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From the Magazine
Ten years after the attacks, we memorialize the loss and we mark the heroism, but there is no organized remembrance of the other feelings that day aroused: the bewilderment, the vulnerability, the impotence. It may be difficult to recall with our attention now turned inward upon a faltering economy, but the suddenly apparent menace of the world awakened a bellicose surge of mission and made hawks of many — including me — who had a lifelong wariness of the warrior reflex.
When the planes hit, I was beginning a new life in the opinion department, an elevator ride up from the newsroom that I had served as a Times reporter and editor for 17 years. My debut was not for a couple of weeks, and I was laboring on a nice, safe essay about Western water rights. As the ash cloud spread, I set off on foot through the dazed city, feeling more than a little pointless, until I was summoned by my new boss to write. Something. Now.
My first Op-Ed column, published Sept. 12, counted the ways our sense of the world would now be changed; we would be like Israelis, rearranging our lives around threat. The column was the opposite of warlike.
"Perhaps," I counseled, "after the obligatory and symbolic reprisals, which will be as ineffectual as Israel's, our president will spend more time talking about the real-world vigilance of intelligence and law enforcement — which depend on a world of carefully tended alliances — and less about the computer-game threat of a nuclear missile from a suicidal rogue state, which we can handle in the solitude of the Situation Room."
But my prudent punditry soon felt inadequate. I remember a mounting protective instinct, heightened by the birth of my second daughter almost exactly nine months after the attacks. Something dreadful was loose in the world, and the urge to stop it, to do something — to prove something — was overriding a career-long schooling in the virtues of caution and skepticism. By the time of Alice's birth I had already turned my attention to Iraq, a place that had, in the literal sense, almost nothing to do with 9/11, but which would be its most contentious consequence. And I was no longer preaching "the real-world vigilance of intelligence and law enforcement."Continue reading the main story
During the months of public argument about how to deal with Saddam Hussein, I christened an imaginary association of pundits the I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club, made up of liberals for whom 9/11 had stirred a fresh willingness to employ American might. It was a large and estimable group of writers and affiliations, including, among others, Thomas Friedman of The Times; Fareed Zakaria, of Newsweek; George Packer and Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker; Richard Cohen of The Washington Post; the blogger Andrew Sullivan; Paul Berman of Dissent; Christopher Hitchens of just about everywhere; and Kenneth Pollack, the former C.I.A. analyst whose book, "The Threatening Storm," became the liberal manual on the Iraqi threat. (Yes, it is surely relevant that this is exclusively a boys' club.)
In several columns I laid out justifications for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. There were caveats — most significantly, that there was no reason to rush, that we should hold off to see whether Iraq's behavior could be sufficiently contained by sanctions and inspections. Like many liberal hawks, I was ambivalent; Pollack said he was 55 to 45 for war, which feels about right.
But when the troops went in, they went with my blessing. Of course I don't think President Bush was awaiting permission from The New York Times's Op-Ed page — or, for that matter, from my friends in the Times newsroom, who during the prewar debate published some notoriously credulous stories about Iraqi weapons. The administration, however, was clearly pleased to cite the liberal hawks as evidence that invading Iraq was not just the impetuous act of cowboy neocons. Thus did Tony Judt in 2006 coin another, unkinder name for our club: "Bush's Useful Idiots."
In 2004, a year after the invasion, and again in 2008, Jacob Weisberg, editor of the online magazine Slate and a charter member of my I-Can't-Believe club, invited liberal hawks to second-guess their support for the war. The responses ranged from remorse to self-vindication, with lots of tortured doubt and defensiveness in between. But I held my tongue. By that time I had moved from the Op-Ed page into a job — executive editor — in which I was obliged to keep my opinions to myself lest they be mistaken for the newspaper's agenda or influence our coverage. I'm pretty sure the reporters who have covered Iraq with such distinction in the ensuing years could not tell you whether I still believed the war was just or necessary. I'm not sure I knew myself at that point. It is the job of news to recount, clear-eyed, what is, and questions of what should be are an occupational distraction. In any case, I declined to participate in Slate's collective examination of conscience.
But I have now returned to the opinion business, at a time when America's role in the world — and in Iraq — is still unsettled. So, let me be the last of the club to retrace my steps, and see if there is any wisdom to be salvaged there.
The question is really two questions: Knowing what we know now, with the glorious advantage of hindsight, was it a mistake to invade and occupy Iraq? And knowing what we knew then, were we wrong to support the war?
Broadly speaking, there were three arguments for invading Iraq: the humanitarian case that Saddam Hussein was a monster whose cruelties were intolerable to civilized nations; the opportunity case — that we might plant the seeds of democracy and freedom in a region desperately in need of them; and the strategic case that Hussein posed an important threat, not only because of his unaccounted-for weapons stockpiles but also because of his habit of smashing through borders and the hospitality he offered to terrorists of various kinds.
For many of us, the monster argument was potent, even if it was not sufficient. Hussein's genocidal persecution of the Kurds, the Grand Guignol of his prisons and the memory of his savage assault on Kuwait all confirmed him as the beastliest of despots. Those like Christopher Hitchens who had made friends among Iraq's Kurdish minority felt an acute sympathy and a sense of obligation, because the United States had abandoned the Kurds to Hussein's butchery after the first gulf war. Others brought to this moment the lessons of Bosnia, where an American-led alliance had stopped the murderous Serbs and somewhat erased the residue of American impotence left by Ho Chi Minh and "Black Hawk Down." We were, as Andrew Sullivan put it, "enamored of [our] own morality."
But there are plenty of monstrous regimes that we do not go to the trouble of overthrowing. It should perhaps have caught our attention that Samantha Power, who literally wrote the book on humanitarian intervention (the Pulitzer-winning "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide") and who had endorsed armed intervention in Bosnia and Rwanda, and at an earlier time in Iraq, did not support the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
"My criterion for military intervention — with a strong preference for multilateral intervention — is an immediate threat of large-scale loss of life," explained Power, who now advises President Obama on multilateral affairs and human rights. "That's a standard that would have been met in Iraq in 1988 but wasn't in 2003."
The idea that America could install democracy in Iraq always seemed to me the most wishful of the rationales for war, although some people who knew the region far better than I made that case. It is true that we had played midwife to new democracies in Germany and Japan after World War II. But those were war-weary societies, with stabilizing institutions, industrialized economies and coherent national cultures, and even so the rebuilding was colossally expensive. The exiled Iraqi academic Kanan Makiya — a proponent of invasion who later repented — observed that Iraq's population was so traumatized by decades of abuse that they were unwilling to take initiative or responsibility: "A regime was removed and a people liberated overnight, but it was a people that did not understand what had happened to it or why."
And if we were paying closer attention, as we should have been, we would have been more alarmed by the fact that the authors of the invasion had shown open contempt for the kind of "nation building" that went into the Marshall Plan. They seemed to have in mind a hit-and-run democracy project for Iraq, which was folly.
Beyond Iraq, the idea that a country democratized under American occupation would become a beacon to the region, an antidote to the poisonous doctrine of extremism, was highly questionable given the region's bitter history of occupation and the popular resentment of America for, among other things, its generous support of so many Arab autocrats.
It turns out, though nobody imagined it eight years ago, that the model for aspiring democrats in the Arab world would be Tunisia, followed in short order by Egypt and Yemen. Do these examples suggest that if we had waited long enough, the Iraqis would have rid themselves of Hussein without American intervention? I doubt it; surely Hussein would have followed the Iranian and Syrian examples of sheer brutality rather than surrender to the streets. Or is it fair to argue that the ouster of Saddam Hussein cleared the way for, even inspired, the recent uprisings around the Mediterranean? Probably not. Friends who have covered the Arab awakening on the ground say there is a powerful pride in its indigenous quality, and specifically a pride that they are not sponsored by Washington. Moreover, America's occupation of Iraq, and the resulting sectarian upheavals, have been propaganda points for other dictators trying to hold onto power.
The main selling point for war in Iraq, at least for the American public, was that Hussein represented a threat to American security. But what kind of threat, exactly?
Iraq was not, as Afghanistan had been, the host country and operational base of the new strain of Islamic fascism represented by Al Qaeda. It is true that Hussein hosted some nasty characters, but so did many other dictators hostile to America. At the time, Iraq was one of seven countries designated as sponsors of terrorism by the State Department, and in the other six cases we settled for sanctions as recourse enough. And his conventional military — what was left of it after it was laid waste in the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq in 1991 — was under close supervision.
That leaves the elusive weapons of mass destruction. We forget how broad the consensus was that Hussein was hiding the kind of weapons that could rain holocaust on a neighbor or be delivered to America by proxy. He had recently possessed chemical weapons (he used them against the Kurds), and it was only a few years since we had discovered he had an active ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Inspectors who combed the country after the first gulf war discovered a nuclear program far more advanced than our intelligence agencies had believed; so it is understandable that the next time around the analysts erred on the side of believing the worst.
We now know that the consensus was wrong, and that it was built in part on intelligence that our analysts had good reason to believe was cooked. Should we — those of us without security clearances — have known it in 2003? Certainly we should have been more suspicious of the administration's assurances. Kenneth Pollack, the former C.I.A. analyst who is now at the Brookings Institution, concedes that he should have drilled deeper into the claims of the intelligence crunchers; he was misled, he says, by the fact that they had seriously underestimated Hussein in the past. A few journalists — notably Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers — emphasized conflicting intelligence that questioned Hussein's capabilities. But assuming we couldn't know for sure, what would have been acceptable odds? If there was only a 50-50 chance that Hussein was close to possessing a nuclear weapon, could we live with that? One in five? One in 10?
Colin Powell, who oversaw the campaign that drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991 and who was the most cautious member of President Bush's war cabinet, was reluctantly convinced (duped, he would later say) that the W.M.D. risk merited military action. His word carried great weight. The journalist and author Fred Kaplan was one of many, I suspect, who joined the hawk club on the strength of Powell's speech to the United Nations Security Council six weeks before the invasion.
"I was particularly struck by the tape-recording of an intelligence intercept that Powell played — a phone conversation in which one Iraqi Republican Guard officer tells another to clean out a site before the inspectors get there," Kaplan recalled. We learned much later that the Iraqi officers wanted to erase traces of chemical weapons that had been stored before the first gulf war. Kaplan dropped out of the hawk club within a month when he concluded that, whether or not an invasion was morally justified, he doubted the Bush administration was up to the task. The rest of us were still a little drugged by testosterone. And maybe a little too pleased with ourselves for standing up to evil and defying the caricature of liberals as, to borrow a phrase from those days, brie-eating surrender monkeys.
In 1992, after driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney mused on the calculus of war. Why, he asked an audience in Seattle, had the United States not pursued Hussein's forces all the way to Baghdad and removed him from power? Because, Cheney said, that would have committed the U.S. to an unacceptable long-term occupation, and it would have meant more American casualties. "The question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?" Cheney asked at the time. "And the answer is, not that damned many."
Of course, Cheney wasn't so cautious the second time around. Along with the arguments that he and many others made after 9/11 came some insufficiently considered assumptions: that we were competent to invade and occupy Iraq without making an awful mess of it and that we could do it at a cost — in lives and money — that we could live with. In the end, the costs were greater than anyone anticipated because of calamitous mistakes in execution. Some critics would put at the top of their list of blunders the abrupt dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the purge of Hussein's Baath Party from government ministries, moves that simultaneously deprived the unsettled country of stabilizing institutions and created an angry and battle-ready cadre of insurgents. Others will say the stupidest mistake was failing to have a credible plan for what came after the conquest. Others will point to the folly of installing power-hungry exiles in key jobs — handing the Oil Ministry to the great con artist Ahmed Chalabi, for example. All in all, Fred Kaplan, who predicted they would screw it up, looked like Nostradamus.
Just consider the numbers. In the short-lived first gulf war, 148 Americans died in battle. In the current war, the toll so far is nearly 4,500 American dead and 32,000 wounded. At least 100,000 Iraqis, most of them noncombatants, have been killed. A war and occupation estimated to cost $100 billion over two years has already cost eight times that amount. And the meter is still running.
For that price, we have purchased an Iraq where the fear of the tyrant has given way to the fear of random death. Baghdad remains a maze of blast walls and checkpoints, less menacing than during the spasmodic sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, but still a very dangerous place to live. There is a querulous elected Parliament, but few of the other fundamentals of civil society like an adversarial press and trustworthy courts. The economy still depends overwhelmingly on oil and state jobs. It is one of the most corrupt countries on earth. And there is little confidence that things will not get worse. Many Iraqis fear the American occupation (as they still call it) is the only thing preventing a revival of sectarian killing and an even more authoritarian government.
Our occupation of Iraq has also distracted us from Afghanistan, furnished a propaganda point for Al Qaeda recruiters and limited the credibility of our support for independence movements elsewhere. It is worth mentioning, too, that our moral standing as champions of civil society has been compromised by the abuses of Abu Ghraib and rendition and torture, byproducts of the war that will long remain a blot on our reputation.
Where does this leave me? The world is well rid of Saddam Hussein. But knowing as we now do the exaggeration of Hussein's threat, the cost in Iraqi and American lives and the fact that none of this great splurge has bought us confidence in Iraq's future or advanced the cause of freedom elsewhere — I think Operation Iraqi Freedom was a monumental blunder.
Whether it was wrong to support the invasion at the time is a harder call. I could not foresee that we would mishandle the war so badly, but I could see that there was no clear plan for — and at the highest levels, a shameful smugness about — what came after the invasion. I could not have known how bad the intelligence was, but I could see that the White House and the Pentagon were so eager to go that they were probably indifferent to any evidence that didn't fit their scenario. I could see that they had embraced Chalabi, the exile cheerleader for war, despite considerable suspicion within the State Department and elsewhere that he was a charlatan. I could have seen, had I looked hard enough, that even by the more dire appraisals of Hussein's capabilities he did not amount to what Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. called in a very different context "a clear and present danger." But I wanted to be on the side of doing something, and standing by was not enough.
As a candidate for president, George W. Bush famously argued that to command respect in the world, we needed to demonstrate not only strength but also humility. In office, though, the humility gave way to hubris. President Bush got it wrong. And so did I.
The remedy for bad journalism is more and better journalism. Reporters at The Times made amends for the credulous prewar stories with investigations of the bad intelligence and with brave, relentless and illuminating coverage of the war and occupation. But what The Times writes casts a long shadow. For years, our early stories hyping Iraq's menace (and to a lesser extent what people like me wrote on the opinion pages) fed a suspicion, especially on the left, that we were not to be trusted.
John F. Burns, a correspondent who chronicled the tyranny of Hussein while the man was still in power and stayed on to cover the invasion and aftermath, recalls the reflexive hostility he encountered as a Times reporter on trips home. "We were all liars, warmongers, lapdogs of Bush and Cheney and so forth," he told me.
"Whatever we wrote — no matter what it was, and no matter how well documented — was dismissed as Bush propaganda," added Dexter Filkins, who covered the battlefields and politics of Afghanistan and Iraq for The Times before moving last January to The New Yorker. "That was probably going to happen anyway, but the paper's real failings gave those criticisms more credibility — and longer legs — than they deserved. Remember that the right-wingers (and a lot of the military) hated us at the time, too, since the war had started to go badly from the get-go, and we were reporting that."
The last big story to break on my watch as executive editor was the upheaval in Libya. The contours weren't exactly the same, but they involved another entrenched, grotesque strongman; another oil economy; another fractured Arab society; another cloud of misinformation. This time we all — president, public and press — picked our way more carefully through the mess, weighing the urge to support freedom against the cost of becoming part of a drama we don't fully understand. That is the caution of a country feeling more threatened these days by our own economics than by foreign enemies. But for some of us it is also the costly wisdom of Iraq.Continue reading the main story


