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By Bill Radin ©1998 Innovative Consulting, Inc. Career Development Reports
To a large degree, the success of your interview will depend on your ability to discover needs and empathize with the interviewer. You can do this by asking questions that verify your understanding of what the interviewer has just said, without editorializing or expressing an opinion. By establishing empathy in this manner, you'll be in a better position to freely exchange ideas, and demonstrate your suitability for the job.
In addition to empathy, there are four other intangible fundamentals to a successful interview. These intangibles will influence the way your personality is perceived, and will affect the degree of rapport, or personal chemistry you'll share with the employer.
- Enthusiasm – Leave no doubt as to your level of interest in the job. You may think it's unnecessary to do this, but employers often choose the more enthusiastic candidate in the case of a two-way tie. Besides, it's best to keep your options open – wouldn't you rather be in a position to turn down an offer, than have a prospective job evaporate from your grasp by giving a lethargic interview?
- Technical interest – Employers look for people who love what they do, and get excited by the prospect of tearing into the nitty-gritty of the job.
- Confidence – No one likes a braggart, but the candidate who's sure of his or her abilities will almost certainly be more favorably received.
- Intensity – The last thing you want to do is come across as "flat" in your interview. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a laid back person; but sleepwalkers rarely get hired.
- By the way, most employers are aware of how stressful it can be to interview for a new position, and will do everything they can to put you at ease.
The Other Fundamentals
Since interviewing also involves the exchange of tangible information, make sure to:
- Present your background in a thorough and accurate manner;
- Gather data concerning the company, the industry, the position, and the specific opportunity;
- Link your abilities with the company needs in the mind of the employer; and
- Build a strong case for why the company should hire you, based on the discoveries you make from building rapport and asking the right questions.
Both for your sake and the employer's, never leave an interview without exchanging fundamental information. The more you know about each other, the more potential you'll have for establishing rapport, and making an informed decision.
Basic Interviewing Strategy
There are two ways to answer interview questions: the short version and the long version. When a question is open-ended, I always suggest to candidates that they say, "Let me give you the short version. If we need to explore some aspect of the answer more fully, I'd be happy to go into greater depth, and give you the long version."
The reason you should respond this way is because it's often difficult to know what type of answer each question will need. A question like, "What was your most difficult assignment?" might take anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty minutes to answer, depending on the detail you choose to give.
Therefore, you must always remember that the interviewer's the one who asked the question. So you should tailor your answer to what he or she needs to know, without a lot of extraneous rambling or superfluous explanation. Why waste time and create a negative impression by giving a sermon when a short prayer would do just fine?
Let's suppose you were interviewing for a sales management position, and the interviewer asked you, "What sort of sales experience have you had in the past?"
Well, that's exactly the sort of question that can get you into trouble if you don't use the short version/long version method. Most people would just start rattling off everything in their memory that relates to their sales experience. Though the information might be useful to the interviewer, your answer could get pretty complicated and long-winded unless it's neatly packaged.
One way to answer the question might be, "I've held sales positions with three different consumer product companies over a nine-year period. Where would you like me to start?"
Or, you might simply say, "Let me give you the short version first, and you can tell me where you want to go into more depth. I've had nine years experience in consumer product sales with three different companies, and held the titles of district, regional, and national sales manager. What aspect of my background would you like to concentrate on?"
By using this method, you telegraph to the interviewer that your thoughts are well organized, and that you want to understand the intent of the question before you travel too far in a direction neither of you wants to go. After you get the green light, you can spend your interviewing time discussing in detail the things that are important, not whatever happens to pop into your mind.
Don't Talk Yourself Out of a Job
I've got a friend who's the hiring manager of an electronics company. He told me once that he brought a candidate into his office to make him a job offer. An hour later, the candidate left. I asked my friend if he had hired the candidate.
"No," he said. "I tried. But the candidate wouldn't stop talking long enough for me to make him an offer."
Don't misinterpret me. I'm not suggesting that an interview should consist of a series of monosyllabic grunts. It's just that nothing turns off an employer faster than a windbag candidate.
By using the short version/long version method to answer questions, you'll never talk yourself out of a job.
The Prudent Use of Questions
Beware: An interview will quickly disintegrate into an interrogation or monologue unless you ask some high quality questions of your own. Candidate questions are the lifeblood of any successful interview, because they:
- Create dialogue, which will not only enable the two of you to learn more about each other, but will help you visualize what it'll be like working together once you've been hired;
- Clarify your understanding of the company and the position responsibilities;
- Indicate your grasp of the fundamental issues discussed so far;
- Reveal your ability to probe beyond the superficial; and
- Challenge the employer to reveal his or her own depth of knowledge, or commitment to the job.
Your questions should always be slanted in such a way as to show empathy, interest, or understanding of the employer's needs. After all, the reason you're interviewing is because the employer's company has some piece of work which needs to be completed, or a problem that needs correcting. Here are some questions that have proven to be very effective:
- What's the most important issue facing your department?
- How can I help you accomplish this objective?
- How long has it been since you first identified this need?
- How long have you been trying to correct it?
- Have you tried using your present staff to get the job done? What was the result?
- What other means have you used? For example, have you brought in independent contractors, or temporary help, or employees borrowed from other departments? Or have you recently hired people who haven't worked out?
- Is there any particular skill or attitude you feel is critical to getting the job done?
- Is there a unique aspect of my background that you'd like to exploit in order to help accomplish your objectives?
Questions like these will not only give you a sense of the company's goals and priorities, they'll indicate to the interviewer your concern for satisfying the company's objectives.
Give It Some Thought
Here are seven of the most commonly asked interviewing questions. Do yourself and the prospective employer a favor, and give them some thought before the interview occurs.
- Why do you want this job?
- Why do you want to leave your present company?
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
- What are your personal goals?
- What are your strengths? Weaknesses?
- What do you like most about your current company?
- What do you like least about your current company?
The last question is probably the hardest to answer: What do you like least about your present company?
I've found that rather than pointing out the faults of other people ("I can't stand the office politics," or, "I don't get along with my boss"), it's best to place the burden on yourself ("I feel I'm ready to exercise a new set of professional muscles," or, "The type of technology I'm interested in isn't available to me now.")
By answering in this manner, you'll avoid pointing the finger at someone else, or coming across as a whiner or complainer. It does no good to speak negatively about others.
I suggest you think through the answers to the above questions for two reasons.
First, it won't help your chances any to hem and haw over fundamental issues such as these. (The answers you give to these types of questions should be no-brainers.)
And secondly, the questions will help you evaluate your career choices before spending time and energy on an interview. If you don't feel comfortable with the answers you come up with, maybe the new job isn't right for you.
Money, Money, Money
There's a good chance you'll be asked about your current and expected level of compensation. Here's the way to handle the following questions:
1. What are you currently earning?
Answer: "My compensation, including bonus, is in the high-forties. I'm expecting my annual review next month, and that should put me in the low-fifties."
2. What sort of money would you need in order to come to work for our company?
Answer: "I feel that the opportunity is the most important issue, not salary. If we decide to work together, I'm sure you'll make me a fair offer."
Notice the way a range was given as the answer to question [1], not a specific dollar figure. However, if the interviewer presses for a exact answer, then by all means, be precise, in terms of salary, bonus, benefits, expected increase, and so forth.
In answer to question [2], if the interviewer tries to zero in on your expected compensation, you should also suggest a range, as in, "I would need something in the low- to mid- fifties." Getting locked in to an exact figure may work against you later, in one of two ways: either the number you give is lower than you really want to accept; or the number appears too high or too low to the employer, and an offer never comes. By using a range, you can keep your options open.
Some Questions You Can Count On
There are four types of questions that interviewers like to ask.
First, there are the resume questions. These relate to your past experience, skills, job responsibilities, education, upbringing, personal interests, and so forth.
Resume questions require accurate, objective answers, since your resume consists of facts which tend to be quantifiable (and verifiable). Try to avoid answers which exaggerate your achievements, or appear to be opinionated, vague, or egocentric.
Second, interviewers will usually want you to comment on your abilities, or assess your past performance. They'll ask self-appraisal questions like, "What do you think is your greatest asset?" or, "Can you tell me something you've done that was very creative?"
Third, interviewers like to know how you respond to different stimuli. Situation questions ask you to explain certain actions you took in the past, or require that you explore hypothetical scenarios that may occur in the future. "How would you stay profitable during a recession?" or, "How would you go about laying off 1300 employees?" or, "How would you handle customer complaints if the company drastically raised its prices?" are typical situation questions.
And lastly, some employers like to test your mettle with stress questions such as, "After you die, what would you like your epitaph to read?" or, "If you were to compare yourself to any U.S. president, who would it be?" or, "It's obvious your background makes you totally unqualified for this position. Why should we even waste our time talking?"
Stress questions are designed to evaluate your emotional reflexes, creativity, or attitudes while you're under pressure. Since off-the-wall or confrontational questions tend to jolt your equilibrium, or put you in a defensive posture, the best way to handle them is to stay calm and give carefully considered answers.
Whenever I hear a stress question, I immediately think of the Miss Universe beauty pageant. The finalists (usually sheltered teenagers from places like Zambia or Uruguay) are asked before a live television audience of three and a half billion people to give heartfelt and earnest responses to incongruous questions like, "What would you tell the leaders of all the countries on earth to do to promote world peace?"
Of course, your sense of humor will come in handy during the entire interviewing process, just so long as you don't go over the edge. I heard of a candidate once who, when asked to describe his ideal job, replied, "To have beautiful women rub my back with hot oil."Needless to say, he wasn't hired.
Even if it were possible to anticipate every interview question, memorizing dozens of stock answers would be impractical, to say the least. The best policy is to review your background, your priorities, and your reasons for considering a new position; and to handle the interview as honestly as you can. If you don't know the answer to a question, just say so, or ask for a moment to think about your response.
Wrapping It Up
At the conclusion of your interview, you can wrap up any unfinished business you failed to cover so far, and begin to explore the future of your candidacy.
During your interview wrap-up, it's a good practice to make the interviewer aware of other opportunities you're exploring, as long as they're genuine, and their timing has some bearing on your own decision making.
The fact that you're actively exploring other opportunities may affect the speed with which the company makes its hiring decision. It may even positively influence the eventual outcome, since the company may want to act quickly so as not to lose you.
However, your other activity should be presented in the spirit of assistance to the interviewer, not as a thinly veiled threat or negotiating tactic. I'd advise you to play it straight with the interviewer.
And remember to maintain a positive attitude. In today's job market, you'd be surprised how often victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat.


