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Lidia Celebrates America
(CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS) Join celebrity chef and author Lidia Bastianich on a cross-country journey to explore how Americans representing diverse heritages are both preserving their own culinary traditions and transforming local cuisine. Learn about some big meals from small towns in Lidia's latest special, A Heartland Holiday Feast.
Funding for LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.


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Thursday, August 11, 2011
Good enough
My third grade teacher wrote "nice" on the blackboard. "Never use this word," she said, or something to that effect. "It's dull and vague. Always be precise."
I wouldn't have remembered this, except she accidentally wrote it in crayon instead of chalk. You can't erase crayon from a blackboard, so I had a whole year to stare at and contemplate "nice."
This "nice," was in lower case, and looked plain. Not even a Greek E on the end, an affectation I have for some reason developed, don't know where I got it. I also cross my 7's. And somewhere along the way, I started saying eye-ther rather than ee-ther, and no one could change my mind.
I grew quite fond of "nice." As one who doesn't beg to differ but lives to differ, I've been its champion ever since. A home-grown tomato isn't awesome; trust me. It's ok, it's a better than average; a tomato you grow, nurture, and pick from the backyard garden is, well, it's nice.
And the photos, books, and experiences I appreciate on a daily basis – nice.
No, something "nice" will not keep you up all night, nor lift a corner of the tent for a peek at heaven. The awesome and outrageous experiences happen now and again, and usually at some private place.
Nice means something has given you a small reward, a bit of pleasure. A smile.
Which is nice, and that's better than ok.
55 comments:
Third grade seems awfully early to be pushing that lesson! But most of us probably get it at some point, so it's ironic that a commonly used teacher's note in the margin is "nice point" or other versions of Nice. I had an Uncle Roy Nice. And his wife was my Aunt Hattie (Nice). Should I stop now?ReplyDelete
Who said "It's nice to be nice"? I worry your teacher would shame that person! (Would your teacher know how to be nice?)ReplyDelete
I like nice. It's so much better than the alternative. I had to laugh at the irony of your teacher's illustration. Too funny!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 11, 2011 at 8:06 PM
I've been chastised for using nice. But nicely.ReplyDelete
Nice is a good word, I wish I knew what it meant as a kid...ReplyDelete
Nice is okay.ReplyDelete
Mostly, though, I'm beginning to think I need this.
I love your memory. By the way, the photo of your tomahtoes isn't nice, it's lovely. And they taste divine.ReplyDelete
Okay, label me as a radical feminist, but I love deleting the word nice. Too many women use it to describe themselves as they turn themselves into doormats. Ooops, must be the bourbon speaking. ;)
I think we should leave nice alone and set our sights on Like and Friend.ReplyDelete
Your teacher was wrong. Nice is a nice word. There aren't enough nice people in the world and describing someone as a nice person is a genuine compliment.ReplyDelete
I had a teacher with the same attitude about "nice." Like you, however, I find it quite useful. Nice post!ReplyDelete
Nice is better than Cannes.ReplyDelete
I'm happy to use nice from time to time. Sometimes a rest from superlatives is a necessary thing.ReplyDelete
I all seriousness, I use "Nice!" - with emphasis - when I really like something.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 12, 2011 at 6:24 AM
Do I see a nice apple in your bowl?ReplyDelete
I knew Dez would take issue with nice. I like you my nice friend.ReplyDelete
Nothing wrong with nice when used judiciously. And as Earl points out, you can change its meaning by how you say it. I've been accused of using nice sarcastically.ReplyDelete
The hallmark of a good word: Versatility.ReplyDelete
This brings to mind the term "Minnesota Nice", referring to an alleged gentility of the population. I heard it again on the news last night regarding two presidential candidates from Minnesota who were going at each others throats in a debate.ReplyDelete
In the past, it may have signaled a certain naivety to those who would take advantage of one's kindness. I think the term, and practice, may have gotten us into more trouble than its worth, but, it beats screaming at one another.
I'm a fan of nice movies, and nice books. They're not heart stopping, nor adrenaline pumping, but those are the ones that linger and return to our brains, long after the others have left.ReplyDelete
My lawyer daughter was taught in lawschool to use precise words. But sometimes "nice" is more than enough.
Very interesting post, Karin!ReplyDelete
I don't use so much the word "nice"... but I like the meaning of "nice".
Mister Earl, NICE one.ReplyDelete
WV: spitw. A nice way to spell spitz.
GUILTY AS CHARGED YOUR HONOR. I was adamant about the use of nice. Come on Hiker. How do you ever help a third grader become more descriptive if you allow "Cute" and "nice" at every turn. I rest my case Your Honor.ReplyDelete
What an interesting discussion! There must have been a world-wide conspiracy to stamp out "nice." My teacher in England made a big deal of correcting us if we ever used it, and I just checked with my husband, from Wales, and he was taught the same. Even now, guilt makes me try to think up alternatives before I describe something as nice - do you do the same?ReplyDelete
You have nice tomatoes!ReplyDelete
(That means much more than just "good enough.")
Bellis, the conspiracy spread to Wales?ReplyDelete
According to Webster's:
Five hundred years ago, it meant "foolish or stupid." By the 16th century, the sense of being "very particular" or "finicky" had developed. In the 19th century, nice came to mean "pleasant or agreeable" and then "respectable."
OK, you have very respectable tomatoes... and they are nice!ReplyDelete
Agreeable tomatoes...ReplyDelete
Never met a tomato I didn't like.ReplyDelete
nice came to mean "pleasant or agreeable" and then "respectable."ReplyDelete
That explains it. Nobody values pleasant, respectable people anymore, so nice has been accordingly downgraded.
The new standard is sexy! As in "those are some sexy tomatoes!" Investments have to be sexy, businesses have to be sexy, apparently even cancer is now sexy
I have to say, when my aerobics instructor starts shouting, "Sexy, sexy, ladies!" in a class with the average age of about 63, the word seems a tad overused.
I hated the "to a nice girl" inscriptions in high school yearbooks. How bland!ReplyDelete
Karen@ I want to join your aerobics class. Nobody ever called me nice but I wouldn't refuse sexyReplyDelete
Your tomatoes are stupid? They didn't run away when you came to pick them so yes, they're very dumb.ReplyDelete
See, you've just proven my point -- nice is anything but dull -- and that most definitely includes Susan.ReplyDelete
P.S. I don't think anyone can get away with saying "agreeable" unless they have a British accent.ReplyDelete
"who lives to differ" - love it. And, I cross my 7s also.ReplyDelete
I am completely with you on this, there is definitely a place for nice! I'm glad to have tripped in here, I'll look forward to coming back again.ReplyDelete
Nice depends so much on context and inflection. "Nice!" said enthusiastically and elongated can be high praise. Said forcefully (and similarly to the above) but with a bit of a sneer has become a staple of the sarcastic crowd. "This is nice" said simply can indicate a wonderful state of contentment. But I get your teacher's point; "nice" is often a non-committal term when you've got nothing nice to say about something. Not unlike "interesting." It can even be dismissive: "That's nice, dear." Still, this was nice.ReplyDelete
apples or maters?ReplyDelete
"Dear" is for when you're speaking to a child (or significant other, if you're living dangerously): "That's nice, dear. Now mommy and daddy are talking grown-up talk. Go play."ReplyDelete
"That's nice, dear" when spoken to a significant other implies (correctly) that you're not really interested or even listening.ReplyDelete
That's a nice comment dear. Now you go back to stacking your pots and pans because Mommy's busy writing a article.ReplyDelete
I'm sorry, were you saying something?ReplyDelete
Dear, I was saying some people feel compelled to have the last word. I believe it's a disorder, and there might be a pill for it.ReplyDelete
Let me know if it helps you, dear.ReplyDelete
Ach, it didn't help at all. Dear.ReplyDelete
how did I miss so many of your wonderful posts? Ah, that's right, I've been on holidays... in Barcelona! It was nice.ReplyDelete
I speed-dialed through the comments hoping I would find this:ReplyDelete
Gunga Galunga...
Nice, huh?
I grew those brown tomatoes this year too. And a bunch of cherry tomato flavors. Nothing better than a fresh summer tomato.ReplyDelete
hello my adam Benga I saw your blog, nice and interesting, so I decided to give comment on every post you.ReplyDelete
thank you for showing my comment.
Please visit back

subset: commoncrawl


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This was a nice treat. Big dark fruit. Smooth and jammy. Have to get more!
More posts
- Max's gran I love Lucy
- House wine at shore grill and grotto. Heavey shiraz that hangs on the pallet, its ok
- A great every day red for under $13 that just screams black fruits. You'll feel lucky that you tried this one!
- Chairman select. Great buy at $10. Light fruity smooth finish.
- The Lucky Country Shiraz.


