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Crochet Caps for a Cause Pattern. Last week I had a new and exciting experience – I became a volunteer at our local hospital. I originally created this blog to have a creative outlet but I had no idea the impact my readers would have on my life. All the positive feedback and comments have helped me see that I have an opportunity and an obligation to give back . My new volunteer job is to create and deliver art and activities for the pediatric and geriatric wards and to make hats and blankets for the maternity and neonatal intensive care units. I delivered my first big package of materials and hats last week and it felt so amazing to be able to contribute to this wonderful cause.
In honour of this new endeavour in my life, I'm including the pattern for what I'm calling my "Caps for a Cause" crochet beanie. This is a very quick and simple pattern that even beginner crocheters can easily master. I crochet pretty slowly and I can make these hats in about 45 minutes (much less time for a preemie sized hat). These hats can be made in any size from preemie all the way to men's large so this is a very versatile pattern.
I'd also like to extend a challenge for any of my readers who are so inclined to join me in this volunteer effort. Hospitals are in great need of caps for newborns, preemies, and cancer patients. Blankets, shawls, wash clothes and toys are also in high demand. Most hospitals have volunteer programs for receiving knitted and crochet goods so I encourage you to donate if possible – oh, and please share your experiences with me in my comments section.
Crochet Caps for a Cause Pattern – download pattern.
- A soft medium weight yarn. I used Red Heart Soft. Choose as many different colors as you'd like.
- Crochet Hook – US J10/6 mm. I used this larger hook size for the baby hats so that the hats were a little more airy and stretchy but feel free to use a smaller hook if you prefer.
- Yarn or tapestry needle
- Scissors
Basic Hat Directions:
Ch = chain, sl st = slip stitch, sc = single crochet, dc = double crochet (U.S.)
- Ch 5 and then join together into a ring with a sl st (keep all your stitches loose). Or use the magic ring method if you prefer.
- Round 1: Ch 2 and then make 12 double crochets into the ring. Join with sl st.
- Round 2: Ch 2 and then 2 dc into the same stitch. Now do 2 dc in each stitch around and then sl st to join.
- Round 3: Ch 2, 2 dc in the first stitch then 1 dc in the next and the repeat this pattern for the entire row. Sl st to join.
- Round 4: Ch 2, 2 dc in the next stitch then 1 dc in the next TWO stitches and repeat in this pattern for the entire row. Sl st to join. (*Hats for preemie babies skip to step 7 – note that hospitals ask that hats for preemie's be a little bit longer so that they can fold back the edge of the hat)
- Round 5: Ch 2, 2 dc in the next stitch then 1 dc in the next THREE stitches and repeat in this pattern for the entire row. Sl st to join. (*For larger hat designs you'd just keep increasing the number of stitches between each dc by 1 until you get the size you'd like. Example: the next row would be 2 dc in the next stitch then 1 dc in the next FOUR stitches, the next row would be 2 dc in the next stitch then 1 dc in the next FIVE stitches, etc…)
- Rounds 6-12: Ch 2, double crochet in each stitch and join with a slip stitch. Continue this for each row until the hat is as long as you want it. (I usually do 6 rows for my baby hats)
- Final row, chain 1 and then sc in each stitch and slip stitch to join (keep this last row loose or else it will make the hat too tight at the bottom).
- Fasten off and weave the ends into the hat using your yarn/tapestry needle.
For the striped hat design just alternate different colors for each row (and add a third colour in the second last row of dc's if you'd like). For the hat with the second color along the rim, change the color in your last row of dc's and then keep that color for step 8. I really like having at least 2 colors in the hat design, it just makes it a little more exciting to look at and you can have fun coming up with contrasting colors.
To add the single woven thread through the hat, thread your tapestry needle with a piece of yarn about 24″ long. Starting at the back seam of the hat, weave in the yarn and tie in with a knot and then weave in and out of each stitch around one row. See photo below for exactly where you put your needle through to get the same design I've done. When you're done the row fasten off and weave in any ends.
Looking for more great crochet patterns: Crochet Cat Bed, Crochet iPhone Case, Easy-Peasy Crochet Beanie, Crochet Infinity Scarf
Subscribe to Dabbles and Babbles to receive the latest crafts, activities for kids, recipes, printables, tutorials and more – subscribe in the right sidebar.
Thanks for reading!
~ Jamey
Update: Here's the pile of hats that Noelle and I took to the hospital on New Year's day… what a positive way to start off a new year.


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KARACHI (October 17, 2012): The organiser of two Twenty20 matches between an international XI and a Pakistan All Stars side Wednesday insisted they would go ahead despite the game's governing body objecting to the name of the touring team.
The two matches on Saturday and Sunday in Karachi are aimed at taking Pakistan a little further towards a resumption of home internationals, suspended since a deadly militant attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore in March 2009.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) wrote to the PCB to say the visiting team could not use the "World XI" name.
"The ICC doesn't permit the names World or World XI for exhibition matches," an ICC spokesman told AFP from Dubai.
Mohammad Ali Shah, sports minister for Sindh province, said the matches were backed by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and were aimed to restore international cricket in the country.
Responding to the ICC's concerns, Shah said the matches would go ahead.
"There is nothing controversial in it," Shah told AFP. "It will be an International World XI which is arriving early Thursday and the matches will go ahead as per schedule."
Former Sri Lankan captain Sanath Jayasuriya will lead the World XI, which also includes former players from South Africa and the West Indies.
The Pakistan All Stars will be led by current all-rounder Shahid Afridi and include Younis Khan, Nasir Jamshed, Asad Shafiq, Umar Akmal, Shoaib Malik, Umar Gul, Mohammad Sami, Wahab Riaz and Imran Nazir.


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Africaarr. Audrey Snyder - Hal Leonard Corporation
Africaarr. Audrey Snyder - Hal Leonard Corporation
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This accompanied arrangement of Toto's chart-topping hit from 1983 is a must for younger choirs! Complete with optional parts for claves/bells, cabasa and conga drums, it spans the generations in its appeal! "I hear the drums echoing tonight, but she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation..."
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A small bird with red and orange plumage perches nearby. It looks towards you with an intelligence that would surprise some, and seems to have an aura of majesty around it as though it is something to be respected.
NG Tiny magical beast (fire)
Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect magic, detect poison, low-light vision; Perception +5
Aura shroud of flame (2 1/2 ft., 1d2 point of fire, DC 10)
AC 17, touch 16, flat footed 13 (+2 size, +4 Dex, +1 natural)
hp 11 (2d10); regeneration 2 (cold/evil)
Fort +3, Ref +7, Will +1
Defensive Abilities immolation, self resurrection; DR 5/evil; Immune fire
Weaknesses vulnerability to cold
Speed 5 ft. (1 square), fly 60 ft. (perfect)
Melee 2 talons +8 (1d3 plus 1d2 fire) and bite +8 (1d4 plus 1d2 fire)
Space 2-1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 2)
Constant—detect magic, detect poison
3/day—see invisibility
1/day—continual flame, cure light wounds
Str 11, Dex 18, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 12, Cha 14
Base Attack +2; CMB 0; CMD 14
Feats Flyby Attack, Weapon Finesse (bite)
Skills Acrobatics +9, Fly +13, Perception +6; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception
Languages Celestial, Common
Familiar Service
Willingly serving spellcasters as familiars, alizarin phoenixes play the role of dutiful protectors and sentries, providing information on the road ahead or enemies who venture into the immediate vicinity of their masters.
Unlike others of its kind, if an alizarin phoenix familiar dies again before a year's time has passed since its last self-resurrection, it does not permanently die. Instead, its master must gather its ashes and carry them with him for 1 week. After 1 week has passed, the master can resurrect his familiar by incorporating the ashes into a special ritual that costs 200 gp per wizard level. Once the ritual is complete, the alizarin phoenix familiar immediately self-resurrects. The ritual takes 8 hours to complete as normal. If the alizarin phoenix familiar is dismissed or lost, it can also be replaced in the same manner. An alizarin phoenix familiar can be self-resurrected multiple times by performing the same ritual. The alizarin phoenix does not gain a negative level when resurrected in this way.
In addition, whenever its master is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points, an alizarin phoenix familiar can transfer a number of hit points equal to its master's wizard level to its master, once per day.
An alizarin phoenix can be summoned via the Improved Familiar feat by a non-evil spellcaster of 7th level or higher.
Immolation (Su)
When an alizarin phoenix is slain, it spontaneously bursts into flame. Any creature adjacent to the alizarin phoenix takes 3d6 points of fire damage and catches on fire. A successful Fortitude save (DC 14) reduces this damage by half and prevents the target from catching on fire. Each round on the alizarin phoenix's turn, a burning target can attempt a new save to extinguish the flames; otherwise it takes another 1d6 fire damage.
