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First comes love, then marriage, then the carriage…YES? Think again. These days, there's nothing taboo about choosing to become a mom on your own. Marriage is not the financial necessity it once was, with men's earnings falling as women's rise. So we build a career, postpone coupling up—and then, at a certain age, want kids. Why not? We have the means, the heart, the will. Single moms ain't who they used to be. These modern mamas prove that all you need for a family is love, commitment, and a sense of humor.
"After my mom died, I realized how much I wanted my own family."
During an afternoon run in 2007, Ina Sargen had an epiphany. "It had been two years since my mom died, and I still missed her so much," she says. "I was heading home and recalled how good it felt to go home to my mom as a child. I realized that I didn't want all the wonderful stories I remembered about her, and my childhood, to end with me."
Shortly after that revelatory run, Sargen, a commercial real estate broker who lives in Philadelphia, began researching adoption. "I went from wanting to wait to get married to realizing that it would be OK…no, great…if my child and I were a family." She finally decided to adopt a child from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. It was easier for single parents to adopt from there, she learned. An overseas adoption is stressful for anyone, but Sargen, without a partner to lean on, had an incredibly rough time with paperwork snafus. Like when Fed Ex put her documents in a recycling basket outside the night before recycling collection.
When she got to Kazakhstan, things didn't get easier. The first night, after two days of travel and meeting with adoption administrators, she was driven to an apartment. It would be her home for at least four weeks. "I have never felt so completely alone. I had a total panic attack," recalls Sargen. The next day, two potential children of her own would be "presented for approval." "What if I didn't bond with either one? I started imagining the worst." Her only lifeline, since there was spotty Internet and cell-phone service, was her contact at the adoption agency. "She called the landline and talked me off the ledge, saying my feelings were normal. She'd be worried if I was blasé."
Sargen's neighbors were there when she finally brought home 9-month-old Leo (named for her mom, Lee). "I live three doors down from an adoptive single mom," says Sargen. "And I have two other friends who are single moms by choice. We have our own little circle."
Sargen made a book: "When Mommy Met Leo in Kazakh-stan." "We also look at the globe; I want Leo to feel comfortable knowing his story," says Sargen. And what about the story of Lee? He's heard it many times. "I believe he's channeled her spirit. There's something eerily similar about their sense of humor, their gentle nature—it lumps me up every time I notice it."
"I tried IVF—and had triplets!"
Cornelia Sullivan has seven sisters. But even she was overwhelmed when she learned that her second IVF attempt led to triplets. She had tried IVF once before, with her eggs and donated sperm, and it didn't work. She'd frozen her embryos, not sure if she'd have the heart to try again. She took time to travel, to date, to think. Seven years later, she owned a house, had a good job, and felt ready.
"All seven of my sisters cheered me on. Each and every one was very supportive of my decision in her own way."
But three? She was worried. Her doctor was, too. "He said 'Everyone reduces,' but I couldn't even consider it. Yet I didn't want to put myself or the babies at risk, either." After all the medical tests, the eternal two-week wait to find out if she'd conceived—and taking out a home-equity line of credit to pay for it all—this surprise was hard to take without a partner to help hash it out.
But once the shock subsided, she forged ahead. "I took things one minute at a time," says Sullivan, a speech-language pathologist in San Francisco. At 29 weeks, Ava, Connor, and Emma were born via C-section. The acronym is intentional. "I call them Team ACE. It's in honor of my father, who passed away. He taught all eight of us to play tennis. Ace is the best you can do." Sullivan's mom flew in from Boston when the babies landed in the NICU, with complications from their premature birth. She'd been Sullivan's rock since the start. "She slept on a cot in my hospital room when I was on bed rest, then visited the NICU with me every day for two months." The biggest challenge hasn't been juggling three kids but finding affordable childcare. Now she works full-time and has a nanny, but budgeting is a struggle. Still, there's peace in the midst of three-toddler chaos. "Every single morning we wake up and name all the members of our family. We also include friends. And then we say how much we love everyone."
"I found my baby's daddy on a personals site!"
At 39, Jennifer Lum found herself alone after back-to-back breakups. And she was caught off guard by how suddenly, and how strongly, she felt maternal as she was staring down her 40th birthday. "While I would have loved to share the experience of raising a child with a husband, I didn't want to get married just for that reason." She went to a sperm bank, but was turned off by the clinical nature of it. "I didn't want to browse through photos of college guys. I figured there had to be a more personal approach." She realized that placing a personal ad for a "baby daddy" could give her the chance to get to know the father of her child—his personality, his quirks, his background. She had over 100 takers. Lum, who works as a design research consultant, narrowed it down to three: a musician who owned a local studio, a software engineer/professional cellist, and a European mathematician. Won over by his witty charm, she went with the math whiz.
"The biggest surprise was that the vast majority—99 of the 100 guys—really seemed honestly sincere. I still have all the e-mails."
After spending time with him over the course of a month, Lum got pregnant on the first attempt. Once Levi was born, though, the father's old-school ways—he wouldn't change a single diaper—started to wear on Lum. They disagreed more often than not. Co-parenting, which was Lum's original intent, was not meant to be. But she has zero regrets.