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Lifetime Cancels Devious Maids After Four Seasons
Sep 1, 2016 4:34 PM EDT
Lifetime has fired the help. The network has canceled the soapy drama Devious Maids after four seasons, TVGuide.com has learned. Created by Desperate Housewives' Marc Cherry and produced by Eva Longoria, Devious Maids centered on a handful of Latina… Read more


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Workshop Program
Workshop Goals
The goals of this workshop are to identify:
Wednesday, March 6
- Welcoming remarks, workshop goals, introductions - John Taber, Paul Santi
6:00 Dinner
7:00 Move to Calvary Church
7:15 Keynote address - Breaking out of the Silo: Training a new breed of Geoengiscists (Acrobat (PDF) 4.4MB Mar6 13) - Terri Hogue, School of Mines
Engineering and the Geosciences - Envisioning a Sustainable Future
This session will address the combination of geoscience and engineering that will be needed in the workforce of the future to create a sustainable future.
Panel Discussion followed by group discussion
- Panel: Thalia Anagnos, Joel Aquino (synthesis notes)
- How do we get students to think in terms of flexibility/adaptability, what we do today is not what we'll be doing 5 or 10 years from now?
- What training did you receive as a student (both academic and beyond academic) that allowed you to be flexible in your career?
Thursday, March 7
- What are the challenges to communicating between the geoscience and engineering cultures?
- How are we currently creating cross-disciplinary courses and how do we do it in the future?
8:00 Continental breakfast- Calvary Church
8:30 Overview of the InTeGrate project (PowerPoint 1MB Mar6 13) and of the day -Cathyrn Manduca
8:45-10:00Challenges we face integrating the engineering and geoscience cultures
- Introduction: Challenges in Integrating Engineering and Geoscience Cultures (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 535kB Mar7 13) - Paul Santi
- Small group discussions and report out using workspace pages
- What are the major societal challenges that need cross-disciplinary approaches?
- How do we get students as well as faculty to value cross-disciplinary communication?
10:15-11:45Panel discussion of course-level examples in geoscience and engineering
- Panel: Laurel Goodell, Gigi Richard, Kevin Amende
- Presentations of successes and challenges faced, followed by a group discussion of what is working and the challenges across the examples
- Reinventing the Introductory Geology Course at Princeton University (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 1.3MB Mar7 13) - Laurel Goodell
- Accidentally Teaching Engineering to Science Majors (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 1.1MB Mar7 13) - Gigi Richard
- Natural Resources of the West Water and Drought at Colorado Mesa course description – from Gigi Richard
- Course-level Examples of Geoscience in "Mechanical" Engineering (PowerPoint 9.5MB Mar7 13) - Kevin Amende
- Montana State EcoSmart House Project - from Kevin Amende
Service Learning in the Geosciences from On the Cutting Edgeprovides information about how to design and implement service learning projects in geoscience courses and includes a set of examples that can be used as is or adapted to your classroom.
Service Learning from Pedagogies in Action describes what service learning is, why it is important, and how it can be used in the classroom. It also provides examples of projects from a variety of disciplines and related resources.
Math you Need this project seeks to help remediate mathematics for introductory geoscience students through student-centered, online, asynchronous tutorials. Each topic is presented in a geoscience context with student pages that (1) introduce the concept and present an algorithm for solving problems, (2) a set of practice problems with worked answers, and (3) provide an opportunity for students to show what they learned with an online quiz.
12:45-1:45 Bringing real world examples and experiences into the classroom
- Introduction: Bringing Real World Experiences and Examples into the Classroom (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 6.3MB Mar7 13) - Anne Ronan
- Table discussions and report out using workspace pages
- Separated into class topics (e.g. hydro, hazards, environmental, civil engineering, mineral resources, global change)
Building Strong Geoscience Departments -This project helps geoscience departments adapt and prosper in a changing and challenging environment by disseminating community expertise on topics such as geoscience curricula and programs, retaining and recruiting top faculty and students, program assessment, and maintaining the department as a valued institutional partner.
1:45-2:15 Challenges and potential solutions for developing integrated activities -Vince Cronin, Horacio Ferriz, Francis Jones
- Challenges and Potential Solutions for Developing Integrated Activities (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 13.9MB Mar7 13) - Vince Cronin
- Field Trips (PowerPoint 3.8MB Mar7 13) -Horacio Ferriz
- Integrated Activities and Challenges of Assessing "Higher level" Thinking Skills (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 334kB Mar7 13) - Francis Jones
- Grouped by student audience (eg. civil engineers, environmental engineers, geoscience students, intro students)
3:30-4:00 Report outs of challenges and needed modules
- Generate proposal team topics for modules/courses
4:00-5:25 Working groups: Develop potential proposals for new course modules
5:25-5:30 End of Day Plenary and workshoproadcheck assessment
6:00 Dinner at Table Mountain Inn
Friday, March 8
Topics of the day:
- How do we integrate sustainability principles into our courses?
- How do we collectively provide the education needed for the future across disciplinary boundaries? For all students?
8:30-8:40 Overview of the day - John Taber
8:45-9:45 Panel: Strategies for Integrating Geoscience and Engineering for a sustainable future
- Panel: Brenda Bowen, Steven Burian, Daniel Morgan
- Discussion (small groups at tables) of barriers and opportunities for integrating sustainability into courses
- Bridging the Disciplinary Divide with Sustainability (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 3.6MB Mar8 13) - Steve Burian
- Sustainability Challenges and Opportunities (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 516kB Mar8 13) - Dan Morgan
9:45 -10Break
10-10:45 Opportunities for working together to increase diversity in geoscience and engineering
- Introduction - Diane Doser
- Small group discussion and report out usingworkspace pages- first at table and then with proposal group
- What do you see as barriers to diversity in your community?
- What has worked for reaching diverse audiences in your community?
10:45-11:30 Work with proposal teams to get proposals ready for short (5 min) overview report out to group
11:30-12:30 Lunch- Calvary Church
12:30 -2:00
- Individual reflection - what to take home
- Report out from proposal teams
- Synthesis and next steps - Cathryn Manduca
- Evaluation
2:00 PM Adjourn


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"Come In, Stranger" -- A break-in on Wisteria Lane leaves the neighbors feeling vulnerable, especially Susan -- who reluctantly accepts a date with a persistent policeman (guest star Steven Eckholdt) after Mike Delfino appears indifferent to her -- and a lonely Bree, who finds herself bonding with Mary Alice's troubled son, Zach. Meanwhile, Lynette and Tom pull out all the stops to get their uncontrollable twins accepted at a prestigious private school, and the unexpected arrival of Carlos' mother (guest star Lupe Ontiveros) puts a crimp in Gabrielle's covert love life, on "Desperate Housewives," SUNDAY, JULY 10 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. (Rebroadcast. OAD: 10/31/04)
Editors please note: This program replaces "Welcome to the Neighborhood" which had been scheduled to air at this time.
"Desperate Housewives" stars Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross as Bree Van De Kamp, Eva Longoria as Gabrielle Solis, James Denton as Mike Delfino, Nicollette Sheridan as Edie Britt, Steven Culp as Rex Van De Kamp, Mark Moses as Paul Young, Ricardo Antonio Chavira as Carlos Solis, Cody Kasch as Zach Young, Andrea Bowen as Julie Mayer, Jesse Metcalfe as John and Brenda Strong as Mary Alice Young.
Guest starring are Doug Savant as Tom Scavo, Christine Estabrook as Mrs. Huber, Zane Huette as Parker Scavo, Brent Kinsman as Preston Scavo, Shane Kinsman as Porter Scavo, Shawn Pyfrom as Andrew Van De Kamp, Joy Lauren as Danielle Van De Kamp, Lupe Ontiveros as Juanita Solis, Steven Eckholdt as Officer Rick Thompson, Harry S. Murphy as Mr. Lenz, Bob Gunton as man, Laura Milby as saleswoman, Shania Accius as Shonda, Mark Brady as patrolman, Betty Murphy as Mrs. Frome, Cheynne Wilbur as Bob Fisk, Lorna Scott as Helen Vale and Pat Crawford Brown as Ida Bernstein.
"Come In, Stranger" was written by Alexandra Cunningham and directed by Arlene Sanford.
"Desperate Housewives" is broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1-channel surround sound.
This program carries a TV-PG,D,S parental guideline.


