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Web 2.0 Tools
Web 2.0 tools sure are niftyand 'next-gen,' but are theyactually making a differencein the way students andeducators collaborate?
Everyone seems to have a different definitionfor "Web 2.0," but most people agree the phrase describesa second generation of web-based communities and hostedservices that aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, andsharing between users. Technically speaking, these new technologiesinclude blogs, wikis, folksonomies (collaborative orsocial tagging), and social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us.
In the business world, these technologies enable colleagues in different offices to work together on projects, and thus move those efforts ahead quickly and more easily than traveling to an in-person meeting or even teleconferencing. In higher education, however, achieving measurable results with these tools is a bit more challenging. And maybe that's because-for the academic community, at least-questions continue to swirl around the use of these technologies. Questions such as: What do these tools bring to the table? How can educators be certain students will use them? How does restructuring a curriculum around Web 2.0 actually make a difference in how students learn? Across the country, as more and more colleges and universities consider embracing Web 2.0, the educators and technologists involved feel a certain amount of trepidation, and even ponder the future of the movement.
Yet, a handful of schools are starting to figure things out. For instance, at Boston College (MA), the State University of New York-Delhi, Lake Superior College (MN), Grand Rapids Community College (MI), and Bentley College (MA), technologists recently have adopted Web 2.0 tools in an effort to improve collaboration. What works at these schools? Following are examples of Web 2.0 components and tools-and the techniques being employed to foster their successful use-that you should consider before moving forward with your own campus initiative.
Wonderful Wikis
Without question, the wiki is the Web 2.0 tool most commonly used by educators and higher ed technologists to facilitate collaboration. Among the more popular offerings: web-based wiki services from vendors such as PBwiki, Socialtext, and Atlassian (maker of the Confluence product).
AT BOSTON COLLEGE, Professor Kane encourages students to submit their own exam questions viahis Exam Question Workspace wiki. In a year, students submitted a whopping 600 questions overall.
At Boston College, at least one educator is all about Socialtext. Jerry Kane, assistant professor of information systems for the Carroll School of Management, has used the product to develop an online community he calls the Exam Question Workspace. Throughout the semester, Kane encourages students to log on to the wiki to suggest exam questions and respond to questions other students have submitted. Before each assessment, he goes into the workspace and selects the toughest questions to include on his tests. Since Kane started using the workspace a year ago, he says students have submitted a whopping 600 questions overall; he estimates that he's pulled 80 to 90 percent of his exam questions from the wiki. Students, he reports, see the workspace as a good place to home in on important facts, so they study material on the wiki religiously, essentially working together to improve their collective knowledge. Interestingly, from the get-go, Kane tells students that there's no guarantee the answers on the site are correct. Instead, he insists that they must be "responsible consumers of the tool" and "fix answers they find to be wrong."
The results? Kane says that student performance in general has improved tremendously over what it was before he started using the wiki. "The strategy works because it breaks those assumptions that learning is a one-way information transmission from the expert faculty to the amateur student," he says. "You've heard of the 'wisdom of crowds'? Well, this method proves that a group of 50 amateurs can learn more from each other than they can when one expert tells them everything."
At SUNY-Delhi, CIO Patrick Masson uses wikis for a different purpose: to assist in policy decision-making. Masson has implemented Confluence to establish a forum in which busy colleagues can read, exchange, review, and edit documents that pertain to certain policies and procedures. Rather than relying on a survey or top-down initiative that might be driven by executive leadership, the school is trying to create an environment where end users articulate their needs and shape the process along the way. So far, Masson says user response to this approach has been overwhelming. During a recent policy initiative, for instance, the wiki's logbook indicated that over the course of one month, the school's president made 73 edits, the coordinator of online learning made 58, the chair of budget and planning made 31, and the vice president of student housing made 29.
"There's no way I could orchestrate all of those meetings on my own," says Masson, who regularly writes about Web 2.0 and collaboration on his blog, As Much by Writing. "To me, the wiki provides not only a communications channel, but an environment that allows people to see current thinking and work together toward legitimate progress."
ANY SCHOOL CAN EMBRACE individual Web 2.0 tools to enhance student collaboration.At Georgetown University (DC), however, technologists recently invested in aslew of them, and brought all of the tools together under one portal designed toserve students in myriad ways.
The portal, dubbed Digital Commons and currentlyin beta phase, offers nine different Web 2.0 resources: blogs, wikis, electronicportfolios, forums, podcasts, posters, timelines, research, and dStories (multimedianarratives with video, audio, and images).
Eddie Maloney, managing director of the university's Center for New Designs inLearning and Scholarship, says the site boasts two important components: the toolsthemselves and a "scaffold" that explains to users how to incorporate the technologiesinto their everyday lives. Ultimately, he notes, the goal is to familiarize users withWeb 2.0 tools early, and to such a degree that collaboration with the technologiesbecomes second nature. After all, "What good is a car without an instruction manualand a road map?" he asks. "The more our users are exposed to these tools, themore they'll use them."
Down the road, Maloney says Georgetown has even bigger plans to create whathe calls a Digital Notebook-an integrated space designed to store all the workstudents produce while they're at the university. He likens this project to the digitalversion of the 1980s Trapper Keeper notebook, adding that it will facilitate collaborationby allowing others to review and provide feedback at will. While aspects of theDigital Commons are live today, Maloney says it could be four or five years beforethe Digital Notebook is up and running.
Other Tools
Wikis aren't the only Web 2.0 tools to aid collaboration in higher education; technologists at two- and four-year schools are finding value in a number of other technology products, as well. Take Lake Superior College, a member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. There, VP of Technology and the Virtual Campus Barry Dahl recently has embraced Zoho Writer, an online word processing and virtual office tool from AdventNet, to enable collaboration among colleagues and students alike. Zoho works a lot like Google Docs: Users can log on from anywhere in the world and read, review, and edit documents simultaneously. And according to Dahl, Lake Superior professors are using the tool to facilitate student collaboration without the endless passing around of Microsoft Word documents-a practice that creates versioning nightmares and turns many students off to the idea of working in groups.
"It's great if I like it and even better if our educators like it, but more than anything, we want technologies that appeal to students," Dahl says. "At the end of the day, if a tool isn't something our students are going to embrace, after a year or two we're going to move on to something else. They're the users who drive everything."
At Grand Rapids Community College, technologists have turned to similar technologies for different purposes. For students, the school recently started using Viddler, a Microsoft .NET tool that enables users to embed comments and captions in videos broadcast over the school's YouTube channel. As others watch videos that have been "Viddled," textbased comments emerge from the moving images just like the bubble quotes on VH1's Pop-up Video show.
While this might not seem collaborative on the surface, Eric Kunnen, coordinator of instructional technologies, says students have taken full advantage of the tool, embedding insights and other suggestions for peers who view the same videos down the road.
Kunnen and the IT staff at Grand Rapids also have implemented Web 2.0 tools to facilitate collaboration among faculty. Here, in a professional development class that educates classroom professors about teaching online, instructors use the social bookmarking features of the Bb Scholar tool from Blackboard to share links and build a repository around best practices.
"The ability to tag resources instead of e-mailing them to each other is incredibly collaborative and time-saving," says Kunnen. "While we can't yet determine that it's improving our professional development, it certainly is making the exchange of information easier among those who take the classes."
Importantly, a new Web 2.0 tool from Microsoft incorporates the best of all these approaches. The tool, known as Popfly, facilitates the creation of "mashups," which are constructs that let users work together to combine data from different sources. In fact, collaboration is the whole idea behind Popfly: Think open source, only with tiny programs for a website. Once users have created these constructs, they are encouraged to share them with other users all over the world in the form of "blocks."
Such was the case at Bentley College, where Mark Frydenberg, senior lecturer and a software specialist in the Computer Information Systems department, recently introduced the tool to some of his computer science classes. One Frydenberg assignment directed students to create mashups that used certain data analysis functionalities that hadn't been covered in class (in an example for the class, Frydenberg himself created a mashup that replaced postal state abbreviations with states' full names). The twist: Instead of developing brand-new mashups, students were tasked to look outside the Bentley universe and build variations on other mashups that general-interest users had built themselves.
"Basically, for the purposes of this assignment, they all had the benefit of someone else's work," says Frydenberg, who notes that perhaps the only downside of Popfly is that it does not allow two people to edit the same thing at the same time. "In some classrooms [building on top of others' work] might be construed as cheating; in mine, the act of collaborating with others was precisely the point."
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Challenges for Collaboration
With technologies such as these, it's hard to understand why more college and university educators haven't asked themselves how to get the most from Web 2.0. Still, not everyone is entirely sold on the wonder of this next generation of internet tools.
