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Who's on the inside track for a Romney Cabinet
Mitt Romney said his Cabinet and White House staff will be stacked with men and women from the business world, but his top advisers sketched out for POLITICO a team composed of many familiar faces in Washington.
Already on the inside track: several veterans of George W. Bush's administration and a number of women — but not necessarily a single Democrat.
Story Continued Below
The choices are still months off — and behind in the polls, Romney is hardly preoccupied with his transition just yet — but it is possible to chart a more detailed early look at a potential Romney Cabinet than was possible for Bush or Barack Obama at this stage of their campaigns.
( Also on POLITICO: GOP still fretting over Mitt's image)
And one name advisers return to time and again is a person little-known to most Americans: Mike Leavitt, a fellow Mormon who is creating a government-in-waiting plan for Romney. Leavitt is the prototypical Romney Cabinet pick — loyal, low-key and diligent, just the kind of person Romney likes to surround himself with.
Leavitt did two jobs for Bush: ran the Environmental Protection Agency and the Health and Human Services Department and is a lock for one of the most important jobs if he wants it — White House chief of staff or Treasury secretary, the advisers said.
Glenn Hubbard, an economic adviser to the campaign, would be a likely Romney appointee as Federal Reserve chairman or Treasury secretary. He served as Bush's top economic adviser for a time as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
And Dan Senor, a senior adviser to Paul Ryan, would likely get a top West Wing job, perhaps deputy chief of staff or even national security adviser. Senor was a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq immediately after the war. Kevin Madden, traveling spokesman on the campaign plane, would be expected to be named White House spokesman.
( Also on POLITICO: Gallup omen points to Romney)
Rounding out the Bush veterans: Senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie, former counselor to Bush and former Republican National Committee chairman, is very well-positioned for a top counselor job given his bigger-than-most-realize role in whipping the current operation into shape, the advisers said.
In his last interview before heading to his lakefront New Hampshire home to prepare his acceptance speech for this week's Republican National Convention, Romney sketched for POLITICO several of the criteria he will use in picking his Cabinet:
— The qualification that is uppermost in his mind is private-sector experience: "My focus is going to be on the economy, getting us strong again. So having people who have actually run things in the private sector or have been actively involved in the private sector will be of real interest to me."
— Romney said he expects that his Cabinet will have "a representative form of diversity that mirrors our society at large," including women, African-Americans and Hispanics. He mentioned Debra Lee, an African-American who runs Black Entertainment Television, as someone who has caught his eye.
— Interestingly, he would not commit to putting a Democrat in his Cabinet, although he noted that he had in Massachusetts. If he decided to include one, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell would be one possibility, perhaps as Transportation secretary.
— Romney also said he would empower his Cabinet more than Obama has. "I do not look to bring someone in to run an agency and say, 'Hey, go do a good job, and let me know how it goes.' I look, instead, to come in and say, 'Here is what I want to have done. These are the things I believe need to be done in this agency, and I'm the guy that got elected, not you. So, it is my goals, not your goals, that are first and foremost." To lure any CEOs into his Cabinet, Romney would need to make plain they would have more power than under Obama or Bush.
Romney boasted of how, as governor, he had more women in power than any other leader in the country. He said he asked women's groups at the time to give him a list of women who should get jobs, and many did. Romney said Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard is the type of woman he would love to have work for him, but her spokesman told POLITICO she wouldn't leave the company for government.
One woman certain for a top role, probably as a senior adviser, is Beth Myers, who helps run his campaign and ran his life as governor. "She made sure that every important issue followed a timetable … and that things were brought to me on a timely basis and that we had sufficient time to deal with them," Romney said.
She would be the new Valerie Jarrett — trusted as the keeper of the legacy.


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In 1993, Vernor Vinge, a retired professor of mathematics, computer scientist and award-winning science fiction author, argued that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence would mark the point at which "the human era will be ended." This idea, associated in popular thinking with the futurist Ray Kurzweil of 2005's The Singularity is Near, posits a moment when computing advances to the point that computers become self-directing, direct their activities to making themselves ever more intelligent, and surpass human comprehension or understanding.
Perhaps it seems like a far-fetched concept in its fullest form. But what about the advertising industry, which has seen so much human activity taken over by computers? Is there an impending advertising singularity? Could artificial intelligence advance advertising and media optimization beyond our ability to understand the decisions being made?
I'm not the first one to entertain this thought. For instance, Matt Herman wrote about it (and mostly wrote it off) as it relates to advertising creative development in a 2010 Ad Age article "Glitch in the Coming Advertising Singularity." Meanwhile Roger Toennis suggested that "The Marketing Singularity is Near," and how it would take Marketing "back to the future" of pre-broadcast media one-to-one word-of-mouth marketing.
For me, the short answer is that in "creative," the singularity is unlikely. In everything else, it is to some degree already arriving, but there remain factors that may mean it is part of a larger ecosystem that still includes human involvement.
Put me clearly in the skeptic column when it comes to an advertising creative singularity. In a recent Nielsen Newswire post, I wrote about the five factors associated with creative success in advertising. It's hard to imagine a computer-driven creative singularity anytime soon, given the uniquely human nature of storytelling, humor and the other creative elements that go into good ads.
That said, algorithms have been developed to write music and news stories: check out "Can Creativity Be Automated?" in the MIT Technology Review.
Here, the proponents of a singularity are on more solid ground. Unlike creative, media planning, buying and measurement is much more likely to be more automated, smarter, faster, self-improving and thoroughly beyond the ability of humans to understand. In fact, it is already being done in some cases through real-time bidding platforms in digital. The media singularity beckons.
The component parts are mostly here, although they aren't fully functioning in an integrated fashion, and they are absent altogether in some areas of the media ecosystem. What are the elements of a fully automated, smarter-than-human, media optimization singularity, and how likely is it?
Digitization. Digital enables data to be fully exploited by computing. The more digitized the advertising and media data, the more computing power can buy, measure and improve performance, automatically, in real time, and without human intervention.
So what this may amount to is a future world in which individual level exposure and sales data is digitized and connected thru APIs to data platforms, attribution models run in real time, machine learning iteratively improves results, and buying is transacted through real time bidding platforms. In limited form, this future already exists in sub-scale pockets of the advertising eco-system. The reason it makes sense to think of this possibility as a singularity is that all of this will happen at lightning speed—in milliseconds, and at massive scale—incorporating hundreds of millions of data points—such that it will be beyond any human's ability to comprehend what is happening except at a conceptual level.
All that said, there are certainly still reasons to be skeptical about a broad scale advertising singularity, and they're not to be minimized. Existing business models, technology platforms, processes, media and device fragmentation, digital ad fraud/bots, industry habits, personal relationships and other factors are all very real hurdles to the realization of this future state.
So the technology building blocks are already in play, but there are factors that will impede the arrival of a singularity. What that means is that we should expect progress toward a singularity to be rapid, albeit along a jagged, non-linear path. Much of advertising as we've known it for the past 100 years or so will be disrupted.
As to whether a true singularity be reached—of all the factors that argue against it, the human element is perhaps the most powerful. In that regard, the singularity may come, but later than people expect.
Whatever the final result, here comes the future of advertising, and one thing is certain--it will be a singular experience.

subset: commoncrawl


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During the colder months, ensure that you and your Porsche experience the benefits of winter wheels and tyres: improved performance, greater safety and enhanced driving pleasure in cold, wet and other adverse weather conditions.
All Porsche tyres are also N-rated to signify that they have been tested and approved for your car, meaning they meet high standards for driving stability, comfort and fuel consumption.
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* Data determined in accordance with the measurement method required by law. Since September 01, 2018 all new cars are approved in accordance with the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), a more realistic test procedure to measure fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions. You can find more information on WLTP at www.porsche.com/wltp. From 01 January 2019, all fuel consumption figures are shown as determined in accordance with WLTP. CO₂ figures will be shown as NEDC-equivalent values, as CO₂ based taxation will continue to be based on an NEDC value (derived from WLTP) until 06 April 2020. Fuel economy and CO₂ emission figures are only intended as a means of comparing different types of vehicles tested under the same test cycle. New WLTP homologated vehicles are therefore not directly comparable with any vehicles tested under NEDC.
Values are provided for comparison only. To the extent that fuel consumption or CO₂ values are given as ranges, these do not relate to a single, individual car and do not constitute part of the offer. Extra features and accessories (attachments, tyre formats etc.) can change relevant vehicle parameters such as weight, rolling resistance and aerodynamics which may result in a change in fuel consumption and CO₂ values. Additionally, weather and traffic conditions, as well as individual driving styles, can all affect the actual fuel consumption, electricity consumption, and CO₂ emissions of a car.