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Glee: Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Finally someone had the brilliant idea to pair all of the characters on Glee for an evening of duets. It also helped to establish some couples among our band of misfits. The episode was mediocre, but the idea was divine.
As far as its place in the Glee canon, this episode will probably be known more for its songs than for its story. It was fine—heartfelt, touching, amusing—but didn't really bring the funny or the emotional the way the best episodes can. I mean, how good can an episode without one second of Sue Motherfucking Sylvester really be? What was great about it was all the action centered around the kids without the politics or romantic lives of the grown ups getting in the way.
At the top of the episode, Mr. Schue tells all the kids they have to sing a duet. Why? Who knows. But the winner will get a free dinner at the mythical strip mall dining palace Breadstix, which I imagine as a cross between the Olive Garden, a Pizza Hut, and a really creepy Italian restaurant I once went to in Richmond that had pink tablecloths and those candles in wine bottles with twine wrapped around them.
Let's get to the duets, shall we? First up was Finn and Rachel, naturally.
[There was a video here]
For a change, Finn actually sounds great doing the Elton John part on "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." Naturally Rachel makes for a fine Kiki Dee, but what was shocking was that she wasn't the one to announce that they would obviously win the singing competition. This time it was Finn. Rachel comes to the sudden realization that she's not a good person. God, Rachel, we've known that since the first moment we met you! Rachel is the kind of girl that you hate, but you're friends with anyway partly because you know all her annoying qualities stem from a deep-seated insecurity, and also because she's fairly entertaining in her neuroses. To make up for being horrible she decides that she and Finn will throw the competition so that new Glee club member Sam will feel welcome and stay in the club. This is how Rachel is kind to others—but doing something that will benefit herself. Of course she's all, "But how ever will I lose?" as she bats her eyelashes repeatedly and then tilts her head in the air pressing the back of her wrist against the center of her forehead. Rachel would be a great silent movie actress.
As the rest of the crew is breaking into gruesome twosomes to sing their duets, it creates some tension within the group, and in the most interesting of places.
[There was a video here]
Now that Puck is in juvie for driving his mother's car into a Kwik-E-Mart and stealing Apu's ATM machine, Santana is hornier than ever, so she wants to scissor with Brittany. Santana is like a lizard, if she doesn't have something warm beneath her she can't digest her food. Brittany doesn't mind being her something warm, but she wants to get all dykey with Santana, even singing a Melissa Etheridge song as a duet. That's more lesbian than reading an Audre Lorde poem while wearing flannel Birkenstocks and eating a vegan casserole from a pot luck dinner at the food co-op.
OK, we need a minute to talk about Brittany and Santana. Because we are humans, we need to put labels on each other. Just what the hell are these two? Santana is probably bisexual. She wants to do it with Puck, but she'll take the pleasure of a woman in a pinch. It's not like she's making out with Brittany in the middle of a frat party to turn on a bunch of boys, she's doing it in private because she enjoys it. For Brittany it seems to be something else. I think she's a full-blown lesbian who has sex with guys because she thinks it's expected of her or to get her way, but she's really in love with Santana. After all, look at how hurt her feelings get when Santana decides to duet with Mercedes. It's like cheating!
And their duet of "River Deep, Mountain High"(which always reminds me of the scene in What's Love Got to Do with It when Angela Bassett records the song) is amazing. Santana is selfish and, just like she toys with Brittany's emotions to get laid, she wants to win dinner at Breadstix to prove she's the best. So does Mercedes. They sing an amazing song and the plot rolls along.
Speaking of rolling, Brittany sets her sites on Artie to sing a duet and to make Santana jealous. It doesn't quite work.
Babygay Kurt is also trying to set up a predatory partnership with Sam, the dreamy new guy (who graced us with multiple topless scenes last night. Thanks, Sam!). BG Kurt wants into Sam's pants so he gets him to agree to do a duet. Sam agrees, even after Finn tries to convince him that it's not a good idea because everyone is going to think he's gay and then he'll be unpopular. Finn also approaches Kurt and tells him to call it off because it's going to make Sam leave the club and strand them with fewer than 12 members, the cut off to perform at nationals.
This dredges up all the drama from the original round of tension between Finn and Babygay Kurt when Kurt had a crush on Finn and was trying to push himself on the straight guy. This whole storyline seemed like a bit of a course correction from that former episode, when Finn got branded a homophobe for shooting down Kurt when Kurt was the one who was behaving out of line. We're glad this was finally addressed, and Finn was vindicated. However, Finn says that he's not homophobic—which I think is true—but then he also basically says, "but everyone else is, so we have to behave in a way that won't incur homophobic response." That's not bigotry, that's cowardice, which sometimes is even worse. If he's not willing to help his friends stand up to the homophobia it's never going to get better, so shame on you, Finn.
Partly as an apology to Finn and partly because he wants to keep Glee together, Kurt decides it's best to cut Sam lose and do a duet on his own.
[There was a video here]
I love a Broadway show, but I've never been a huge fan of Victor/Victoria and this number certainly didn't impress when it was on stage. It wasn't so great here either. I think it's just a case of great performance (and the things Kurt does with his voice are amazing) of a bad song. Also, I didn't quite get how it's supposed to be a duet. It's more of a performance about duality, which is an interesting dynamic for the episode, but didn't really play by the rules of the competition or subvert them in a really interesting way.
But I really feel for Babygay Kurt. It's not easy to be the only gay in high school (just ask me how I know), and invariably Kurt is going to have crushes on boys, because that's what teenagers of all stripes do, they have crushes. Since there are no other gays around for Kurt to lust after, he's going to end up hoping against hope that one day he'll turn a straight boy. It's very frustrating, and does messed up things to your head. One day, BG Kurt, you'll meet some other gays that will want you and you won't have to keep having these unattainable crushes. One day.
And one day Mike Chang will finally get a chance to sing. And that day is today (or last night, actually).
[There was a video here]
"Sing!" from A Chorus Line was the perfect choice for Mike, who's known more for his dancing prowess than his vocal power, especially because his girlfriend and singing partner sure can carry a tune. But not here. Is it me or did you cringe each time Tina sing her one note at the end of his sentence? It just never seemed on pitch or clear, which is sort of the opposite intention of the song.
Tina and Mike are maintaining their Asian connection, but Tina is afraid that they're a little too focused on their shared heritage (are they both even the same flavor of Asian?). They bicker a little, but they don't seem to be breaking up anytime soon. This makes Artie upset and he tries to lose himself in Brittany's arms, but it doesn't work. When Artie gives up on their duet practice and wants to wheel back home to lust after Tina some more, Brittany does what she's best at and takes his virginity. Once he's finally fallen for Brittany, Santana sabotages it and tells him that Brittany just used him for sex.
OK, what is up with Brittany and Santana? Brittany is clearly in love with Santana, but is Santana in love with Brittany too? And did Brittany really have feelings for Artie? Does that mean she's not a lesbian. God, life is so much easier with sexual labels!
The only thing that I'm more mock offended at is Finn and Rachel's "offensive" number they used to throw the competition.
[There was a video here]
"With You I'm Born Again" was a Motown hit for Syreeta Wright and Billy Preston that I never heard before this morning. They sound pretty great singing it, so why is it so offensive? Because they were dressed like a priest and a nun? It could have been a lot more offensive. Is the other Glee members' shock supposed to be sarcastic? I don't get it. This was really stupid.
What wasn't stupid was Sam's duet with Quinn.
[There was a video here]
I'm just going to say it, I hate Jason Mraz, also Gavin Degraw, Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and the rest of those sappy, emo male singer songwriter types. God, I hate them all. But, in the hands of Sam and Quinn, I didn't entirely hate "Lucky," Mraz's duet with Colbie Caillat. OK, I kind of liked it. I still hate Jason Mraz though, just on principle.
When Babygay Kurt doesn't want to sing with Sam anymore, Sam turns to Quinn and their rehearsal becomes a bit of a seduction. But Quinn doesn't want to be involved with a man. She says she needs to be worried about humiliating Rachel and besting Santana, not worrying about boys. Boys are what got her in trouble last year with the pregnancy and everything and she doesn't want to fall into that trap again. After that scene where she walks out on Sam I said to myself, "Damn, self, they really don't use Quinn nearly as much as they should." With some cajoling from Finn and Rachel (who says she just wants Quinn and Sam to sing together so there will be some competition for second place—classic Rachel Barry), they team up and deliver a solid performance.
When they go to Breadstix as the winners of the competition, there's a very sweet scene where dorky Sam embarrasses himself and then redeems himself by impressing Quinn by being sweet. Sure his using lemon juice in his Bieberish locks is nothing like her giving a baby up for adoption, but he makes it seem like it is. He tells Quinn that he understands her and she is comfortable enough to say that their triumphant dinner at Breadstix is really their first date. This is sure going to get messy when Puck gets back!
What was even sadder was Brittany nuzzling a meatball all by herself in the next booth. She's a Lady with no Tramp. Or maybe she's both Lady and Tramp. Either way she broke Artie's heart and feels bad about it. Maybe somewhere in her daffy brain Brittany realized she did to Artie what Santana is doing to her and it upset her. Does that mean she's a lesbian? And is Santana so stung by Brit's dalliance with Artie that she won't go back to her "girlfriend?" Wow, Brittany and Santana really have the most complicated and interesting relationship on primetime television.
At least they have someone to be gay with. When Babygay Kurt wants to get gay, he has to sing a Barbra Streisand/Judy Garland duet with Rachel.
[There was a video here]
For those who don't know, this was a remake of a performance from Judy Garland's 1960s TV show where Garland and Streisand sang a mash up (if you can call it that) of two of their signature songs. Every person who has ever been to Musical Monday in a gay bar has seen it. Rachel even wears Barbra's little Donald Duck sailor top. Their rendition really was stunning, and if you can stand alongside Garland and Streisand, then these kids are doing something very right indeed.
But even more powerful than the song was the emotion behind it. Of everyone in Glee, Rachel knows what it's like to be alone, and she finally has some sympathy for someone other than herself. She explains to Kurt that everyone in the club loves him just the way he is, and even though he won't have anyone to date, that doesn't mean he has to be lonely. Wow, I think that was the first time that Rachel Barry ever made me cry. Her unselfish act earlier in the show—losing the duet competition to keep Sam in Glee—wasn't unselfish at all, but she had nothing to gain by asking Kurt to sing with her. Finally Rachel does something altruistic, and we've never liked her more. Sometimes the best couples have nothing to do with romance at all.


