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Press releases Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Pillay urges more attention to human rights abuses in North Korea, calls for international inquiry
North Korea
14 January 2013
GENEVA (14 January 2013) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called Monday for the international community to put much more effort into tackling the "deplorable" human rights situation of people in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), and said the time had come for a full-fledged international inquiry into serious crimes that had been taking place in the country for decades.
"There were some initial hopes that the advent of a new leader might bring about some positive change in the human rights situation in DPRK," Pillay said. "But a year after Kim Jong Un became the country's new supreme leader, we see almost no sign of improvement."
"I am also concerned that, at the international level, the spotlight is almost exclusively focused on DPRK's nuclear programme and rocket launches," she said. "While these, of course, are issues of enormous importance, they should not be allowed to overshadow the deplorable human rights situation in DPRK, which in one way or another affects almost the entire population and has no parallel anywhere else in the world."
In December, the High Commissioner met with two survivors of DPRK's elaborate network of political prison camps which are believed to contain 200,000 or more people. "Their personal stories were extremely harrowing," she said. "They described a system that represents the very antithesis of international human rights norms. We know so little about these camps, and what we do know comes largely from the relatively few refugees who have managed to escape from the country. The highly developed system of international human rights protection that has had at least some positive impact in almost every country in the world, seems to have completely bypassed DPRK, where self-imposed isolation has allowed the government to mistreat its citizens to a degree that should be unthinkable in the 21st century."
"The camp system not only punishes individuals for legitimate, peaceful activities – such as expressing dissenting opinions – it also involves rampant violations, including torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment, summary executions, rape, slave labour, and forms of collective punishment that may amount to crimes against humanity," Pillay said. "Living conditions in the camps are also reported to be atrocious, with totally insufficient food supplies, little or no medical care and inadequate clothing. One mother described to me how she had wrapped her baby in leaves when it was born, and later made her a blanket by sewing together old socks."
The High Commissioner cited the case of one of the people she met who was born in a camp and spent the first 23 years of his life there, where he was not only tortured and subjected to forced labour but, at the age of 14, was also made to watch the execution of his mother and his brother.
"The death penalty seems to be often applied for minor offenses and after wholly inadequate judicial processes, or sometimes without any judicial process at all," Pillay said. "People who try to escape and are either caught, or sent back, face terrible reprisals including execution, torture and incarceration, often with their entire extended family."
The High Commissioner has also previously met with families of Japanese nationals abducted by DPRK agents over many years – particularly in the 1970s and 80s – whose fate remains unknown.
"There is an urgent need to clarify the fate of the many South Koreans and Japanese, abducted by DPRK over the years, as well as the countless civilians in the South rounded up and taken to the North during the Korean War, and to seek truth, justice and redress for their long-suffering families," the High Commissioner said.
"Six decades after the war, the plight of the tens of thousands of families separated by the conflict across South and North also remains largely unresolved," she added.
"We have only had glimpses of this terrible system from those who do succeed in getting out, but what we do know should compel the international community to action," she said. "For this reason, I believe it is time the international community took a much firmer step towards finding the truth and applying serious pressure to bring about change for this beleaguered, subjugated population of 20 million people."
Noting that both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have adopted strong resolutions, without a vote, condemning the Government for the systematic human rights abuses taking place, the High Commissioner said it was time to take stronger action, and that a very significant first step could be made by setting up an independent international inquiry.
"For years now, the Government of DPRK has persistently refused to cooperate with successive Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in the DPRK appointed by the Human Rights Council, or with my Office," the High Commissioner said. "For this reason, and because of the enduring gravity of the situation, I believe an in-depth inquiry into one of the worst – but least understood and reported – human rights situations in the world is not only fully justified, but long overdue."
For more information or media requests, please contact Rupert Colville (+41 22 917 9767 /[email protected]) or Cécile Pouilly (+ 41 22 917 9310 /[email protected])
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Check the Universal Human Rights Index: http://uhri.ohchr.org/en


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Posted by Editoress on 04/17/05
Sea Otter Classic Monterey CA
Reports brought to you with the support of Human Kinetics Publishers
The Sea Otter Classic awarded its first professional titles on Saturday with the conclusion of the Sierra Nevada/Kodak Gallery UCI Road Stage Race. For the third consecutive day, the leader's jerseys changed hands, with two first time winners adding 'Sea Otter Champion' to their race resumes. Kristin Armstrong (T-Mobile) and Doug Ollerenshaw (Health Net-Maxxis) won the women's and men's titles. Canadian national road champion Gord Fraser (Health Net-Maxxis) took second in the overall standings. Erinne Willock (Webcor) was the top Canadian woman, in ninth place.
The road stage race concluded with a tough road race stage through the Fort Ord Recreation Area. From the Laguna Seca Speedway, the riders headed out to a hilly 16 kilometre circuit. The women completed 7 laps and the men 9 before heading back in to finish on the Speedway with one and two laps respectively.
Armstrong's T-Mobile team had the strongest line up in the race, but it was Tina Pic of the rival Quark team who held the leader's jersey at the start of the race. An early break containing Grace Fleury (Quark), Felicia Greer (Webcor), Mari Holden (T-Mobile), Lynn Gaggioli (Monex) and Rebecca Larson (Colavita/Cooking Light) and Nicole Demar (Victory Brewing) opened a gap on the second lap. Demar dropped off after flatting on lap four.
Armstrong's team sent the winner of the Prologue stage, Ina Teutenberg, away on an attack on lap six, forcing rival teams to chase. Teutenberg was joined at the front of the race with half a lap to go by her chief rivals - Pic and Christine Thorburn (Webcor), plus team mate Armstrong. Thorburn immediately attacked, but was quickly brought back, and then Armstrong launched an attack that no one could respond to. The Athens Olympian quickly pulled more than a minute clear to solo in for the stage win and overall title. Pic and Thorburn finished a minute and a half back, with the GC in the same order.
Christine Thorburn: "It was a really hard race out there, and my team did the best that they could, but one Ina Teutenberg is like two or three team mates. The way they (T-Mobile team) rode, Kristin Armstrong got to rest for the whole race. I had to make something happen, I had to put time on them (Armstrong and Pic), but I didn't have the legs today."
The men's race saw the Health Net-Maxxis squad of race leader Chris Wherry take charge on the third lap, with an attack containing three members of the team successfully breaking away from the pack. Along with Ollerenshaw, the break contained Prologue stage winner Gord Fraser and Mike Sayers. Surprisingly, none of the top contenders from other teams made the cut. The break would gain over six minutes on the rapidly disintegrating field, which made Fraser the leader on the road.
However, stage one winner Ivan Stevic (Aerospace Engineering) was chasing solo up to the break, so Ollerenshaw jumped away from the lead group and rode in alone for the biggest victory of his two year professional career. Fraser took second in the overall classification, and local Oakland rider Roman Kilun took second in the stage and third overall.
Doug Ollerenshaw: "We had three riders in the break, and it looked like we had one-two-three locked up in the overall, but then we heard that (Ivan) Stevic was coming up. I knew we would be in trouble if he got a free ride once he got up to us, so I had to go. I was feeling really good."
Gord Fraser: "This is the worst officiated race I have ever been in, it was horrendous. We heard Stevic was four minutes back, then the next thing we heard was that it was less than 30 seconds! Doug rode so well, it is nice to see him win big; he has been a big contributor to the team. With Stevic coming up we knew I had to stay with him for any sprint, so it was better to get Doug up the road. He took the bull by the horns - I looked up and he was up the road. It was perfect."
The Mountain Bike Stage Race subjected the field to a short but intense effort in the afternoon with the Short Track event; a seven lap crowd-pleasing circuit. Katarina Hanusova (Luna) just nipped overall race leader Alison Sydor (Rocky Mountain-Business Objects) at the line in the women's race, after Luna had spent much of the race setting the pace.
Alison Sydor: "It's not really a fast course but it's windy. Sue (Haywood - Trek-VW) pushed the pace lots and tried to attack in the last three laps-there was a lot of yo-yo-ing off the back and we were racing each other for the corner but Katarina just had a little bit more than Sue or I."
Sydor's second place solidified her lead in the overall standings, while Hanusova moved up to second, 21 seconds behind Sydor, with Sue Haywood in third.
The men's race saw Kona send Ryan Trebon off early, followed by team mate Barry Wicks. Both were unknowingly setting up Geoff Kabush, who launched a huge atttack with 3 laps to go, opening a gap of nearly 10 seconds. He was still leading into the last lap, but overall leader Bart Brentjens (Giant) was heading the chase. Australian Trent Lowe (Subaru-Gary Fisher) charged around Brentjens to take the win, with Brentjens in second and Kabush hanging on for third.
Trent Lowe: "I think you didn't see me for a reason. I was tucked in between taller riders like Ryan (Trebon) and Bart Brentjens. If I never touched the wind then I would have legs on the last lap. I was a minute down behind Brentjens going into today; I'll be behind Bart Brentjens in the top five tomorrow but that's where the gaps will be the biggest - you'll win or lose most tomorrow."
Geoff Kabush: "The first couple of laps Kona was strung out, looking for attacks - I just wanted to get a chunk of time out of Bart Brentjens. The little bit of wind might have cost me for soloing the last half."
In the men's standings, Brentjens added to his lead, with Lowe moving into second place ahead of Kabush. The Mountain Bike Stage Race concludes on Sunday with the Cross Country.
Return to Canadian Cyclist homepage | Back to Top |

