastric cancer include elderly patients with atrophic gastritis or pernicious anemia, patients with sporadic gastric adenomas,[1] familial adenomatous polyposis,[2] or hereditary nonpolyposis colon cancer,[3] and immigrant ethnic populations from countries with high rates of gastric carcinoma.[4,5] Workers in the rubber and coal industries are also at increased risk.[6]
Risk factors for gastric cancer include the presence of precursor conditions such as chronic atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia, pernicious anemia, and gastric adenomatous polyps. Genetic factors include a family history of gastric cancer, Li Fruameni syndrome, and Type A blood type.[6] Environmental factors include low consumption of fruits and vegetables; consumption of salted, smoked, or poorly preserved foods; cigarette smoking; and radiation exposure.[6,7,8]
There is consistent evidence that Helicobacter pylori infection, also known as H. pylori infection, of the stomach is strongly associated with both the initiation and promotion of carcinoma of the gastric body and antrum and of gastric lymphoma.[9,10,11] The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies H. pylori infection as a cause of noncardia gastric carcinoma and gastric low-grade B-cell mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue or MALT lymphoma (i.e., a Group 1 human carcinogen).[12,13]
Compared with the general population, people with duodenal ulcer disease may have a lower risk of gastric cancer.[14]
Interventions for Reduction of Stomach (Gastric) Cancer Risk
Smoking cessation
Based on solid evidence, smoking is associated with an increased risk of stomach cancer.[15,16,17] The 2004 Surgeon General's report identifies cigarette smoking as a cause of stomach cancer, with an average relative risk (RR) in former smokers of 1.2 and in current smokers of 1.6.[18] Compared with persistent smokers, the risk of stomach cancer decreases among former smokers with time since cessation. This pattern of observations makes it reasonable to infer that cigarette smoking prevention or cessation would result in a decreased risk of gastric cancer.
Magnitude of Effect: A systematic review and meta-analysis showed a 60% increase in gastric cancer in male smokers and a 20% increase in gastric cancer in female smokers compared with nonsmokers.
H. Pyloriinfection eradication
Based on solid evidence, H. pylori infection is associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer. A meta-analysis of seven randomized studies, all conducted in areas of high-risk gastric cancer and all but one conducted in Asia, suggests that treatment of H. pylori may reduce gastric cancer risk (from 1.7% to 1.1%; RR = 0.65; 95% confidence interval, 0.43–0.98).[19] Only two studies assessed gastric cancer incidence as the primary study outcome, and two different studies were double blinded. It is unclear how generalizable the results may be to the North American population.
Magnitude of Effect: Risk of cancer may be reduced; effect on cancer mortality is not known.
Interventions With Inadequate Evidence as to Whether They Reduce the Risk of Stomach (Gastric) Cancer
Based on fair evidence, excessive salt intake and deficient dietary consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables are associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer. Dietary intake of vitamin C contained in vegetables, fruits, and other foods of plant origin is associated with a reduced risk of gastric cancer. Diets high in whole-grain cereals, carotenoids, allium compounds, and green tea are also associated with a reduced risk of this cancer. However, it is uncertain if changing one's diet to include more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains would reduce the risk of gastric cancer.
Magnitude of Effect: Small, difficult to determine.
Incidence and mortality
The age-adjusted incidence rate for gastric cancer in the United States for the years 2004 to 2008 was 7.7 persons per 100,000 population. Incidence among men is twice as high as among women.[1] Mortality rates for gastric cancer have been declining worldwide in recent decades, most prominently in the United States.[2,3] Mortality rates for white males in the United States were approximately 40 deaths per 100,000 population in 1930, compared with 4.6 deaths per 100,000 population for the years 2003 to 2007. The death rate from gastric cancer for black males was 2.3 times higher than for whites for the years 2003 to 2007.[4] The annual number of new cases seems to be steady in recent years; in 2012, it is estimated 21,320 Americans will be diagnosed with gastric cancer and 10,540 persons will die of it.[5] Gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the world.[6,7] Worldwide, the estimated number of cases per year in 2008 was 988,000, and the estimated number of deaths was 736,000. Age-standardized annual incidence rates vary widely across the world: from 3.9 to 42.4 cases per 100,000 in men, and from 2.2 to 18.3 cases per 100,000 in women. More than 70% of cases occur in developing countries, and 50% of the cases occur in Eastern Asia.[7]
Most cancers in the United States are advanced at diagnosis, which is reflected in an overall 5-year survival rate of 27.1% from 2001 to 2007.[1] Carcinomas localized to the mucosa or submucosa ("early" cancers) have a much better prognosis; the 5-year survival rate is more than 95% in Japan and more than 65% in the United States. In high-risk populations, secondary prevention measures linked to screening programs have been instituted.[8] In Japan, endoscopic resection techniques have been refined and could possibly be responsible for drastic reductions in mortality rates in the presence of steady incidence rates. This hypothesis, however, has not been tested in clinical trials. (Refer to the PDQ summary on Stomach (Gastric) Cancer Screening for more information.)
Understanding the pathogenesis of gastric cancer has advanced over the years. A lengthy precancerous process has been identified in which the gastric mucosa is slowly transformed from normal to chronic gastritis, to multifocal atrophy, to intestinal metaplasia of various degrees, to dysplasia, and then to invasive carcinoma.[9] The process is apparently driven by forces acting on the gastric epithelium for many years, such as excessive dietary salt and most prominently, infection with H. pylori.
A systematic review and meta-analysis showed a 60% increase in gastric cancer in male smokers and a 20% increase in gastric cancer in female smokers compared with nonsmokers.[10] A systematic review of studies addressing the relationship between cigarette smoking and gastric cancer to estimate the magnitude of the association for different levels of exposure to cancer provides solid evidence to classify smoking as the most important behavioral risk factor for gastric cancer.[10,11,12] Compared with persistent smokers, the risk of stomach cancer decreases among former smokers with time since cessation. The pattern that emerges from these observations makes it reasonable to infer that cigarette smoking prevention or cessation would result in a decreased risk of gastric cancer.
H. pyloriinfection eradication
H. pylori infection is an accepted cause of gastric adenocarcinoma.[13,14] Questions remain concerning the natural history of H. pylori infection; the mechanism of transmission and the rates of reinfection or recrudescence for different populations are unknown.[15,16] A small randomized trial of antibiotic eradication in 140 H. pylori-infected people suggests the possibility of transmission among close family members.[17] In 70 participants, only the participant received eradication therapy; in the other 70 participants, all H. pylori-infected family members living with the primary participant also received the eradication therapy. Nine months after the therapy, the positivity rates in the index participants in each group were 38.6% and 7.1%, respectively (odds ratio = 8.61; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.91–22.84), suggesting the possibility of transmission from untreated, infected family members.
Since about half of the world population is infected with H. pylori, antibacterial treatment for all people who are chronically infected may be impractical and could trigger antimicrobial resistance. Vaccination against H. pylori has been shown effective in experimental animal models, but thus far, such efficacy has not been studied in humans.
A meta-analysis of seven randomized studies, all conducted in areas with high-risk gastric cancer populations, and all but one study conducted in Asia, suggests that treatment of H. pylori may reduce gastric cancer risk (from 1.7% to 1.1%; relative risk [RR] = 0.65; 95% CI, 0.43–0.98).[18] Only two studies assessed gastric cancer incidence as the primary study outcome, and two different studies were double blinded. It is unclear how generalizable the results may be to the North American population. It would be useful to know which subgroups of persons with H. pylori are particularly likely to develop cancer in order to decide which subgroups might be appropriate to consider for targeted screening and eradication. However, studies in H. pylori-infected subjects have been underpowered for determining progression to invasive cancer. Even studies of associations between baseline characteristics (such as age, alcohol use, and well water used as the source of drinking water in rural China) and histologic progression of intestinal metaplasia to more severe grades of metaplasia show associations of insufficient magnitude to be useful in clinical decision making.[19]
Interventions With Inadequate Evidence as to Whether They Reduce the Risk of Stomach (Gastric) Cancer or Evidence of No Effect
Excessive salt intake has been identified as a possible risk factor for gastric cancer in correlation and case-control studies.[20,21] The daily intake of salt has decreased drastically in most western countries and in Japan, in part due to public health campaigns to reduce hypertensive diseases. This may be at least partially responsible for declines in gastric cancer rates. There is a consistent association between high salt intake and the risk of gastric cancer.
Epidemiologic evidence from case-control and cohort studies suggests that increased intake of fresh fruits and vegetables is associated with decreased gastric cancer rates.[21,22] However, no randomized controlled trials have been done to establish a causal association.
Dietary supplements
Because of the evidence for an inverse association between gastric cancer and dietary intake of fruits and vegetables, especially those rich in antioxidants, there has been interest in dietary supplementation with antioxidants.
Dietary indices of micronutrient intake have been calculated and indicate possible protective effects of beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin E, selenium, vitamin C or foods that contain these compounds. A chemoprevention trial in China reported a statistically significant reduction in the gastric cancer mortality rate after supplementation with beta carotene, vitamin E, and selenium.[23] The population studied, however, may have been nutritionally deficient, raising questions of generalizability to other populations such as that of the United States. In addition, the experimental design did not permit assessment of the relative effects of beta carotene, vitamin E, and selenium.