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EVANSTON, Ill. — Parents, educators and developmental psychologists have long been interested in how children understand the relationship between human and non-human animals. For decades, the consensus was that as children begin reasoning about the biological world, they adopt only one — markedly "anthropocentric" — vantage point, favoring humans over non-human animals when it comes to learning about properties of animals.
A new study from Northwestern University researchers challenges this long-held assumption. In two experiments, with the results to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 17, research by Patricia Herrmann, Sandra R. Waxman and Douglas L. Medin in the psychology department in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences examined the reasoning patterns of children as young as three years of age.
The results were striking: Although 5-year-olds adopted an anthropocentric perspective (replicating earlier studies), 3-year-olds showed no hint of anthropocentrism. This outcome, considered in conjunction with recent cross-cultural evidence including Native American children, suggests a new model of development: Human-centered reasoning is not an obligatory starting point for development, as researchers and educators had previously assumed.
Instead, it is an acquired perspective, one that emerges between three and five years of age in children raised in urban environments and one that likely reflects young children's keen sensitivity to the perspectives that are presented to them, however informally, within their communities and in the media for young children (e.g., stories and films in which animals talk, sing and act like humans).
The researchers say that perhaps most importantly, this new evidence has strong and direct implications for early science education.
"If young children's fundamental perspectives on the biological world — and the place of humans within it — are sensitive to the experiences, beliefs and practices of their communities, then by the time they enter school, children from different backgrounds may harbor different perspectives," said Sandra Waxman, a co-author and professor of psychology. "If we are to design more effective science curricula, then it is incumbent upon us to understand the diverse perspectives that even the very youngest children bring with them as they enter their classrooms."
NORTHWESTERN NEWS: www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/

subset: commoncrawl


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Martin Fowler has recently made a post on the topic of the importance of reproducible builds. This is a vital principle for any process of continuous integration. The ability to recreate any given version of your system is essential, but there are several routes to it if you follow a process of Continuous Delivery (CD).
Depending on the nature of your application reproducibility will generally involve significantly more than only source code. So in the achievement of the ability to step-back in time to the precise change-set that constituted a particular release version of your software, the source code, while significant, is just a fragment of what you need to consider.
Martin outlines some of the important benefits of the ability to accurately, even precisely, reproduce any given release. When it comes to CD there is another. The ability to reproduce a build pushes you in the direction of deployment flexibility. By the time a given release candidate arrives in production it will have been deployed many times in other environments and for CD to make sense, these preceding deployments will be as close as possible to the deployment into production.
In order to achieve these benefits we must then be able to recover more than just the build, we must be able to reconstitute the environment in which that version of the code that your development team created ran. If I want to run a version of my application from a few months ago, I will almost certainly have changed the data-schemas that underly the storage that I am using. The configuration of my application, application server or messaging system may well have changed too.
In that time I have probably upgraded my operating system version, the version of my web server or the version of Java that we are running too. If we genuinely need to recreate the system that we were running a few of months ago all of these attributes may be relevant.
Jez and I describe approaches and mechanisms to achieve this in our book. An essential attribute of the ability of having a reproducible build is to have a single identifier for a release that identifies all of things that represent the release, the code, the configuration, 3rd party dependency versions, even the underlying operating system.
There are many routes to this, but fundamentally they all depend on all of these pieces of the system being held in some form of versioned storage and all related together by a single key. In Continuous Delivery it makes an enormous amount of sense to to use a build number to relate all of these things together.
The important part of this, in the context of reproducible builds, is that talking about the binary vs the source is less the issue than the scope of the reproduction that you need. If you are building an application that runs in on an end-users system, perhaps within a variety of versions of supporting operating environments, then just recreating the output of your commit build maybe enough. However if you are building a large-scale system, composed of many moving parts, then it is likely that the versions of third-party components of your system maybe important to it's operation. In this instance you must be able to reproduce the whole works if you want to validate a bug and so rebuilding from source is not enough. You may need to be able to rebuild from source, but you will also need to recover the versions of the web-server, java, database, schema, configuration and so on.
Unless your system is simple enough to be able to store everything in source code control, you will have to have some alternative versioned storage. In our book we describe this as the artifact repository. Depending on the complexity of your system this may be a simple single store or a distributed collection of stores linked together through by the relationships between the keys that represent each versioned artefact. Of course the release candidate's id sits at the root of these relationships so that for any given release candidate we can be definitive about the version of any other dependency.
Whatever the mechanism, if you want genuinely reproducible builds it is vital that the relationships between the important components of your system is stored somewhere and this somewhere should be along with the source code. So your committed code should include some kind of map for ANY system components that your software depends upon. This map is then used by your automated deployment tools to completely reproduce the state of the operating environment for that particular build. Perhaps by retrieving virtual machine images from some versioned storage, or perhaps running some scripts to rebuild those systems to the appropriate starting state.
Because in CD we retain these, usually 3rd party, binary dependencies, and must do so if we want to reproduce a given version of the system, then in most cases we recreate versions from binaries of our code as well as those dependencies because it is quicker and more efficient. On my current project we have never, in more than 3 years, rebuilt a release candidate from source code. However, storing complete, deployable instances of the application can take a lot of storage and while storage is cheap it isn't free.
So how long is it sensible to retain complete deployable instances of your system? In CD each instance is referred to as a "release candidate" each release candidate has status associated with it indicating that candidate's progress through the deployment pipeline. The length of time that it makes sense to hold onto any given candidate depends on that status.
Candidates with a status of "committed" are only interesting for a relatively short period. At LMAX we purge committed release candidates that have not been acceptance tested, those that have been skipped-over because a newer candidate was available when the acceptance test stage ran or those that failed acceptance testing. Actually we dump any candidate that fails any stage in the deployment pipeline.
The decision of when to delete candidates that pass later stages is a bit more complex. We keep all release candidates that have made it into production. The combination of rules that I have described so far leaves us with candidates that were good enough to make it into production but weren't selected (we release at the end of each two week iteration and so some good candidates may be skipped). We hold onto these good, but superseded, candidates for an arbitrary period of a month or two. This provides us with the ability to do things like binary-chop release candidates to see when a bug was introduced or demo an old version of some function for comparison with a new.
We have implemented these policies as a part of our artefact repository so largely it looks after itself.