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John William Doyle was born in Belmont County, Ohio in February 1829, I believe. At this time his parents are not known. A marriage record dated 27 October 1850 in Marshall County, Virginia (which is now West Virginia) shows John Doyle marrying Rebecca Johnson. In the 1850 census, it appears that both John and Rebecca are in the same household. So were they living together before they were married? Just curious.
John and Rebecca had four children that I know of:
Wiley Augustus Doyle (1851 VA/WV- 1924 CO) married Melissa Jane Adams
Mary Emma Doyle (1853-1933) who married Oliver Bryan (I wrote about them earlier)William Franklin "Frank" Doyle (1856 OH-1928 CO) who married Dora Cleo Speckelmire/Specklemier, or other variations of the spelling
James Bruce Doyle (1856 IL-1911 CO) who married Della Ann Speckelmire (various also).
Yes, the two ladies were sisters, daughters of John Calvin Speckelmire and Charity Mullen. And there are SOOO many different ways I've found this last name spelled.
In 1858 Rebecca died in Randolph County, Illinois. I am looking for cemetery records for her.
In September 1862, John enlisted in Company A, 110th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He was discharged in June 1865, at the end of the Civil War. John and his children lived in Jefferson County, Illinois in 1870, but moved to Rawlins County, Kansas, before 1880.
John William Doyle died in January 1898 in Rawlins County, Kansas and was buried in the Achilles Cemetery in Rawlins County.
I would like to collaborate with anyone researching any of these people.
I would like to thank Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small for encouraging us in our writing attempts for our ancestors. This is the address in case the link doesn't work. http://www.nostorytoosmall.com/posts/challenge-52-ancestors-in-52-weeks. I missed my deadline one week, but this has been a great incentive for me to organize at least a little bit of information about each ancestor on a regular basis. And, Amy also has been compiling a list every week in a recap. This list is of all of those blogs and surnames that we have been writing about. So, I check down the list every week to see if someone else has written about any of those people that I'm also researching. Thank you, Amy.


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Mommy Makeover
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Stevenson unanimously outpoints Fonfara
MONTREAL (AP) — Adonis Stevenson successfully defended his World Boxing Council light-heavyweight title Saturday night, unanimously outpointing Poland's Andrzej Fonfara at Bell Centre.
The 36-year-old Stevenson (24-1) picked himself off the canvas in the ninth round before battling back in the 10th to preserve the victory in his third title defense.
Fonfara (25-3) was knocked down in the first round and again with a body shot in fifth, but the lanky 26-year-old fighter kept coming back and going on the attack. In the final round, he caught Stevenson with a right and went all out for the knockout.
Judges John McKay and Jack Woodburn scored it 115-110, and Richard DeCarufel had it 116-109. It was the first time Stevenson, the Montreal-based fighter from Haiti, went the distance in 15 bouts since 2007.
On the undercard, Montreal middleweight David Lemieux stopped Roberto Guerrero of the Dominican Republic in the third round. Lemieux (32-2) knocked down Guerrero (26-3) in the first and second rounds. After Guerrero took a knee in the third to have his bleeding right eye cleared, Lemieux knocked him out with a right uppercut.
In a light-middleweight bout, Jermell Charlo of Houston outpointed Charlie Belamy Ohta of Japan, receiving winning scores of 115-111, 118-109 and 118-109. Charlo improved to 24-0, and Ohta dropped to (24-2-1).


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Patients & Visitors
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If you are unable to find a desired time or have an urgent need, please call us directly at (303) 301-9010 and the receptionist will be happy to accommodate you.
Please note, the following insurance plans require a written referral prior to being seen:
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Interested in Language
In 'Odour of Chrysanthemums' by DH Lawrence is a sentence: He was a man of handsome body.
I wonder why there isn't an article for BODY, because it is usually considered a countable noun.
The only uncountable sense I could find in OALD was:
But this cannot be the meaning shown in that short story.the full strong flavour of alcoholic drinks or the thick healthy quality of somebody's hair
1.a wine with plenty of body
2.Regular use of conditioner is supposed to give your hair more body.
Could anyone help me?
Thank you.
Lawrence wrote this story in 1909.
'He was a man of handsome body' is unlikely to be written by a modern author.


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Let safety tag along this Halloween
Checkup On Health
While the temptation to eat too much candy always haunts children and adults alike, it's really the activities surrounding trick-or-treating on Halloween night that pose the biggest risks.
Keeping common sense safety in mind can help everyone have a much more enjoyable evening as monsters, ghosts, witches, and goblins make their annual trek through neighborhoods throughout America.
Christy Adams is the Trauma Prevention program coordinator for UC Davis Health System. Along with offering advice on car seat safety, drowning prevention and helping youngsters properly wear bicycle helmets, she focuses on annual events such as 4th of July and Halloween.
"Parents and guardians just need to take a few minutes to remind both themselves and children to keep safety in mind as trick-or-treating time approaches," Adams said. "Common sense is a great safety tool, but it's easy to take things for granted unless you take a moment to go over it."
Adams offers the following tips for a fun and safe evening on Halloween:
Costumes should be short enough to prevent children from tripping and falling. Falls are the leading cause of unintentional injuries on Halloween, something Adams says emergency room physicians and nurses at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento have often seen.
- Decorate costumes with reflective tape for greater visibility during dusk and darkness. Make sure costumes also are light enough to be clearly visible for drivers.
- Costumes, including masks, beards and wigs should be flame resistant; look for the label inside. With candles being part of decorations, avoid costumes that are big and baggy and have billowing sleeves or skirts.
- Costume accessories (swords, knives, etc.) should be made of soft, flexible material.
- Consider using face paints rather than masks so vision is not impaired.
- Plan a route in advance and have adult supervision.
- Use sidewalks and don't walk in the street except at appropriate places.
- Carry flashlights.
- Place reflective tape on Halloween bags or sacks.
- Don't cross the street between parked cars.
- Visit homes that have well lit yards.
- Don't run between houses, which can have unseen landscaping hazards, sprinklers and furniture that can present dangers after dark.
- Inspect all treats before eating. Throw it away any package if it is opened.
"Common sense is a great safety tool, but it's easy to take things for granted unless you take a moment to go over it."
— Christy Adams, trauma prevention coordinator


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If you are an anti-natalist and think being alive is hell and suffering and an overwhelming bummer, why are you still alive? Is there some life instinct that's driving you to stick around or you're just not ready to check out yet?I explain:
Let me explain by analogy. Two birthdays ago, my friends had a surprise party for me. I was in a very antisocial mood at the time, and it was a very unpleasant experience - but I suffered through it because I didn't want to hurt my friends' feelings. I didn't just walk out and leave the party (though I feel I morally could have done, if it were bad enough for me). But mostly I wish they hadn't had a party for me in the first place - I would have been better off if they hadn't.In more general terms, the question may be phrased as: If you have been the victim of injustice and a solution to your subjective suffering exists, why not take it? And the answer is: because the proffered solution (a) through no fault of mine, harms others whose interests I care about, and (b) through no fault of mine, will very likely put me in a situation that is worse than my current situation.
Ditto my mom giving birth to me. I wish she hadn't, but my family and friends would be very sad if I peaced out of the party (though I still have a moral right to commit suicide).
Another problem is that killing oneself is hard. Barbiturates are tightly controlled these days. You'd be amazed how easy it is to survive a gunshot wound to the head. And then they keep you alive and do medical experiments on you without your consent. Not a pretty picture.