Likewise, there was a randomized placebo-controlled trial of 200 mg of oral allitridium (a component of garlic) every day combined with 100 mcg of oral selenium every other day for 1 month of each year over a 3-year period in Qixia County (Shadong Province, China), an area with low intake of garlic and low selenium content in their garlic compared to other areas of China.[24] Although designed as a double-blinded trial, allitridium causes a distinctive odor of garlic. A total of 5,033 people, who met at least one of the following criteria: (1) medical history of stomach disorder, (2) family history of tumor, (3) history of smoking, or (4) history of alcohol consumption, were randomly assigned. The study, published in a Chinese medical journal, was not well described. After a follow-up for as many as 11 years, there were a total of 23 gastric cancer cases in the allitridium/selenium group and 30 cases in the placebo group (RR after adjustment for a number of baseline characteristics = 0.48; 95% CI, 0.21–1.06). Only 60% of the gastric cancers were diagnosed by histopathology. There was a qualitative difference in outcome by sex: RRmen = 0.36 (95% CI, 0.14–0.92); RRwomen = 1.14 (95% CI, 0.22–5.76). Given the problems with design and reporting of the study, the evidence of benefit (including men) is weak and may not be generalizable to Western countries.
In a randomized double-blind chemoprevention trial in Venezuela among a population at increased risk for gastric cancer, a combination of antioxidant vitamins (vitamins C, E, and beta carotene) failed to modify progression or regression of precancerous gastric lesions.[25] Another potential explanation for the lack of benefit of vitamin supplementation in this trial was the high prevalence of advanced premalignant lesions and the high H. pylori infection rate.[26]
A secondary analysis of the Alpha-Tocopherol Beta Carotene trial conducted on male smokers in Finland evaluated the effect of supplementation on gastric cancer incidence.[27] No protective effects for these supplements against gastric cancer were observed. Six-year follow-up results of a study of 976 Colombian patients have been reported. Patients were randomly assigned to receive eight different treatments that included vitamin supplements and anti-Helicobacter therapy either alone or in combination versus placebo. Among the 79 patients who received anti-Helicobacter therapy, a borderline statistically significant regression of intestinal metaplasia when compared with a placebo (15% vs. 6%; RR = 3.1; 95% CI, 1.0–9.3) was noted. However, the combinations of antibiotics and vitamins did not confer additional benefits. More importantly, the progression rate of intestinal metaplasia was comparable irrespective of the treatments received. The progression rate was 23% in the placebo group and 17% in antibiotic recipients.[28]
A systematic review examined randomized trials of antioxidant dietary supplements for the prevention of gastrointestinal cancers, including gastric cancer.[29] Twenty trials were identified that assessed the preventive effects of antioxidant supplements or vitamin C on gastrointestinal cancer. With regard to gastric cancer, there were 12 comparisons of one or more micronutrients with placebo: beta-carotene alone (4 trials); vitamin C alone (1 trial); vitamin E alone (1 trial); vitamin A plus beta-carotene (1 trial); beta-carotene plus vitamin C (1 trial); beta-carotene plus vitamin E (1 trial); beta-carotene plus vitamins C and E (1 trial); selenium plus vitamins C and E (1 trial); and beta-carotene, vitamins C and E, and selenium (1 trial). None of the comparisons showed a statistically significant effect on the incidence of gastric cancer. The overall summary estimate across all trials of antioxidants showed no statistically significant effect (RR of gastric cancer = 1.14; 95% CI, 0.97–1.33). Approximately 0.51% of participants in the combined antioxidant groups developed gastric cancer versus 0.38% in the placebo groups after treatment of 2.1 to 12 years and follow-up for as many as 14.1 years. In the combined analysis of all 20 trials of antioxidants for the prevention of gastrointestinal cancers, a fixed effects model showed an increase in overall mortality of antioxidants compared to placebo (RR for mortality = 1.04; 95% CI, 1.02–1.07) but not in a random effects model (RR for mortality = 1.02; 95% CI, 0.97–1.07)
The PDQ cancer information summaries are reviewed regularly and updated as new information becomes available. This section describes the latest changes made to this summary as of the date above.
Description of the Evidence
Updated statistics with estimated new cases and deaths for 2012 (cited American Cancer Society as reference 5).
If you have questions or comments about this summary, please send them to Cancer.gov through the Web site's Contact Form. We can respond only to email messages written in English.
Purpose of This Summary
This PDQ cancer information summary for health professionals provides comprehensive, peer-reviewed, evidence-based information about stomach (gastric) cancer prevention. It is intended as a resource to inform and assist clinicians who care for cancer patients. It does not provide formal guidelines or recommendations for making health care decisions.
Reviewers and Updates
This summary is reviewed regularly and updated as necessary by the PDQ Screening and Prevention Editorial Board, which is editorially independent of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The summary reflects an independent review of the literature and does not represent a policy statement of NCI or the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Board members review recently published articles each month to determine whether an article should:
Changes to the summaries are made through a consensus process in which Board members evaluate the strength of the evidence in the published articles and determine how the article should be included in the summary.
Any comments or questions about the summary content should be submitted to Cancer.gov through the Web site's Contact Form. Do not contact the individual Board Members with questions or comments about the summaries. Board members will not respond to individual inquiries.
Levels of Evidence
Some of the reference citations in this summary are accompanied by a level-of-evidence designation. These designations are intended to help readers assess the strength of the evidence supporting the use of specific interventions or approaches. The PDQ Screening and Prevention Editorial Board uses a formal evidence ranking system in developing its level-of-evidence designations.
Permission to Use This Summary
PDQ is a registered trademark. Although the content of PDQ documents can be used freely as text, it cannot be identified as an NCI PDQ cancer information summary unless it is presented in its entirety and is regularly updated. However, an author would be permitted to write a sentence such as "NCI's PDQ cancer information summary about breast cancer prevention states the risks succinctly: [include excerpt from the summary]."
The preferred citation for this PDQ summary is:
National Cancer Institute: PDQ® Stomach (Gastric) Cancer Prevention. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute. Date last modified <MM/DD/YYYY>. Available at: http://cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/gastric/HealthProfessional. Accessed <MM/DD/YYYY>.
Images in this summary are used with permission of the author(s), artist, and/or publisher for use within the PDQ summaries only. Permission to use images outside the context of PDQ information must be obtained from the owner(s) and cannot be granted by the National Cancer Institute. Information about using the illustrations in this summary, along with many other cancer-related images, is available in Visuals Online, a collection of over 2,000 scientific images.
The information in these summaries should not be used as a basis for insurance reimbursement determinations. More information on insurance coverage is available on Cancer.gov on the Coping with Cancer: Financial, Insurance, and Legal Information page page.
Contact Us
More information about contacting us or receiving help with the Cancer.gov Web site can be found on our Contact Us for Help page. Questions can also be submitted to Cancer.gov through the Web site's Contact Form.
Call 1-800-4-CANCER
For more information, U.S. residents may call the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Cancer Information Service toll-free at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237) Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Eastern Time. A trained Cancer Information Specialist is available to answer your questions.
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There are also many other places to get materials and information about cancer treatment and services. Hospitals in your area may have information about local and regional agencies that have information on finances, getting to and from treatment, receiving care at home, and dealing with problems related to cancer treatment.
Find Publications
The NCI has booklets and other materials for patients, health professionals, and the public. These publications discuss types of cancer, methods of cancer treatment, coping with cancer, and clinical trials. Some publications provide information on tests for cancer, cancer causes and prevention, cancer statistics, and NCI research activities. NCI materials on these and other topics may be ordered online or printed directly from the NCI Publications Locator. These materials can also be ordered by telephone from the Cancer Information Service toll-free at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
Last Revised: 2012-01-26
This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use. How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions.
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
© 1995-2012 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated.


text: Jesus Chairez tells his story for Outrageous Oral, Volume 2, September 13, 2012, at the Vixen Lounge of Sue Ellen's nightclub. Outrageous Oral is a quarterly evening of poignant memories and stories from Dallas' GLBT past. The Dallas Way is committed to our mission to gather, store, organize, and present the complete GLBT history of Dallas, Texas.


text:
Today's guest post comes from Anita Liberty, performance poet, filmmaker, novelist and lover of small dogs. For the uninitiated, Anita Liberty is a woman who, when she discovered that her ex-boyfriend Mitchell was dating someone named HEATHER, dedicated her art to embarassing him in public, with hysterical poems like "Not Thinking About You" and "Still Not Thinking About You." Anita's first book How to Heal the Hurt by Hating, dealt with the aftermath of her breakup and the discovery of the aforementioned Heather. In her second book, How to Stay Bitter Through the Happiest Times of Your Life, Anita met a man, fell in love, got married and had a beautiful baby, but was still, well, bitter. Her most recent book sent her back to her teenage years, to perhaps the point from which all her angst comes, and is called The Center of the Universe (Yep,That Would Be Me). Once she delved into the Young Adult genre, and knowing that she was a reader from a very young age, I thought she'd be a natural to review Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick of Jezebel's Fine Lines fame. And a natural she is. Read on for her thoughts. Then browse inside Shelf Discovery to see for yourself. And learn more about Anita Liberty here.