Dahl at Lake Superior raises concerns about resource management. After praising the value of some of the Web 2.0 tools he uses at his school, he concedes that-particularly in the area of online learning-many Web 2.0 tools can create real problems for the Technical Support department, since a good number of students might need help figuring out how to scale the learning curve of a certain product.
"If you have 30 students and 25 of them have never used a particular kind of blogging software, but all of a sudden it's a requirement of the course, those students are going to bombard the help desk with support calls as soon as they see the syllabus," he maintains. "Adding another layer of technology requires more attention on our part, and that's something we have to prepare for."
Ron Danielson, vice provost for information services and CIO at Santa Clara University (CA), agrees, adding that many Web 2.0 tools are worthwhile, but not intuitive to use. Danielson recounts his experience chairing a search committee for a new dean at his school: He recalls that many of the other faculty members on the committee hadn't the foggiest notion about how to use a wiki he developed. He says this kind of adoption lag presents a huge obstacle for Web 2.0 tools because the technologies will never become more than novelties unless a critical mass of users feels comfortable relying on them to collaborate.
"Some people are intimidated by the interactive nature of all this," he says- an admission that must be painful for him since, on SCU's behalf, Danielson recently invested in another Web 2.0 medium: Second Life. "In theory, [educators] want to embrace all of these new technologies and collaborate. In practice, it's a little more complicated to get their heads around the fact that periodic regurgitation of facts is just not the way to go."
KEEP UP ON THE LATEST WEB 2.0 NEWS, analysis, and campus innovation coveragewith Campus Technology's new Web 2.0 eNewsletter, distributed monthly andedited by Trent Batson, senior associate with the Teaching, Learning, and TechnologyGroup. For more information or to subscribe, visit here.
Because of such adoption impediments, many experts suggest it could be years before higher education separates the wheat from the chaff and determines which Web 2.0 tools make the biggest difference in academia. As part of this process, Sandy Schaeffer, director of the Advanced Learning Center at the University of Memphis (TN), says another key question technologists must ask themselves is how one actually measures collaboration success. From his perspective, Web 2.0 hasn't necessarily improved collaboration, but has instead morphed it into a different form. Students who once met around a physical table in the student union now might meet in a wiki; those who formerly exchanged handwritten notes now may trade URLs on a social bookmarking site.
"Eventually, we may have a net gain of collaboration once people become comfortable with the mechanics of this stuff," says Schaeffer. "Right now, the changes are noteworthy, but I wouldn't say we've seen a revolution just yet."
Until that revolution occurs, Trent Batson, senior associate with the nonprofit Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group, says the best way for educators to take full advantage of Web 2.0 tools is to use the technology to actually redefine what they mean by content. He points out that prior to 2004, content was what the teacher brought to class. But if educators use Web 2.0 tools correctly, Batson says the definition of content can be expanded to include everything students create during class with guidance from the instructor, and everything they create outside of class by interacting among themselves.
"Change won't happen on its own," says Batson (who is also the editor of Campus Technology's new Web 2.0 eNewsletter; see box). "It's up to us to use these tools to make knowledge not the product of conversation but, instead, the conversation itself."
::WEBEXTRAS :: On-Demand Webinar: Online CollaborationResults in Dramatic Training,Support Savings at MnSCU. White Paper: Research: Socialtext'sCorporate Wiki.
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It is 231 days before the move to ICD-10 becomes a must-do. Lest the deadline slip your mind, MedPage Today is spotlighting some of those thousands of new codes that might just be getting a bit too granular.
Today's code:
V52.2XXA: Person on outside of pick-up truck or van injured in collision with two- or three-wheeled motor vehicle in nontraffic accident, initial encounter
Other "Follies"
V00.32: Snow-ski accident


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A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
Researchers Test Laxative-Free Colon Scan
But virtual procedure isn't ready for prime time yet, researchers say
URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_125148.html
(*this news item will not be available after 08/12/2012)
Monday, May 14, 2012
MONDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) -- A preliminary new study suggests that patients who get virtual colonoscopies -- alternatives to regular colonoscopies -- might avoid the unpleasant task of bowel-cleansing with laxatives beforehand.
However, this study of 605 people found that the laxative-free virtual colonoscopies were less effective at detecting small malignancies than regular colonoscopies. Not surprisingly, patients who underwent the laxative-free procedure preferred it.
"This study opens the door to a more patient-friendly form of exam," said study lead author Dr. Michael Zalis, associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. "We know that the colonoscopy preparation keeps a lot of people from participating."
Colon cancer is expected to kill 50,000 people in the United States this year. Colonoscopy screening enables doctors to identify and remove precancerous polyps.
The virtual colonoscopy has become more common in recent years. The American Cancer Society endorses it as an acceptable screening method. Supporters say it is more comfortable than regular colonoscopy because it doesn't require placing a fiber-optic scope into the rectum. Instead, doctors use CT scanners to inspect the intestines for signs of colon cancer.
The virtual procedure doesn't require sedation, unlike regular screening, but it does require insertion of a small tube into the rectum to push carbon dioxide into the intestine.
And like regular colonoscopy, virtual colonoscopy usually requires that patients drink a liquid laxative that causes diarrhea and cramping as it cleanses the bowel of fecal matter.
But this new procedure cleanses the bowel "electronically." Patients involved in the study, who were 50 to 85 years old and at average to moderate risk of colon cancer, received a "contrast agent" to add to low-fiber meals and snacks for two days before their procedures. Then they had virtual colonoscopies without needing to take laxatives.
Contrast agents are designed to mark things in the body so radiologists can detect them. In this case, the contrast agents marked bits of feces in the intestines, and a software program removed them from the image.
Several weeks later, the patients underwent regular colonoscopy, and the researchers compared the results.
The researchers found that the laxative-free colonoscopies were nearly as good as regular screenings at identifying polyps 10 mm or larger -- the most likely to become cancerous -- but were less effective at detecting smaller polyps. Common practice usually involves removing any polyps 6 millimeters or larger, the study authors said.
The virtual procedures do "an OK but not great job at finding larger polyps that everybody would agree need to be identified," said Dr. David Weinberg, chairman of medicine at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. "They do an even less good job at finding smaller polyps that might be significant."
Weinberg said there's still much to be understood regarding virtual colonoscopy, such as how often patients should undergo one to make sure polyps that are missed don't have a chance to grow to a dangerous size.
As for the idea of laxative-free virtual colonoscopy, he said, "the technique needs to continue to evolve before it's likely to be an important and frequently utilized alternative to colon cancer screening."
The study, funded in part by GE Healthcare, manufacturer of the contrast agent, appears in the May 15 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
SOURCES: Michael E. Zalis, M.D., director, CT colonography, department of radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and associate professor, radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston; David Weinberg, M.D., chairman, medicine, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia; May 15, 2012, Annals of Internal Medicine
Copyright (c) 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Series #1)
- Description
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- About the Author
- Read an Excerpt
Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history.
With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate — and gods and mortals — are bound inseparably together.
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Orbit
Publication Date: 02-25-2010
Pages: 427
Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.30(d)
Series: N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Series #1
N. K. Jemisin is a Brooklyn author who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, Nebula, and RT Reviewers' Choice awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards. She is a science fiction and fantasy reviewer for the New York Times, and you can find her online at nkjemisin.com.
