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LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASA's Curiosity rover has indeed found something in the Martian dirt. But so far, there's no definitive sign of the chemical ingredients necessary to support life.
A scoop of sandy soil analyzed by Curiosity's sophisticated chemistry laboratory contained water and a mix of chemicals, but not complex carbon-based molecules considered essential for life.
That the soil was not more hospitable did not surprise mission scientist Paul Mahaffy since radiation from space can destroy any carbon evidence.
"It's not unexpected necessarily," said Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who is in charge of the chemistry experiments. "It's been exposed to the harsh Martian environment."
Cobalt, a relatively common mineral, may hold promise as an industrial catalyst with potential applications in such energy-related technologies as the production of biofuels and the reduction of carbon dioxide.
That is, provided the cobalt is captured in a complex molecule so it mimics the precious metals that normally serve this industrial role.
In work published Nov. 26 in the international edition of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists report the possibility of replacing the normally used noble metal catalysts with cobalt.
Catalysts are the parallel of the Philosopher's Stone for chemistry. They cannot change lead to gold, but they do transform one chemical substance into another while remaining unchanged themselves. Perhaps the most familiar example of catalysis comes from automobile exhaust systems that change toxic fumes into more benign gases, but catalysts are also integral to thousands of industrial, synthetic, and renewable energy processes where they accelerate or optimize a mind-boggling array of chemical reactions.
It's not an exaggeration to say that without catalysts, there would be no modern industry.
August 13, 2012 marked the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Manhattan Project. The communities of Tri-Cities, WA, Los Alamos, NM and Oak Ridge, TN took part in this day of remembrance.
Consumers are in for a shock when Microsoft releases the Windows 8 operating system later this week. The interface changes are the most widespread the OS maker has undertaken since the release of Windows 95.
Robot flowers that flex and blossom are one of the highlights at the Kinetica Museum's exhibition in London. The show mixes technology, science and art.
Two Americans won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for studies of how the cells in our bodies pick up signals as diverse as hormones, smells, flavors and light. Scientists say the studies are key to developing better medicines.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — A French-American duo shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for inventing methods to observe the bizarre properties of the quantum world, research that has led to the construction of extremely precise clocks and helped scientists take the first steps toward building superfast computers.
Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland opened the door to new experiments in quantum physics by showing how to observe individual quantum particles without destroying them.
A quantum particle is one that is isolated from everything else. In this situation, an atom or electron or photon takes on strange properties. It can be in two places at once, for example. It behaves in some ways like a wave. But these properties are instantly changed when it interacts with something else, such as when somebody observes it.
Working separately, the two scientists, both 68, developed "ingenious laboratory methods" that allowed them to manage and measure and control fragile quantum states, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
It's a medical nightmare: a 24-year-old man endures 350 surgeries since childhood to remove growths that keep coming back in his throat and have spread to his lungs, threatening his life. Now doctors have found a way to help him by way of a scientific coup that holds promise for millions of cancer patients.
The bizarre case is the first use in a patient of a new discovery: how to keep ordinary and cancerous cells alive indefinitely in the lab.
The discovery allows doctors to grow "mini tumors" from each patient's cancer in a lab dish, then test various drugs or combinations on them to see which works best. It takes only a few cells from a biopsy and less than two weeks to do, with materials and methods common in most hospitals.
Although the approach needs much more testing against many different types of cancer, researchers think it could offer a cheap, simple way to personalize treatment without having to analyze each patient's genes.
Copyright © 2019
The Los Alamos Monitor is your source for local news, sports, events, and information in Los Alamos County and Los Alamos, NM, and the surrounding area.


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Luca Guadagnino's film Io Sono l'Amore, which is being billed in the U.S. as I Am Love, is an enchanting consideration of love in a modern Italian world.
The movie is a delight for the senses, and not just because of the shots of the ancient-seeming, lavishly appointed villas. The director cobbled together preexisting music composed by John Adams to create the film score. The results are anything but your typical, sentimental movie-music. The selections, including "The Chairman Dances" and excerpts from Harmonielehre, have the clear, ringing and invigorating sounds that mark Adams's early-career minimalist compositions — music that seems to awaken the movie's heroine, played by the magnificent Tilda Swinton, to the life-affirming power of love.
Below, Swinton calls it Adams's "unedited" sound, which is a nice way to put it.
Send feedback to OPERA NEWS.

subset: commoncrawl


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Welcome to the Film and Television Studies news blog. To the left please find links to pages filled with news of all our latest excitement including: Graduation 2011!!!, guests to campus, the Dugan Foley Award, the new UVM Film Series, and Faculty News. I've been so proud of all our students and faculty this year and all the years that I have been director of Film and Television Studies. It was not too long ago that we started this major, and now we have 140 majors and 85 minors! Our position of director rotates amongst the FTS faculty, and I'm pleased to announce that Dave Jenemann will be taking up the role of Director as of July 1. We look forward to Dave's leadership. And I look forward to more time for my scholarship!!! Of course, my door will always be open to anyone needing advice but especially to those excited to discuss the films and books they are thinking about.
Have a wonderful summer and see you all in the fall! And to our fabulous graduating seniors: please stay in touch, and good luck with all your future endeavors!
Hilary Neroni


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June marks the three-year anniversary of this column, so if you'll indulge me, I'd like to take this week to reflect on the sum of all these scribblings, and on the most important player in the I Just Work Here game — you.
Every workplace denizen knows sincerity is a rare commodity — rarer than it should be, anyway — and we tend to take praise with a healthy dose of skepticism. Why is this person sucking up to me? What is the end game here?
I believe I've been direct with you from the get-go, so I hope you'll trust my sincerity when I say that the responses, questions, kudos and criticisms I receive from readers are the most meaningful part of writing this column.
When I Just Work Here launched three years ago, I didn't know much about workplace issues beyond my own personal experiences. I had a space to write in and the ability to reach smart people who could help me understand everything from management best practices to job search techniques to the way our minds work in office settings and how those minds respond to the technology around us.
I also had readers, thankfully, who were eager to connect. (And willing to put up with my goofy jokes.)
The emails, phone calls and letters — yes, some people still write letters — I receive from you introduce me to new topics worthy of examination, confirm when I do something right and rightfully correct me when I do something wrong. Without that feedback, this column would not have lasted. It would be called, "I Used to Work There."
So I'm grateful to all of you for taking the time to share your problems and opinions. I read every piece of correspondence I receive, and respond to as many as possible. There aren't enough hours in the day to reply to all of them, so my apologies if you've written and not heard back.
OK, that's enough "you're the wind beneath my wings" talk for now. I don't want it to go to your heads.
Looking back on these columns, with everything from internal workplace conflicts to bad bosses and good management policies, I still return to the mantra adopted early on: Be a decent human being.
I've repeated that phrase in at least 10 columns over the years, and I believe more than ever that it's a simple and wildly effective guide for any workplace action or decision. Before you do anything, take a moment, take a breath and remind yourself to be a decent human being.
Is the email you're about to send unnecessarily snarky? Did you take the time to write "thank you" at the end?
Is the meeting you're about to call totally necessary, or could it be a waste of other people's time?
A co-worker seems stressed. Is there something you can do to lighten that person's load? Trust me, they'll remember the gesture, even if they turn it down.
An employee has a sick child and needs to leave early, possibly slowing down progress on a project. As a manager, are you going to make that employee feel bad or are you going to be compassionate and say family always comes first? How would you want that person to respond if the roles were reversed?
A group of co-workers are griping about the boss. Are you going to join in so you fit in, or take the high road and not fire pot-shots behind people's backs?
As a boss, are you playing favorites with someone? Are you giving all your workers honest feedback that will help them succeed, or are you focusing only on the ones you think will make you look best?
In each of these scenarios, unfolding in the bustle of a busy work day, you choose a path. The easy path is to not think and just act, and that's often the path that leads us astray.
The better path is one that requires an extra beat, one moment in which you remind yourself that it's better to be kind, thoughtful or generous. That it's better — and not much harder — to be a decent human being.
By taking that one quick moment, good things happen. To you. To the people you work with or manage. And to the workplace you inhabit.
Be a decent human being. Be a DHB! Print it out on stock paper and hang it on your cubicle wall. Tattoo it on your forearm. Publicly recognize employees who display that behavior with a DHB shout-out.
It's simple. It's fundamental. And it's effective. (And it doesn't cost any money, unless you'd like to send me some.)
Thank you all for three great years. You make my work inestimably fun.


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The Azure Code Samples are currently available in English
Create Container Group with multiple instances and container images using C#
Azure Container Instance sample for managing container instances. - Create an Azure container group with two container instances using Docker images "microsoft/aci-helloworld" and "microsoft/aci-tutorial-sidecar" - Retrieve container log content - Delete the container group resource
Running this Sample
To run this sample:
Set the environment variable
AZURE_AUTH_LOCATION with the full path for an auth file. See how to create an auth file.
git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/aci-dotnet-create-container-groups.git
cd aci-dotnet-create-container-groups
dotnet build
More information
Azure Management Libraries for C# Azure .Net Developer Center If you don't have a Microsoft Azure subscription you can get a FREE trial account here
This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact email@example.com with any additional questions or comments.