When my friend, Book Club Girl, asked me if I'd like to write a guest blog for her, of course I said yes. Why wouldn't I? I'd been angling for a guest blog from BCG for a while. I thought it would be like house-sitting or cat sitting or a one-night stand – I could get all the benefits without any of the commitment. Book Club Girl is popular. She's so popular. You know this if you're reading this right now. She's got a lot of disciples, fans, followers. You don't say no to someone like that. She's got power. At first, I felt a little performance anxiety about having to come up with a worthy book-related topic for the blog. But fortunately Book Club Girl asked if I'd like to review the newly-published book, SHELF DISCOVERY: THE TEEN CLASSICS WE NEVER STOPPED READING by Lizzie Skurnick. That sounded fantastic. I was happy to be relieved of having to generate my own clever topic and I felt fully-qualified to review this particular title, seeing as I am an author of a sure-to-be-classic Young Adult book (THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE (YEP, THAT WOULD BE ME)).
As soon as I got SHELF DISCOVERY in the mail from BCG, I sat down and started reading (I procrastinate about reading way less than I procrastinate about writing). This book of short essays came out of Lizzie Skurnick's Fine Lines column for Jezebel.com, in which she took a nostalgic and purely-subjective look at the books that inspired her to become the avid reader she is today. When I heard about SHELF DISCOVERY from Book Club Girl, I thought for sure that I would be able to match Skurnick's breadth of knowledge about YA literature from the sixties and seventies. I, too, was a ravenous reader when I was a nubile and impressionable teenager. So I flipped open Skurnick's book to the Table of Contents, where she lists the titles of all the books that are covered in SHELF DISCOVERY and put checkmarks next to the ones I'd read. Turns out I'm not as well-read in this genre as I've always thought. Damn you, Skurnick. I hate having my inadequacies exposed. But exposed they were and I had to admit that there was a lot of unexplored territory in my teenage literary journey.
Skurnick groups her essays into ten categories (and I paraphrase): the best YA heroines, puberty, crime/mystery, tearjerkers, teens with big drama, nature girls, supernatural, romance, period (time, not menstrual) and the taboo. Guess where I had the most checkmarks of books I'd read? In the taboo section. Yep. I was drawn to the forbidden. That much is clear. I may not have read Harriet the Spy, The Secret Garden or A Little Princess, but I was all over Wifey, Clan of the Cave Bear and Flowers in the Attic. Do I remember anything about them? No. Except that they had naughty passages. Then again, I have terrible reading retention and that was part of why it was so much fun reading Skurnick's book. Not only does she seem to remember everything she reads, but she's a re-reader, so she keeps her memory refreshed and impressions sharp. I really enjoyed reading Skurnick's essays about the books I had read (Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, the Little House on the Prairie series, A Wrinkle in Time, Deenie, Go Ask Alice, The Summer of My German Soldier, Island of the Blue Dolphins and more…. I can't stop typing titles 'cause even typing the titles evokes the warm feelings I still have towards my favorite teen titles.), but I also enjoyed reading the essays about the books I hadn't. I've always been a fan of the shortcut and Skurnick is great at capturing the essence of a particular book and provoking in the reader the same nostalgia she feels about it. Even if it's not a book one has actually read. She writes intimately and, while reading her, I just sort of kept mentally nodding my head and thinking, "Yeah. Me, too, Lizzie. See? See how much we have in common?"
Skurnick's list of books is distinctly personal. I'm sure everyone who reads SHELF DISCOVERY will come up with books she feels Skurnick has egregiously omitted. But the point of Skurnick's book is that it is unapologetically specific to her experience as a teenage reader (with the exception of the handful of essays by various current YA authors and then their essays are unapologetically specific to them). The sub-subtitle of SHELF DISCOVERY is "A Reading Memoir." These aren't reviews, they're reflections. In each essay (what Skurnick calls "Book Reports") she pulls juicy, evocative passages from the books, puts the books in social and literary contexts and, most effectively, examines and conveys her emotional response to the stories and characters. SHELF DISCOVERY certainly made me want to go to the library and find the books I somehow missed when I was a teenager, as well as go back and re-read some of the titles I remember loving as a kid (Forever, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase).
If I were in a book club (which I'm not, but would happily collect invitations from any and all Los Angeles-based book clubs and then make a decision based on who serves the tastiest treats – get Book Club Girl's brownie recipe and I am so THERE) I'd suggest this as one month's pick. This book almost wants to be read and discussed as a group. I certainly wanted to share it with all of my friends, find out which books they'd read, which they hadn't, what they remember about their young reading selves, etc. I think it would be great to read it for a book club and go through the list of titles and choose a couple of books to either read or re-read and discuss as well. For the most part, I find that most YA books from my YA life don't hold up to my adult standards. They're evocative of a certain time, but most feel dated and are more poorly-written than I remember. But the conversation provoked by some of these titles could easily veer into self-confessional and titillating. That would be my hope anyway. Along with the brownies.
On a side note, while I was reading Skurnick's book, I saw a thread on Twitter between two teenagers discussing my YA book and there was a cryptic mention of a librarian at their school who was considering refusing the donation of the book on account of its language and sexual content. I couldn't have been more thrilled. I felt the same way as I did about a decade ago when I performed my poem, A Visit to the Gynecologist, for a Spoken Word special on MTV. I got a call at the last minute, shortly before airdate, informing me that MTV's Standards and Practices weren't comfortable with the language or content of my poem. I wasn't mad. I was glad. I wore censorship like a badge of honor. And the idea that my book might be "banned" from some Midwestern public school library by some uptight, stodgy, ill-equipped, unsophisticated, everyday's-a-bad-hair-day librarian fills me with pride. One of my favorite moments from Skurnick's books is in the chapter titled Panty Lines: I Can't Believe They Let us Read This. Skurnick writes: "In general I'm against book banning, but in the case of filthy literature, I'm all for it. How else would we find out which are the best ones?" I think having my book banned would be the most solid endorsement that I had written something worth reading. And then maybe someday I'd end up in someone else's "reading memoir. " (A YA author can dream, can't she?)


text:
On raising a son on the autism spectrum, progressive politics, pop culture, and coffee addiction.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
A matter of perspective
And yet, I find myself thinking lately about a post I wrote several years ago about the down-side of being a "high functioning" child, as I find myself responding to Bud with higher expectations, lower levels of patience, and increasing frustration with his behavior.
I'm reminding myself that I need to take a step back and remember what's going on here.
It's one of the dangers, I think, of having a child with a "hidden" disability. The more he "looks" like other children on the surface, the quicker I am to blame him for troubling behavior, instead of recognizing that it is merely another manifestation of his disability.
I think about it this way: If Bud were blind, I doubt I would hear myself saying "You have a cane. We have been over this a million times. Would you PLEASE stop bumping into things?" I'm virtually certain I would not blurt out in frustration "CAN YOU JUST WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING?"
I have a hunch that I would be quicker to remember that visual impairment is the very definition of blindness, and that the behaviors that stem from that are merely signs that there is more progress to be made.
Why, then, can it be so difficult to remember that most of Bud's troubling behavior stems from the core deficits that are the hallmark of an autism diagnosis:
Language impairment;
Difficulty with appropriate social interaction;
Restrictive interests and repetitive behaviors.
When I look at the behaviors that make me want to scream - that do, in fact, sometimes make me scream - I can see how neatly they fit into these three little boxes.
Bud has made - and continues to make - extraordinary progress. His skills compound. His abilities soar. And he is still autistic. The core deficits of autism will continue to manifest in new ways for him, signalling our need to shift approaches and rethink assumptions.
It is MY job to watch where we're going.
27 comments:
I have that problem with my eldest. I forget that this "normal" child, still has NLD. I quite often find it more frustrating than dealing with the more prominant issues with my non-verbal autistic son.
- June 12, 2010 12:29 PM
- Apples and Autobots said...
That is sooooo true! I experience some of the same frustrations with my son who has Asperger's.
- June 12, 2010 2:35 PM
- Lisa said...
It's like, oh great THAT problem is fixed now, I can relax. All done. Great progress.
But then the next set of issues pop up. Sigh. And they will.
Dreamer is doing so well, I thought he could plan his own birthday party. He forgot to keep track of who he'd invited...
- June 12, 2010 6:48 PM
- xine said...
Oooh, I have fallen into that trap too many times with the kids I work with! After they've learned and maintained a skill for a while, it is easy to forget that they sometimes have bad days and forget, and that it isn't appropriate for me to think something like "seriously?! You haven't had an accident in months, what gives?!" when I should be thinking "How awesome, I can't believe he hasn't had an accident in months! He's doing such a good job. Today he must have been so excited about what we were doing that he forgot to use the restroom." Or something like that.