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A plan to allow some young people to serve in the U.S. military even if their parents brought them to America illegally as young children may be the opening some Republicans need to support at least limited immigration reform. The so-called ENLIST Act would grant to undocumented young immigrants the right to join the U.S. military and be eligible for citizenship after four years.
But the measure already suffered one defeat when its sponsor, Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., tried to add it as an amendment this week to a must-pass defense policy bill. Still, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., both have said they don't have a problem with the principle of allowing so-called "DREAMers" to serve in the military and earn an expedited path to citizenship.
It's easy to see why the GOP leaders are open to the idea. Fewer than 1 percent of Americans currently serve in the U.S. military, and only 13 percent of those living now have ever served. What was once a duty (as well as a rite of passage) for American men has become the exception. With the end of the draft in 1973, fewer young men enlisted, and though the ranks of the military have been bolstered by the enlistment of women, who make up almost 20 percent of the military now, too few Americans choose to serve their country.
But there are thousands of young men and women who want to serve but can't because they came here illegally, often as very young children or even infants. They were raised and educated in the U.S. and now want to pay back the country they love by risking their lives to defend it. But current law only allows those who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents to serve -- with one important exception. A provision of law known as the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest program allows the Pentagon to take other recruits deemed crucial. The administration is currently considering whether to invoke this provision to give DREAMers the right to enlist.
Unfortunately, the latter alternative might be a pyrrhic victory for immigration reform advocates. One of the chief objections of GOP opponents to reform legislation is that they don't trust the Obama administration to enforce the laws as written. Certainly the GOP-generated delays in getting immigration reform passed have frustrated those who want to see some resolution to our current immigration morass, but using executive authority may ultimately undermine the impetus to enact more comprehensive reform. If Republicans feel the president will simply do what he wants on this issue -- and whatever he thinks is politically expedient -- they will be far less likely to consider legislation.
The ENLIST Act gives Republicans a good compromise position. The most sympathetic group of illegal immigrants is made up of youngsters who came here with their parents. Most people recognize that a child is not morally or legally culpable for acts committed by his or her parents -- and many of these kids don't actually find out their illegal status until they have been here for years. Their stories are often tragic.
One young DREAMer I met when I moved to Colorado came here at age 2 with her parents, who had legal visas. Ana's parents earned permanent status when she was just a child, and all of her siblings were born here, but somehow Ana's application for permanent status slipped through the cracks. Ana found out her illegal status when she applied for a driver's license; until then, she had assumed she was American. She lived in fear for years afterward. But she started her own business, paid her taxes and became active in her Evangelical church, always worrying that a routine traffic stop would result in her deportation, until she received a reprieve when the administration granted deferred action to more than 500,000 DREAMers like her.
Republicans would be well advised to pass legislation that lets the Anas of the country serve in the military. If too few of those of us lucky enough to be born here are willing to risk our lives for our country, shouldn't we allow those who are willing to do so? It's the right -- and principled -- thing to do.