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Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 15 August 1968
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Ken Scott
Released: 22 November 1968 (UK), 25 November 1968 (US)
Paul McCartney: vocals, acoustic guitar, bass guitar
John Lennon: backing vocals, harmonica, harmonium, six-string bass
George Harrison: backing vocals
Ringo Starr: drums
George Martin: piano
Available on:
The Beatles (White Album)
Anthology 3
A jokey song about a cuckolded young American man seeking revenge against a love rival, Rocky Raccoon was written in India by Paul McCartney in early 1968.
Paul [wrote it]. Couldn't you guess? Would I go to all that trouble about Gideon's Bible and all that stuff?
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
McCartney wrote the song on the roof of the ashram in Rishikesh, with John Lennon and Donovan Leitch also helping out.
Rocky Raccoon is quirky, very me. I like talking blues so I started off like that, then I did my tongue-in-cheek parody of a western and threw in some amusing lines. I just tried to keep it amusing, really; it's me writing a play, a little one-act play giving them most of the dialogue. Rocky Raccoon is the main character, then there's the girl whose real name was Magill, who called herself Lil, but she was known as Nancy.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
The song was originally titled Rocky Sassoon, but was changed by McCartney to make the main character sound "more like a cowboy".
There are some names I use to amuse, Vera, Chuck and Dave or Nancy and Lil, and there are some I mean to be serious, like Eleanor Rigby, which are a little harder because they have to not be joke names. In this case Rocky Raccoon is some bloke in a raccoon hat, like Davy Crockett. The bit I liked about it was him finding Gideon's Bible and thinking, Some guy called Gideon must have left it for the next guy. I like the idea of Gideon being a character. You get the meaning and at the same time get in a poke at it. All in good fun. And then of course the doctor is drunk.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
McCartney is said to have got the idea for the drunken doctor from an road accident he was involved with in 1966.
Paul had a moped which he came off one day in May 1966. He was a bit stoned at the time and cut his mouth and chipped his tooth. The doctor that came to treat him was stinking of gin and because he was a bit worse for wear he didn't make a very good job of the stitching which is why Paul had a nasty lump on his lip for a while.
A Hard Day's Write, Steve Turner
In the studio
The Beatles recorded Rocky Raccoon during a single session on 15 August 1968. They recorded nine takes of the basic rhythm track, with McCartney on vocals and acoustic guitar, Starr on drums and Lennon on bass.
Onto the master, take nine, The Beatles added another bass and drum track. Lennon then overdubbed a harmonica part, George Martin played the honky-tonk piano solo, and Lennon, McCartney and Harrison contributed backing vocals.
The rejected take eight was included on Anthology 3 in 1996. The opening lyrics are significantly different from the final version:
Rocky Raccoon, he was a fool unto himself
And he would not swallow his foolish pride
Mind you, coming from a little town in Minnesota
It was not the kind of thing that a young guy did
When a fella went and stole his chick away from him.
According to Mark Lewisohn, the lyrics underwent a number of changes throughout the session:
For a song recorded and completed so quickly, Paul was surprisingly uncertain of the lyrics, formulating them as he went along and leaving the following rejected ideas in his wake: "roll up his sleeves on the sideboard"; "roll over, Rock... he said ooh, it's OK doc, it's just a scratch and I'll be OK when I get home"; "This here is the story of a young boy living in Minnesota... fuck off!"; and "move over doc, let's have none of your cock". As Paul himself later said, between takes, "I don't quite know the words to that verse yet!"


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True crime author Ann Rule has named Eagle Creek resident Rick Swart in a defamation lawsuit against Seattle Weekly newspaper.
Rule filed the lawsuit in King County Superior Court last week.
Swart is married to the subject of Rules New York Times best-selling book, Heart Full of Lies.
The book follows Liysa Northon, an Oregon woman who shot her Hawaiian Airlines pilot husband Chris Northon in the head while he was either asleep or unconscious during a camping trip in Eastern Oregon in 2000.
She claimed the shooting was an act of self-defense to protect herself and her children from a violent husband who abused drugs and alcohol.
Liysa Northon pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. She said later that her lawyer pressured her into pleading guilty to the charge as part of a plea bargain.
Northon later filed complaints against her former attorney but they were dismissed by the Oregon State Bar Association in 2009.
Rules book portrays Northon as a calculating, cold-blooded killer rather than a battered wife.
A federal judge dismissed a defamation suit filed by Northon against Rule in 2007.
Fast-forward to July 20, 2011. Seattle Weekly published an article titled How Seattles self-proclaimed queen of true crime turned a battered wife into a killer sociopath by Swart, a former editor of the Wallowa County Chieftain.
Seattle Weekly featured a caricature sketch of Rule on its cover with the headline Ann Rules Sloppy Storytelling.
The piece claimed Rules book was less than factual and that she ignored crucial facts in Northons case.
It was only after the article was published that Seattle Weeklys then-editor Caleb Hannan learned that Swart and Northon were engaged. Hannan is also a defendant in Rules 2013 defamation lawsuit.
Swart had followed Northons trial as the editor of the Wallowa County Chieftan.
He eventually realized that he had met Northon back when she was 17-year-old Liysa DeWitt at Wallowa Lake.
He had been taken with her, but they didnt meet again until years later.
In December 2010, Swart requested an interview with Northon. She was still serving her sentence at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville.
Northon was released from prison in October 2012, and moved in with Swart at a home he recently purchased in Eagle Creek.
Rule sued Seattle Weekly for running Swarts free-lance article with the undisclosed conflict of interest of his engagement to Northon.
Swart claimed in an op-ed titled, Why I fell on the sword for Liysa Northon that journalists and publications that covered Northon, her trial and Rules book had largely and irresponsibly neglected to get Northons side of the story, so he decided to take the task upon himself.
But upon learning that he was her fiancé, publications refused to publish his article.
In the beginning I told several editors that I had fallen in love with Liysa and therefore had taken extra care to make sure every statement could be independently documented, Swart wrote in the piece. No one would publish it, nor were they willing to do an independent investigation on their own.
Swart defended his article published in Seattle Weekly as factual and the right thing to do.
I hurt no one. What I did at great personal sacrifice was expose the truth, he wrote in Why I fell on the sword for Liysa Northon. It would have been far easier to sit back and not do anything, like everyone else.
Rules lawsuit seeks reasonable damages for harm done to her reputation.
As a crime writer, Rule claims her ability to sell books depends on her reputation for accuracy.
Ann has worked very hard. She has 30 million books in print. Shes a New York Times best-seller many times over. Shes considered by many to be the pre-eminent true crime writer, said Anne Bremner, Rules lawyer. Its her lifes work and what her career rests on is her reputation for truth and accuracy. Its a well-deserved reputation.
Bremner said the case is important not just in terms of Rules reputation, but journalistic integrity.
It was false and defamatory, and thats why (Rule is) taking action, she said in reference to Swarts Seattle Weekly article.
Swart declined to comment on the lawsuit.


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The satellite on Bus No. 1 did not work properly for much of the trip, so the Ohio State Buckeyes followed the Iron Bowl's progress on their iPads and smart phones. But as they neared the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, the TVs suddenly kicked in — just in time to see Alabama running back T.J. Yeldon step out of bounds. To see 1 second placed back on the clock. A long field-goal try. A longer return.
The bus rocked.
"It was absolutely nuts for 15 minutes," Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said Sunday. "Nuts."
BCS: Florida State, Ohio State move to 1-2
In other words, it was kind of like everywhere. All of college football was rocked when Auburn upset Alabama. The reverberations won't stop anytime soon. And it's probably fitting that the final week of the BCS era will be consumed by fierce debate and controversy.
WEEK 14: Full BCS standings
Florida State moved up to No. 1 in the next-to-last BCS standings unveiled Sunday evening. Ohio State is No. 2, followed by Auburn. But how they end up is anyone's guess. Everyone has an opinion. The argument has only just begun, but is already very intense. It figures to rage for a full week, until the final standings are released. Or longer, probably.
MISERY INDEX: Tears in Tuscaloosa
And as the last act of a famously flawed system — this time next year, we'll all be debating which four teams get into the College Football Playoff — it's a sort of perverse perfection.
GREAT DEBATE: The SEC vs. the Big Ten
"Fans," said BCS executive director Bill Hancock, "are better off with tension." And he added: "People are gonna be talking about college football all week, and of course it creates a little interest in the games this week."
You cannot fathom how unbeaten Ohio State, with a victory against Michigan State (ranked No. 10 in the BCS), should land anywhere but in the BCS national championship game? Others believe there's no way one-loss Auburn, with a victory over No. 5 Missouri, should get left out. Or switch it, inserting one-loss Mizzou for Auburn, same thing: the SEC champion, goes the argument, should have the shot to win its eighth consecutive national title.
Just after the Iron Bowl's fantastic finish, Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs told USA TODAY Sports it "would be a disservice to the nation" if one-loss Auburn was left out. He upped the ante in a subsequent interview with ESPN Radio, saying "it would be, quite frankly, un-American for us not to get a chance to go to Pasadena if we're able to beat Missouri, and I believe the same about Missouri."
The debate overshadowed Florida State's return to the top spot in the BCS standings for the first time since 1999. Never mind that the Seminoles' strength of schedule ranks No. 66 in the Sagarin Ratings (Ohio State's is No. 61, Auburn's is No. 26, Alabama's is No. 48, Missouri's is No. 41), their dominance this season has them firmly at No. 1. But if not many are talking about their ascent, that also means no one's questioning whether they should be there.
Also somehow overlooked: If the SEC's streak is in jeopardy, Alabama's reign atop college football is all but dead. The Crimson Tide had won two consecutive BCS titles and three of the last four. Even though Alabama fell to only No. 4 in the BCS standings, it would need losses by both Florida State and Ohio State to have a chance to climb back to No. 2 (and play the Auburn-Missouri winner in an all-SEC title game).
In other words, Nick Saban's bunch must hope for utter and complete chaos — which would, of course, be even more fitting.
It seems impossible. A Michigan State victory against Ohio State in the Big Ten championship wouldn't be all that surprising, but Florida State has been established at least a four-touchdown favorite over Duke in the ACC championship. But if nothing else, the events of the weekend (along with the Iron Bowl, Ohio State had to squelch Michigan's two-point try in the final seconds to avoid an upset) should reinforce that assuming anything in college football is an iffy proposition.
"We'll see what happens," Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. "The bottom line" — and this goes for all of the contenders — "is we're playing a great football team, and we'll see where it goes."
But while we await the actual games, Ohio State and Auburn are locked into a battle to shape public opinion, with the goal of grabbing the No. 2 spot if they both win Saturday. It seems unlikely the Tigers would overtake the Buckeyes. Whether it happens appears to depend largely on the voters in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches and the Harris Interactive polls, which together account for two-thirds of the BCS formula. While various projections had Auburn with a slight lead in the computer rankings which form the other third of the formula, those mimicked the overall standings: Florida State No. 1, Ohio State No. 2 and Auburn No. 3.
It was that way in both polls, too. But the Buckeyes' lead was slim. In the coaches poll, for example, Ohio State had a 25-point lead, which would be erased if 13 voters dropped Ohio State one spot while moving Auburn up one.
Thus, we should probably expect to hear more comments like those by Jacobs, which were made in the moments after the Tigers' victory, while fans were still celebrating on the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium, and then accelerated the morning after, when he'd had plenty of time to consider everything.
Give Auburn a break, maybe — and just a little one — because the Tigers know about being left out. See 2004. But this time Auburn is not unbeaten. Florida State and Ohio State are. In the previous 15 years of the BCS, No undefeated team from a major conference has ever finished behind a one-loss team in the final standings, but then, the SEC has that seven-year streak of hoisting the crystal football.
Jacobs' comments were red meat for the true believers, but hyperbole probably doesn't help sway any undecideds or soft leans. By contrast, Auburn coach Gus Malzahn was measured.
"I'm focused on the SEC championship game and Missouri," he said, but then added: "Our league is the top league in college football. That's really how I feel about it."
Meyer wouldn't address the issue, either, insisting Michigan State was the Buckeyes' sole focus.
"The bottom line," he said, "is Ohio State is not even in any conversation unless we can figure out how to move the ball against the No. 1 defense in America."
Either way, the campaign is in full swing. If history is an indication, we're in for a lot of very loud politicking this week, from fans and TV's talking heads, athletic directors — and maybe even, if it gets really intense, from the coaches. And it may not end well. Which, considering everything, would be dead, solid perfect.
"Everybody is talking college football," Hancock said. "That's perfection for me."
George Schroeder, a national college football reporter at USA TODAY Sports, is on Twitter @GeorgeSchroeder.