Lum and Levi spend weekends hiking, rowboating, and skateboarding with friends. Levi occasionally brings up wanting a dad. "I acknowledge his feelings," Lum says. "Then I point out that we know families with two moms, one dad, divorced parents. I talk about the wonderful people in his life and then I bring it back to the most important thing: We have each another." The one person Lum wishes knew Levi is her grandmother. "I remember one Christmas years ago, she said, 'You know, Jenny, you don't need a husband to have a baby.' Funny that she gave me the thumbs-up before I knew that's how things would go."
Levi is incredibly intelligent but also has ADHD. Her biggest source of support has been from an online parents group. "It's mostly 'alternative' moms, letting each other kvetch." Levi is training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which has taught him focus and persistence. And he's brought home the gold in competitions three times.


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March 7, 2010
Who Do You Think You Are?
2 comments:
- A rootdigger said...
yes, it will be viewed and it will make an impact. They touch on some dramatic issues. Salem religion and it's courts. The Slave trade. the Holocost and the polish people. And they do so in such a personal way, that it disturbs you. I only hope it doesn't put fear into someone. so much so, that they think they don't want to look.
I had questions about why the families lost touch with those in usa during the war, and I think it was the case for both sides safety issues. [blog idea].
- March 23, 2010 at 9:04 AM
- Lucie LeBlanc Consentino said...
Thank you for your post! Actually I think the program will encourage people to go digging for their roots. No matter who we are and where we search there is always something one could run away from. In my case, I felt the anguish of my deported ancestors for a very long time once I became aware of their lot. It is our history that makes us who we are today and when we know our past it helps us to build on the future and to leave a rich heritage for our yet unknown descendants. ;o)
- March 23, 2010 at 9:14 AM

subset: commoncrawl


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European Commission
José Manuel Durão Barroso
President of the European Commission
Statement by President Barroso on the EU-US trade agreement with U.S. President Barack Obama, the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and UK Prime Minister David Cameron
G8 Summit press conference/Lough Erne
17 June 2013
Today is a special day for the relationship between the European Union and the United States.
Today, we announce that we will start the negotiations of a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement.
Very frankly, three years ago very few would have bet that today we will be in the position to launch negotiations on an ambitious European Union-United States free trade agreement.
And when the teams of the European Commission and the United States will meet for the first round of negotiations next month, it will be the start of a joint undertaking of real strategic importance.
Our joint endeavour is part of our overall agenda for growth and jobs to both sides of the Atlantic by boosting trade and investment.
It is also a powerful demonstration of our determination to shape an open and rules-based world.
We intend to move forward fast. We can say that neither of us will give up content for the sake of speed, but we intend to make rapid progress.
I do not underestimate the core challenge: moving our regulatory regimes closer and addressing the harmful effect of behind-the-border trade barriers. Huge economic benefits are expected from reducing red tape and avoiding divergent regulations for the future. I would rather have our companies invest in new innovative products and services and job creation than in double testing and multiple inspections or even separate manufacturing lines.
Our regulators need to build bridges faster and more systematically. The current economic climate requires us to join forces and to do more with less. More importantly, in doing so, we will remain strong global players who set the standards for the 21st century.
Therefore, I call on our legislators on the European side, especially the European Parliament, our regulators, our civil society to play a constructive and engaged part in these negotiations.
The business communities on both sides of the Atlantic, in particular, have been a strong advocate of free trade and investment between Europe and the United States.
And this is also good for the rest of the world. Given the integrated supply chains in today's global markets, everyone can benefit from this agreement.
Integrating two of the most developed, most sophisticated and certainly the largest economies in the world can never be an easy task.
But we will find convincing answers to legitimate concerns,
we will find solutions to thorny issues,
we will keep our eyes on the prize, and we will succeed.
So even if these negotiations may not always be easy, I am sure they will be worth it.
For the sake of the jobs it creates, and because of the strategic dimension of what we are doing: to write the next chapter of what is our common history, forged by the sense that we share the same principles and values, the principles and values of open economies and open societies.
Side Bar


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for the cake:
2 cups flour
1 cup strawberry-rhubarb compote
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk, at room temperance
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, at room temperature
for the streusel:
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Preheat the oven to 375. Butter and flour or spray with cooking spray with flour a 9-inch springform pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together 2 cups of flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour until a thick dough forms Pour batter into the prepared pan. Thoroughly spread the cake with the compote. Set aside. In a small bowl, mix together all of the streusel ingredients by hand or with a fork until a rough crumb forms. Sprinkle streusel evenly over the compote-topped raw cake. Bake 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out pretty much dry. Remove to a wire tack to cool. After about 15 minutes, release the buckle from the pan and serve.


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Suspension guru Rhoddy Harvey-Bailey once explained to me that antiroll bars are only there to correct mistakes inherent in a suspension design. I recalled his words very clearly as McLaren Automotive's MD, Antony Sherrif, explained the philosophy behind the suspension design of the new MP4-12C.