- June 12, 2010 9:14 PM
- Christa said...
Shannon Rosa just asked me to write a guest post for the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism about the mixed bag that goes with having a child that "passes."
I think you just wrote it for me. :)
Can I link to you and quote this post in mine?
- June 12, 2010 10:18 PM
- C. S. Wyatt said...
People forget the bad days, the non-verbal days, the days I simply need a break to recharge. My wife certainly forgets and will say, "You already told me X several times!" She gets frustrated much faster if I have been okay for a long time and then have an unexpected bad day.
That's human. The shift from speaking in public or teaching to rocking without speaking is a lot to take, I realize. But the little "changes" on bad days are even harder to recognize and tolerate.
I always try to remind myself that people forget I'm constantly dealing with sensory overload, cognitive challenges, and an uncooperative motor system. I must pause and remind some people, carefully and politely, to be patient with me and I'll be patient with them.
- June 13, 2010 2:40 AM
- Melissa (Betty and Boo's Mommy) said...
Oh my goodness ... yes. Absolutely needed to read this today, if only to remind myself of this and that other people "get it." As always, thank you.
- June 13, 2010 9:33 AM
- Fairlington Blade said...
I remember coming to Secondo's most recent meeting with Dr. Dave. Keen was doing the appointment and I showed up late to pick up the kiddos and take them out to a special meal. [Note to anyone in the Washington, DC, area--Firefly and Eventide rock! And that includes families with special needs kids.]
The theme of the meeting was that it's OK to be mad at your special needs child. We're great parents etc etc etc and there's nothing wrong with being frustrated. Several days later, I saw Keen walking downhill with a squalling Secondo on her shoulder. They'd been out tricycling and it was time go home. Primo was cool with it, Secondo took a stand. Bad idea, kid. I took Secondo upstairs to cool off and made Keen a G&T.
- June 13, 2010 11:54 AM
- MOM-NOS said...
Christa, link away! I'm glad it was helpful, and I look forward to reading your post.
C.S. Wyatt, thanks for your perspective. It's really valuable to me.
- June 13, 2010 12:35 PM
- Elisa said...
I feel ya! Thanks for sharing what a lot of us feel.
- June 13, 2010 4:40 PM
- KAL said...
Wow, I could almost have written this post word for word, but about Sam. I forget all the time!
- June 13, 2010 4:44 PM
So often, I click and find your sage postings so timely, as it was again. Right when my son and I have both hit that frustrating semblance of normality and so I must start to TELL myself and I now begin to TELL others the best I can, that we are so far from that, really. We are not just being weird, we are progressing wonderfully. We are doing excitingly well! But of course it is impossible to understand, because even I lose myself even when we're here in sight of our goal. We are so horribly, tantalizingly, mean-teasingly close to "functioning" that it almost feels worse. We, he and I, are literally in that period that could accurately be called Spectrum purgatory.
Dramatic sounding I know, but my dear-sweet-husband is traveling again and I'm so weary after a weekend camping with the scouts, just me, Mom, and my two wildly different children and the rain...and I'm trying to convince myself how good and successful the experience was, how we seem to fit in, sort of, and I'm failing. Anyway, that's another story, isn't it.
Briefly-Thank you for sharing with such compassion and empathy the patience I'm losing and the clarity.
- June 13, 2010 5:55 PM
- Professor Mother said...
I wrote a blog a few months ago about "passing" as well... and how I sometimes think of autism like Gollum, stalking our house. http://professormother.com/2010/03/28/passing/ "It"- normal life, "typical" worries- are so close, and yet so far away... You get reminded afresh again and again.
I know that your "happy talk" to yourself is just trying to cheer yourself up- because the alternative of screaming, crying, etc. just isn't a choice. You're among friends who understand...
- June 13, 2010 8:04 PM
- AmyLK said...
It is so easy to forget that our kids have trouble with things. They look so normal and even act normally in most situations. Its good to remind ourselves once in a while that we need to have more patience with them and to be the drivers.
So glad that Bud is making such wonderful progress. Good job Mom!
- June 14, 2010 10:19 AM
- pixiemama said...
On this, Foster's first day at a NT day camp, as I stood outside the pool locker room nearly furious that his 5-year-old sister was dressed infinitely faster than him ... yeah, I needed to read this, too.
Glad you're posting again lately.
- June 14, 2010 7:27 PM
- Jen said...
I have had this same issue myself. My Elijah is so sweet at times that I think I truly forget he is on the spectrum.
- June 17, 2010 1:43 PM
- TC said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- June 17, 2010 7:07 PM
- TC said...
(Sorry...needed to fix the six bajillion typos...)
Yes, yes, yes.
Plus there's this complicating factor, at least for me: How do you tease out the autism from the just-typical-annoying-child behavior. I don't want N to think that it's OK for him to use his autism/quirkiness/whatever as an excuse to act badly. And it's not always easy to know what is within his powers to cope with, and he's just choosing not to...and what he literally is dis-able to do. I want to come down on him hard(ish) about the former, but I want to cut him plenty of slack/give him plenty of support for the latter.
Some days, it feels like I get it right. Others, I'm pretty sure I'm doing it all entirely backward, and am going to wind up having raised an adult who was indulged in his worst traits, and not supported through his best.
- June 17, 2010 7:09 PM
- Korta said...
This isn't just about this post... I just found this blog and I read everything on the RSS feeder. My daughter was diagnosed with autism a couple months ago and even though I basically knew it, it's been rough. She's borderline aspergers, which I feel lucky about, but her classmates are just so different still. And they've started teasing her. Her most troubling behaviour is that she insists on grabbing people's noses). She has for ages but now it's been even worse at school, and one of the parents has been yelling at me that he's sick of it, I've tried to explain and he's just furious all the time. I've been crying and playing over in my head what to try to say to this man, and trying at the same time to get my daughter to stay away from his kids, but that just makes my daughter more stressed and makes it worse for the OTHER kids she's grabbing at. The teacher tried to tell the kids the other day to be nicer to her because she really can't help it. I just don't know what to do. There's an autism team at the school (or at least they sometimes come in) but with school ending in a couple weeks they doubt they'll be able to do anything this year. Sorry, she's in grade one, I should say.
I'm sorry, I meant to use this comment to say how beautiful and wonderful your blog is and how much just sitting reading about your son and his classmates has helped! I didn't mean to get all weepy. I am hoping so much that her classmates grow to love her as much as your son's class obviously loves him. I'm so proud of my daughter and how hard she's been trying. Thank you so much for showing that people CAN understand! I really needed this site!
- June 18, 2010 11:36 PM
I really needed to read this! Thank you! Johnna
- June 19, 2010 5:35 PM
- Lynn said...
I completely agree. My husband has this horrible habit of always quoting my daughter's age when he is frustrated by her behavior, as in "She's 6 years old now!" I feel so badly because she's really not 6 years old on so many levels, and she shouldn't be held to typical age-appropriate behavior...at least not all of the time.
- June 26, 2010 8:10 PM
new blog I found that I like is: http://awesomewithautism.blogspot.com/2010/05/start-here.html because it's written by a man with Aspergers, and it's interesting to get a post-childhood first-person viewpoint of ASDs. Also, the blogger is a comedy writer, so the blog is really funny. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.
- June 27, 2010 1:51 AM
- Alysia said...
a trap we fall into constantly with our little guy. Especially when we expect to handle more than he can. Thanks for the reminder.
- June 29, 2010 3:26 PM
- Jean said...
As my little autie dude is only 6 we're not at that stage yet, but I hope I will be able to keep in mind that even tho he is improving, that he is still autistic.
Excellent point.
- June 29, 2010 3:32 PM
- Valerie Foley said...
I just posted a link to this post on another board, with the accompanying statement:
I think this all the time, but I could never ever write it so well.
Thank you so much.
- July 01, 2010 3:43 AM
- Drama Mama said...
Oh my God.
I feel you just lifted up my skirt and showed everyone my slip.
The cane, the bumping, yes, yes, sigh, yes.
Thanks for reminding ME to cool it.
- July 02, 2010 9:02 AM
My husband and I were just talking about this. We went on vacation with my 2.5 year old daughter. Last year, when we went, she was just shy of going to school and had JUST started receiving services. This year, well, it's been a year... PROGRESS. Needless to say, we've begun to see the difference in her after just a week of vacation. Actually, WE saw it after just a couple of days. And it's partly because the expectation is different now.
It IS frustrating. We'll probably make this a shorter break next year. Hindsight and all.
- August 31, 2010 8:17 AM


text:
Saturday, December 15, 2007
My Favorite Patient
History was not helpful, exam revealed a very confused somnolent patient, but was otherwise unhelpful.
The standard workup including CT scan was negative, but there was one interesting lab test. The Urine Drug Screen was almost pan-positive.
Amphetamines: POS
Benzodiazepines: POS
Opiates: POS
Barbiturates: POS
Cannabis: NEG
I went back to the room to ask more questions and talk to the daughter. I handed the multiply positive drug screen to the daughter and said "maybe this explains her confusion" Turns out that drug abuse had been a significant history with the patient, but they didn't tell me that part.