subset: commoncrawl


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Tag: Glitch Games »
Veritas review
Forever Lost: Episode 3 Review
Cabin Escape: Alice's Story Review
Ferris Mueller's Day Off Review
Forever Lost: Episode 2 Review
Mixis Review
Developer Spotlight: Glitch Games
Given the recent release of Forever Lost: Episode 1, this seemed like the perfect time to delve further into the world of developer, Glitch Games, and see just what the folks there are up to.
Who is Glitch Games?Glitch Games was founded in late 2011 when one time college friends Simon Pearce and Graham Ranson found themselves reunited post University studies and full of ambition where games development was concerned. As Simon explained to me, "…and the fact we didn't want proper jobs." And who can blame them? The Glitch Games office is based in Oxfordshire, UK.
What is Glitch Games most famous for?
Currently, Forever Lost, the very spooky adventure game. Previously, Glitch Games has produced educational titles such as My First Colouring Book and Kids Love Animals. The devs are also responsible for party type game Blox, word game Wordoodle and sinister The Hauntening.
What's next on the horizon?
Only the first episode of Forever Lost has been released so future episodes are in the works. Simon explained that "Since we now have the story established and the main framework complete, we can focus our time primarily on the puzzles and structure of the games, which hopefully means we can be even more creative for future releases."
How about a few interesting things from the developers themselves?
148apps: Forever Lost is quite a change of pace from your past games, what lured you into pursuing the adventure game genre?
Glitch Games: Both of us love adventure games so the lure has always been there, we just thought that maybe they were a little too ambitious for us.
Then back in February we took part in the Techority 48 hour challenge. We decided to use it to experiment with the idea creating an adventure game to see just what we could come up with. By the end of the competition we had decided that we enjoyed making it so much that no matter what happened we would be releasing our entrant on iOS to see what people thought of it. We ended up winning the competition and people seemed to like our little game so it just seemed that right thing for us to do would be to make a full adventure game and 7 months later here we are.
148apps: What do you enjoy most about making iOS games?
Glitch Games: One of the most enjoyable aspects, for us at least, is in coming up with fun and interesting uses for all the various features like the touch screen and accelerometer. We also like the creative freedom it allows us by being able to be completely independent and self financed.
Where can I find out more about Glitch Games?
The developer has embraced social networking as any self respecting developer should in the 21st century. Besides the website, there is a Facebook page, LinkedIn page, Twitter account and YouTube channel.
We will also be keeping an eye on future episodes of Forever Lost.


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And on another level, I might be insane for posting this BEFORE I've really started the tour, but, well, here goes. Maybe the title should be How I Think You Can Stay Sane While Doing an Insane Blog Tour.
Actually as I started signing up with different bloggers who graciously offered to host me for my first official blog tour, I did get a might twitchy. All those posts! How to stay organized! Well, I turned to my favorite writing organizational tool: Scrivener.
I wrote a post a while ago about using Scrivener for other things besides your WIP; in that instance using it as a writer's toolbox. Today, I'm going to talk about how I'm using it to help organize my blog tour.
One of the things I've been doing with my project files is keep everything related to that book in the Scrivener file. So, when it came time to query, I created a folder and under it inserted related items I'd need at my fingertips, like the query, synopses at different lengths, the blurb, one sentence pitch, logline, etc. This was very handy when I was doing online pitch contests–I'd just go to that project's Scrivener file and find the appropriate length, copy and paste into the contest entry.
So, it was a natural progression to make a folder in my book file for Guest Posts and add document placeholders under each for each stop on the tour. Here's a screenshot for BEER AND GROPING IN LAS VEGAS:
For the blog stops, I put them in order of appearance. Every time I get a confirmation, I put them in the correct spot, and also add the event to my Google calendar. I've even found an interesting phenomenon happening–I'm usually one of those people who seem to only be motivated by deadlines. I knew I should write a lot of these ahead of time and send them off, but they weren't really due yet. And so it was hard to make myself do any before I really HAD to. But getting this set up, it made me feel like I had everything nicely contained and it then made me want to start filling it out!
The nice thing about this is that I can take snapshots of previous versions and export in whatever format that particular person requires. I can also quickly click around and copy an answer to an interview question that got asked in another. Same with all the little bottom stuff (bio, blurb, links). It's all right there and I don't have to try to remember which post had what and only be able to find out by opening every single Word document. As the posts go live, I'll add a link to it as well.
For those using Scrivener, remember you can also designate what the status is, and then see an outline view–very handy to see what you still need to write, etc. For Mac users, you probably have even more options, like color coding the docs in the left pane according to whatever you want, like maybe a different color if you're still waiting for interview questions, or still need to schedule a date, etc.
Anyway, that's how I'm using it and thought I'd share for anyone else. Are you using Scrivener this way? If so, do you have any other tips? Do you use Scrivener outside the box?
Oh, and if you have any slots in January and you'd like to host me, let me know 😉 Here's a list of my current blog schedule.