I AM NOT AS I ONCE WAS. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember. * * * My people tell stories of the night I was born. They say my mother crossed her legs in the middle of labor and fought with all her strength not to release me into the world. I was born anyhow, of course; nature cannot be denied. Yet it does not surprise me that she tried. * * * My mother was an heiress of the Arameri. There was a ball for the lesser nobility—the sort of thing that happens once a decade as a backhanded sop to their self-esteem. My father dared ask my mother to dance; she deigned to consent. I have often wondered what he said and did that night to make her fall in love with him so powerfully, for she eventually abdicated her position to be with him. It is the stuff of great tales, yes? Very romantic. In the tales, such a couple lives happily ever after. The tales do not say what happens when the most powerful family in the world is offended in the process. * * * But I forget myself. Who was I, again? Ah, yes. My name is Yeine. In my people's way I am Yeine dau she Kinneth tai wer Somem kanna Darre, which means that I am the daughter of Kinneth, and that my tribe within the Darre people is called Somem. Tribes mean little to us these days, though before the Gods' War they were more important. I am nineteen years old. I also am, or was, the chieftain of my people, called ennu. In the Arameri way, which is the way of the Amn race from whom they originated, I am the Baroness Yeine Darr. One month after my mother died, I received a message from my grandfather Dekarta Arameri, inviting me to visit the family seat. Because one does not refuse an invitation from the Arameri, I set forth. It took the better part of three months to travel from the High North continent to Senm, across the Repentance Sea. Despite Darr's relative poverty, I traveled in style the whole way, first by palanquin and ocean vessel, and finally by chauffeured horse-coach. This was not my choice. The Darre Warriors' Council, which rather desperately hoped that I might restore us to the Arameri's good graces, thought that this extravagance would help. It is well known that Amn respect displays of wealth. Thus arrayed, I arrived at my destination on the cusp of the winter solstice. And as the driver stopped the coach on a hill outside the city, ostensibly to water the horses but more likely because he was a local and liked to watch foreigners gawk, I got my first glimpse of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' heart. There is a rose that is famous in High North. (This is not a digression.) It is called the altarskirt rose. Not only do its petals unfold in a radiance of pearled white, but frequently it grows an incomplete secondary flower about the base of its stem. In its most prized form, the altarskirt grows a layer of overlarge petals that drape the ground. The two bloom in tandem, seedbearing head and skirt, glory above and below. This was the city called Sky. On the ground, sprawling over a small mountain or an oversize hill: a circle of high walls, mounting tiers of buildings, all resplendent in white, per Arameri decree. Above the city, smaller but brighter, the pearl of its tiers occasionally obscured by scuds of cloud, was the palace—also called Sky, and perhaps more deserving of the name. I knew the column was there, the impossibly thin column that supported such a massive structure, but from that distance I couldn't see it. Palace floated above city, linked in spirit, both so unearthly in their beauty that I held my breath at the sight. The altarskirt rose is priceless because of the difficulty of producing it. The most famous lines are heavily inbred; it originated as a deformity that some savvy breeder deemed useful. The primary flower's scent, sweet to us, is apparently repugnant to insects; these roses must be pollinated by hand. The secondary flower saps nutrients crucial for the plant's fertility. Seeds are rare, and for every one that grows into a perfect altarskirt, ten others become plants that must be destroyed for their hideousness. * * * At the gates of Sky (the palace) I was turned away, though not for the reasons I'd expected. My grandfather was not present, it seemed. He had left instructions in the event of my arrival. Sky is the Arameri's home; business is never done there. This is because, officially, they do not rule the world. The Nobles' Consortium does, with the benevolent assistance of the Order of Itempas. The Consortium meets in the Salon, a huge, stately building—white-walled, of course—that sits among a cluster of official buildings at the foot of the palace. It is very impressive, and would be more so if it did not sit squarely in Sky's elegant shadow. I went inside and announced myself to the Consortium staff, whereupon they all looked very surprised, though politely so. One of them—a very junior aide, I gathered—was dispatched to escort me to the central chamber, where the day's session was well under way. As a lesser noble, I had always been welcome to attend a Consortium gathering, but there had never seemed any point. Besides the expense and months of travel time required to attend, Darr was simply too small, poor, and ill-favored to have any clout, even without my mother's abdication adding to our collective stain. Most of High North is regarded as a backwater, and only the largest nations there have enough prestige or money to make their voices heard among our noble peers. So I was not surprised to find that the seat reserved for me on the Consortium floor—in a shadowed area, behind a pillar—was currently occupied by an excess delegate from one of the Senm-continent nations. It would be terribly rude, the aide stammered anxiously, to dislodge this man, who was elderly and had bad knees. Perhaps I would not mind standing? Since I had just spent many long hours cramped in a carriage, I was happy to agree. So the aide positioned me at the side of the Consortium floor, where I actually had a good view of the goings-on. The Consortium chamber was magnificently apportioned, with white marble and rich, dark wood that had probably come from Darr's forests in better days. The nobles—three hundred or so in total—sat in comfortable chairs on the chamber's floor or along elevated tiers above. Aides, pages, and scribes occupied the periphery with me, ready to fetch documents or run errands as needed. At the head of the chamber, the Consortium Overseer stood atop an elaborate podium, pointing to members as they indicated a desire to speak. Apparently there was a dispute over water rights in a desert somewhere; five countries were involved. None of the conversation's participants spoke out of turn; no tempers were lost; there were no snide comments or veiled insults. It was all very orderly and polite, despite the size of the gathering and the fact that most of those present were accustomed to speaking however they pleased among their own people. One reason for this extraordinary good behavior stood on a plinth behind the Overseer's podium: a life-size statue of the Skyfather in one of His most famous poses, the Appeal to Mortal Reason. Hard to speak out of turn under that stern gaze. But more repressive, I suspected, was the stern gaze of the man who sat behind the Overseer in an elevated box. I could not see him well from where I stood, but he was elderly, richly dressed, and flanked by a younger blond man and a dark-haired woman, as well as a handful of retainers. It did not take much to guess this man's identity, though he wore no crown, had no visible guards, and neither he nor anyone in his entourage spoke throughout the meeting. "Hello, Grandfather," I murmured to myself, and smiled at him across the chamber, though I knew he could not see me. The pages and scribes gave me the oddest looks for the rest of the afternoon. * * * I knelt before my grandfather with my head bowed, hearing titters of laughter. No, wait. * * * There were three gods once. Only three, I mean. Now there are dozens, perhaps hundreds. They breed like rabbits. But once there were only three, most powerful and glorious of all: the god of day, the god of night, and the goddess of twilight and dawn. Or light and darkness and the shades between. Or order, chaos, and balance. None of that is important because one of them died, the other might as well have, and the last is the only one who matters anymore. The Arameri get their power from this remaining god. He is called the Skyfather, Bright Itempas, and the ancestors of the Arameri were His most devoted priests. He rewarded them by giving them a weapon so mighty that no army could stand against it. They used this weapon—weapons, really—to make themselves rulers of the world. That's better. Now. * * * I knelt before my grandfather with my head bowed and my knife laid on the floor. We were in Sky, having transferred there following the Consortium session, via the magic of the Vertical Gate. Immediately upon arrival I had been summoned to my grandfather's audience chamber, which felt much like a throne room. The chamber was roughly circular because circles are sacred to Itempas. The vaulted ceiling made the members of the court look taller—unnecessarily, since Amn are a tall people compared to my own. Tall and pale and endlessly poised, like statues of human beings rather than real flesh and blood. "Most high Lord Arameri," I said. "I am honored to be in your presence." I had heard titters of laughter when I entered the room. Now they sounded again, muffled by hands and kerchiefs and fans. I was reminded of bird flocks roosting in a forest canopy. Before me sat Dekarta Arameri, uncrowned king of the world. He was old; perhaps the oldest man I have ever seen, though Amn usually live longer than my people, so this was not surprising. His thin hair had gone completely white, and he was so gaunt and stooped that the elevated stone chair on which he sat—it was never called a throne—seemed to swallow him whole. "Granddaughter," he said, and the titters stopped. The silence was heavy enough to hold in my hand. He was head of the Arameri family, and his word was law. No one had expected him to acknowledge me as kin, least of all myself. "Stand," he said. "Let me have a look at you." I did, reclaiming my knife since no one had taken it. There was more silence. I am not very interesting to look at. It might have been different if I had gotten the traits of my two peoples in a better combination—Amn height with Darre curves, perhaps, or thick straight Darre hair colored Amn-pale. I have Amn eyes: faded green in color, more unnerving than pretty. Otherwise, I am short and flat and brown as forestwood, and my hair is a curled mess. Because I find it unmanageable otherwise, I wear it short. I am sometimes mistaken for a boy. As the silence wore on, I saw Dekarta frown. There was an odd sort of marking on his forehead, I noticed: a perfect circle of black, as if someone had dipped a coin in ink and pressed it to his flesh. On either side of this was a thick chevron, bracketing the circle. "You look nothing like her," he said at last. "But I suppose that is just as well. Viraine?" This last was directed at a man who stood among the courtiers closest to the throne. For an instant I thought he was another