Self Resurrection (Su)
Like its greater cousin, a slain alizarin phoenix remains dead for only a short time unless its body is completely destroyed by an effect such as disintegrate. Otherwise, a fully healed phoenix emerges from its remains 1d4 rounds after its death, as if brought back to life via resurrection. The alizarin phoenix gains 1 permanent negative level when this occurs, although most use greater restoration to remove this negative level as soon as possible. An alizarin phoenix can self-resurrect only once per year. If an alizarin phoenix dies a second time before that year passes, its death is permanent. An alizarin phoenix that dies within the area of a desecrate spell cannot self-resurrect until the desecrate effect ends, at which point the phoenix immediately resurrects. A phoenix brought back to life by other means never gains negative levels as a result.
Shroud of Flame (Su)
An alizarin phoenix can cause its feathers to burst into fire as a free action. As long as its feathers are burning, it inflicts an additional 1d2 point of fire damage with each natural attack, and any creature within reach (0 feet) must make a DC 10 Reflex save each round to avoid taking 1d2 points of fire damage at the start of its turn. A creature that attacks the phoenix with natural or non-reach melee weapons takes 1 points of fire damage (no save) with each successful hit. The save DC is Constitution-based.
Environment warm desert, forests, and hills
Organization solitary
Treasure standard
The alizarin phoenix is a cousin to the great fiery birds of legend that dwell in the deep, remote deserts of the world. Like their greater cousins, these creatures are rare, but are more commonly seen in the company of adventuring humanoids. Many keep alizarin phoenixes as pets, and since they can never truly die, this avoids the heartbreak associated with the deaths of most beloved animals.
Alizarin phoenixes are not often seen in combat, but when forced to engage an enemy, they fearlessly attack head on, since they do not fear death. They will often fly as close to enemies as possible, so that when they die, their slayer also takes damage from their immolation ability.
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FY 2008 Budget
Transforming Higher Education
Intel Science Awards
Teacher World's Fair
State Reforms Overview
Quote to Note
Upcoming Events
FY 2008 Budget
Last week, it was all about the Hill as Secretary Spellings and other senior staff testified before the relevant House and Senate appropriations subcommittees regarding the President's Fiscal Year 2008 budget request. "As 9% investors in K-12 education, our role at the federal level is limited," the Secretary observed during her opening statement before the House subcommittee. "But we can make a real difference for students by targeting resources strategically. We all agree that education is a top priority for our country's future, and we all agree that we must produce a balanced budget." (Note: The federal investment in postsecondary education is about 33%.) The Secretary delineated three critical goals of the budget: improving chronically underperforming schools; increasing resources and rigor in high schools, especially in math and science; and making college accessible and affordable for every student. She then outlined the programs in support of these goals, from School Improvement Grants and increased Title I funding for high schools to the largest Pell Grant increase in 30 years and increased funding for Academic Competitiveness and National SMART grants. Of course, the budget request "was developed in concert with our [No Child Left Behind] reauthorization proposal to help move the debate forward in key areas," the Secretary reminded the Senate subcommittee.... I look forward to what I expect will be a vigorous debate...as we work together on both the 2008 appropriation for the U.S. Department of Education and the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind."
The Secretary's House testimony was followed by testimony from other Department officials, elaborating on their primary areas of responsibility. Among the presenters: Deputy Secretary Ray Simon (K-12), Undersecretary Sara Martinez Tucker (higher education), Director of the Institute of Education Sciences Grover Whitehurst, and Assistant Secretary for Vocational and Adult Education Troy Justesen. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget08/testimony.html.
Transforming Higher Education
Meanwhile, the last two weeks have been building to the Secretary's Higher Education Summit:
First, in between her testimony, the Secretary offered remarks at a March 13 American Enterprise Institute seminar on higher education, detailing her action plan to make college more accessible, affordable, and consumer-friendly for families. "No matter what challenges we encounter, from global competition to national security, we rely on our rising generation to invent the technologies that will keep us on top, crack the codes to keep us safe, and lead our nation in the years ahead," she noted. "Only education will give them the skills they need to rise up to these challenges." For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/03/03132007.html.
Next, on March 21, the Secretary unveiled the FAFSA4caster, an online tool which provides students with an early estimate of their eligibility for federal financial aid. Starting on April 1, the FAFSA4caster will instantly calculate a student's eligibility for federal student aid, including grants. It will also reduce the time it takes to complete the full Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, as it pre-populates 51 of the 102 questions on the FAFSA. The FAFSA4caster meets one of the Secretary's action steps to improve the U.S. higher education system: notifying students of their eligibility for aid earlier than spring of their senior year. For more information, please go to http://www.federalstudentaid.ed.gov/fafsa4caster.html.
Then, on March 22, nearly 300 college presidents, administrators, association and business leaders, and government officials gathered at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., to formulate "next steps" in carrying out the recommendations of the Secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. In the morning, attendees considered a set of 25 initial recommendations from five pre-summit, subject-specific working groups: aligning K-12 and higher education expectations; serving adults and other non-traditional students; increasing need-based student aid; enhancing affordability, decreasing costs, and promoting productivity; and using accreditation to emphasize and support student learning outcomes. In the afternoon, attendees identified core tasks that need to be done to achieve the recommendations and which stakeholders (colleges, foundations, government, etc.) should be responsible for them. "It's a truth Lyndon Johnson recognized when he signed the Higher Education Act," the Secretary said. "As he put it, 'The leadership of your country believes it is the obligation of your nation to provide and permit and assist every child born in these borders to receive all the education that he can take.' Forty years later, we're 'the leadership' to whom he's referring.... It's our responsibility and privilege to meet this obligation." This summer, the Department plans to hold regional summits (Atlanta, Boston, Kansas City, Phoenix, and Seattle) to solicit more advice and involvement and explore whether and how the issues are playing out differently at a local or regional level. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/03/03222007.html.
Intel Science Awards
At a March 13 ceremony, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett honored 40 Intel Science Talent Search (STS) award winners, comprising, for the first time, an equal number of young men and women. Sponsored by Intel since 1998, STS is America's oldest (1942) and most prestigious high school science competition; 1,705 students entered the contest this year, representing 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Top honors went to Mary Masterman of Oklahoma City, who built an accurate spectrograph for about $300 that identifies the characteristicsor "fingerprints"of different kinds of molecules. (Commercial units can cost up to $100,000.) She joins some rather esteemed alumni: six Nobel Laureates, three National Medal of Science winners, 10 MacArthur Foundation Fellows, and two Field Medalists. For more information, please go to http://www.intel.com/education/sts/.
Teacher World's Fair
Today (March 23) in New York City, Secretary Spellings joins thousands of educators for PBS' second Celebration of Teaching and Learning conference, dubbed the "World's Fair for Teachers." This year's conference focuses on science and global awareness issues with dozens of sessions and workshops led by respected experts. Teachers and other professionals will also collaborate with colleagues and learn about the resources and services offered by public television. For more information, please go to http://www.thirteencelebration.org/.
In a recent letter, the Secretary informed Chief State School Officers of the extension of Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZABs) through 2007. She also reminded them 2005 QZABs allocations will expire at the end of this year. QZABs are bonds subsidized by the federal government which can be used for rehabilitating and repairing school facilities (but not new construction), purchasing equipment, developing curricula, and training school personnel. QZABs can help schools save up to 50% of the cost of financing allowable activities, and states are not required to submit an application to the federal government before using QZABs. Enclosed with the letter is a table showing the state allocations of QZABs for 2005-2007, denoting the maximum amount of QZABs that may be issued within a state for a given year. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/secletter/070301.html.
State Reforms Overview
The National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) State Education Reforms (SER) web site describes the growing role of states in public elementary and secondary education throughout the 1990s. To facilitate discussion, the site groups reform efforts into four categories: standards, assessments, and accountability; school finance; teacher training and resources; and school choice options. Topics include student and teacher assessments, Adequate Yearly Progress, highly qualified teachers, and charter schools. For more information, please go to http://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/.
Quote to Note
"There's a strong case that strengthening higher education is critical to our future competitiveness. But, in my opinion, there's an even stronger moral case to be made. Helping more Americans earn a degree is not only important for our economic standing, it's essential to reinforcing what our country stands for. If our nation stands for equality, if we believe every child deserves access to the opportunities education provides, then the sad fact that so many of our low-income, minority students are, in effect, being locked out of higher education doesn't reflect those uniquely American ideals."
|Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (3/22/07),
addressing the Higher Education Summit
Upcoming Events
The Department's next "Education News Parents Can Use" broadcast, on charters and school choice, is scheduled for April 17. Also, if you missed it, be sure to view the archived webcast of this month's show on higher education. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/news/av/video/edtv/.