subset: commoncrawl


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I have to admit I've been on an iced drink kick lately. Shanghai's muggy weather and our lack of AC makes it hard to muster up enthusiasm for standing in front of a hot stove. Lately I have just been whipping up quick pasta dishes, then rushing to the freezer to pull out ice cubes for a cold drink.
Lemonade is hard to beat as the de rigeur summer beverage. That is, unless we're talking about lemonade with alcohol. Basic lemonade may be necessary for an afternoon in front of the laptop, but come nightfall, I'd much rather have something like Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Vodka-Thyme Lemonade. I have never been to Perry St. in NYC where this is served, so I can't say how this recipe compares to the actual version. What I can say is that it's pretty simple if you account for the few hours for making thyme-infused syrup.
Just make sure to hide this from the kids.
Vodka-Thyme Lemonade Adapted from Perry St., New York, via Food & Wine Cocktails 2007
Makes 1 drink
1 tablespoon sugar 3 lemon wedges Ice 1/4 cup Lemon-Thyme Syrup* 1 ounce vodka Splash of club soda A few thyme sprigs
*To make Lemon-Thyme Syrup: Bring 1 1/2 cups water and 1 1/2 cup sugar to boil. Stir to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat, add 1 handful of thyme springs, cover and let stand for 2 to 4 hours. Add 3/4 cup lemon juice and strain. Syrup can be refrigerated for up to a week.
To make lemonade: Moisten the rim of a highball glass with a lemon wedge and coat lightly with sugar. Fill the glass with ice cubes.
In a cocktail shaker, muddle the remaining lemon wedges with the Lemon-Thyme Syrup. Add ice and vodka and shake. Strain into highball glass and top with club soda. Garnish with thyme sprigs and serve.


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[Editor's note: GeekWire is running a series of profiles on the startups participating in this year's class in the TechStars Seattle incubator program. Check back each day at 1:30 p.m. for a new profile, leading up to Demo Day on Nov. 1]
With hundreds of thousands of apps populating mobile app stores, it can be challenging for developers to get their creations to rise above the clutter. MobileDevHQ believes it can help, offering keyword analysis and other tricks to catapult apps up the charts.
We heard from CEO Ian Sefferman, a former software developer at Amazon.com, for this installment of Startup Spotlight.
Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: "We help mobile app developers/marketers get more downloads through organic channels (e.g. App Store Optimization — ranking highly in app store search)."
Inspiration hit us when: "We originally started as a consumer app discovery site, helping users find apps. It took us over two years of developers and marketers continually asking — How do I promote my app? How does the app store work? — before we realized we had some amazing data, could offer them a product, and could charge for that product."
VC, Angel, or Bootstrap: "Right now we're cash flow positive, so we don't need to raise external capital. However, we'd like to grow aggressively and own this big market, so we're looking for the right partners to make that happen, whomever they may be (VC or angel)."
Our 'secret sauce' is: "We have some amazing algorithms and data that no one else can get. For example, we are the only organization that has a real understanding of search volume in the app stores (i.e. how frequently a particular term is searched for in the app stores)."
The smartest move we've made so far: "Pivoting from a consumer app discovery site into a product that offers tools for app marketers. We went from linear growth with little revenue to explosive growth, real revenue, and the ability to grow aggressively."
The biggest mistake we've made so far: "Not spending enough time on the story of our business. The sooner you learn that your job as a startup is to be a storyteller (to customers, to investors, to press, etc.), and the sooner you get feedback to refine that story, the better off you become."
Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, or Bezos in your corner: "As a former Amazonian, I choose Bezos. What he has built with Amazon is really remarkable, and his consistent focus on the long-term and the customer is something I strive for constantly."
Our world domination strategy starts when: "Mobile app marketers spend a smaller percentage of their overall marketing budget on paid ads. We believe the best mobile app marketing strategy is a combination of organic and paid, and we want to own the organic side."
Rivals should fear us because: "Our data and algorithms are unparalleled. We have been collecting data from and understanding the app store ecosystem for over three years. That data, plus our unbelievable and complementary team of engineers and business folks, makes us the best in the world at organic app marketing. Oh, and our ping pong skills are getting quite good."
We are truly unique because: "We have deep experience in the app ecosystem, a team that gels together amazingly, and a product that can't be beat."
The biggest hurdle we've overcome is: "Turning a product with low-growth, little engagement, and zero revenue into a high-growth product, high engagement, real revenue, and a massive market. It involved adding key players to the team, getting out of the building, and some very dark months."
What is the most important thing you learned at TechStars: "How to tell our story more powerfully and succinctly. Storytelling is so important, and knowing which story to tell whom, what to say in each story, and how to present those stories is an invaluable skill."
What was your most memorable moment in TechStars: "For me, there's no single moment that stands out. Instead, watching each of the 10 teams progress so much in a short amount of time is incredibly inspiring."
What's the one piece of advice you'd give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: "Don't give up. I've written before that the value of a startup is in the slog. Your idea might be wrong, but what you learn will lead you to your success. It might take years, so be ready for a long fight, but don't give up."


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Merry Christmas!
I want to wish everyone a blessed Christmas close to our Savior and close to loved ones. For those who can't be with loved ones or are ill or grieving, my prayers are with you. At least no one can keep you from our Savior and He is enough to fill us with abundant life and joy inexplicable! Rest in Him, trust Him and seek Him deeper. He is the answer to EVERYTHING! Thank you Father God for sending Jesus to save us!
This is the set I made with my class. My original post along with directions for the base are here.
I can't think of a better way to wish you a Merry Christmas than to send you to the designer's site as he's now offering the entire set with revised directions in book form, already printed! Just cut and assemble! He is a marvelous servant of God and has offered all his gifts for free all these years. This is the first thing I am aware of that he is selling and at only $12. I can tell you that I paid Staples a LOT more than that to print all the pages of this marvelous nativity. So hurry over to My Little House and visit Didier! This is a great family activity and a great opportunity to teach the truth of Christ's birth straight from the Bible. Try Luke 2:1-20. Good to memorize too!
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
I've shared LOTS of Christmas goodies this month. Be sure to scroll back in case you've missed anything and Merry Christmas!
Please support this blog by shopping my PayPal store. God bless you! Digifree CraftCrave CraftCrave


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Enjoy the thrill of general and urgent care without the sleep deprivation!
Warwick Animal Hospital in Warwick, RI seeks an energetic and team-oriented veterinarian to join our practice. Our mix of general and urgent care provides exciting caseload variety, the opportunity to build long-term relationships with clients and patients, and the satisfaction of providing excellent urgent care, counted on by the Rhode Island community. The modern and inviting hospital boasts superb veterinarians, and numerous caring support staff dedicated to our patients, clients, and community. Get to know us better here!
Warwick is just outside Providence, with restaurants, WaterFire events, shopping and convenient access to the T.F. Green Airport. A short drive in the opposite direction will bring you to downtown Newport, known for beautiful beaches, the iconic Newport Cliff Walk, fantastic dining, nightlife, boating… the list goes on!
We are part of a family of practices with a long history and reputation that separates us from others – see what all the buzz is about! We support our veterinarians with superior salary, benefits (including health and dental, 401(k), CE allowance, vacation, dues, and liability coverage), outstanding practice teams, and a family friendly atmosphere.


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Grey Matters Blog celebrates senior dogs and provides a resource for the people who care for them. It draws upon the wealth of knowledge and experience with senior dogs offered by The Grey Muzzle Organization community. Our contributors will share articles on senior dog care, as well as relevant news, success stories from our grantee organizations, and more.
More to come


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Vlambeer's 'roguelike-like' to PlayStation 4, Vita
During today's conference, it was announced that Wasteland Kings would be making its console debut exclusively on Sony's PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4, once again adding their growing line-up of indie titles.
Unveiled earlier this year, Vlambeer's upcoming 'roguelike-like' features mutant-fueled action, randomly generated worlds and a wide-array of weaponry. As we mentioned last week, its development will be streamed via Vlambeer's official Twitch channel. Once again, PC gamers can keep an eye out for Steam Early Access in the coming weeks.
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What's interesting about this book is that is appears that it went into adulthood. Look at this......
Robert was Sig's oldest son and my dad's older brother. Robert was born November 3, 1920 so this entry would have been right after his ninth birthday. Doesn't it seem odd to have your son sign your autograph book?
And there was this entry by Sig's brother, Leon. Leon was #2 of the boys, Sig was #3.
This is a really cool autograph......
|Best Wishes
From your loving father
Herman Levy
Yep, that's Sig's father, Herman Levy, and my great grandfather! He's definitely been a brick wall for me - why couldn't he have signed it "Herman Levy, son of XYZ Levy"?
And here's Sig's mother, Goldie Benas Levy.
|Dear Sigmund
What are the best days in memory?
Those in which we meet a companion
who was truly such.
Your Mother
Fresno, June 24, 1901
So now I have the signatures of four of my great grandparents plus one of my great great grandparents - how cool is that?