elder, then I realized my error: though his hair was stark white, he was only somewhere in his fourth decade. He, too, bore a forehead mark, though his was less elaborate than Dekarta's: just the black circle. "She's not hopeless," he said, folding his arms. "Nothing to be done about her looks; I doubt even makeup will help. But put her in civilized attire and she can convey… nobility, at least." His eyes narrowed, taking me apart by degrees. My best Darren clothing, a long vest of white civvetfur and calf-length leggings, earned me a sigh. (I had gotten the odd look for this outfit at the Salon, but I hadn't realized it was that bad.) He examined my face so long that I wondered if I should show my teeth. Instead he smiled, showing his. "Her mother has trained her. Look how she shows no fear or resentment, even now." "She will do, then," said Dekarta. "Do for what, Grandfather?" I asked. The weight in the room grew heavier, expectant, though he had already named me granddaughter. There was a certain risk involved in my daring to address him the same familiar way, of course—powerful men are touchy over odd things. But my mother had indeed trained me well, and I knew it was worth the risk to establish myself in the court's eyes. Dekarta Arameri's face did not change; I could not read it. "For my heir, Granddaughter. I intend to name you to that position today." The silence turned to stone as hard as my grandfather's chair. I thought he might be joking, but no one laughed. That was what made me believe him at last: the utter shock and horror on the faces of the courtiers as they stared at their lord. Except the one called Viraine. He watched me. It came to me that some response was expected. "You already have heirs," I said. "Not as diplomatic as she could be," Viraine said in a dry tone. Dekarta ignored this. "It is true, there are two other candidates," he said to me. "My niece and nephew, Scimina and Relad. Your cousins, once removed." I had heard of them, of course; everyone had. Rumor constantly made one or the other heir, though no one knew for certain which. Both was something that had not occurred to me. "If I may suggest, Grandfather," I said carefully, though it was impossible to be careful in this conversation, "I would make two heirs too many." It was the eyes that made Dekarta seem so old, I would realize much later. I had no idea what color they had originally been; age had bleached and filmed them to near-white. There were lifetimes in those eyes, none of them happy. "Indeed," he said. "But just enough for an interesting competition, I think." "I don't understand, Grandfather." He lifted his hand in a gesture that would have been graceful, once. Now his hand shook badly. "It is very simple. I have named three heirs. One of you will actually manage to succeed me. The other two will doubtless kill each other or be killed by the victor. As for which lives, and which die—" He shrugged. "That is for you to decide." My mother had taught me never to show fear, but emotions will not be stilled so easily. I began to sweat. I have been the target of an assassination attempt only once in my life—the benefit of being heir to such a tiny, impoverished nation. No one wanted my job. But now there would be two others who did. Lord Relad and Lady Scimina were wealthy and powerful beyond my wildest dreams. They had spent their whole lives striving against each other toward the goal of ruling the world. And here came I, unknown, with no resources and few friends, into the fray. "There will be no decision," I said. To my credit, my voice did not shake. "And no contest. They will kill me at once and turn their attention back to each other." "That is possible," said my grandfather. I could think of nothing to say that would save me. He was insane; that was obvious. Why else turn rulership of the world into a contest prize? If he died tomorrow, Relad and Scimina would rip the earth asunder between them. The killing might not end for decades. And for all he knew, I was an idiot. If by some impossible chance I managed to gain the throne, I could plunge the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms into a spiral of mismanagement and suffering. He had to know that. One cannot argue with madness. But sometimes, with luck and the Skyfather's blessing, one can understand it. "Why?" He nodded as if he had expected my question. "Your mother deprived me of an heir when she left our family. You will pay her debt." "She is four months in the grave," I snapped. "Do you honestly want revenge against a dead woman?" "This has nothing to do with revenge, Granddaughter. It is a matter of duty." He made a gesture with his left hand, and another courtier detached himself from the throng. Unlike the first man—indeed, unlike most of the courtiers whose faces I could see—the mark on this man's forehead was a downturned half-moon, like an exaggerated frown. He knelt before the dais that held Dekarta's chair, his waist-length red braid falling over one shoulder to curl on the floor. "I cannot hope that your mother has taught you duty," Dekarta said to me over this man's back. "She abandoned hers to dally with her sweet-tongued savage. I allowed this—an indulgence I have often regretted. So I will assuage that regret by bringing you back into the fold, Granddaughter. Whether you live or die is irrelevant. You are Arameri, and like all of us, you will serve." Then he waved to the red-haired man. "Prepare her as best you can." There was nothing more. The red-haired man rose and came to me, murmuring that I should follow him. I did. Thus ended my first meeting with my grandfather, and thus began my first day as an Arameri. It was not the worst of the days to come.Read an Excerpt
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
By Jemisin, N.K. Orbit
Copyright © 2010 Jemisin, N.K.
All right reserved.
Excerpted from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by Jemisin, N.K. Copyright © 2010 by Jemisin, N.K.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.


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Moon Bloodgood's films include What Just Happened, Pathfinder, and Eight Below, while Common has racked up credits in American Gangster, Wanted, Street Kings, and Smokin' Aces. Together, they're part of the Resistance in summer blockbuster Terminator Salvation. I spoke briefly with both actors at San Francisco's Moscone Center on the occasion of WonderCon 2009.
Moon Bloodgood: Hi...how are you...?
Groucho: Obviously you had to do some physical training, or weapons training. Also, what did you do to get yourself in an emotional headspace as well? Both of those things.
Common: I guess for me, I just—after we really started learning who my character was, 'cause McG—you know my character was initially written not too much—it's really only just a bad-ass character, you know, really the big heavy of the movie. And, you know, McG wanted more to it, to the character, and I was glad he wanted more 'cause I didn't want to just be the big, bulky guy there, you know? So anyway, I worked on different things, thinking about how it would be in a world that's post-apocalyptic, a world where, you know, things have been destroyed and we're really fighting for survival. So emotionally that took me to different places. And then, each situation and scenes take you to different places emotionally. Like, there was a scene—I don't think it's in the movie anymore—where I challenge—'cause I ain't know if Marcus was a machine or not—none of us knew what he really was. And it was like, I was lettin' out all my fury that I had encountered, you know, from being in this world—I let it out on him. And that scene was emotional in certain ways. It got kinda deep when we were doing it. Sam— Sam is a great actor. Moon and I were talking, and we were really impressed by what he was doing.
Moon Bloodgood: Yeah. Oh! I was so lost in what you were saying. It was hard, because when I'd come on—I said that on the panel—I was first up, I guess, me and Sam, and I'd done all this work on my backstory and notes and who I was. We had all coincidentally read The Road by Cormack McCarthy, and it sort of came up, and we had rehearsals for two weeks. Then, you know, Christian came on and the script was changing, andit was just—things were changing and there needed to be a sense of spontaneity. So I—a couple of my story points changed, so I had to sort of just— thank God I had really worked where I was coming from, who I was, what my relation was to Marcus. At the same time, I sorta had to be in the moment, because it would be like "Oh, your father was a crop duster." "Oh, no, he wasn't." I was like "Okay!" And literally, like, you're shooting in an hour. And Christian wants to...right? You had to be like "Okay." Not just as a technical part as an actor. It was a really big learning experience on how to be spont—you know, not so set in your backstory and who you think you are, yeah.
C: I remember one day they came and told me, like—I got to set that day, and they was like, "Yo, it's the scene your brother got killed." I'm like, "I didn't even know I had a brother!"
MB: (Laughs uproariously.)
C: Then by the time I got to the set, when I got to the set, they was like "Oh, he's not your brother anymore. He's—"
MB: Oh, no, no, no, they did that?
C: I was like "Ahh, man."
MB: No, they didn't! Oh my god!
C: You just had to be ready.
MB: Yeah...
C: My first scene [with Christian Bale]—actually it was one of the first scenes I had dialogue on, so I was excited. I was charged. It was the scene when they tell me that my brother had died, or one of the comrades had died. And it was him coming back from the war, an actual battle, and telling us what happened. And, you know, it was good. It really was a great expression for me, and I really loved it, 'cause it was an emotional thing for me, but he was saying, "Yo, this dude just died; he didn't make it." And my whole thing was like, "Hey, if he died fighting with spirit, then that's what that had to be." So, you know, I had to pull that soldier out of me on that one. And it was fun. One thing Anton [Yelchin] and I were talking about is that you want scenes where you really get to do somethin' as an actor. Not only just runnin' around and shootin', so any scene where I get any type of emotional expression, I dig it.
MB: Especially with Christian Bale.
C: Yeah, with Christian Bale. I was really serious. And [to my agent] I was like "I want—" a list of actors, and Christian Bale was on that list of actors I wanted to work with.
MB: Absolutely...
G: McG talked about really wanting to have a lot of practical effects. He talks about not wanting to have the tennis ball to stare at and that kind of thing—the special effects. Were there ever any hairy moments? Can you talk a little bit about the physical side of the performance?
MB: Yeah, we had—I had very, very little green screen. Everything was like, for me… we had great sets and it made it so much easier as an actor not to have to use—I mean, there were moments I had to use my imagination, but that was so much better being able to see these amazing—We also had the budget for it. Umm… Wow, I mean, it's been six months. There was so much action stuff, it was just like—
G: But you never felt in danger.