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NEW YORK (MarketWatch)—The U.S. dollar was little changed against the euro and Japanese yen as investors assessed lackluster jobs data on Thursday.
The dollar USDJPY, +0.06% traded at ¥102.46 Thursday from ¥102.45 late Wednesday. The greenback had climbed as high as ¥102.66 during the Japanese trading day, the highest since Aug. 5.
The euro EURUSD, -0.0452% climbed to $1.3367 from $1.3365 late Wednesday. The dollar index DXY, +0.01%, which measures the U.S. currency against a basket of its rivals fell to 81.579 on Thursday from 81.606 late Wednesday.
The dollar initially slipped after U.S. data showed that the number of people applying for unemployment benefits rose to a six-week high last week. Jobless claims rose by 21,000 to 31,000, higher than the 300,000 expected by Wall Street.
A U.S. import price index fell 0.2% in July.
Benchmark Treasury yields fell while stocks closed higher.
The dollar fell against the South Korean won after the Bank of Korea decided to cut its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage point. The market move was seen as typical case of "buy the rumor and sell the news."
The rate cut had been mostly priced in since rumors started circulating in July, one trader said. The dollar USDKRW, +0.17% was at 1,021.2 Korean won from Wednesday's close of 1,028.9. Korean won.
The U.K. pound GBPUSD, -0.0960% was little changed Thursday at $1.6688, after falling on a lackluster report on U.K. wage growth that raised the prospect that the central bank would push back the timing of an interest-rate increase. The pound had been at $1.6688.
More must-reads on MarketWatch:
Betting on the next 'Buffett effect' as 13F deadline looms
Follow U.S. stock-market action


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There is a brand new way to search for information on The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. Launched today, a new section on The IUCN Red List website offers a simpler way to search for species and learn about the threats they face. Featuring more images than before, the sub-site makes The IUCN Red List information easily accessible to all wildlife enthusiasts.
More than a measure of the current extinction crisis, The IUCN Red List is also the starting point for conservation action. Up until now it has been largely tailored to scientists, and now thanks to the generous support from Rolex, we are very excited to announce the launch of the first phase development of the new IUCN Red List sub-site
The sub-site is targeted to the general public, and provides a new view of The IUCN Red List where users can discover the species listed on the site using the new "Discover Species" search tool which allows them to search for species using common group names and filter results by IUCN Red List Category, location, habitat type or threat type.
Individual species profile pages provide an engaging visual view with large images, interactive maps and also include a selection of related species, enabling users to browse and learn about other species. Another new feature on the sub-site allows people to log in with their Facebook or Twitter account and save lists of their favorite species or species they have seen in real life. This new way of interacting with The IUCN Red List will help inspire and educate the general public and future conservationists.
The new IUCN Red List sub-site is available now for you to discover. To be among the first to try it, visit www.iucnredlist.org now and choose "Discover more" on the pop-up menu box.
The sub-site was developed by Electronic Ink.
For more information please contact:
Lynne Labanne, IUCN Species Programme Communications Officer, IUCN, e [email protected]
Camellia Williams, IUCN Species Programme Communications, IUCN, e [email protected]


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Iron Maidens Normal and Heroic strategy guide brought to you by FATBOSS. Please "like" the video if it helped you kill this boss and please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions!
More Blackrock Foundry Guides: http://bit.ly/1FkG2U4
—Why aren't you following us?
Watch us live — http://www.twitch.tv/fatbossTV
Tweets 'n' stuff — http://www.twitter.com/fatbossTV
Our faces — http://www.facebook.com/fatbossTV
Music by Monstercat — http://bit.ly/1Cd1YQ6


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Whether you are familiar with the Church or new to and simply curious about what we in the Evangelical Lutheran Church believe, who we are, what we do and where to find us, we invite you to explore our website as well as church life in real life.
We believe in one God. We believe that God has three forms, but He is nonetheless one. >>>
How to become a member? What does it mean to be a member of the church? >>>
Meet people from the church: the employee, the volunteer, the visitor, etc. >>>
Looking for a church nearby? Looking for a church with a specific name? >>>
folkekirken.dk · interchurch.dk · Contact


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Tonight I went to see a summer hit, Lucy. To summarize, it is a movie about a woman, who, through a bad drug-ring run-in, ends up able to open up her very brain, and strive past the normal ten percent that most humans can access it. The movie is entirely about her journey from ten to one hundred percent, and what happens at the end.
Now this is not the first story of a human pushing past humanities limits. In fact, there was another such being in media, one Dr. Manhattan. Through a freak science incident, this particular case ended up becoming almost godlike, capable of manipulating not just matter, but time and space as well.
But both of these two have something in common.
Both lose touch with their humanity, over a period of time. At one point, Dr. Manhattan, instead of exercising his gifts to save a woman, ends up allowing her to be shot. Lucy, despite her gifts, and apparent omniscience at the end of the movie, chooses to give mankind knowledge, but no guidance. Both of them, in the end, ascend beyond humanity, and choose not to interfere any further.
Why is this? What is it about these ascended gods that marks them as amoral, beyond the human concept, beyond understanding humanity, despite knowing, and having control over just about everything? Why do these so called gods choose instead to give humanity knowledge, and no true guidance? What is it about this ascension that takes them beyond any and all morals or codes that they held during humanity?
I beleive these characters are designed this way to invoke exactly that. A Godhood, an ascension. The belief that all humankind's worries and needs are inconsequential in the larger run of things. However, I ask you, why would the belief, the realization of this, make these beings choose instead to fuck off into the deep blue mysterious beyond?
Why instead, do they not choose to stay? To attempt to guide humanity towards some kind of peace? If they have an absolute understanding of everything trivial and horrid that humanity has done, and how to correct it… Why don't they? Are we to believe that once someone has ascended beyond all the worry, all the strife, all the day-to-day rat-races, that they would just… forget or ignore or lose interest in all of those they once cared about?
Dr. Manhattan's transformation was quite well done, over a period of many, many years, and to be honest, I understand why he began to lose touch. He became entrenched instead on all of the mysteries the world had now unlocked for him. As he said, "I am tired of this world, these people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."
I'm curious, dear readers, has there ever been a case of one of these ascended gods choosing instead, to guide humanity? Successfully? Please tell me in the comments about it, about what you think would happen, and about what you think humanity's response would be.


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In the sea of "I'm so blessed" Facebook Updates, aspirational healthy living/organizational/design/cooking/food blogs, and food-styled Instagram photos out there, there is no shortage of fodder to make you feel like you should be doing more, dressing better, and generally being more fabulous. While I'm definitely huge proponent for trying to live your best life, I also think it's nice to keep it real around here too! So here are some confessions for ya:
1. OOTDs In Real Life
While I think it is super fun to document Outfits of the Day on Instagram during the week
I rarely document them on the weekends because every possible waking hour I can spend in an outfit equivalent to THIS feels like a win!
Here, let me breakdown this fine fashion – American River CrossFit hoodie // Hot Pink Mossimo Tank Top // Lululemon Still Pants covered in dog hair.
2. The Kitchen — In Real Life
Last Friday I mentioned that Garrett, Buster + I were having a dance party in my kitchen. (Buster is a very accomplished ballroom dancer, didn't you know?) An overwhelming amount of people mentioned my crazy-clean kitchen counter tops.
That, my friends, was just a coincidence. Remember, I cook A LOT. Most of the time I am fighting an uphill battle against this:
And the closest thing we have to a dishwasher is Garrett.
3. Paleo Perfection — except in the garage!
So I've let you walk through what's in my pantry before:
And I'm pretty open about what my fridge looks like:
I'm just a real Paleo Angel, eh? But wait until you see the shelf in my garage of things I just can't let go:
Rye Chips! Wheat Flour! And Cereal???? OH MY. What gives? I'm glad you asked. It's football season, and I've been known to make a damn good Chex Mix. Sometimes you just gotta off-road! And the flour? Well, I guess it's just my food-hoarding tendency. I haven't used it in forever but something about chucking it just feels wasteful. So now it just lives in my garage not being used. Waste of SPACE, let me tell you. The rice is for the dog!
No house is perfect.
4. My Workout Clothes Smell Like FUNK
Will you still be my friend?
I've washed and then dried all of my workout clothes. Apparently this is problematic (especially the drying part.) Most of these are fairly new and they still kind of smell like gym floor. It is so super duper nasty and I am on the hunt for a solution that will work for my high efficiency washer (Do you have one? Weigh in!) Manda said hang drying cures the stink, so I'm trying that. If that doesn't work, I'm getting some Sport Wash.
Regardless, um…GROSS. It really *is* time for some new duds.
5. I am an Organizational Jekyll + Hyde
(or Heckyll + Jyde if you are Teresa Guidice, but that is neither here nor there.)
Some of my bathroom cabinets are very pleasingly organized. We have talked about this before, I like me some organized drawers.
But others, just continue to be FULL O' CRAP (neatly stacked upon other crap.)
The thing is: one only has so much time to care. And right now, I just can't get to jazzed up about whether or not my stash of Bath & Body Works Antibacterial Hand Soaps are organized pleasingly by season.
6. My Suitcase From Colorado Is Only *Technically* Unpacked
I'm not a total heathen, I've taken the clothing out of the suitcase. I just, uh…haven't actually put it away and it is all sitting on the guest bedroom bed. Whoops.
This is real life, folks!
So tell me…anything you would like to confess?