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This guide to Facebook Marketing is written by guest writer Amy Porterfield. Amy will be presenting with Darren Rowse and Lewis Howes in a free webinar for ProBlogger readers this Wednesday. Register to get access to this Webinar here now.
One Billion. That's the number of users Facebook will hit in a matter of months – if not sooner. The powerhouse network continues to climb.
Did you know that two billion posts are Liked and commented on each day and, on average, Facebook users spend over 700 BILLION minutes a month on Facebook? There's no doubt your ideal audience is on Facebook right now.
The key is to figure out how Facebook's mega population can help you position your blog as the leading source in your industry while helping you increase your overall traffic and leads.
When it comes to Facebook marketing, you've got to have a plan. If you go at it without a strategy, your Facebook efforts could quickly become a huge waste of time.
To help you get clear on your Facebook plan, consider these four steps as a roadmap to Facebook success.
Step #1: Set Up Your Foundation For Facebook Success
Step #2: Quickly Grow a Lucrative Fan Base of Quality Leads
Step #3: Create Ongoing, Massive Engagement
Step #4: Turn Your Fans Into Profitable Super Fans
A closer look at each step will help you understand how these steps can grow your online presence, attract your ideal readers and build your blog.
Step #1: Set Up Your Foundation For Facebook Success
Before you can attract high quality leads to your blog, you must establish a solid Facebook foundation. The first step is to make sure your Facebook Page is optimized and reflects your brand impeccably. With almost a billion people on Facebook, you need to make sure your Page stands out from all the noise.
Facebook is the ultimate platform to brand yourself and your brand. You can do this by creating a customized wall image as well as a custom welcome tab.
A welcome tab is the page all non-fans land before they see the activity on your wall. This customized page will allow you to create a strong call to action that will get non-fans to click the Like button and become an instant fan of your Page. A custom welcome tab can get you up to 50% more Likes than if you sent non-fans directly to your wall on their first visit. To get instant momentum on Facebook, begin my creating a solid foundation right from the start.
To better understand how to build your Facebook foundation, check out these useful articles:
- 7 Killer Apps For Building Custom Tabs On Facebook – All Facebook examines seven popular tools for adding tabs to your Facebook Page to help you get the Like and grow your fan base.
- How to Create a Facebook Business Page in 5 Simple Steps – Anum Hussain offers step-by-step instructions on how to create a Facebook business page.
- 5 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Page – Maya Grinberg gives you lesser-realized features on and around your Facebook Page that can be optimized to best reflect your brand.
- 40+ Great Examples of Facebook Fan Pages – Kevin Muldoon shows you some creative Facebook Pages that will inspire you and give you some ideas for your own Page.
Step #2: Quickly Grow a Lucrative Fan Base of Quality Leads
When it comes to Facebook success, numbers matter. Hubspot [http://hubspot.com] completed a study of over 4,000 Facebook business Pages and found that Pages with at least 501 fans drove 3 times more traffic than Pages with less than 501 fans. But even more promising, Pages with 1,001 fans or more generated 21 times more traffic than pages with less than 1,000 fans. That's a huge jump!
Your fan count matters, however, numbers are an empty metric without quality. You must attract high-quality fans that will become avid readers of your blog and are invested in your business. A Page full of fans who will never become paying customers is a huge waste of your time.
To attract your ideal audience on Facebook, you first want to make sure you understand who you want to attract. Get clear on your ideal blog reader so you can craft Facebook posts that will grab their attention and keep them coming back for more.
To explore new ways to attract your ideal audience on Facebook, take a look at the following articles. They are all packed with valuable fan attraction takeaways you can test out on your own Page.
- Can Facebook Campaigns Grow Your Fan Base? – Melissa O'Keefe explores the specifics of successful Facebook campaigns and how they can build quality fans and followers.
- Facebook for Websites: Social Plugins for Your Blog and Business – Kissmetrics provides a great review of Facebook's social plugins to give bloggers options for integrating Facebook onto their websites.
- Use a Facebook Campaign to Find New Fans – Matt Robison illustrates how Facebook ads, when done right, can be an excellent source of traffic for your blog.
- How to Time Your Facebook Posts to Reach the Most Fans – Jeff Widman of PageLever will answer the questions, ""How frequently should I post on my Facebook page?" and "When is the best time to post?"
Step #3: Create Ongoing, Massive Engagement
Engagement equals massive value. The key is in knowing what triggers drive your fans to discussion. Once your fans are engaged with you on your Facebook Page, you can easily move them to take action.
If you want to use Facebook to attract new blog readers and drive leads, it's essential you provide a high level of content and quality information that delivers massive value and entices your fans to share it with their friends.
If you want your fans to take action, you must make an effort to educate, empower and entertain your fans. Don't worry; you don't have to do all three at once! But the next time you post, make sure you pack your post with a punch and deliver content your audience will want to devour and share.
Facebook recently added a new public metric to Facebook Pages. In the left column, right below the number of fans, you'll see a number that reflects the number of people who are talking about you on Facebook at that moment (sharing your posts, liking your content, commenting on your updates, etc.). The metric is labeled "Talking About This" and when it reflects a lot of conversation, it's great social proof. The challenge is that most people struggle to get their fans talking and in turn, increase this metric.
If your "Talking About This" number is low, it's likely that your content is falling flat with your audience. If that's the case, do this quick test. Look at your last 10 posts and answer these four questions:
- Do my posts reflect what my core audience wants?
- Do my posts give valuable info my audience needs?
- Are my posts enticing enough to keep their attention?
- Am I creating content my audience will want to share with their friends?
If you answered no to any of the questions above, reevaluate your content and get clear on the type of posts your audience will want to devour and share. If you don't know, ask them! Facebook is a great place to get great feedback from your ideal audience (and it's free market research!).
To learn a few new strategies to get your fans talking even more, check out the following articles:
- The Blogger's Guide to Meaningful Engagement on Facebook – Neil Patel gives you valuable tips and tools to help you break through the Facebook noise and grab the attention of your audience.
- 7 Ways To Craft Your Facebook Posts For Maximum Shares – Mari Smith is the "Queen of Engagement" on Facebook and shares with you proven strategies that will give your content massive viral visibility.
- 3 Reasons Using Apps For Posting On Facebook Works Again – Lep Widrich explains how third-party apps for posting had a bad rap on Facebook, but with the recent changes, these apps are smart solutions that can save you time.
- How To Use Facebook And Blogging Together For Your Business – Renee Warren shares how using both Facebook and blogging, separately and together, will help your business.
Step #4: Turn Your Fans Into Profitable Super Fans
When Facebook first started to gain massive popularity, there was a lot of talk about how it was a great place to network with potential customers and build relationships. And while that's still true, ……
If you only focus on building relationships with Facebook, you're missing out on an extremely important fact – Facebook is a thriving marketplace where you can turn lukewarm fans into Super Fans.
What's a Super Fan?
Super Fans are Facebook users who have opened their Facebook profile, giving you access to their name, email address, likes, interests, connections and so much more. In addition, they've purchased from you, spread the word about you and your business to their friends and connections and have encouraged others to purchase from you as well.
Super Fans do what any marketing department would kill for, all for free. You want as many Super Fans as you can get.
The key to moving your fans up the ranks to Super Fan status is by setting the foundation for your Facebook Page, attracting quality fans and providing value via your posts and conversations on Facebook. Each of these steps will ensure that your audience sees you as the go-to source in your niche. When you know your fans challenges or needs, and can offer them solutions, you are positioned perfectly to move your fans to action.
Here are some useful articles that will help you move your fans up the ranks to Super Fan status:
- 9 Facebook Marketing Strategies to Build Super Fans – To ensure that your time spent on Facebook is valuable, follow these nine rules that will lead you down the path to more engagement and overall fan growth.
- How to Use Secret Facebook Groups to Enhance Your Business – Phyllis Khare shares tips to grow your business by using one most underutilized features of Facebook, Facebook Groups.
- The Real Reason Your Customers Don't Like You on Facebook – Jay Baer of Convince and Convert shows you how important it is to activate and encourage the customers who have already liked you on Facebook – instead of focusing all your time on attracting new fans.
- How To Turn Your Facebook Page Into A Lead-Generating Machine – Facebook is the optimal social network to collect leads. This article will give you the strategy needed to create a Page that will continually attract your ideal audience and entice them to give you their contact info in exchange for a valuable takeaway.
When it comes to Facebook marketing, there's a widening gap between those who get it and those who don't. When you get clear on your own Facebook marketing strategy, you can more easily use this powerhouse network to drive more exposure and traffic to your blog.
Want to learn more about using Facebook as a Marketing tool? Register for a free webinar with Amy Porterfield, Lewis Howes and Darren Rowse to be held his Wednesday here.
Amy is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies and a social media strategist for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Check out her latest Facebook marketing course, FBInfluence, by watching this video here.


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Daily Readings for Tuesday, January 10, 2023
- Morning Psalms 42; 146
- First Reading Isaiah 40:25-31
- Second Reading Ephesians 1:15-23
- Gospel Reading Mark 1:14-28
- Evening Psalms 102; 133
Morning Psalm 42
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me continually,
"Where is your God?"
4 These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help 6and my God.
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God, my rock,
"Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because the enemy oppresses me?"
10 As with a deadly wound in my body,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
"Where is your God?"
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.
Morning Psalm 146
1 Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD, O my soul!
2 I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
4 When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.
5 Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD their God,
6 who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
9 The LORD watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10 The LORD will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the LORD!
First Reading Isaiah 40:25-31
25 To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power,
not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
Second Reading Ephesians 1:15-23
15I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Gospel Reading Mark 1:14-28
14Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
16As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea — for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
21They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." 25But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" 26And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." 28At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
Evening Psalm 102
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD;
let my cry come to you.
2 Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call.
3 For my days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.
4 My heart is stricken and withered like grass;
I am too wasted to eat my bread.
5 Because of my loud groaning
my bones cling to my skin.
6 I am like an owl of the wilderness,
like a little owl of the waste places.
7 I lie awake;
I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.
8 All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who deride me use my name for a curse.
9 For I eat ashes like bread,
and mingle tears with my drink,
10 because of your indignation and anger;
for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.
11 My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
12 But you, O LORD, are enthroned forever;
your name endures to all generations.
13 You will rise up and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to favor it;
the appointed time has come.
14 For your servants hold its stones dear,
and have pity on its dust.
15 The nations will fear the name of the LORD,
and all the kings of the earth your glory.
16 For the LORD will build up Zion;
he will appear in his glory.
17 He will regard the prayer of the destitute,
and will not despise their prayer.
18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet unborn may praise the LORD:
19 that he looked down from his holy height,
from heaven the LORD looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die;
21 so that the name of the LORD may be declared in Zion,
and his praise in Jerusalem,
22 when peoples gather together,
and kingdoms, to worship the LORD.
23 He has broken my strength in midcourse;
he has shortened my days.
24 "O my God," I say, "do not take me away
at the mid-point of my life,
you whose years endure
throughout all generations."
25 Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you endure;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You change them like clothing, and they pass away;
27 but you are the same, and your years have no end.
28 The children of your servants shall live secure;
their offspring shall be established in your presence.
Evening Psalm 133
1 How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the LORD ordained his blessing,
life forevermore.