MB: There was one moment when Sam was like "I can't see, so I need to know where that bomb is." Like "What just went off?" I fell one time, I tumbled. I started laughing. I mean, there's just moments—no, that fear motivates me. Not in every area of my life, but when I'm afraid, "Scshhh!"—I think maybe that's why I got the part? 'Cause I'm not afraid to be physical. Did you have to do tons of physical—? You even shoot after me one day, right? At the silo.
C: Yeah. Most of this stuff—
MB: You call me a traitor.
C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
MB: I'm still mad about that.
C: (Laughs.) Yeah, I ain't do too many new things. I mean, the first films I've been doing, unfortunately, I've been holding guns in each one—
MB: (Laughs.)
C: So there wasn't a whole lot of gun training I had to do. But there was one motorcycle scene that I thought I was going to do the stunt for. But, I mean, first of all, I came to the set thinking I was going to do the stunt, and when I saw it really happening, I was like "Naw, I ain't doin' that."
MB: (Laughs.) Right, right—
C: I wanted to do it.
MB: You thought you could, but you saw it, you're like "Oh, I'm gonna go have a sandwich." It was good!
C: I was cool on that.
MB: Good!


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Family Disaster Plan
Family Disaster Plan Summative AssessmentFor this paper you must cite and reference 2 sources. The paper should be 23 pages and written using current APA format. Your paper should address the following:a. How would you prepare for the following situation? (provide realistic examples and details for safety and survival)(Scenario) At this moment, you are sitting at home working on your WCU class. Suddenly, the National Weather Bureau sends an alert across your cell phonea tornado is headed your way. You have 15 minutes before touchdown in your neighborhood. What is your plan? This is a 'shelter in place' scenario, you cannot outrun the tornado. Identify a safe place in your home to take shelter.You must include research. Cite and reference two sources and explain the recommended safety measures in a tornado emergency and how you would apply them to your specific living arrangements. b. How prepared are you in the event of a disaster? Describe your level of disaster preparedness using specific examples and references to your "go-bag" and preparedness checklist assignments.Example: I am more prepared for a water-related disaster than a fire-related disaster even though I live in a highly secluded, forested area. I have a boat as transportation in the event of flooding, but I do not have rain barrels or fire barrier supplies on hand.Example: "There were many missing items on my preparedness checklist. I realized that I do not own a flashlight. If I had to use my phone as a light it would drain the battery very quickly. c. Reflect on how prepared you were before this class and compare it with how prepared you are now. · Have you acquired any new emergency items?· Do you plan to take any additional trainings or certification courses?· Have you shared your knowledge with friends and family?


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Ranger Ink - Stickles Glitter Glue - Pink Taffeta
Ranger Stickles Glitter Glue are "sticky sparkles" that add sparks of color and glitz to your favorite paper, plastic and wood craft, besides giving pizzazz to your holiday trimmings. Use them for writing, dabbing, dashing, edging and embellishing. They're great fun at home or school. Easy to squeeze bottle features a continuous flow fine tip perfect for lettering and detail work. Stickles are non-toxic, acid-free and non-settling. 0.5 oz.


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In mid-March Mary Tod asked if I'd publicize a survey she'd compiled on reading interests in historical fiction. She received an enormous response.
Mary has been reporting on the results over at her blog A Writer of History. She asked if I'd like to comment on the survey data dealing with favorite authors. My response: Of course!
Out of 805 respondents total, 602 gave the names of their favorite authors (see table). People were allowed to give as many names as they wanted.
Per Mary, in addition to what's above, 19 authors were selected as favorites by 10 or more people. 404 different authors were chosen by only one person; a further 99 authors were chosen by two people. More details at A Writer of History, along with the next 20 on the list and Mary's own thoughts.
My observations on the Top 20:
- There's a lot of diversity overall, but the top authors stand out - especially the top 5.
- Fifteen of the Top 20 authors are women. (The original survey had 668 women and 129 men responding.)
- Many of these authors write novels in series (Gabaldon, Cornwell, Sansom, Dunnett, Peters, Winspear, O'Brian, Plaidy, as well as Follett for his best-known books). Others write books with interconnected sets of characters or interrelated families (Penman, Chadwick, Moran for her ancient Egyptian novels).
- Several of these authors are deceased (Seton, Heyer, Plaidy, Austen, Dunnett, Peters, O'Brian) although for most, their novels have been reissued and are still in print - and ripe for discovery by new historical fiction fans. Per information provided by Mary, Seton, Heyer, and Plaidy are mainly preferred by the 40-and-older set.
- Biographical fiction, especially about royal women, is popular! (No kidding, you'll say, but it's nice to have some data to back it up.) This correlates with the conclusions drawn from readers' stated preferences on Mary's survey. Readers' three favorite story types were those about (1) strong female characters, (2) the lives of significant historical figures, and (3) the lives of lesser-known historical figures.
- Most of the Top 20 authors write British or European settings - predominantly medieval and Tudor/Renaissance. Some have also written American settings (Gabaldon, Cornwell, Seton) but this isn't what they're best known for.
- A great many of these authors write door-stopping epics of 500-plus pages. Obviously many readers aren't afraid of large books - or of committing to lengthy series by these authors.
- Jane Austen is listed by 24 people as a favorite author.
historical novelist, even though she was writing about the time in which she lived. Correction: the survey asked for favorite authors, not necessarily favorite historical novelists, so Austen's presence here isn't the anomaly I'd thought. Apologies for my misunderstanding of the survey question. - The original survey had 473 US respondents, 134 Canadian respondents, and 86 UK respondents, the rest being from Europe, Australia/New Zealand, and Asia. Despite the US having five times as many respondents as the UK, British authors had a very strong showing in terms of readers' favorites.
How many of these authors are on your personal favorites list?


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Everyone can use a little research help every now and then, right? Learn about best practices in using the latest technology to organize and plan your research strategies. Call on these digital research assistants 24/7. Legacy's Geoff Rasmussen will educate, compare, and contrast the three major research guidance tools: FamilySearch, Research Wiki, and Legacy Family Tree's Research Guidance. You will learn how to easily keep track of what you've previously researched, as well as plan your research To Do List.
Join us for the live webinar on Wednesday, September 26, 2012 at 2pm Eastern U.S. Register today to reserve your virtual seat. Registration is free but space is limited to the first 1,000 people to join that day. Before joining, please visit www.java.com to ensure you have the latest version of Java which our webinar software requires. When you join, if you receive a message that the webinar is full, you know we've reached the 1,000 limit, so we invite you to view the recording which should be published to the webinar archives within an hour or two of the event's conclusion.
About the presenter
Geoffrey D. Rasmussen is the father of four budding genealogists. He graduated with a degree in Genealogy and Family History from Brigham Young University and has served as director and vice-president of the Utah Genealogical Association. He is a dynamic genealogy speaker on all forms of genealogy technology, and as host of the Legacy Family Tree webinar series, has spoken virtually to nearly 100 different countries. He recently received the Distinguished Presenter Award at the prestigious RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City (2011). He has authored books, videos, articles, and websites, and develops the Legacy Family Tree software program. On a personal note, Geoff enjoys playing the piano, organ, cello and basketball. His favorite places are cemeteries, the ocean, and hanging out with other genealogists. He met and proposed to his wife in a Family History Center.
Geoff is the author of:
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- Digital Images: Scanning, Editing, and Preserving Your Photos webinar-on-CD
- Navigating the New Census Tools in Legacy Family Tree webinar-on-CD
- Watch Geoff Live series
- Research with Geoff - Live! webinar-on-CD
- East Tennessee Tax Records Index, volumes 1, 2, and 3 (a fascinating read...)
- The Rasmussen Legacy
- The Genealogy Daily Calendar
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Many of the people who go se "Jack Reacher" won't be aware tha Tom Cruise is way too short to play the title characte (when the actor was cast in the role last year, fans of Lee Child's best-selling book series were up in arms over the choice). Reacher, who is the protagonist of 17 novels is well-known in literary form as being six-foot-five with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes and a weight of well over 200 lbs. So, basically the opposite of Cruise.
However, the actor will likely make the character his own, and that's fin if you can accept that movies don't always have to be faithful to the page. ruise is just following in steps of actors who were cast in adaptations in spite of having little to no resemblance to their literary counterparts. Let's take a look at 10 examples below.