The MP4-12C eschews the use of antiroll bars because they limit suspension movement as well as axle articulation, thus degrading the ride quality. Instead, McLaren employs an active ride system using hydraulic pressure in its computer-controlled, Tenneco-made active damping system to resist roll. The interconnection of these dampers, front and rear and side-to-side, to control roll as well as dive and squat is a simple and elegant solution that takes advantage of the speed of current microprocessors to effectively sidestep an age-old mechanical problem. A further advantage is that it can be programmed for various modes of operation, with the choice of Comfort, Sport and Track modes at the driver's fingertips.
Eager to show that their new car can really walk-the-walk, McLaren invited me to drive the MP4-12C on public roads around Dunsfold in Surrey, followed by a maximum attack session on the runways of the nearby airfield where the British Aerospace Harrier VTOL fighter-bomber was once made. It's also the location of the famed Top Gear test track.
The MP4-12C uses micro switches embedded under the horizontal surface of the lead-in strake of its carbon-fiber doors. Run your hand under the area where you would expect a handle to be and the butterfly door springs ajar. The angle of the door opening mimics that of the legendary McLaren F1 from two decades ago.
The MP4-12C eschews any such visual showmanship with its straightforward, partially analog instrument pack. The most important display in any driver's car is the rev counter, and it is central to the McLaren's instrument layout.
Starting the engine is as simple as pressing the Start button on the console. The twin-turbocharged V8 fires with a healthy growl and settles down to a relatively deep, but quiet, grumbling idle. Forced aspiration muffles the flat-plane crank V8's voice considerably, and the loud racecar-like bark that some consider part and parcel of the Ferrari and Lamborghini ethos is conspicuous for its absence.
Where every other manufacturer uses independent left and right paddle shifters, McLaren has chosen a single-piece, F1-style, centrally pivoting paddle to operate its Graziano-made seven-speed dual-clutch SSG (Seamless Shift Gearbox) transmission. Thus, when you upshift by pulling the right paddle towards you, you'll see the corresponding left side of the paddle move away from you.
In practical terms, this makes no difference to its operation. What does make a difference is the mechanical click and the greater and more positive effort required to select a gear compared to the low-effort micro switches triggered by the paddles of rival systems. McLaren claims this more deliberate movement makes for a more authentic driving experience; this is how the shifters work on their F1 racer.
The 3.8-liter power unit, designed from scratch, is both powerful and torque-rich, with 592 hp at 7000 rpm and 443 lb-ft of torque between 3000 and 7000 rpm. Performance is also aided by the McLaren's relatively low weight. Tipping the scales at under 3,200 pounds, thanks to its carbon-fiber tub and aluminum and SMC plastic body panels, it is 112 pounds lighter than its chief rival, the Ferrari 458 Italia.
McLaren claims 3.3 seconds for the 62-mph run. Top speed is 330 km/h, or 205 mph, making it the fastest car in this class.
Mere numbers cannot describe how fast this car feels when you plant your right foot. The twin-turbo V8 produces sensational thrust—strong, smooth and relentless, and although peak power occurs at 7000 rpm, it revs smoothly to over 8000, with the cutout set at 8500.
Initially, I left the transmission to its own devices, and it did a better job of impersonating a proper automatic gearbox than most. But it's not the way to drive a supercar, so I switched the system to manual. The SSG really does what it says on the tin. Fast and seamless, it makes full use of the healthy torque curve to give you one long, sustained blast of acceleration from zero to top speed. This is epic stuff.
It has been a whole year since I last drove the Ferrari 458 Italia, but my memory of this equally amazing car is still crystal clear. While the McLaren V8 beats it for torque and perceived potency, the naturally aspirated Ferrari engine is snappier to respond, with a more visceral sound and feel.
However, against the stopwatch the McLaren is simply faster, and as accomplished as the Ferrari's chassis is, the McLaren's is better, especially on the bald limit where it seems almost impossible to make it misbehave. With the electronic nanny disabled, a drift in the McLaren is exactly that. In the Ferrari, it can snap you around in a heartbeat if you're not on top of it when it finally lets go of the tarmac.
There are times when a new car redefines the rules, and in ride quality, the MP4-12C does just that. As we trundle along the perimeter roads of the airfield, I'm amazed at the car's supple ride and handling ease. Bounce and rebound control in Normal mode are worthy of a good sport saloon like a BMW M5, with a secondary ride that takes the edges off sharp bumps. Ramping up the pace, the primary ride and body control over long-wave undulations prove to be spectacularly good.
Like all cars that have three suspension settings, the McLaren's best overall mode is the middle one: Sport. The extra bit of damper control removes any hint of softness over crests, reduces body roll in fast corners, and gives an extra dose of precision to the steering when turning in to a bend. The light and ultra-stiff carbon tub creates a stable and strong structure so the suspension can thus be calibrated for performance and comfort with little compromise.
I briefly put the suspension in Track mode, but just a few hundred feet told me that the enhanced bounce stiffness was eating into the ride comfort on less than perfect surfaces. While this setting is not as aggressive as some, it simply offers no performance advantage on a real-world road, while detracting from the serenity, balance and traction offered by the superbly judged Sport setting.