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Eric Jaffe
Eric Jaffe is the former New York bureau chief for CityLab. He is the author of A Curious Madness and The King's Best Highway.
Last week, Amtrak announced its highest annual ridership … ever [PDF]. America's passenger rail provider carried 31.2 million people in fiscal 2012, which ended with September. That's a 3.5 percent increase over 2011 and led to ticket revenues of roughly $2 billion. Since the year 2000, ridership is now up 49 percent:
Amtrak's broken ridership records are beginning to sound like a broken record. As the above chart shows, the 2012 mark was the ninth annual record in ten years. September's numbers marked a twelfth consecutive monthly record. July of 2012 was the single best month in Amtrak's 41-year history.
As usual, the bulk of Amtrak's success came in the Northeast Corridor. Regional and Acela services carried some 11.4 million passengers in 2012, a spike of nearly 5 percent over the previous year. That's more than a third of all riders for the year, but the actual numbers for stations in the northeast, which Amtrak released yesterday, are even more impressive [PDF].
The ten highest station figures for the corridor came at New York (9,493,414), D.C. (5,013,991), Philadelphia (4,068,540), Boston (1,447501), Baltimore (1,028,909), New Haven (755,669), Wilmington (737,846), BWI Airport (703,604), Newark (680,803), and Providence (669,576). Those are on-and-off passenger numbers for Acela and regional trains as well as others that traverse the sector. They add up to roughly 24.6 million riders, or about three-quarters of Amtrak's record-breaking 2012 total.
Still it's worth noting that the northeast isn't the only place where interest in Amtrak is growing. Passenger records were broken for 25 of Amtrak's 44 services in 2012. Ridership increased to previously unseen heights in the Midwest (particularly Chicago-St. Louis), the West Coast (Bakersfield-Oakland rose 7 percent), and the Mid-Atlantic (the Charlotte-Raleigh train is up 16 percent).
Even long-distance trains reached their highest combined levels in nearly two decades. Much of that increase went through the Windy City. Records fell on trains between Chicago and New York (up 4 percent), New Orleans (8.5 percent) and even San Antonio (nearly 13 percent). Only five routes lost riders, with the biggest disappointment being the Pacific Surfliner between San Luis Obispo and San Diego, down about 5 percent.
What's most impressive about Amtrak's recent success is that it's not attributable to any one clear factor but rather speaks to a general attraction toward train travel. Amtrak itself points to improved services like WiFi and electronic ticketing, as well as high gas prices. In the Northeast Corridor the shift reflects sustained discontent with air travel; as the New York Times recently reported, Amtrak now captures 75 percent of the intercity market between New York and Washington, and 54 percent between New York and Boston. A growing perception of the train as a "mobile office" surely contributes as well.
Of course you wouldn't know about this success listening to many Republican politicians. House Transportation Committee chair John Mica recently led a series of three Congressional hearings slamming Amtrak's food and beverage services [PDF], its "monopoly mentality" with regard to commuter trains [PDF], and its long history of taxpayer subsidies [PDF]. Mitt Romney has promised to end federal support for Amtrak if elected. (Perhaps Big Bird can conduct the final train.)
Some of that criticism is justified, but it's a strange time to call the provider a fiscal burden on Americans. Ridership figures aside, Amtrak is now a (relative) success at the ticket window. Revenue in 2012 covered 85 percent of Amtrak's operating expenses [PDF]. As a consequence of this improved financial footing, Amtrak requested only $450 million in federal operating funding in 2013 — less than Congress was willing to appropriate.
The size of Amtrak's taxpayer subsidy still remains an important topic of discussion. On this count, both sides are massaging the numbers. Amtrak chief Joseph Boardman puts the burden at $1.48 per American; that takes into account operations but not capital funding, which altogether comes out to roughly $1.4 billion. Mica uses the latter figure to declare a per-ticket subsidy of nearly $51 in 2012; the missing context here is that intercity railroads universally require government contributions for capital expenses if they're going to run at all.
A far more productive conversation about Amtrak's subsidies requires a look at individual services. Those only exist as prospective 2012 figures for the moment [PDF, via Transportation Nation], but they're instructive nonetheless. In the Northeast, Amtrak makes about $20 per rider, and among the individual state routes, it loses a little less than $11 per rider. That works out close to a wash.
The real drain on taxpayers is Amtrak's long-distance routes. Ridership may be up 4.7 percent on those services for the year, but the projected loss comes out to more than $111 per rider. If there's a substantive discussion to be had about the future of Amtrak, it's about the viability of these long-distance services, which unlike many local transit routes that lose money don't seem particularly necessary as a public service.
(On that last note, Boardman recently claimed the number of people whose only public intercity transportation option is Amtrak has "tripled in just five years" [PDF]. That statement appears to be based on a 2011 Bureau of Transportation Statistics report, which found that the share of rural Americans who rely on rail as their only option rose from .3 to .9 percent between 2005 and 2010 [PDF]. Coverage is important, for sure, but those aren't exactly italics-worthy figures.)
While many in Mica's camp believe Amtrak would be better off privatized, that's an unlikely outcome even under a President Romney. So barring any drastic changes, there's little reason to think Amtrak's ridership won't continue to increase. On the contrary, with some focused, substantive discussions it should only become more efficient. There's even a conceivable scenario in which train popularity explodes in the near future.
Consider: As Boardman recently pointed out [PDF], highway user fees accounted for not quite 46 percent of road funding in 2010, and in the past four years the general taxpayer fund has given 30 percent more to roads than Amtrak has received, in full, since its creation in 1971. If that subsidy discussion ever made its way into the spotlight, it would become clear that the gas tax isn't keeping pace with the times and must be raised. Anyone who watched the second presidential debate knows how well a major spike in fuel cost will go over with Americans. You might even see a record number asking, for the first time, what's the fastest way to the Amtrak station.
Top image: Passengers wait for trains in Washington, D.C.'s busy Union Station. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
A long-term study of people in four cities finds that income volatility in one's 20s and 30s correlates with negative brain effects in middle age.
Go-go has become the soundtrack for a growing anti-gentrification movement in Washington. Now a city council bill wants to make it D.C.'s official music.
Drilling and fracking permits are up since Governor Newsom took office. But it's not totally clear why.
Facing declining birthrates and rural depopulation, hundreds of "marginal villages" could vanish in a few decades. But some small towns are fighting back.
People in different regions of the U.S. have measurably different psychological profiles.


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Inquiry refers YMCA worker to DPP
The child abuse royal commission has recommended that the YMCA NSW supervisor who recruited a pedophile be prosecuted for lying to the commission.
In findings handed down on Wednesday the commission said the public evidence of Jacqui Barnat, co-ordinator at a south Sydney childcare centre where Jonathan Lord worked for almost three years, conflicted with her private evidence.
Lord was jailed in 2013 for 10 years, with a six-year non-parole period, for molesting 12 boys between the ages of six and 11.
In private evidence to the commission Ms Barnat said staff never started work until a working with children check (WWCC) clearance came through but later admitted she was mistaken.
The findings on Wednesday upheld many but not all the recommendations in December by counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC, who said Ms Barnat should be prosecuted for lying about the WWCC.
The commission said on Wednesday there was insufficient evidence to do this but she did lie outright about her own babysitting activities.
Babysitting for parents who were YMCA clients was against regulations. Lord did it openly and in this way gained access to many of the children he abused.
Ms Barnat later admitted she too babysat.
The commission said it felt it was necessary to refer Ms Barnat's evidence on her babysitting to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
"It is a serious matter to give false evidence to a royal commission. Her answers cannot be explained by the atmosphere of the private hearing or the nature of her examination. The questions asked were clear and direct, and required a truthful answer.
"However, we remain concerned that Ms Barnat has not accepted her failures and learned from them."
The inquiry has already forced the country's largest childcare operator to overhaul management, policies and practices.
CEO Phillip Hare resigned in May and children's service manager Liam Whitely was moved to a role where he is not handling childcare services.
Ms Furness had said the YMCA was unlikely ever to be child-safe with them in charge. The commission on Wednesday upheld that.
Throughout the hearing the provider argued that the events at one Sydney centre did not mean systemic failure and it blamed junior staff for failing to implement child safety policies.
In its 165-page report the commission said the fact "abuse occurred in the way it did at YMCA Caringbah calls into question the child safety practices of YMCA NSW".
It also found YMCA NSW was responsible for not adequately training staff, including Ms Barnat.
YMCA NSW said it "sincerely apologises to the children who were abused, as well as the families and colleagues who have been affected by the actions of Lord".
It also acknowledged "failings have been identified in its procedures and in the implementation of its policies, including child protection".


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The conference was organised in cooperation with the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU and brought together around 300 participants and over 500 online viewers from across the EU. Representatives from EU institutions and bodies, national governments, international organisations, national human rights institutions and equality bodies, labour inspectorates, social partners and civil society organisations gathered in Warsaw to discuss how to improve access to fundamental rights for irregular migrants living in the European Union. Plenary sessions and interactive discussions in the working groups and the Marketplace of Ideas focused on fundamental rights in migration management, labour exploitation, access to basic healthcare and education for children, detention of irregular migrants, protracted irregularity and many more.
FRA Director, Morten Kjaerum emphasised the need to "find solutions to ensuring that migration policy is built on fundamental rights standards". He added that "Whatever solutions we adopt, what is clear is that our societies cannot continue to pick the fruit of irregular migration with one hand, while using the other hand to close the door to basic rights."
Read more about the conference.


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How to Concatenate Text Cases in R
You can put together separate data elements in R so that they form a single text string. To concatenate text, you use the paste() function:
paste("The", "quick", "brown", "fox") [1] "The quick brown fox"
By default, paste() uses a blank space to concatenate the vectors. In other words, you separate elements with spaces. This is because paste() takes an argument that specifies the separator. The default for the sep argument is a space (" ") — it defaults to separating elements with a blank space, unless you tell it otherwise.
When you use paste(), or any function that accepts multiple arguments, make sure that you pass arguments in the correct format. Take a look at this example, but notice that this time there is a c() function in the code:
paste(c("The", "quick", "brown", "fox")) [1] "The" "quick" "brown" "fox"
What's happening here? Why doesn't paste() paste the words together? The reason is that, by using c(), you passed a vector as a single argument to paste(). The c() function combines elements into a vector. By default, paste() concatenates separate vectors — it doesn't collapse elements of a vector.
For the same reason, paste(words) results in the following:
[1] "The" "quick" "brown" "FOX" "jumps" "over" "the" "lazy" "DOG"
The paste() function takes two optional arguments. The separator (sep) argument controls how different vectors get concatenated, and the collapse argument controls how a vector gets collapsed into itself, so to speak.
When you want to concatenate the elements of a vector by using paste(), you use the collapse argument, as follows:
paste(words, collapse=" ") [1] "The quick brown FOX jumps over the lazy DOG"
The collapse argument of paste can take any character value. If you want to paste together text by using an underscore, use the following:
paste(words, collapse="_") [1] "The_quick_brown_FOX_jumps_over_the_lazy_DOG"
You can use sep and collapse in the same paste call. In this case, the vectors are first pasted with sep and then collapsed with collapse. Try this:
> paste(LETTERS[1:5], 1:5, sep="_", collapse="---") [1] "A_1---B_2---C_3---D_4---E_5"
What happens here is that you first concatenate the elements of each vector with an underscore (that is, A_1, B_2, and so on), and then you collapse the results into a single string with — between each element.
The paste() function takes vectors as input and joins them together. If one vector is shorter than the other, R recycles (repeats) the shorter vector to match the length of the longer one — a powerful feature.
Suppose that you have five objects, and you want to label them "sample 1", "sample 2", and so on. You can do this by passing a short vector with the value sample and a long vector with the values 1:5 to paste(). In this example, the shorter vector is repeated five times:
> paste("Sample", 1:5) [1] "Sample 1" "Sample 2" "Sample 3" "Sample 4" "Sample 5"