Over the next two weeks, the Department will be exhibiting at the National Science Teachers Association's annual conference in St. Louis (March 29-April 1) and the National Association of Elementary School Principals' annual convention in Seattle (March 29-April 2). If you are attending either of these events, please stop by the Department's booth.
Credits, Subscribe & Unsubscribe
Please feel free to contact the Office of Communications and Outreach with any questions:
Director, Intergovernmental AffairsRogers Johnson, (202) 401-0026, email@example.com
Program AnalystAdam Honeysett, (202) 401-3003, firstname.lastname@example.com
To be added or removed from distribution, or submit comments (we welcome your feedback!), please contact Adam Honeysett. Or, visit http://www.ed.gov/news/newsletters/edreview/index.html.
This newsletter contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links are provided for the user's convenience. The U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Furthermore, the inclusion of links is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or services offered, on these sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites.


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The war over contraception rages on, but Democrats have definitely won this round.
Over the past week, Democrats have turned the tables on Republicans in the heated debate over whether religious institutions should be required to cover contraception in their employer-sponsored healthcare plans. But what initially looked like yet another losing battle over Obama's healthcare reform unexpectedly turned into a resounding win for the Democratic Party.
At the center of this victory was Sandra Fluke, a pretty 30-year-old Georgetown University law student who was not allowed to testify at a House Oversight Committee hearing on the contraception issue.
As we have previously noted, Fluke would not have been a very strong witness had she been allowed to speak. As a Georgetown student, she could not have provided any insight into the Catholic university's employee healthcare plans which, incidentally, cover contraception.
Issa's rationale for rejecting Fluke was that "the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception." But his exclusion of Fluke left the panel without a single female witness.
Of course, any debate about contraception includes a discussion about women's health issues. There are women who come down on both sides of the issue, making the lack of female representation on Issa's panel at minimum bad politics.
It is not clear whether Democrats on the Oversight Committee knew, or suspected, that Fluke's testimony would be rejected. But there is no way they could have anticipated that Rush Limbaugh would get in on the action.
Limbaugh makes inflammatory remarks all the time. But his description of Fluke as a "slut" and a "prostitute," and his suggestion that she post sex tapes online in exchange for birth control pills struck a chord, perhaps because it provided a subtext to the image of Issa's all-male contraception hearing.
Limbaugh's verbal assault against Fluke, combined with the GOP's tepid and belated response, put Democrats on the offense. In the wake of the Limbaugh firestorm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has raised more than $1 million with a new "War on Women" campaign, and Obama's reelection campaign has launched a series of "Women's House Parties" to organize female volunteers.
Even the President himself has waded into the issue. He called Fluke last week to offer his "encouragement and support." On Monday, the White House announced he will deliver the commencement address at Barnard College.
This routing by the Democrats has put the Republicans in a potentially perilous political position going into the 2012 election. As the Washington Post's Karen Tumulty points out, a spate of recent polling suggests that the GOP has lost its recent gains with female voters and is now getting trounced by Democrats all the way down the ticket.
Democrats clearly have no intention of ceding this new advantage. In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Obama's senior campaign strategist David Axelrod used Mitt Romney's timid response to Limbaugh as a broader metaphor for his weakness as a candidate.
"If you don't have the strength to stand up to the most strident voices in your party, how will you stand up to Ahmadinejad?" Axelrod said. "This is not a game. You're running for president of the United States. When you stake out positions in the middle of the campaign you're going to be held to those positions."


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Media Says: No Cure for Heart DiseaseSeptember 2010
By William Faloon
In response to the failure of quadruple-bypass surgery to keep blood flowing to Bill Clinton's heart, the Associated Press proclaimed that there is no cure for coronary artery disease.1
As we predicted in the November 2004 issue of Life Extension Magazine®, a lot more than statin drugs would be needed to prevent atherosclerotic plaque from re-occluding the former President's coronary blood flow.
According to his cardiologist, Bill Clinton did everything right since his 2004 bypass, including eating well, exercising, and keeping his blood pressure and cholesterol in check. Despite this, the bypass graft re-occluded at the beginning of this year, necessitating the insertion of two stents to prop the vessel open.
Mainstream cardiologists were quoted in the media stating that those undergoing coronary artery procedures often have to return every four to five years for tune-ups, i.e., to reopen newly blocked coronary arteries. One cardiac surgeon bragged that he had performed 10 or 15 different stent procedures on the same patient over a period of time.
Bill Clinton's cardiologist stated that we don't have a cure for this condition, but we have excellent treatments.
These blatant admissions document the inability of conventional doctors to prevent and reverse atherosclerosis.
Life Extension® Members Know Otherwise
In response to Bill Clinton's heart attack and subsequent need for bypass surgery in 2004, Life Extension reminded its members that atherosclerosis arises from a chronic condition known as endothelial dysfunction.
We listed the risk factors that cause endothelial dysfunction and described how members could protect against each and every one of them.
The fact that mainstream cardiologists have 'thrown in the towel' when it comes to eradicating coronary artery disease reveals how little they pay attention to the published scientific literature.
Life Extension® members long ago were made aware of 17 independent causes of atherosclerotic disease. The diagram on page 16 of this issue outlines each of these correctable cardiac risk factors.
Coronary Artery Disease Can Be Reversed
Contrary to what mainstream cardiologists say, it is possible to reverse the blockage of blood flow through the coronary arteries. One way is to follow the aggressive lifestyle modification program Dean Ornish, MD has prescribed for decades.
Dr. Ornish and colleagues showed that a regimen that emphasized a very low fat diet, regular exercise, meditation, and avoidance of certain risk factors not only stopped the progression of coronary artery disease, but could reverse it.
This result was demonstrated in a randomized controlled trial, known as the Lifestyle Heart Trial, with data published in The Lancet in 1990. In this study, test subjects were recruited with pre-existing coronary artery disease.2 The patients assigned to Dr. Ornish's regimen had fewer cardiac events than those who followed standard medical advice.3 What's more, their coronary atherosclerosis was somewhat reversed, as evidenced by decreased narrowing of the coronary arteries after only one year of treatment. Most patients in the control group, on the other hand, had worsening of their coronary artery blockage at the end of the trial compared to when they started. These favorable results have been replicated by doctors using similar methods (for example, Caldwell B Esselstyn, Jr., MD4 and K. Lance Gould, MD).5
The drawback to Dean Ornish's program is that it is very restrictive. Participants must avoid all meat and dairy products except egg whites, nonfat milk, and nonfat yogurt; as well as all vegetable oils, nuts, seeds, and avocados. Participants following the Ornish program must supplement with calcium, iron, vitamin B12, and essential fatty acids or deficiencies will develop.
As you'll read soon, there are other documented ways to maintain healthy coronary artery blood flow that are ignored by most practicing cardiologists.
Dick Cheney Does Opposite of What Dr. Ornish Recommends
Perhaps no living political figure exemplifies poor lifestyle choices and ensuing chronic heart disease better than former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Cheney was known for eating outrageous quantities of artery-clogging foods and smoked heavily for 20 years. He almost certainly suffers today from cardiac risk factors that extend beyond his early-life unhealthy habits.
Shortly after Bill Clinton's coronary stents were inserted this year, Dick Cheney suffered his fifth heart attack. The first occurred in 1978, when he was only 37. He suffered his second in 1984 and a third in 1988 before undergoing quadruple bypass surgery to unblock his arteries. His fourth heart attack occurred in 2000. At that time, doctors inserted a stent to open a re-occluded coronary artery.
In 2001, doctors implanted a device to track and control Cheney's heart rhythm. In 2008, he underwent a procedure to restore his heart to a normal rhythm after doctors found that he was experiencing a recurrence of atrial fibrillation. Despite all this, Cheney suffered his fifth heart attack in February 2010.
Dick Cheney has reportedly taken statin drugs for nearly two decades. In June 2001, his LDL was an excellent 72 mg/dL, indicating he was taking a high-dose statin drug. This did not, however, prevent him from suffering another heart attack.
The former Vice President has had access to the best that conventional cardiology can offer, yet his chronic heart ailments have not abated.6 Cheney's multi-decade case history presented the media with another opportunity to declare there is no cure for coronary heart disease, something that Dr. Dean Ornish and many others involved in natural healing vehemently disagree with.
Crestor® Approved by FDA to Reduce C-Reactive Protein
The FDA has given pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca a gift worth tens of billions of dollars by allowing their statin drug Crestor® to be the only medication approved to reduce the risk of heart attack in aging men and women with LDL-cholesterol less than or equal to 130 mg/dL, elevated C-reactive protein greater than or equal to 2 mg/L, and at least one other traditional cardiac risk factor (e.g. hypertension, smoking, or family history).