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Jeanette Tetrault
Research & Publications
Patient Care
Dr. Tetrault's scholarly work focuses on care of patients with addicition and the medical co-morbidities associated with substance use, mainly HIV and Hepatitis C. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Dr. Tetrault is a physician providing primary care, addiction treatment and buprenorphine/naloxone treatment at the Central Medical Unit of the APT Foundation, a multi-specialty addiction treatment facility, and is an attending physician at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH). She is the co-director of the Addiction Recovery Clinic in the Adult Primary Care Clinic at the St. Raphael's Campus of YNHH, which serves both a clinical care and a teaching mission. She has been recognized for her teaching accomplishments being awarded the New England Regional Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Clinician Educator of the Year Award in 2013. She is the Program Director for the Yale Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program and serves on the Board of Directors for The Addiction Medicine Foundation and for the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Directors Association. She is a past-president of the New England Region of SGIM and co-chair of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use Interest Group for SGIM. In 2017, she was recognized as a Macy Foundation Faculty Scholar
Education & Training
- MDBoston University School of Medicine (2001)
- BABoston University (1997)
- Ambulatory Care FellowWest Haven VA Hospital
- Chief ResidentYale University School of Medicine
- Medical Intern and ResidentYale University School of Medicine
- Board CertificationAB of Preventive Medicine, Addiction Medicine (2018)
Honors & Recognition
|Awarding Organization
|W. Anderson Spickard Excellence in Mentorship Award
|Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Use and Addiciton
|Clinician Educator of the Year
|Society of General Internal Medicine-New England Region
|George Thornton Community Teacher of the Year Award
|Yale University School of Medicine Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency Program
|Best Research Abstract in Women's Medicine
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Professional Service
|American College of Academic Addiction Medicine
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|Addiction Medicine Fellowship Directors Association
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|American Society of Addiction Medicine
|2012 - Present
|Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse
|2012 - Present
|Society of General Internal Medicine
|Substance Abuse Interest Group
|2011 - Present
|Intern Selection Committee
|Interview new applicants to Yale Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency Program
|2009 - Present
|American College of Physicians
|Connecticut Chapter Council of Young Physicians
|2009 - Present


text: "Roar" by Katy Perry. The world's #1 dance game brand is back with Just Dance®2014! The latest edition of the record-breaking franchise takes the party to a whole new level of fun with new game modes, coaches and stylish environments. Written by B McKee, L Gottwald, H Walter, M Martin & K Perry. ©2013 WB Music Corp(ASCAP), When I'm Rich You'll Be My B****(ASCAP)/Prescription Songs LLC, Kasz Money Publishing, Dream Machine Corp & MXM Music AB. Admin by Kobalt Music Publishing America Inc/Downtown DMP Songs(BMI) obo Songs of Pulse Recording(BMI). All rights reserved. Courtesy of Capitol Records under license from Universal Music Ent. Music Downloads Not Rated by the ESRB


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The Tweet Topic Explorer
Jeff Clark at Neoformix has created a cool, interactive tool that visualizes word frequency in a specific Twitter stream called Tweet Topic Explorer. You can enter anyone's Twitter ID and it will generate an interactive visual on the fly. Above is the visualization of my Twitter ID: @rtkrum. According to Jeff (see note below), this works in most browsers but has trouble with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Similar to a word cloud, the area of the circles is sized based on the frequency of that word in the Twitter stream. Words are clustered together and color-coded if they are often found together in the same Tweets. The actual text of the Tweets is displayed next to the visual, so you can click on any word and it's highlighted in the text as well. Clicking on any Twitter names in the text will generate a new visualization for that Twitter user.
One issue I have is that the font size of each word is adjusted to fit within it's circle, so longer words are naturally smaller to fit on one line withing the circle. So even if a long word has a higher frquency (and a larger circle area) it appears smaller to the reader's eye because the font is so small.
I have created a new tool to help see which topics a person tweets about most often. It also shows the other twitter users that are mentioned most frequently in their tweets. I call it the Tweet Topic Explorer. I'm using the recently described Word Cluster Diagrams to show the most frequently used words in their tweets and how they are grouped together. This example below is for my own account, @JeffClark, and shows one word cluster containing twitter,data,visualization,list,venn, and streamgraph. Another group has word,cloud,shaped,post etc. It's a bit hard to see in this small image but there is a cluster about Toronto where I live and mentions of run, marathon, soccer. Also, there are bubbles for some of the people on Twitter I mention the most often: @flowingdata, @eagereyes, @blprnt, @moritz_stefaner, @dougpete.
Anyone out there still reading? Generate a visualization using your Twitter ID and post a link in the comments!
Outstanding job Jeff!
Found on FlowingData
on 2011-05-01 14:35 by Randy
Jeff added the ability to visualize Twitter lists. Here's the link wwhere you can see the Tweet Topic Explorer for the Cool-Infographics-People list.


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Jie Qi, from Media Lab's High-Low Tech Group, took a synthesizer and distilled it into a compact, no-frills interface. About the size of an audio cassette, it has setting for multiple tones, looping ability, and five note polyphony. The sound has an 8 bit feel to it, but the real magic is in how it's controlled They packed a ton of functionality into a small space, including the ability to share tracks with friends.
As for documentation, they've made a homepage and a wiki page for it, so users can obtain one and start hacking it.
[via The Creators Project]