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South University, West Palm Beach (View Other Campuses)
Discover the benefits of an education from South University, West Palm Beach. Since 1899, South University has committed to the professional, social, intellectual, and personal development of our diverse students by providing, a faculty that lends professional experience to the learning experience, and a student body that shares a goal of professional fulfillment.
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Choose a location to learn more:
South University Campus
Online Programs
Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Administration (2013)
South University Campus
Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Management (2014)
Join the South University Community through social networks.


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Apress, as I expect you know, publish some really good SQL Server books. Some of which are on the MCM reading list. Each day Apress offer an ebook from it's catalogue for a bargain basement price of $10 in its Deal of the Day. (About £6.50). If you catch it on the right day you can pick up an absolute bargain. Through this offer I recently bought Grant Fritchey's (Blog|@scraydba) SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled. This is on the MCM reading list. I'd happily have paid the full fee for this book. I'm half way through it and I've learned a great deal already.
This is just a short post for Monday, I haven't posted for a while I'd thought I dust of the blog and let you know about the possible deals you can get over at Apress.


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Search For Properties In Central Beach
View All Central Beach Listings ›
Current Properties in Central Beach
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Central Beach is an oceanside community on the barrier island of Orchid Island. Hosting a myriad of local attractions and maintaining proximity to the heart of downtown Vero Beach, Central Beach is the ideal residence for a luxurious lifestyle overlooking the Atlantic.
Real Estate: Central Beach luxury real estate includes awe-inspiring estates nestled on grid-lined streets, many of which are named after trees and flowers, shaded by live oak trees. Estate properties in Central Beach are within walking distance of the ocean and the Indian River, and several are nestled on the sandy ocean's shore. The multi-million dollar luxury properties in this area effortlessly merge historic charm with modern amenities.
Lifestyle: While residents may access the many destinations within Vero Beach just a few miles away, there is an abundance of local attractions in the community of Central Beach itself. Head to Ocean Drive near the Atlantic shore for fine restaurants, boutique shops, hotels, offices, and convenient access to sandy white beaches. Central Beach is a prominent activity hub, hosting art shows, parades and festivals on an annual basis in its inviting environment. Art enthusiasts appreciate the Vero Museum of Art and the Riverside Theatre located in Central Beach, while yachters enjoy easy access to the ocean and the area's collection of yacht clubs and marinas.
Education: Families residing in Central Beach enjoy access to some of the best regional schools, including Beachland Elementary School, Gifford Middle School and Vero Beach High School. Nearby private schools include Saint Edward's School and Glendale Christian School.
Water Access: Central Beach exists on a Vero Beach barrier island, nestled between the Indian River and the Atlantic Ocean. This proximity to the ocean and a prominent river means residents are never far from a stroll down a sandy beach, a dip in the water, or water activities like yachting, sailing and fishing.


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We recently wrote about Rep. Justin Amash's plan to strip the NSA of funding by adding an amendment to the defense appropriations bill making its way through the house. The plan was not without its obstacles, not the least of which was a last-minute change in rules deliberately aimed at preventing actions like Amash's.
With the open amendments process effectively nullified by the change in process, Amash has changed tactics a bit.
Representative Justin Amash of Michigan is on his way to forcing the first legislative showdown over the National Security Agency's controversial policy of collecting the phone logs of every American.
The venue for the fight is an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that would ban the NSA from collecting information from people who aren't under investigation.
This one seems like it might have a better chance of surviving any pushback by Republicans hoping to shepherd the appropriations bill through the house. Even with the rules change, if Amash's amendment is allowed to receive a floor vote, it could still end up as part of the larger bill. So far, the House Rules Committee is fighting the amendment by postponing the vote, something it did twice last week.
Even if the HRC manages to kill off the amendment by denying it a floor vote, it may find itself facing something even worse.
The catch is, if the Rules Committee doesn't allow a vote on the amendment, Amash and a coalition of Republicans and Democrats probably have the votes to bring the whole bill down. To do so, they could vote against the "rule," which governs debate for the bill. Those are typically party-line votes, so only a few Republicans would need to join the Democrats to defeat it.
Amash's actions can't be making Speaker of the House John Boehner very happy. Rather than easing through an annual DoD budget, Boehner is facing combative legislators attempting to send a message to the NSA (and to their constituents). Neither option looks particularly palatable, and thus far, the Speaker hasn't shown he can muster a unified front, much less cross party lines like Amash can.
Amash says the amendment could get widespread support in a roll call vote. "The coalition is much broader than just libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberals. If you talk to members from across the political spectrum you'll find widespread disapproval of what the NSA is doing…"
Either way this plays out, the NSA's going to be perturbed. If the appropriations bill sails through with the amendment attached, it will be faced with a possible ban on part of its domestic surveillance activities. There's little doubt the NSA will get its powers reinstated, but it will have to go through a very public battle in order to do so. In the current climate, it's doubtful that many would leap to its defense, other than the usual suspects.
If Amash's amendment is prevented from receiving a floor vote, the entire appropriations bill might be shot down. If that happens, and the Department of Defense's budget is in jeopardy, you can imagine the Speaker's office will be quickly filling up with agency heads looking to get their hands on an impotent Boehner.


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Improving Care, Reducing Costs in Medicare
By Lina Walker , May 16, 2013 01:05 PM
As a self-proclaimed sci-fi geek, I can't help but begin this blog with a quote from one of my favorite writers:
"The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change. That is the dominant factor in society today," wrote author Isaac Asimov, "No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be."
That was indeed the central message of last week's AARP Solution Forum on improving care and cutting costs in health care. The day brought together leaders representing diverse perspectives to highlight initiatives currently underway across the country and discuss action for further progress. The event focused on Medicare but the conversation extended into the private under-65 market - one cannot discuss transforming Medicare without also talking about changes in the larger health care marketplace. The two are inextricably tied.
Our speakers were Dr. Nicholas Wolter from Billings Clinic in Montana, Michael James from Genesys PHO in Michigan, Patricia Smith from the Alliance of Community Health Plans, Lisa McGiffert from Consumers Union, Jennifer Eames Huff from the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project, and Leah Binder from the Leapfrog Group. The event was moderated by Larry Atkins, President of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and Susan Reinhard, senior vice president at AARP Public Policy Institute (PPI). An archived webcast of the event, more information about our speakers, and links to materials from the event are available on the PPI website .
Get in on the discussion: Health insurance rates remain largely steady this year
The discussion made clear that the goals of the "Triple Aim" - better care for individuals, better health for populations and communities, and care that is affordable - is becoming widely accepted as a worthy goal for the health care system. However, the path from intention to actionable steps for change is challenging. Our speakers coalesced around three central points. The first is that movement towards large-scale system-wide improvement requires changing the culture in health care organizations and systems to become more patient-centered. The second is that wider adoption of health information technology to improve communication among providers and across care settings is desperately needed. And, last but certainly not least, the system needs better quality and resource use measures for greater accountability and transparency, and these measures need to be publicly reported.
Change in Medicare will have to occur within the current framework, many of our speakers noted, which is largely fee-for-service and likely to remain so for a while. The speakers also noted some inherent constraints in the system that could impede innovation and the perennial threat of dramatic cuts to Medicare physician payment rates need to be addressed. Despite these challenges, we are seeing movement towards new models of care that are more patient-centered and team-based, such as medical homes and accountable care organizations.
Debra Whitman, EVP of AARP, closed the meeting by recognizing the opportunity these ideas present to transform Medicare and the whole health care system but noted that success will require all stakeholders to work together.
About the author:
Lina Walker directs the Health team at the Public Policy Institute, where she spends the majority of her time working on Medicare issues. Her background includes research on Medicaid, long-term care, economic security, and private pension reform.
[Photo courtesy of: trp0/Flickr]


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The Virginia man who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council headquarters last year while carrying a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches is now expected to be sentenced in July.
A judge Monday scheduled sentencing for Floyd Corkins II for July 15. There had been expectations the sentencing could come today.
Prosecutors want Corkins to spend 45 years in prison. Corkins pleaded guilty in February to shooting Leo Johnson, who was filling in as a security guard on Aug. 15.
Surveillance video that day shows Johnson wrestling with Corkins right before Johnson was shot in the arm. Johnson managed to get the gun from Corkins, and has been hailed as a hero for preventing others from being hurt.
Corkins pleaded guilty to three charges against him: interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition, assault with intent to kill while armed and committing an act of terrorism while armed.
The terrorism charge is based on a fact Corkins acknowledged in a plea agreement: that he wanted to kill as many people as possible at the Family Research Council because he thought the organization is anti-gay.
According to the plea agreement, Corkins told FBI agents after the shooting that he wanted to smear the 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches that he was carrying on the faces of victims to "make a statement against the people who work in that building... and with their stance against gay rights and Chick-fil-A," The Associated Press reported.
Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy had spoken out against gay marriage at the time.
Sentencing guidelines recommended a maximum of 10 years on the first count and up to 15 years on the two other counts.
Corkins also acknowledged in his plea agreement that he considered making a bomb, but didn't have the patience to do it.