Life Extension members were warned long ago about the dangers of excess C-reactive protein in the blood. C-reactive protein is a marker of inflammation. Chronic inflammation, as evidenced by high C-reactive protein blood levels, is one cause of atherosclerosis.7-9 Published studies indicate that elevated C-reactive protein may be a greater risk factor than high cholesterol in predicting heart attack and especially stroke risk.10-14
While generic statin drugs and natural therapies have also been shown to reduce C-reactive protein, the FDA has anointed Crestor® as the only approved drug to treat patients with elevated C-reactive protein who also fit certain age and traditional risk factor criteria. This means that Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies have to pay over $125 for 30 20-mg tablets of Crestor® as opposed to as little as $7.30 for 30 40-mg tablets of generic simvastatin (brand name Zocor®).
Crestor® is the most potent statin drug, so some people may require 40 mg of simvastatin to achieve the same results as 20 mg of Crestor®. Both of these doses are higher than what is usually needed to lower LDL (low-density lipoprotein). Statin drug side effects are amplified as the dose escalates, so one can expect that those prescribed high-dose Crestor® (to reduce C-reactive protein) will suffer more liver-muscle damage.
An increased risk of type 2 diabetes was recently suggested in statin drug users, which further emphasizes the need to use the lowest effective dose if one chooses to use this class of drug.15 There are other options.
The Phony Health Care Cost Crisis
The FDA's gift to AstraZeneca means that only high-cost Crestor® can be advertised and health insurance-reimbursed for the purpose of reducing cardiac risk in patients with a combination of elevated C-reactive protein, "normal" LDL cholesterol, advancing age, and at least one traditional cardiac risk factor like high blood pressure, smoking, and family history. While AstraZeneca enjoys gargantuan profits, taxpayers will be forking over 17 times more than what a generic of probable equal efficacy would cost.
Remember, there is no real health care cost crisis. It is governmental over-regulation of our disease-care system that causes medical prices to be hyper-inflated. Our 500-page book FDA Failure, Deceit and Abuse thoroughly documents this tragedy that politicians still cannot grasp.16
Life Extension has long advocated that those who need statin drugs should use the lowest possible dose. For many people with excess C-reactive protein, the lifestyle modifications you will soon read about (and/or low dose 5-10 mg/day simvastatin) can bring elevated C-reactive protein down to safer ranges.
Too Many Statin Drug Users Suffer Heart Attacks
Pharmaceutical companies have promoted statin drugs as a virtual universal remedy to prevent heart attack. According to conventional guidelines, statin drugs are to be prescribed when LDL blood levels exceed 130 mg/dL and lifestyle modifications like stopping smoking and losing weight fail to bring LDL cholesterol to an optimal level.
Life Extension has long argued that LDL levels should be kept below 100 mg/dL in healthy people to optimally protect against atherosclerosis. In certain high-risk cardiac patients, LDL levels need to be suppressed below 70 mg/dL.
The high dose used in the Crestor® study pushed median LDL level down 50% to a low of 55 mg/dL from a median of 108 mg/dL at baseline and it reduced C-reactive protein by 37%. Despite these impressive reductions in two proven cardiac risk factors, a significant number of subjects taking Crestor® still suffered "major cardiovascular events."17 This further exposes the fallacy of relying only on statin drugs to maintain healthy arterial blood flow. Remember Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney took statin drugs for years, but their coronary arteries re-occluded anyway.
Crestor® will soon be promoted as a panacea for heart attack prevention. What will not be disclosed in drug advertising, however, is that more than half of the major cardiovascular events in the Crestor® study would occur despite the high-dose use of this drug. In statistical terms, while Crestor® reduced the relative risk of the combined endpoint of heart attack, stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes by 47%, the majority (53%) of these cardiovascular endpoints in this high-risk study group would still take place! What this means is that if you have cardiac risk factors and rely solely on a high-dose statin drug, you are still at significant risk of suffering a heart attack.
Why Crestor® Failed to Protect All the Study Subjects
There are at least 17 independent risk factors involved in the development of atherosclerosis and subsequent heart attack and stroke. Statin drugs do not come close to correcting all of these risk factors. Based on the findings from the Crestor® study, it is obvious that even when LDL (and total cholesterol) is reduced to extremely low levels, too many people still suffer a major cardiovascular event.
This study will nonetheless be the basis of a national advertising campaign to tout Crestor®. An analysis of the study findings, however, documents the critical need to correct all known cardiovascular risk factors (including elevated LDL, total cholesterol, and C-reactive protein).
We are not vilifying the proper use of statin drugs. For many people with stubbornly high LDL and C-reactive protein levels, they represent an important weapon against arterial disease. Our emphasis is that statin drugs are not the only way to lower LDL and C-reactive protein, and they should not be relied on as the only approach to protect against atherosclerosis.
Reducing C-Reactive Protein Requires a Multimodal Approach
Life Extension has reviewed thousands of C-reactive protein blood test results over the years. Our consistent observation is that overweight and obese individuals have stubbornly elevated C-reactive protein levels.18 Our findings were confirmed in a recent study that showed overweight and obese individuals are far more likely to have elevated C-reactive protein. In fact, obese people are three times more likely to have elevated C-reactive protein levels than normal-weight individuals.19,20
C-reactive protein is a marker of chronic inflammation. A large body of evidence correlates chronic inflammatory reactions with the increased risks of cancer,21-23 stroke,24 heart attack,25-27 and dementia.28 People who accumulate excess body fat suffer sharply higher incidences of all these diseases, further validating the importance of maintaining C-reactive protein at optimal ranges.
In the Crestor® study, median C-reactive protein levels were 4.2 mg/L in the Crestor® group, and 4.3 mg/L in the placebo group at baseline.17 Obese individuals can have C-reactive protein levels that are easily double this.29 The biological challenge in overweight people is to combat the excess C-reactive protein made directly by fat cells (adipocytes) and the C-reactive protein made in the liver in response to excess amounts of interleukin-6 expressed in abdominal fat that is dumped directly into the liver.
Since obese and overweight individuals spew out C-reactive protein from their liver and fat cells, it is often challenging to bring this lethal inflammatory compound (C-reactive protein) into safe ranges.
We are impressed with the data from the Crestor® study showing the reduction in C-reactive protein and major cardiovascular events. Our decade-long evaluation of C-reactive protein blood results, however, prompts us to warn that it will require more than statin drugs to suppress dangerously high C-reactive protein levels prevalent in so many individuals.
The good news is that low-cost nutrients and hormones, along with dietary changes, can work as well as statins in reducing deadly C-reactive protein.


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Online classes, certificates and degrees at Rio Salado College make it possible to fit college into your busy life. You don't have to sacrifice work, family and your other commitments to get an education. With flexible Monday start dates, you can take online classes on your schedule, wherever and whenever you want!
For 15+ years, Rio Salado College has provided online learning and services to more than 250,000 students. Start earning your certificate or degree with online classes today. Contact Rio Salado for information about our class schedule, degree programs, enrollment, financial aid eligibility and more.
What does an online class look like?
What programs are available at Rio Salado College
What else do I need to know?
Rio Salado College offers round-the-clock support to our online students with 24/7 online tutoring and library services. For your convenience, the helpdesk is also open 24 hours a day--phone, email, chat--we've got you covered. You can register for classes, access your grades, or receive technical and instructional support anytime you need it.
Going to college doesn't have to mean going into debt. You make smart buying decisions every day--and college should be no different. Rio Salado's tuition for Maricopa County residents is $85.
Rio Salado College is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. The college has a national reputation in online learning with more than 43,000+ online students taking classes annually at Rio Salado College.
Rio Salado College was established in 1967 by the Maricopa County Community College District in response to a growing need for accessible education solutions and workforce training. The college added hand-coded online courses to its distance learning options in 1996. In 2004, Rio Salado introduced its first custom-built learning management system, RioLearn, and by 2006, a majority of the classes offered by the school had been converted to an online format.
Rio Salado College is widely recognized for its culture of innovation, forward-thinking approach and innovative approach to accessible learning to higher education.
See the Tuition and Fees page for more details.
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Experts: Taliban threat could undermine Afghan progress
The United States must balance how many troops it leaves behind after exiting Afghanistan to ensure Taliban strongholds don't grow.
WASHINGTON — The surge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan secured large portions of the country but has left pockets of Taliban in parts of the east, raising concerns that those strongholds could undermine progress as U.S. forces continue to leave the country, analysts say.
How much of a threat the Taliban poses is central to the debate on how many U.S. troops to leave behind after 2014, when Afghan forces assume responsibility for security. Any remaining troops would be used primarily for counterterror missions and to support Afghan security forces.