Tom Cruise as Lestat ('Interview with a Vampire')
"Jack Reacher" isn't the first adaptation Cruise was cast in where fans (and author) were disappointed. In the novel by Anne Rice, Lestat is described as having blonde hair, like a blaze of light, and bluish gray eyes. And he's supposed to be young looking and six-feet tall (kinda like Reacher, but undead). Reportedly, Rice originally envisioned Lestat resembling Rutger Hauer, and her first choice for the film casting was Julian Sands.
Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones ('Bridget Jones's Diary')
Following early casting considerations including Toni Collette, Kate Winslet and Emily Watson, an American actress was chosen to play the very popular and very English character. In one of the greatest instances of skeptics being proven wrong and an actor successfully making a literary favorite all her own, Zellweger managed the accent adequately and also gained a good amount of weight to fit Jones's issues with her body. Moviegoers and fans of Helen Fielding's novel found her to be an utter delight in the part.
Keanu Reeves as John Constantine ('Constantine')
Comic book fans weren't happy to hear that Reeves was cast as a definitively British character, specifically from Liverpool, who was drawn with blonde hair and meant to resemble Sting. Reeves didn't try for the accent (the movie was set in Los Angeles), nor did he bother to dye his hair. Reviews of the adaptation were mostly negative, including usual criticisms about Reeves's acting, but the changes to the character weren't of much focus. Still, fans of the comic are probably thankful it didn't succeed enough to warrant sequels and can now hope that if Guillermo Del Toro follows through with a supernatural DC Comics ensemble film that Constantine will be recast more appropriately.
Daniel Craig as James Bond ('Casino Royale')
Now that Craig has starred as Agent 007 in three very successful movies, there doesn't seem to be any issues with the actor's looks. But back when he was first cast as James Bond, skeptical fans, whether of Ian Fleming's novels or just the movie franchise, really focused on his hair, calling him "James Blonde." Now "Skyfall" is the highest grossing (and arguably the best) Bond movie yet. Also, hardcore fans have moved on to protesting the idea of Idris Elba or any other non-white actor in the part.
Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon ('The Da Vinci Code')
Another famous Tom has overruled literary descriptions on account of his stardom being more important to the studio than faithfulness. Still, the oft-noted way that Dan Brown presents the appearance of Robert Langdon is "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed." However, Ford would have reminded us just too much of Indiana Jones in the role of an expert on religious and historical symbols. At least Hanks went the distance and got a mullet for the part.
List also include
Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade ('The Maltese Falcon')
Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey ('Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World')
Will Smith as Agent J ('Men in Black')
Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk ('The Human Stain')
Steve Zahn as Al Giordino ('Sahara')
ONTD, does it bother you the character you imagined in the books and the one you see on the screen doesn't even remotely similar even if the actor/actress is good enough to pull it despite his/her physical appearence?


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"I don't know why I'm not scared at all." These are the words of Troy Duffy, an East Coast-bred dreamer who moved to Los Angeles to pursue his music career, found himself suddenly thrust from bouncing and bartending into a nearly million-dollar-deal with Miramax Films, and survived, barely, the Hollywood lion's den for a few horrifying years. But there's a reason Duffy wasn't scared, despite having every reason to be: the man is a psychopathic egomaniac and substance abuser. At least, that's what his friends have to say about him in the documentary Overnight.
Okay, co-directors Mark Brian Smith & Tony Montana aren't friends with Duffy anymore, but they were when they began shooting an eventual 350 hours of footage to document Duffy's assault on Hollywood. Duffy was working at J. Sloan's, a Los Angeles dive bar, when a friend managed to get Duffy's script The Boondock Saints into powerful hands. After an intense bidding war, Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein laid out the deal, which included, among other perks, a promise to purchase J. Sloan's for Troy and his brother Taylor. Immediately, Troy got to work...congratulating himself for his greatness and success.
Hollywood helped: Smith and Montana show us a backyard "film deal barbeque" attended by Mark Wahlberg and John Goodman, followed by a parade of well-known actors tromping through the now hip J. Sloan's: Jake Busey, Jeff Goldblum, Patrick Swayze, Vincent D'Onofrio. As pre-production and casting proceed, Duffy positions his band The Brood for a record deal to complement their contribution to the film's soundtrack. Full of lofty promises of lifelong employment, Duffy consistently reassures Taylor (the arguable heart of the band), Smith and Montana (the band's one-time co-managers), and three others who comprise Duffy's so-called "the Syndicate" with pep talks that wouldn't sound out of place coming from General Patton. A record deal follows the movie deal, as does a "record deal celebration" in Cabo San Lucas.
In fact, Duffy exudes a lunatic confidence. Over an apparently sober breakfast, smoking and swearing up a storm next to his wide-eyed teenage brother, Duffy delivers a rant that reeks of delusion: "If our music in this film is embraced, we will have accomplished something that no on else in the history of this fucking world has ever done: be accepted on a huge scale in both mediums of film and music." For his part, former Doobie Brother and music producer Jeff "Skunk" Baxter describes The Brood as "if the Beatles could meet Alice in Chains," but he's quicker to sing the praises of Taylor rather than Troy, who consistently belittles his bandmates by reminding them they'd be nowhere without him.
Critical of everyone but himself, Duffy slowly but surely squanders his opportunity with Miramax by alienating Weinstein and bogging down development with unreasonable demands. Finding himself in turnaround and then cut loose completely, Duffy finds himself blackballed by a Harvey-fearing town and at the mercy of whatever deal he can get. Through it all, he maintains that he has the companies right where he wants them. Needless to say, complications ensue with the record deal, and Duffy's alcohol-fueled downward spiral alienates everyone in his life, including his helpless family. An attempted emotional intervention by Taylor falls on deaf ears.
The cruelties of Overnight are so thorough as essentially to decimate the humor, but the film resonates with irony. Early on, Paul Reubens submits to an unintentially parodic audition marked by Duffy enthusiastically plumbing the emotional depths of one of his Tarantinoid homopohobic slurs. A giddy William Morris agent admits of Hollywood, "Rome has nothing on us!" When a broken Duffy wins an audience with a small Boston University film class, his "no one understands me" mantra hits a darkly amusing low. Long after being dumped by Miramax, Duffy sports a Boondock Saints hat stamped with the Miramax Films logo; if Duffy means the fashion choice to be ironic, I suppose he succeeds.
Film buffs probably already know that Boondock Saints bombed as a theatrical release but found new life as a home-video cult hit. The film's interest, though, isn't so much in "what" as "how" and "why" so much potential could be so thoroughly dissipated. Overnight, with its rough but pervasive all-access DV footage, puts one in mind of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, but without the crucial psychoanalyst. In the end, Smith and Montana don't even try to hide that Overnight is their hatchet-job revenge on the man who first betrayed their confidence. A film-ending epigram about success implies that it only brought out Duffy's dormant true colors. Overnight is guiltily mesmerizing; if it's instructive at all, it's as a cautionary tale of the fatality of lost perspective.


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Friday, November 04, 2011
A Star is Born (uh, Baked)
Now that the air is nippy and the fall color has turned the trees to flame, the urge to start baking for the holidays has hit. Natasha, my dear friend (but not a Bread Baking Babe...that's Natashya) loaned me a wonderful book called Festive Baking - Holiday Classics in the Swiss, German, and Austrian Traditions by Sarah Kelly Iaia.
It really started my creative juices flowing, even though many of the recipes are for things related to Christmas, not the fall. One recipe that called to my crafty side was in the bread section (of course it was). It's called Geflochtener Weihnachtsstern or Braided Christmas Star. The dough called for is a typical rich sweet dough flavored with lemon zest. I decided to go with something more in keeping with autumn and harvest...Anadama bread. I've made it before but this time I used regular corn meal and less molasses and I like it better this way.
The finished bread was soft and mellow with just a hint of molasses. It kept the shape of the star really well, too. It goes well with hearty fall soups or stews and makes wonderful toast.
Once I'm back from Seattle I plan on making French Toast with any bread that is still around. The start shape was barely contained by the half sheet baking sheet, which is a lot of bread, plus I baked the other half of the dough into a nice loaf and it made something line 16 slices for sandwiches (or French Toast since Sweetie loves French Toast.) I used three of the 'arms' of the star today to make s small batch of stuffing to go with the grilled chicken and asparagus we had for dinner. It made excellent stuffing. What a versatile bread!
Hang on to this recipe in case you want to bake a star for the holidays. It really is easy if you know how to braid, yet looks super impressive. You could probably even use thawed frozen bread dough if creating bread dough isn't our thing. Just be sure to glaze it with the egg wash so that it is that gorgeous golden brown.