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Jacob - The Gift of Greatness part 4
Walkthrough - Jacob - The Gift of Greatness part 4
From the previous area, work your way out of the back of the small compound and up the path leading upward and to the right. As you walk up, expect to be attacked by another small group of LOKI Mechs. The only cover here is in the form of some crates far away from the LOKI Mechs' spawn-point, so you're going to have to work some magic from afar, or risk being killed by rushing their position. Either way, once they're downed, you'll be just outside of Jacob's father's lair (you'll hear him talking over the comm all-the-while, claiming that the mechs, and soon enough, his human guards, are beyond his control). Before entering the makeshift wall around the outside of his lair, be certain you scour the area around the wall, where some more credits can be found in some salvaged parts, as well as some heavy weapon ammunition. The latter you may need before very long.
Within the confines of the makeshift wall, get ready for the most difficult fight you'll face here on this far-off planet (not that that's saying much... though this is the final battle you'll encounter here). You won't be fighting many more LOKI Mechs here, but rather a huge FENRIR Mech, in addition to "Brainwashed Guards," Jacob's father's very own personal detachment of mentally-deranged sentries. These guys mean business, so don't rush around here and act rashly. Rather, focus first on the huge mech, since it poses, by far, the biggest threat to you. Then, you can go about killing the brainwashed enemies, who are far easier to fell than their synthetic counterpart. When all is finally quiet, you can press through the door at the far end of the area, though you'll first want to take the time to seek out a PDA (that will give you some credits), as well as a stash of Element Zero. Once you've found both of those items, head through the door and up the path towards the location, finally, of Jacob's father.
Jacob's father, Ronald Taylor, won't recognize his own son at first. Indeed, he'll put on a good show for you for a little while, explaining what happened to him and his crew, and feigning excitement that the Alliance has finally sent someone to look for him. But you're on to his game, and you know what he's done to the people here, and what he's put them through over the last decade. The women are in bad shape, and the men have rebelled and become "hunters." Ronald Taylor is the only human here who is still in control of his own mind. Go through this lengthy conversation, exploring all angles of the conversation tree. Then, when the time comes, go forward with the plan to call Alliance vessels to come take the survivors off of the Normandy. Jacob's father is going to go to a military prison, for a good long time.
Following your conversation with Ronald Taylor, you'll automatically find yourself back on the Normandy, and in the (virtual) presence of the Illusive Man. Impressed by your experience back on the uncharted planet, but not at all surprised by it, Shepard instantly wonders whether it was the Illusive Man who turned Jacob on to his father's location. He swears it wasn't him, however, and upon further conversation, Miranda reveals herself as the one who snuck the message into Jacob's inbox. She says she was following through on an old promise, and there are some allusions here as to a possible romantic backstory between Jacob and Miranda. Nonetheless, following this conversation, this quest comes to a conclusion. Helping Jacob has secured his loyalty to you and your cause. Good work.
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Telling people at work
Telling people at work about a cancer diagnosis is a very personal decision. Although you may want to keep it private, it might be difficult if you are gone for long periods of time or your appearance changes.
Who to tell at work
You may want to talk with your manager or human resources department before you or someone else tells others at work. They don't need to know specific details about your cancer, only how it will affect your ability to do your job. Employers are often supportive when they know about a diagnosis and can help make adjustments for you at work. This is especially true if you need to take time off or if cancer or its treatment will affect the way you do your job.
You may have already talked about some of your concerns with co-workers you are close to. Others may need to be told if it could affect their workload and responsibilities.
If you're a manager or own a company, you will probably need to tell most of your employees about your diagnosis, especially if it's going to affect day-to-day work routines.
Don't be afraid to ask for support or help. You may be able to get advice or counselling from an employee assistance program (EAP). Your human resources department or your manager may be able to suggest other programs or benefits that are available to you.
When to tell people at work
It can be very hard to choose the right time to tell employers and co-workers. When you tell them may depend on how soon you will start treatment.
- If you have treatment scheduled right away, you may need to tell your manager so that plans can be made quickly to cover for you.
- You may be able to wait to tell people at work until after treatment is planned. Then you can talk about when and for how long you will be away from work.
What to tell people at work
Some co-workers may know very little about cancer. They may think that it's contagious or that it means that you are going to die soon. There may be concerns about your ability to work and the quality of your work.
Try to be ready for different reactions. You may want to tell people:
- about the diagnosis and what treatment you will have
- how long you may be off work
- that your mood and energy may be affected
- how your looks may change (weight loss, hair loss or skin changes) during treatment
If you don't want to talk to co-workers about cancer, let others know that you want to focus on job tasks rather than on cancer. You may also want to ask your manager or a trusted co-worker to be the one who shares information with the other staff. It can be helpful to let your manager help explain how your work will be handled during your illness.
Taking action against all cancers
The latest Canadian Cancer Statistics report found that of all newly diagnosed cancers in 2017, half are expected to be lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers. Learn what you can do to reduce the burden of cancer.


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Sunderland boss Paolo Di Canio has urged defender Jack Colback to sign a new contract with the club and believes the 25-year-old can go on to establish himself as one of the best left-backs in the country.
Colback is currently considering his future with the club amid fears his first-team plans could be limited by the transfer deadline day arrival of former Liverpool full-back Andrea Dossena.
But Di Canio is determined to keep hold of Colback, who is likely to keep his place against Arsenal at the Stadium of Light on Saturday with Dossena still a week away from achieving match fitness.
Di Canio said: "Jack is in negotiations but I hope he is going to sign a new contract because it would be difficult for him to find a better club than Sunderland.
"I know Jack wasn't happy in general at the end of last year and I had a chat and told him I don't want unhappy people here, but he has a big chance this year.
"In my opinion Jack is one of the best few left-backs in the country. He has all the characteristic qualities - he is aggressive, tough and intelligent and he can push forward.
"It depends on him but I'm very satisfied with the way he played in the last few games. He deserves a new contract and he can have a very good future here."
Di Canio is considering whether to end Wes Brown's 18-month absence from first-team action against the Gunners on Saturday.
Brown has continued to recover well from his long-standing knee injury and played a full part in training this week - but Di Canio admits he has doubts over whether the weekend is the right time for his return.
Di Canio said: "Wes is looking much better than he did last week and this is a good signal, so I am going to decide tomorrow what to do with him.
Source: PA


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There are lots of ways for you to get involved
With more than 50 organizations on campus, it's easy to get involved and become a leader at Morningside. You could join the choir, a co-ed volleyball team, the climbing club or the mock trial team. You could start your own radio show, or you could run for student government. There also are organizations in different academic departments, such as the Morningside Student Nurses Association, Iowa State Education Association, Undergraduate Psychological Association or Math Club. Maybe you will start a new group on campus. Students do it all the time!


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START Conference Manager
Supporting Participation in Communities of Practice by Scientists from Developing Countries --- the Case of High Energy Physics
Airong Luo
ASIS&T 2008 Annual Meeting (AM08 2008)
Columbus, Ohio, October 24-29, 2008
Over the last decade, researchers have hypothesized that a new form of scientific organization, the collaboratory, holds promise to greatly benefit scientists from developing countries by allowing them to reach remotely located experts, instruments, and databases. However, there have been no empirical studies to prove or disprove this hypothesis. Adopting a qualitative approach, this study examines how collaboratories affect one of the factors that purportedly leads to scientific productivitycommunities of practice. Results of data analysis indicate that collaboratories bring about new opportunities for scientists from developing countries to access scientists from developed countries and their practices, but barriers also exist.
Conference Manager (V2.54.6)