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Multistate Outbreak of Salmonella Agona Infections Linked to Rice and Wheat Puff Cereal (FINAL UPDATE)
NOTICE: This outbreak is over. The information on this page has been archived for historical purposes only and will not be updated.
Posted May 13, 2008
Outbreak Summary
CDC is collaborating with public health officials in multiple states across the United States and with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate a multi-state outbreak of Salmonella Agona infections. An investigation that includes interviews of persons with Salmonella Agona infections and comparison of the DNA fingerprints suggests that cereal from Malt-O-Meal unsweetened Puffed Rice Cereals and unsweetened Puffed Wheat Cereals is likely related to these illnesses.
As of May 13, 2008, state and city health departments from 15 states have identified 28 ill persons infected with same genetic fingerprint of Salmonella Agona. Ill persons with the outbreak strain have been identified from Colorado (1), Delaware (2), Illinois (1), Maine (4), Massachusetts (2), Michigan (1), Minnesota (1), North Dakota (1), New Hampshire (2), New Jersey (5), New York (3), Ohio (1), Pennsylvania (2), Rhode Island (1), and Vermont (1). Onset dates, which are known for 23 patients, ranged from January 1 to April 10, 2008. Patients' ages ranged from 4 months to 95 years with a median age of 65 years. Eight hospitalizations and no deaths have been reported.
Investigation of the Outbreak
On April 5, 2008 Malt-O-Meal Company received results of routine food testing performed on March 24, 2008 that detected the presence of Salmonella in a Minnesota plant that produces and packages dry cereals. On April 5, 2008, Malt-O-Meal issued a recall of unsweetened Puffed Rice cereals and unsweetened Puffed Wheat cereals produced during the previous 12 months at the plant in Minnesota. The recall products have "Best If Used By" dates of April 8, 2008 to March 18, 2009. On April 7, 2008, PulseNet, the molecular subtyping network for foodborne disease surveillance, independently notified CDC's OutbreakNet Team of a cluster of human Salmonella Agona isolates with an indistinguishable PFGE pattern (outbreak pattern) in multiple states. On April 10, 2008, CDC was informed by several state health departments that patients infected with Salmonella Agona with the outbreak pattern had eaten Malt-O-Meal cereal products. On April 11, the Minnesota State Public Health Department confirmed that the Salmonella isolate isolated from the Minnesota plant was Salmonella Agona and had the same indistinguishable PFGE pattern as the isolates from ill humans. Additionally, both the Delaware and New York State Public Health Laboratories isolated Salmonella Agona with matching PFGE patterns from two bags of Puffed Rice cereal produced by the same company. CDC, multiple state health departments, and FDA are working collaboratively to identify additional cases and determine the source and factors that contribute to this outbreak.
More information can be found in the MMWR article Multistate Outbreak of Salmonella Serotype Agona Infections Linked to Toasted Oats Cereal.
Final Case Count Map
Persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Agona, by state of residence, as of May 13, 2008 (n=28)
As of May 13, 2008, state and city health departments from 15 states have identified 28 ill persons infected with same genetic fingerprint of Salmonella Agona. Ill persons with the outbreak strain have been identified from Colorado (1), Delaware (2), Illinois (1), Maine (4), Massachusetts (2), Michigan (1), Minnesota (1), North Dakota (1), New Hampshire (2), New Jersey (5), New York (3), Ohio (1), Pennsylvania (2), Rhode Island (1), and Vermont (1).
Clinical Features
Most persons infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12–72 hours after infection. Infection is usually diagnosed by culture of a stool sample. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days. Although most people recover without treatment, severe infections may occur. Infants, elderly persons, and those with impaired immune systems are more likely than others to develop severe illness. When severe infection occurs, Salmonella may spread from the intestines to the bloodstream and then to other body sites, and can cause death unless the person is treated promptly with antibiotics.
Advice to Consumers
Recalled Malt-O-Meal products may still be in grocery stores and in consumers' homes. Consumers who have unsweetened Puffed Rice or unsweetened Puffed Wheat cereals should check the "Best If Used By" dates printed on the product. Any cereals with a "Best If Used By" date of April 8, 2008 to March 29, 2009 should not be consumed. Consumers who have a recalled product should contact their local health department.


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With a view to developing a high impact and good knowledge base amongst its students and trainees in the field of electronic journalism, the Institute has a modern production studio, equipped with digital cameras with synch and special effects generators. The editing consoles comprise I-Mac, FCP Mac-Pro digital video editing systems and on-line digital video editing. For radio transmission, the Institute has separate sound recording, FM and voice-over studios, which are used for imparting training in Radio and TV technology.
The Institute has partially upgraded its analogue tape-based equipment to modern digital technology. This provides students with hands-on experience on digital cameras and non-linear editing that are universally employed in T.V. channels today.
For strengthening the infrastructure available with the Institute, it has acquired two high-end FCP Mac Pro video edit machines for a network-based digital non-linear video editing system at New Delhi, with stand-alone, non-linear edit systems and a high-end digital graphic support system for T.V. and print media. Digital still cameras, along with accessories, were also acquired for sufficiently strengthening the training in audio-visual and print areas. Digital video and still cameras, teleprompter machines and iMacs for non-linear editing have also been procured for our Regional Centres at Aizwal, Amravati, Jammu and Kottayam.