Some say the power steering is too light. I'm negatively sensitive to cars with over-light steering and have driven cars whose steering is really too light, others that are too heavy, and the odd one that is just plain nervous. The McLaren is none of these. Thus, I found it easy to take this car to the limit of adhesion through a slalom on the airfield runway straight off the bat, and never had cause to think about it on either road or track.
Pushing harder and harder on the Top Gear test track, the MP4-12C seemed to get better the faster it went. Driven with real purpose, in Sport and then Track modes, it astounded with its front-end grip, its ability to deploy its awesome power and its intuitive balance. Understeer is minimal and of the stabilizing kind, unless you really pile into a tight bend carrying far too much speed. Aided by its Brake Steer electronic wizardry helping to negate understeer and aiding traction out of bends, this is a car that helps an average driver and makes a good one look like a hero. Even at the limit, with the safety systems loosened up, the MP4-12C seemed like it would never run out of talent. Eventual breakaway at the rear is so progressive, so well telegraphed compared to other mid-engine cars, you'd have to be fast asleep to not catch it.
The brakes are spectacularly effective. Easy to modulate and full of feel on the road, the bespoke lightweight steel rotor and alloy caliper system from Brembo/AP Racing saves weight over a conventional design, making the ceramic option seem like an expensive extravagance.
To test its mettle to the full, I made a simulated emergency stop from 160 km/h (100 mph) on the runway. The McLaren scrubbed speed like a pair of anchors had been thrown out; I removed both hands from the wheel. The car just stopped dead straight with no drama. The built-in anti-dive feature of the active damping, and the air brake effect created by the rear spoiler rising to its maximum angle, help to keep weight transfer in check and enhance braking performance.
However, there are times when sheer power alone is not enough, and if the McLaren beats the Ferrari in the chassis department, it loses points on engine charisma. No turbocharged motor has as sharp a throttle response as a good normally aspirated one, least of all one as brilliant as the Ferrari's. And even in Track mode, when the MP4-12C's otherwise purposeful soundtrack is at its best, it is still not as spine tingling as the Ferrari's.
In the end, the depth and breadth of the McLaren MP4-12C's abilities are simply astonishing, and as a complete package, the MP4-12C rewrites the supercar book so convincingly that any rival will be hard pressed to match its unique spread of abilities. While it may be too perfect in some ways for some tastes, the important thing is that it exists. The supercar bar has been undisputedly raised a whole notch higher.
2012 McLaren MP4-12C
3.8-liter V8, dohc, 32-valve, twin-turbocharged
Seven-speed SSG automated manual
Front and rear independent double wishbones, active dampers, anti-dive and anti-squat
Alloy calipers, lightweight steel rotors
Length/Width/Height (in.): 177.4/75.2/47.2
Wheelbase: 105.1 in.
Curb Weight: 3,161 lb
Peak Power: 592 hp @ 7000 rpm
Peak Torque: 443 lb-ft @ 3000 rpm
0-62 mph: 3.3 sec.
Top Speed: 205 mph


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On October 7, 2012, His Eminence Metropolitan Mefody of Perm and Solikamsk and His Eminence Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany celebrated Divine Liturgy at the main church of the city of Perm's Holy Trinity-St Stefan Monastery. The archpastors were joined in the service by clergymen of Perm Diocese. Many worshipers were in attendance and partook of the Holy Gifts of Christ.
At the end of the service, Metropolitan Mefody expressed his heartfelt thanks to everyone:
On the feast day we heard the Gospel account of how Apostle Peter, beholding the Lord, said "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:8).
Such is the humility and cognizance of unworthiness that Apostle Peter exhibited. He shows us the example of what our emotional state must be as we approach prayer, how we must address the Lord and the Mother of God. We must remember that we are not worthy to even speak Their names. How often we turn persistently to Them that They hear us. We turn to them without compromise, only thinking about "me" and my problems.
Today, as we have the opportunity to venerate this great icon, the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God "of the Sign," we should ponder what our emotional state should be. If we approach with a trivial, fleeting request, it will be unworthy. We must approach the holy icon remembering today's words from Apostle Peter from the Gospel. St Peter felt himself unworthy to be in the presence of God, but hopes for Divine mercy, that He will not reject him and would cover his sinfulness. It is in the mood that we are to address the holy icons here and everywhere.
Once again I wish to express my joyful welcome and gratitude to Archbishop Mark, who joined us in celebrating Divine Liturgy today. This is joyful, it is ceremonious, it is brotherly and truly spiritual. I also wish Vladyka and his delegation God's help and Divine blessings, and I ask his holy prayers. I wish you a joyous feast day, Your Eminence, dear Vladyka, Archbishop Mark!
In his response, Vladyka Mark thanked Metropolitan Mefody and the believers of Perm for their hospitality:
Over the several days of our brief visit to the Perm region, we have come to know the holy sites of the Perm Diocese, we have sensed that we are among Orthodox Christians here, and we have a genuine spiritual bond as we pray for each other. I hope that the Lord strengthens you in your efforts to restore and strengthen your spiritual life.
After this, Vladyka Mefody gave his guest a gift: an icon of St Stefan of Great Perm, painted in the studios of Holy Trinity-St Stefan Monastery.