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I'm a mad scientist in the kitchen. My inventions for new culinary techniques that will revolutionize the way we eat usually happen in the middle of the night during a bout of insomnia. I stumble downstairs the next morning in a sleep-deprived daze, and a quick Internet search reveals that I'm far from the first person to have invented the cookery method, and hundreds of recipes already exist.
I managed to feel smug about having invented savory cakes for some time, and not just because I'd given up researching my concoctions in order to avoid the inevitable disappointment. A cursory search didn't turn up too many results. I found some loaves of quick bread with olives or cheese in them, some "cakes" made of piles of crepes with savory fillings, and my 1963 copy of Mrs. Beeton's Everyday Cookery features a lurid photo of a cake made of layers of sandwiches (prawn, egg, ham salad) frosted with a thick coating of cream cheese. And of course we have crab cakes and fish cakes, but that's not quite what I was making.
Savory cakes would make a nice brunch or special lunch, but I like them as the center of a hearty dinner.
I was making big tasty cakes with vegetables and cheese mixed right into the batter or layered with the batter or piled on top. We'd found some large, beautiful antique French cake pans at a local flea market, and I had just collected armfuls of chard and fresh herbs from our CSA. I wanted to combine them somehow. I wanted to whip up a batter flecked with fresh herbs and fill it with sauteed greens and cheese and bake it until it was golden and fragrant. And then I wanted to eat it looking out over our spacious Provencal estate, our abundant grove of olive trees, our verdant vineyard. Or, in our tiny, messy, but delightfully spring-green backyard.
Of course, slightly more extensive research revealed that I didn't invent this one either. In France they speak of a "gateau salé," or salty cake. A gateau salé will often have ham, olives or cheese baked right in. Aside from this, I've found a few other examples here and there, but not as many as you might expect. We have savory pies (I'm a big fan) and savory pancakes, savory muffins and biscuits. A savory cake is simpler to prepare than many of these, and it marries the pleasant texture and comforting quality of a cake with bright complex flavors.
Savory cakes are wonderfully versatile. You can follow the basic recipe and add any vegetables you like — fresh, roasted or sauteed. In the cooler months I like to grate butternut squash, mushrooms or cauliflower, toss them with herbs and olive oil, roast them until they're crispy and mix them right into the batter. They add their own particular element of sweetness, roastiness and umami flavor. In the spring and summer, I'll layer the cake with greens, greens and more greens, as well as asparagus, zucchini, artichokes or beautiful beets. Savory cakes are a perfect vehicle for CSA vegetables, particularly the greens and herbs that are starting to wilt by the end of the week. If you add spices, cheese, capers, olives or even beans, you combine all of the elements of a meal into one satisfying package.
You can fortify the batter and make it more interesting with the inclusion of ground nuts or different types of flour. I've used ground almonds, walnuts and hazelnuts, semolina flour, corn flour, masa harina and chickpea flour, and they all add a depth of flavor and a nutritional boost. A sauce or salsa livens it up and provides a contrasting texture.
And when do you serve this culinary anomaly? Not for dessert, obviously, and not on the side, like a quick bread. They're too complicated and substantial for that. Savory cakes would make a nice brunch or special lunch, but I like them as the center of a hearty dinner, with roasted potatoes and something bright and green — a salad or a simply prepared vegetable. Cakes have long been associated with celebrations, with parties and visits and gatherings. These pretty, festive savory cakes continue that tradition and take it in an unusual new direction.
My research into savory cakes is obviously far from exhaustive. I'm sure that other examples can be found in different cuisines and different cultures. But I'm sticking with my story that I, kind of, invented them.
Recipe: Chickpea Flour Cake With Chard
Loosely inspired by French socca, this cake combines chickpea flour and regular flour with eggs and leavening to make a light but substantial cake. Chard, rosemary and mozzarella make it flavorful and nourishing. I served it with a Spanish-style sofrito, a thick, jammy, long-cooked tomato sauce with red pepper and olives. Chickpea flour is available at most supermarkets, health food stores or Indian grocery stores.
Makes 8 servings
1 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped, or 1 teaspoon dried
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or to taste)
2 cups packed chard, washed and finely chopped
3 large eggs
1 cup grated mozzarella
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil, washed and chopped
2 tablespoons butter
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine the chickpea flour, all-purpose flour, salt, plenty of pepper, baking powder and rosemary in a large bowl. Whisk in the milk. You should have a thickish batter. Leave that to sit while you cook the chard.
In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the garlic and red pepper. When the garlic starts to brown, add the chard, with water still clinging to its leaves (or with a few tablespoons of water). Stir and cook about 10 minutes, until the chard is wilted but still bright, and the pan is quite dry. Set aside to cool for a bit.
Whisk the eggs into the chickpea flour mixture, one at a time. Whisk until the batter is fairly smooth. Stir in the cheese, basil and chard and mix well.
Melt the butter in a 9-inch frying pan with a metal handle. You want to keep the heat fairly moderate, so you don't burn the bottom. When the butter starts to brown, pour in the batter. Cook for about 7 minutes. The edges will start to look brown, and the top will start to bubble and lose its shininess.
Put the whole pan into the oven, and cook for about 10 more minutes, until the top is just golden, dry and firm and bounces back lightly when pressed. It will be covered with tiny bubbles.
Take the pan carefully out of the oven. Let it cool a few minutes, and then slip a spatula carefully around the sides to loosen it from the pan. I used a pie server at first, to lift it, and then slipped a larger spatula under. Transfer to a plate. Cut in wedges and serve.
Red Pepper And Olive Sofrito
1/3 cup olive oil
1 large shallot diced
2 large cloves of garlic, diced
1 or 2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped fine
Dash of red pepper flakes
1 roasted red pepper, peeled and chopped
1 heaping teaspoon Spanish paprika
2-3 cups peeled, seeded, chopped tomatoes or 2 cans chopped tomatoes
1 roasted red pepper, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives, chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large saucepan. Add the shallot, and when it starts to brown add the garlic, rosemary and the red pepper flakes. When this starts to brown, add the paprika and then immediately add the tomatoes, peppers and olives. (If you leave the paprika in hot oil too long it will burn and get bitter). Let the tomatoes come almost to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer.
Let simmer on medium low heat for a long time — up to an hour. First the mixture will get very juicy, then dry out, then become more of a paste and less of a sauce. And at some point, the tomatoes will separate from the oil, which will be a beautiful reddish saffron color. That's how you know it's done. You don't have to stir constantly, but it's a good idea from time to time so tomatoes don't stick and burn. If you have to add a drop of water now and again, toward the end, that's fine.
Season with salt and pepper, the butter and balsamic vinegar.
Recipe: Savory Almond Cake With Toasted Beets, Beet Greens, Goat Cheese And Asparagus
This pretty, colorful cake is loosely based on a gateau Basque, in which jam or cream is piled between layers of batter. This filling of grated toasted beets with their greens, goat cheese and asparagus is bursting with spring flavors.
Makes 8 servings
1/2 cup toasted sliced almonds
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 stick butter, softened
4 large eggs
1 cup milk (I use whole, but skim or part skim would also work) soured with 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar (or substitute one cup buttermilk)
In a food processor, chop the almonds until ground. Add the flour, salt, plenty of black pepper and baking powder and process until mixed. Cut in the butter in small pieces and process until mixed and crumbly. Add the eggs and process until smooth. Add the milk and process until smooth.
1 large beet, peeled and grated
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil , divided
1 large bunch beet greens, or combination of beet greens and chard or just chard, washed and de-stemmed (about 4-5 cups)
Small bunch asparagus, woody ends cut off
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried sage or 1 tablespoon fresh , chopped
1 teaspoon dried rosemary or 2 teaspoons fresh, chopped
1 teaspoon dried thyme or 2 teaspoons fresh, chopped
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees, or use your toaster oven.
Combine the beets, balsamic vinegar and 1 tablespoon olive oil and toast or roast until dark and fragrant. They will be crispy on the edges but soft in the middle. It should take 15-20 minutes.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and drop in the greens. Boil for about 10 minutes (slightly less if you're only using chard). Put the asparagus in a strainer over the boiling water, cover and boil for a few minutes until bright green and tender. Drain. Run cool water over the greens and drain, ringing in your hands until as dry as you can get them. Chop them fine.
Warm the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, pepper and herbs. Cut the tips of the asparagus 2 or 3 inches long and set aside. Chop the rest of the asparagus into small pieces. Put these in the skillet along with the greens, stir to combine and cook for a minute or two. Season with salt and pepper.
To Assemble
1/2 cup thinly sliced mozzarella
1/3 cup goat cheese
Olive oil for the pan
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees, and put a generous coating of olive oil in a large cake pan or small roasting pan.
Pour half the batter into the pan in an even layer. Top with the greens, leaving about 1 1/2-inch margin all around. Layer the mozzarella over the greens. Add the goat cheese to the toasted beet and stir just to combine. Layer this over the mozzarella. Pour the remaining batter over the top, spreading with the back of a spoon to fill in any holes and make a smooth layer. Arrange the asparagus spears prettily on top.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the top is puffed and golden. Let cool slightly, slice, and serve.
Recipe: Yeasted Savory Cake With Fennel, Olives And Capers
Although this cake is yeasted, it's decidedly not a bread, the addition of butter, eggs and baking powder give it a lovely soft crumb, which makes a nice contrast to the strong flavors of olives, capers and fennel. We ate this with a light, fresh tomato and white wine sauce.
Makes 8 servings
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water, divided
4 tablespoons very soft unsalted butter
1 large egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped or crumbled or 1 teaspoon dried
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
Combine the yeast, sugar and 1/2 cup warm water in a large bowl and leave in a warm place for about 15 minutes, or until frothy.