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Heart of Blandness: A Walking Tour of Silicon Valley
Walking is the only pleasant form of traveling by land. You need no special equipment, training, money, e-tickets, antidepressants, or Twitter followers. Whatever clothes you're wearing will do fine; a hat and shoes are optional. When I've got a few days to spend somewhere, I spend them walking around. So I spent a few days walking around Silicon Valley.
We all know Silicon Valley, whether we want to or not. It's where the carefully cultivated children of privilege go to make immense amounts of money—not so much by selling goods and services to regular people, for a profit, but by selling companies to other Silicon Valley companies. It's a Ponzi scheme that nobody there really complains about, because everyone is pretty wealthy at the start. Failure in "the Valley" usually means a buyout, or exile as a consultant or freelancer, still providing a standard of living far beyond what 90 percent of Americans will ever enjoy.
Silicon Valley is also marketed as The Future of Humanity.
But as a human landscape, it's a crushingly boring sunny suburban slab of freeways, fast food, traffic, and long smoggy boulevards of faded retail sprawling out to endless housing developments of sand-colored stucco boxes. It's Phoenix with milder weather, Orlando minus the mosquitos.
Tech-loving travelers come from around the world to see Silicon Valley, but there's nothing to see—no Times Square, no French Quarter, just low-rise office parks and security guards circling the parking lots. Could anything be gained by walking from corporate landmark to corporate landmark? Maybe not, but two days of walking always beats two days of looking at a computer, even if I'd be walking from technology company to technology company.
I looked on a map—Google map on an iPhone, because I'm as guilty as anyone—and found the four big names that usually come to mind when "the Valley" is mentioned. There they were, in opposite corners on the map, like princedoms in medieval Germany: Facebook, Apple, Yahoo!, and Google. Roughly in the middle sits Stanford University and Sand Hill Road, a precision system of entrepreneurial education, networking, and funding that ensures a steady supply of new princes and an occasional king.
From an East Bay BART station to an empty express bus across the Dumbarton Bridge, I got to Stanford and stood blinking in the sun for a while, watching homeless men go through the trash at the transit center.
My pedestrian route would require more than 30 miles of walking around this anti-pedestrian landscape. I did it over two long-but-disconnected days, splitting the suburban hike only because it was impossible to find a hotel at any price after my first 15-mile day—there was a tech conference with big-name music acts flown in to entertain the millionaires, and not even the old wino motels on El Camino Real had a vacancy.
The fog mostly stays up in San Francisco or along the coast, so the days were mild and sunny down here on the peninsula, where it eases into what remains of the bay marshlands. With the Santa Cruz mountains on the horizon—the vista that Mountain View is named for—this coastal plain must have been something like the Serengeti before the Gold Rush of 1849. The California Grizzly roamed the wetlands, great herds of pronghorn antelope ran through the grasslands, and the still-present mountain lions watched from the rock outcroppings and stands of oak.
After the Gold Rush, the railroad tycoon Leland Stanford established his gigantic rancho 30 miles south of San Francisco. Like so many Californians since, Stanford was determined to build a civilization in this paradise that would rival anything on the East Coast, anything in Europe itself.
Today, Stanford University stretches over 8,180 acres—that's 10 Central Parks—of multi-level garages and the occasional academic building. There are students here and there on bicycles, but very few pedestrians and none of the relaxed hanging around and clouds of marijuana smoke common to Cal Berkeley across the bay. Stanford's northern boundary is marked by a Neiman Marcus-anchored shopping mall and the legendary Sand Hill Road—legendary because it's where the venture capital firms have their offices in lookalike stucco-and-smoked-glass strip malls and corporate parks. Bits of plastic bags and kleenex flutter in the roadside weeds as a steady stream of luxury sedans and sports cars zoom past.
I am hungry and equipped with nothing but a bottle of water and a light jacket in my daypack. The breakfast hour turns to lunchtime and I turn to Yelp, which directs me to the closest mall, across the street from Palo Alto High School.
The student lunch crowd is clearing out for the wealthy housewife-and-retiree contingent. In California enclaves like Santa Barbara and Santa Monica and Palo Alto, it is the height of urban life to drive to a particular type of rough-wood-and-mission-tile mall and have a hundred-dollar lunch while sitting outside next to the acres of parked cars. I pick the French-style cafe for my own delayed breakfast and get an outdoor table, where I watch a promenade of silly little dogs and their owners clad in Patagonia layers and running shoes.
The local paper is mostly real-estate ads, the crime blotter heavy on Oakland men arrested for various property crimes. (The police, effectively a private security force for the rich, have pioneered the use of license-plate readers to identify potential criminals from across the bay.)
There's a brief report on Steve Jobs' childhood home becoming a historical landmark, alongside a story about an old man in a Mercedes hopping out and punching a bicyclist. I'm not far from Steve Jobs' final residence, so I ask Siri for directions and eventually type it all into Google Maps myself, because Siri is worthless.
Jobs' neighborhood is pleasant and quiet, most of the houses from a time before the rise of those vulgar modern mansions spilling over every legally available square foot of residential lot. Of the houses I see for sale, my real-estate app says the most affordable is a very modest three-bedroom rancher for $2.5 million. It's a blandly beautiful day, like most days here, and I am the only person on the sidewalks beyond a domestic servant talking to her mobile phone while walking a furious little dog. A few bicyclists race by in their bicycling costumes, and as I approach the Apple co-founder's house I spot construction workers across the street, converting a ranch-style house into a multi-story monstrosity.
Old Palo Alto is an agreeable walking neighborhood, and Jobs routinely took advantage of it—according to that Walter Isaacson biography, the Apple CEO's favorite kind of business meeting was an hours-long walk with his tech executive buddies. Tour buses apparently bring loads of foreign visitors to this relatively modest home on Waverly, but on this midday afternoon I see nobody around but a pair of Latino gardeners working near the garage, one with the leaf blower and another spreading wood chips.
A few blocks to the southwest, it's a honky tonk highway of rundown apartment courts and mattress stores surrounded by seas of cracked asphalt. This is El Camino Real, the old King's Highway and one of many wide boulevards and freeways that connect the various pockets of the valley. It is demeaningly loud and ugly here, and after one short mile I stop for coffee and a rest at a Peet's franchise. All the tables are occupied, so I sit at the counter along the storefront glass and eavesdrop on the three meetings happening immediately behind me. There are two Indian guys in suits trying to sell something to each other, a woman who looks like a realtor pitching a Christian dating idea, and another two people who keep banging their laptop screens together on the tiny table. John McAfee, the fugitive and anti-virus software guy, is scowling from the cover of the local alt-weekly paper.
My pilgrimage route leads to Cupertino now, which means more chain stores and suburbs and condo units with carports. Within a mile of Apple headquarters, I'm stuck at an endless red light where one six-lane boulevard crosses a busy four-lane road. I take out my phone and snap a picture of this suffocating banality.
There's a neighborhood of Eichler knockoffs, like the modernist mid-century house where Steve Jobs grew up, then a 1970s block of Brady Bunch houses in various states of decay or vulgarization, and then the cement-block wall at the end of a cul-de-sac opens to an immense office park, white charter buses loaded with the 5 o'clock crowd headed back to San Francisco.
Mixed in with the infamous private buses is a tour charter waiting for a Chinese group. They're pouring out of the on-site Apple Store, carrying elegant white boxes filled with iPads and iPhones that were manufactured not here, but in China.
Take a tour of Wall Street and you'll find dozens of fancy restaurants where you can order a steak and a martini and listen to traders bitch about their bosses and their wives. Silicon Valley doesn't encourage lunches "off campus," so every big tech company has a master chef overseeing a menu of delicious and fresh food. The employees have no reason to leave—gyms, coffee, even haircuts and routine car maintenance can be handled without leaving the mothership.
This makes the employees entirely dependent on the company for every aspect of life. And it ensures that the surrounding neighborhoods are completely starved of people and decent places to eat. The restaurant closest to Apple's world famous headquarters at One Infinite Loop is some dubious Marie Calendar's-style mall diner called "BJ's." Within a few blocks, it's all liquor stores and check-cashing joints and freeway overpasses.
The Facebook office park is surrounded by marshland, at the edge of the unfashionably rundown East Palo Alto, but again the campus is so insulated from whatever's around that it hardly matters. You drive in, you park, you leave when it's time to sleep. Across the giant boulevard is a construction site—the new Facebook campus, a self-contained rectangle that might as well be on an island—and a mini-mall with a taco stand, a nail parlor and a Jack in the Box.
This is one of many times when I realize that walking the entirety of Silicon Valley is not illuminating at all. Nobody at Facebook walks this rotten road with its mile-long run-down apartment complexes and the Comcast bill collector leaving shutoff notices on the doors. Nobody at Facebook cares about East Palo Alto's terrible murder rate. Besides, that will all be fixed in a few years, when these last "bad neighborhoods" are recolonized and rehabilitated by the pioneering young couples making ends meet on combined annual salaries of $250,000.
Highway 101 runs through this side of the Valley, a treacherous concrete river that can only be crossed by the occasional overpass or pedestrian bridge. I navigate down semi-rural residential streets, the mature trees busy with weird black squirrels. This patch of big woodsy lots with modest houses gives way to a short stretch of mismatched apartments and cottages all managed by an affordable-housing agency. A dry creek in concrete casing runs around it like a moat. One tiny bridge, barely big enough for a single car and nearly obscured by overgrown trees, leads out of the poor part of town into Palo Alto itself. This is the most dangerous part of the whole journey, because of the luxury sedans racing across the tiny bridge. It is an effective and apparently legal method of keeping The Poors where they belong.
A terrifyingly long and tall pedestrian/bicycle bridge—the kind of place guaranteed to get the calmest person thinking about earthquakes—gets me back over the 101 beyond a new complex of investment firms and a Four Seasons hotel. As with any place where the rich travel by automobile, pedestrians using the sidewalk are led away from the luxury buildings hidden behind menacing walls. But there is a respite from the concrete, finally, as Baylands Park provides trails and views of hawks swooping down into the marsh grass. It's only a mile or so before I'm forced back to a bleak bicycle lane along Highway 101's frontage road.
This dull landscape of truck exhaust and noise doesn't end until the Intuit campus, miles of buildings dedicated to Turbo Tax programming, employee cafeterias, ergonomics, shipping, and of course security. My phone claims I'm walking along something identified as the "Berlin Wall." While I never match the name to a specific place, the whole built environment is a Berlin Wall. Minus a badge from a big tech company, I'm an East German just gawking at the featureless buildings, wondering if the people inside are half as bored as I would be, stuck in there, trying to understand tax forms or wrist braces.
Anyway, who cares about Intuit. Sure, it makes a lot of money selling popular products that really do "empower" people, at least in the realm of tax preparation and household accounting. When you tell people you're walking through Silicon Valley, they mostly ask about Google. The Googleplex.
In the popular culture, it's a private utopia where everybody makes a ton of money and still gets everything for free: gourmet dining, bicycles, hoops, and soccer fields, transportation to and from distant apartments in San Francisco. But like every "campus" around here, it's tedious and dull, pushed up against the scraped dirt zone around a golf course, muddy drainage canals full of beer bottles and old tires cutting between the buildings. The family of mallards down there seems pretty happy. All the people are talking to their phones, even the ones walking alongside other people. A few whimsical statues based on the Android logo are there for tourists to have something to photograph.
As at Apple's HQ, the dining choices are nonexistent. For a hungry two miles, Yelp cannot find a single restaurant open to the public. Eventually there's an office park deli and a noodle shop, and then nothing again until I see a an empty pizza place and a deserted sports bar. The sports bar will at least have beer, I hope, but I sit at the empty bar completely ignored for a full fifteen minutes. It's enough time to recharge my phone.
When the razor-wire fencing appears with the ominous government warnings, it's only a clumsier version of the social control methods the big corporate campuses have perfected. This is NASA's spot at Moffett Field, where giant military blimps were once housed in the even bigger Hangars 1, 2 and 3. As I walk along the airfield, security men in white pickups glare at me from the other side of the fence. And not long after my walk, the local newspaper reveals that Google is taking over this historic airfield, too. The executives already use it for their private jets.
The Silicon Valley style of techno-libertarianism is effective enough as propaganda that smart people are still surprised by Google's routine behavior, whether providing the NSA with limitless data on the people who foolishly trust Google with their privacy, to the American space agency handing over its longtime home at Moffett Field so Google can run a private airline on U.S. government runways.
But the libertarian computer wankery is really nothing more than a mythology churned out by born-rich people who've convinced themselves they've "bootstrapped" themselves into immense power and wealth.
Silicon Valley is actually a century-long experiment in Military-Intelligence Capitalism, going back to 1912, when a Stanford graduate got a radio patent, started up the Federal Telegraph Corporation in Palo Alto, and immediately signed the U.S. Navy as a major client. The Pentagon and NASA and DARPA and the vast American intelligence octopus have all rewarded Silicon Valley with billions of dollars in contracts, year after year. Surveillance experts move seamlessly between the worlds of "private" Silicon Valley and the "government" back in D.C. and Langley and Silver Spring, and the FBI is active around the world enforcing the Valley's trademarks, patents and copyrights.
As my long urban hike ended with another corporate campus—Yahoo! this time, a company so boring that I didn't even bother crossing the lawns to look inside the main lobby—I felt the way Mark Twain felt about golf. Wandering all over the automobile sprawl of Silicon Valley was "a good walk spoiled."
Still, it was roughly accurate. A civilian can go to a lot of trouble and walk around the perimeter of these technology campuses, but the guts of the operation are completely hidden, like Google's cooperation with the NSA Prism program or Facebook's shady selling of "Likes" from third-world click farms or Apple hiding Steve Jobs' incurable cancer for years. The dumbest Silicon Valley blowhards talk openly about separating Silicon Valley from the rest of the state or even from the rest of the governed world, but in reality it has already happened.
Ken Layne walks about 25 miles a week. You should try it! But probably not in Silicon Valley. Image by Jim Cooke; photo via Getty,