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Another troubling Miami Dolphins effort
Ninety-nine yards. That's what separated the Dolphins from a biting loss Thursday night. That's how far Ryan Tannehill had to drive his team to become a hero.
The Dolphins quarterback had to move his team for a touchdown with four minutes to play that would have turned the fortunes of this game, perhaps this season, and certainly would have colored the rookie's reputation.
The drive ended in an interception.
And another possession that came with 1:26 to play also ended in an interception.
Bills win 19-14.
And now, with the Dolphins in full-scale swoon the past three weeks, there is more trouble that seems on the horizon.
The Seahawks are coming to Miami in 10 days. How many home fans are going to show for that one?
Then the Patriots will come to town. The Dolphins just lost to the Bills, Titans and Colts. They're going to beat New England?
This season isn't dead yet. But it is on a respirator and doctors are working feverishly to revive it.
That's the short-term situation. Of course, if you believe this season wasn't necessarily about, well, this season, then you are looking to other things. You are looking for answers to other more enduring questions.
One question that looms is whether these guys are any better than last season? Last season's team was terrible early on but rallied, winning six of its final nine games. These guys seem to be writing the script in reverse — good early and playing worse as we head into the toughest part of the schedule the next few weeks.
So are these Dolphins even going in the right direction?
The past three games — all losses in troubling fashion — suggest this team is no longer headed in the right direction. These games suggest the Dolphins are not getting better as the season wears on but, indeed, are regressing at a slow but steady pace.
It's not so much the results that trouble but the nature of the opposition against which those results are being posted.
Yes, the Colts are a rising team with a budding star at quarterback, but let's face it, that is the team that lost more than any other team a season ago. The Titans rocked the Dolphins at home and did it with the league's worst statistical defense following a loss in which they gave up 50 points.
And then there is this Bills game.
The Bills had lost eight consecutive games against AFC East opponents before the Dolphins.
The Bills had lost 10 consecutive prime-time games dating back to 2001.
And, of course, the Bills had taken over from the Titans as the worst defense in the NFL because the Titans practically shut down the Dolphins.
Well, it seems the Miami offense is the prescription against poor defense.
Offensive coordinator Mike Sherman implored his players to play so inspired this night that it would "make their sons proud."
But there can be no pride coming out of this work.
The Dolphins didn't cross midfield until the third quarter.
The Dolphins had only two first downs in the first half and one of those came when a Bills player jumped offside.
Miami's most productive offensive play in the first half was a 17-yard completion to Brian Hartline. Only problem with the play is it ended with Hartline fumbling the ball over to the Bills.
But there was a bright side.
At least Hartline didn't get benched for his indiscretion, as Reggie Bush famously noted he got benched last week for his fumble.
But cornerback Nolan Carroll did get benched. He struggled in the first half. I use the word struggled because the word stunk is so unpleasant.
Carroll was picked on repeatedly, and when he didn't give up completions he committed penalties. He had two pass-interference penalties and an illegal-contact call in the first half.
And for that he was benched throughout the third quarter.
Think whatever you want about the philosophy of benching an underperforming player during the game, but Joe Philbin obviously believes it's a tool to turn to whenever he thinks appropriate.
Problem for Philbin is Sean Smith suffered from some sort of cramps in the fourth quarter and had to leave the game. And so Carroll got a second chance out of sheer necessity by coaches.
Carroll responded with a 5-yard holding penalty that gave the Bills their fourth first down in four penalties against him. This is a player who was playing better earlier in the season. He has struggled the past few weeks.
Where is the progression in that?
The facts are the Dolphins aren't showing grand progression up and down the roster.
Bush hasn't gotten better. In fact, the Dolphins running game has been stagnant for a month.
Tight end play?
Anthony Fasano? Anything?
He has had four catches the past four games after having 22 the previous six games. That's not progression.
The run defense isn't up to the standards of the early part of the season. Miami yielded 120 rushing yards this night, which is twice as many as it gained.
The play of the secondary has fallen off and, worse, it has happened against a couple of mediocre quarterbacks.
This season is not lost. There are still questions about how far Tannehill can progress. We can watch to see how much spunk this team has and how far they are from actually being relevant.
But playoffs? And progression from week to week?
Don't see it.


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Jeff & Ryan in the window but no Blake
Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds continued to work on RIPD in Boston yesterday, shooting at the convention centre and seeming to enjoy each other's company during set tweaks and lighting adjustments and whatever the f-ck it is that takes so goddamn long to literally film a 30 second scene. Day to day, movie making is an excruciatingly slow process.
I really like the concept of RIPD - the Rest in Peace Department, like if Patrick Swayze from Ghost had a job. And Jeff and Ryan are partners which, sometimes I imagine the relationship between Gary Busey and Keanu Reeves in Point Break and it cracks me up. I'm sure it won't be like that entirely but if it is a little, I wouldn't mind either.
Anyway, as you can see, the chemistry between the two leads seems strong. Ryan even looks a little crushy on the legendary Bridges here. Check him out, doing the robot, trying to impress his mentor. Cute, right? Cuter than when his girlfriend calls the paps if she's visiting for the weekend? So far, no pictures yet of Blake in Boston since Wednesday when she rushed back to see him after working on Gossip Girl for a couple of days, the third weekend in a row. She made her point I guess. The good play would be to cool it, not over-saturate, let us wait a while before dropping her next move. Is it possible Blake Lively's learned some restraint?
Ryan/ Splash News


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Miley Cyrus' Wedding May Be on Hold But She Still Shows Off Carefree Side in Chanel Onesie
Miley Cyrus is ignoring more talk of problems in her relationship with fiance Liam Hemsworth -- the latest being that the wedding is postponed, although we weren't aware there was a set date -- focusing rather on having fun. The singer/actress shared a pic of her in a heather gray Chanel onesie and pink leggings. She doesn't look like a girl bummed out about her wedding being TBD.
First things first, about that wedding-on-hold stuff. Radar Online reports that the two were to be married in Palm Springs in June but those plans are on hold. A source said, "...there have been so many problems with them, they thought it was best to work out their issues before making such a big commitment." That's a smart move on their part. Things have been rocky, so it's best to smooth them out before taking the plunge. They don't want to get married and have it fall apart in 72 days, like, you know, Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries.
However, Elsa Pataky, the wife of Liam's brother, actor Chris Hemsworth, made a curious comment that makes the rumor of the wedding being on ice seem legit. When asked by Life & Style about the nuptials, she said, "I don't know. If they get married, it would be nice to go."
She could have been throwing the tabloid off the scent or she could have been caught off guard and thus honest. But that doesn't sound promising.
And as for that Chanel onesie?
It's a true case of "WTF is she wearing?" She captioned her photo: "Don't hate. Appreciate. #Chanel1Z." It's as though she knew people would be dumbfounded by her outfit. At least she's wearing it in her walk-in closet, which is to die for, by the way, and not while grabbing a Starbucks or hitting a club in L.A.
We realize that this one-piece is a Chanel item, but that fact can't even save it. We love Miley, but this is fugly.
Miley Ray has shown a predilection for onesies. A now-infamous unicorn onesie was her uniform in her twerking video, and you may have forgotten that she also wore a leopard-print onesie on Christmas. She lives in these things. We hope this doesn't spark an adult onesie trend on par with a Snuggies. Please, God, no!
Watch the Miley Cyrus Twerking Video


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Visiting Artists Series: Tracy Miller and Hilary Harnishfeger
The AU Art Department brings two Brooklyn-based artists to campus to teach and exhibit. Curated by Tim Doud. Tracy Miller is known for her still-life paintings of food. She simultaneously paints abstract networks of shapes, where recognizable objects double as dumb forms, flat and impenetrable. The paintings house a chaotic array of foods and flowers, at once delectable and disgusting in their abundance. She makes paintings that flirt with conventions of landscape, still-life, abstraction, and representation. Hilary Harnischfeger makes wall-mounted compositions as well as sculptures. She employs varied materials in her wall-works such as paper, plaster, clay, ink, and chunks of rock and quartz to create tactilely seductive pieces that straddle the line between two- and three-dimensionality. In her freestanding sculptures, she mines the meeting point between abstraction and materiality, using clay to lend her objects a fleshy, corporeal quality.
- Type:
- Exhibit
- Host:
- American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
- Contact:
- Event Website:


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Ancient animal urine provides insight into climate change
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Leicester are using an unusual resource to investigate ancient climates prehistoric animal urine.
The animal in question is the rock hyrax, a common species in countries such as Namibia and Botswana. They look like large guinea pigs but are actually related to the elephant. Hyraxes use specific locations as communal toilets, some of which have been used by generations of animals for thousands of years. The urine crystallises and builds up in stratified accumulations known as middens, providing a previously untapped resource for studying long-term climate change.
Funding from the Leverhulme Trust and, more recently, the European Research Council has allowed the Leicester group to join an international team led by Dr Brian Chase, from the Institut des Sciences de lEvolution de Montpellier, to study these unique deposits. With Dr Chase, Drs Andrew Carr and Arnoud Boom from the University of Leicesters Department of Geography are engaged in exploring novel records of past environmental change preserved within the middens.
Their work has recently been published in the journals Quaternary Research, Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology and Geology.
In order to study past environmental changes scientists typically acquire samples from deposits laid down in bogs or lakes, within which organic matter, which can be dated is preserved, explains Dr Carr. But in dryland environments such as southern Africa this isnt possible. Fortunately it seems that hyrax urine preserves organic matter over timescales of tens of thousands of years, which provides remarkable insights into past environmental changes within the hyrax habitat.
Obtaining the material is not easy and Dr Chase is an experienced rock-climber, which allows him to reach middens that are often otherwise inaccessible. The middens form extremely tough deposits, which have to then be cut from the rocks with an angle grinder.
Using forensic techniques the Leicester group has been able to identify the individual organic molecules preserved in the middens; these include compounds produced by the hyraxes metabolism and plant-derived molecules which passed through the animals digestive system. These biomarkers provide clues as to the kind of plants the animals were eating and therefore the sort of environment they were living in. The biomarkers thus reveal insights into how the climate of the region has changed during the last 30,000 years, with a potential accuracy of a few decades to centuries.
Palaeoenvironmental records in this area were fragmentary, says Dr Carr. The middens are providing unique terrestrial records to compare against nearby deep ocean-core records, allowing us to think in much more detail about what drives African climate change.
This is a very dynamic environment, and it appears that that the regions climate changed in a complex manner during and after the last global Ice Age (around 20,000 years ago). The next step, which is part of Dr Chases new research project, will be to compare the midden data against simulations of past climates generated by GCMs [computer-based general circulation models that are used to simulate both past and future climates] to evaluate their performance and explore why climates have changed the way they have.
Although the rock hyrax middens have been previously used to study pollen, this is the first time that their full potential to document the regions climate has been explored. Drs Chase, Carr, Boom and their colleagues have already a number of scientific papers on hyrax urine, with more in production.
Explore further