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Archimedes and the seagle: a novel
Penguin Books, 1986 - Fiction - 228 pages
Archimedes, a dog, offers his opinions on life, people, seagulls, and the way of the world
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animals Archibald fountain Archimedes Australia backyard bark birds bitumen Book Bourke Street Circular Quay Darling David Ireland Dinosaur Dog Dog's Dogenes Donna dreams earth enjoy everything eyes face feel fence ferry friends Gallery Road Gardens grass Grok Guest gulls happen happy harbour head heard HELEN DANIEL humans Hyde Park idea inside Isle of Gulls Jeff Julie jump keep Kellyville kennel knew laughed legs light listen live look Macquarie Place Marble Bar mean mind move never night once Opera House Park passed past Perhaps Quay remember round seagull seen side sitting smell sort stood stop Street Sydney talk tell there's things thought trees tried trying turned understand waited walk watch waves what's willy wagtail wonder Woolloomooloo words young


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Archives: 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001
Oregon Best All-Around Rider (BAR) a year-round, multi-discipline
competition. We maintain six separate rankings, one each for
Road, Track, Criterium, Time Trial, Cyclocross and Mountain Bike. This
way you can see how you perform in any separate one. Points are
given out to the top 15 in each class – 30, 25, 22, 19, 17, 15,
13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. State Championships are worth double
points. National caliber races (Cascade, Mt Hood, AVC) are worth
triple points.
The points are tallied and then the riders are ranked in order of points in each discipline. At that time a ranking number is assigned from 300, 299, 298, 297 etc. This way no one discipline gets more weight than any other. These ranking numbers are then added and a score is given. This also means that as riders move up or down in the rankings that their points can actually decrease.
A rider who has points in more then 4 disciplines get a bonus 50 points for each discipline over 4. This means that there is a total 1200 points possible with a possible additional bonus of 100. Riders must compete in 4 disciplines in order to qualify for the end of the year trophies.
The Team BAR is the sum of the accrued points before rankings.
Results will be posted when they are available.
Overall BAR Standings
|Senior Men
Category 3 Men
Category 4/5 Men
Master Men
Single Speed/Fixed
Junior Men
|Senior Women
Category 3 Women
Category 4 Women
Masters Women
Junior Women
Overall Age Graded BAR for Masters and Juniors Categories
Updated 12/21/2005


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Friday, June 3, 2011
High Five! Tiny Morsels for Your Friday
1) Jo-Jo Reyes is your number two starter: Okay, that's a stretch, but amongst the regular starters, his ERA+ ranks only behind Ricky Romero. (And Carlos Villaneuva, whose awesomeness probably deserves its own bullet point.) Our point here is not to hype Jo-Jo into something that he's not (which was our pre-season mistake), but merely to underscore that a guy who was about to be run out of town two weeks ago ("useless", "waste of a roster spot") is now a guy who the team will depend upon to give them quality innings for the next few months. Beacuse...
2) Kyle Drabek is wild man! WILD!: Drabek has walked more batters than he's struck out (45 to 43). Yikes. And if you want to double down on your worries, listen to Keith Law on the June 2nd edition of the Baseball Today podcast, wherein he wonders if this sort of lack of command indicates some form of injury. (Our two cents is that we think Drabek might have been able to get Double-A hitters to swing at hard stuff out of the zone more so than big leaguers. That's what passes for positivism around here.) Also, KLaw quite rightly questions John Farrell's handling of Drabek in that inning by not letting him extricate himself from the mess he'd made, given that it's part of the learning process.
Does Drabek's recent struggles mean he should go back to the minors and put in some time against Triple-A pitchers? It might work out well, considering...
3) Brett Cecil's wife thinks Brett Cecil is ready for promotion: We tend not to monitor the Twitter accounts of Jays' wives and girly-girls, because we're already creepy enough. But we couldn't help but notice the retweets of Jennifer Cecil's timeline from last night, as her fella tossed a complete game, six-hitter as the Las Vegas 51's won 4-1. The one run was on a homer which Mrs. Cecil assures us would have been a double in Toronto, and she noted that he was touching 94 MPH and regularly hitting 91. Take that as you will. Perhaps if Cecil were to be recalled, he could share a cab with...
4) Gordie Dougie!: For all of the pissing and moaning we've done in pushing back on the many fans who were calling for his immediate integration into the MLB roster, we'll confess to being as excited as any of you now that the recall is imminent. The power-speed-contact-discipline numbers that we've seen from Lawrie in the past month are enough to make even us, Your Scolding Auntie, trip over our knickers in anticipation. And won't he look splendid lining up next to...
5) AL All-Star Shortstop Yunel Escobar!: Actually, June-Yell is going to be in tough when it comes to making an appearance in this year's game, given the extraordinary seasons of other AL shortstops. Even with the pretty nice start that Escobar has put up, he's still in a three-way tie for fourth amongst AL SS's in fWAR. (Though Erick Aybar's and Elvis Andrus' 1.7 fWARs are fuelled mostly by stolen bases, and we suppose that you could start to pick apart what value should be placed on SBs if you were so inclined. We'll say that we LIKE the fact that Yunel has only one stolen base this year. So there. SMALL BALL SUCKS!)
All this to say (wtf happened to all the brevity we promised), if you want Yunel to make the All-Star roster ahead of The Shell of Derek Jeter, Alexei Ramirez or Asdrubal Cabrerra, you might have to buckle down and find the time to get your 25 votes in for our boy in the middle infield.
And don't go to sleep on José Bautista either! You remember how that hot girl on American Idol got voted off because no one thought she needed their votes, and then the creepy country kid with the head tilting won? Don't let that happen to the One Man Gang!
Have a great weekend!
8 comments:
- Xave said...
Cecil's son (?) 's name is BRYTON??? What IS that???!!
- June 3, 2011 at 1:47 PM
- Chad said...
Brett Cecil's wife referred to herself as a "mama bear" in a tweet. That took a bit of the shine off for me. (then again, maybe she isn't a Sarah Palin acolyte)
- June 3, 2011 at 5:01 PM
- Tao of Stieb said...
I dunno. I kinda assume that most athletes are Republicans or worse.
- June 3, 2011 at 5:18 PM
Morrow follows Obama on twitter, and seems like a bit of a democrat if you think about it.
- June 3, 2011 at 9:23 PM
I guess if you use ERA you get Reyes doing that well, but that pretty much shows you why you shouldn't use ERA (or ERA+, by extension). XFIP is probably the way to go, given that you want to focus on K's, BB and expected HR rates. At which point Reyes is 5th if you include Villanueva, and not really that far off from where Cecil was.
Morrow, Romero, Litsch & Villa are all doing better then Reyes by that.
The reason I went with XFIP over FIP is that a guy with a 35% GB rate isn't going to maintain a sub 10% HR rate pitching half his games in Toronto.
I get what you're trying to say, but Reyes shouldn't be anything more then a guy who starts when someone is injured.
- June 4, 2011 at 12:17 AM
- Chad said...
Yeah, Tao, probably 99.7% of white athletes are Republicans. Latinos, with the exception of Venezuelans, are probably hardcore plutocrats or fascists.
If my physical abilities and bank account put me in the 99.99 percentile of human achievement, I probably wouldn't be a leftie either.
As it is, I am stuck with the hoi polloi -- at least until I find a power source for my robot Cerberus.
- June 4, 2011 at 8:37 AM
Thoughts on the demotion of Eric Thames?
- June 4, 2011 at 10:50 AM
- dogandabeer said...
Thames will be back soon enough.
Let's let Lind settle in (2 homers today) first, then we can decide on the bench.
- June 5, 2011 at 4:02 PM