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Author: Susan Linton
The Sabayon Linux live DVD distribution, based on the unstable branch of Gentoo Linux, has been in development for several years and caters to a wide variety of users. Having started out with a beautiful but mainstream appearance, it now boasts one of the most unique looks in Linux and more usability options than most other distros. The distribution offers premium open source games, accelerated desktop effects, a large and varied software suite, and several variations. Besides the full release, Sabayon also comes in a Business Edition and usually a Mini edition. With all it has to offer, Sabayon has something for everyone.
The Sabayon Linux 3.4 was released last month in a 4.2GB package available via FTP, torrent downloads, and direct purchase. The minimum requirements for the live DVD are an i686 processor and 256MB RAM (512 recommended).
Sabayon's boot screen offers users a variety of choices. Besides the options of language, keymap, screen resolution, and another menu full of other modes and options, you can pick:
- Start SabayonLinux 3.4 — boots the normal system, including accelerated graphic drivers and your choice of Compiz Fusion or Metisse (with supported Nvidia or ATI graphics chip).
- Start without Music — disables music during boot.
- Anonymous Internet Browsing — purports to enable anonymous browsing (see below).
- Start Graphical Installation — boots to Fluxbox and starts graphical installer.
- Start Text Installation — boots the system and starts console-based installer.
- XsistenCe (Persistent Home) — allows you to save personal configuration settings and files on a USB drive for future use.
- Play with Sauerbraten (Game) — boots directly into the game.
- Play with Savage (Game) — boots directly into the game.
All the options take a relatively long time to boot — approximately three minutes on my system. During boot, startup music begins playing during the last stages, unless you choose the Start without Music boot option. After the boot process, the first screen to appear will be the Configure Accelerated Desktop options. Sabayon loaded my Nvidia drivers, but neither Compiz Fusion or Metisse would work properly on my machines. I also had trouble shutting down or rebooting Sabayon; it would hang more times than not.
Anonymous mode enables some privacy settings and ad blockers, but does not actually allow you to anonymously browse the Internet. The IP address, client, and referrer are given to sites as usual. A thread on the Sabayon forum states that this option works after a hard drive install, the installation of extra packages, and enabling it.
XsistenCe worked well for saving and letting me use all my settings and customizations, even when I saved settings on one computer and later booted on a different machine. To take advantage of this option, create a file named xsistence-mode on your USB drive and insert the drive at boot time.
Neither booting "Play with Savage" nor starting Savage in the normal desktop mode worked for me, although Sauerbraten worked well enough that I lost a bit of work time when I booted in that mode.
The hard drive install
I've had mixed results with Sabayon's installer in past versions. Users' chances of success have increased significantly since Sabayon switched to the Anaconda installer from the experimental Gentoo graphical installer.
The live system displays an icon on the desktop for updating the installer. After the update, the installer walks you through several configuration screens. There are four choices available: install, several upgrade options, rescue, and configure (reinstall or repair) bootloader; I chose to install. Sabayon asks you to choose a language and keyboard, and then a default desktop environment. I chose KDE instead of the alternatives — GNOME, Fluxbox, and Core (which is a bare-bones install without X or a graphical interface). Next, you choose package categories: a second GUI, Advanced 3D Games, Basic Free Games, Multimedia, Office, and Internet. I chose them all. There is an advanced detail option, but it doesn't let you select individual packages; it merely lists the packages included the category.
Next, you select any services you might need from among Samba, CUPS, VFS, and Secure Shell. Then there is the disk partitioning step, which offers an automatic and manual option. I chose manual, as my disk is already partitioned, and I designated a 10GB partition for the install. Based on the packages I had chosen to install, Sabayon popped up a suggestion that I use 12GB. Not having a larger partition handy, I went back and deselected the Advanced 3D Games.
After selecting or setting up a partition, you must choose a filesystem. Ext4 is available in Sabayon this release, and I couldn't resist testing this new experimental filesystem. Another pop-up appeared, stating I'd need a separate ext2 or ext3 partition for /boot, as ext4 is not bootable. Finally I was asked to configure time zone, root password, and user accounts. It took almost 45 minutes for the installation to complete, but it finished with no problems.
The system
After the initial install, the first boot took some time while it ran first configurations and such, but subsequent Sabayon boots took only about 45 seconds. Compiz Fusion still did not work, but Metisse worked well. My clock was set wrong despite the install option, but I was able to fix it easily by relinking the /etc/localtime to the correct time zone; unfortunately there is no system-wide graphical configuration tool for this. My display was correctly configured, my touchpad was responsive and accurate, and the sound worked perfectly upon login. Sabayon ships with drivers for my wireless Ethernet chip, and the KDE Network Manager worked even with WPA security. CPU scaling (a power-saving feature) worked out of the box, as did suspend to RAM. I'm not sure suspend to disk is working, however, as the operating system appears to just be shutting down and restarting normally. I didn't see any of the telltale standard output, and the time required to restart is approximately the same as a regular boot. A battery monitoring applet is enabled by default and appears in the upper panel. Overall I was pleased with the hardware support for my Hewlett-Packard dv6105 laptop.
Sabayon Linux includes so much software it would take another article dedicated to that topic to describe it all. The developers provide software for just about any task, and sometimes several choices. The entire KDE 3.5.7 complement is available, as well as many popular KDE-oriented add-ons. Among the many bundled 3-D games you'll find Danger from the Deep, Nexuiz, Battle for Wesnoth, Torcs, Warsow, Second Life, and Flightgear, all of which worked well, as did multimedia offerings Amarok, VLC Player, SMPlayer, Manslide, LightScribe, K3b, Elisa Media Center, Democracy, TVTime, and X-Sane. I was able to enjoy any video or audio file format I tried. Want more? How about Evolution, OpenOffice.org, Firefox (with popular plugins), Pidgin, Skype, YaKuake, and the GIMP, along with less commonly found apps such as Wine-Doors, Google Earth, and Picasa. I did have trouble with Picasa freezing my system. Other desktop environments available include GNOME 2.18.2 and Fluxbox 1.0r3. All rest upon Linux 2.6.22, Xorg 7.3, and GCC 4.1.2. This is really only a small sample of the all the software included in Sabayon. A full install without the Advanced 3-D Games resulted in a system that took up almost 10GB of disk space.
You can add just about anything that's not included by using Portage, Sabayon's package management system. It takes a source package, sometimes adds Gentoo enhancements, and compiles it for your system as designated in the /etc/make.conf file. You may wish to review that file for your own tastes and add support for other applications for package builds. For example, if you wish to provide PHP support for Apache, you must list PHP or mod-php in your USE flags. This file is also where you designate your choice in architecture, including whether to use the stable or unstable branch of development. More information can be found in Gentoo's Configuring Portage documentation, and in advanced Portage Features.
As I said, I chose ext4 as my filesystem. This turned out to be an unwise decision. At one point I had booted the live DVD and mounted my new Sabayon partition, but failed to umount it when time came to reboot. The live DVD hung and froze solid during shutdown, as it has done several times since my testing began, and I had to hard reset the machine. As a result, my new Sabayon install became unbootable. On my next boot I was dropped to a maintenance shell to run fsck, but the damage was too extensive — I wasn't able to save the install. The moral of the story is stick to tried and true filesystems. During my short time using ext4, I didn't spot any compelling improvements. The system didn't seem any faster, and obviously it proved not nearly as durable as more common alternatives.
I've done quite a bit of testing of Sabayon over the course of a week — more than usual for a distribution review — and I find it pleasing overall. It's stable and responsive, and I have suffered very few problems considering the vast size of the system and extensive volume of software. I was happy with the hardware support for my machines.
If you've tried Sabayon in the past and found it lacking, give this version a try. I'm glad I can finally give this derivative of my favorite distro a thumbs-up. I just may continue using Sabayon as my main operating system.
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text:
Quarterbacks coach Wade Wilson made it clear early this week that the Dallas Cowboys are "still hopeful" Kyle Orton will report for June's mandatory minicamp.
Wilson shouldn't hold his breath.
After months of speculation, we now know that Orton's desire is to retire from the NFL.
NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported on Thursday's edition of "NFL Total Access" that Orton has informed the Cowboys of a wish to retire at age 31. He doesn't want to play for them or any other team.
The problem with Orton's stance is that the Cowboys will force him to pay back $3 million of his $5 million signing bonus if he follows through on that plan to walk away.
For now, the two sides are in a standoff.
The Cowboys' brain trust views Orton as a top backup, which is why they shelled out so much money to bring him on board in the first place. They expected to have his services as Tony Romo insurance for the 2014 season.
The ball is in Orton's court. Retirement might just be a luxury he can't afford.
The latest "Around The League Podcast" breaks down the latest news and shares takeaways from rookie camps.