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Paul Painlevé
Our editors will review what you've submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
- Died:
- Oct. 29, 1933, Paris (aged 69)
- Title / Office:
- prime minister (1925-1925), France
- prime minister (1917-1917), France
- Political Affiliation:
- Cartel des Gauches
- Subjects Of Study:
- differential equation
- function
- three-body problem
- transformation
- aviation
Paul Painlevé (born Dec. 5, 1863, Paris, France—died Oct. 29, 1933, Paris) French politician, mathematician, and patron of aviation who was prime minister at a crucial period of World War I and again during the 1925 financial crisis.
Painlevé was educated at the École Normale Supérieure (now part of the Universities of Paris) and completed his thesis on a problem in complex function theory at the University of Göttingen in Germany. He presented his thesis in Paris in 1887 and the same year became a professor at Lille. In 1892 he moved to Paris, where he taught at the École Polytechnique and the Collège de France (1896). He was a distinguished mathematician, and among his awards were the Grand Prix des Sciences Mathématiques (1890) and the Prix Bordin (1894). In 1895 he was invited by King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway to lecture at the University of Stockholm. His Stockholm lectures, Leçons sur la théorie analytique des équations differentielles ("Lessons on the Analytical Theory of Differential Equations"), which were published two years later, concluded with some important contributions to the three-body problem. He returned to the École Normale Supérieure to teach in 1897.
Painlevé's interest in dynamics led him to a special interest in the infant science of aviation, and he became a theoretician of heavier-than-air flight. He was one of the first Frenchmen to fly with Wilbur Wright, at Auvours in 1908, and the following year he created the first course in aeronautical mechanics at the École Aéronautique.
Painlevé became interested in politics and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from a Paris constituency in 1906. He served as minister of education and minister of inventions in the wartime government of Aristide Briand, and, as war minister from March to September 1917, he made the controversial decision to replace Gen. Robert-Georges Nivelle with Gen. Philippe Pétain after the costly failure of Nivelle's offensive in May. In September 1917 he formed his own ministry, and the following month he agreed to the establishment of the Supreme Allied Council at Versailles, choosing as the French representative Gen. Ferdinand Foch, who later became Allied commander. Painlevé resigned in November, however, and was succeeded as prime minister by Georges Clemenceau.
Painlevé was one of the founders of the Cartel des Gauches, a coalition of socialists and radicals, which defeated the rightist Bloc National in the general elections of 1924. He became prime minister in April 1925 but resigned in November because neither his ministers nor French financial interests could agree on a solution to the financial crisis engendered by the devaluation of the franc. Subsequently he served as war minister in the governments of Aristide Briand and Raymond Poincaré and was air minister in 1930–31 and 1931–32.
Although not remembered as an outstanding political leader, Painlevé was a brilliant mathematician. He is remembered for his work in transformations and, especially, in differential equations and the theory of functions. He was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1900.


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Cisco Systems has taken a step back from its Cisco Connect Cloud service, removing it as the default setting for management of its Linksys EA Series Wi-Fi routers after a firestorm of complaints from customers about automatic firmware updates and the service's terms of service.
The default method for managing the high-end Linksys routers has been changed to traditional setup and management over the local network, Cisco said in a blog entry posted on Thursday. When the company brought Cisco Connect Cloud online last week, it made the Internet-based administration service into the default tool for the routers.
Now, users who want the features of Cisco Connect Cloud will have to choose on their own to use it. This is a major step back from a service that the company had promoted as part of its vision of the future of home Wi-Fi routers. In a previous response to complaints, Cisco had stepped in to help users return to the older management system if they wanted, but the latest move makes users actively choose the new service. In the blog post announcing the change, Cisco also apologised twice and repeatedly sought to extinguish customers' concerns about privacy and automatic firmware updates.
"We believe lack of clarity in our own terms of service has contributed to many of our customers' concerns, and we apologise for the confusion and inconvenience this has caused," wrote Brett Wingo, vice president and general manager of Cisco Home Networking.
"Cisco Connect Cloud and Cisco Linksys routers do not monitor or store information about how our customers are using the Internet and we do not arbitrarily disconnect customers from the Internet. The Cisco Connect Cloud Service has never monitored customers' Internet usage, nor was it designed to do so," Wingo wrote.
"Cisco will not push software updates to customers' Linksys routers when the auto-update setting is turned off," he wrote.
The blog entry said Cisco would update its terms of service and related documentation as quickly as possible, though that would not be the first time the company has done so during the crisis. Changes announced last Friday failed to quell some vocal users' concerns.
Cisco Connect Cloud was announced in April alongside a new generation of Wi-Fi routers for homes, the Linksys EA2700, EA3500 and EA4500. Cisco said it would allow users to manage their wireless LANs remotely via a Web browser or a smartphone app, and it announced six third-party apps to work with the service and opened up the platform to other developers.
When the cloud service went live last week, some owners of the EA3500 and EA4500 routers complained on user forums that Cisco had updated their routers' firmware overnight and effectively forced them to move to cloud-based management. A LAN-based option was made available, but the users said it lacked many of the features that came with the previous LAN-based management.
Even worse, disgruntled customers looked into Cisco Connect Cloud's terms of service and found that Cisco said it might collect information about use of the service, including users' Internet history. The terms also said Cisco might share "aggregated and anonymous user experience information" with third parties. That language sparked outrage among customers, some of whom said they would stop using the Linksys routers.
After the complaints, Cisco rewrote the privacy policy and took steps to help users roll back their router firmware to the previous version and opt out of automatic updates. But complaints continued. The updated privacy policy raised concerns among some customers that Cisco might take their routers offline based on the terms of service.
While changing the default status of Cisco Connect Cloud, Cisco stood by cloud-based router management in Thursday's blog post. "We are committed to providing both Cloud-enabled and local management software," Wingo wrote.


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Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cookie Dough Frosting.
These cupcakes are a spin off of the popular cookies and cream cupcakes, which I am still having dreams about.
Dreams so vivid, that I can taste them in my sleep.
Or . . . maybe that is just the cookies I was eating in bed.
Kidding! (Sort of.)
These cupcakes are dreamy, too.
I used the good ole' recipe for my vanilla bean cupcakes, and simply added some chocolate chips.
They came out super moist and tasty.
It's like a cookie in cupcake form.
I would be lying if I said these stuck around for a few days. Heck, they barely stuck around for a few minutes! And this time, we didn't share. We hoarded the cupcakes.
That ooey, gooey frosting down there? It tastes just like cookie dough. And you may as well just slather it on the cupcake, because there is no way the chocolate chunks are fitting through a pastry bag.
That's fine by me. I'll suck it up for the chocolate chunks.
Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
makes 12 cupcakes
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350.
Cream butter, sugar, and eggs together until fluffy. Add vanilla.
Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Add half of the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined. Add the milk. Once mixed, add remaining dry ingredients. Add chocolate chips and mix if you'd like them in smaller pieces.
Pour into cupcake tins and bake for 20-25 mins at 350. Let cool, then frost.
Cookie Dough Frosting
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 – 2 lbs powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Mix butter and powdered sugar together, adding sugar gradually to the mix. Add vanilla. Mix in milk, adding more if needed. Continue to add milk and sugar until it reaches the desired consistency. Mix in chocolate chips.
I refuse to let Mr. How Sweet eat any cupcakes for fear of the frosting getting stuck in the moustache.
Yep, the 'stache is still going strong. As this point, I am just thoroughly disgusted. He is already 10 years older than me, and now he looks 20 years older than me.
If he is going to look that much older, he should at least pretend to be a sugar daddy and buy me some expensive shoes. Or a new car. And stuff for my friends. What do you want? I'll start taking order now.