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Now more than seven years since the last execution in California, the state this week will try again to revive its dormant death penalty system in an appeals court considering the latest legal tangle over San Quentin's lethal injection procedures.
In a hearing Tuesday, the 1st District Court of Appeal will review a Marin County judge's 2011 order stopping executions because prison officials failed to comply with administrative rules in revising California's three-drug execution method. The Brown administration appealed the ruling, likely assuring the state will not execute anyone this year on its 734-inmate death row.
Even as the appeal proceeds, prison officials continue to craft a new execution procedure that would rely on a single drug to put condemned killers to death, similar to methods other states such as Arizona, Washington and Ohio set up to short-circuit challenges to the three-drug procedures. A prison spokeswoman said last week there is no timetable for adopting a single-drug method.
But California appears a long way from resolving a morass of state and federal legal battles over lethal injection.
Switching to the single-drug approach would likely require a new round of administrative hearings, which could take a year or more. Resolution of the legal battle in the 1st District would only pave the way for a return to the federal courts, which first put executions on hold in 2006. And states across the country, including California, are facing fresh problems over a shortage of drugs used in executions, and questions over whether they've obtained them legally from overseas manufacturers.
"With California, even if they have a (method in place), that's not the last issue," said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor. "Any state like California moving so glacially is going to be really behind."
The San Francisco-based 1st District will hear arguments in one aspect of California's legal problem. In response to a federal judge's orders, the state in 2010 adopted new execution procedures designed to address concerns inmates might suffer an inhumane death during the lethal injections; those included changes in training, how the drugs are administered and the construction of a new execution chamber.
But in Marin County, Superior Court Judge Faye D'Opal found the state did not comply with the administrative rules and blocked San Quentin from using the new procedures. Among the findings was that prison officials failed to explain why the state did not choose the single-drug method, which involves a fatal dose of a sedative, despite the fact California's own expert recommended that alternative.
In court papers, Attorney General Kamala Harris' office argues the state did more than enough to satisfy the rules, including holding public hearings and considering more than 29,000 public comments. Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said such administrative rules should not take precedence over enforcement of a state law such as the death penalty statute.
"The (judge) in this case completely failed to tailor its remedy to minimize interference with enforcement of the law punishing murder, a law of the highest importance," he said.
But Steven Mayer, the lawyer for death row inmates challenging the procedures, said prison officials "hellbent on doing whatever they wanted to do" botched the effort.
"What's unusual about this case is how bad a job the (California prison department) did," Mayer said.
The appeal is unfolding in the aftermath of November's narrow defeat of Proposition 34, which would have abolished California's death penalty. Death penalty foes are already mobilizing for another try to take the issue back to the voters.
Meanwhile, if the courts clear the way, California would experience an unprecedented rush of executions because more than a dozen death row inmates have lost their final legal appeals and are eligible for firm execution dates, including condemned Alameda County killer Harvey Lee Heishman and San Mateo County's Robert Green Fairbank Jr.
Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236. Follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz.


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The New York Times is reporting that professional doper Lance Armstrong may admit to doping for professional gain, because he would gain professionally from the admission by fast-tracking the process by which he could compete in sporting events again. It takes some work to remember a time when Armstrong, the best ever in a sport that's synonymous with doping, wasn't associated with performance enhancing drugs. Suspicions have dogged Armstrong since 1999 at the latest, when he threatened a fellow cyclist who wrote about drugs in cycling for a French newspaper, and in 2004, L.A. Confidential alleged doping directly. Since August, Armstrong's cycling achievements have been overshadowed by his immense and impressive doping achievements, and now, like Jesse James admitting that he robbed banks, Armstrong is considering to confessing to the crime which has come to define him:
Lance Armstrong, who this fall was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping and barred for life from competing in all Olympic sports, has told associates and antidoping officials that he is considering publicly admitting that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his cycling career, according to several people with direct knowledge of the situation. He would do this, the people said, because he wants to persuade antidoping officials to restore his eligibility so he can resume his athletic career.
Armstrong has been under pressure from various fronts to confess. Wealthy supporters of Livestrong, the charity he founded after surviving testicular cancer, have been trying to persuade him to come forward so he could clear his conscience and save the organization from further damage, one person with knowledge of the situation said.
There's a lot of hedging in the Times report, which is based on information from anonymous sources and includes a half-denial from Armstrong's lawyer. The piece notes a precedent in Marion Jones, who denied doping for years before finally admitting it and ultimately serving six months in jail for lying to federal investigators (and passing bad checks). If Armstrong admits to doping, he could face perjury charges in connection to a civil suit against SCA Promotions, which withheld money from Armstrong after doping accusations surfaced in 2004.
To be clear: This isn't a an otherwise unsuspected civillian admitting to a crime; it's more like a convict admitting to the crime that led to his incarceration. Armstrong has already had his Tour de France titles stripped. An exhaustive USADA report laid out not only the way Armstrong doped but also the way he pressured other teammates into doping and vehemently lied about it.
Armstrong's confession would likely only unnerve those that occupy exceedingly confused moral universes. You can write circles around his "complicated" legacy but since this summer, Armstrong has been on the wrong end of an endless stream revelations not only about his doping regimen but also his personality. Admitting to cheating would be the first vaguely sympathetic thing he's done in some time, and it would give Armstrong an opportunity to speak about doping, the last topic on which he's a credible source.
In Reversal, Armstrong Is Said to Weigh Admitting Drug Use [NYT]


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The purpose of this document is to provide clarity about how the certificates are issued and used by DSBWorldWide, Inc. employees, partnered health department officials, and external entities.
Food handler certificates are issued to students seeking food handler education upon completion of the food handler course.
Course completion and certificate issuance are based upon several factors:
Last updated: 2/2/2018


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MeSH Tree Structures
MeSH descriptors are organized in 16 categories: category A for anatomic terms, category B for organisms, C for diseases, D for drugs and chemicals, etc. Each category is further divided into subcategories. Within each subcategory, descriptors are arrayed hierarchically from most general to most specific in up to thirteen hierarchical levels. These trees should not be regarded as representing an authoritative subject classification system but rather as arrangements of descriptors for the guidance and convenience of persons who are assigning subject headings to documents or are searching for literature. The trees are not an exhaustive classification of the subject matter but contain only those terms that have been selected for inclusion in this thesaurus. Their structure frequently represents a compromise among the views and needs of particular disciplines and users, in the absence of any single universally accepted arrangement.
Because of the branching structure of the hierarchies, these lists are sometimes referred to as "trees". Each MeSH descriptor appears in at least one place in the trees, and may appear in as many additional places as may be appropriate. Those who index articles or catalog books are instructed to find and use the most specific MeSH descriptor that is available to represent each indexable concept. For example, articles concerning Streptococcus pneumoniae will be found under the descriptor Streptococcus Pneumoniae rather than the broader term Streptococcus, while an article referring to a new streptococcal bacterium which is not yet in the vocabulary will be listed directly under Streptococcus. Accordingly, the user may consult the trees to find additional subject headings which are more specific than a given heading, and broader headings as well. For example, under Abnormalities, there are specific abnormalities:
Congenital Abnormalities C16.131
Abnormalities, Drug Induced C16.131.042
Abnormalities, Multiple C16.131.077
22q11 Deletion Syndrome C16.131.077.019
DiGeorge Syndrome C16.131.077.019.500
Alagille Syndrome C220.127.116.11
Alstrom Syndrome C22.214.171.124
Angelman Syndrome C22.214.171.124
In the MeSH Browser, each descriptor is followed by the number that indicates its tree location. It may also be followed by one or more additional numbers, in smaller type, and truncated at the third level, indicating other tree locations of the same term. The numbers serve only to locate the descriptors in each tree and to alphabetize those at a given tree level. They have no intrinsic significance; e.g., the fact that D12.776.641 and D12.644.641 both have the three digit group 641 does not imply any common characteristic. The numbers are subject to change when new descriptors are added or the hierarchical arrangement is revised to reflect vocabulary changes.
Last Reviewed: December 6, 2016