Add the butter and stir until nearly melted. Beat in the egg. Add the dry ingredients and beat until smooth and sticky. Add the remaining cup of warm water and beat again until light and frothy.
Cover with a damp cloth and leave in a warm place to rise. After about 1 1/2 hours, beat the batter again and then leave to rise for another hour. Or, you can leave the batter for a few hours and omit the second rise.
1 tablespoon butter
1 plump clove garlic, minced
Handful of fresh herbs*
1 small fennel bulb, trimmed, cleaned and diced fine
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives, roughly chopped
2 teaspoons capers
Splash of white wine
2 cups mixed greens (I used spinach and chard) washed, trimmed and chopped fine
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 cup mozzarella, grated or cut into small slices
*I used chives, sage, rosemary, savory, thyme and oregano, but use whatever you have on hand that you enjoy. Dried herbs will work well, too, if that's all you have.
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and stir and fry for under a minute until it starts to brown. Add all of the herbs, stir and cook until they begin to sizzle. Add the fennel and cook for a few minutes until it softens, turns translucent, and starts to brown. Add the olives and the capers.
Pour a splash of white wine in the pan and stir to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Add the greens and a few tablespoonfuls of water. Cook until the greens are wilted and tender but still bright and the pan is quite dry. Stir in the balsamic vinegar and season well with salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper.
Butter and flour a large cake pan. Pour half the batter into the pan. Yeasted batter is a funny consistency, so you might have to coax it to the edges of the pan. Make it as smooth and even as possible.
Top the batter with the vegetable mixture, trying to distribute it evenly and leave a border of about an inch around the edge. Top with an even layer of cheese.
Pour the rest of the batter over, smoothing it to the edges, and covering in any holes that form.
Let this sit for at least half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Bake the cake for 25 to 30 minutes, until it's golden brown and firm to the touch. Let cool slightly, slice and serve.
Fresh Tomato White Wine Sauce
2 tablespoons salted butter
1 clove garlic, minced
4 or 5 plum tomatoes, cleaned, trimmed and roughly chopped**
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped or crumbled, or 1 teaspoon dried,
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/3 cup white wine
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
**If they're very seedy, give them a gentle squeeze to get some of the seeds out.
Melt the butter in a medium-sized skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for under a minute until it starts to brown. Add the tomatoes, rosemary and smoked paprika and stir to coat with butter. Cook for a minute or two until the tomatoes start to soften. Add the wine, and cook until it's reduced and syrupy. Add enough water to make the dish saucy again, and cook until the tomatoes are falling-apart soft, about 10 minutes. You can break them up a bit with your spoon as you stir. Stir in the balsamic vinegar, season well with salt and pepper and serve. Serve on the side to be spooned over the cake.
Recipe: Savory Cake With Cornmeal, Black Beans, Kale And Smoked Gouda
Rich with earthy flavors, smoky cheese and the pleasant texture of cornmeal, this is a hearty, satisfying cake. I baked it in a Bundt pan and then piled the center with a fresh green avocado-castelvetrano olive guacamole, but you could bake it in a large cake round or square cake pan instead. I sliced the leftover cake to make savory French toast, topped with a spicy smooth chipotle tomato sauce.
Makes 8 to 10 servings
3 large eggs
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup beer, whatever kind you like
1 cup grated smoked gouda
1 cup grated cheddar
1 medium-sized bunch kale, washed and trimmed (1 heaping cup cooked)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot, minced
1 plump clove garlic, minced
4 or 5 fresh sage leaves, or 1 teaspoon dried
1 sprig fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 teaspoon chipotle puree*
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon cumin
Butter or olive oil for the pan
*I buy a small can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, purée them and store them in the refrigerator.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs until light and fluffy. Add the corn meal, flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Mix well. Pour in the beer and stir to combine. You should have a fairly thick batter. Add a little more beer if necessary to loosen it up. Stir in the grated cheeses.
Meanwhile, put the kale in a big pot and cover with water by about 1 inch. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until the kale is quite soft but still bright. Drain, let cool until you can handle it (or run under cold water) and chop fine.
In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the shallot and cook for under a minute until it starts to brown. Add the garlic and herbs, stir and cook for about half a minute until they start to brown.
Add the black beans and stir until they're coated, then add the chipotle puree and the tomato paste. Stir and cook for a minute or two. Add the paprika and cumin and about one tablespoon of water. Cook until everything is heated through and the pan is quite dry, 4 or 5 minutes. Let cool slightly.
Add the kale and beans to the batter and mix well.
Generously coat a Bundt pan or other cake pan with butter or olive oil. Pour in the batter, trying to make it even and smooth. Bake for about 25 minutes until it's puffed and golden and firm to the touch. Let cool slightly, slice and serve.
Avocado Castelvetrano Guacamole
1 ripe avocado, peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup castelvetrano olives, pitted and roughly chopped
2 teaspoons capers
1/2 cup (or to taste) fresh cilantro, washed, de-stemmed and chopped
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper
Combine everything in a small bowl and lightly toss.
Recipe: Chickpea Flour Cake With Tarragon And Artichoke Hearts; Spinach Sauteed With White Beans And Black Truffle Butter
In this cake, the vegetables and cheese are piled on top in a pretty pattern, and the cake bakes up golden all around it. The bright lemon-anise flavor of tarragon contrasts nicely with the nutty flavor of chickpea flour. I served it with a saucy mix of beans, greens and truffle butter, but a simple tomato sauce would work nicely as well. Chickpea flour is available at most supermarkets, health food stores or Indian grocery stores.
Makes 8 to 10 servings
1 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup olive oil
2 large eggs
1/2 cup warm water
4 artichoke hearts (I use canned in brine) drained and chopped in half lengthwise
Small sprig of tarragon, leaves only
10–12 grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup mozzarella cheese, chopped into small cubes or slivers, or grated
In a large bowl, combine the flours, the salt, pepper and baking powder. Beat in the olive oil and eggs and add enough water to make a thick batter — 1/2 cup should do it.
Let the batter sit while you preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Generously coat a small baking pan or large cake pan with olive oil. Spread the batter in an even layer. Arrange the artichoke hearts, tarragon leaves and tomatoes in a pretty pattern. Scatter the cheese all around them.
Bake for 25–30 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbly, the chickpea flour cake is puffed and brown on the edges. Let sit for a moment, and then serve with some sauteed greens, or any kind of sauce you like.
Spinach And White Beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or to taste)
1 clove garlic, minced (unless there's garlic in your truffle butter)
1 can small white beans such as navy, cannellini or flageolets, rinsed and drained
4 or 5 packed cups baby spinach, chopped quite fine
1 tablespoon black truffle butter (or regular butter)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the pepper flakes and garlic if you're using. Add the white beans and stir and fry a bit until they're warm. Add the spinach and cook until it's just wilted and bright. Add a little water if necessary to loosen it up. Stir in the truffle butter, and season with salt and plenty of black pepper.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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"I would beat your f***ing ass just for the sheer joy of it"
Paul Joseph Watson
A man claiming to be a trainee Sheriff's Deputy posted a threatening Facebook message aimed at Cop Block, an organization which advocates filming police officers, in which the soon to be cop said that protesters should be exterminated in "gas chambers" and that he would beat them up "just for the sheer joy of it."
Image: Ron Paul Supporters (Wikimedia Commons).
"While its rare that we receive direct death threats, they must be taken seriously, especially when they come from someone with military training and is about to become a Law enforcement agent / Sheriff," states a post on theofficial CopBlock Facebook page.
According to CopBlock, the threats were made by Darren Redding, a former U.S. Marine who claims to be a current cadet in training with the Washoe County Sheriff's Department. Redding's Facebook page has now been deleted, but the messages sent to CopBlock appear at the end of this article.
"If I had my way, there would be another holocaust with camps and gas chambers full of fucking cunt scabs like you, I hope you die," stated Redding, adding, "I hope some cop beats your ass next time you're "protesting" or filming them or whatever. In fact I'm about to start the training academy for the washoe county sheriffs dept in reno, Nevada and I can't wait to deal with punk ass bitches like you. I would beat your fucking ass just for the sheer joy of it."
"If you were a law abiding citizen you wouldn't have any problem with 5-0, but something tells me you were probably being a jackass towards a police officer and you got what was coming to you, and that inspired you to make a page giving a bad name to all law enforcement," stated Redding, complaining about one of Cop Block's posts.
Cop Block responded to the threats by inviting people to contact the Washoe County Sheriff's Office and suggest that they refrain from hiring someone who has expressed a desire to see people who exercise their rights gassed in concentration camps.
The Washoe County Sheriff's Office first responded by claiming Redding's Facebook page had been hacked, but then distanced themselves from him altogether, asserting he was not in training with them. The Sheriff's Office's is expected to make a statement about the issue soon.
Hundreds of other Facebook users responded in the comments section, with one former US Army Ranger stating that Redding should not be allowed to become a police officer.
"The numbers of the sheriff's office where he plans to apply should be give out as well as emails for everyone to write to so that this does not just fall through the cracks and be forgotten about. The last thing we need is another out of control officer that will take a dump on people's rights (or worse)," remarked Kevin Warrick.
While the vast majority of police officers do not espouse such extreme views, this is another example of how a minority of law enforcement personnel, especially those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, are now entering the police force with total hostility towards the American people and complete contempt for the bill of rights.
Screenshots of the original message Cop Block says they received from Darren Redding can be viewed below.