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Categories: | Target Demographic: Female |
Price Range: Call | Production Provided: Yes |
Currently Touring: Yes | Target Attendance: Open |
Turn on your TV or radio and you'll find no shortage of next-big-things and overnight successes. But in the midst of all of that noise, you may find yourself craving something more. Something authentic, something familiar, yet fresh.
Look no further. The women of Point of Grace are celebrating 20 years together, and with this celebration they offer A Thousand Little Things, their 12th record. Brimming with the beautiful harmonies, encouraging lyrics, and graceful melodies that Shelley Breen, Denise Jones and Leigh Cappillino are known for, A Thousand Little Things reminds us to be mindful of the multitude of blessings God has given us. And what the world needs now — more than ever — is to remember how important gratitude is, each and every day.
You may ask yourself how a band who has already achieved such monumental success — 27 #1 songs, 13 Dove awards, two GRAMMY nominations, career album sales in excess of 7 million with multiple Platinum and Gold certifications, and one of the Top 10 best-selling artists in the history of Contemporary Christian Music — presses on? It's quite simple: They love what they do, and they love sharing it with their fans.
"When you can say, 'This is where we are, and this is what we love,' that's when you have your best shows and your best music, because you finally found yourself and you're fine with it," Denise explains. "You're relaxed, and you're honest."
But make no mistake: "Relaxed" does not mean complacent: Shelley, Denise and Leigh are as excited to put out their latest album as they were when they released their self-titled debut in 1993. And they're ready to share their hard work with the world.
"The longest part of the recording process is just finding the songs," recalls Shelley. "We scour the landscape of Nashville to find the greatest songs. We have always been really cautious to not just find three good songs that could go on the radio and hurry up and write the other ones to fill the spaces." The trio worked with trusted A&R representative Susan Riley to find the ten songs that would comprise Things. "Susan has a sort of innocent ear; she has our demographic's ear. She listens to music and thinks, 'Can my kids listen to this? Does this move me?' She's either emotionally attached to a song or not. It was good for us to have another woman's — and another mom's — perspective on the songs."
The women of Point of Grace feel a strong connection to their fans, and they foster this connection through frequent touring. "Our live show is what drives us," Shelley states. "Touring is a constant for us. It's the personal touch that we've always tried to give to our fans."
That personal touch includes active blogging, which each of the ladies does regularly at www.pointofgrace.net, discussing everything from their children's basketball games to favorite recipes. They'll further nurture the relationship with their fans through their new lifestyle and music radio show, "Graceful Living." This show will give the ladies of Point of Grace the opportunity to talk directly to their fans — and some surprise guests — about all of their favorite topics. "It's a life show," Denise explains. "Music is part of it, but it's just about living life, so it will be fun to have lots of different angles, from sports to fashion." And while the show will speak to women, Point of Grace will be sure to include topics to keep the whole family engaged. "My husband was asking how we would keep this manly!" Leigh laughs.
They are moms, wives, and artists; and, like every working woman, they're thankful for the fullness in their lives, yet striving to find balance. A strong work ethic — fostered through years of touring, recording and writing — drives these three women to keep making music to share with their listeners. "I wouldn't trade the nights in the van, the nights pulling cables, the nights only being able to eat rice and beans, because you get to a place of gratitude, a place where you know how to connect," Leigh muses. "It's OK to work hard!"
The songs of A Thousand Little Things don't necessarily fit into one genre. "Our producer, Ian Eskelin (Francesca Battistelli, Sidewalk Prophets), wanted to serve the songs both vocally and musically," Leigh says. "On songs like 'Wash Me Away' or 'Heaven Knows,' it just lended itself more on the pop-meets-rustic side. I think this record is where the musical minds of people are — a little bit everywhere. And we've been around for a long time, so we're a little bit of everything. I think this record is a taste of all of those flavors."
Several tracks on the record have a more reflective feel, mirroring what each woman was experiencing in her personal life and in her relationships with family and friends. "For me, 'What I Already Know' just ate me alive," Leigh admits. "In the studio, I couldn't even sing the doggone thing — it took me back and really sunk deep into my being." Denise adds, "'What I Already Know' is a prayer: Lord, I know you're guiding me, and I trust you. 'I Believe In You' was dedicated to our kids, and wanting to say to them, 'I believe that you're going to make good choices.' And 'Only Jesus' hit at a time when my friend's mom died, and nothing else can take away that pain except for trusting that Jesus is going to rise in that occasion for you."
The band also flexed their songwriting skills on this album, penning three songs, including the uplifting, instantly appealing title track. "I wouldn't say that writing is something that God naturally laid on any of us, but there were specific things that we wanted to say," Denise explains. "We'd try to talk to somebody, and it wouldn't come across, so we had to sit down and say, 'We want something happy!' As Christians, we should be the happiest people on earth, and thankful for the things that God gave us." Leigh adds, "At the beginning of the record, everything seemed to be very contemplative and deep, and we had a little hiatus and came back and said, 'We need some happy songs! We need some songs with some sunshine! But isn't that life?"
The notion of gratitude is woven throughout the album, especially in "A Thousand Little Things," which lists the many things to take notice of — and be thankful for — in everyday life. "In all of those little moments in life, little and big, we're reminded that there is a creator that loves us and wants us to have a good life while we're here," Shelley says. "And we're grateful for that." Leigh chimes in, "Every single day, there are a thousand little things we can truly be thankful for, so I sing that little song all the time."
The ladies of Point of Grace remind us all to be grateful for the thousand little things we'll experience today, from a warm cup of coffee in the morning to a bedtime novel at night.


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Don't Cook the Planet by Emily Abrams
The angle: Eating well and helping the planet don't have to be a trade-off!
Recipes for right now: Chilled English Pea Soup, Hickory Hill Deviled Eggs, Kale Caesar, Spinach Soufflé, Spring Lamb Shepherd's Pie, Buttermilk Chicken, Artichoke Risotto, Pasta with Ham and Peas, Lavender Butter Cookies
Who would enjoy this book? Parents teaching kids about environmental-awareness, cooks subscribed to CSAs, fans of celebrity chef recipes
Quick Facts
• Who wrote it: Emily Abrams
• Who published it: Triumph Books
• Number of recipes: 70
• Other highlights: Happy Earth Day! Say hello to Emily Abrams — this young lady is on a mission to change the environment, starting with our food choices. In this book, she's invited celebrities from Alice Waters and Michael Pollan to Chevy Chase and Senator John Tester to contribute to a unique collection of ingredient-conscious recipes. All of the proceeds from this book go to non-profit organizations working toward environmental causes.
The recipes might come from chefs, but they are squarely in our camp as home cooks. With farmers markets starting to open and fresh produce finally coming in, this will be a good cookbook to have on hand.
I also appreciate the integration of environmentally-focused essays, infographics, and side-notes that accompany the recipes. They are useful for learning more about key environment issues and making more educated food choices as we shop for ingredients. I could also definitely see cooking from this book along with an enthusiastic young family member — the recipes are easy enough to help teach basic cooking skills along with lessons on sustainability.
Find the book at your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon: Don't Cook the Planet by Emily Abrams
Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.


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10 Unique Missoula Christmas Gifts
If you're looking for a gift this year for the true Missoulian, or if you're just looking to ship a little Missoula to someone for Christmas, then look no further. We have put together a list of gifts that are unique to Missoula and Western Montana. We have a little something for everyone.
Pop the top, tip it back and take a swig - You'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't love beer. Missoula has great local breweries like Kettle House, Bayern or Big Sky and tons of great microbrews to choose from. Put together a six pack of your favorite brews.
Powder, chill and swoosh - We're very lucky to live near some great ski areas. This gift would be great for anyone who enjoys hitting the slopes. There's nothing quite like a season pass to Western Montanan's finest like Snowbowl or Look Out.
Shimmy, shake and groove - What better gift to give a fitness buff or dance lover than a dance class that's named for our unique town. Give them a membership for a month's worth of Oula classes. Classes are offered at a variety of locations including the YMCA, Access Fitness and Downtown Dance.
Shine, shimmer and bling - I have a friend who works at Rockin Rudy's, and also sells her jewelry there too. The Book Store at The University of Montana and the M Store also carry local jewelry.
Flys, nymphs and water gear - Book a trip or pick something from one of Missoula's great fly shops like Grizzly Hackle, Kingfisher or Blackfoot River Outfitters. If you have a serious fly fisherman who owns his own boat, you could order a fancy new Rod Dog from Montana Raft Frames.
Paddles, boards and kayaks – You can find a variety of water goodies at Strongwater. This is a great shop for the outdoor enthusiast who loves to paddleboard or kayak.
Brew, steam and sip – Missoula has tons of great local coffee houses and drive-thrus like Liquid Planet, Loose Caboose or Zootown Brew. Who wouldn't love a gift card to their favorite coffee shop? This could make many Monday mornings a lot more bearable.
Slurp, munch and crunch – It's hard to go too far in this town without running into one of our unique and tasty local eateries. Paul's Pancake Parlor, Noodle Express and The Oxford are just a few of the great options you have to choose from.
Ride, spin and learn - If you want something that doesn't fit in a box for your little one, you could always invest in a set of tokens from A Carousel for Missoula and a pass to The Children's Museum. Your little one will love an excuse to get out of the house and beat that cabin fever.
Football, basketball and gear – It's hard to walk into almost any place in Missoula and not find at least one thing Griz. But, if you have the dough, there isn't a single Missoulian out there who wouldn't love a season pass or at least a few tickets to some Griz games - no matter what the sport.
Joy Larson is a mother of four boys, graduate of The University of Montana, animal lover and writer.


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A Christmas card from the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran wishes us a Merry Christmas. There is nothing unusual about that. Countries with other religious traditions commonly recognise the Christian festival and share its greetings at no sacrifice to their own faith and traditions. It is only in Christian countries that some solicitous folk feel obliged to avoid all religious references lest they offend others.
Christmas is wonderfully a religious occasion, even for those who do not acknowledge it and do not realise it. A spirit of goodwill is real. It goes beyond greeting cards, gifts and good wishes. Christmas softens the hearts of all except irrevocable cynics.
As the year comes to a close its problems and arguments seem to recede in importance. The spirit of Christmas brings family members overseas home to visit, and brings old friends and relatives together, often for the first time since last Christmas. The spirit moves in the wider community, bringing donations of gifts, food and friendship for those alone or destitute at Christmas.
Tonight and tomorrow morning many more people will go to church than go on any Sunday of the year, including Easter, to sing carols and experience the spirit of something that is warm, timeless, reassuring and splendid. Tomorrow some people will make a personal act of charity, turning up to help the Auckland City Mission serve Christmas dinner to those who could not otherwise enjoy one.
And for everybody, tomorrow will be quiet. It is one of the few days in modern life that shops are closed, sport and daytime entertainment is not scheduled, the newspaper will not appear.
The peace of Christmas Day seems sacred and secure.
With any luck it will be sunny. Residents of the Northern Hemisphere sometimes sympathise with those of us who have Christmas in summer. To them it is unimaginable without a chill in the air and the possibility of snow to bring the romantic Christmas images to life. But they do not know what they are missing.
A Christmas in New Zealand sunshine has a freshness and warmth of its own. Many decide it is too hot for the traditional midday roast but just as many retain that fine tradition. Lashings of turkey, sweet peas, new potatoes and the rest go down fine in midday sun, leaving a long languid afternoon to sit, talk, finish the wine and set up an evening barbecue for those whose appetite returns.
Feasting is the way people have always marked important days together. Feigning guilt is part of the fun. Christmas is a celebration of the innocent joy of living, the birth of a baby that marked the beginning of a strain of religious thought that would have a powerful influence on the character and history of Europe and the continents it colonised.
Christianity was not always a tolerant religion but it is today. It poses no threat to its resurgent monotheistic cousin, Islam, though leaders of both traditions have some work to do to remind their adherents of the fact. Christmas is the best expression of modern Christianity: open, undemanding, dedicated to peace, compassion, generosity and joy.
A large number of us, when baldly asked by the Census, declare we do not belong to it, and we do not practise it.
But when the year winds down and we feel the first heat of summer, when the bunting goes up, Santa appears and carols are in the air, we are glad of the religion's artefact. It impels everyone to acknowledge the goodness around them with the simple wish we offer our readers now: have a happy Christmas.