She woke her mother up and said "Mama, have you been doing drugs again (or "druds" if you're pretending to be a doctor...see other posts)?" The mother woke up and said......(this is my favorite part)...... "not unless they've been putting it in my weed"!
For the non-medical folks....of course the only negative part of her drug screen was the weed...the only part she admitted to! I thought it was hysterical! That case made my night all worthwhile.
17 comments:
Well, I guess this counts as a really good story...hehe, I'm kidding.ReplyDelete
It's a great story! Brightened my mood after this last call I had, freaking frequent flying itchy nipple guy!
Nice story, but you haven't lived until you get two of our frequent flyers. 1. Jesus Christ's mistress (who happens to be a male). 2. The Virgin Mary, who signs all her consents just like that.ReplyDelete
Hey, maybe the 50 year old is sharing her medications with the Mistres and the Virgin Mary.
i plan on living long enough to become an embarrassment to my kids and my profession. i will be the most inveterate abuser of the ER, and have every allergy in the book. the only thing that will work for me will be dilaudid. i also plan on starting to smoke pot the day my youngest heads off to college. when the ER doc asks me if i drink or use drugs i will say, "as much as i can whenever i am awake, ouch, my ding-dong hurts again, oh me! it's fixin' to making my head explode! help! help!"ReplyDelete
there will be payback, the sins of our population will be visited upon the next generation of people silly enough to go into emergency medicine by ME. obtw, erdoc85, at that time i will hope you are still practicing. i will come and visit a lot... by ambulance every time.
I'm only going to use the ED for disimpactions and "funny" looking moles. One of each per week. I'll get the nickname the shit- filled mole guy. I like it already.
The family of this lady probably said..."momma ain't never been this out of it." Then a quick search of her last visit shows that it was for an accidental overdose.
emergencyem: one time as a medicine intern, I got a 4am call from one of the Sri Lankan night nurses. The patient's scrotum was "very itching". Upon further questioning this was a 2 week old problem, and "nothing worked".ReplyDelete
I gave her the same verbal order I'd give you "scratch 'em prn"!
Just heard from current patient...ReplyDelete
Me: "Have you had any blood in your diarhea."
Patient: "No, it's solid water."
Until today, I have never seen a patient poop ice, but this guy evidently did.
Okay, now I get it. You goofballs created this blog to satisfy your need to see who is funnier. Me? I'm just enjoying the ride.ReplyDelete
This dude calls us AT LEAST twice a week...I finally got fed up one night and asked him, "just what do you want us to do about this?" He looked at me blankly then said, "scratch it?" I replied, "I dont think so, get in the ambulance."
The next time I said, "well hell, why don't you scratch it?" He flipped me off. Yea.
He doesn't have heating in his house...so I suspect when it gets really cold we'll be picking him up every night...is there a law against abusing 911?
On a different note, I agree with Lynn. I love this damn blog.
i think we are one of the few doc blogs, scalpel included of course, that rants a bit about our insane patients. other than that we would be the guys snapping towels at your ass in the locker room.ReplyDelete
"other than that we would be the guys snapping towels at your ass in the locker room."ReplyDelete
i always liked that.
- Anonymous7:09 AM, December 17, 2007
bwahaha. apparently it was all spike and no weed....ReplyDelete
- Anonymous1:02 PM, December 17, 2007
She was fucked-up because 'kind' mellows the buzz of all the other shit. Rx: two bong hits, STAT!ReplyDelete
Etotheipi: Be very careful dude...you just made a clinically significant remark! That was my recommendations too...that someone add some weed to her crank and she'd be all better!ReplyDelete
Emergencyem: no laws. It's not about abuse of the EMS, it's about lawyers. Imagine one time if you fail to transport this dude and he suffers acute spontaneous bilateral nippoplosions. He'd be all over 20/20 and the "uncaring" medical establishment would again be blamed for societies' ills. Hillary would surely be interviewed. Seriously, though,if your medical director had any balls (in my experience, few do), he could arrange a protocol by where you don't have to transport this guy every time.
Lynn: I expect to read about nippoplisions in your next book.
"Acute spontaneous bilateral nippoplosions."ReplyDelete
+20 for that comment. +5 for saying Hillary would be involved. Very funny!
Yea...our director won't write refusing transports into our protocols...he's a pussy...of course the gig with the itchy nipple guy is waaaay backwoods ems...at my other job we have a protocol in place to where we wouldn't have to transport his sorry ass...sorry I'm angry. I just got back from picking him up. Again.
other than that we would be the guys snapping towels at your ass in the locker room.ReplyDelete
911, I have to admit that whenever a guy saw my ass, snapping it never entered into the conversation.
Lynn: I expect to read about nippoplisions in your next book.
Since my writing is based on reality, I'm going to search far and wide to find such a case. I'm depending on you guys to help me out. Oh. Wait. Then I gotta dedicate the book to you. Yeah...I can do that.
All this talk about weed reminds of the old days when PCP was still a big player on the street and people came in all "wacked out". (Now U know how old I really am!)ReplyDelete
Never understood why they wanted to ruin the buzz and mellow of their pot!
- Anonymous8:12 AM, December 21, 2007
ever see that scare tactic school movie with the dude who drowns while on PCP and the other junkie is standing by the pool droning: "wow, why are you swimming on the bottom of the pool?"ReplyDelete
Classic. It's like the Citizen Kane of school anti-drug movies.


text:
When comparing Elm vs Basic, the Slant community recommends Elm for most people. In the question"What is the easiest programming language to learn for a non-programmer (actually used for production)?" Elm is ranked 3rd while Basic is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Elm is:
Lack of run-time exceptions makes it easy to produce large swathes of reliable front-end code without drowning in tests.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pro No run-time exceptions
Lack of run-time exceptions makes it easy to produce large swathes of reliable front-end code without drowning in tests.
Pro Inferred static typing
ML static typing is great because it's always there, you just choose how explicit you want to be and how much you want the compiler to do.
Pro Designed around high-level front-end development
As Elm was designed as a front-end langauge, it has out of the box support for things like DOM-element creation, letting programmers focus on their application logic, rather than implementation details specific to the web.
Pro Good documentation
Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries.
Pro Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming
You can try to apply some functional programming ideas in other languages that have an imperative basis, but you haven't seen the real power unless you tried it in the environment of purely functional programming. Elm is a simple language with great learning resources and easy graphical output, which makes it easy to explore the power of functional programming. Plus programming in Elm is very readable.
Pro Growing community
Pro Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors
In no other language you can refactor so easy without any worries, since the compiler will guide you through. It is like TDD but than compiler-error driven.
Pro High-level Functional-Reactive Code
Build animations, games, and interactions with an incredibly small amount of terse, readable code.
Pro Static module system
Elm uses easy to use modules.
import List
import List as L
import List exposing (..)
import List exposing ( map, foldl )
import Maybe exposing ( Maybe )
import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(..) )
import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(Just) )
module MyModule exposing (foo, bar)
Pro Interactive Programming and Hot Swapping
Support for hot swapping and interactive programming is included.
Pro Missing syntactic sugar
Easy to learn, most functions have only one way, not 5 alternatives where you must study where to best use what.
Pro Good tooling
All major editors have great support. With Atom for example, Elm plugins are available for linting, formatting, make/compiler support and Elmjutsu will simply overflow you with super useful functions, like navigate to referenced definition and show expression type.
Pro Not quite Haskell semantics
Luckily you do not have to learn Haskell to be able to do any Elm. It is meant to be a language that compiles to Javascript, so for Javascript programmers (Front end) not for CS students who want to learn as many different algorithms as possible.
Pro Batteries included
The Elm Architecture means you don't need to spend valuable time and effort choosing the right frameworks, state management libraries, or build tooling. It's all built in.
Pro Lots of information available
Although there are lots of examples and tutorials to be found, for a beginner it can be difficult to find good material as there are also lots of bad examples around.
Pro Lots of choice
Con Lack of typeclasses
Elm doesn't have typeclasses which means some code needs to be duplicated. A fix in a function that needs typeclasses means all of the duplicates need to be fixed too.
Con Not database-friendly
It is lots of work to make a server or database your "one source of truth", as Elm makes you write endless JSON parse boilerplate to talk to the server.
Con Poor Windows support
Few if any of Elm's core contributors are Windows users and breaking bugs are sometimes left for weeks or months.
Con Adds an additional layer of abstraction
Some users claim that Elm adds an additional layer of abstraction, meaning that it is one more hurdle between the brain and the product.
Not the best choice when looking for a job.


text:
Blogs Nosey Parker
The Bizarre Death and Mysterious Burial of a Hollywood Oscar WinnerAlan Parker - March 2nd, 2011
Almost nobody remembers Gig Young now, but 41 years ago he was the toast of Hollywood.
The Academy Awards for 1969 were presented on the evening of April 7, 1970, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.
It was the second year the Oscars were televised worldwide and it was also the second year there was no host — a brief interregnum between the Bob Hope era and most of the 1970s when hosting was done by committee (before one last hurrah for Bob Hope and the beginning of the Johnny Carson era).