Olga Troitskaya


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Humans are constantly pushing their bodies to the limits, testing their pain thresholds, tolerances and sexual endeavors. For some people pain and sex go hand in hand. They use pain to enhance sexual desires. In the body modification world play piercing is not always just for the hell of it, but it can also be done to spice up sexual experiences.
Play piercing is basically when needles are pierced into the skin without inserting and leaving a piece of jewelry in the hole. The needles are inserted so that both ends of it stick out of the skin, a secant position. This type of piercing is done just for the enjoyment of procedure rather than for aesthetic purpose. The types of needles that are usually used are sterile hypodermic needles.Like when any other type of piercing, a clean sterile … read more


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General Comments: Futures closed lower on what was called speculative long liquidation. Futures are in a trading range, but trends are turning down. News of any kind remains hard for the traders to find. There was no demand news to support values. Big Brazil production remains negative to prices, and traders know that Indian and Thai production is in the market, too, although there are more reports of slow harvest progress in Thailand. Conditions still look good for many production areas. The Thai crushing season is underway with good production expected, but the crushing pace is called slow right now. Brazil production continues strong.
Overnight News: Scattered and light showers are expected in Brazil through the weekend. Temperatures should be near to above normal.
Chart Trends: Trends in New York are mixed to down with objectives of 1810 March. Support is at 1860, 1830, and 1800 March, and resistance is at 1910, 1925, and 1945 March. Trends in London are mixed to down with objectives of 494.00 March. Support is at 505.00, 502.00, and 500.00 March, and resistance is at 516.00, 520.00, and 524.00 March.
General Comments: Futures closed lower. Good arrivals in Africa are negative and are continuing. Ivory Coast arrivals are strong, and the trend for strong arrivals from there should continue. Ghana producers are reported to be selling as well. Malaysia and Indonesia crops appear to be in good condition and weather is called favorable. Overall weather patterns in West Africa production areas are good for harvest progress. Demand is reported weaker from the U.S. and Europe, in part because of current economics and in part due to changes forced by the World Bank that encouraged forward marketing of the crops. The market needs some demand news or some other news to shake it out of the sideways to lower trade. This news could come on as the main West Africa harvest should be about over and there is a lot of talk that production next year will be less.
Overnight News: Mostly dry conditions are expected in West Africa. Temperatures will average near to above normal. Malaysia and Indonesia should see episodes of scattered showers. Temperatures should average near normal. Brazil will get dry conditions and warm temperatures. ICE certified stocks are sharply lower today at 3.798 million bags.
Chart Trends: Trends in New York are mixed. Support is at 2205, 2195, and 2155 March, with resistance at 2275, 2290, and 2325 March. Trends in London are mixed. Support is at 1410, 1405, and 1380 March, with resistance at 1450, 1455, and 1490 March.
Next page: Cotton, Orange Juice and Coffee


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Blog of Dr. Miland Brown that features different aspects of world history. Not everything can be covered but sites dealing with any historical issue or topic are possible future posts. Also includes sites which discuss teaching history. Dr. Brown is an academic in North America.
Friday, April 23, 2004
World War II in the Curriculum.
From the site:
In 1991, the fiftieth anniversary of the United States' entrance into World War II was observed. This is an opportune time to reevaluate and renew the teaching of this cataclysmic event. Most people have been affected by the political, economic, and social consequences of the war. But perhaps the most important reason to rededicate ourselves to teaching about World War II is that the experience is still near enough in time to provide retrospective interest for those who lived through it and to spark intellectual curiosity among those unborn at the time.
There are many debates about what to teach in the social studies curriculum. However, there is a consensus on the need to emphasize World War II, as it is a major turning point in world history. World War II involved the largest armed forces, the longest battle lines, and the most destructive weapons of any war. It inflicted more suffering, more destruction, and more deaths.
Good history teaching emphasizes global turning points --- those events that have had the most far-reaching consequences, for the largest number of people, across the broadest areas of the Earth. Knowledge of World War II and other global turning points in history advances one's understanding of how our contemporary society developed. This knowledge, of course, is the necessary foundation for effective thought and action by our students about the important political events and public issues of their lives.
Many students, however, are failing to achieve knowledge about the causes, events, and consequences of World War II. In the 1986 National Assessment of History and Literature, most 17-year-old students said they had studied World War II, yet only 53 percent of them knew that Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union when the United States entered the war (Ravitch and Finn 1987, 55). In a set of questions on the World War II period, high school students were tested on (1) factors leading up to the United States' involvement in the war, (2) characteristics of the war, (3) the end of the war, and (4) the United Nations. In general, students performed dismally on this set of questions. For example, 45% did not know that Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps during World War II. Fewer than two students in five (39.5%) put D-Day in the correct four-year period.
10 comments:
- Penny Weigand said...
For some great historical fiction read Penelope Dyan's "Sweet Lorraine" and "For Love of Pete". The later is a story based on real life Sgt. Peter Thomas Sirna who played the taps when they raised both flags on Iwo Jima. Both novels are fiction, but are historically accurate. These are great books to read side by side with a WWII curriculum! For more details go to www.bellissimapublishing.com
- Stephen Chicoine said...