President Obama met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House on Friday and said he has not settled on the size of the force or the pace of the drawdown through 2014. The White House has said no option is off the table, including removing all troops after 2014.
STORY: Karzai urges stronger U.S.-Afghanistan ties
STORY: Obama, Karzai agree to speed up military transition
Some military strategists, however, say the United States risks losing gains of recent years if the number of remaining U.S. forces is too small to stiffen the spine of Afghanistan's fledgling army and police force in the face of a continued Taliban threat.
Eastern Afghanistan's deep valleys and towering mountains have long served as a refuge for insurgent groups, including the Taliban and Haqqani network. Securing Kabul, the nation's capital, depends on the ability to control the approaches to the city, which run through the east.
"We have a fundamental problem in the east," said Fred Kagan, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute who has advised top commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The plan was always to shift resources from the south to the east, but the president's timeline for the surge recovery really prevented that from happening to any significant degree."
Obama ordered a surge of more than 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan in December 2009. The vanguard of that surge flooded into Helmand province and Kandahar, key Taliban strongholds in the south.
But the pullout of the reinforcements began before the coalition could shift to the east, the next phase of the campaign.
Today, there are 66,000 American troops in Afghanistan, down from a peak of nearly 100,000 in 2010.
U.S. military officials say the Taliban has been driven to the margins of the country, making it difficult for them to influence or intimidate the population.
"We know the Taliban will remain resilient and capable in some areas, but they have largely been pushed out of the population centers," said Army Col. Tom Collins, a military spokesman in Kabul, in an e-mail.
The Taliban has "adapted somewhat by moving their operations and IED (improvised explosive devices) terror campaign into the countryside where civilians overwhelmingly remain the victims," Collins said.
Even if the Afghan and coalition forces can secure the key population centers, the presence of Taliban strongholds in the countryside can still pose a threat to Afghanistan's government, said Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
The Taliban can use the isolated redoubts to launch attacks to cut roads and slowly claw its way back into power. The Soviets controlled key cities during their occupation in the 1980s but were ultimately defeated by the mujahedin, or Muslim freedom fighters, who fought from remote rural bases.
"They've seen repeated wars in which those who control large areas of the countryside unmolested win the war," Neumann said of Afghans.
Driving insurgents from rural strongholds will pose a major challenge for Afghan security forces, which lack the mobility and firepower of U.S. forces.
Afghanistan's military doesn't have enough aircraft to move forces quickly and then provide them with the supplies necessary to sustain operations. Roads in many parts of Afghanistan are primitive, making air mobility essential.
"You're putting the Afghans in a very precarious position," said Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.


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Please note: We have now published an updated version of this article: Ten steps to successful SEO for startups
You're starting a new business. You have a great idea or product, some money to invest, eager customers, and great workers.
With the business model and process elements covered, now is the time plan out how to succeed in search and discovery digital contexts.
Many elements are required to do well nowadays need to be built-in to your site and off-site properties, so here is an outline on how to build a new business that will do SEO right.
Step 1: Know Your Concepts and Keywords
Start by determining what customer behaviors you want to be a part of and what concepts you want to be associated with.
This is bigger than just keywords and keyword research. People, content, functionality, open data, and a bunch of other things will get you business into the conversations you care about.
For the sake of clarity, let's say you're starting a new business based on selling new and used cars and operating car dealerships. Here's what a concept map might look like:
Take the concepts and behaviors you want to be associated with and build a list of strategic keywords. You will use these keywords for a lot of different purposes later.
Step 2: Plan Your Content Investments and Practice Content Marketing
Now that you have a handle on your key concepts and have built a strategic keyword list, you're ready to create a high-level plan for content creation. I say high-level because this will help inform your website user experience, the type of people you hire, and the kind of narrative, social, video, or other type of digital content you invest in.
Here's an example of a high-level editorial plan for a new and used car dealership business:
Note how core concepts inform multiple aspects of content and UX creation.
Step 3: Ensure Your Site is Technically Flawless
This is the world of technical SEO. It has two main components:
- Making sure you don't screw up your indexing by creating content that can't be seen or is duplicative.
- Making sure you create search-engine friendly code.
Modern content management systems do a pretty good job in this area, and if you are using WordPress you are really lucky as there are some great SEO plugins that make tuning the technical side of things easy.
Most content management systems can also create sitemaps – be sure to activate them, submit them to Google, and validate them using Google Webmaster Tools.
One emerging element of technical SEO is the creation of open data sets or APIs. If your business will thrive by getting your inventory or content into as many places as possible, consider creating data feeds or APIs for third-party developers to use.
Step 4: Get Your On-Page and Metadata Act in Order
Discrete content elements – web pages, images, PDFs, videos, social profiles and brand pages, local listings, and off-site (reviews) pages all require on-page optimization. This means knowing the target keyphrase for the content and getting it into the right places – the title, description, copy, etc.
This is too much ground to cover in detail in this one guide, but here are a few helpful optimization resources:
- Metadata & You: Best Practices, Benefits & Implementation Made Easy
- Image Optimization: How to Rank on Image Search
- 5 YouTube Video Optimization Tips
- SEO for Google+ Profiles, Pages, Local, Communities & Updates
- 5 Social Media Profile Optimization Tips for Brands
You need to make sure every piece of content is optimized before it goes out the door and is published, and that it has both social signal (tweets, Google +1's,) and inbound link support.
There are also a ton of emerging metadata schemas out there – Open Graph, Twitter Card, Google-specific (Authorship, etc.), Schema.org, and others. Best practice is to build this front-end metadata into your templates where appropriate and have them pull the right attributes from the database or have your writers enter the values into the CMS at the point of content creation.
Step 5: Develop Your Social Authority Plan
Social authority, in most cases measured by a given persons G+ profile, has the potential to become a major ranking factor in the emerging world of app-based or semantic knowledge engines.
This means you need to determine who in your company (maybe everybody?) will become active on Google+ and other key social graph and authority platforms like LinkedIn to champion your brand, create content, and get connected to other authoritative people. Google+ posts pass Page Rank, and Google+ profiles may show author attribution on results pages, so it's an especially important platform for SEO.
Some brands don't want every employee to represent their brand in social contexts, some are OK with that. For example, if you work for The Economist, don't expect to see you name appear on any of your articles. If you work at The New York Times, you may even get your Twitter handle in your byline.
Many companies net out in the middle – high profile executives and writers or product people are authorized, encourages, and reviewed and compensated based on their social authority and the metrics of the content they create and promote on 'earned' platforms.
Step 6: Mobilize, Localize, and Socialize Your Content and People
Search engines are geo-locating results more and more – not just the local results block but the core web results as well. This means you need to make your content as locally relevant as possible and to make it work great on mobile devices (where a ton of local searching is done).
Create geo-targeted evergreen pages, create geo-optimized profiles, location pages, support or reseller pages, whatever. No matter how abstract your business is you can find some way to make it locally relevant.
Here's an example of geo-located core web results:
I often tell clients that local is the "back door" into competitive search results pages. Making your site responsive or at least mobile-friendly for the major screen sizes will often help here.
If you have location or sell through the channel, get your locations or agents up on mobile geo-optimized landing pages and put inbound links from all the major social profile pages pointing to their profile page.
Step 7: Practice Distributed, Search-Informed Communications, and PR
Launching a new business is news-worthy, so make the most of the bursty nature of the event to get inbound links to deep pages using good anchor text.
It's not just press releases. It's interviews, it's getting your employees to link to deep pages from their Google+ profiles, and it's drawing attention to the deep functionality of the site so that bloggers and other folks will link to them and discuss them.
As noted above, empower some or all of your employees and make them a PR/social media army to drive social signals and inbound links around you launch.
Step 8: Train Editors, Publishers, and Writers on SEO and Linking
Be sure to put your writers and editors through SEO and social media bootcamp before you go live. Get them to understand content metrics and target keywords.
Make sure they push their content on Google+, LinkedIn, wherever it's relevant. The idea is to do content marketing, not content creation. If a particular writer gets a lot of inbound links or tweets, let them know rewards will follow.
Step 9: Put the Key Metrics, Reporting Tools, and Reporting Cadence in Place
Having a content metrics and inbound marketing reporting plan in place before you launch is a great way to ensure these elements don't get de-scoped or forgotten.
There are a ton of tools out there to help you evaluate content both from a social sharing as well as an SEO perspective. Add in traditional web analytics and you have a good idea of how well acquisition content is doing.
Look at things like organic landing pages, time on page, and pages viewed per session for a given entry page. Add in social metrics and you are good to go.
Look at this report at least once a week once you launch. You can also pay offshore resources peanuts to manually compile this data.
Linkdex has a great Content 360 report that aggregates SEO and social sharing metrics into one URL-level report. Nice!