Winning the Oscar for Best Picture was Midnight Cowboy, the only X-rated film in the history of the Academy Awards to win Best Picture.
John Wayne got the only Oscar of his career as Best Actor for his role of crusty Rooster Cogburn in True Grit and Maggie Smith won Best Actress as an eccentric Scottish teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Goldie Hawn (in one of those typical Oscar "huh?" decisions) got the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Cactus Flower.
And the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor goes to … Gig Young for his performance as Rocky, the sleazy and manipulative promoter of a Depression-era dance marathon in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
It was a popular choice in Hollywood, where Gig Young had established himself over the previous 30 years as a charming, genial party guy who often played the role of a charming, genial lush onscreen — and on the Tonight Show couch as a frequent, amusing guest of Johnny Carson.
Young had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor twice before, for 1951′s Come Fill The Cup and 1958′s Teacher's Pet, but the 1969 win was the pinnacle of his career — and the beginning of the end.
Actually the beginning of the end for Gig Young began with the birth of Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Nov. 4, 1913.
For most of the next three decades, Gig Young was Byron Barr, a charming, genial kid and aspiring actor.
According to most biographies, Byron was raised in Washington, D.C. (more about that later) before winning a scholarship at the end of high school to the famous Pasadena Community Playhouse in California, where he worked on his acting chops before being picked up as a contract bit player by Warner Bros. in the late 1930s.
The young actor was still known as Byron Barr — and got the occasional screen credit under that name — until his breakout role in 1942′s The Gay Sisters, in which he played a character named … Gig Young.
Warner Bros. decided "Gig Young" was a catchier name than "Byron Barr" (and — unbelievable as it may seem — there was another young supporting actor kicking around Hollywood at the time also named Byron Barr) so "Byron Barr" stopped being a charming, amiable second-string actor and "Gig Young" stopped being a movie character's name.
Gig Young, actor, then reverted to Byron Barr, pharmacist's mate in the U.S. Coast Guard, for the duration of World War II.
When the war ended and Byron Barr returned to civilian life, Warner Bros. dropped his contract. But Byron Barr decided to keep his Warner Bros. stage name and Gig Young quickly became a solid, busy Hollywood presence in movies like Wake of the Red Witch, The Three Musketeers and Only the Valiant.
In the mid 1950s he was hosting the television series Warner Bros. Presents while keeping up his busy movie career and busier social life.
By 1956 he was on to his third wife, Elizabeth Montgomery, daughter of famed Hollywood actor Robert Montgomery. Elizabeth Montgomery would go on to superstardom in the 1960s as Samantha Stephens, the nose-twitching hexess in TV's Bewitched (1964-72).
But first she had to dump Gig Young. Montgomery divorced him in 1963, citing physical and emotional abuse fuelled by her husband's alcoholism.
The Gig Young party gig was starting to run low on steam, but there were still two more wives, a pretty good TV series called The Rogues and that 1969 Academy Award to go before the whole charming, amiable Gig Young persona blew apart in a million pieces.
He married his fourth wife, Hollywood real estate agent Elaine Williams, shortly after the Montgomery divorce and daughter Jennifer — Byron Barr/Gig Young's only child — came along in April 1964.
Of course, Williams was divorcing Barr/Young within three years (physical-emotional abuse/alcoholism) and in the subsequent child support proceedings Barr/Young proclaimed that Jennifer was not his biological child and he was not responsible for her upkeep. The court ruled against him, but more about that later.
So Gig Young staggered into the 1970s, clutching his Oscar, with a few more movie roles to come but far more trouble.
Typical was his experience in 1973 when Mel Brooks picked Gig Young to play the Waco Kid — a role ultimately assumed by Gene Wilder — in the groundbreaking western comedy Blazing Saddles.
Let's let Mel Brooks tell you what happened on the first day of filming when Cleavon Little's character Bart and the Waco Kid (Gig Young), a broken-down, drunken gunslinger, meet for the first time in jail:
"We draped Gig Young's legs over and hung him upside down. And he started to talk and he started shaking. I said, 'This guy's giving me a lot. He is giving plenty. He's giving me the old alky shake. Great.' And then it got serious, because the shaking never stopped, and green stuff started spewing out of his mouth and nose, and he started screaming. And, I said, 'That's the last time I'll ever cast anybody who really is that person.' If you want an alcoholic, don't cast an alcoholic… Anyway, poor Gig Young, it was the first shot on Friday, nine in the morning, and an ambulance came and took him away. I had no movie."
Gene Wilder flew from New York to Los Angeles over the weekend and was playing the Waco Kid on Monday morning, but that's another story.
The DTs didn't deter Gig Young and he was still firmly on his downward spiral when he hooked up with director Sam Peckinpah (another guy on a downward spiral) to make a couple of ultra-violent, nihilistic movies — 1974′s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and 1975′s The Killer Elite.
(It seems to be during the making of these films that Gig Young started collecting guns.)
There were two more movies after that and one more marriage before Gig Young's ignominious end.
Young was an invisible presence in a terrible movie, The Hindenburg, also released in 1975, and then he hit rock bottom in 1978 when he was cast in a patchwork reworking of an unreleased kung-fu movie called Game of Death — incomplete footage of which was shot prior to star Bruce Lee's death in 1973.
So Gig Young's last movie had him in a minor supporting role to an action star who had been totally inactive for five years.
Not really a good mental and emotional place to be for his fifth marriage on Sept. 27, 1978, to 31-year-old German actress Kim Schmidt (sometimes erroneously listed as 21 and sometimes erroneously listed as Australian).
I'm not sure why Kim Schmidt married him — maybe it was true love, maybe it was Oscar love, maybe it was just something to do — but it was a bad decision.
Three weeks after the wedding Gig Young ended the marriage in their condo apartment, Suite 1BB of the Osborne Apartments on West 57th Street in New York City, on Oct. 19, 1978.
He ended it by loading a Smith & Wesson .38-calibre revolver — one of many, many firearms he kept in the apartment — and putting one slug through his wife's head and one slug through the roof of his mouth.
Exit, Gig Young.
But not gracefully.
Adding insult to felonious injury, his will left the bulk of his estate to his 1970s agent, Marty Baum of CAA, and $10 to his putative daughter, Jennifer Young. (How creepy is that, taking as your real last name the fictional name of a guy who had disowned you as his daughter?)
In the end, it was up to Gig Young's sister, Genevieve Barr Merry, to bury her brother. Which she did, in the Green Hill Cemetery in Waynesville, North Carolina.
And that is where Gig Young's story ends and mine begins.
A couple of years ago, I took an extended road trip down the east coast of the U.S., partly to write travel stories, partly to heal wounds of a dissolved marriage and partly to feed an eccentric hobby of mine — visiting the graves of interesting dead people.
I must admit that Gig Young didn't meet the main criterion of my search for dead people — for the most past they were people I admired or, at least, could stand in awe of.
People like Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone (a simple stone on a rural hillside in the Finger Lakes district of upper New York); Mark Twain ( a grotesque monument in Elmira, N.Y., erected 30 years after his death by his daughter to jointly honour her dead Russian composer husband); Billie Burke, the actress who played the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, alongside her previously deceased/bankrupt husband Flo Ziegfield of Ziegfield Follies fame (simple graves on a hilltop outside New York City shaded by a huge statue Burke erected in honour of her mother). People like that.
But my ultimate destination was North Carolina, the place of my birth and the place where I had scattered my father's ashes over his parents' graves the better part of a decade earlier.
I was doing some travel writing/gathering up in North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains first and that was where I stumbled across the fact that Gig Young was buried in Waynesville.
That was also when I became aware that Young — an actor I was very familiar with from my childhood — had died in a bizarre murder-suicide. And I couldn't figure out what he was doing buried in a small mountain town in North Carolina , far away from Hollywood and New York City and even Washington, D.C., where he supposedly grew up.
So driving down the Blue Ridge Parkway chasing 19th Century inns, steam locomotives and a moonshiner named Popcorn Sutton, I stopped off at the Green Hill Cemetery on a hot, sunny June afternoon to look up Gig Young.
One major thing that distinguishes American cemeteries from Canadian cemeteries is the number of little flags erected at gravesites. Those flags are usually put there by the American Legion and other post-service fellowships to honour departed members.
In a normal U.S. cemetery, a third to a half of the graves will be showing flags, in part because of higher American war death tolls in the past half century and in part because mandatory conscription — and thus an extended base of former military personnel — was in effect in the U.S. from the early 1940s through the 1970s.
Then there's another quirk: The further south you travel, the more Confederate flags you see intermingled with United States flags in cemeteries. Those flags are maintained by organizations like the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy to honour the southern dead of a war fought 150 years ago.
I tell you this because the Green Hill Cemetery is so old it has far more graves sprouting Confederate flags than U.S. flags.
I like cemeteries: They're calm and peaceful and have interesting stories to tell. And I generally like people who work in cemeteries: They tend to be calm and peaceful and have interesting stories to tell too.
And when you're looking for a needle — one single grave — in a haystack — a cemetery with anywhere between 300 and 300,000 (Arlington) graves — the people who work there are a good place to start the search.