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Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Lamar Thomas Is Back in the News
We'll take any excuse to post this YouTube video. Former Miami receiver Lamar Thomas, 38, has returned to Miami and is chasing a liberal arts degree. Thomas, as you might remember, is a former commentator for Hurricane football telecasts.
But he lost that gig for his comments during the brawl between Florida International and Miami at the Orange Bowl. Thomas' rant earned him another honor from our readers. His remarks were voted the Most Classless Act of 2006. Thanks to UWire.
Posted by dawizofodds at 1:22 AM
2 comments:
Hey Lamar,
Wanted to email you but not sure how many people see this one (we met in hawaii and I'm the army girl with the silly laugh). Anyway, you've got my email now. Hope you had a happy 4th. Mine was awesome :-)
hEY COACH THOMAS IS YOU STUDENT 2bOYNTON hIGH WOW IS SO FUN HAVIN YOU AT OUR SKOOL FUNNY WHEN YOU ACT LIKE U OUR AGE THATS JUST AWSOME.....THATNKS FOR NOT ONLY BEING OUR COACH BUT FOR TELLING US A LOT OF GOOD THING YOU NEVA GIVE US NEGETIVITY ALLWAYS STAYIN POSSITIVE THIS OUR YEAR OF GRADUATIONBUT I HOPE NOT ONLY WE KEEP SEEING YOU BUT WE HOPE THAT YOU DONT 4 GET THAT YOU HAVE THE STUDENTS AS YOUR FANS ALSO LOL WELL SEE U @ SKOOL TIGET L.T PRIDE
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Aleksandar Hemon landed in the United States two decades ago, January 1992. He was 27, a young Bosnian journalist from Sarajevo arriving on a one-month visa, arranged through a cultural exchange program sponsored by the State Department. Just after he arrived, war broke out in Yugoslavia. Hemon was stranded. In the years since, as he settled into this country and became an acclaimed writer — became one of Chicago's finest contemporary writers and arguably its most important literary talent since Saul Bellow — Hemon has told this immigration story many, many times.
"I have to be honest," he said. "I don't get excited repeating it anymore, explaining to people how I arrived at this point." Then he adds, "But I do like stories, and I do get pleasure from telling a great one."
And so, not unlike Joan Didion, who famously wrote, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," he told me a story: "After I arrived, the last stop of my tour was New York City, and as corny as this sounds, I remember walking around Manhattan, going to this place, to that place, moving through hotel lobbies, and I'm not sure why, but the Beatles' 'Nowhere Man' was following the entire time. Things were getting worse in Yugoslavia — now 'Nowhere Man'! It was too easy, like walking in a bad movie. And yet — what was I going to do now?"
There is so much story to the story of Aleksandar Hemon, so much incident, acclaim and tragedy, spanning three decades and two continents, that, though he has four celebrated works of semi-autobiographical fiction and now a collection of essays, "The Book of My Lives" — which arrives Tuesday, its very title a nod at how expansive those lives have been — we need to start small.
With, say, soccer.
Let's start there because, as we rewind through his history, it offers a kind of calm. Hemon plays in an informal league in the Uptown neighborhood several times a week; he had played soccer all his life, but during his first years in Chicago, he didn't play at all.
"Not playing soccer tormented me," he writes in "The Book of My Lives." When I asked why he didn't play, he said he couldn't, that, though he had left Sarajevo before fighting began, and his parents got out before the first mortar shell exploded, something had severed inside. It's why, for the first three years he lived in Chicago, he could not write, either.
"English was not yet ready for me to write in, and my Bosnian, it was not functioning for me — the war had somehow (expletive) it up for me."
Then one morning, he decided to join a pickup game, and slowly "his relationship with Chicago, initially a relationship of necessity, became one of love," said John Freeman, his close friend and editor of Granta, the British literary magazine. Hemon played with Montrose Harbor leagues and Lincoln Park teams; the Uptown group he plays with now, on a baseball field adjacent to Senn High School, he's played with for a dozen years.
On a recent cold Saturday morning, freezing rain tapped on the empty parking lot alongside the field. Just after 7 a.m., cars began arriving, old and gray and dented, driven by youngish guys in tracksuits. Then new BMWs and oldish guys showed up. Then Hemon, on a bike, standing on the pedals, gliding around the backstop.
He looked content.
He leaped off his bike and warmed up, jumping in tight pirouettes and kicking at the sky. Meanwhile, the field grew crowded with players, a wild social and class mix: new immigrants with lousy jobs, old immigrants with lousy jobs, men with scars from internment camps; Indians, Iranians, Irish; brain surgeons, cell biologists. Hemon was the only writer, the only MacArthur Foundation "genius." He's also the tallest member of the team, broad-shouldered, bald and intimidating.
The players shoveled the field, creating boundaries with the snow, and the game started. A few minutes in, a short Nigerian with braids began yelling, "Sasha! Sasha!" Hemon, whose nickname is Sasha, was playing midfield. Three goal-scorers had flown right past him. "How, Sasha?" the man yelled. Hemon said nothing. The player beside Hemon sighed, "I know, I know …" The Nigerian cut him off: "What you mean? If you knew, you wouldn't!"
Hemon's face tightened.
Later, his wife, Teri Boyd (a former Tribune photo editor), told me her husband was on his best behavior, most likely because I was standing there. Charlie Callahan, a team member (and vice president at Rothschild Investment Corp.), told me: "I couldn't say how many times I've talked Sasha off his bike and into staying when he's mad. He has an economy of speech, so it's interesting to hear a literate person threaten. I also couldn't tell you how many times I've heard him say, 'If you keep that up,' and 'I am going to hurt you.'"
A few days before that game, we sat at Hopleaf, the Andersonville pub that Hemon calls his second home, a few blocks from his actual home. We talked about awards, and he told me about being nominated in 2008 for a National Book Award, for "The Lazarus Project," his best-seller telling parallel stories across a century, one about a Jewish immigrant killed by Chicago police in 1908, the other about an Eastern European writer in Chicago obsessed with the story. Hemon has a dense Eastern European accent and a bemused, watchful face. He said he hated the experience of being nominated, "because I wanted to win, and I didn't want to want it. People were rubbing my shoulders as they announced my name, and I am like, 'Please! Stop touching me!'" (He did not win.)
He added, "Even now, with this new book, it is well and nice, but if I want anything now, it is for nothing bad to happen. I just went skiing with my family in Colorado. Fantastic, but the accomplishment I felt was that no one was hurt. My goal this year, it is to not have a catastrophe."
As he said this, he waved his hand and sent a glass of water cascading across the table.
He jumped up and ran for napkins, and as I waited for him to return, my mind wandered. Imagine being an aspiring writer, going to a country, being stranded, paralyzed with fear, unable to communicate. On the other hand, that's easier to imagine than what came next: Hemon set a goal of learning English and publishing a book in five years. To say he succeeded is an understatement. As crowded as the pool of contemporary writers wrestling with the American experience has become — Junot Diaz, Colum McCann, Jhumpa Lahiri — no discussion is complete without him. He created a body of stories so loaded with displacement, disconnection, humor, Chicago and Sarajevo, so consistent in voice — and occasionally in character, carrying some from book to book — "his work can feel like a massive, singular literary project," said Sean McDonald, his longtime editor, now executive editor at publishing imprint Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A massive act of thinly veiled fiction, read as a seamless whole. In "Nowhere Man," his 2002 book, he writes of an immigrant canvassing Chicago, as Hemon did: "'Hello,' Pronek said, 'my name is Jozef and I am from Greenpeace. Do you care about the dolphins?'" In a chapter of his new book, "Reasons Why I Do Not Wish to Leave Chicago: An Incomplete, Random List," he writes, for No. 13: "The highly muggable suburbanites patrolling Michigan Avenue, identifiable by their Hard Rock Cafe shirts, oblivious to the city beyond the shopping and entertainment areas." And in "Lazarus," though not of himself, he writes: "I am a reasonably loyal citizen of a couple of countries. In America — that somber land — I waste my vote, pay taxes grudgingly, share my life with a native wife, and try hard not to wish painful death to the idiotic president."