Step 10: Allocate Dollars for Content Promotion and Syndication
At this point, you pretty much have a plan in place. Now you need to understand how you're going to promote, syndicate, and generally give you content a push out the door.
Taking a step back, you're enterprise content plan for the example used above might look something like this. At each stage, there are paid, social graph, or syndication options that go beyond traditional SEO and can work synergistically.
At the end of this process you have created an acquisition-focused enterprise content framework. Now ask yourself how paid media can support each element.
Staple your enterprise content plan right in front of you – that way you can see it all the time.
Step 11: Make it Somebody's Job
I've saved the best for last, because if nothing else I want you to remember this. Put SEO and content metrics on somebody's performance plan and make sure you have the resources in place to get the work done.
Writers aren't SEO people, neither are analytics people nor developers. You need an earned media person who will drive this project forward continually.
Hire them. Call them whatever your want – Content Champion, Inbound Marketing Strategist, Earned Media Manager – whatever – but put them in place and hold them accountable.
If you're the CEO, it's not really your job to do this. If you're a director of online marketing, it's likely you don't have the time to do this. You need somebody who will work cross-group and who can focus on this.
Whether it's for a startup or a new business, these 11 steps will help your SEO efforts be more successful. Of course, once you launch a business the keywords and content your care about may change, but the game remains the same.
Work at a startup or new business? Ask questions or share your own experiences in the comments!
Shuttle Image Credit: Alexander Stirn/Flickr
Related reading
How to lead SEO teams and track its performance effectively: Experts' tips
Leading an SEO team is not an easy task. Nine industry experts share how to effectively guide your SEO team and assess their performance.
SEO is a team sport: How brands and agencies organize work
I interviewed 31 people, from Content Specialists to SEO Directors, and CEOs to ask them about how teamwork and workflow affect SEO operations and success.
Seven SEO tips for image link building to generate more traffic
Your images, infographics, and memes, too, can be used for link building to turn your page into a link magnet. Image link building tips with examples.
The Transformation of Search Summit 2019: Speakers, agenda, FAQ
The Transformation of Search Summit 2019 will take place in New York on Oct. 25. Speakers include experts from Disney, Pinterest, Mastercard, and Microsoft.


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Agoria Wallonie
Agoria Wallonia promotes and protects the interests of the Agoria member companies with all relevant decision makers from the political, economic, social and academic world. Through targeted actions this policy unit advocates a favorable business environment for the benefit of the technology industry in Wallonia.
Your contact Dominique Demonté
Upcoming events
15/10 EverZinc organizes "R-Zinc" : The First European Rechargeable Zinc Battery Meeting EverZinc, member of Agoria, has announced the organization of R-Zinc, first rechargeable zinc battery meeting in Europe which will take place on October 15 at Nine One Brussels.
24/10 'CEO Roundtable Sustainability' @ Umicore Hoboken Agoria's Young Professionals Network would like to invite you to its event: 'CEOs meet Young PROs on sustainability'. Ever wondered what sustainability can mean for tech companies? Do you doubt whether sustainability can be a real driver for innovation and long-term profits? Come and join us, you will learn how top notch tech companies have integrated sustainability into their business model. Seven key note speakers will pitch their sustainability strategy to a critical public of young professionals. Get inspired!
07/11 Belgian Plastics Day 2019 - Plastics in a Circular Economy How is the Belgian plastics industry performing in a circular economy? What are the market trends? How is the uptake of recycled plastics in Belgium? This is what you can discover on the second Belgian Plastics Day, co-organised by Agoria and essenscia PolyMatters.
More events on the french or dutch version of our website
Intersysto launches an e-health app that revolutionises home care After its participation at the CES trade show in Las Vegas where it won an award for its 3S Homecare app making it possible to better organise home support for elderly people, the start-up from Tournai also took part in the Mission led by Princess Astrid in Morocco last December. Interview with its founder, Dominique Duhayon.
Apply to the Corporate Startup Stars The 'Corporate Startup Stars' is a set of awards intended to recognise large firms that have gone out of their way to work with startups, in order to promote corporate-startup collaboration as a mechanism for helping startups scale. Last year, Samsung Electronics, KPN and Sodexo were awarded as Europe's top three startup-friendly corporates.
Become stronger on the international market All European SMEs active in textile machinery and advanced manufacturing can apply to the Ready2Net Call.
#CSR: What is the effect of CSR on your company? Ask yourself: What does Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mean for your company? Decreasing the impact on the environment and climate? Philanthropy? Employer branding? Ensuring employees throughout the company commit to the importance of CSR is one of the main challenges for companies at this time. This text provides insight into the impact of CSR on your company. We will follow up on this with another article on concrete steps you can take to implement CSR.
More news on the french or dutch version of our website


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Friday, November 1, 2013
Is Mulcair's QP performance paying off?
Considering the results of Ipsos-Reid's latest poll, as well as his improving approval ratings recorded by EKOS Research, it is a question worth asking.
Ipsos-Reid was in the field between the first and second explosive speeches made by Duffy in the Red Chamber, so the fallout from his last set of allegations (if there will be any) have yet to be fully recorded. Nevertheless, the poll has some interesting results.
(Ipsos-Reid also polled between Oct. 16-20, before the Senate scandal blew up again. The national results of that poll have been included in the lower bar in the chart above.)
The Liberals and New Democrats tied for the lead in the poll with 31% apiece (if you're wondering why I decided to put the Liberals first in the chart, it is because Ipsos had 263 people in their survey supporting the Liberals and 262 supporting the NDP - it is just that close!). Compared to their pre-Duffy polling, that represented a drop of two points for the Liberals and a gain of four points for the New Democrats. Those shifts are within the margin of error (of a probabilistic sample). The Conservatives dropped a single point to 30%, putting them in third place for the first time since, I believe, ever (at least for this current version of the party).
The Bloc Québécois had 6% while the Greens had just 2% support. 1% of Canadians supported another party and, by my estimate, 21% of those sampled were undecided.
It is perhaps more instructive, however, to look at Ipsos-Reid's previous poll from mid-September. Since that poll, both the Tories and Liberals dropped two points but the NDP picked-up five: that is outside the margin of error, suggesting that the New Democrats are really making gains.
This is certainly a great poll for the NDP, who have not led or been tied for the lead in any survey since October 2012. A word of caution, though, as Ipsos-Reid finds the NDP's supporters to be less committed than those of the Liberals and Conservatives. Two-thirds of their supporters were absolutely certain they would vote in an election (barring an emergency), compared to 58% for the NDP.
The source of the NDP's gains appears to be Ontario. The party tied with the Conservatives with 33% apiece in the province, a gain of eight points since September (the Liberals were at 32%). That increase was outside the margin of error, and the only shift since either the pre-Duffy or September poll to be outside the margin of error at the regional level anywhere. But with the exception of Atlantic Canada, the NDP did make modest gains throughout the country.
In Quebec, the NDP was up to 32%, putting them ahead of the Liberals, who were down to 30%. The Bloc Québécois fell to 25%, while the Conservatives were at 12%.
The New Democrats also led in British Columbia with 36%, followed by the Conservatives at 29% and the Liberals at 28%. The Liberals led only in Atlantic Canada, with 55% to 26% for the Tories and just 17% for the NDP.
The Conservatives were ahead in Alberta with 49% to 26% for the NDP and 19% for the Liberals, while they were in front with 46% to 29% for the NDP and 24% for the Liberals in the Prairies. It is perhaps worth noting that in both Alberta and the Prairies, second place flipped from the Liberals to the NDP between the Oct. 16-20 and Oct. 25-28 polls. The shifts were within the margin of error, however.
It is also worth noting generally that this Ipsos-Reid poll stands out for having the Liberals low and the NDP high, particularly in Ontario. We will have to wait and see whether other polls will confirm that the New Democrats are making gains.
The Conservatives benefit from the divided opposition in Ontario, winning the plurality of seats in the province. They also put up good numbers in the West, but lose quite a few seats in B.C.
The New Democrats win the majority of seats in Quebec and manage a strong performance in Ontario and British Columbia, along with a smattering of seats on the Prairies and in Atlantic Canada. The Liberals win most of their seats east of Manitoba.
It is hard to imagine that the Conservatives would be able to govern very long, if at all, with this sort of result in the House of Commons. But it is also hard to imagine what the Liberals and New Democrats would do. Govern in tandem? With a tie in both popular vote and seats, who would take the lead in such a coalition? Would Mulcair or Trudeau be Prime Minister? The most likely result, in the end, might be another election to settle the matter since there is no other simple solution.