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About We Love Dates
We Love Dates is a worldwide online dating site and dating advice blog headquartered in London. That's right, we are sharing the love worldwide-members from the UK, US, South Africa, Canada, Ireland and Australia are all currently, and successfully, using our dating site to find love! Our motto is "love is all around"...and well, if you're on our site it definitely is!
Our popular dating advice blog is your one stop shop for online dating tips, relationship advice, news and personal stories that will comfort you, make you laugh and encourage you on your online dating journey. Trust us when we say "we've been there, dated that." Despite what you may have heard, online dating should be fun, and that is our goal at We Love Dates.
We love making new friends, and we're always connected, so please reach out to us! Find us on Facebook and Twitter or shoot us an email at anytime.
We Love Dates, and it's our goal that you will too!


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History Carnival #3
Sorry for the late notice -- vote of no confidence in college president and faculty retreat both happened last week. And I'm still applying for jobs. But more importantly, History Carnival #3 is going on at detrimental postulation. Go and read the great stuff there!
Got to get ready for the rest of the week, but the next carnival will take place here from March 15. If you want to submit something, please e-mail me at another_damned_medievalist AT hotmail Dot com (typed in the normal way) by 3 p.m. EST on March 15. I'm already jonesing to add Ancarett and New Kid's latest on relevance to the list. Please?


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Over 1,000 faculty, staff, and students attended the Mass of the Holy Spirit presided by Reverend Raymond Dlugos, O.S.A., Vice President of Mission and Student Affairs. Reflecting on Jesus' Parable of the Sower, Father Ray's homily called attention to the, "reality that there is a great abundance of wisdom, experience, and love waiting to be harvested at Merrimack this year. However, we won't find that abundance by staying on paths that we have already walked on too many times before, staying safe with our preconceived ideas and perspectives, or by choking one another with disrespect. Rather we will find the abundant harvest waiting for us by risking new activities, relationships, and challenges and treating one another with the utmost respect, concern, care, and love."
Following the Mass, students, faculty, and staff processed with President Christopher E. Hopey, Ph.D. to the Academic Convocation ceremony, which formally welcomed everyone back to campus. The president referenced the excitement and pride the College is currently experiencing by saying, "I am energized with the excitement and enthusiasm you all have for Merrimack and the year ahead. It is very clear that you are ready to take advantage of all that Merrimack has to offer you." He mentioned many of the new investments the College has made to support its academic core and residential experience for students. Such projects include; the Residential Village, the new home of Sports Medicine and Health Sciences, Augies Pub, the expanded bookstore and fitness center, new Dunkin Donuts, and the renovated Merrimack Athletics Complex, as well as many other improvements to the campus. President Hopey reiterated to students all the choices that they have available to them while here at Merrimack and he advised them to reflect on the purpose of life in their time here saying, "Although our physical changes and programmatic growth are important to our success, what is equally important as individuals and as a community, is to take time to reflect, think and contemplate on our purpose and direction in life. True success is reached when balance between spirituality, peace, and action comes together."
Josephine Modica-Napolitano, Ph.D., Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, introduced the Convocation speaker. Roland Merullo, a Massachusetts native, and distinguished author delivered the Convocation address. He addressed students with humorous dialogue such as what it must be like for non-New Englander's to experience a Boston accent for the first time, and then transitioned to a more serious tone. Merullo shared with the students some of the people in his life who have inspired him, focusing particularly on his grandmother, a woman with little education and no work experience but a beautiful soul who inspired others. He pointed out that his grandmother may be considered a "holy one in disguise," which is a Buddhist phrase. He compared his grandmother's legacy of love to a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Character is higher than intelligence." Merullo noted that his grandmother was able to cultivate her interior world and found that the greatest part of life is loving someone. Merullo gave his version of a blessing to the audience, saying that his wish for the crowd is that they can love themselves as well as love, support and encourage others. He hopes they are able to share this love with either their future grandchildren or other young children in their lives.
Merullo's address highlighted the importance of inner growth, saying that we do not all have the potential to be professional athletes or famous musicians, but we all have the ability to evolve spiritually. To engage the students, he posed the question, "Why are you here?" followed by a list of possible reasons why these students would be at Merrimack. Merullo then rephrased the question to be philosophical, "Why are you here?" He believes that students can find their answer to this question by engaging with the interior world. By doing this, Merullo said students will become more generous and selfless which can have lasting effects on others. Merullo states that to reach interior growth, people need to take time away from the distractions of technology and multitasking. For Merullo, meditation has been his way to reach the interior world, but he encouraged students to find a method that suits them. Merullo's invaluable advice to students will help them travel their own paths on the Merrimack journey.


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Providing a common platform to international students from 40 countries to represent heritage of their respective country, LPU organizes its annual international fest "One World". This year the 7th fest is being celebrated on the theme of "Promoting World Peace" for two days. His Excellency Mr. Alem Tsehaye Worldemariam (Ambassador of Eritrea to India), H.E. Mr. Illiassou Ali (Ambassador of Niger to India), and H.E. Mr. Samake Niankoro Yeah (Ambassador of Mali to India) inaugurated the international cultural extravaganza at the campus. Prior to this, the fest was flagged off for two kilo-meter long colourful cultural procession which comprised 40+ international tableaus. Showcasing and upholding cultural inheritance of their respective country, international students kept on dancing & singing all the way. Celebrating the theme of the year, students were holding placards with slogans "One Human Family", "International Peace for World", "The Sunny Side of Life", "Peace through Education", "Give Peace a Chance", "More Power to the Peace" and many more. Nepalese students exhibited that their country never participated in world-war, and not even a single drop of blood has been shed on their motherland out of any kind of war.
International students were seen with dresses, ornaments and other attributes of their respective country. Continuing years of celebrations at 4 venues of the campus through 40 exhibition stalls, 2000 international students mesmerized 30000+ campus audiences. Maintaining global unity, Indian students, too, participated along with their International counterparts in different celebrations.
Welcoming the elite guests from Eritrea, Niger & Mali and congratulating all participants at the fest, LPU Chancellor Mr Ashok Mittal said: "At LPU, we motivate our international students to celebrate this mega-fest by showcasing and sharing their cultures and values with students of other countries. This celebration of diversity helps students in strengthening bonds of unity in diversity and in imbibing global understanding also."
Students also showcased myths, folk-lore, tribal-tales, urban development, music, dance-forms, literature, chivalry, currencies, attires, languages and other achievements. Thousands of on-looking students witnessed and enjoyed the spirit of 'One World'. Participating 40 countries included students from China, South Africa, Bhutan, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Cameroon, Yemen, Nigeria, Mali, Maldives, Zambia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Thailand, Kazakhstan and more.
One of the students from China Yijing Li (B Sc- Physiotherapy) shared: "At China, we all want International peace. Here at LPU, we Chinese students are very happy to represent our country. We are happy to see that students of other countries enjoyed dragon dance of our culture with a feeling of oneness." Sri Lankan student Anjali Ishara of B Com Professional Program, Marifou Sampy of BBA from Mali, Rinchen Dorji of BBA IT from Bhutan, Lintel Flora Lebona of Physiotherapy from Kingdom of Lesotho, Zaid Abdiwahid of MSc Nutrition & Dietetics Program from Somalia and Anindita Mitra from Bangladesh of MBA program shared unanimously: " The event 'One World' celebration is making us more practical with an elaborated insight into how world can be one leaving aside all intrigues & self interests." Another student from Mauritius, Raveena Bundhoo said: "We understand that the unity among human beings lies in their diversity. We are happy to see that LPU designs this fest so that students with distinctive cultural backgrounds live peacefully, work together to be globally fit citizens and make peace exist all around the world."


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In this game, take the endangered king to his favorite igloo. His serfs will fulfil all your orders. In the next step, they will become a jumping platform, they will burn a hole in the ground.
Be the first to comment.
Play our games and their subgenres: Puzzle games | Solution games | Lemmings games | Ants games | Christmas games | Winter games
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All parts of legendary zombie killing game. Buy and upgrade your car or truck and kill them all.
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Games which are similar to Angry birds style. Shoot and hit enemies by cannon and save friends.
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Great strategic online game from Middleages time. Millions of players around the world. Fight with them and be great king of your land.
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Select vehicle and ride. Famous Uphill rush series presents latest part of fantastic ride.