Anadama Bread and Star
Star shaping from Festive Baking by Sarah Kelly Iaia
makes two loaves or one loaf and one big star
1/2 cup regular corn meal
2 cups water, divided
1/3 cup molasses
6 tablespoons butter, softened,
1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup whole wheat flour
3 1/2 cups (about) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
oil for greasing
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water for egg wash
In a bowl, whisk together the cornmeal and 1 cup of the cold water. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, bring another cup of water to a boil. Add cornmeal mixture and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is very thick, about 3 - 4 minutes. Stir in the molasses and the butter.
Add the whole wheat flour and stir until all is combined. Transfer mixture to bowl of an electric stand mixer and cool to tepid. (Or transfer to a mixing bowl large enough to mix the dough by hand and then knead in the rest of the flour.)
Add the 1 cup sourdough starter to the mixing bowl with the tepid cornmeal mixture. Mix on low speed with dough-hook attachment ( or a wooden spoon) for several seconds. With dough hook in place on the stand mixer add flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing for several seconds after each addition. Sprinkle in the salt, and continue mixing until dough completely comes away from sides of bowl, about 7 minutes.
Lightly oil a bowl. Form dough into a ball and place it in the bowl. Oil a sheet of plastic wrap and loosely cover dough. Allow dough to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until it has doubled in size. (At this point I punched the dough down, recovered it, and put it in the fridge overnight. The next day I let the dough warm up and then did the shaping.)
Lightly grease 1- 9 x 4 inch loaf pan. Line a sheet pan with silicon mat or parchment for the star. Press down dough and divide it into 2 equal pieces. Shape one piece loosely into a loaf and place in the prepared pan pan. Cover with oiled plastic wrap and allow to rise for 30 minutes, or until loaf has doubled.
For star, take second half of dough (all the dough remaining) and divide it into six equal pieces (using a scale really helps with getting the pieces about the same size). Set one piece aside. Each of the other five pieces is used to make one of the star 'arms'.
Take one of the pieces and divide it into three equal pieces. Roll each of those three pieces into a rope about 8 inches long, with a taper at one end. Join the three ropes at the tapered end and braid the ropes. Repeat with each of the next 4 pieces.
Place the braided pieces on the prepared baking sheet with the tapered end pointing out, to shape a five-point star. The ends at the middle should touch and so pinch them together.
Take the last piece of dough and roll into a long rope, about 20 inches long. Starting at the center of the star, wind the rope around in a spiral over the center of the star. Tuck the end under the spiral.
Cover the star with oiled plastic wrap and set aside to rise, until doubled in bulk. When almost to that point, preheat the oven.
When oven is fully preheated, brush the star and the loaf with a wash of 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water. Make sure that the wash goes into the crevices of the star. Slash the top of the loaf.
Bake in preheated 350 degrees F oven. Bake loaves for 35 minutes to 1 hour, or until bread is dark golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped. Star may take a shorter baking time than the loaf. That's OK.
Allow bread to cool in pans for 5 minutes, then turn out onto wire cooling rack. Serve warm if possible.
This bread is mellow and soft, barely sweet from the molasses and makes really good toast.
Anadama bread cornmeal
baking bread
crafty baking
sourdough starter
6 comments :
Katie, I'd never seen one like this either but it actually is pretty simple if you can braid bread dough :) Would make a great centerpiece...could even put small candles in it.
Tanita, the sweet version sounds so yum. The secret of the braids is to do it loosely with some space built in for the dough to expand into.
Tanna, You are sweet. It is a GREAT book for lots of holiday baking with a particularly great section on cookies.
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Created by Jijith Nadumuri at 28 Mar 2010 16:59 and updated at 31 May 2010 10:33
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Section 10
X Pauloma Parva continued Sauti said, And Ruru, on hearing those words, replied, My wife, dear to me as life, was bit by a snake; upon which, I took, O snake, a dreadful vow, viz, that I would kill every snake that I might come across. Therefore shall I smite thee and thou shalt be deprived of life' And the Dundubha replied, O Brahmana, the snakes that bite man are quite different in type. It behoveth thee not to slay Dundubhas who are serpents only in name.
Subject like other serpents to the same calamities but not sharing their good fortune, in woe the same but in joy different, the Dundubhas should not be slain by thee under any misconception' Sauti continued, And the Rishi Ruru hearing these words of the serpent, and seeing that it was bewildered with fear, albeit a snake of the Dundubha species, killed it not. And Ruru, the possessor of the six attributes, comforting the snake addressed it, saying, Tell me fully, O snake, who art thou thus metamorphosed' And the Dundubha replied, O Ruru! I was formerly a Rishi by name Sahasrapat. And it is by the curse of a Brahmana that I have been transformed into a snake. And Ruru asked, O thou best of snakes, for what wast thou cursed by a Brahmana in wrath? And how long also will thy form continue so And so ends the tenth section of the Pauloma Parva of the Adi Parva.
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I think it's a brilliant idea and recommend all those who draw to take a close look at the details.
The Derwent Art Prize
Aim of the Competition
The aim of the Prize is to reward excellence through showcasing the very best international works created in pencil.Inaugural Exhibition
It's expected that some 80 works will be selected for the exhibition - which will then be displayed in three different ways
- The Inaugural Exhibition for the Derwent Art Prize 2013 will
- open at the Mall Galleries in London (16th-21st September 2013)
- subsequently tour to venues across the UK, including the Pencil Museum in Keswick, Cumbria.
- All selected artists will be featured on the Derwent Art Prize website.
The prizes will be awarded at the Private View at Mall Galleries, London on 18 September 2013 and are as follows:
- First prize - £5,000
- Second Prize - £2,500
- Third Prize - £500
- People's Choice Award - £500
- UKCPS Award for Excellence - £250 (The UKCPS Award for Excellence also includes a year's membership to the society)
Entries are be judged by a distinguished panel of selectors - with two of them having a particular interest in Drawing as an art form
- Yvonne Crossley (Director of The Drawing Gallery, Shropshire);
- Fisun Güner (journalist and freelance visual arts writer); and
- Professor Stephen Farthing RA (artist and Rootstein Hopkins Research Chair of Drawing at the University of the Arts, London).
Call for Entries
So - as always with a Call for Entries - here's my overview and analysis of what they're asking you to do. Those interested should also make sure they read
- the Full Conditions of Entry carefully
- the answers to the Frequently Asked Questions
Who can enter?
- Nationality: The Prize is open to all British and international artists
- Age: All entrants must be over the age of 18 years old on 1st July 2013. You also have to be alive!
Artwork eligible for this competition must comply with the following criteria:
- Media: artwork must be created in pencil (including water-soluble, pastel, graphite, charcoal or colouring pencils).
- Format: open to both 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional works.
- Size: maximum size: 182cms any dimension. There is no minimum size limit.
- Date completed: All entered work must have been completed within the last 3 years.
- Availability: All artwork selected for exhibition must be available from 9 September to 31 December 2013.
- For Sale / Price of artwork: Works selected for exhibition MAY be offered for sale. Pricing the artwork needs to factor in a charge of 40% commission plus VAT which will be applied to the sale price of all works sold during the exhibitions or afterwards directly as a result of the Derwent Art Prize both at the exhibitions and on the website.
Entry is digital and artists need to register for an account before they can submit their entry
Artists are required to submit the following:
- Entry form - completed online
- Images: up to 6 recent works, in digital format
- file format: jpg, tiff or png (a slight confusion here - the FAQs state jpeg only whereas the entry conditions state jpg, tiff or png - when confused, I always go with the conditions of entry!)
- maximum size: 4MB file size and "3000 x 3000 pixels resolution" (Note: again we seem to have a confusion between dimensions and dpi - FAQs state 300 dpi)
- Fee: A non-refundable £10 application fee for the first work and £2 per additional works (price and currency will vary depending on country).
Here's the overview of key dates for this competition
| Action |
1 July 2013
| Deadline for entry |
15 July 2013
| All artists notified of results of the first stage of the selection process |
w/c 9 September 2013
| Deliver work to the Mall Galleries |
16-21 September 2013
| Inaugural Exhibition at the Mall Galleries |
18 September 2013
| Private View and Prize Winners announced |
1 October - 31 December 2013
| UK Exhibition Tour (work selected must be available for this period as well as the Mall Galleries exhibition) |
Delivery of work
The entry conditions are very explicit about the way in which work should be submitted - for both UK and International Artists. There are no regional collection points and it is expected that artists not living in London will need to use courier services as works must be delivered unwrapped.