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Over the past 50 years, Wilmot Elementary School has been many things: among them a place for students to get a good education and a school surrounded by parent and community support.
However, at the school's golden anniversary celebration on April 30, about 300 attendees learned that Wilmot also is a place where love sometimes gets its spark.
Ivan Wolverton, who attended Wilmot in the late 1970s, told the group during a walk-down-memory-lane program that when he was in sixth grade, he was waiting in line for the bus one afternoon and saw a girl being chase by a bunch of boys.
He didn't know her, but she definitely caught his eye. They were in different grades, and he had virtually no contact with her during middle and high school. However, he knew her name: Stephanie Martin.
Martin said she was a rebel and Wolverton was a jock, so they had different circles of friends. They went their separate ways, got married, had kids and divorced.
Then, four years ago, Wolverton looked up Martin on Facebook. They reconnected and are getting married on June 8. In addition, Martin's 9-year-old daughter also attends Wilmot.
"Wilmot is the reason we're together now," Wolverton told the group.
Their story was among hundreds told that night as former faculty and students toured the school and reconnected with friends. They entered the school by walking on a red carpet, saw class pictures by decade on the walls, and ate cake as part of the anniversary.
There were a half-dozen former faculty members and alums who attended Wilmot when it first opened at its location on Hatch Drive in the fall of 1962. There's some friendly dispute about when the school first was called Wilmot.
Wilmot got its roots from the Evergreen Elementary School formerly on the site of the library. Then it moved to where the high school is now.
The original building was unique in its design, set up in hexagonal pods. It was torn down and rebuilt during the 1999-2000 school year, and classes were held in temporary buildings that year.
Kindergarten teacher Diane Kanagy, who has been teaching at the school for 23 years, said the gathering, and the enduring love and support for Wilmot, kept bringing the word "legacy" to her mind.
"All of you are a part of that," she told the group. "All of you left a unique fingerprint on the legacy of Wilmot."
Marcia Younger, a Wilmot teacher when it opened in 1962, told anecdotes about women teachers not being allowed to wear slacks to school and not being allowed in the classroom when they were pregnant.
"This was a community of trust," she said. "Wilmot is a community full of loving, supportive families. I made some lifelong friendships that have lasted for 50 years."
Wilmot third-grade teacher Amy Vermeulen told the group that many things about Wilmot have changed over the years — the building, the names of faculty, the clothing and the hairdos, but the talent of the staff and the support from parents and community have remained.
Dick Reed, who taught special education at Wilmot from 1963 to 1966 before teaching at Evergreen High School, summed it up best: "This is just like home."
Contact Deb Hurley Brobst at email@example.com or 303-350-1041. Check www.CanyonCourier.com for updates.
A timeline of Wilmot Elementary that includes many pictures of the school through the past five decades can be seen between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday for the next two weeks. Visitors need to check in at the front office.
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A Thousand Suns
You won't see Mazge Gazeto in an "I Love New York" t-shirt anytime soon. When Gazeto, a native of the Gamo Highlands in Africa's Rift Valley, soaked in a view of midtown Manhattan for the first time, he had some critical things to say: "I can't see any land or fields. There is nothing. These people just live on concrete surfaces."
In 2008, Gazeto was part of a delegation invited to New York City by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. There, they shared their culture's insights about governing resources and relating to nature—wisdom fundamentally tied to a worldview in which humans are deeply interconnected with a larger universe.
The Western cosmology is very different, says Yale Divinity School professor Mary Evelyn Tucker. Here, "removing God from nature ... has de-sacrilized the world, and therefore opened it up for consumption, and our abuse, and for exploitation."
"We can say it is just two different worlds," says Gamo elder Kapo Kansa, "and we are depending on nature here, and there people are depending on scientific facts."
The documentary follows the Gamo delegation's trip to New York, exploring the impact that different worldviews have on agricultural practices, religious traditions, and our relationship to the environment.
Indigenous peoples have learned a few things about making it through hard times. Rebecca Adamson discusses what traditional economies did to foster abundance, sharing, and harmony with Mother Earth.


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50 Pretty Outfits for Girls To Copy
Here are some beautiful dresses and outfit ideas we have prepared for you. It's really pretty. Hurry to write this gallery comment. Your comments are valuable to us. Be confident that you will like it. We are happy to share these pictures. Hurry to follow us on the social media. Because the most beautiful tops and skirts images are on our site.
This site publishes the latest and best shorts - dresses. We are delighted to present you the images in the gallery. These outfit images and designs are completely free.
The best collection of Pretty Outfits for Girls To Copy
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School Buses
Preventive Maintenance Manual for Virginia School Buses
The Preventive Maintenance Manual-This is a PDF document. (PDF) includes daily pre-trip inspections, inspection schedules and guidelines, shop records and inventory control, and record keeping materials to assist local school divisions in meeting Board of Education transportation regulation 8VAC20-70-380.
May 23, 2008, Superintendent's Memo, Informational #133 – VDOE reminds school divisions of the daily pre-trip safety inspection requirement.
Public School Bus Specifications
- Virginia School Bus Specifications-This is a Word document. – Effective July 1, 2019
Purchasing School Buses
VDOE enters into contracts for the purchase of public school buses through a rigorous competitive bid process conducted by the Virginia Department of General Services (DGS).
- School bus contract information
- To purchase school buses, use the eVA Web-based procurement system.
School Bus Accident Data
Per the Regulations Governing Pupil Transportation effective September 28, 2012, school bus accident data is published.
Division superintendents are required annually to certify that insurance providing the required coverage has been obtained for all vehicles to be used in transporting school children and school personnel. These requirements are covered in Sections 22.1-188 through 22.1-198, Section 46.2-472, and Section 38.2-2206, Code of Virginia.
Certification must be submitted to the Superintendent of Public Instruction on or before August 1 of each year.
School divisions must use the Web-based reporting system (SSWS) to certify insurance coverage. This certification is located under Crash/Incident Reporting.
- SSWS login page (password protected)
Pilot Projects
When a new technology, piece of equipment, or component is desired to be applied to the school bus, it must have the VDOE approval. It is the responsibility of the vendor to ask school divisions to participate in a pilot project. The pilot project will need to be tested and completed in multiple regions of the state before it can be forwarded to the specifications committee to be added to the bid list.
Procedures for Pilot Projects-This is a PDF document. (PDF), revised September 19, 2014. Includes application process, guidelines, application form and reporting information.


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Appeals Court Significantly Reduces Award in Heston Lawsuit Against TASER
2008 Verdict and Attorney Fees Award Reduced by $6.6 Million
Scottsdale, Ariz. - TASER International, Inc. (NASDAQ: TASR), a global provider of safety technologies that prevent conflict, protect life, and resolve disputes, today announced that it has prevailed in vacating three of the four monetary awards that were appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Heston v. TASER International, Inc., City of Salinas, et al., N.D. Cal. Case No. C 05-03658 JW.
The Heston case received international attention in June 2008 as the first and only adverse verdict against TASER International related to the use of its products. The Company has been successful in getting dismissals in 127 other product liability lawsuits.
The jury apportioned 85 percent of the responsibility for the death of Mr. Heston to his use of toxic methamphetamines and related factors, and 15 percent to TASER International. The jury awarded Plaintiffs $5.2 million in punitive damages, and compensatory damages of $1,000,000 to Mr. Heston's parents and $21,000 to his estate. The compensatory damages were reduced to $150,000 and $3,150 respectively due to the 85 percent contributory negligence of Mr. Heston.
The District Court found that the Jury's award of $5,200,000 in punitive damages was improper as a matter of law and ordered those damages disregarded. However, the trial court did award $1,423,127 in attorneys' fees to the plaintiffs under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 1021.5.
Both TASER and the plaintiffs filed appeals in this case. The Appellate Court ruled in TASER's favor on three of four significant damages issues: the elimination of punitive damages was upheld, the award of attorneys' fees was vacated, and the damage award to the estate of Mr. Heston was vacated. The court upheld the damage award to the parents in the amount of $150,000.
TASER is also responsible for $52,700 in costs and interest.
"We are very pleased that the Court of Appeals vacated $6,626,277 in damages and attorneys' fees in this case," said Doug Klint, President and General Counsel of TASER International, Inc. "We believe that the scientific data and medical studies since this case occurred have largely disproven the allegations against TASER in this case. We remain committed to aggressively defending litigation filed against law enforcement and TASER, as well as, developing and delivering the safest options available to law enforcement for minimizing the risk to human life during violent, dangerous encounters such as the one in question here. We extend our condolences to the Heston family and hope that the end of this extensive legal process will allow us all to move forward."
About TASER International, Inc.
TASER International, Inc., (NASDAQ:TASR) is a global provider of safety technologies that prevent conflict and protect life. More than 16,200 public safety agencies in 107 countries rely on TASER electronic control devices (ECDs) and AXON on-officer camera systems to help protect and serve. TASER innovations benefit individuals and families too; providing personal protection and accountability while maintaining regard for life. Since 1994, more than 236,000 individuals have relied on TASER technology as a means for effective personal safety. Learn more about TASER International and its solutions at www.TASER.com, www.Evidence.com and www.Protector.com or by calling (800) 978-2737. Be a part of the TASER community by joining us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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Belpregranny on Family Tree Circles
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Journals and Posts
Looking for James and Amy Enoch Clark burial site
Hi. I'm Barb Gunsch from Ohio. I have a wonderful husband anme John and 4 wonderful children and 2 wonderful grandchildren. I also have a dog, Pug, named Pugsly. My hobbies are scrapbooking, reading, working with crafts and of course, Genealogy.
I'm looking for the burial site of James and AMy ENoch Clark of Wirt County, WV. Most of my ancestors are from Wirt County. James seem to have dropped from the bottom of the earth. I have very little detail on him. Amy was the daughter of Isaac Enoch of Wirt County.
Any help is appreciated.
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Making MODS
From UA Libraries Digital Services Planning and Documentation
for information on how to upload MODS, see Uploading MODS
To generate MODS from Excel spreadsheets one will need Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc, a solid text editor and Archivist Utility.
- OpenOffice Portable is freely available here.
- We have found that we generally get better results in creating tab delimited text files (necessary for Archivist Utility) from OpenOffice, given the greater number of export options.
- Notepad++ Portable (a great text editor) is freely available here.
The portable versions can easily be installed without the need for assistance from IT staff.
A brief, Microsoft Word tutorial describing the steps to generate MODS is available here.


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Nicole Forsgren Velasquez and Taylor Martin win $300,000 One-Year Grant to Study How Students Learn With Online Games
October 2013
News Warehouse
Nicole Forsgren Velasquez and Taylor Martin win $300,000 One-Year Grant to Study How Students Learn With Online Games
Huntsman Assistant Professor Nicole Forsgren Velasquez and Associate Professor Taylor Martin, of the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education & Human Services, have been awarded a $300,000 grant that will send them deep into the world of online games.
The 18-month grant comes from the National Science Foundation and the duo will be studying online educational games or "learning games," as they are sometimes called. They hope to discover how students can learn from such approaches and to see if the games can be personalized to better match learning styles and accelerate the online educational process.
Dr. Forsgren Velasquez said that traditionally students might be given a pretest and then later tested again to see how much they have learned. Because she and Dr. Martin will be able to access the back-end information from the games they study, they will be able see how students actually learn as they solve the problems they face.
"We often have thousands of kids playing these games, so we can detect patterns in the data," she said. "So we might observe that some kids tend to get stuck at a certain point in the game. Other kids might never get stuck."
If they can identify areas in the game where students struggle, they can suggest programming changes that would allow the software to offer students hints at crucial moments, helping them clear obstacles that are slowing their progress, she said.
"We think this is really transformative area and we think it could mean a lot for learning and education in the country, especially with all of these educational games people are playing," she said.
Dr. Forsgren Velasquez said she doesn't think such games will or should ever replace the kind of classroom and hands-on instruction that students need. Online games, however, are another tool educators can use and this research could make that tool more effective.
"Online educational games can help students who are struggling get up to speed so they aren't left behind in the classroom," she said.
"You can go home and work through a difficult spot on your own time, doing something that's fun, and then you can go back to school and be caught up or even ahead of the class," she said. "It enables learning in a lot of different environments."
The researchers say they will focus mostly on how games can help students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The Utah Legislature has been especially concerned about raising scores in these areas and Drs. Forsgren Velasquez and Martin have been asked to share some of their research with the Utah Legislature in January 2014.
Dr. Forsgren Velasquez said the collected data will help identify how to best help students with different learning styles.
"We think we will have a better idea of different strategies that kids use as they learn and what approaches are useful for which students," she said. "Once we have that back-end data to understand how students are exploring and interacting with the game, we can identify features that can help meet the needs of students with different learning styles."
Dr. Forsgren Velasquez said some of the money will be used to hire two graduate assistants who will help with the research. She predicts it will be valuable experience for the students.
"They can go out into industry and they will now have experience doing real and interesting analytics projects that will augment what they are learning in the classroom," she said.