Since there aren't usually a lot of living people in a cemetery on a midweek afternoon, it didn't take long to find caretaker Lonnie Higgins.
Lonnie was a nice guy but a fairly young guy, cemeterily speaking, so he didn't have quite the sense of historical ownership I was looking for.
Lonnie could direct me to a grist stone once operated by Daniel Boone (everything in the mountains of North Carolina has some connection to Daniel Boone), to the car dealer buried in a Model T Ford and to the grave of the very last serving Confederate officer (Alden Howell, died 1947 age 106), but he had no idea who Gig Young or Byron Barr was or where he was buried.
Lonnie thought a little more.
"And we've got that actress here, the one from Bewitched."
"Elizabeth Montgomery?" I asked in disbelief.
"No, not Samantha. Her mother."
"Agnes Moorehead?"
"I guess. I heard she was buried here but I've never seen her grave myself."
That was just too weird: The guy once married to Elizabeth Montgomery and the woman who once played her mother on TV buried in the same rural cemetery in the middle of nowhere.
And then, thankfully, Fred Rathbone drove up in his truck.
Fred was the former Green Hill caretaker, retired now, but the main man for 35 years and the repository of knowledge I had been looking for.
And yes, Fred was related to Basil Rathbone, the Sherlock Holmes actor whose urn crypt in a New York mausoleum I had recently been locked out of.
"He was my daddy's second or third cousin."
Well, everybody in North Carolina is pretty much related to everybody else, including Daniel Boone, so the Rathbone connection was no surprise.
With the pleasantries over, I asked Fred about Gig Young.
"Oh, yes, he's here but not under that name. Under the family name."
"Yeah, that's it. I've seen it many times but I don't remember right where now. Over that way somewhere. There's a family monument and then the individual markers."
"And Agnes Moorehead? She's buried here too?"
Fred looked confused.
"Lonnie told me Agnes Moorehead, the mother from Bewitched, is buried here too."
Fred's furrowed brow cleared.
"Oh, no. The Bewitched connection is to Gig Young. He was married to Samantha, you know. Lonnie just got his witches mixed up."
Lonnie and Fred and I had a good chuckle about that one.
So Lonnie and Fred went on talking and watching birds and listening to the wind in the trees while I went grave hunting.
And about 45 minutes later — after finally turning 90 degrees from the direction Fred had pointed me in — I found the Barr family plot.
And under the Barr monument there were five gravestones:
John E. Barr 1877-1975
Emma C. Barr 1879-1944
Donald E. Barr 1906-1949
Floyd H. Barr 1883-1969
Byron E. Barr 1913-1978
So there was Gig Young, buried with his family under a modest stone stained with I don't know what, except maybe shame.
I went to find Fred and Lonnie and showed them the grave.
Fred told me John and Emma were Gig/Byron's parents, Donald was his older brother and Floyd was his uncle.
And Fred told me Gig/Byron's father, John, had served in the Philippines in the Spanish-American War (1899-1901) with Fred's grandfather.
"So the family was here for a long time?"
"Oh yeah, they owned a cannery."
"Well, all the published information says Gig … um, Byron … was born in Minnesota and grew up in Washington."
"Well, John and Emma were away for a while but they came back when Byron was six or so and he grew up here. That's for sure. I grew up with him. I was a lot younger than he was but I saw him around."
So that's why Gig Young is buried in Waynesville, N.C. At the end of his sad, broken life, his sister took him home to be buried with his family in the little mountain town where he spent his childhood.
And that's pretty much it.
Except for the daughter, Jennifer.
Even though her father had denied her and spurned her in his will, Jennifer Young grew up in Hollywood claiming some reflected glory from her famous/infamous father/non-father.
She has a music career of sorts now and is trying to find backers for a documentary on her father, but she was known as a fixture on the Hollywood party scene for years and made headlines in the past 15 years for two things.
1. Jennifer was BFF and former roommate of Beverly Hills madam Heidi Fleiss, although Jennifer denied persistent accusations that she was one of Heidi's stable of high-priced Hollywood hookers. Charlie Sheen, a Heidi client, could shed more light on that if he didn't have troubles of his own that probably outweigh most self-inflicted career setbacks endured by Jennifer's father/non-father. (I really think Charlie should take a good look at Gig Young's lifestyle choices. But he won't. See you at the end of the road, Charlie.)
2. In the mid-1990s, Jennifer launched a highly publicized campaign to get possession of her father's Best Supporting Actor Oscar from agent Marty Baum, who had claimed it in a round-about way under the terms of Gig Young's will. In a tripartite agreement involving Baum, Jennifer Young and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (legal owners of the statue), Baum agreed to turn over the Oscar to Jennifer on his death.
Well, Marty Baum died in November 2010. Jennifer Young got the Oscar in December and the Academy says she can keep it for 48 weeks of every year until she dies. That's about as close to a happy ending as this story can get.
Categories: News


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- Abuse in Later Life Online Course: For Florida's Domestic Violence Advocates
- Creating Accessible Domestic Violence Services Online Course: For Florida's Domestic Violence Advocates
Request onsite training or technical assistance on any of the following topics.
Domestic Violence and a Disability
This workshop explores advocacy for survivors living with a disability to include disability awareness, safety planning for persons living with a disability, barriers to disclosure of abuse, and economic challenges and financial resources.
Creating Accessible Domestic Violence Services
This workshop explores the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and beyond. Discussion will include what the ADA means for DV services and how to exceed these requirements in order to provide services that are accessible to survivors who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or have low-vision, survivors with physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities. All staff are encouraged to attend this training.
Creating Accessible Domestic Violence Services: Online Course
Welcome to FCADV's online course Creating Accessible Domestic Violence Services. This course is designed to train advocates on increasing accessibility of domestic violence services to survivors living with disabilities. Upon completion, domestic violence advocates will receive a certificate for 3 hours of training.
NOTE: This course is designed for the certified domestic violence centers in Florida. Only domestic violence advocates employed by or volunteering at a certified domestic violence center in Florida will receive a certificate of completion.
Click here to get started taking the Creating Accessible Domestic Violence Services Online Course
Mandated Reporting: Distinguishing, Identifying, and Reporting Child and Vulnerable Adult Abuse
Presentation and discussion of issues related to "What qualifies as child or vulnerable adult abuse?" and when to and not to report. Shelter and CPS/ APS interaction and interventions will be discussed. A significant portion of the training will be devoted to your center's or shelter's unique experiences.
Women Who Are Battered and Living with Mental Health Complexities
Designed to help advocates working with battered women who demonstrate mental health complexities. Information to help advocates understand the multiple issues the survivor faces and development of policies that consider survivor needs will be addressed. This workshop will focus on creating trauma-informed services and making appropriate referrals.
Domestic Violence in Later Life
The intersection of domestic violence and older survivors living with disabilities and poverty will be explored identifying definition, scope and barriers to service. A facilitated discussion will focus on intervention tools and techniques.
Training Healthcare Providers: Advocate's Guide to Presenting Trainings
Resources and information will be presented in this training. Advocates will become familiar with basic components of trainings for healthcare professionals in their community.
Domestic Violence Advocacy for Survivors who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
This workshop explores barriers faced by survivors of domestic violence who are deaf or hard of hearing. Participants receive instruction on usage of their center's TTY how to place and receive relay calls. A discussion is led on building community partnerships.


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Contreras thwarted a Baltimore threat in the fourth inning to start a renaissance that saw him retire the final 11 batters he faced with the return of a 93-m.p.h. fastball and tumbling split-finger fastball.
Contreras stabilized the White Sox in a 3-1 victory while extending the rotation's pitching success that started after he allowed four runs in a loss to Detroit on Friday.
Since then, Sox starters have limited opponents to three runs in 36 innings—capped by Contreras' sterling effort.
"I really prepared myself for this game," Contreras said. "You look at our bullpen, they've done a great job. The young kids are working hard. Our starters and defense are doing well. I have to step it up.
"All the work paid off, and I'll get ready for my next start (against the New York Yankees)."
Part of management's faith in the back end of the Sox's rotation was that an improved offense would give the starters run support that was sorely lacking last season.
Jim Thome gave Contreras the only runs he needed on a three-run homer in the first inning off left-hander Adam Loewen that snapped a 43 at-bat homerless drought.
Thome also moved to within one homer of catching Mel Ott (511) for 21st place on the all-time list, with Ernie Banks and Eddie Mathews (512) directly ahead.
"Those are special names," said Thome, who needs one more walk to tie Willie Mays (1,464) for 18th place on the all-time list. "Those are guys who have done tremendous things in the game and sometimes you don't think about it till we talk about it, but it's special and very cool."
As much as Thome's homer gave the Sox an early lift, Contreras (1-1) gave his teammates more confidence as he didn't allow a walk for the first time since Aug. 17 in a 5-4 loss at Seattle.
"Awesome," manager Ozzie Guillen said of Contreras' control. "I always say Jose has to challenge people, be ahead in the count to make his [split-finger fastball] work. He has so much good stuff to put people away."