Reginald Gibbons, a Chicago poet and Northwestern University professor, was first to publish him, in the late 1990s in the journal TriQuarterly. He told me Hemon's first stories, written as he was still grasping English, needed the lightest of editing, and as Hemon continued writing, "it became clear that here was a guy out of nowhere, ambitious and operating in the tradition of unbelievable European writers who write in English the way Americans never do, who see everyday life as painful, but absurdly painful — even fantastical at times."
Indeed, comparisons between Hemon and Vladimir Nabokov, another late-to-English Eastern European fabulist (and closet humorist), dot reviews of Hemon's work. Throw in grim European stylists like Isaac Babel and Franz Kafka, and his writing comes into clearer focus.
McCann, who is from Ireland, recalled meeting Hemon just after the 2000 publication of "The Question of Bruno," Hemon's first book.
"We were both emigrants, we were both (soccer) fans, we both had bad hairdos, but most of all we cared about literature. It was always about language, the way words slip in under our skin. We were both writing because we felt it was the only thing we could do. He wrote as if his life depended on it, and I recognized that feeling." Then he added: "He is the best writer of our generation. I don't think it's immigrant fiction. … It's fiction that belongs everywhere."
Quick question: How long have you been writing in English? I've been a journalist since about the time Hemon arrived in Chicago; everything I've written has been in English. Here is the first sentence of the first book Hemon wrote: "We got up at dawn, ignored the yolky sun, loaded our navy-blue Austin with suitcases and then drove straight to the coast, stopping only on the verge of Sarajevo, so I could pee."That sentence contains nearly every note in Hemon's writing ever since. Have you ever written anything as good?
When Hemon returned to the table with napkins, I asked what he meant about avoiding more catastrophe. Eventually he answered the question, but at first he told me a different story, about survival and chocolate.
"I think I believe in the power of despair. Hope is nice for television, but for me, it is a liberating moment when you move in one direction because all other directions are blocked. It is why I have always written despite everything. It is refugee metaphysics. For generations, my family, both sides, the concern was always survival. The pursuit of happiness was a few steps ahead always. But I grew up with middle-class standards, so I struggle with this. My parents were college-educated and would never have any wealth, and it was fine. But my father, he knew poverty once, and when he would travel abroad, he would bring back chocolate. He would expect us to stretch it. But we knew chocolate. We would devour it in like 10 minutes! And yet, when I moved here in the '90s and had nothing, I could hear him: 'Don't get used to the chocolate.'"
As for catastrophe:
"Well, you know, Isabel died. Then my wife had surgery. So it's an annual thing. I am very tired of hospitals."
Hemon and Boyd — his second wife, after a 2005 divorce — have a 5-year-old daughter, Ella, and a 16-month-old named Esther, who, in 2011, was diagnosed with a very rare medical condition called Prader-Willi syndrome. It makes its sufferers ravenous, compulsively hungry; its victims have been known to eat themselves to death.
"When you read the possible outcomes online, it looks like an absolute disaster," Hemon said, "but Esther is doing well, and some things express themselves differently in different people."
Then there was summer 2012.
"I was having horrible headaches," Boyd told me, "and a couple of doctors said it was probably a result of the stress, but it was a cyst — a cyst growing on my brain." Which led to a pair of brain surgeries. (Boyd said she feels OK but added, "No, I still don't feel the same, to be honest.")
That presumed stress she alluded to, Esther's condition aside, was assumed because of what happened in 2010.
Boyd took Isabel, their 9-month-old, for a routine checkup. The doctor thought Isabel's head seemed abnormally large. Tests confirmed a tumor on her brain. She had a rare form of cancer with a low survival rate, and she died four months later. Hemon dedicated "The Book of My Lives" to Isabel, "forever breathing on my chest."
Indeed, its concluding story, "The Aquarium," which appeared in The New Yorker less than a year after Isabel's death, is an unsparing account of Isabel's last months and Ella's ability to cope by telling stories. It was written in the Chicago production offices of filmmakers Lana and Andy Wachowski (of "Matrix" and "Cloud Atlas" fame), close friends of Hemon's. He normally writes (longhand) in coffeehouses and at a writers studio on Broadway, but explained, "I needed a weeping room, a place to write and weep at the same time."
Asked if she had hesitations about his writing that story, Boyd said, "Yes, but I knew that he needed to."
Asked if he had his own hesitations, Hemon replied: "Well, I could not not write it. The only other possibility was waiting, but the pain would not be less, and if I can't write about the painful things, then I am a hack."
His voice never cracked, and his eyes, visibly watery, never flowed. "Trauma by definition is a rupture, a segregating of life into before and after. There is continuity in that we still love Isabel, but there is also her absence. Therapeutically speaking, I want to work toward one life again. We have two other children and in more ways than one, Isabel is present in them. So you develop a kind of layered conscience: You are aware of your child who is here now, but you also miss, and are always thinking of, your child who is not."
Hemon is not a sentimental guy.
"I do not wish to express 'strength' in these situations," he said of his family's troubles. He is warm, funny at times but nonchalant. Asked how he was able to write so well in English so fast, a story one might assume is worthy of a story itself, he explained that he had no choice. That, in 1995, after three years of flailing at bad jobs in Chicago (bike messenger, restaurant worker), he simply began writing, not always knowing what words meant in English, but looking each one up and storing it on an index card. He had studied literature and written stories at the University of Sarajevo, so he "reread in English the books I had already read," he said, "partly to see how they worked in English and what they meant now — in light of significant developments."
Meaning, well, that the literature professor who had meant the most to Hemon during his college days in Sarajevo turned out to be a proponent of the Bosnian genocide (and later killed himself).
"I had thought there was solidarity between people of sophisticated tastes," Hemon said. "Turns out, life does not work like that."
His goal, he said, was simply to bide his time, steeping himself in writing and books. He received a master's degree in literature at Northwestern University, then went to Loyola University for his doctorate. He began making a name for himself in literary journals.
"I was literally five pages from finishing my thesis when my agent called and said she had sold my book," he said. "So, I literally stopped writing, stood up and never finished."
He made a hand-wiping motion.
I asked, is that arrogant?
He replied, how so?
I said, a book deal is no promise of success.
He told me a story: "James Joyce was 19, and he went up to Yeats, who was much older, and said, 'You are too old for me to help.' I remember reading that and thinking, '(Expletive) yeah.' But you have to be a little crazy to write. I want to write a masterpiece, though I have not yet probably, and if this makes me arrogant, OK."
One final thing: Hemon will never leave Chicago.
He says this. His wife says this. Though when I mentioned it, he said: "I needed the infrastructure of a hometown. But I wasn't looking to be rooted. I was looking to spread wide, not deep. I just wanted to know a lot of people."
The truth is, as unsentimental as he seems, he is sentimental about the city. At the most recent monthly, invitation-only gathering he hosts at Hopleaf — started after Isabel died, as a way of building a community of creative types — he never dropped his goofy grin, jutting out his upper lip in delight. The room was stuffed with artists, and Hemon was the center of attention without seeming like the center of attention.
Which is perfect.
His best friend from home, Velibor Bozovic, now a photographer in Montreal, put it differently, very Bosnian:
"I was in Sarajevo throughout the war. My first trip out, I went to Chicago. I hadn't seen Sasha in five years," he said. "It was so cold, but we had to walk the whole city anyway! He had to tell me about the neighborhoods, the architecture, the people, so many things. He was so obviously in love. But then, after (making) a radical cut from your old life, you learn to survive. Sasha might have ended up in hell, and I'm not sure anything would be different."
Twitter @borrelli
Aleksandar Hemon discusses his new book of stories, "The Book of My Lives," and more with the Tribune's Christopher Borrelli. 7 p.m. Wednesday at Tribune Tower, 435 N. Michigan Ave.; $15 at 312-222-4369 or tribnation.com/events.