The EKOS poll
The poll by EKOS Research, done over most of the same days as Ipsos-Reid, had a very different result: 37% for the Liberals, 26% for the Conservatives, and 25% for the New Democrats. The numbers, even at the regional level, were broadly similar to their previous poll from earlier in October, which I analysed here. Interestingly, EKOS shows that Mulcair's approval ratings have soared to almost 50%, a big change from previous polls, both their own and those by other firms.
But there is something that is important to note with the EKOS Research poll. Brought upon by questions asked by Abacus Data's David Coletto, Frank Graves of EKOS wrote up an explanation of why his latest poll was heavily weighted towards university graduates, to the tune of almost three times the number it should have been compared to the census. I have brought up the problems related to over-sampling one group before (most recently here), but the potential issue with the EKOS survey is that the poll was not weighted by education at all, meaning that the poll is skewed towards those with a higher level of education (rather than just having the risk of the lower-sampled groups having their errors magnified by inflating their weight).
Coletto found that if the sample was weighted according to the census results for education levels, the results would be dramatically different: 33% for the Conservatives, 32% for the Liberals, and 24% for the NDP. This would bring the poll's results much more into line with what Ipsos-Reid, Abacus Data, and Harris-Decima have recently recorded. The same would happen with EKOS's previous poll in September.
Graves's response to Coletto's concerns is laudable. It is hard to imagine many other pollsters being so open with a methodological issue like this, and we should applaud this degree of transparency. It is far too rare in the industry.
The main element of Graves's response is that respondents are known to inflate their level of education - a high-school dropout becomes a high-school graduate, a college degree becomes a university degree, a few years at Trent becomes a bachelor's, etc. That makes this more difficult to compare a survey's education-level sample to the census than, say, gender or age. Graves suggests re-weighting his sample to a different proportion for education, with 45% being university educated instead of the 22% from the census or the 62% from his poll. The results change accordingly: 35% for the Liberals, 29% for the Conservatives, and 25% for the NDP.
I'm not sure I quite agree with Graves's re-weighting approach, as it would seem to make a lot more sense to bring the numbers much closer than that to the census. But I do understand his concerns with the difficulty in getting accurate responses (if you weighed a poll by ethnicity, what do you do with all those people who impossibly say their ethnicity is Canadian?). On the flip side of the coin, though, if the sample itself cannot be trusted, why report the results for that particular category? Are university graduates more likely to support the Liberals, or only people who falsely claim to be university graduates? How useful is that information?
If the results were broadly similar across the different educational levels, this would not be an issue at all. But since they are significantly different, and have been for some time since Trudeau's surge, this is an important issue. I would suggest that EKOS weigh their polls more with a nod towards educational levels than they have in the past, since it seems to be a leading indicator of how someone will vote: 42% of self-proclaimed university graduates support the Liberals, compared to 28%-29% of the rest of Canadians in the EKOS poll. The NDP's support was mostly uniform, while the Conservatives get 36%-37% support among lower educated voters, and 21% among university graduates.
Another point Graves's brings up, which I do agree with, is that pollsters need to draw a line of what to weigh a sample by. Any number of factors could be chosen - should you weigh a poll by beer preference according to market share? But education is a rather basic measuring stick and, perhaps more relevantly, it is a category that EKOS itself reports.
On that score, the sort of concerns brought up by Coletto and on this site in the past give pollsters good reason to limit the amount of information that they release with their polls. Why run the risk of some pesky nerd poking holes in your work? There is, of course, a big difference between the right thing to do and the easy thing to do. EKOS is doing the right thing, and the openness with which Graves approaches methodological issues gives me more confidence in his work than it would otherwise. Other pollsters, including some of the most important ones in Canada, are asking us to take their numbers on faith. We should instead be expecting and demanding the degree of transparency we get from firms like Abacus Data, Ipsos-Reid, and EKOS Research.
26 comments:
Some of us thought Mulcair was no Jack Layton, even though I like him. Well, he is clearly on the right track and it's translating into increased party support. Liberals are still viewed in many minds as the natural alternative but people seem to be unsure whether to move strategically to Justin. Either way, the momentum is with the opposition parties. Harper is not out of it yet but the trend is not his friend. Boy, will he ever have his work cut out for him if the CPC is to recover. That's a tall order but not totally impossible. However, I won't bet any money on the Conservatives bouncing back.
Éric, I have to take issue with you describing a Canadian ethnicity as "impossible". ("...those people who impossibly say their ethnicity is Canadian...") I have to believe that it's just a possible as "Latin American", "British", "Belgian", "Pakistani", "Taiwanese", etc. All of those were created by defined borders that didn't particularly reflect cultural or genetic groupings, or are heavily affected by immigration. I'm not actually saying that those folks *are* or *aren't* Canadian "ethnically", only that all ethnicity is, to some degree, a choice of definition. My family has been in North America for 15 generations, and I have no family ties to Ireland or Germany, where many of my ancestors originated. Does that mean I have NO ethnicity?ReplyDelete
In general, I think that ethnicity is a silly way to categorise the world (as opposed to "cultural groups", which are far more useful, if much harder to count), but if it is going to be used, then "Canadian" is just as possible a label as any of the others.Replies
I disagree. My ethnicity is French and Irish, and that is just what it is. It doesn't matter that my ancestors have been here since the 17th century. It isn't a made-up construct, it is in our DNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_testDelete
What part of France? A French national identity only really fully formed in the 18th century. Are you sure your ancestors wouldn't have considered themselves as Saintongeais or Norman perhaps?Delete
FYI, those DNA tests only tell you what areas a certain haplogroup is most common in. They're very widely dispersed, and gradually increase and decrease as a gradient, not some hard cut-off. The most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in both Ireland and France is the R1b haplogroup. It's still found at detectable frequencies as far east as western China, and is the most common haplogroup in some parts of Cameroon even. If you delve deeper you might be able to get some idea of where your direct male-line and female-line ancestors were living at a given period of time, but that tells you absolutely nothing about all of your other ancestors, from whom a majority of your DNA came. You can't tell if someone is Irish or French from their DNA at all.
If you took someone at random from Istanbul today, odds are they'd self-identify as Turks and speak Turkish. Go back 1000 years, and most of the ancestors of this same person would identify as Greek or Roman and speak Greek. Go back 1000 years before that their ancestors would speak Greek or Thracian. Another 1000 years prior, they may have been speaking Phoenician. Yet genetically, this is the same continuum of people.
Put it this way - you consider Irish an ethnicity with a basis in genetics. The dominant genetic marker for men in Ireland is the R1b Y chromosome haplogroup. The best guess right now is that the R1b haplogroup arrived from northern Spain with the expansion of agriculture to Ireland around 4000 BC.Delete
The Celtic languages that became Irish didn't arrive in Ireland 3400 years later with the Celtic expansion from central Europe during the Iron Age. Those languages, along with other Indo-European languages (ie English, French, German, Greek, Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi), can trace their origins back to the domestication of the horse in the southern Ukraine around 3,700 BC.
So, could you explain to me how Irish ethnicity can be based in genetics that arose 3400 prior to any Celtic language ever being spoken in Ireland?
Race and ethnicity are cultural construct. Nothing more and nothing less.
Which language to we identify ourselves by too? Is it the one that our ancestors spoke the longest? If so, you and I are more correctly Basques than Irish-French or German-Scotch.Delete
I imagine my ancestors would have considered themselves Norman, but I'm not entirely sure. I just finished reading a book on Champlain, and while he definitely considered himself a Saintongeais, there was also a strong streak of 'Frenchness' in the language of the time. Your point is taken, but that seems to be more about national identity than ethnicity, which are two different things.Delete
I clearly don't know about this topic as much as you do, so I will yield the floor. But I don't know if ethnicity is something considered to be something passed down over many millenia. While I do consider myself to share some genetic material with the Gauls of the Roman times, I don't really consider myself Gallic. Stretched to its logical extension, we're all sub-Saharan Africans.
It is an interesting topic, to be sure, and I'm not sure how uniform it is. Think of eastern Europeans and the various borders that came and went over the centuries and the movements of people, but compare that then to Icelanders who are considered one of the most genetically uniform groups in the world, or other generally insular cultural groups like, say, French Quebecers, who share a very shallow genetic pool.
Certainly First Nation peoples should be considered "ethnically" Canadian. Although I suspect many would say we're Cree not Canadian or Mohawk or Iroquois etc... Ethnicity is both a social and ancestral group of people. An immigrant could be Canadian so long as he identified with the culture's social traits or characteristics. Conversely a person may not have social attachments but, be a member of a certain ethnic group by ancestry. For example a Quebecois could be Quebecois, Gallic but, not French. Or an Englishman could be genetically Scandinavian yet still be English.Delete
In any case I think these definitions change over time so I see no reason to not include a Canadian ethnicity.