Derwent are only liable for any negligence on their part. Artists may wish to ensure they have appropriate cover for all other risks eg damage in transit.
Copyright / Withdrawal of work
Each artist by entering the Derwent Art Prize confirms that they hold all intellectual property rights in the work and that they have obtained prior written approval for the use of any third party copyrighted material contained in the submitted work.In other words this needs to be an original work of art and no other image can be copied without the written approval of the copyright owner of that image. (If you are unclear about copyright see Copyright for Artists)
The exhibition organisers also indicate that they will deny entry or withdraw a work from exhibition if there is anything to suggest that exhibiting the work exposes Derwent to legal proceedings.
Conclusion and Comments
I'm very pleased that pencil art is to get its own prize and exhibition. Also that the prizes on offer are likely to generate some very serious entries from professional artists.
It's certainly the first time I can remember such a generous prize for pencil art. I'm minded to tip off a few artists of my acquaintance about the need to read this post and take a close look at the conditions for entry!
So - what do you think of this new idea?


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Where is the real-life Olivia Pope when you need her?
"Scandal" star Columbus Short is in serious trouble with the law. The 31-year-old, who plays gladiator Harrison Wright on the hit political drama, is facing up to four years in prison for a bar fight that took place earlier this month in Los Angeles.
MUST READ: Black Twitter Goes In On Sundy's Black Eye; Columbus Short Investigated & More…
According to reports, the actor turned himself in to authorities in Claremont, Calif. today. He was booked for felony aggravated battery and released on $50,000 bail.
The altercation took place at a restaurant called Gabe's Bar and Grill on March 15. Short allegedly suckerpunched a guy at an engagement party after a verbal disagreement. The fight was so bad the victim "was rendered unconscious for several minutes" and left with a broken nose.
According to the owner, "[The fight] happened in the parking lot, but none of the employees saw what happened."
MUST READ: Columbus Short & Wife Tanee McCall-Short Call Off Divorce, Decide To Work Things Out
The TV star may be easy on the eyes, but looks can be deceiving because The Los Angeles Times reports this was not his first time behind bars — or his first battery charge!
"Short's off-screen actions have repeatedly landed him in jail," the paper detailed. "He was arrested for drunk driving in July 2008, Los Angeles police records show. He was arrested again July 19, 2010, for battery with great bodily injury and later for failing to appear on a court case….Short was convicted of disturbing the peace and placed on three years' probation, court records show."
"He was arrested and charged last month for battery on a former spouse at his former Woodland Hills home," the LA Times added. "He plead not guilty."
We'll keep you posted as more details arise. Short's reps have yet to release a statement.
The Cover-Up: 15 Ways 'Scandal' Got Clever With Hiding Kerry Washington's Baby Bump
Columbus Short's Wife Files Divorce & More…
Check Out This Gallery


text: Main Content Section 750.147b friendly link printer friendly THE MICHIGAN PENAL CODE (EXCERPT)Act 328 of 1931750.147b Ethnic intimidation. Sec. 147b. (1) A person is guilty of ethnic intimidation if that person maliciously, and with specific intent to intimidate or harass another person because of that person's race, color, religion, gender, or national origin, does any of the following: (a) Causes physical contact with another person. (b) Damages, destroys, or defaces any real or personal property of another person. (c) Threatens, by word or act, to do an act described in subdivision (a) or (b), if there is reasonable cause to believe that an act described in subdivision (a) or (b) will occur. (2) Ethnic intimidation is a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 2 years, or by a fine of not more than $5,000.00, or both. (3) Regardless of the existence or outcome of any criminal prosecution, a person who suffers injury to his or her person or damage to his or her property as a result of ethnic intimidation may bring a civil cause of action against the person who commits the offense to secure an injunction, actual damages, including damages for emotional distress, or other appropriate relief. A plaintiff who prevails in a civil action brought pursuant to this section may recover both of the following: (a) Damages in the amount of 3 times the actual damages described in this subsection or $2,000.00, whichever is greater. (b) Reasonable attorney fees and costs. History: Add. 1988, Act 371, Eff. Mar. 30, 1989 Popular Name: Ethnic IntimidationPopular Name: Hate Crimes


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The Chapel of the Advocate is open to students of all faiths for prayer and meditation, and services are scheduled regularly during the academic year. Standing tall in front of the chapel is Gehry's bell-less bell tower constructed of wood and glass. Behind it is the chapel's entrance. It is necessary to descend from ground level to enter the chapel, which is sunken into the ground, not unlike the ruins of an old European church.
"Looking through the glass, you don't see the altar and seats but see a wall, painted Gehry's favored pale jade green. You must enter to see the full space, and when you do, you first smell the wood and see the sheets of pristine plywood and unfinished joists arranged with simple beauty. It proves that the look of raw construction can be truly elegant."
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Today at SXSW, two of the cofounders of Oculus and one of its lead hardware engineers took the stage for a quick on-the-fly Q&A session about the future of their burgeoning virtual reality headset.
If you (like, presumably, most people watching) were hoping for an update on when they might ship the retail version (or even a second developers-only version) of their virtual reality headset: no such luck*.
[* The topic actually got brought up a few times, but they actively dodged it. When an audience member asked "Do you know roughly when a new developer kit might ship?", Palmer replied simply: "Yes."]
They did, however, touch on a question that many have asked since the Oculus Rift started picking up steam: why now? Plenty of people have tried this virtual reality headset thing before, and it's never taken off. Why might the Oculus Rift do any better?
(For reference, the original questioner mentioned the DisneyQuest Aladdin virtual reality ride that Disney built in the 90s — hence Palmer mentioning it specifically, below.)
Here's what Palmer Luckey had to say:
The main issue was.. well, there were two issues [with past attempts.]
One, it was really, really expensive… All virtual reality units were tens of thousands of dollars each. The DisneyQuest stuff was super cool — but that headset cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, and cost tens of thousands each. They were using custom CRTs, carbon fibre shells, these crazy spring mounts.
The other thing: quality really was not up to where it could be a consumer product. It could be a research project, easily, and you could do very cool things. People have been using virtual reality for research, but it's only pretty recent that we've had mobile displays kind of… driving this revolution where we have very high pixel density displays that are a reasonable size, that are very light weight, and low cost.
Same thing with motion tracking. Back then, a lot of motion tracking was done mechanically. The VR headsets were using magnetic tracking. That actually worked okay for virtual reality… if you were standing up, and they'd isolated you from any ferrous objects [editor's note: objects containing lots of iron and are often magnetic] and calibrated against any distortion. But it wasn't ever good enough for a consumer solution, where it's going to be planted in a lot of different places, in a lot of different environments. They did have some [other types of tracking] then, but it wasn't nearly as cheap and was an order of magnitude less precise then what we have today.
The biggest part: no matter how good the VR hardware was at the time, the computing power has never really been there. Today, the average person's PC, or even a $400 console can render… not a photorealistic environment, but a pretty good looking 3d environment. If you look at any of those old systems back then, they weren't anything near photorealism. There were cool things you could do — you could render a wireframe, at high framerates, in 3d.. but it wasn't anything consumers would latch on to.
Oculus hardware engineer Ryan Brown added:
A quote I like from Chris Anderson: we're all benefitting from what he likes to call the "peace dividend of the [smartphone war]". Everything we can package into these [head mounted displays], it's because of the minituarization and monetization of these cell phone components.
And, as for the biggest topic touched on all night: if they can show off prototypes that do all sorts of things their current developer kits don't (like the Crystal Cove prototype they showed at CES) what's keeping them from shipping those?
"It takes a long time to go from 'We have a working demo that works in one environment!' to 'We have something that is cheap, reliable, and would work in everyones home without any failure points.'
Some people are like 'They got it working! They can ship it now!'
If we shipped it [right now], it would be a terrible product. It does fall apart in a lot of scenarios. We know how to fix a lot of those, and we're working on fixing others. "
But what's the biggest hurdle they see on the horizon? As I myself have waxed on about before, no one has really nailed input yet — that is, between keyboard/mouse, gestural interfaces, and game controllers, controlling what's going on inside of the virtual reality world doesn't really feel perfect yet.
Palmer: "The next big obstacle is going to be input. Input is something that hasn't really been tackled yet in VR."
Nate Mitchell: "Yeah, I agree on input."
For what it's worth, Oculus is already doing better than any past stab at a virtual reality headset. They've already sold upwards of 60,000 headsets — and that's with the hardware still in a developer-only state. And, as Nate Mitchell pointed out on stage, more people have built software for the Rift in the past year than has been built for virtual reality (as a whole concept) in the past 20 years before it.