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PANTONE Extends Plastic Standard Chips with Two New On-trend Collections
New collections offer inspiration, direction and standards for designing and specifying plastic products
CARLSTADT, N.J., March 20, 2012 – Pantone LLC, an X-Rite company (NASDAQ: XRIT) and the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today announced two new PANTONE® Plastic Standard Chips Collections: PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips Color Collection Volume 1 and PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors 2013 design set.
Developed using on-trend colors for product design and manufacturing; the PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips Color Collection Volume 1 contains 154 of Pantone's most sought-after colors. These include important selections from all major color families, key-trending neutrals, lustrous metallic and vibrant neons selected from the PANTONE PLUS SERIES and the PANTONE FASHION + HOME Color Systems. The PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors 2013 design set includes large-format plastic Chips in 73 forecasted colors from the recently announced PANTONE VIEW home + interiors 2013 forecast.
"Color consistency is essential to the product development process," said Giovanni Marra, director of corporate marketing at Pantone. "The new PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips Collections are matched to internationally recognized PANTONE Color Libraries, making the coordination across all materials simple and reliable. For example, PANTONE 17-1463 Tangerine Tango is the same for textiles or plastics."
PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips Color Collection Volume 1
The PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips Color Collection Volume 1 features 154 of the most desirable product design colors that are popular in various markets including toys, consumer electronics, home furnishings, appliances and accessories. Perfect for inspiration and quick production, this cost-effective set will save users more than 60 percent (or U.S. $1,500) compared to the cost of individually purchased Chips. Attractively housed in a PANTONE UNIVERSE™ storage tin, the large-format polypropylene Chips enable precise color communication and color control in plastics throughout the development process.
PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors 2013/plastic standards and design set
Divided into nine key trend palettes that display visual inspiration and suggested color harmonies for 73 forecasted colors, the PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors 2013 design set includes a detachable, printed color card of each trend palette and CMYK values for each of the forecasted colors. The PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors/plastic standards is a Chips only set, which does not include the forecast book, and saves customers more than 50 percent (or U.S. $600) compared to purchasing individual Chips. Both PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors 2013 sets are packaged in a PANTONE UNIVERSE storage tin and displayed by individual trend palettes.
PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips
With the ability to match all 3,400 standard PANTONE Colors in the PANTONE PLUS SERIES and PANTONE FASHION + HOME Color System Libraries, as well as custom colors, PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips provide designers across industries – from industrial and product design to fashion accessories and toys – with an internationally recognized color language for plastics. PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips are sold individually, and now as collections, making it possible for designers to send complete color specifications, along with their designs, to clients and manufacturers – increasing efficiencies, reducing costs and accelerating speed to market.
Created using polypropylene, a plastic that closely aligns with materials commonly used in production, PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips include both gloss and matte finishes in a large 3" by 1 7/8" format. These larger chips are tiered, ranging in thickness from 1mm to 2mm, making it easier to visualize, measure and match PANTONE Colors in plastic. A small hole in the upper left corner of the chip lets designers conveniently group palettes on rings. Individual Chips include PANTONE Color names and/or numbers along with the corresponding pigment formulations and spectral data information.
Pricing and Availability
The PANTONE Plastic Standard Chips Color Collection Volume 1 is U.S. $950. The PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors 2013 design set, which includes the forecast book and Chips, is U.S. $650. The PANTONE VIEW inspiration for interiors 2013/plastic standards, a Chips only set, is U.S. $550. All Collections will be available for purchase March 26 online at www.pantone.com/plasticcollections, through PANTONE resellers worldwide, or by calling 888-PANTONE.
About Pantone
Pantone LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of X-Rite, Incorporated, has been the world's color authority for nearly 50 years, providing design professionals with products and services for the colorful exploration and expression of creativity. Always a source for color inspiration, Pantone also offers paint and designer-inspired products and services for consumers. More information is available at www.pantone.com.
About X-Rite
(NASDAQ: XRIT) X-Rite is the global leader in color science and technology. The company, which now includes color industry leader Pantone, develops, manufacturers, markets and supports innovative color solutions through measurement systems, software, color standards and services. X-Rite's expertise in inspiring, selecting, measuring, formulating, communicating and matching color helps users get color right the first time and every time, which translates to better quality and reduced costs. X-Rite serves a range of industries, including printing, packaging, photography, graphic design, video, automotive, paints, plastics, textiles, dental and medical. For further information, please visit www.xrite.com.


text:
About Ophelia Millais
Hello, and thanks for reading my profile. This is the only account I use on Techdirt.
* Addendum: When I say as-yet undemonstrated, I mean the RIAA has asserted in their complaint that it's possible to search for plaintiffs' recordings via the site, and that searching the site generally results in links to MP3s as well as playback via an embedded widget, but unless I missed something (maybe I did), they did not actually say that they successfully and routinely were able to use the site to access the specific recordings at issue.
IMHO, without such an assertion, it can't be assumed that users are able to infringe plaintiffs' copyrights for those specific recordings, and thus there should be no finding of secondary infringement by the site's operators.
Looks to me like the RIAA is trying to beef up their arsenal of precedents against search-engine-like sites.
I mean they can't seriously think MP3Skull is a threat to their business. They say it's infringing and causing harm "on a massive scale," but they have no numbers to back that up and don't need any. That's because it's not about MP3Skull or their business model at all. MP3Skull could shut down today and it wouldn't result in any bump in business. Nor does the RIAA want to partner with MP3Skull and get a cut of their ad revenue.
No, they really just want to get a ruling against this type of website; they are seeking a declaration that any site willfully infringes if it is a search engine that provides links to copyrighted content.
One of the things the RIAA is doing here is trying to solidify the concept of secondary, contributory infringement—an emerging doctrine in civil case law which does not require proof of actual infringement by the defendant, but rather just proof that the defendant has a sort of conspiratorial role with the people doing the actual unauthorized copying and distributing. All that needs to be shown is that infringement has occurred as a result of MP3Skull's actions, and that MP3Skull was knowingly facilitating it. In this regard, the case is an easy win for the RIAA, and their complaint is chock-full of evidence against Mp3Skull. MP3Skull uses major-label artists as examples, and instructs & encourages users to work around blocks instituted as a result of takedown notices. The RIAA has already used that kind of "red flag knowledge" of infringement by users to obtain favorable precedents against user-uploaded content services, file-sharing services, and file-sharing software distributors. MP3Skull's smoking guns are in plain sight, no discovery of internal emails needed.
One of the other things the RIAA is doing in this case is much more sinister. In addition to claiming secondary infringement, they are claiming direct infringement. They present absolutely no evidence in support of this, but they are hoping the judge (who I assume they've forum-shopped for) will agree with their claim that MP3Skull's owners "reproduce and distribute unauthorized reproductions" and "engage in unauthorized public performances". This right here is the backdoor SOPA and must not be allowed traction.
Unfortunately, MP3Skull's owners are unlikely to emerge from the shadows to raise a First Amendment defense. I am also wondering if it's reasonable to expect any amicus briefs from companies which now have an "arrangement" with the RIAA, like Google/YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc. Even if a "hyperlinking is free speech" defense were raised, I wouldn't expect it to succeed in this case, given MP3Skull's public nose-thumbing and their apparent intent to hook people up with any music whatsoever, regardless of whether it can be legally distributed.
I think the best we can hope for is an amicus brief from the EFF in an effort to limit the collateral damage. They should insist that no "plain reading" of the statutes nor circuit precedent supports a finding of direct infringement. And if the court is to find secondary infringement, then it must be expressed in a way that makes it clear that it's contingent upon 1. evidence of direct infringement by MP3Skull users (or at least evidence that such infringement is likely, based on site traffic and an as-yet undemonstrated ability to search for and acquire plaintiffs' recordings via the site); and 2. the egregious infringement-encouraging and facilitating things that MP3Skull did above and beyond mere indexing and hyperlinking.
I wouldn't even consider the companies that do the tracking on behalf of advertisers and the NSA to be necessarily distinct entities. We're talking about fully opaque companies specializing in things like ad placement, analytics, and content/widget hosting. Their resources are embedded in practically every webpage we visit nowadays, and are almost always transmitted unencrypted. I count about 20 unnecessary such hosts embedding resources on this page alone. So how can we see whether any one of these is run by, colluding with, or being snooped on by the NSA or anyone else?
Try getting any these companies to tell you just how they operate, who exactly they share our data with, how secure the data is, and what breaches they've had. Ask them if they're, in any way, in league with the NSA or any other branch of law enforcement. Ask them how many NSLs, subpoenas, and requests they've gotten, and how much data they've disclosed, including inadvertently, to third parties, including government, law enforcement, and unidentified persons.
This is where my mind goes whenever someone suggests that we have nothing to worry about from advertisers tracking us.
Consider linking Like fashion to Johanna Blakeley's 2010 TED Talk on the subject. Short version: trademark protection alone has proven more than sufficient to support a flourishing fashion industry that, economically, dwarfs the entire entertainment industry.
(that's just a swung dash in front of the dollar sign. the fonts here make it look like a minus sign)
1.5 million listens in 6 months got Zoe Keating ~$1600. So there's some math for ya.
What does using video in education have to do with piracy?
Indeed, I don't see how Boundless Informant is identifying participants or even geolocating with any more precision than any other IP address-based lookup. It seems to be precise only to the country level.
So Emmel didn't lie, considering she qualified her denial of geolocation and identification as being something they can't do with certainty in regard to all parties to a given communication. That leaves quite a bit of wiggle room.
SO this is not about YOU its about all your descendants!
I think most of us can't help but regard a failure to erode the public interest as a win.
The part I find interesting is that it's a case of using a complete work, not just an excerpt or two. It's usually pretty difficult to get a determination of fair use when more than a portion of a work is at issue. In this case, the portion didn't matter, due to the copies being made (a) without intent to compete (b) for their factual rather than expressive content.
The parents and administrators probably still give this security company the benefit of the doubt. It's assumed the scans would only be used for attendance and would only be useful when the child is in school.
They don't even think of things like what could go wrong, how secure is this data being kept, how long do they keep it, what else might be done with it, what if someone uses the data to identify and track the children in places & situations where they (and their parents) expected anonymity, what happens when the company goes out of business or is acquired by a big government/military/law-enforcement contractor, etc.?
Agreed. It's in their interest to conceal the fact that they've declared him an "enemy", the ramifications of which are profound for Assange, Manning, anyone else who has any connection whatsoever with Wikileaks, and anyone who is in a position to leak any U.S. government/military information to anyone, ever.
Are you talking about Patronet, his buggy, overengineered, browser-based content subscription service? That seems to have died on its own, and is more comparable to crowdfunding than Napster. Rundgren was vocally anti-Napster and the like.
The amount of fake/phony/incorrect notices appears to be between 1/3 and 1/2 of ALL notices.
If the only people with the ability to develop a test for a deadly virus are so ethically challenged that they need to be "motivated" by a fat monopoly payday, then it's going to take a massive die-off of humankind before people get their priorities straight and realize that just because you can charge for something doesn't mean you should.
That kind of stuff continued through the mid-'80s where I lived. All the students in our (small-ish) high school were on guard for it, too; they even protected, across social and class divides, the kids who were acting out. No one was trying to "terrorize" or "bully" anyone. Everyone eventually grew up and became successful in adulthood; no one had to be taught a lesson or locked up for decades to send a message.
Our yearbook staff conspired to sneak things past the faculty advisor (or so we thought, who knows what she really knew), writing risqué captions, creating fake students, swapping in embarrassing photos of kids doing things they weren't supposed to be doing ... it was all just silly fun. Now it would be "bullying" and someone have to pay with a felony record, I guess.
As you said, they are in a public place. It would be improper to broadcast any footage disclosing the identities of the civilians, but I'm not sure the act of filming them can be said to be an invasion of privacy, even if they don't want cameras on them. And we've already established that cops don't have the right to privacy in these situations.
You're good at detecting sarcasm. :)
What I see is basically what I said in my previous comment: the post is merely a relayed report about an IP-maximalist organization spreading baseless FUD and employing faulty reasoning for upholding the status quo, to the detriment of the disabled. And that's not even Mike's assessment; KEI blogger Jamie Love is who ascertained these things. Mike's contribution, besides the secondary report, is really just the addition of his "see? yet more evidence of..." reaction.
I suppose his posting it here can be interpreted as an attempt to discredit someone, although "copyright holders" is a bit broad, since that's basically everyone who has ever authored anything. Rather, it's discrediting this particular business lobbying group, based on something they're actually doing. What more do you want?
You want to have a conversation based on the merits of your post, yet your post is pure ad hominem.
the folks on TD who can't stand it when their leader is challenged