text:
Going the Whole Hog
A getaway in Texan Hill Country where hunting, butchering and snacking get the rock star treatment
AN HOUR BEFORE sunrise, my guide, Josh Randolph, and I settled into our 4-by-8-foot hunting blind at the mouth of Creepy Canyon. Josh told me there was a clearing in front of us, which I had to take on faith, since it was still too dark to see much more than the faint silhouettes of a few live oaks and the canyon's walls rising above them.
If, sometime over the next three hours, a boar was to make its way into the clearing, my plan was to shoot it. I'd never done any such thing before, and even after hunter's education and rifle proficiency courses, even after time on shooting ranges in New York and Texas, I still had questions. Lots of them. When I whispered some nonsense about whether I should put in my ear protection before shooting, Josh told me not to worry so much. "You need to embrace the Boom," he said. "If you do your job right, there should be only one." I took this as a more universal bit of Zen wisdom than Josh probably intended, but it seemed to fit my overall situation, here on my second of three guided hunts, so I ran with it.
I was at Madroño Ranch: 1,500 acres of prime Texas Hill Country, home to a herd of approximately 44 bison as well as countless visiting boar and deer who travel over its low fence. Usually the site of an environmentally focused arts residency program, a few weekends a year it hosts a destination hunting school. Hog School is organized by Jesse Griffiths, owner of Austin's Dai Due butcher shop and supper club, author of "Afield: A Chef's Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish" and, to those in the butchery know, a figure considered to be something of a rock star.
At this weekend's Hog School, Jesse was instructing five others and me on the hunting, butchering and cooking of wild boar. Each of the student's motivations for attending was unique, but Frank, an Alaska bush pilot who spends his winters in Texas, received empathic nods when he told us, "I've been hunting hogs for a few years, and I've never been able to make anything that doesn't taste like my shoe." I, on the other hand, was a fairly confident cook, but a novice hunter. I wanted to learn more about an animal's transformation from something wild and alive to, well, dinner. I needed to know if I was capable of taking a creature all the way from the field to the plate. The self-imposed price of flinching was vegetarianism. I couldn't have made the stakes any higher for myself.
The group arrived at the ranch just before noon on a Friday. Jesse, the guides and Tabatha Stephens, a chef who would be doing much of the cooking over weekend, welcomed us with bowls of chili made from a deer that had been recently shot at the ranch. After lunch, we paired with our guides and scattered across the ranch for the first hunt of the weekend.
Jesse was my companion for this outing. He told me he'd seen a sow near the ranch's entrance the evening before, and was hoping for her return. Near the front gate was a field, boxed in on three sides by hills and scrub, and by a hunting blind on the fourth. For a plywood shed, it was pretty luxe—a pair of swiveling office chairs sat on a scrap of Berber carpet. Jesse opened the horizontal shutter and we leaned our rifles in opposing corners and waited. Two doe and a few fawns seemed to appear and dissolve into the landscape. They were in no danger: This weekend, we were hunting boar, and only boar. The deer seemed somehow aware of their momentarily protected status, lingering in plain sight. The sow never showed herself.
For weeks leading up to school, I had been worried about not having the nerve to pull the trigger, or worse, that I'd pull the trigger, only to land a bad, wounding shot. Up to that point, I'd never really considered the possibility that I might not have the opportunity to pull the trigger at all, for want of a target.
" The price of flinching was vegetarianism. I could not have made the stakes any higher. "
Empty-handed, we drove up to the ranch manager's house to reconvene with the others for our lesson in field dressing. We stopped at a floodlit concrete pad where a black boar, about 50 pounds, lay. Frank was the only one of our group to have taken a hog that evening, and so it was his boar that was winched up on the gambrels (imagine a heavy steel coat hanger with hooked ends, suspended from an iron frame by steel cable), the animal's hind legs at eye level.
Jesse, Josh and Frank snapped on latex gloves and began to trim away the hide. A funk filled the air as Jesse gingerly sliced through the belly. "When you've got a clean shot like this, you don't want to make a mess of the gut," he said. He went on to identify and bag the organs—heart, kidneys and liver—that would go into the boudin sausage we'd be making the next afternoon.
After the following morning's outing—my excursion with Josh to Creepy Canyon—we convened for another field dressing session. (Bill, an ER nurse from Woodlands, Tex., had shot a boar that we guessed was part Russian, judging from the prominent tusks.) There was some discussion of the pending cold front that might drive the hogs down from the hills, improving our odds for the next morning's—and our last—hunt. When Bill's hog was cleaned and stored in the walk-in cooler, we headed back to the house for the weekend's centerpiece, an afternoon of butchering and cooking.
In the kitchen, we snacked on ham sandwiches as Jesse brought in the first boar, positioning it on the kitchen island with a pair of orange-handled boning hooks. "The things we're going to throw away from this, you could fit in the palm of my hand," he said.
Over the course of an hour, he dismembered the carcass, stopping to explain the uses for each cut. We learned how to wrap the tenderloins in caul fat for a noisette (a small, round piece of meat) and how to roll a porchetta. We moved on to a second hog, which Jesse butchered in all of 45 minutes, and a third he dispensed with even faster.
After a break, it was Tabatha's turn to teach sausage-making. She walked us through a Cajun boudin made with rice and the organs, which had been simmering on the stove. I helped feed onions and near-frozen chunks of allspice-spiked boar through the grinder for chaurice, a Creole sausage. In quick succession came a chorizo verde and coriander-and-juniper-seasoned sausage that was bound for the smoker.
The Lowdown: Dai Due School in Medina, Texas
Getting There: Madroño Ranch in Medina, Texas, is an easy drive from either San Antonio (about 1½ hours) or Austin (about 2½ hours). Major airlines serve airports in both cities.
Getting Ready: Guests are required to have a Texas hunting license; a nonresident five-day license will set you back $48 and can be ordered online through the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (tpwd.state.tx.us). If you're starting off in Austin, consider a trip down to the Lone Star Gun Range near Lockhart, about an hour south of town. After your practice, head into Lockhart for barbecue at Black's (215 North Main St., blacksbbq.com).
What to Bring: Layered hunting garb—camouflage and earth tones are recommended, along with sturdy boots. A camera and notebook are useful for the butchering and cooking classes.
Getting In: Dai Due runs a handful of weekend-long events each year. The next hunting event, Jan. 18-20, is already full. Check the listings on the Dai Due website (daidueaustin.net) and sign up for their mailing list to learn about upcoming slots. Weekends cost $1,875.
Class adjourned, Jesse went out to the grill to start the oak fire over which much of the meal would be cooked. The guides leaned against pickup trucks, sipping beers as they monitored the smoker. I sat for a moment in one of the rocking chairs on the covered patio, watching the sky turn orange then purple over Wallace Creek; the day had started early, and nodding off was a threat. I grabbed a Dr Pepper and joined a group near the grill listening to Frank share some of his exploits flying a B-52 in the Christmas raids over Vietnam in 1972.
We moved to the living room where a long table ornamented with candles and turkey feathers was set beneath a vivid mural of bison. We took our seats, and Heather Kohout, owner of the ranch with her husband, Martin, said grace.
Platter after platter came—the noisette and the porchetta; the sausages; caul-fat-wrapped crépinettes, and the pot roast we'd smelled simmering all day; ribs and chops, braised turnips and creamed kale. Finally, a teacup with dark chocolate pudding and a dollop of whipped cream. It was after 10 at night, and we'd have to be up in a few hours for the final hunt. I retired fat and happy, knowing that, if nothing else, I'd been given this feast and the skills to make it on my own.
The next morning, my guide, Kathy, and I headed to Zane II, a blind where she and Frank had struck gold on Friday night. I was still optimistic, but as the sun came up, it became increasingly clear that the only thing I would shoot at the ranch would be a target I'd aimed my rifle at on the first afternoon. Past the low scrub of mesquite, persimmon and agarito, we headed one last time to the gambrels at the ranch manager's house. Robert Selement, as burly and extravagantly mustachioed as you'd want a Texas ranch manager to be, came down along with a few dozen head of bison, to check on us. Looking at the empty gambrels, he shrugged. "Well, that's why they call it hunting and not shooting."
To say I wasn't disappointed to be driving away later that afternoon with empty coolers would be disingenuous. But Robert was right—I didn't come to Madroño to shoot; I'd come to hunt, and that I did. I'd come to learn how to take an animal from field to plate, and I did that, too. Most importantly, I learned that it all amounted to something that I wanted to do again.
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Buy now from the Steam Store
45 tracked gamers have this dlc pack, no one has completed it (0%)
There are 10 achievements worth 357
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