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What Women Want
Stop Being Stupid
Last Friday night, as a houseguest, I witnessed the following:
A loving grandmother, whose cooking options were limited due to the recent demise of her stove, fed dinner to an 18-month old, a 4-year old, and a 12-year old. Cereal came out first. Cheerios and something along the lines of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Cow's milk (especially for the baby — good god, what is she, a calf?). Orange juice — oh goody, liquid sugar! And (blessedly), a salad with black olives.
As soon as the new stovetop was working, Grandmother heated water for Kraft mac n' cheese. She usually makes it from scratch, she told me, as if that excused shoveling gut-damaging pasta down the children's unsuspecting throats. It seems the grandchildren regularly visit on Fridays, so they always have dessert and "kid food."
"Kid food," apparently, is what one feeds to little brats whose parents have been too lazy to feed them real, healthful food. Or maybe the parents just assume that kids "won't" eat healthful food, so there's no point trying. Or maybe Grandmother just wants to make the little children smile. Whatever the case, surely anybody in their right mind (even if their only health information comes from quacks like Dr. Oz and the USDA) knows that cheesy hotdogs and macaroni isn't going to build healthy individuals.
Think the easy, cheap food choices don't matter? (After all, they're young and resilient!) Just look at the eldest grandchild. She has fat rolls and weighs more than I do. Her belly hangs over her waistband and bulges out beneath the hem of her shirt. She has more than one chin. She is clearly metabolically deranged and insulin resistant. Type II diabetes nips at her heels. She is twelve years old.
Does anybody else feel sorry for this kid? Does anybody else wish that, when exposed to information about how to effect better heath through proper nutrition, the adults in her life would listen? Does anybody really believe that feeding her even a single swallow of muffin or juice or cereal isn't killing her? Her situation is dire, folks. Without major nutritional changes, this kid is doomed to a short and painful life. And how many years will it be before her young cousins exhibit similar symptoms?
Oh, I know this isn't all Grandmother's fault. She doesn't provide most of the kids' meals. But really, are "treats" that kill really treats? Are they okay because they kill slowly, over decades rather than minutes? Is "just a little" french toast drenched in sweet pancake batter and topped with powdered sugar acceptable because it's…What? Saturday morning? Company is here? We have a new oven? Am I missing something that would make this decision appropriate?
Let's review:
Grains create holes in the lining of the small intestine. The more you eat, the worse it is, but even small amounts cause some damage (worse in some people than others). These holes permit foreign or incompletely digested substances to enter the body. There, they aggravate the immune system, resulting in inflammation and allergies, and they contribute to autoimmune conditions ranging from eczema and rheumatoid arthritis to acid reflux and IBS to Parkinson's and MS.
Whole grains also feature phytates in their bran. These substances bind the minerals in the grain (and whatever is consumed with it), making them unavailable for use by the body. So, while it is true that "healthy whole grains" contain some nutrition, your body can't use it. It may as well not be there. (Get your fiber from a butternut squash, dummy.)
Finally, grains represent a calorie and carbohydrate dense, nutrient poor, food source. Sure, they're cheap and yummy and will make you feel good as their morphene-like compounds reach the pleasure centers in your brain, but they'll also send your blood sugar skyward, demanding the release of insulin to bring it back into a safe range by storing it in the tissues…bodyfat tissues, unless you just completed a substantial amount of high intensity exercise. As a result, you get a blood sugar crash (and cravings for more carbohydrate) about 2 hours later. Over time, excessive carb intake and resultant excessive insulin release leads to insulin resistance, type II diabetes, obesity, systemic inflammation, and high triglyceride levels. Enter cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune conditions. Hooray! Just what we want for the grandkids we adore.
So…remind me why anyone would want to feed a child cereal, pasta, and toast. Anybody? Anybody???
And if your answer was "it's all they'll eat," just shut the hell up and spare me the whining. Cut the crap. Grow a backbone. When they get sufficiently hungry, they'll eat real food. Until then, at least you won't be killing them with stabs and scoops of their spoons and forks.
Pass it on.
In the southwest corner of Idaho, there is a broad swath of wilderness known as the Owhyee canyonlands. It is rough country, parched and hewn, studded with rock, split by canyons, gnarled with sagebrush, swirled by dust, bedded deep in sand. Brisk dawn gives way to sweaty days. At night, stars pour across the sky like cream.
I spent all last week there, riding 50 miles per day on horseback as part of a 5-day endurance ride. It's a sport I've loved for years, one which never loses its challenge. Every ride is a test of fitness and horsemanship, and every successful finish a triumph. Many rides last only a day or a weekend, but this one stretches over enough time to impose its rhythm on us riders.
We rise early, before the sun, to feed and prepare our horses for the day. Few of us sit again (saddle notwithstanding) until the 50 miles are ridden, the horses cared for with electrolytes and baths and leg poultices and grazing and walks to limber up. We must also wash hoof boots and tack, make repairs, pack crew bags for the next day. The only downtime comes at dinner, which we eat in a cheerful group. Then we concentrate again while the ride manager reviews the next day's trail.
At last, as the day's heat leaches away, we crawl into bed, at once exhilirated and exhausted. It is only 9pm, but the day has worn us thin. We sleep well, wake naturally, step outside to live and move and breathe and work as bodies were meant to do. On our best days, we never hurry, never tarry. All that needs to be done, is done, and nothing more.
And it is the best feeling in all the world.
(For those who are interested, I blog in detail about my Barb horses, horse training, and endurance riding at The Barb Wire.)
Five Days
I've been busy. It has been all I could do to jot down my food journal, which you'll find below. You'll see how I navigated the ubiquitous "work food" problem, elected for less physical stress in the face of other stressors, and thoroughly enjoyed a week of food and motion despite the frenzy. I'm finally learning.
PBC Day 7
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Grassfed burger (no bun) with grilled tomatillo salsa, sauteed onions, and cotija; sweet potato roasted in coconut oil; grilled asparagus. Grilled lamb ribs with homemade barbecue sauce; baked sweet potato with butter; squash ribbons with sizzled garlic and sage leaves.
Workout: None whatsoever. I was busy checking out my new camper, plus I was dealing with a minor cold on top of seasonal allergies. AaaaCHOO! It's nice that farm life requires at least forth minutes of general activity per day, no matter what else is going on.
PBC Day 8
Fuel: Scrambled eggs with hot sauce. The meat and lettuce off a Quiznos sandwich (I was at an all-day meeting, with lunch provided. In anticipation of the usual lunch boxes, I brought a plastic fork and was able to dissect my sandwich with relative grace. I donated my chips and cookie to my endurance-athlete friend and colleague, wincing sympathetically as I did so.) Nuts and dried cherries. (Supplementary lunch supplies!) Kippered herring. Primal enchiladas (beef and sauce, no tortillas, topped with cheese); plantains oven-fried in grassfed butter. Shiraz.
Workout: Bodyweight. 4x rotation of pushups, thrusters, pullups, planks, side planks. Toss in some farm chores and an evening walk with my staghound, Wyrsa.
PBC Day 9
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Eggs over easy with primal enchiladas (beef and sauce) topped with grassfed cheddar. Watermelon. BBQ lamb ribs, roasted sweet potatoes, grilled asparagus and garlic. Blackberry, mango, and banana with cinnamon and heavy cream. Gin on the rocks.
I find it interesting that I'm eating more fruit lately than I normally do. Usually, I come in around 2-3 servings per week — not per day! I'm guessing it's due to the end-of-summer abundance of fresh, local fruit combined with an uptick in my workout schedule. No biggie. Fruit isn't the devil, especially for individuals who are already lean, but it's an observation worth noting.
Workout: Heavy day! 5x rotation of backsquats, military presses, deadlifts, and bench presses. Also, a generally active day as I prepared for next weekend's 5-day endurance race and moved around some hay bales to make way for another delivery.
PBC Day 10
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Four scrambled eggs with hot sauce. (Easily ignored pile of bagals and sweetened cream cheese at staff retreat.) BBQ pulled pork, potato salad, fresh fruit, and a few veggies. (Passed on the buns, chips, cookies, and brownies. Relatively easy to navigate, as catered lunches go, though I'm sure there was plenty of sugar in the pork.) Raw nuts and a few dried cherries. Ground lamb curry and coconut-roasted sweet potato. Gin. (Ahhh, so nice to be home alone after all that slow-paced, touch-feely team-building, tools-for-idiots-who-don't-know-how-to-plan stuff.)
Workout: Just farm chores and a long, barefoot walk with Wyrsa. Wore as little clothings as possible to soak up the evening sun.
PBC Day 11
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Breakfast (at 11:00am — back on my own schedule, thank heavens! Leftover bagals in the breakroom held little appeal. The addiction is broken!) of leftover sweet potatoes and enchilada sauce with ground beef. A few nuts and berries in late afternoon. Lamburger with onions sauteed in butter, sliced tomato, sweet and yukon oven fries with seasoned salt and primal barbeque sauce. Gin.
Workout: Just chores and another walk with Wyrsa, again barefoot-ish (with Soft Stars) and wearing Vitamin D gear. Part of me wanted to do more, but the other (smarter) part recognized that I'd had quite a stressful day at work, less-than-ideal sleep, and a weekend of hay stacking ahead. Just walk, dummy! So I did.
Real Work
I started bodybuilding a few years ago, when I saw a possible divorce coming down the pike. I reckoned that if I was going to have to manage my farm — including stacking 25 tons of hay annually, breaking ice on troughs, repairing fences, rototilling, hauling feed and salt, etc. — singlehanded, I'd better get busy getting strong.
I started out with 6 pushups, no pullups, and only bodyweight to work with. So I worked with it. Five days a week. Hard. I pushed the pushups to 35 on a decline and pulled the pullups to 9. I added a backpack full of sand to get me through most of a year before I could afford a barbell set.
By the time hay season rolled around, I was able to stack thathose bales. And break the ice. And repair the fences. And rototill. And all the rest of it.
Take yesterday, for instance. I trimmed all four hooves on each of six horses, one after the other. If you've never trimmed hooves, just trust me — it's hard work. It leaves a body sweaty, bruised, and sore. But it's real work, my favorite kind.
For all that I love getting under the bar, real work is more satisfying. Farm labor is the fruit of my gym labor. The bar is the means; the hooves and hay are the ends, and I can make them meet. I am farm strong.
I often wonder what city folk do for real work. There must be options. What are they?
PBC Day 6
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Eggs over easy with grilled tomatillo salsa, bacon, coconut-roasted plantain, and blackberries. Grilled gassfed beef burger (no bun) with grilled tomatillo salsa, sauteed onions, and cotija; grilled asparagus; sweet potatoes roasted in bacon fat. Whiskey.
Workout: Nothing official. Nothing needed! Those six sets of hooves were plenty. Ironman and I also took a short walk after dinner
Embracing Discomfort
A Facebook friend of mine recently posted something to the effect that, in order to achieve optimum health, people need to learn to be hungry. That is, they need to accept temporary hunger as a natural and even beneficial state.