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LI communities to have say in post-Sandy redevelopment projects
Tucked in New York State's action plan for spending $1.7 billion in federal Housing and Urban Development grants for disaster recovery is a pot of money aimed at giving Long Islanders a say in making their communities more resilient to withstand future storms.
Nearly $194 million from the first installment of Community Development Block Grant money -- among funds appropriated for recovery from superstorm Sandy and tropical storms Irene and Lee -- will go to 20 Community Reconstruction Zones, or CRZs, in Nassau and Suffolk counties, according to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's office.
Thursday in Albany, county executives Edward Mangano and Steve Bellone are to gather with Cuomo, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and other officials for a daylong conference that the governor's office said will focus on ways to redesign communities, strengthen resiliency and contribute to New York's effort to build back smarter ahead of future extreme weather events.
Communities from Long Beach to Mastic Beach will receive grant money for planning of projects and activities. Amounts were calculated based on the percentage of properties damaged and the amount of assistance granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The highest grants are up to $25 million for Long Beach and up to $25 million for the collected communities of Barnum Island, Harbor Isle, Island Park and Oceanside. The lowest ones are up to $3 million for communities including Atlantic Beach and East Atlantic Beach; Bayville; Fire Island and Oak Beach-Captree; Lido Beach and Point Lookout; Mastic Beach; Oakdale and South Valley Stream.
To develop plans, each Community Reconstruction Zone will have a committee of local elected officials, residents, and academic and business leaders. The grants are to pay for planning consultants; after successful plans are crafted, that CRZ will qualify to receive more federal funding to carry out identified projects.
Development of plans is expected to take up to eight months.
Laura Munafo will be the Nassau County CRZ program leader. Munafo recently worked at the Nassau County Office of Emergency Management as a community service representative.
Suffolk County's CRZ program leader will be Vanessa Lockel, who currently works as regional director for the American Beverage Association and previously worked as a press aide for state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
The time has never been better for Long Islanders to think big, said Kevin Law, co-chair of the Long Island Regional Development Council, created by Cuomo in 2011 to focus on long-term economic growth.
"For years, there's been talk about a reformulation plan for the coast, all the way out to Montauk," said Law, who also is chairman of the Long Island Housing Partnership. "The plans were there but the funding wasn't."
In June, Cuomo announced his support of a $700 million project that will upgrade natural and man-made storm protections along 83 miles of Suffolk's South Shore, from Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point.
The project provides for a range of protective measures -- from beach rebuilding and dune construction to road raising, home elevations and other erosion-control steps.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working with New York State to refine aspects of the project and complete an environmental review.
Having a post-Sandy redevelopment plan in place will help local communities capitalize on the wave of federal money coming to harden the Island's shoreline, Law said.
"I don't think they're talking about moving people from the coast and up [to] Sunrise Highway," Law said. "Mother Nature may do that one day. It's more about what steps we can take to harden our communities and infrastructure to prevent the devastation."
Because the coastline means different things to each South Shore community -- oceanside recreation in Long Beach, commercial fishing in Freeport and Islip -- community input is essential, said Seth Diamond, New York State's director of storm recovery.
"It's very much designed for the projects to reflect their priorities," Diamond said.
Nine CRZs also have been identified across New York City's five boroughs and are eligible for a total of about $157 million in HUD block grant funds. Another 14 CRZs were identified in Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties, among other upstate counties, and are eligible for a total of nearly $46 million in block grant funds.
The state's action plan for use of HUD funds in disaster recovery included the effects of Sandy and of tropical storms Irene, in August 2011, and Lee, in September 2011.
Man charged in attack on sleeping parents ... Not-guility plea in deadly accident ... School cyberattacks on rise ... State wrestling championships
Man charged in attack on sleeping parents ... Not-guility plea in deadly accident ... School cyberattacks on rise ... State wrestling championships


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Build A Semi-Anamorphic 35mm Pinhole Camera
Jun 9, 2011
Build A Semi-Anamorphic 35mm Pinhole Camera
An Amamorfic Camera provides a clever method of using the 35mm film to capture non standard aspect ratio photographs.
The short version is that the pinhole on that camera is not perpendicular to the film for the long version [OpenGeekWindow] You know this problem all to well from digital point and shoots. The aspect ratio on a regular point&shoot is 3:4 and the standard for printing pictures is 2:3, so you have to ask your printer (hey, anyone here still prints?) to leave white stripes at the edges of the picture.
Now, a similar problem exists when shooting films of one aspect ratio with lenses built for a different aspect ratio. Some of the film is blacked out. Anamorphic systems solve this problem, they use the entire film by "stretching" the photograph. The photograph can then be seen at it's "real" aspect ratio by shrinking it with a reversed anamorphic lens.
Of course, if you wanted to play back those anamorphic images you would need a killer projector like this $10,999.99 monster from Marants[/CloseGeekWindow]
In this tutorial Costas Kaounas will show you how to build an Anamorphic (or rather semi anamorphic) pinhole camera.
Step 1 – Prepare The Parts
First draw the planes t1, t2 & t3 on 3mm and 1mm cardboard as shown. (click each plan to enlarge)
Then cut all the pieces with a sharp knife and paint the interior surface with a black sharpie.
Step 2 – Putting The Camera Together
Glue the frame pieces on the bottom part. Note that I had to cut the part marked with red, because it prodused shadow on the film (didn't realized it from the beginning)
Assemble the pinhole plate. it is two layers of 1mm cardboard with the alouminum pinhole between them
glue all the exterior parts and lightseal with black tape
use plastic sheets and black tape for outer finishing
Sample Images
About The Author
This camera was designed and built by Costas Kaounas a high school teacher and a photographer from Greece.
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Join the Discussion
DIYP Comment Policy
Be nice, be on-topic, no personal information or flames.


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Robert W. Gereau IV, PhD, has been named the Dr. Seymour and Rose T. Brown Professor of Anesthesiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The professorship was announced by Washington University Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Larry J. Shapiro, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine.
The professorship honors Washington University alumni Seymour Brown, MD, a 1940 graduate of the School of Medicine who served for more than 40 years as chief of anesthesiology at what was then St. John's Mercy Hospital, and his wife, Rose Brown, who graduated from WUSTL in 1936 with a bachelor's degree in education and biology. After completing her degree, Mrs. Brown served on the editorial staff of C.V. Mosby Publishing Co., editing medical books and journals.
They married in 1941, and shortly after that, Seymour Brown served as a physician on a destroyer in World War II, where he lived through many legendary naval battles including the battles of Midway and Guadalcanal. During the latter battle, his ship was torpedoed and sunk. Later in his military career, Brown was named chief of anesthesiology at naval hospitals in Great Lakes, Ill., and Mare Island, Calif.
When Dr. Brown completed military service, the Browns moved to Boston, where he studied anesthesiology at the Lahey Clinic and Mrs. Brown worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, editing books.
When they returned to St. Louis, Dr. Brown worked briefly at Barnes Hospital before starting the anesthesiology program at St. John's and joining the clinical teaching faculty at Saint Louis University, where he served for more than 30 years. He also served terms as president of the Missouri and the St. Louis societies of anesthesiology. Mrs. Brown assisted hearing-impaired students for 13 years and later worked as a real estate agent. She also volunteered at St. John's Mercy Medical Center and at St. Luke's Hospital for 20 years.
"Over the years, the Brown family's generosity has helped fund scholarships for medical students, and this is one of two professorships the family established in anesthesiology," Wrighton said. "The Browns also created an endowment for research in the Division of Gastroenterology in honor of their son, who was a gastroenterology resident here. We cannot thank the Browns enough for their extremely generous support."
Dr. and Mrs. Brown were married for 65 years prior to Dr. Brown's death in 2006. Mrs. Brown died in 2013. The couple had two sons, Alvin R. Brown, MD, and Donald E. Brown. Alvin Brown, who was a resident in gastroenterology at the School of Medicine, died in 2000. Donald Brown, an attorney, lives in Maryland with his wife and daughter.
In addition to his appointment in anesthesiology, Gereau also is a professor of anatomy and of neurobiology and is director of the Washington University Pain Center. He studies the molecular mechanisms involved in pain sensation, and his research includes basic laboratory work and translational studies of the pain response in people.
Most recently, Gereau's laboratory has been involved in studies using optogenetics, which uses light signals to activate or deactivate nerve cells responsible for transmitting pain signals from the periphery to the brain. He is using tiny, light-emitting devices to map the molecular and cellular properties of neural circuits to better understand how those circuits transmit pain after nerve injury. Being able to visualize how the circuits connect and transmit pain signals could allow for the development of new treatments.
"Dr. Gereau's work is at the forefront of pain research and is helping to better understand and alleviate chronic pain," Shapiro said. "His efforts are vital to the development of new and more effective ways to treat the large numbers of patients with pain who could not previously be helped."
Gereau graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in biology from what is now Missouri State University. He earned a doctorate in neuroscience from Emory University School of Medicine and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies before he became an assistant professor in the Division of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in 1998. He joined the Washington University faculty in 2004.
"Rob is a very talented scientist and a wonderful mentor for our residents, students and fellows," said Alex S. Evers, MD, the Henry E. Mallinckrodt Professor and head of the Department of Anesthesiology. "His recent work using optogenetic techniques to turn pain signals on and off could lead to major breakthroughs in both the understanding and treatment of pain."
Gereau's research has been supported continuously by National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the past 15 years, and he has served as a member and chair of multiple NIH study sections. He also serves on several editorial boards for scientific journals and is a member of the board of directors of the American Pain Society.
"The support from the Brown family for research in the Department of Anesthesiology has been tremendous," Gereau said. "It is a great honor to receive this recognition for pain research, and I am very grateful to Don Brown and his family for their generosity in establishing this professorship. This support will help make our research effort more agile and innovative, and I hope it will help us to bring new treatments to the tens of millions of people who suffer with chronic pain."
Gereau has authored 80 peer-reviewed scientific publications, 26 invited publications and has been invited to deliver 85 lectures. During his career, Gereau also has mentored 34 pre- and postdoctoral trainees, as well as nine undergraduates and five high school students. In 2011, he received the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award from the Washington University Graduate Student Senate. Among his other honors is a 2012 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award for his efforts to treat pain using optogenetics.
Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.