Contreras relied on his split-finger fastball to notch three of his four strikeouts during his span of retiring 11 consecutive batters.
But he passed his biggest test in the fourth after three consecutive singles and a throwing error by third baseman Joe Crede put the tying run at first with one out.
Contreras struck out Luke Scott and retired Adam Jones on a grounder to end the threat as the Orioles never got a runner past first base the rest of the game.
"That makes me more excited about him," Guillen said. "They could have tied the game easily and all of a sudden we go in a different direction. But he stepped it up with the strikeout and a couple of good hitters coming up.
"It was good for him to get in that situation and control it the way he did."


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'White moms' remark fuels clash
Education Secretary Arne Duncan realized fairly quickly that he had stumbled.
He had just told a gathering of state superintendents of education that "white suburban moms" were rebelling against the Common Core academic standards — new guidelines for math and language arts instruction — because their kids had done poorly on the tough new tests.
Story Continued Below
"All of a sudden, their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought … and that's pretty scary," Duncan said at the event Friday.
Two hours later, with those comments sparking outrage on social media, Duncan told POLITICO that he "didn't say it perfectly."
And he formally apologized on an Education Department blog Monday.
( Sign up for POLITICO's Morning Education tip sheet)
But he stood by his thesis: To oppose the Common Core is to oppose progress.
"Do we want more for our kids, or do we want less?" Duncan said. "Do we want higher standards or not?"
That's the debate that Duncan dearly wants to have.
It's not, however, the debate he's getting.
To the immense frustration of Common Core supporters, an eclectic array of critics have raised sustained and impassioned objections about the new standards. From New York to Florida to Michigan to Louisiana, their voices are so loud and their critiques so varied that they have muddied the narrative around Common Core. It's no longer a focused national debate about high standards; it's hundreds of local debates, about everything from student privacy rights to cursive handwriting to computerized testing to the value of Shakespeare.
Over the summer, Duncan complained that opponents were "fringe groups" who make "outlandish claims" about "really wacky stuff" such as "mind control, robots, and biometric brain mapping." There is undoubtedly some of that.
But there are also substantive critiques from all corners. Catholic scholars say the standards aren't rigorous enough. Early childhood experts say they demand too much. Liberals complain the Common Core opens the door to excessive testing. Conservatives complain it opens the door to federal influence in local schools. Teachers don't like the new textbooks. Parents don't like the new homework.
And some critics sense a conspiracy, suggesting that the difficult Common Core tests are designed to make public schools look so bad that parents everywhere — including white, suburban moms — will rush to embrace charter schools, cyber schools, vouchers and other models that turn public education over to private entrepreneurs.
All but four states have adopted the Common Core State S tandards, which aim to guide instruction in math and language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade. The standards have been endorsed by a broad coalition of politicians and business and education leaders. Supporters include the national teachers unions and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President Barack Obama and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Yet even as the new standards are rolled out in classrooms from coast to coast, anger continues to bubble. Opponents have organized rallies, circulated petitions, bombarded lawmakers with calls and pulled their children out of standardized tests. One group of Common Core critics has even declared Monday "National Don't Send Your Child To School Day" as a form of protest.
Against this backdrop, activists on both sides say Duncan's off-the-cuff remark was clumsy, insensitive — and certain to stir the already-roiling pot of dissent.
"He's made it sound as if to question Common Core is to be unreasonable," said Andy Smarick, a partner at Bellwether Education, a consulting firm that has analyzed the standards and their implementation. Smarick called the speech "divisive" and predicted it wouldn't help the cause.


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EA Sports MMA is revealing its roster of fighters week by week, beginning with the heavyweights last week. This week, a 17-fighter light heavyweight roster was unveiled.
Randy Couture, Muhammed Lawal, Ken Shamrock, Kevin Randleman, and Alistair Overeem were announced as heavyweights last week. They will also fight at light heavyweight, joining Jason Miller, Bas Rutten, Renato Sobral, Gegard Mousasi, Vladimir Matyushenko, Scott Smith, Roger Gracie, Melvin Manhoef, Murilo Rua, Matt Lindland, and Dan Henderson.
By comparison, UFC Undisputed had 25 fighters eligible at the light heavyweight division.
Below is the legend identifying who's who in that picture above. EA Sports MMA is out Oct. 19 on Xbox 360 and PS3.


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The Emirates story started in 1985 when we launched operations with just two aircraft.
Today, we fly the world's biggest fleets of Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s, offering our customers the comforts of the latest and most efficient wide-body aircraft in the skies.
We inspire travelers around the world with our growing network of worldwide destinations, industry leading inflight entertainment, regionally inspired cuisine, and world-class service. Read on to find out more.
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We've had an incredible journey since our beginning in 1985. Explore the milestones that make us proud. Discover more
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Shin Sekai Yori, or From the New World, is a series that set out with a mission. Nowadays most anime adhere to their set of stropes. This is one of those shows that just said "screw conventions!" and it just went with an execution that just took so many different risks, taking almost nothing for granted, and ended up as quite a unique experience because of it.
Where most series that are based on something are based to a manga, visual novel, or things like that, with From the New World they actually set out to adapt an actual novel again, and it shows because the pacing is totally different from any other anime out there, including multiple timeskips that see the main characters grow up from small children to full grown adults. The story… makes use of this really well…
It's hard to really talk about the story without spoiling, but let's just say that you should not think that even though there are kids in this series, it's kid-friendly. Shin Sekai Yori is DARK. It uses a lot of build-up to get to where it's going, but when it's there it makes one hell of an impact. It has created this unique setting for itself, and it takes a while to set everything up, but that also makes this series quite varied in its mood. The setting has got a lot of depth to it, and the creators actually managed to pull a ton of potential out of it.
The downside to this series is that it is not the easiest to watch, by far. Some episodes have animation that takes quite a few… "artistic liberties". On one hand this had some of the best animation of the past half year in any TV-series. It can be absolutely gorgeous when it wants to. For a few shots each episodes. The rest of the airtime is full of inconsistent character-designs, weird camrea angles and jerky direction that makes it really hard to figure out what's going on. It's not bad or anything, but this will get jarring on some people.
It's definitely not a show for everyone. Let alone the dark parts, this is a show for people who are looking for something experimental. A show that isn't afraid to trip itself up over and over for its vision. And believe me: the vision that this series has is amazing.
One-Sentence Review: Taking a unique setting, along with a "screw conventions!"-mentality, Shin Sekai Yori delivers a storyline with a ton of depth to it for those with an open mind.
– Bokura no
– Casshern Sins
– Strange Dawn


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Victoria Lippert posted her third collegiate double-double
with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Photo courtesy of Gil Talbot.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Harvard women's basketball team beat rival Yale, 68-60, to win its seventh game in a row and improve to 18-7 overall and 9-2 in Ancient Eight play. Three Crimson players reached double figures with freshman Victoria Lippert leading the way with 16 points and 11 rebounds for her third collegiate double-double.
Lippert was 6-for-14 from the field and 4-for-4 from the charity stripe. The rookie also had three steals, two assists and a block in 32 minutes of play. Sophomore Brogan Berry added 13 points, five assists and four rebounds. She moved into 10th on the all-time assists list at Harvard, tying Allison Feaster '98 with 243 career handouts. Junior Emma Markley put up 11 points and grabbed seven boards, while Jackie Alemany collected a career-high six steals.
After a back-and-forth start to the game, the Crimson used back-to-back treys to take a 15-8 lead with 14:12 left to play in the first. The Crimson defense held the Bulldogs scoreless for nearly 10 minutes, while extending its lead to 22-8. Yale's Megan Vasquez snapped the scoring draught for the Bulldogs with 7:56 on the clock. Harvard led by as many as 21 points during the final four minutes of the first half. The Bulldogs pulled to within 16 before Harvard took a 45-26 lead into the locker room.
Berry had 13 points and three assists at the break. Lippert had nine rebounds and Alemany had five assists. The Crimson shot 54.5 percent in the first 20 minutes, including a 66.7 percent effort from beyond the arc. Harvard grabbed 21 rebounds in the first half and handed out 13 assists.
Markley scored the first six points of the second half as Harvard pulled away to a 59-34 lead midway through the second session. The Bulldogs slowly chipped away at the lead by going to the free throw line. With less than a minute to the play the home team cut the lead to single digits, 66-58. Harvard held as Miriam Rutzen scored the Crimson's final basket of the night to give her two points and a career-high nine rebounds.
The Crimson shot 44.3 percent from the field and outrebounded its rival, 40-31.
Harvard returns to Lavietes Pavilion for the final three regular season games. The Crimson welcomes Penn and Princeton Friday and Saturday before closing out the conference season against Dartmouth March 9.
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Things to Do in Key West
Key West "Bight" Before Christmas Holiday Celebration
Will you be in Key West for the holidays? Then you won't want to miss the Key West "Bight" Before Christmas Celebration! Come enjoy music, games and general holiday good cheer along the historic seaport.
|Nov 27, 2013 to Dec 31, 2013.
|Event Type:
|Things to do in Key West