The thought stuck with me. I tossed it around for a couple weeks and eventually realized that I believe my friend is onto something with regard not only to hunger, but other physical states as well. Modern society seems determined to disconnect us from the world, with its attendant unpleasantness, as much as possible.
We have vehicles to minimize the obstacles of terrain and distance; convenience stores, refrigerators, and plastic wrappers to ensure immediate access to food; heavily padded furniture, floors, and shoes to minimize our contact with natural surfaces. We have high-tech clothing and HVAC systems and insulated homes to shield us from weather's whims; machines to dig our holes and raise our beams; drugs to quell the unpleasant side effects of our own immune systems hard at work.
I'm not saying we should all go live in the woods. I like my automatic dishwasher and flush toilet as much as the next guy. I'm just saying that, given the extraordinary ability of our bodies to adapt to adverse conditions, perhaps we would be healthier if we actually asked our bodies to deal with more discomfort than our modern environment strictly requires.
Which leads me back to hunger. Just because food is available on every corner doesn't mean we are best adapted for a lifetime of full bellies. Even if we take Chik-fil-A and Peanut M&M's out of the equation, and assume a squeaky-clean paleo diet, we still don't need to nosh constantly. Like many paleos, I have discovered the unique pleasure (yes, pleasure) of hunger. (I'm talking intermittent fasting, people, not anorexia or Auschwitz.) It's a kind of fasting that comes naturally when you really start listening to your body. I talked about appropriate IF in this post.
But hunger is only one form of healthful discomfort. What about physical effort? I once read a Fitness Black Book article hypothesizing that fitness levels tend to correspond with pain tolerance. That is, elite athletes have an unusually strong ability to push through pain (not injury, ideally) while unfit people are prone to "wimping out." Interestingly, exercise may increase pain tolerance over time. Even if you're the type that hates physical effort, whether it be occasional white-buffalo-in-the-sky hill sprints or 1RM tests under the bar, it seems you can improve your feelings about exercise by doing more of it. You can certainly improve your health.
How about temperature? I've mused lately over a series of posts at Critical MAS, in which the author experiments with cold exposure and its role in improving leanness, adaptability to stress, and more. It's interesting stuff, particularly since the nights are dropping into the 50's now and I'm sleeping with the windows open, waking to invigorating chill, choosing to head outside with fewer layers than would keep me perfectly cozy. Doing so encourages physical activity and, over time, broadens my comfort zone. I behave similarly in the heat of summer, eschewing air conditioning in favor of letting my body experience the seasons in all their (ahem) glory.
There are other things. I choose to sleep on an unusually hard surface. I often avoid backrests in favor of core-enhanced posture. I delay dinner for an hour or two while I do the farm chores and take an evening run. I carry a box of tissue instead of swilling Dayquil.
It's nothing major. Certainly nothing dangerous. And as discomfort goes, it feels surprisingly good.
You see, physiological benefit notwithstanding, we stand to gain mental and emotional fortitude by bearing up under — even seeking out and embracing — discomfort. Call it "building character" ala Calvin and Hobbes, if you will, but it seems to me that improving our ability to deal with stressors makes us stronger. And I really like being strong.
Just something to think about.
PBC Day 5
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Eggs over easy, bacon, spaghetti squash fried in bacon fat, blackberries. Coconut cream concentrate. Tomato-cucumber salad topped with cotija, oil, vinegar, and dill. Ground lamb and onion cooked in coconut milk with garam masala; sweet potato roasted in coconut oil. Chardonnay. Apple with almond butter. (And wow, that apple did me in. Waaaay too much sugar. I went to bed early, feeling as though I'd eaten a pint of Tin Roof Sundae. Ugh. I haven't eaten a whole apple in so long that I'd fogotten how they affect me!)
Workout: Barefoot trail run. I also rode 16 miles on two horses and generally kept moving most of the day.
Hoofing It
I have weird feet.
It's an unfortunate fact that severe bunions are not particularly attractive. I've had mine so long that I remember when I didn't realize that my feet were the abnormal ones, and all those people with people with perfectly straight feet weren't cursed with an absurdly boring podiatrical condition.
It's another unfortunate fact that severe bunions typically result in early and severe arthritis, as bones jammed together in unorthodox ways wear through the cartilage that is intended to slide between them. I remember many nights during my undergrad work when my late-night studies were accompanied by burning pangs in my the large joints of my big toes. There was nothing to do but grimace and let it pass.
Years of running (nothing impressive, just 4-6 miles most days, and a half-marathon in my early twenties) did the arthritis no favors. It continued to stab at me almost daily, growing worse in winter and at night. Fortunately, I have a high pain tolerance and didn't figure the fiery pangs compared to the 3-month incapacitation associated with bunion surgery, which involves the chiseling away of large amounts of scarlike calcification, plus the intentional severing and re-setting of several bones. No thanks.
So here's the cool thing: I'm 33 now, I've been primal/paleo for over two years, and the arthritis pain is gone.
Erm…isn't arthritis supposed to get worse with age?
I still run sometimes. In fact, I ran yesterday — just a couple miles along the rutted and rocky irrigation road that runs along the downhill side of my farm. And get this: I did it "barefoot." (I wore Soft Stars, which are comparable to the better-known Vibram Five Fingers but lack the toe-shoe feature that I suspect would not accomodate my bunions.) Barefoot running requires a toe-first landing that I would have dreaded three years ago.
While I'll never be a yogi, I now make a habit of performing exercises that require the kind of extensive toe flexion that was impossible in my twenties. Walking lunges. One-legged barbell squats heavy enough to make my glutes sore for days. Planks. Pushups.
Winter still comes and goes. I'm very active, spending entire weekends and weeknights on my feet. I wear heels to work, though nothing steep or featuring pointed or narrow toeboxes.
And I hardly ever feel the arthritis. Maybe once every 4 months. Really.
Super. Cool.
I don't fully understand this. Alleviation of rheumatoid arthritis, an inflammatory condition related to autoimmune problems, is a well-documented benefit of paleo nutrition. However, osteoarthritis caused by a mechanical defect, like bunions, would seem to present a different challenge. My bones are still crunching past each other at awkward angles, right? So why is the pain gone? Decreased inflammation? Improved healing capacity? Mark Sission shares some ideas here.
Whatever the details, I'll take it!
PBC Day 4
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Grassfed ground beef sauteed with bacon and onions; eggs over easy. Grassfed ground lamb in coconut milk with onions, garlic, garam masala, and sundried tomatoes served over sweet potato roasted in coconut oil. Chardonnay. Banana with almond butter and coconut cream concentrate. (Yes, I often carb up a bit on Friday nights.)
Workout: Nothing official. I took a dog and my nano (yay!) for an hour's walk/run along the canal. Barefoot running is amazing for calf development. You gotta try it.
(Not) Too Common
I'm thinking about entering Wednesday's MDA contest. It involves submitting my Primal success story, with photos. The thing is, my success story isn't dramatic. I didn't lose 100 pounds or put MS into remission or reverse type II diabetes.
On the other hand, I did get strong and sexy, and I solved a bunch of minor-but-persistent health issues that I was previously conditioned to accept as "they way things are."
So many people accept eczema, GI issues, heart disease, diabetes, acne, arthritis, hypoglycemia, mood swings, cravings, and myriad other conditions — not to mention the supposed age-induced creep of bat wings and spare tires — as "normal."
These things are not normal. They are common.
My story is about being the exception.
Is yours?
PBC Day 4
Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Grilled lamb chop and shrimp with pesto (no dairy) and garlic butter; herb-roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions. Buttered spaghetti squash; stuffed pasilla. Grilled grassfed burger (bunless) with smoked salt, avocado, bacon, and sauteed onions; cucumber-tomato salad with olive oil, vinegar, and dill. Coconut cream concentrate. Red wine.
Workout: 5x backsquats, bench presses, one-legged barbell squats, and military presses. Feels fantastic to be back under the bar! I also scurried about the farm for a while as soon as I got home from work, preparing for tan incoming thunderstorm that lasted half the night. Rain! And, I did a Feldenkrais lesson before bed.
Sound and Bites
I got a nano!
Yeah, yeah, everyone else on the planet already has one. But you have to understand, I am SO not the music or technology type. But I like podcasts. And audiobooks. And it's so teeny-weeny cute!
I ordered it a little, red jacket for clipping to my shorts for long walks or hill sprints. I set up speakers in my gym so I can listen while I lift. Now I just need some good music and a pair of earphones that don't 1) fall out or 2) hurt my ears.
#2 applies to both the music and the headphones. Any suggestions?
PBC Day 3
Food as Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Eggs scrambled with pulled pork, peppers, onions, and tomatoes; plantain roasted in coconut oil. Coconut cream concentrate. Grilled lamb chops with walnut-pecan-mint-sundried tomato-raisin-olive oil pesto; grilled shrimp with garlic butter; herb-roasted purple potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions; anaheim peppers stuffed with cheese, jalipenos, and sundried tomatoes. Gin on the rocks.
Workout: Play day. Took my endurance horse out for a quick, 8-mile ride. Did the usual farm chores. Set up iTunes and nano. (Hey, for me, that was a workout.)
At the Very Least
I'm reading this book. It's fascinating.
In Wheat Belly, cardiologist William Davis, MD, explains how modern wheat — which is vastly different from its ancestors due to extensive modifications that were never safety-tested — not only contributes to bodyfat gain and chronic disease by damaging the gut lining (gluten) and spiking blood sugar more than ice cream or Snickers bars (carbohydrate, glycemic index), but it also stimulates appetite (gliadin) and activates the same pleasure centers in the brain as opiates like herion (exorphins).
If you're not ready to give up all grains, at least read this book. If you struggle to lose bodyfat, suffer from allergies or other autoimmune conditions, have skin problems like acne or eczema, deal with gastrointestinal issues from poor digestion to celiac, or worry about cancer or heart disease, at least read this book.
Just read it. And make up your own mind.
PBC Day 2
Food as Fuel: Coffee with heavy cream. Pulled pork with grilled tomatillo salsa. Grilled sirloin tip; cucumber and tomato salad with cotija, olive oil, and vinegar; green grapes. Steamed mahi-mahi; squash ribbons with sage butter; baked sweet potato with grassfed butter. Malbec.
Workout: Bodyweight. 4x rotation of pushups, air squats, pullups, and planks. Nothing too spectacular, but it definitely fried some muscle glycogen and made me a touch sore by morning. Feels great.
Incidentally, I was running late again last night (got stuck at the office for an impromptu meeting, then had an errand to run). By the time I got home and did the farm chores, it was almost 7pm and I would really rather have settled into my evening relaxation routine of cooking dinner and sipping wine. I just didn't feel like I had the steam for a workout… but I put on my workout clothes instead, and proceeded to have a strong and enjoyable session.
That's what usually happens. As Nike would say, Just Do It.