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OCEAN CITY- Registration is ongoing for the Coastal Lacrosse Club's 2012 spring season, but the teams are filling up quickly, according to club officials.
The Coastal Lacrosse Club, founded in 2009, offers organized, instructional teams for both boys and girls ages five to 14. Registration for the 2012 season is still open, although the teams are rapidly filling up. In order to maintain a low player-to-coach ratio, teams are being formed solely on a first come, first served basis.
Registration is $85 per player, and $75 for additional siblings. Financial assistance is available through the club's scholarship program. Coastal Lacrosse was founded on the goal of teaching kids the game of lacrosse while having fun at the same time under the direction of a dedicated and committed group of coaches. For registration forms and additional information, contact the club at www.coastallacrosseclub.com.


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Jessica Sherawat (Resident Evil: Revelations) – Cosplay of the Day
Hump Day is upon us and here to help us make it to the weekend is Jessica Sherawat, from Resident Evil: Revelations. Let's jump into the Cosplay of the Day and check out her very unique outfit.
Jessica Sherawat is one of the supporting characters in Resident Evil: Revelations and has served as a partner for both Chris Redfield and Parker Luciani. She is of an extremely extroverted nature, as can be gleaned from her choice of mission outfit, and is somewhat of a femme fatale. It's tough to tell where her loyalties lie, but one thing is for certain: Jessica is dangerous.
This is Japanese cosplayer Aoi Takamura in Jessica's outfit from the game. It must get really breezy around that one exposed leg, but she'd know of its tactical advantages more than us. We particularly appreciate the steps take in these photoshoots to recreate the dank, claustrophobic atmosphere found in Resident Evil: Revelations, augmenting this cosplay to even greater heights.
Check out more of Aoi's cosplay outfits, a lot of which include Resident Evil characters, on her deviantART.
Want your Cosplay to be seen? Send your info to firstname.lastname@example.com and we may feature you in our Cosplay of the Day!


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Contact the Lake Saint Louis Police Department at 636-625-8018.
Show All Answers
City Hall is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m, except for city holidays and weather emergencies.
The Civic Center is located at:200 Civic Center DriveLake Saint Louis, MO 63367
It is near the intersection of Lake Saint Boulevard and Highway 40/61, directly across the street from the Schnucks grocery store.
As of 2010, it is estimated to have approximately 14,545 residents.
The City was incorporated in 1975.
In areas zoned residential, trailers and recreational vehicles may be parked on the driveway between 6:00 A.M. and 10:00 P.M. without a permit and between 10:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. if the owner obtains a permit from the Lake Saint Louis Police Department. Residents can obtain up to 4 (four) 72 hour non-consecutive permits per calendar year.
Permits may be obtained by contacting the Lake Saint Louis Police Dispatch Center at 636-625-8018.
If you are registered to vote, a few weeks before any election you will receive a postcard telling you where you should vote. Lake Saint Louis has many voting locations. The address will be on your card. It will provide your precinct number and location where you will go to vote.
The City of Lake Saint Louis allows only two garage sales to be conducted at the same location within any calendar year. No garage sale may continue for more than three days. Before conducting your sale, you must notify the Police Department Dispatch Office at 636-625-8018 of the time, date and location of your event as well as the name, address and telephone number of the person or persons responsible for conducting the sale. In general terms garage sale signs are not permitted but signs may be posted on parked vehicles so long as the vehicles are legally parked. You may also place signs on your property, so long as they are in place only on the day and during the hours of the sale. Garage sale signs must be no larger than 5 square feet.
Directional signs which direct potential customers to the sale are permitted in the City right of way as long as they are not larger than 3 sq ft and not taller than 3 feet. The signs can be located one (1) per intersection in any one (1) direction. They cannot be posted for more than one (1) day before and one (1) day after the sale or event and they can only be up for a maximum of three (3 consecutive days).
Contact the Parks and Recreation Department at 636-561-4620 or contact City Hall at 636-625-1200.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Windows Phone 7 up for grabs from 'excited' 3
At least one user for Microsoft to claim...
Want a Windows Phone 7? OK, how about if it was free? Thought you might change your mind. Well, network 3 is offering one to the first lucky punter it draws out of its virtual hat.
It's not limiting the prize draw to its customers, but anyone currently with O2, Orange, T-Mobile or Vodafone is likely to receive suggestions that they shift to 3 when the network mails out the handset availability information you're actually signing up to receive when you enter the draw.
3 blogger Sylvia Chind gushes that the Windows 7 Phone is "massively exciting" and that 3 is "really excited about this one". In case you're still not sure how keen the company is on the Microsoft offering, Sylvia adds: "Excited? We are."
As we reported yesterday, 3 will be joined by all the other UK networks when Windows Phone 7 launches over here, probably next month.
More unadulterated enthusiasm here. ®


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TechRadar Verdict
- +
Build quality
- +
- +
Battery life
- +
- +
- -
- -
No DVD drive
Why you can trust TechRadar
When we first reviewed the Dell Adamo 13 back in 2009, we fell in love with its sleek design, but at £1649 it was priced a little too high.
Now this highly desirable ultraportable has dropped massively in price to just £499, so even cash-strapped consumers can afford it.
Without a doubt this is the best-looking laptop at this price point. Everything from the half-glossy lid to the matt-black interior exudes style and class. The build quality is superb too, with no hint of flex seen in any area of the sleek metal chassis.
This is also one of the thinnest laptops we've seen and is practically half the size of the others here at just 20mm. The 1.8kg weight means you can comfortably carry it around all day, while the five hour battery life is perfect for extended travel.
Low-voltage processor
To slim things down, Dell has used a low-voltage Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor. As a result, performance lags behind laptops such as the Toshiba Satellite Pro S500-15W, although the Dell still outperformed the Acer Aspire 5552 and came close to the PC Nextday Zoostorm 3389.
You can indulge in some light multi-tasking with your office applications, without suffering lag.
Multimedia potential is unfortunately as limited as the PC Nextday Zoostorm 3389-9426/A, thanks to the basic integrated Intel GMA 4500M graphics. You can certainly enjoy your music and movies, but editing your media files isn't an option.
Battery life: 282 minutes
MobileMark 2007: 166
3DMark 2003: 1503
We were very impressed by the compact 13.4-inch screen. It may be a smallish display, but it features a 1366x768 pixel resolution, so images are beautifully crisp. The Super-TFT finish brings colours to life, and viewing angles are refreshingly wide, although the display is quite reflective in direct sunlight.
The keyboard looks just as slick as the rest of the laptop, with unusually contoured keys that are perfectly sized. The travel is quite short due to the thin chassis but it is very comfortable to type on for extended periods. It's also backlit for use in dark environments.
The well-sized touchpad is responsive and supports multi-touch gesturing, while touch sensitive media shortcuts give you easy control over your music and movies.
While the 128GB of storage is low, the Solid State Drive allows fast access to your data and is less susceptible to failure. There's no DVD drive in the slender chassis, however, so bear this in mind if you need disc access.
A DisplayPort allows external displays to be connected, while an eSATA port can be used to hook up an external hard drive.
The beautifully crafted chassis makes the Adamo 13 one of the most attractive laptops we've ever seen. Packing some impressive features, including the sharp and vibrant screen and excellent keyboard, this is a truly stunning bargain.
Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview
Arm's new super powerful Neoverse V3 CPU core obliterates previous generation and should get Intel and AMD worried — HBM and CXL support, 128 cores per socket, hyperscalers will be salivating
Faster games for all? Microsoft's DirectSR could be the upscaling breakthrough PC gamers have been praying for
Leaks for Windows 11 laptop with Snapdragon X Elite show a CPU that's a serious threat to Apple's M3


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Description: Every summer, Rose goes with her mom and dad to a lake house in Awago Beach. It's their getaway, their refuge. Rosie's friend Windy is always there, too, like the little sister she never had. But this summer is different. Rose's mom and dad won't stop fighting, and when Rose and Windy seek a distraction from the drama, they find themselves with a whole new set of problems. It's a summer of secrets and sorrow and growing up, and it's a good thing Rose and Windy have each other.
Review: Every summer, Rose and her parents vacation at a lakeside cottage. The problems of everyday life are put on pause as Rose is reunited with her friend Windy and relishes in the leisure offerings of playing games of MASH, swimming, and the joy of digging giant holes in the sand, but this summer is different. Rose's parents are fighting. Her mother is distant and isolating herself, while her father struggles to maintain his carefree persona. Rose, herself, is on the cusp of adolescence; not quite ready to leave the comforts of childhood behind but drawn and fascinated by the older teens who are caught up in their own dramas fueled by alcohol and having fun. Rose and Windy are voyeurs into the older teen's universe, toeing the mysterious line of teen life by experimenting with new vocabulary and renting R rated horror movies.
This One Summer offers a slice of life of lazy summer days, but it gradually unfolds into a complex narrative of a fragile family trying to overcome a loss and Rose's ambivalence toward growing up. The two world are told separately for most of the graphic novel, but soon connect. I really wanted Rose to know what was going on with her parents, because it would clear up a lot of her confusion and make a bigger impact on the big reveal of the story but that doesn't happen. Like life, there are no happy endings tied in a perfect bow, but hope is lingering. The mood throughout the graphic novel is thoughtful, quiet, almost meditative. The artwork is visually stunning. The muted tones of the monochromatic blue-on-white illustrations are perfectly suited to the story's ambiance. This is not a graphic novel that you should read quickly, but rather a close read of the dialogue and panels will allow you to pick up the subtleties of the story. The incompleteness of the book may be deliberate as we watch a young girl enjoy her confusing in-between time filled with curiosity, yearning, and insecurity.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Words of Caution: There is language, underage drinking, crude humor, allusions to sex, and adult situations. Recommended for strong Grade 8 readers and up.
If you like this book try: Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, Chiggers by Hope Larson