I believe you must emphasize the human experience for students. My latest book Our Hallowed Ground (see www.freedomhistory.com) profiles nearly a hundred veterans from the war. I wrote the book with students in mind. Powerful emotion engages students and imprints on their memory.
- Colin said...
Since this is a school curriculum discussion, and I am the author of a book about a little known World War II operation, I just wanted to say how wonderful it would be for the veterans of the top secret Operation Jedburgh if you all taught about them. Operation Jedburgh was an operation where agents dropped into occupied France to work with the French Resistance. You can read more about it at my website: http://www.operationjedburgh.com
- Ludjapie said...
I definitely think our students need to learn about WWII. I don't think that they realize how awful our POW's were treated and they were mostly just kids. I have a blog with postings from letters my father wrote (ludjapieslagniappe.blogspot.com). I am trying to get the local school to at least listen to his oral history of what happened to him. He was a Japanese POW. The book Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides is a great reference and also Last Man Out by Glen McDole. Thank you.
- Marge@wwii4kids said...
I have 3 sons who are quite interested in World War II, one of whom is truly passionate about it. I'd forgotten most of what I learned about WWII in school until my 11-year-old became such an enthusiast. Recently we launched a website named World War II for Kids , and in the process of doing our research, we discovered two great books on the topic. One is called World War II for Kids by Richard Panchyk, and the other is Armchair Reader: World War II by Publications International, Ltd. The second one is a biggie, but it's broken into manageable topics and gives a different perspective on some that might otherwise seem boring to kids. I highly recommend both books!
I wonder why, apart from political correctness, you list the internment of Japanese-Americans so high in the list of things students don't know about the war. After Pearl Harbor, the Army for a time recommended abandoning the West Coast and withdrawing to the Rockies. That's how freaked out the country was. And you're aware of the sympathy for Japan among a huge portion of the Hawaiian population. Or perhaps you're not. Regretable as the internment was in hindsight, to raise it to the level of paramount concern is presentism of the worst kind.
- Suvorovetz said...
Unfortunately, prevailing WWII curriculum is full of glaring omissions, especially with regard to how, when and where the whole thing broke out. Some very serious researchers challenging the status quo are being simply shunned by the established academia - and I'm not talking about Holocaust deniers here.
I am a 3d artist/ illustrator and I am in the process of recreating Morrison field in West Palm Beach, Fl. from 1940-1957. The air base presently does not exist the international airport does. I am presently recreating the entire airbase in 3d as it was in the 40's; as it was a World War II staging base. My goal is to have it on the web and located also at the historical society.
The purpose is for educational purposes to show what life was like on the "home front" on a military base. I am keeping an on-line journal of the project as it is being developed and researched. Visitors are welcome at the blog: http://imag3d.wordpress.com ( click on the "history" tag at the bottom of the page) Questions, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome.
- Chris said...
Someone played taps during the Iwo Jima flag raising? Are you referring to the one as the Island was taken, or maybe some sort of flag raising at a staff office?
- world war 2 said...
Since students tend to failed history subject especially with regards to world war 1 and 2. It will be great to have this on the curriculum. Good history teaching emphasizes global turning points which I agree on. Thank you for sharing a very interesting post.


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We are living in times that provide a breeding ground for ingratitude. Jobs are lost. Families are falling apart. Children are going wayward. Suffering does not discriminate. If you are reading this, you are probably suffering in some way.
So, as we gaze ahead over the holiday season and reflect on what we are thankful for, what happens when you are going through difficulty and cannot seem to muster up the gratitude?
Jennifer* tells us her story of how she went from disillusionment to bitterness to healing to gratitude during a dark time in her life as she struggled with infertility.
"You have plans for your life, a map of how things are supposed to turn out. When I got married, having kids was part of the plan," she recalled. "We tried for a long time, with no success. It took several years for me to realize it just wasn't going to happen for me."
It was during this time that the seeds of ingratitude were planted.
"My relationship with the Lord took a blow," Jennifer said. "Scripture tells us that God is the giver of life, and I couldn't understand why He would not allow life to be given through me. It's especially hard, because people get pregnant through rape, or through promiscuity."
"However, I could have provided a stable home with a loving family, so I was ticked at God. So, I went through this crisis of unbelief, anger and bitterness. This also presented an identity crisis for me."
The feelings of ingratitude came and went through holidays, birthdays, Mother's Day, and other mile markers throughout the year. For Jennifer, everything was defined by that void. "The desire in my heart was unfulfilled."
One day, she had a turning point. She took what she decided would be her very last pregnancy test, and it was negative. She was hopeless, and she was suicidal. After calling in sick at work, she sat on the couch, and began to mull over the far-reaching consequences of taking her life.
"I had a 'snap-to' moment. My core kind of heard myself say, 'What are you thinking? You are a child of God. Knock it off!'"
It would still be a couple of years before she would draw close to God and become truly thankful for the blessings in her life.
One day as she was commuting to work and listening to the radio, she heard a worship song with these words in the lyrics: "You were worth it all. " In an instant, the depth of the love of God came upon her. She felt Him pursuing and telling her that there is something He wanted to teach her. She allowed Him to penetrate that hardness. She began to worship.