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Published Jul 25, 2017
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Mo. House Creates Two More Medicaid Study Panels
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) - The Missouri House has created two additional committees to study changes to the Medicaid health care program for the poor.
House Speaker Tim Jones said Thursday that one of the new panels will pair citizens from across the state with legislators. That panel will provide its research to an interim House committee, which will work on a proposal for the 2014 legislative session.
The Senate already has created its own interim committee to study Medicaid. And a bill pending before Gov. Jay Nixon would authorize the appointment of a fourth Medicaid committee comprised of House and Senate members.
Earlier this year, the Republican-led Legislature rejected the Democratic governor's plan to expand Medicaid to thousands of low-income adults under the terms of President Barack Obama's health care law.


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In the two and a half months since he traded Canada's weather for Florida's, and titles like FIFA for Madden, Cam Weber has read that he delayed Madden's release for three weeks because of the NFL lockout; that he's adding some kind of social network to the game, like Need for Speed's Autolog; and that he is at the same time doubling the size of the Madden team while presiding over a massive brain drain within it.
None of that is true, Weber says, understanding that just because he says it isn't, hardcore fans might be inclined to believe it more. Regardless, he is now the chef in EA Sports' football kitchen, where rumors flare like grease fires and are just as hard to extinguish.
"I've had a small taste of that this week," admitted Weber, when asked if he knew what he was getting into when an organizational shakeup after the collapse of NBA Elite 11 tabbed him as the "football czar," directly reporting to Andrew Wilson, now EA Sports' second-in-command.
Before taking over two months ago, Weber, 37, logged production experience on FIFA and, most recently, was executive producer of Fight Night Champion, among the most critically acclaimed in the EA Sports catalog. He's trading that for Madden, the division's flagship product but also a game that takes more forum abuse year-to-year than any - sports or otherwise - that comes to mind.
"Before I came down here, I spent hours combing through forums and reading what people say. There's a lot of negative response to a lot of things," Weber says. "But when you think about it, you've got a really engaged community there. Maybe they're angry about certain things, maybe they're frustrated about certain things, but they're out there, they're passionate, and those are the people you want to build a game for.
"I'd rather deal with a passionate fanbase than one that doesn't care," Weber said.
It's a diplomatic attitude, but one almost immediately put to the test since Weber came aboard in February. Even before NFL owners locked out their players, EA Sports had been sending repeated assurances that a full Madden NFL 12 would publish this year. Of course, said skeptics. EA poured a lot of money and promotion into a fan vote for this year's cover, pulling in some 12 million votes. Gimmick, said the cynics. Then came news that Madden 12 was moving from its traditional early August release date, to a week before the season opener. Ah-hah! Said everyone.
EA Sports insists it planned to move the date all along, to align it with the league's ever growing gala week celebrating the new season, and this would be the new release window for future years. But comment boards and forum posters took it as EA throwing in the towel on a lockout year. Analysts have said a lockout threatens Madden's sales by up to half their usual total. Weber is adamant that, if there really is no football in real life, that makes 2011 the year to focus hard on game development, not to take a pass.
"If there was a year to produce a Madden for the hardcore, this would be it," Weber said. "In a year of potentially no NFL, the guys who are going to come back are the hardcore fans."
EA Sports has a tightly programmed set of reveals for Madden - again, a campaign meant to underscore the full-version treatment for Madden 12 regardless of labor strife in the real world. Weber wouldn't budge on specifics until it was pointed out that every Madden, every year, seems to make the same appeal to the core.
"Fundamentally, you'll see improved collisions, and significant improvements to the defensive AI," Weber said, and indeed, the AI tuning and these collisions - less of the "suction" tackles caused by certain animations - have been touted for Madden's Tiburon sibling, NCAA Football, which Weber also oversees. "We've also done a lot of work on how players perform throughout the game; we're diving deeper into how they perform as the momentum of a game changes. You'll see a ton of improvements in our Franchise and Superstar modes. And we'll have a new feature in how our players play the game online as well. But I can't get into more detail than that."
The online feature, Weber said, is not some type of "Autolog," the social networking feature of Electronic Arts' Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit which, among other things, helps players compete asynchronously - i.e., they don't have to be online at the same time to beat a friend's best time. Weber, at last week's "Season Opener" event in San Francisco, complimented Autolog's innovations, and suddenly that meant Madden was getting the same thing this year, if not at the expense of something gamers wanted more.
Weber said he was only reacting to a question that directly mentioned Autolog, and that Madden, broadly speaking, will begin serving more ways for gamers to compete online than simply head-to-head games with friends, or finding strangers in an online lobby. As for what is coming in Madden 12, "I wouldn't compare what we're doing this year to Autolog."
And then came the mention of the Three Year Plan, something that didn't land gently on ears when it was first mentioned at Season Opener. EA Sports has in the past publicly committed to long-term development goals to rejuvenate certain series - FIFA and the dormant MVP Baseball most notably. With Madden, the title most stung by "roster update" criticisms, on the boards this sounded more like "Wait until Madden 14 comes out."
Weber showed up in February, halfway through Madden 12's build. What a three-year plan is, Weber says, is a comprehensive focus on football gameplay - "whistle to whistle" as he says - that's meant to keep each year from being purely reactive, so that future editions going forward all have identifiable long-term development behind them. In so doing, he offered that Tiburon's core football gameplay team would double in size. Though this crew works on the engine used by both Madden and NCAA, that became "Madden's team is doubling."
Weber reiterates: Twice as many people will be working on core gameplay for both games. Madden and NCAA retain their own teams of designers, producers and animators, focusing on the features that differentiate them.
"We're going to focus on building from the core out," Weber said. "It's something we've seen in the FIFA franchise. Our FIFA team had very large, dedicated and high performing central gameplay team that formed the core of their business. So, our NCAA football team does amazing job of delivering the sights, sounds, tradition and pageantry of college football. Our Madden team focuses on the NFL experience. We will let them focus on those things while having a high powered, heavily funded team driving improvements, from the core out."
Thing is, such long-term plans were often mentioned in the past by the series' creative director, Ian Cummings, who kept close contact with the community. Cummings, however, departed last week after 11 years with EA Sports. And that's where Weber and Tiburon have had to whack the next mole, that the studio is battling a mass defection of his best and brightest, fleeing over philosophical differences.
Cummings and Tiburon's former chief technological officer are headed for Row-Sham-Bow, the casual games studio headed by Philip Holt - who had been EA Tiburon's GM until the shakeup this winter. Weber said Cummings' departure was amicable, and only he and another unnamed engineer were lost from the studio's football staff - not the droves of Madden design members as had been rumored.
"Ian got a new opportunity, and even after he resigned, he finished off the tuning and the features he was working on," Weber said. "Madden is in an alpha stage; its feature set is complete, at this stage, all that is left is polish and tuning. It's tough to lose a guy like Ian, but even for every guy like Ian in creative development, there are three or four chomping at the bit to step up and take the opportunity."
That's a hell of a lot of inside baseball for a former college quarterback, to manage in 60 days. Weber, a Vancouver native, called signals for Simon Fraser University from 1992 to 1996, the only Canadian college playing American football in the NCAA. He comes to his job as more than a designer or a fan, but someone who can judge the exploits and hazards presented in an opposing defense and whether or not the game lives up to them.
"My passion is football, and this is the opportunity to come work on the sport I love. I'm a hardcore football guy and football fan. I know the pressure is there to deliver for those hardcore fans, and deliver the game they deserve," Weber said. "To me, it's a dream job."