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We believe that people should be the authors of their own health story. Please view our materials with a critical eye...
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Making Choices About Everyday Care (for Families)
The diagnosis of a dementing illness marks a new stage in your life and your family's life. Challenging decisions and important choices arise, along with uncertainty and often confusion, anxiety or fear. Some decisions might need to be made right away. Others lie ahead. The best future for you and your family depends on understanding what is most important to each of you. Recognizing and communicating your personal values about everyday care enables you and your family to make the right choices, one by one, as the situation changes.
Choices in Care
Today, in many communities, resources exist to assist you and your family now and in the future. For example, support groups, counseling services and volunteer programs can help with the emotional impact of the disease or disorder and enable you to stay involved and active. Assistance with daily living can be provided through structured day programs, in-home support, short-term respite and other community programs. Legal and financial advice can guide you and your family in planning for the future. Experienced professionals can assist by providing information and arranging for services you may want.
Recognizing Your Values and Preferences
When it comes to everyday care, what are your wishes? The first step in exploring your options is to be sure that you know what is most important to you. Those who are close to you also need to understand what you want. Projecting into the future is difficult, but it is important to educate yourself about choices and communicate how you feel about these.
Some of these questions may help you and your family think and talk about values and preferences:
How much are we willing to spend for paid care?
Who in the family will take charge of caregiving and/or make the arrangements for care?
What sacrifice of money or time is too much?
What kind of help do we need right now? What do we think we might want in the future?
Can we get used to having a stranger in our home to help us? Can we adjust to someone who speaks a different language?
Do we want some out-of-home care provided? What kind? How often? How long?
Small and very personal choices also can make a big difference. For example:
How often do you want a bath? Is a shower all right? In the morning or at night?
Would you rather have someone you know help with bathing or someone you don't know?
Do you mind if someone of the opposite sex helps you with baths?
What do you like to wear at home? When you go out?
Do you like to exercise? How often?
Do you like to go outdoors? Or do you prefer being inside, near a window?
Would you rather be alone most of the time or have company?
Communicating Your Wishes
Both the one who is ill and the one who provides care try to make decisions that are in the best interests of the other person. Family members who provide care find it more satisfying if everyday care matches the values and preferences of the one receiving care. Sadly, family caregivers —especially adult sons or daughters— sometimes do not know as much as they would like about their parents' wishes for daily and nursing home care. That uncertainty adds stress.
Recent research confirms that ongoing, meaningful communication about daily care choices and preferences is quite possible. Dementing illnesses need not keep a person from expressing life-long values and wishes for care now and in the future. Even if serious memory problems affect work and home life, or lead to changes in behavior and mood, one still can participate in care decisions.
Until there is a need, few of us consider how we feel about care issues or life choices such as stopping driving or no longer cooking. Starting a discussion about this subject may be hard, but most people respond positively to a conversation that involves planning for
the future.
Here are some tips that may help your family communicate about these issues:
Start talking about preferences for everyday care and handling daily activities, such as finances and living arrangements, before problems arise or a crisis occurs. The sooner you discuss such questions, the better prepared you will be to make difficult decisions later on.
Choose a time when you all are relaxed. Try to focus on understanding what each of you needs and prefers, recognizing strengths but not making assumptions.
Don't be surprised or discouraged if you get resistance the first time you bring up this topic. That is normal. Try again at another time.
Don't assume that the illness prevents making many personal decisions. A person with dementia may be able to make some decisions and not others. Also, it may be easier to express decisions at one time of day than another. Keep trying at different times.
Recognize your loved ones' rights to make their own life choices even if you do not agree with them. If health or safety is at immediate risk, or you need help in talking about these issues in a family meeting, do get a skilled professional to assist you in reaching agreement.
Knowing your individual styles of communication can help. A diagnosis of dementia may upset and overwhelm members of a family. Some cope by taking immediate action. Others withdraw to absorb the unexpected situation. Both responses may block good communication. A trained counselor or facilitator can be helpful in improving family communication about care preferences and decisions.
Finally, by all means express your preferences when your family explores care possibilities. For example, it may be more important for you to consider who provides a service rather than the cost of the service. For your family, it may be more important to consider what is included in the service and what it will require of them or of you. In either case, make your wishes and preferences known! In the long run, a clear understanding of what is most important to you will help you and your family now and in the future.
Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease: Fact Sheet, Family Caregiver Alliance, Revised 1999.
Making Hard Choices, Respecting Both Voices: Final Report, Feinberg, L.F., Whilatch, C.J. and Tucke, S. (2000). Family Caregiver Alliance, San Francisco, CA.
Recommended Reading
Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease: Fact Sheet, Family Caregiver Alliance, Revised 1999.
Show Me the Way to Go Home, Larry Rose, 1996, Elder Books, P.O. Box 490, Forest Knolls, CA 94933, (800) 709-COPE.
Alzheimer's Early Stages: First Steps in Caring and Treatment, Kuhn, Daniel (1999). Hunter House Inc., P.O. Box 2914, Alameda, CA 94501, (800) 266-5592.
Family Caregiver Alliance
National Center on Caregiving
Web Site: caregiver.org
E-mail: [email protected]
Family Caregiver Alliance supports and assists caregivers of brain-impaired adults through education, research, services and advocacy.
FCA's information Clearinghouse covers current medical, social, public policy and caregiving issues related to brain impairments.
For residents of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, FCA provides direct family support services for caregivers of those with Alz-heimer's disease, stroke, head injury, Parkinson's and other debilitating brain disorders that strike adults.
Alzheimer's Association
225 N. Michigan Ave., Ste. 1700
Chicago, IL 60601-7633
Phone: (800) 272-3900
National Stroke Assocation
96 Inverness Dr. East, Suite 1
Englewood, CO 80112
(800) 787-6537
[email protected]
American Stroke Association
A division of the American Heart Association
7272 Greenville Ave.
Dallas, TX 75231
(888) 478-7653
The American Stroke Association offers information and sponsors programs and support groups throughout the nation for stroke survivors and family members.
Prepared by Family Caregiver Alliance in cooperation with The Benjamin Rose Institute. Funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. ©2005 Family Caregiver Alliance. All rights reserved.


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Music Department | Soundtrack
Will "Game of Thrones" take home Best Drama Series for the fourth time? Can Julia Louis-Dreyfus make history once again? Who is or isn't hosting the ceremony?
Join us Sunday, Sept. 22, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT for IMDb LIVE After the Emmys, with exclusive interviews, and more. Plus, see what IMDb editors are watching this month.


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School & Classroom
Planning your school classroom, or childcare facility is easy. With many options, you can design spaces large or small with school-quality furniture, book browser displays, lockers and storage bins of all sizes. We also carry classroom building block sets, which are ideal for small hands with big imaginations. Likewise, school-quality play kitchens are an ideal accompaniment to your learning atmosphere, as children learn to play interactively and imaginatevly.


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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- The former Penn State president accused of covering up reports of sexual molestation by retired assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky earned $2.5 million in severance last year, the school said Wednesday.
Graham Spanier's total taxable income was $3.3 million in 2011, the university said. That included $700,000 in salary, $83,000 in taxable benefits and the severance money, which will be paid by 2017, the school said.
Spanier was forced out of the job after Sandusky was arrested on child molestation charges.
He said he was not aware the school had made his earnings public, and declined to comment. He remains a tenured faculty member but is on leave.
Spanier was charged four weeks ago with engaging in an alleged cover-up of abuse committed by Sandusky. Spanier and co-defendants Gary Schultz and Tim Curley are asking to postpone their Dec. 13 preliminary hearing.
Their recent court filings have focused on the role played by former university chief counsel Cynthia Baldwin, and all three defendants have argued their charges should be thrown out.
Sandusky is serving a 30- to 60-year sentence for abusing 10 boys. He maintains he is innocent and is pursuing appeals.
Spanier, Curley and Schultz are accused of endangering the welfare of children, obstruction, conspiracy, failure to report suspected child abuse and perjury.
Curley is on leave to serve out the final year of his contract as athletic director, and Schultz, is retired as vice president for business and finance.
The school on Wednesday also said it already had implemented more than half the 119 recommendations made by former FBI Director Louis Freeh to strengthen university policies in areas such as safety and governance.
Freeh conducted the school's internal investigation into the scandal. He said in his final report that Spanier, Curley, Schultz and the late coach Joe Paterno concealed allegations against Sandusky to avoid bad publicity. Lawyers for all three men, as well as Paterno's family, have all firmly denied those conclusions.


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First we found a futuristic easter egg in Battlefield 3's End Game DLC. Now we have something a bit more...prehistoric.
That's definitely a pterodactyl, right? I think we all know what this means: prehistoric Battlefield is an inevitability.
No but seriously though, nice find on the Nebandan Flats, scannerbarkly. Kind of wondering if you can shoot the beast down now.
And remember, we've had dinosaur-related easter eggs in Battlefield 3 before. EDIT: Including:
On the same map. That picture comes from spiralout154 on Reddit.
Dinosaur Easter Egg - Air Superiority -Pteradactyl on Nebandan Flats [scannerbarkly]


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Welcome to the internet homepage of Future Flavor.
In a world where millions of .mp3s are released every second, finding exceptional music can be quite a challenge for a modern day web crawler. In response to this net crisis, we've established an elite team of hyperexploited aural laborers across the third world, streaming Soundcloud 24 hours a day. With great patience and care, their 7 favorite uptempo and downtempo tracks are chosen each month then outsourced to web art sweatshops where custom masterpieces are created to go alongside them. The result is a prestigious pairing of free internet music and art, forever yours to keep on CD-RW or MiniDisc. All thanks to the wonders of the www.
Think you have what it takes to be a cyber celeb? Submit your music or visuals
Submit your follows/likes on twitter and facebook


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We bring the beach party to you! Travel to hotspots like Spring Break in Miami Beach to see the hottest girls getting wild and nude. Candid photos and video from the world's most infamous topless beaches!
Get Total Access To Thousands Of Real Bikini Photos And Hours Of Videos Of Girls With No Inhibitions