"The relationship I had with Him became worth every bit of heartache I had gone through. I finally understood that my life is not about me."
Cultivating a Thankful Heart
Now, having survived her difficult journey with her faith intact, Jennifer has two points of advice for navigating tough times with a heart of thanksgiving.
1. Focus on things above.
"It's not about you. Your journey is difficult and uncomfortable. Just remember that you were created to reflect the glory of God. Focus on things above, like Colossians 3:2 tells us. There will always be resolve. It may not come on this side of eternity. But, we don't need to know all things. Our minds cannot wrap around God's purpose for everything. After all, the Bible tells us there will be suffering. I needed to give up the 'right' to understand and exchange it for a heart that sees the glory, beauty and majesty of God."
2. Choose worship.
"God is worthy of praise and glory. Your emotions don't dictate God's worthiness. Anytime you worship God from a broken heart, when you empty the last bit you have and you give it to God, there is a wonderful exchange. When you don't understand God and you choose worship anyway, there is something supernatural that happens in those moments."
*Name has been changed.


text: Terry Evans has one of the most identifiable voices in blues and roots music, providing vocal support for the likes of John Lee Hooker, Ry Cooder and John Fogerty. In recent years, Evans has come to the forefront as a concert headliner with a stunning series of well-received recordings. Evans returns in 2005 with his first studio recording since 2001's Mississippi Magic. His voice is as rich as ever. On the Ry Cooder-penned My Baby Joined the Army, Evans emotes the pain of loss through his voice and guitar and captures the despair of Cooder's lyrics. Let's Get Gone and Turn on Your Lovelight are straight ahead groove-laced blues rockers and I'll Be Your Shelter (In the Time of Storm) is a gospel-tinged track reminiscent of The Blind Boys of Alabama. The album was produced by Terry and Phil Bloch. Special guests include David Lindley, Jorge Calderon, and George Bohannon.


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DETROIT - Detroit Tigers pitcher Nate Robertson is scheduled to join Volunteers of America Michigan and students from the Detroit Action Team on Tuesday, April 22 to distribute books and read to low-income children at the Detroit Public Library Main Branch.
Robertson will join area high school students from Ferndale High School, Warren Woods Tower High School and University Prep High School for the day-long literacy event, scheduled from 9:30 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. at the library located at 5201 Woodward Avenue.
The student volunteers are members of the Detroit Action Team, a group of community-minded high school students working with Major League baseball players to inspire and train the next generation of volunteers.
"There is something very special when a young child and a teenager interact," said Emilie Rohrbach, Action Team Coordinator for Volunteers of America Michigan. "The younger kids really connect and the teens can be a great positive influence; encouraging kids to read."
Administered by Volunteers of America and the Major League Baseball Players Trust, the Action Team program was created to encourage young people throughout the United States to volunteer in their communities. Action Teams, consisting of Major League baseball players and Team Captains from area high schools, are working together in cities nationwide to encourage young people to get involved. The Action Team program also includes a school-based curriculum developed by the Players Trust, in partnership with The Wall Street Journal's Classroom Edition, which carries the message of volunteerism and teaches valuable community service skills to 700,000 high school students in more than 5,000 classrooms across the United States.
Action Teams in Michigan are comprised of students from Mumford, Warren Woods Tower, Ferndale, University Prep Academy and Waverly high schools who volunteer their time for various projects throughout the year with Volunteers of America Michigan. Currently, Detroit Tigers players involved with the Action Team include Curtis Granderson, Nate Robertson and Jacque Jones.
Also, on the night of April 22, the Detroit Action Team Captains will be honored in a ceremony at Comerica Park prior to the Tigers game against the Texas Rangers. Action Team Captains will take the field along with Karen Myers and Emilie Rohrbach of Volunteers of America Michigan, where they will be presented with certificates of achievement signed by the players acknowledging their dedicated service to the community and efforts to encourage their peers to volunteer.


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Kate Daniels
Poet and editor Kate Daniels was born in Richmond, Virginia. The first in her family to graduate from college, Daniels earned a BA and an MA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from Columbia University. She converted to Catholicism as an adult, and her often lengthy, narrative poems engage engages themes of working class experience, family, trauma, racism, and Southern culture.
Daniels has published several collections of poetry, including The Niobe Poems (1988), Four Testimonies (1998), and A Walk in Victoria's Secret (2010). Reviewing Daniels's Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize–winning debut, The White Wave (1984), for the Village Voice, critic James Hunter noted, "Time and again [Daniels] reexamines lyric epiphany with the brute language, the cruel music of the everyday."
Daniels co-edited, with Richard Jones, Of Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly (1981). She also edited Muriel Rukeyser's selected poems, Out of Silence (1992), and edited and published the literary journal Poetry East, with Richard Jones from 1980 to 1990.
Daniels has won the Hanes Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a Pushcart Prize, the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry, the James Dickey Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Harvard University's Bunting Institute. Her work has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Poetry.
She has taught at Bennington College, Louisiana State University, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University. Currently she is professor of English and creative writing at Vanderbilt University.