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When Una Fairchild stumbles upon a mysterious book buried deep in the basement of her school library, she thinks nothing of opening the cover and diving in. But instead of paging through a regular novel, Una suddenly finds herself Written In to the land of Story—a world filled with Heroes and Villains and fairy-tale characters.
But not everything in Story is as magical as it seems. Una must figure out why she has been Written In—and fast—before anyone else discovers her secret. Together with her new friend Peter and a talking cat named Sam, Una digs deep into Story's shadowy past. She quickly realizes that she is tied to the world in ways she never could have imagined—and it might be up to her to save it.


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watch out for getting overcharged if you don't have a member card. I've experienced this in quite a few major cities traveling internationally now. I spend an hour picking out my cart full of stuff, stand in line for 20 minutes and then get up to the stand and they ask if I have a member card (this is for just a regular store and no mention was made of this card on the sale signs). Then, I notice I get charged more than I was expecting.
Maybe this is their way of making sure tourists pay more, or maybe this is just a habit countries are adopting all over the world ( I know they do this in the U.S but I don't shop anywhere you have to have a card to get the price on the shelf)
In any case, watch out for using (and counting on) the prices on the signs in front of items, if you are in a store with a member card.


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Our specialist team provides every home plumbing service you call for, from fixing various toilet plumbing problems, sewage systems and pipelines in case of running water problems, to installing boilers in your shower for your ease. We take care of any plumbing fixture and home plumbing repair: backflow, clogged drain, slab leaks, solar water heater installation, frozen pipes, basement flooding, burst pipes, leaking faucets, clogged sinks, faulty garbage disposals, sump pump failure, leak detection and other drainage problems.
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When migrating, sockeye salmon typically swim up to 4,000 miles into the ocean and then, years later, navigate back to the upstream reaches of the rivers in which they were born to spawn their young. Scientists, the fishing community and lay people have long wondered how salmon find their way to their home rivers over such epic distances.
How do they do that?
A new study, published in this week's issue of Current Biology and partly funded by the National Science Foundation, suggests that salmon find their home rivers by sensing the rivers' unique magnetic signature.
As part of the study, the research team used data from more than 56 years of catches in salmon fisheries to identify the routes that salmon had taken from their most northerly destinations, which were probably near Alaska or the Aleutian Islands in the Pacific Ocean, to the mouth of their home river—the Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada. This data was compared to the intensity of the Earth's magnetic field at pivotal locations in the salmon's migratory route.
The Earth has a magnetic field that weakens with proximity to the equator and distance from the poles and gradually changes on a yearly basis. Therefore, the intensity of the magnetosphere in any particular location is unique and differs slightly from year to year.
Because Vancouver Island is located directly in front of the Fraser River's mouth, it blocks direct access to the river's mouth from the Pacific Ocean. However, salmon may slip behind Vancouver Island and reach the river's mouth from the north via the Queen Charlotte Strait or from the south via the Juan De Fuca Strait.
Results from this study showed that the intensity of the magnetic field largely predicted which route the salmon used to detour around Vancouver Island; in any given year, the salmon were more likely to take whichever route had a magnetic signature that most closely matched that of the Fraser River years before, when the salmon initially swam from the river into the Pacific Ocean.
"These results are consistent with the idea that juvenile salmon imprint on (i.e. learn and remember) the magnetic signature of their home river, and then seek that same magnetic signature during their spawning migration," said Nathan Putman, a post-doctoral researcher at Oregon State University and the lead author of the study.
Important results
It has long been known that some animals use the Earth's magnetic field to generally orient themselves and to follow a straight course. However, scientists have never before documented an animal's ability to "learn" the magnetic field rather than to simply inherit information about it or to use the magnetic field to find a specific location.
This study provides the first empirical evidence of magnetic imprinting in animals and represents the discovery of a major new phenomenon in behavioral biology.
In addition, this study suggests that it would be possible to forecast salmon movements using geomagnetic models—a development that has important implications for fisheries management.
Get out the map
Putman says scientists don't know exactly how early and how often salmon check the Earth's magnetic field in order to identify their geographic locations during their trip back home. "But," he says, "for the salmon to be able to go from some location out in the middle of the Pacific 4,000 miles away, they need to make a correct migratory choice early—and they need to know which direction to start going in. For that, they would presumably use the magnetic field."
Putman continues, "As the salmon travel that route, ocean currents and other forces might blow them off course. So they would probably need to check their magnetic position several times during this migration to stay on track. Once they get close to the coastline, they would need to hone in on their target, and so would presumably check in more continuously during this stage of their migration."
Putman says that once the salmon reach their home river, they probably use their sense of smell to find the particular tributary in which they were born. However, over long distances, magnetism would be a more useful cue to salmon than odors because magnetism—unlike odors—can be detected across thousands of miles of open ocean.
A long, strange trip
Like other Pacific Salmon, sockeye salmon spawn in the gravel beds of rivers and streams. After the newly hatched salmon emerge from these beds, they spend one to three years in fresh water, and then they migrate downstream to the ocean.
Next, the salmon travel thousands of miles from their home river to forage in the North Pacific for about two more years, and then, as well-fed adults, they migrate back to the same gravel beds in which they were born.
When migrating, salmon must transition from freshwater to seawater, and then back again. During each transition, the salmon undergo a metamorphosis that Putman says is almost as dramatic as the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Each such salmon metamorphosis involves a replacement of gill tissues that enables the fish to maintain the correct salt balance in its environment: the salmon retains salt when in fresh water and pumps out excess salt when in salt water.
Salmon usually undertake their taxing, round-trip migration, which may total up to 8,000 miles, only once in their lives; they typically die soon after spawning.
Source: National Science Foundation


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PHILADELPHIA – In a city that has become renowned for its hip and innovative restaurant scene, a local tourist attraction is offering decidedly different fare: prison food.
This weekend, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia will serve visitors sample inmate meals from the 1830s, 1940s and today: broiled salted beef with "Indian mush"; hamburger with brown gravy and beets; and Nutraloaf — an unappetizing concoction currently served as a punishment.
Event organizers say the not-so-haute cuisine is a way to stimulate both the taste buds and the mind. The meals reflect the changing nature of food service at penal institutions and, in some ways, attitudes toward inmates, said Sean Kelley, the prison's director of public programming.
"We hope to have a discussion all weekend long about what these policies mean to accomplish and whether they're effective," Kelley said.
The quirky tasting menu will be available Saturday and Sunday at Eastern State, a defunct prison that once housed gangster Al Capone. The centuries-old facility was abandoned in 1971 but later reopened to tourists looking for an eerie glimpse of life behind its 30-foot-tall walls.
Food samples will be prepared offsite by Freestyle BBQ, a catering company based in Langhorne that happens to be owned by Pennsylvania corrections officer John Freeman.
Freeman, who works at an undisclosed state institution, started his food business on the side last year. When he heard that Eastern State needed a temporary cook, Freeman couldn't believe the serendipity — and neither could Kelley.
"Who knows prison food better than me?" Freeman said.
While on prison duty, he eats the cafeteria food, which he describes as flavorful but low-grade. But flavorful is not how he describes the bland recipes he'll be making for Eastern State.
"It's going to be hard ... to cater something and basically not jazz it up," Freeman said.
He described the broiled salted beef as being like corned beef, and the Indian mush as basically polenta — cornmeal and water. Kelley, who tried making the recipe himself, noted the mush was actually "very good" because it's topped with a bit of molasses.
That meal would have been delivered to inmates on carts in an era of solitary confinement. Prison officials at the time were optimistic that well-nourished inmates would be "penitent," reflect on their offenses and become better people, Kelley said.
The hamburger-and-gravy meal comes from an actual Eastern State menu for the week of April 17, 1949, which will be on display. Inmates ate communal meals that were prepared on site by their fellow prisoners who used cookbooks, Kelley said.
Current prisoners also are trained to cook in the state prison system, said spokeswoman Susan Bensinger. A current sample menu from Graterford prison includes waffles, pork barbecue and poultry and gravy, with vegetarian options for each meal. But that's for well-behaved inmates.
Prisoners being punished get the food loaf often called Nutraloaf. The recipe varies by state, but in Pennsylvania it consists of rice, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, oatmeal, chick peas and margarine. It's nutritionally sound but prisoners across the U.S. have filed lawsuits over it, calling it cruel and unusual punishment. Many states continue to serve it.
Kelley, who also made a batch and brought in to share, said he was surprised at the number of co-workers who wouldn't taste it.
"I'm curious to see if visitors really will be experimental enough to try it," Kelley said.
Eastern State Penitentiary: http://www.easternstate.org
Follow Kathy Matheson at www.twitter.com/kmatheson