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End-of-life notice: American Legal Ethics Library
As of March 1, 2013, the Legal Information Institute is no longer maintaining the information in the American Legal Ethics Library. It is no longer possible for us to maintain it at a level of completeness and accuracy given its staffing needs. It is very possible that we will revive it at a future time. At this point, it is in need of a complete technological renovation and reworking of the "correspondent firm" model which successfully sustained it for many years.
Many people have contributed time and effort to the project over the years, and we would like to thank them. In particular, Roger Cramton and Peter Martin not only conceived ALEL but gave much of their own labor to it. We are also grateful to Brad Wendel for his editorial contributions, to Brian Toohey and all at Jones Day for their efforts, and to all of our correspondents and contributors. Thank you.
We regret any inconvenience.
Some portions of the collection may already be severely out of date, so please be cautious in your use of this material.
Connecticut Rules of Professional Conduct
Commentary - Rule 8.3
[1] Self-regulation of the legal profession requires that members of the profession initiate disciplinary investigation when they know of a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct. Lawyers have a similar obligation with respect to judicial misconduct. An apparently isolated violation may indicate a pattern of misconduct that only a disciplinary investigation can uncover. While allowing pledges of silence can expedite settlements and redress to individual victims, the public at large is not well served when lawyers can buy their way out of professional disciplinary action. Reporting a violation is especially important where the victim is unlikely to discover the offense.
[2] A report about misconduct is not required where it would involve violation of Rule 1.6. However, a lawyer should encourage a client to consent to disclosure where prosecution would not substantially prejudice the client's interests.
[3] If a lawyer were obliged to report every violation of the Rules, the failure to report any violation would itself be a professional offense. Such a requirement existed in many jurisdictions but proved to be unenforceable. This Rule limits the reporting obligation to those offenses that a self-regulating profession must vigorously endeavor to prevent. A measure of judgment is, therefore, required in complying with the provisions of this Rule. The term "substantial" refers to the seriousness of the possible offense and not the quantum of evidence of which the lawyer is aware. A report should be made to the bar disciplinary agency unless some other agency, such as a peer review agency, is more appropriate in the circumstances. Similar considerations apply to the reporting of judicial misconduct.
[4] The duty to report professional misconduct does not apply to a lawyer retained to represent a lawyer whose professional conduct is in question. Such a situation is governed by the Rules applicable to the client-lawyer relationship.
[5] Under subsection (c) the lawyer or judge who receives the information concerning the violation still has discretion to report it to the appropriate authority, depending on the seriousness of the conduct and the circumstances involved.


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Population, Health, and Environment Through a "Gendered" Lens
The water lapped at the side of our tiny outrigger boats as we struggled to get our sea legs up onto the dock. We had just arrived at Gilutongan, one of more than 7,000 islands that make up the Philippines nation. Coming from land-locked Colorado, the turquoise blue water signaled vacation in my mind-but we weren't on vacation. I was one of 50 visitors to Gilutongan as part of the second annual Population, Health, and Environment conference held in Cebu City, a bustling hub in the centralVisayas region. Among us were journalists, activists, researchers, and development practitioners, and our island excursion was meant as a window into the harsh reality that governs island life.We were also there to witness first-hand the components of an integrated development program that aims to reshape the islanders' harsh and remote reality.
Filipino life and culture are permeated by the sea, which is the source of sustenance, income, and transportation and is never far away. Yet the nation's once-prolific fisheries are in dramatic decline. Filipino fishing households typically live far below the Philippines' official poverty threshold; on average, a household has six members, each earning 20 pesos (US$0.40) a day. Related to this wrenching poverty, malnourishment is common among fishing families.
Although the fisheries crisis is driven by myriad forces, population growth is part of the problem.Unlike the rapid fertility declines (and thus smaller families) in other East Asian nations, such as Korea and Taiwan, Filipino families remain relatively large. Larger families require more fish, both for consumption and as a hopeful path out of poverty.


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If cash is king, there's a revolution in the land.
Plastic started to dislodge cash from its throne, now smartphones and online payments are set to finish the job.
Reserve Bank figures show ATM withdrawals peaked at in 2009-10 and have been on the slide ever since.
And more than three out of four face-to-face payments are now estimated to be tap and go, according to Leila Fourie, the chief executive of the n Payments Association.
Increasingly that means tapping a smartphone rather than a credit or debit card.
Cash is falling out of favour in other ways too.
The rise of the subscription economy is a big trend, where goods and services and paid by direct debit.
For example, a subscription to Netflix or Stan has supplanted the video store, gym memberships are on rolling monthly payments, while companies such Aussie Farmers Direct or Hello Fresh are providing different ways to shop for groceries.
Mike Ebstein, the founder of payments consultant MWE Consulting, estimates that recurring direct debit payments would be about 10 per cent of of the value of credit card payments.
Meanwhile, in-app payments such as in rideshare and taxi services Uber and GoCatch provide yet another way to do away with cash.
And pretty soon the Reserve Bank's New Payments Platform will make electronic payments from bank account to bank account even faster and easier, meaning you'll be able to pay online for that secondhand fridge at a garage sale on a Saturday.
But who benefits from the decrease in cash? Electronic payments are convenient for consumers, but is there a downside?
Mark McCrindle, a social researcher with his own consultancy, McCrindle Research, says the convenience can come at a cost as "out of sight is out of mind".
"It is all around us, with tollway e-tags, for example, where there is a bip but most people are not aware of how much they are paying," he says.
"There's not that 'point of pain' of paying with cash that has a psychological impact of making us aware that we are now poorer having made that transaction." Game of phones
The major drawcard for contactless payments is convenience, including the ability to use a credit or debit card for small amounts and the efficiency of the transaction.
With Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass, consumers can 'tap and go' for everyday transactions, up to $100 a time, without the need to enter a PIN or sign a receipt.
Smartphones are the next frontier in contactless payments with the big tech companies coming out with apps that allow payments without even require opening the app or unlocking the device.
is one of the leading countries in the world for smartphone uptake, with more than four out of five people owning a device, according to Deloitte for its Mobile Consumer Survey in 2016. That's up from up from three out of four in 2014. ???
Elizabeth Barry, 26 from Sydney's Zetland, uses CommBank's contactless app, which has replaced its earlier app, Kaching, for everyday transactions.
"I use my phone for pretty much all of my smaller payments like grocery shopping. I find it more convenient taking my phone out than taking a card out," Barry says.
Barry has a Samsung phone and she can put a short-cut on the phone screen but she prefers to log-in to make sure that she is making the payment correctly.
"It's all really easy – I don't remember the last time I logged-on for internet banking," she says.
A senior writer with comparison site Finder, Barry doesn't shop too much online and when she does she prefers to use PayPal if it is available, because it's easy and PayPal will refund her money if something goes wrong. Cash not dead
However, not everyone is a winner from the shift. It is having a detrimental effect on waiters' tips and charities that solicit cash donations from passers-by on the streets.
According to a survey of 2000 people, commissioned by ME Bank, those who pay with a card or smartphone are less likely to pay tips to waiters or to donate to a charity in the street.
Nic Emery, the ME head of deposits and transactional banking, says the move to digital money also excludes people who do not have a bank account, which sometimes includes the poorest people.
Though use of cash is slowing, cash is not dead. In fact, it's going to remain part of the n economy and the payment system for the foreseeable future, says the Reserve Bank in its December 2016 Quarter Bulletin.
The Reserve Bank's Consumer Use Survey of 2013, the latest available, found that about one in 10 respondents said they make all of their in-person payments with cash.
And cash remains an important store of value.
About three out of four people told the survey they held cash in places other than their "wallets". Following day-to-day transactions, the next most-cited reason for storing cash was to cover emergencies.
McCrindle says tapping a smartphone connected to a credit card tends to loosen people's natural restraint.
He points out that the ratio of household debt to income is the highest it's ever been, and the January crunch from Christmas spending is now happening year round.
"It's going beyond the budget and living in a financial fog, tapping here there and everywhere, making it harder to manage money," he says. Which app?
Tech experts predict digital "wallets" will soon be used not only in place of cash, but for paying for all sorts of things such as travel tickets and passes.
Tech companies are seeking to strike deals with as many banks, card providers, retail chains and big providers of services as possible.
Apple Pay app is probably the market leader, though it is the only app that works with the iPhone's "near-field communications", which communicates with payment terminals, says Alex Kidman, tech expert at Finder.
It allows payments on an iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad or Mac using Visa, MasterCard and American Express debit and credit cards.
ANZ has entered into a deal with Apple to use Apple Pay, as has several smaller banks and credit unions.
Android Pay is probably the next most popular. It can be used by any smartphone using the Android operating system – such as popular Samsung, HTC and Google models – and works with those financial institutions who support it.
Android Pay supports MasterCard, Visa and American Express credit and debit cards.
Android Pay can be used on an ever-growing number of stores, including 7-11, Coles, McDonald's and some government agencies.
PayPal remains the middleman for online payments for many online retailers, including eBay. Security
Trying to remember passwords is becoming a frustration of the past as biometric scanning gains traction.
Technology that involves our own money is always something that's likely to make us nervous, but the reality is that smartphones can be significantly more secure, Kidman says.
Most mobile payment systems will allow you to use a PIN if that's your desire, but payment by smartphone-apps like Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay offer an additional level of security, provided your device is protected with fingerprint scanning.
These use your fingerprint to pre-enrol onto the device as an additional layer of authentication. Kidman says even if your phone is lost or stolen, thieves can't use it for contactless payments.
"Your fingerprint data is stored securely on the device itself, so there are no worries about your biometric data being stored or illicitly accessed online," he says.
Smartphone payment systems work like PayPal in that the details of your card do not go to the retailer. Instead, a one-time token is generated for each purchase. Warning for travellers
Travellers have to be careful and remember to carry more cash and cards with old technology, because contactless payments are not as widely used overseas as they are .
"You may see a sign that indicates Apple Pay or Android Pay compatibility, but it's not a guarantee that when it comes time to tap the transaction will go through," Kidman says.
"It's wise to always travel with a card that can handle contactless, chip and PIN, magnetic stripe and even signature verification," Kidman says. That is particularly the case in the United States, where many smaller retailers still use signature verification.