text: Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, and the suicide rate has increased 30% since 1999. The increase coincides with the increasing availability of news regarding celebrity suicides over the past twenty years. Just in the past few days, for example, we've had the highly publicized suicides of Spade and Bourdain. Simply put, many people are influenced by and try to emulate the actions of celebrities, and there is no reason to think suicide is an exception. Therefore, my position is that the deaths of celebrities should be reported without mention of suicide being the cause. Furthermore, Hollywood should refrain from including suicides in movies and tv shows, and schools should not assign the reading of Romeo and Juliet.


text:
artemmin needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 62 designs submitted by 29 freelance designers.
Independent Internet Professional, one of the partners in the marketing firm, owning and running number of sites.
Target audience, anyone looking for a new domain name and would like to do a quick domain search, easy to use domain search with additional useful information.
We are looking for an "up to date" creative logo design for our site PCNames.com
The typeface should be clear, simple and bold. We want something that stands out. Again being careful not to have multicolored logo design.
Please feel free to experiment with colors! (please don't use more than 2 different color tones in the same logo).
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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It was the best of times... it was the worst of times... but regardless, it's BEA. From all over America and abroad, publishing industry professionals will be piling into the Javits Center to complain about the heat, the cold, the lack of taxis, the long lines for coffee, and the cost of everything. But even as they've just blown their wads in London, publishers bring their hopefuls for the upcoming seasons.
What that means for booksellers and librarians and all the rest of us is galleys—those pre-pub "books" that once upon a time all looked the same, but now catch our attention in glorious color. We hoard the ones that have the buzz, cherish the ones we've gotten signed, and pile as many as we can fit in bags because they're there and we want to read every single one of them. One thing for sure: we're happy to be at BEA and happy to have them.
At Abrams there will be samplers for giveaway of Yarn Whisperer (who needs a horse?) by Clara Parkes, with knitting as a metaphor for life, and Guys Can Be Cat Ladies Too by comic Michael Showalter, who's not afraid to show his fuzzy side.
Algonquin is coming to BEA this year (for its 30th anniversary) with 500 galleys each of three much-anticipated titles and their always-anticipated authors: Guests on Earth by Lee Smith, who brings Southern gothic home with this novel of a teenage orphan in a mental institution under the direction of a famous psychiatrist in 1930s Asheville, N.C.; Explanation for Everything by Lauren Grodstein, the story of a relationship between a grieving biology professor and his evangelical student; and Alice Hoffman's Survival Lessons, the guide she wished she'd had when she was diagnosed with breast cancer 15 years ago. Of novelist Hoffman's first work of nonfiction, senior editor Kathy Pories notes its importance: "It seems only right that she should be personally handing out the book herself."
Atria is giving away 300 copies of Thomas Keneally's novel Daughters of Mars, which follows two Australian sisters to Europe to work as nurses during WWI, and 300 of Mountain of Light by Indu Sundaresan, a lush historical about the famous 105-carat diamond of the title. Ballantine Bantam Dell will have 200 galleys each of books from bestselling authors: Songs of Willow Frost, Jamie Ford's second novel (his debut sold over a million copies), about a mother and son in 1920s and Depression-era Seattle; Under the Wide and Starry Sky, in which Nancy Horan takes on the adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson; trial lawyer Walter Walker's legal thriller, Crime of Privilege; and Kelly Corrigan's memoir of her mother and motherhood, Glitter and Glue. Baylor University Press will have 275 galleys available of Brett Robinson's Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs. Bellevue Literary Press's galleys represent a commitment to human rights issues with They Started Shooting: Children of the Bosnian War and the Adults They Became by Lynne Jones, and a commitment to literature in translation: Aaron's Leap, a novel by Magdalena Platzova, translated from the Czech, and one "richly atmospheric, supernaturally shaded novel," Palmerino, by Melissa Pritchard.
Bloomsbury is piling it on with 800 galleys of The Bone Season, a creepy and imaginative debut novel by Samantha Shannon set in 2059 London, where a young girl is imprisoned by a creature "with dark honey skin... her master... her trainer... her natural enemy." Also there will be 800 galleys each of the memoir, Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward's story of surmounting the trauma and poverty of rural Mississippi, and Mitchell Jackson's novel, The Residue Years, about a mother, her son, and drugs.
Blue Rider Press has 250 galleys to give away of Blowback by Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent whose cover was blown during the Bush administration and whose memoir hit the bestseller lists. This time Plame's written a novel, with Sarah Lovett, about, yup, a female CIA agent.
Crown has 200 galleys of three titles: psychological thriller The Last Winter of Dani Lansing by P.D. Viner; My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead's revisiting of the "seminal book of her youth"; and Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, "a tragicomic multigenerational memoir" by three-time James Beard Award–winning food writer Anya Von Bremzen. Clarkson Potter previews a group biography of "the Bloomsbury set of the food world" with 200 galleys of Provence, 1970 by Luke Barr. Coffee House Press will bring 100 galleys each of An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky by Dan Beachy-Quick and The Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic by Christopher Merkner. And for Valeria Luiselli, there will be 100 copies of a combined galley (though books will be sold separately), which includes her novel, Faces in the Crowd and her essay collection, Sidewalks, both translated from the Spanish. Counterpoint will have three giveaways: two novels—Lola Bensky by Lily Brett and Kara Was Here by William Conescu—and Nancy Spiller's memoir, Compromise Cake. DK will have full-color galleys for giveaway of The Conquest of the Ocean: An Illustrated History of Seafaring by Brian Lavery, the first in a new series of narrative nonfiction titles.
At Dutton, there will be 250 galleys of Covet, about a disintegrating marriage and the "charming policeman" the wife meets after a job takes her husband away from home. This is Tracey Garvis Graves's first hardcover after selling half a million copies of his first novel in e-book and paperback. Linda Fairstein's new crime thriller, Death Angel, has Alexandra Cooper delving into the history of Central Park with the former prosecutor signing 125 galleys. Farrar, Straus and Giroux is giving away 200 galleys of Nicola Griffith's Hild, a medieval historical set in seventh-century Britain about St. Hilda of Whitby, who began her rise to influence as the king's seer. And there will be 100 galleys of Someone, Alice McDermott's new novel, which follows the life of an ordinary woman through the transformation of her Irish-American Brooklyn neighborhood. Gallery has 300 galleys available of Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen, and Globe Pequot Press arrives with 150 galleys (and maybe more) of their lead fall title, Girl Factory by Karen Dietrich.
Grand Central is the place to be if you want to hide in the stacks. The ever-popular Scott Turow has a new book forthcoming, Identical, with 750 copies up for grabs. And joining Turow in the 750-galley category are Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child with White Fire; Leila Meacham with Somerset; Deborah McKinley with That Part Was True; Jean Hanff Korelitz with You Should Have Known; and for Rhoda Janzen's Mennonite Meets Mr. Right, 500 galleys. Graywolf has its two biggest fall books for giveaway: Duplex, a coming-of-age novel by the inventive Kathryn Davis (a renegade from Little, Brown), which blends past and future, robots and sorcerers; and Kevin Barry's new story collection, Dark Lies the Island. Over at Grove/Atlantic expect 150 galleys each of two debut novels: It's Not the Love, It's Just Paris, about an American girl (in... uh huh, Paris!) by PEN/Hemingway winner Patricia Engel, and the terrifying Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly, in which a child goes missing under a best friend's watch. There will also be galleys of Bob Shacochis's first novel in 10 years, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul.
HarperCollins brings galleys across its many imprints. From Harper, there's The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy, a novel connecting a diverse set of characters; a reimagining of Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope; and Ann Patchett's This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. (Anything from Patchett can cause a riot in the aisles.) Amy Tan has a new book, Valley of Amazement (Ecco); John Searles returns with Help for the Haunted (Morrow); and from Joshilyn Jackson, Someone Else's Love Story (Morrow). Also Turn Around Bright Eyes: A Karaoke Love Story (It Books) by Rob Sheffield; Human Remains (Harper Paperbacks) by Elizabeth Haynes, whose police analyst heroine finds her neighbor's decomposing body; and from HarperOne, ARCs of Chickens in the Road by Suzanne McMinn.
Harlequin is pulling out all the stops at BEA for its biggest title of 2013, Jason Mott's The Returned, in which loved ones return from the dead (blessing or horror?), with a book tree of galleys available all through the show, 1,500 of them. Also, Bella Andre moves into print with The Look of Love, the first in an eight-book series. And there's Shona Patel's debut novel, Teatime for the Firefly, set in the hills of Assam, India, along with Sylvia Day's Afterburn. Henry Holt has galleys of a novel by Renaissance man (producer, publisher, author) Peter Gethers, who often writes about travels with Norton (his cat). In that spirit, Ask Bob is a love story about a pet doctor.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's got titles galore to give away, including Jonathan Miles's second novel, another clever piece of satire, Want Not, that his publisher is calling "a three-pronged tale of human excess"; The Lion Seeker, a debut novel by Kenneth Bonert set in Johannesburg's Jewish community; and Oliver Pötzsch's The Ludwig Conspiracy, a historical thriller about the mysterious death of dear old eccentric Ludwig II of Bavaria, known for his fairy tale castles.
Ig Publishing's galley giveaway is Betwixt and Between by Jessica Stilling, a debut novel about where children go when they die. Knopf is giving away 250 galleys each of Subtle Bodies by Norman Rush, Longbourn by Jo Baker, The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook, and Alexander Maksik's A Marker to Measure Drift.
Little, Brown has 700 copies of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, a debut thriller about the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1892, based on a true story. For Kathleen Kent's novel, The Outcasts, set on the 19th-century American frontier, there are 200 galleys. And covering mystery and spies, there's 500 galleys each of Gone by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, The Double by George Pelecanos, Dominion by C.J. Sansom (Mulholland Books), and 500 galleys of Countdown, Alan Weisman's exploration of "the complexity of calculating how many humans this planet can hold without capsizing." Liveright has "plenty" of galleys of Allan Garganus's new book, Local Souls, his first in 10 years: three linked blackly comic novellas of cults, male friendships and a woman seeking the child she was forced to give up at birth take place in Falls, N.C., the town of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. Also available, a first novel by P.S. Duffy, The Cartographer of No-Man's Land, that should do for WWI what Matterhorn did for Vietnam.
McGraw-Hill Professional is bringing Numbersense by Kaiser Fung, to take the mystery out of big data, and Leading the Starbucks Way by Joseph Michelli. Milkweed will have 300 galleys available of Larry Watson's latest, Let Him Go, set in the mid–20th-century American West, with a retired sheriff and his wife on a quest to retrieve their dead son's child after his mother marries into a treacherous clan. Norton is giving away galleys of the novels A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn and Rustication by Charles Palliser. Overlook Press has 400 galleys for The Facades, Eric Lundgren's debut novel; billed as a "comic existential mystery," already anointed as a Buzz Selection. Also, Overlook is bringing 200 galleys of Rosie Thomas's heart-tugging romance set in Bali, Constance, and 100 galleys of The Little Tokyo Informant, Andrew Rosenheim's latest thriller, this one leading up to Pearl Harbor.
Penguin Books is giving away 200 copies of Necessary Errors by Caleb Crain (the finished book). Plume is coming with galleys of its New York Times bestselling author Sarah Jio, whose fifth novel, Morning Glory, is set on a Seattle houseboat. Quirk Books will have William Shakespeare's Star Wars by Ian Doescher available throughout the show. And Random House brings a slew of heavy hitters and 200 galleys each of their forthcoming books: Night Film, Marisha Pessl's sophomore novel, a literary thriller about the mysterious death of a reclusive cult horror film director; Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, the story of identical twin sisters; and as for the boys, there's Paul Harding of Tinkers and Pulitzer fame with a second novel, Enon; Colum McCann's novel Transatlantic, which "spans 150 years and two continents"; and E.L. Doctorow's Andrew's Brain.
Independent press Red Hen is coming with galleys of all its fall titles (along with chocolate bars and appropriate swag), notably Song for Chance, a novel by John Van Kirk, and When Rain Hurts, a memoir about adopting a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. Riverhead's giveaways (650 for each title) are Drama High, the inspiring story of drama director Lou Volpe and the Levittown, Pa., high school where he put on theater productions, written by journalist and Levittown native son Michael Sokolove; and The Dark Path, David Schickler's memoir about his conflicted feelings surrounding his desire to become a Jesuit priest. Spoiler: he's married with children.
Running Press is giving away its Beatles book, When They Were Boys by Larry Kane, and Eric Devine's novel, Dare Me, about the consequences of a YouTube video. Sarabande is bringing 65 galleys of its lead title, Praying Drunk, a collection by Kyle Minor, billed as "a masterful blend of fiction, autobiography, and surrealism."
Scribner has 300 galleys to give away of Jayne Anne Phillips's Quiet Dell and My Notorious Life by Kate Manning. Simon & Schuster's lucky number seems to be 300, which is how many galleys of each title it will be giving away, starting with Lauren Weisberger's Revenge Wears Prada. Other giveaways are The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion's novel about a genetics professor who takes on the project of finding love, and Unremarried Widow, Artis Henderson's memoir about the death of her husband in Iraq. Skyhorse is bringing galleys of three titles: We Were There: Revelations from the Dallas Doctors and Nurses Who Attended to JFK on November 22, 1963 by Allen Childs; 24 Karat Etiquette: Advice from the Founder of Beverly Hills Manners by Lisa Gache, and The Assembler of Parts: A Novel by Raoul Wientzen (Arcade). Sourcebooks comes with fiction, lots of it, with 1,000 ARCs of The Book of Someday by Dianne Dixon, and for The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure and Lies You Wanted to Hear by James Thomson, 500 galleys each. Spiegel & Grau has 100 galleys of My Promised Land by Ari Shavit.
St. Martin's is giving away all-time favorite author Lisa Scottoline's latest, Accused, as well as Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt; How to Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman; and Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain. From Griffin, there are 250 each of A Killing in the Hills, Pulitzer–winning journalist Julia Keller's debut crime thriller; Rainbow Rowell's FanGirl; and Suzanne Palmieri's novel, The Witch of Little Italy, about a pregnant girl's return to her Italian-American family in the Bronx, also a debut. And the indomitable Louise Penny signs How the Light Gets In (Minotaur).
Thomas Nelson will have galleys of The Noticer Returns: Sometimes You Find Perspective, and Sometimes Perspective Finds You by Andy Andrews. Three Rivers Press has Reasons Mommy Drinks by Fiona Stevenson and Lyranda Martin-Evans about the struggles of new motherhood, and so all that drinking doesn't make Mom fat, The 2-Day Diet by Michelle Harvie and Tony Howell, 200 galleys of each. TitleTown brings 100 galleys each of Breathe for Me: Surviving the Antelope Canyon Tragedy; Invisible Killer by Diane Montane and Sean Robbins, about serial killer Charlie Brandt;and The Deadlist Game, a thriller by Hal Ross. Tor/Forge Books is bringing Michael Pocalyko to sign galleys of The Navigator; there'll be 250 galleys of The Dogs of Christmas by W. Bruce Cameron; and The Incrementalists, an urban fantasy by Steven Brust and Skylar White. Touchstone is giving away 300 galleys of In the Blood by Lisa Unger and Speak of the Devil by Allison Leotta, while Workman will have 500 galleys of photographer Christopher Boffoli's Big Appetites: Tiny People in a World of Big Food, in which miniature figurines "play" with their food in "cleverly captioned photos."
As Tiny Tim observed, "God bless us, every one!"