I'd argue even that ancestry aspect is cultural, in the sense that it is one's perception of their ancestry that is relevant. Whether I'm part of the R1a or R1b haplogroup doesn't really affect my daily life, and without testing I wouldn't be aware of which group I'm a part of. Without being aware of some distant horse warrior ancestor from the Russian steppe, I'd not be likely to identify with such a community.Delete
I do think you can be part of multiple ethnic groups though. I consider myself first and foremost Canadian in ethnicity, but I also consider myself Scottish and German. One of my best friends considers himself Punjabi and Canadian. He is no less Canadian than I.
Is there some biological/genetic correlations within ethnic groups? Sure, but that shouldn't be surprising. People living in the same area tend to both have kids with one another and adopt one another's language and customs.
You're correct he is no less Canadian than you - because it is a nationality! He can't consider himself ethnically German, though, and you can't consider yourself ethnically Punjabi, no matter what either of you would do...Delete
And I disagree strongly that ancestry is about perception. Our ancestors have a direct influence on our lives, be it via genetics or upbringing. My father was influenced by the way his father raised him, and his father was influenced by the way his father raised him, and so on and so on. Whether I perceive it or am aware of it is irrelevant.
...Unless you were adopted! Then you get a combination of familial and genetic heritage. ...and that's what I (and others) are saying, I think - that an "ethnicity" may be, in fact, very closely correlated to a genetic match (say, Iceland), or have nothing to do with it (The number of different genetic backgrounds that make up Cuba, for example, or Lebanon).Delete
I don't think that the argument is so much about how legitimate "Canadian" is as an ethnicity as it is about how arbitrary many of the "ethnic" labels are, hence bringing "Canadian" into the fold as "just as arbitrary".
"Lebanese" is commonly considered an ethnicity in Canada, broadly unknown in Lebanon, where one's ethnic, religious and cultural makeup are very complex topic, and the only people who claim to be "Lebanese and nothing but" are usually people trying to make a poltical point about national unity (not unlike many "Canadians").
"German" - made up of a gajillion smaller countries, but sharing a common language. Wait, but so do the "Austrians". So - can they be the same ethnicity?
"Jewish" - I think that many people consider themselves ethnically "Jewish", particularly if they lived in countries where they experienced exclusion and ghettoisation for generations, However, that's clearly not the same thing as "Israeli", because many have never lived in Israel. On the other hand, picture a Jew who left Berlin before WW2 - he/she isn't "ethnically German" by any reasonable definition, but then - why should I be?
So - like an adopted child, a genetic heritage that gets mixed in with others ends up with features of all of them - and if that mixture starts to look and act the same as the other nearby mixtures, even though they may have had initially-different ingredients then eventually that set deserves a name, and it's legitimate to use it.
There aren't many people around calling themselves "part Carthiginian", but that was surely a reasonable ethnicity at one point in history. Times change, and though it probably once wasn't, "Canadian" is now, just as good as the other labels.
For most of history Austrians and Germans were considered the same ethnicity-German. The Holy Roman Empire was composed of hundreds of sovereign princely states but, not nations. The Emperor's subsidiary title was "King in Germany" much like the Kaiser's title was "German Emperor". These titles are deliberately vague and do not refer to a specific territory or jurisdiction.Delete
Hi Éric; given how the post-mortem of the recent surprise elections in BC and Alberta focused on adjusting for turnout, and your experiment with your simple turnout model by age, I'm surprised you didn't acknowledge Graves' point that weighting by self-reported education "(could) begin to over-represent those who will not show up at a polling booth (those without post-secondary education are consistently less likely to vote on Election Day)".ReplyDelete
Admittedly, even in the Ekos brief it was a throw-away line.
While turnout will continue to be difficult to estimate, I personally think that it remains the elephant in the room for political polling and electoral projections. Education could be as significant an effect as age or income.
It's fine to say Mulcair is doing great and he is in Question Period. But in an election it's going to be a different scene.ReplyDelete
Mulcair's targeted lawyer approach works really well in the current Commons situation but not on the hustings !!
I think Justin will do better on the hustings than Mulcair or Harper because of personality differences !!Replies
Mulcair has a good chance of dominating the leaders' debates, IMO. But of course, that's not what decides the election.Delete
As an ecologist who regularly tackles various statistical analyses I'm a little bit embarrassed to request this, but sometime why don't you do a whole piece on exactly how the infamous "margin of error" should be interpreted in the context of opinion polls?
My understanding was that the margin of error reported by pollsters is a sort of upper limit which is only actually reached when one of the categories in the survey (e.g. support for a particular party) approaches 50%, but your statement that NDP support rising 4 points from 27% to 31% between two polls with margins of error of 3.4 pp is within the margin of error has me doubting myself. My assumption is that you consider that NDP support could've actually been as high as 30.4% in the first poll and as low as 27.6% in the new poll given their respective MoE's, and therefore it would've taken an increase from 27 to 34% for you to consider it statistically significant?
In any case, I still think a general article on the interpretation of the MoE would be of interest to your readership. Cheers,
There is a formula for calculating the margins of error for changes in support of a party from one poll to the next, and it depends on the sample size and the level of support. I plug the numbers into the formula, and that tells me whether a shift is statistically significant or not.Delete
It might be worthwhile to go into it in more detail at some point, but I'm intrigued by the statement Nate Silver once made on his blog that the margin of error is not nearly as important as it is made out to be.
I'd agree with Nate Silver on that. Lay readers of statistics tend to consider that anything within the margin of error is equally probable, and anything outside the MOE is out of the question. In fact, the MOE is an arbitrary cutoff. The conventional MOE is for 95% confidence, meaning that the results are within the margin 95% of the time -- and approximately 1 out of every 20 polls you read is actually outside that margin!Delete
Well in Canada at least, systemic bias seems to be substantially larger than statistical noise.Delete
I think Tom Mulcair is doing a fine job. I have met him 3 times and have been impressed. I think he is doing well on the hustings as the polls are indicating.Replies
The Hustings only appear at election time. The hustings are the traditional place of assembly or courts and or a raised platform where electors cast their vote. Today the word hustings refers to an election specifically and strangely it is one of the few English words that is time specific. Without an election a politician is simply glad handling not technically "on the hustings".Delete
Imagine the fascinatingly unfair situation of the third place party getting the plurality of seats. Neither of the two more popular parties would want to form a coalition with each other without their own leader being prime minister, since (a) the Ontario experience of the 80s and the UK and German experience of the 2000's show that the senior coalition partner tends to outshine the junior partner, (b) both parties would expect the governing party to be weak and unstable, forcing another election relatively soon (and thus a chance at winning rather than coming oh-so-close). So, due purely to the Prisoner's Dilemma Paradox, the third place party could end up governing for quite a while, which might convince even the most placid Canadian that the single-member-plurality electoral system is ridiculous.ReplyDelete
Hi GI,ReplyDelete
I agree with your analysis although how unfair the situation may be is an individual perspective.
In the situation above I think you're correct; the dilemma of who from the first or second party becomes PM may Scotch (the ethnicity not the drink) either of them becoming government. If Harper resigned and the GG had to summon a particular leader, Trudeau or Mulcair, a number of criteria may enter the GG decision: popular vote, representation in all or most regions, ability to make the current Parliament work, ability to introduce legislation in the Senate, constitutional conventions etc...Whoever he asks may decline appointment or both may in favour of a dissolution.
bede dunelm,Delete
Call me old fashioned but in my book all that counts is whether the incoming PM (Prime Minister Designate) can command the confidence of the House.
The Monarch or Governor must have the best interests of the country, monarchy and democracy at heart when making a decision of this magnitude.Delete
In a practical sense most prime ministers or premiers come into office without having tested the will of the House. We tend to over look this fact because most have majority governments and confidence is assured.
In the situation above if Harper resigned either of his own accord or because of loss of confidence the GG would need to pick a replacement. Once appointed the new PM will test the will of the House. The closeness of the results seem to complicate matters as a prima facie reading indicates no party alone has the ability to form a workable majority. Although by convention the Official Opposition (NDP) would be offered the first opportunity to form government given the near even results I think the ability to produce a workable Parliament would be foremost on the GG's mind and that may favour the Liberals. The outgoing PM also has the ability to advise on his replacement although it is up to the discretion of the Monarch or Governor whether to act on it or not.
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Interesting bit from Weibo's Prospectus:
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Melting Rates
This is a good discrepit event to start a conversation on heat energy. Ice cubes are placed on blocks made of different materials (although students aren't aware of that). One ice cube melts at a much faster rate than the other. The block that melted the ice cube faster feels colder than the other. Students are quick to predict/assume that the warmer block would have melted the ice cube faster. This leads to a critical thinking discussion of how heat energy flows and the ability of materials to conduct heat better or worse than others.