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How do I motivate my boyfriend to save money?
Although we cover the topic once or twice a year, I constantly get questions from people who are frustrated by the financial habits of their spouses and partners. Some people are Spenders, and some people are Savers. What can you do to get both partners on the same page?
Linda is the most recent GRS reader with a relationship issue. She wrote to ask how to get her boyfriend motivated to save money. Here's her story:
How do I get someone motivated about saving money and being more frugal? Is it even possible?
My fiance and I are pretty different when it comes to money. I'm the Saver, and he's the Spender. I'm all about the future, and he's more about the present. He changed a lot after we got together, and now that we're saving for a wedding, he has definitely cut back on most of the big expenses.
But I get frustrated that although he speaks of saving money and of eventually buying a house, he's always wanting to eat out, to get the latest gadgets (he's switched cell phones three times in two years, and bought a MacBook and an iPad), and to go on vacation. He's a poster child for the latte factor: He has a gold card from Starbucks, which shows how much he frequents it.
His last job had really good pay, but not his current one, so that may also contribute to the spending habit. (He's used to what he used to spend and hasn't made the adjustment.) I'm not sure if I'm just giving him a hard time, or if there's just some thing I'm not doing right. Do you have any advice?
First, Linda needs to know that it is possible for a Spender to become a Saver. I was a Spender for decades, but my wife is a Saver. In fact, Kris could have written this e-mail twenty years ago. Now, though, I've changed. I still have Spender tendencies (do they ever go away?), but they're over-ruled by my new Saver habits.
But I didn't get here overnight. It took time. And there were a lot of missteps along the way.
I made plenty of false starts toward frugality during the late nineties and early aughts, but I didn't really change until I hit rock bottom. When we bought our house in 2004, I was overwhelmed by my debt and expenses. It was then that I was finally ready to "find religion".
From the folks I've talked to, that's a common theme: It's tough to get somebody else to change until they're ready to change. The motivation has to come from within. The question, then, is how do you inspire somebody to change their financial habits? I don't know if there's any one right answer. (But maybe readers can share what worked for them, or what worked for the people they know.)
Now, goals keep me going. I've learned that there are trade-offs. Sure, I want to buy books and comics and gadgets and expensive restaurant meals. And I do buy some of these things. But once I sat down and decided what was most important to me, it became easier for me to save.
Lately, I've been using travel as an example. I love to travel. Like George Bailey, I want to see the world. Because this goal is always with me (and I literally think of it every hour of every day now), it's easy for me to make smarter choices. In fact, it motivates me to find new ways to save.
So, how can Linda help her boyfriend save money and become more frugal? I think she has to find a way to show him how his present choices affect his future options. Talk with him about what his big goals are — does he want to travel? own a business? go back to school? — and then discuss what it takes to get there. Until he understands that what he does today affects what he can do tomorrow, he's not likely to change. (One sneaky way to try to get the point across is for Linda to talk about one of her goals, asking her boyfriend to help her figure out how to achieve it — even if she knows the answer already.)
What do you think? How do you motivate a spouse or partner to become better with money? For years, Kris tried to help me see the light, but I wasn't ready. What could she have done differently? What can Linda do to help her boyfriend?
Become A Money Boss And Join 15,000 Others
Subscribe to the GRS Insider (FREE) and we'll give you a copy of the Money Boss Manifesto (also FREE)


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America has added more than a million jobs since President Trump took office.
The U.S. economy added a strong 209,000 jobs in July, more than economists had expected. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, matching a 16-year low. Just after the Great Recession in 2009, unemployment peaked at 10%.
"The economy is looking pretty good," said Cathy Barrera, chief economic adviser at ZipRecruiter, the job posting site.
Many economists say the United States is at or near "full employment," meaning the unemployment rate won't go down significantly more.
Related: The CNNMoney Trump Jobs Tracker
The job market continues to be one of the main strengths of the U.S. economy. July was the 82nd consecutive month of job growth.
But wage growth is sluggish. Wages grew only 2.5% in July compared with a year earlier. The Federal Reserve would like to see wage growth kick up to 3.5%.
"There's still questions about when we're going to see that spike" in wages, said Chris Gaffney, president of Everbank World Markets. "Are we going to see more wage increases for U.S. workers?"
The United States has added 1.07 million jobs during Trump's six months in office. Of course, he isn't entirely responsible for the job market. A slew of factors throughout the economy affect hiring decisions.
Related: Trump's immigration policy poses risk to economic growth
July's job gains came across the board. Restaurants and bars added 53,000 employees. Health care gained 39,000 new positions. Manufacturing firms hired 16,000 workers. Business services and mining were also among the gainers.
More Americans who were on the sidelines jumped back into the job market in July to look for work. Experts say that as unemployment stays low and wage growth remains steady, more Americans should start looking for work again.
"There's still lots of people coming back into the labor force, looking for jobs," said Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual, an insurance firm.
The good economic news comes days after Trump endorsed an immigration plan aimed at lowering the number of foreign-born workers by designing a skills-based system to determine who gets into the United States. Last year, there were 27 million foreign-born workers in the United States.
Several economists say the plan would put U.S. economic growth at risk if it meant there would be fewer workers in America. Economic growth is already paltry, and Trump has promised to boost it to 3% from its current range of about 2%.
"It would definitely slow economic growth if you slow the number of people coming in," Rick added.


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Hide the Unread eMail Number on Mail Icons for iPhone & iPad
Most of us have an email account or two, and likewise most of us have an increasingly growing number of unread mail messages accumulating slowly (or quickly) in our inboxes. Features like VIP tagging and inbox can help to tame some of the email clutter, but there's simply no denying that some of our inboxes are past the point of no return… where hundreds if not thousands of emails are going unread, cluttering up the inbox and making for some astronomical unread mail numbers showing up on our Mail, Gmail, Mailbox, Ymail, and other email app icons in iOS. If your iPhone or iPad mail clients look anything like this due to tons of unread emails, it's sometimes best to just call it quits and hide that onerously giant number from the mail icons completely.
Turning Off Unread Mail Count for Mail App Icons in iOS
- Go to "Settings" and head to "Notification Center"
- Tap on "Mail" and then tap on the mail account name to change the unread icon count for
- Flip the "Badge App Icon" switch to OFF
- Repeat for other email accounts if necessary
For users who have added multiple email accounts to the Mail app, each individual Mail account will need to be adjusted to completely remove the unread count red number indicator from the app icon.
For further email relief, you can also mute the new mail alert sound in iOS or on a per account basis, while still maintaining VIP sounds for those important senders that really need to get through.
Hiding the Unread Mail Number from Gmail & Other Email Apps in iOS
- From the "Settings" app, return to "Notification Center"
- Select "Gmail", "Ymail", or the other email app to hide the unread message count for
- Switch each "Badge App Icon" setting to the OFF position
Unlike the native Mail app for iOS, multiple email addresses setup within the Gmail app are handled by the same unread count, so keep that in mind if you're turning off the setting for the app completely.
Of course, you can hide other red badges too, including that for Messages, Phone, Reminders, Calendar, and any other app that has updates that post as a number overlaid on the app icon too.


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A Scottish brewery plans to open a new bar on the US-Mexico border in effort to bring together craft beer fans from the two countries.
BrewDog hopes to build its Bar on the Edge half in Texas and half in Chihuahua.
It would serve Mexican beers on the US side and American drinks on the Mexican side, as well as BrewDog's range of craft beers brewed in Columbus, Ohio.
James Watt, co-founder of the Aberdeenshire-based brewery, said: "Beer has always been a unifying factor between cultures – and our business was born from collaboration and an inclusive approach – so we thought it would be fun to place the bar a few feet further to actually cross the US-Mexico border too.
"We will request official permission from the local authorities to put it there and adhere to any red tape stuff, but I guess it would make it more difficult to build a wall if there's a BrewDog bar in the way.
"We're planning on putting the bar there anyway until someone tells us to move it.
"It was (former US president) JFK that said, 'conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth'. We love the US, and we already have an amazing army of fans over here, but we do not intend to bring BrewDog 'lite' to the US.
"The Bar on the Edge is our line in the sand, quite literally."
The geographical border, at which current US President Donald Trump has vowed to build a wall, will be represented by a dotted line across the centre of the premises.
Built from old shipping containers, it will be classed as a temporary mobile building.
Although it will not see regular footfall, the founders hope it will become a magnetic pole for craft beer fans on both sides of the border to come together.
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