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Hello my Lovelies!
Denim shirts have been a huge trend and I was always a fan, but never really managed to find one that I liked. Until the other day I snatched one in ZARA. It's dark denim and the shirt itself is quite short. What do you guys think about the denim shirt trend?
I'm wearing ZARA shirt, H&M scarf and Ray-Ban sunnies.


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Rugbymuffin wrote:GreenLantern wrote:I think Iggy gets re-signed, hopefully Pitts has a coach that can use him next year. I liked regular season Iginla, but playoffs Iginla was a snooze fest.
He never really did look fully comfortable, but with the Pens revamped coaching staff next year I have a feeling he will still produce at a great clip. I think he spends the off season really working on his speed (something he never needed in Calgary's system) and comes back next year revitalized.
You don't score 10 consistent 30 goal seasons in this league and just one day turn into a bad player, he will be back and he will be fine. Like I have said before Iginla is a conditioning beast, nobody is more upset with his performance in the last round than him and he will use it as fuel for the training fire this off season.
I feel the "he wasn't used right" is a valid arguement.
My retort is, If he is so good, shouldn't he be able to play anywhere on the ice ?
As much respect he deserves for everything he's accomplished, the fact is that he hasn't produced at a star level for a couple of seasons. That's just the reality of the stage his career is in. No one should be disappointed by this, because he's been the player he was with the Pens for a while now. Joe fan may not have realized this, but I'm certain Pens management knew the player they were getting.
That doesn't mean that he can't be a contributor if utilized differently. But don't expect him to be the 3rd option and defensive conscience of his line while playing with Malkin and Neal; which is basically what was asked of him and why he struggled and was exposed IMO.
You don't re-sign him expecting him to improve. It's possible to have a late-career resurgence, but unlikely. So don't hold it against him if it doesn't happen. We'll see how much money and how large a role with another team he's willing to sacrifice to play with the Pens. I don't see it happening.


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Coupon codes are going to be all over the place, so you need to find a website that collects them for a variety of websites. Look up the name of the store you're trying to shop at along with the words coupon codes, and generally, you will be brought to a website that lets you look over a few deals that you can press a button to go to. Sometimes you have to do tasks like sign up with your email, so be wary of that and use an email account that is for spam since that's likely what they will send you.
There are numerous ways to sign up for mailing lists, so you should try that, so you get the most up to date information on what is going on sale. For websites that are large retailers, you can check with them on a regular basis, such as when they update their coupon sections to give you an idea of what's going on sale that week. Either way you look at it, the more you search for ways to stay on top of deals, the more deals you will find out about.
Make an effort to find promotional codes through forum posts or sites where companies can speak with customers as seen with http://www.vapordnacoupon.com. Sometimes a company won't post much on their website, but for followers of theirs in places like social media sites, they will be able to provide them with quite a significant amount of coupons. You'll want to always search for this if you're checking out and you see that there is a space to enter a code. That means that there probably is something set up to where people can get a good deal when using a discount code, and if you can't find one try emailing the company to see what they have to offer.
Websites that list coupons but have you do things like surveys to get them can be useful if you have a way to filter out what isn't going to work. For instance, there may be a spam website up that wants you to enter your payment information to get promo codes, and in the end, all they do is email you a ton of messages all the time that have no coupons you can use. Always look up reviews of a coupon website before you trust that they are okay to work with. This goes for Vape World Coupons and every other e cigarette brand.
The good thing about finding the top coupon sites online is that you are then able to save money on what you were going to buy anyways. Use the advice you were given above and come up with a list of places that you can check for deals when you can shop a little. Then it's easier for you to find out what is available and what you're going to want to wait for a sale on. Some items may take many years to go down in price, but with coupons, this can be taken care of without too much trouble.


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Vietnamese Meatloaf (Mam Chung Thit)
Mắm chưng thịt is a staple of Vietnamese cuisine. It's a blend of pork or chicken, crab meat, salted fish fillet in brine, bean thread noodles, mushrooms and eggs.
For this recipe, I used a mix of chicken breast and thighs. The flavor is reminiscent of the filling of a meat egg roll combined with the strong flavor of salted fish fillet in nước mắm (brine). The most common fish used for making steam fish cakes is snakehead fish, though mackerel or catfish can be used as well.
Yields: 7 mini fish cakes1 pound ground chicken (see tips)
1 Dungeness crab (uncooked)
1 (6-ounce) salted snakehead fish fillet in brine (see tips)
1-1/2 teaspoons ginger garlic paste (see tips)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 (2-ounce) package dried bean thread noodles
1 can straw mushrooms, drained and halved
6 fresh wood ear mushrooms, finely chopped
4 tablespoons cilantro, finely chopped
3 tablespoons green onions, finely chopped
1-1/2 yellow onions, finely diced
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
8 eggs
2 egg whites
1-1/2 teaspoons mushroom seasoning salt (or regular salt)
3/4 teaspoon egg yellow food coloring powder
1-1/2 teaspoons black pepper
1 tablespoon canola oil (or any neutral oil)
Prepping the crab:
Clean the crab, brush and rinse thoroughly. Place in a pot, add about ½ to 1 cup of water and bring to a boil for about 10 minutes (see tips). Transfer to an iced bath for about 3 minutes to stop the cooking process. Drain and discard all the liquid.
Remove and discard the abdominal flaps (the triangle-shaped tail). Lift and separate the back-fin with the rest of the claws by placing a large tablespoon at the bottom of the crab. Remove and discard the "lungs" (also known as Devil's fingers; they have a spongy texture); they're inedible.
Gently remove the crab meat from the back-fins (the inner chambers are filled with meat). Gently crack the claws using a meat tenderizer mallet and gather all the crab meat in a large mixing bowl.
Prepping the bean thread noodles: Place the dried bean thread noodles in a bowl. Don't forget to cut the little cotton threads and discard them! Soak them in cold water for 20 minutes and drain. Chop into 1 inch threads. Set aside.
Prepping the eggs:
Combine 6 eggs, 2 egg whites and the mushroom seasoning salt using a fork.
In another bowl, beat 2 eggs with the yellow food coloring.
Prepping the salted fish in brine:
Pat the fish fillet dry with paper towels. Remove and discard the bones. Thinly slice the fish. Pulse the fish into a fine powder using a mini-food processor.
Steaming and baking:
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Reserve 7 cilantro leaves for decoration.
In the large mixing bowl containing the crab meat, add the ground meat. Season with ginger garlic paste, chopped onion, red chili powder and black pepper. Using food service disposable gloves, mix the meat. Add the green onions, cilantro, sugar and 6 eggs and whites. Add the wood ear mushrooms, the halved straw mushrooms and bean thread noodles. Mix well. Check seasoning (see tips).
Lightly spray some oil on 7 (6-inch diameter) disposable pot pie pans. Remove the excess oil. Fill each tin with the meat mixture.
Fill a large pot with cold water until it barely touches the steamer level. It's important to start with cold water so the fish cakes cook evenly. Place all the tins in the steamer (I needed to stack 2 levels to fit all the tins), bring to a boil and reduce the heat to medium-high. Steam for about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat. Allow to rest for about 5 minutes. Remove the tins and transfer to a baking sheet. Evenly coat each tin with the 2 remaining eggs. Garnish with a leaf of cilantro in the middle of each tin and bake for 15 minutes until the top is dried.
Enjoy with Vietnamese rice (jasmine rice) or cơm tấm rice (see tips). Serve with sliced cucumber, pickled daikon radish and carrots, nước mắm sauce and / or tướng ớt (or Sriracha) on the side.
Eat with chopsticks!
I like mixing 1 part chicken breast with 1 part dark meat (chicken thighs). I find the result to be more moist, as dark meat is more flavorful and has more fat than chicken breasts. I usually grind the meat using the attachment of the KitchenAid. Just make sure to remove all the bones prior to grinding!
If it's in season, you can also make the fish cake with turkey. I love using the dark meat for more flavor.
For the crab cooking time, count approximately 8 minutes per pound.
I use snakehead fish fillet (mắm cá lóc in Vietnamese) but you can use any other fish such as catfish, mackerel (mắm cá thu) or cod fish. The fish is brined in fish sauce (nước mắm), salt and sugar. The fish adds a natural saltiness and characteristic strong flavor to the meat. The brining process is very similar to the procedure that is used to prepare anchovies. For 1 pound of meat, I usually use only one large fillet (about 6 to 7 ounces) out of the jar. Make sure to remove any bones while finely chopping the fish. You can find these salted fish in brine in any Asian store; they're sold in 15-ounce jars.
Fresh Wood Ear Mushrooms.
You can find straw mushrooms and wood ear mushrooms in any Asian store. I was pleased to find that my local Asian market now carries fresh wood ear mushrooms (I usually use the dried version) at the market today. They're grown locally in Half Moon Bay (CA) and they're sold in 6-ounce packages. They're flavorless but they give an interesting, chewy texture to the Asian meatloaf.
Little reminder on how to make freshly grated ginger: Clean the ginger root and remove any dirt. Peel the ginger root with a paring knife (or the edge of a spoon). Grate the ginger with a fine mesh Microplane. Gather about 1 teaspoon of grated ginger root.
I use ginger garlic paste a lot in my cooking. It tastes great and is very healthy for you as well. Place the chopped (or grated) ginger and 5 cloves of garlic in a blender, add about 2 tablespoons (or more) of water for a smooth flow. Transfer to a jar and store in the refrigerator. You can keep this paste for at least a week in the refrigerator.
I buy egg yellow powder at the Indian store. It's also perfect for making macarons. If you don't have any, you can either omit this ingredient or use liquid yellow food coloring.
Cơm tấm is a Vietnamese specialty rice. It translates to broken rice. You can find it in most Asian stores.
A good way to check if your filling is properly seasoned is to sauté some in a frying pan with a little oil. If it's not quite seasoned, add more salt and pepper as needed to the mix. Once the fish cakes are in the aluminum tins, it's too late!
One of the most common condiments to serve with mắm chưng is Sriracha sauce. It's the red chili sauce with the green cap. For those who are not into spicy food as I am, you can serve them instead with a dipping sauce of fermented fish sauce base called nước mắm.Published By: on January 3, 2010.


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How to Use
the Readings
Inquiry Question
Reading 3: Life in Locke
Founded in 1915 after the disastrous fire in Walnut Grove, Locke was the last of several rural Chinatowns established in the Delta region. Although some Chinese elected to stay in Walnut Grove and rebuild, one group, originally from the Chung Shan district in Kwangtung province, China, decided to build their own separate town. The Chung Shan Chinese were a minority within the larger Chinese immigrant population in the United States. Their common Cantonese dialect gave them a sense of identity and group cohesion. Under the leadership of Lee Bing and six other merchants, the Chung Shan group secured a lease on a site carved out of a large pear orchard one mile north of Walnut Grove along the Sacramento River levee. Because the State of California's Alien Land Law of 1913 prevented aliens--including the Chinese--who were not American-born from owning land, a committee of Chinese merchants obtained a verbal lease from George Locke who owned the land in the Delta region.
Three Chung Shan merchants had already set up businesses at the Locke site in 1912. They served the transient labor force that worked in the nearby asparagus fields and in the canneries and packing sheds built by the Southern Pacific Railroad across River Road in 1909. For the first few years, the town continued to be "more a service center for farm laborers than a residential community."¹
The town was laid out north of Chan's store (one of the early structures), on River Road along the levee. Buildings on River Road and Main Street, which paralleled River Road on the flat below the levee, combined commercial and residential uses, and merchants often lived above or behind their businesses. A more purely residential area grew up farther east. Along these streets rose one- and two-story frame buildings in a vernacular style; that is, the style of most working people in the locality. The residents did not consider using expensive materials, both because they could not own the land, and because many still held the dream of returning to China. Built quickly, the town was essentially complete by 1930.
Because Locke was not incorporated and had no police, it became a popular location for Prohibition-era speakeasies. The large numbers of people attracted from surrounding cities made drugs, gambling, and prostitution big businesses. During the 1920s, the town's permanent population peaked at 600, but weekend visitors swelled that to 1,500. A theater, a hotel, a lodge, nine grocery stores, six restaurants, a flour mill, two slaughterhouses, brothels, bars, gambling halls, and boarding houses brought prosperity to the town. Those good times did not last long, however. The Depression began and Prohibition ended. In addition, the asparagus industry declined, and increased mechanization began to reduce the need for unskilled farm labor.
Locke survived after other rural Chinese communities perished, reflecting a community cohesiveness that was evident for many years. Although many second-generation Chinese-Americans moved to the cities for better economic opportunities, older people tended to remain in Locke, where they spoke only Chinese and ignored the intrusions of the modern world. Although the Alien Land Laws were eventually ruled unconstitutional, the residents of Locke never purchased the land upon which their houses were built.
Locke is now a National Historic Landmark representing the largest, most complete, example of a rural, agricultural Chinese-American community in the United States. Over the years, the Chinese population has dwindled to a handful. The remaining residents lease the land as they always have. Much of Locke has fallen into a state of disrepair and the wood construction is at high risk for fire damage. Locke is a redevelopment area under the jurisdiction of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, County of Sacramento. The County of Sacramento understands the dire need to protect this important cultural resource and is currently exploring options to provide long-term preservation of historic Locke.
Questions for Reading 3
1. Why did some of the Chinese laborers start their own town north of Walnut Grove?
2. Why was Locke such a popular town during Prohibition?
3. What events led to the decline of Locke?
4. What is the present status of Locke? What do you think could be done to preserve a town like Locke (or Walnut Grove)? Consider such typical preservation activities as promoting tourism, developing rehabilitation projects, improving roads and other elements of the infrastructure, and encouraging awareness of the problem among Asian Americans in other regions. Do you think any of those activities might help Locke to survive? Explain your answer.
Reading 3 was compiled from Jack S. Duke, "The Town of Locke" (Sacramento County, California) National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Washington, D.C: U.S Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1970; James H. Charleton, "Locke Historic District" (Sacramento County, California) National Historic Landmark Nomination Form, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1990; and Bruce Jones, "Delta Advisory Planning Council Report," 1975.
¹ Christopher L. Yip. "A Time for Bitter Strength: The Chinese in Locke, California," Landscape XXII (Spring 1978): 13.


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PARIS - Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says Canada supports sending United Nations observers to violence-wracked Syria to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Speaking from a "Friends of Syria" meeting in Paris Thursday, Baird said the first step is to make sure that can be done safely.
While the group of Western and Arab ministers did not discuss military intervention, Baird did not rule out military support for an observer mission.
Baird stresses the group backs efforts at holding the regime of President Bashar Assad accountable for its actions.
He said the ministers are urging Syria to comply fully with a peace plan by special envoy Kofi Annan, which calls in part for a complete ceasefire in its bloody crackdown on dissent.
A small observer group is already in Syria, but the UN is pondering sending in hundreds more.
Also on HuffPost


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Best residential remodeling estimating software – 2018 reviews 76 gas card login
Traditionally, residential remodelers have relied on pen and paper to draw up estimates for their customers. While many remodelers swear by this method, it can be time consuming and can lead to inaccurate estimates. So if you're looking to streamline your estimating process and put together tighter, more accurate bids, you will want to look into purchasing residential remodeling estimating software.
Cost estimating software helps residential remodeling contractors calculate material and labor costs and produce detailed remodeling proposals. As competition for projects continues to increase and more contractors are pressured to deliver fixed-bid work, buyers are adopting modern systems, including Web-based systems, to deliver accurate and professional proposals. At the same time, owners are using these systems to create their own home remodeling estimates and double check the accuracy of project bids they receive.
When we speak to residential contractors, the two primary criteria they have for estimating systems are: 1) that it be easy to use; and, 2) that it is affordable. There are a number of systems that meet these criteria, but they vary in their feature breadth and sophistication. Below is a table of the top core modules you should look for as you evaluate home estimating systems. Manage customers
Your system should serve as a basic customer management system. For example, it should track your prospect and client contact information, as well as the notes you create when you interact with them. More advanced programs will help you organize and automate your new project sales pipeline.
While an estimating system does not function as a construction project management system, it should organize estimates by project and maintain information on each project. You should be able to pull up a client contact, select one of that client's projects and see the estimates you have developed for that project.
The core of an estimating system is the ability to maintain an extensive database of materials. This database should be updated regularly with up-to-date prices for materials in your region through a subscription pricing service like RemodelMAX. You should also be able to modify this database yourself.
Rather than specify every 2×4 and nail you need for a job, you'll want to create assemblies that combine all of the items needed to build a specific unit of work (e.g., a residential interior wall). Vendors should offer pre-built assemblies, as well as the ability to create custom assemblies.
Templates are like assemblies at the project level. They allow the remodeling cost estimator to start with a completed estimate for a similar job (e.g., kitchen remodel) and then make modifications to make the estimate specific to the job that is being estimated. The system should come with a library of templates, and allow you to create custom templates.
Of course, things change during the pre-construction process and during the project. So, the system should enable you to process change orders in the system. The system should generate a change order report that illustrates the cost impact of the change. Finally, this feature should have a status for accepted, declined, pending etc.
The output of your estimating activities should be well-formatted reports, contracts, and proposals that impress your clients with their professional level of detail and polish. The system should make it easy to customize these reports with your company logo and contact information, as well as contract terms specific to how you do business.
Subscription pricing: With subscription pricing, users typically pay a monthly fee for as long as they want to use the software. This fee might be determined by the breadth of features you want included, or it can also be determined by the number of remodeling jobs your business does on average.
It is worth noting that some vendors offer "per job" pricing, meaning you'll only be charged for every individual remodeling job, and typically it's a small percentage of the remodeling job's overall price. Some vendors also offer free versions of their software that have limited features, allowing you to try it and out and see if you want to pay for the full version.
Cloud-based. Cloud-based software is accessed through a web browser or a native mobile application and is hosted on the software vendor's servers. Many residential remodelers prefer to use cloud-based estimating software as it allows them to draw up estimates from their mobile device when they're on the go.
It is important to keep in mind that not all estimating software platforms can accommodate residential remodelers. Some platforms are better suited for specific types of estimating work, while others can work as multi-purpose systems that can cover most of your bases.
Also consider vendor viability. We frequently see in the market for construction software smaller vendors getting acquired—and sometimes sunsetted—by bigger vendors. While smaller vendors often have cheaper pricing, you might have less confidence that the vendor will be around for a long time. This is particularly important if the vendor offers a perpetual license and then goes defunct—that can be a bad investment if you end up stuck with "abandoned" software that is no longer being updated.