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I was under the impression I asserted my self pretty well on the road, but as I had been following along with the instruction my wife went through to become a certified bicycling instructor by the League of American Bicyclists, I've begun to rethink assumptions I held about safe riding. I would usually control a lane when there is near by parking (to avoid door zone), but sometimes hold that one third of the way over position. When riding in the bike lane I would ride to the far left of the bike lane to avoid doors, but admittedly that often results in cars to the left passing a little too close for comfort. I realized despite my assertiveness as a cyclist, I was still sometimes exchanging my personal safety for the sake of not upsetting motorists.
Now I really get what the LAB means by lane control, if the lane is too narrow to share side by side with a car with safe passing, regardless of other factors, just control the center position of the lane, it's always safer. Drivers will pass with more distance because they know that have to get over and cannot put the squeeze on you trying to stay in the same lane. Most drivers understand that by turning their wheel a little bit to the left, and then a little bit to the right, they can actually go around. Some drivers will not understand that something in front of them not shaped like a car could be in the road. They may honk at you or worse yet, in rare cases shout to get out of their way or get on the sidewalk (sidewalk riding is illegal in Santa Monica). If you can, try to remain clam and zen. Just think of it as their way of saying they see you, and that is a good thing, considering how often "Well I didn't see" is used as an excuse in all kinds of motorist caused collisions.
The safety instruction has also changed how I feel about bike lanes. I've always thought the design of most bike lanes in Santa Monica were total crap. Too narrow, shoved much too close to opening car doors, too inconsistent, and with often poor intersection positioning. The more I think about it, the more I feel like bike lanes as they currently exist in Santa Monica constrain safe riding rather than promote it. They are obviously the product of highly compromised politics born in the 1995 plan, and for the most part have been repeatedly painted down unchanged in design ever since.
When bike lanes are present, you are obligated to ride in them, except when necessary to leave the lane because of hazards or to make an upcoming left turn, signaling first of course. Also if the speed of other traffic is as slow or slower than you are traveling, you can leave the bike lane. But what if the whole bike lane is hazardous? On certain blocks where the bike lane is especially narrow, or positioned entirely wrong, clearly the safest place to ride is always outside of the bike lane however. The law is phrased to be flexible, but I'd rather the safety of a bike lane be clear than have to argue semantics with an officer who disagrees.
Especially since sharrows can be used to promote safe riding without having to allocate separate space, I don't understand why they aren't used more often. I'd prefer more streets with sharrows over more door lanes. Sharrows are purely psychological, they can encourage riding out of the path of doors, and have an amazing ability to calm the number of motorists who honk at you. They simply reaffirm the existing legal rights of cyclists, and can change road way behavior with a bucket of paint and a stencil.
Broadway Ave. between Cloverfield and 20th is narrower than most other blocks of Broadway, and like most blocks that happen to be a little narrower and are part of a Class II bike route (aka bike lanes), the squeeze is put on the space of the bike lane, not the car parking, the regular travel lane, or center turn lane. This particular block is also constantly full of delivery vehicles and the turn over rate of parked cars pulling out and opening car doors is extremely high in the work commute rush and lunch hour time periods. When I ran back through my mind, I realized nearly every close call moment I've had riding on Broadway was on those few blocks.
So during a ride down that stretch during lunch a few weeks ago, which was especially congested with cars sticking into the bike lane at every angle and driveway opening that day, I got the idea to try something different. Since then I've been protesting the Broadway Ave. bike lane, my formerly usual route, as much as possible, and taking 2 lanes each way roads like Colorado Ave. instead. Controlling the center of the right lane as outlined by LAB instruction. On Broadway I always used to ride in the far left sliver of the bike lane to avoid car doors, but this also results in approaching cars giving me less passing distance. At least on Colorado, I can both ride where it is safe from doors and get decent passing room.
I did have one driver put the squeeze on me in the first week doing this, but compared to the almost daily near misses I would have riding Broadway, I much prefer life outside the door lane even if the occasional driver proclaims from their window I have no such right to be in the road. If drivers want cyclists to stick to official "bike routes", perhaps they should join cyclists in asking for bike routes that don't suck.
So as I ride currently in Santa Monica I am routing to avoid bike lanes all together, which to my initial surprise has significantly reduced the number of times I've had to evade or make a hard braking to avoid collisions. Additionally there are times where destinations I am trying to reach necessitate riding on a street with a bike lane, but rather than ride in the bike lane I am riding completely outside of it.
While the city may wish to obligate me into shoving my self into the path of opening car doors, my personal safety comes first, so screw the bike lane, or as I refer to them now, door lanes. If the SMPD would like to write me up a ticket for riding outside an available bike lane, I'd gladly accept and would come prepared to argue in court that some bike lanes in Santa Monica are sub-standard facilities unfit to be obligated to ride in. CVC 21208 section (3) permits leaving a bike lane to "...avoid debris or other hazardous conditions" after all.
Based on the safety literature provided in the League Of American Bicycling course instruction, I think it is perfectly reasonable to argue that on some streets in Santa Monica, the entire bike lane represents a hazard because of it's insufficient width and proximity to opening car doors. I'd like to see legislation to address careless door opening, but the truth is, even if that did exist, I would not trust door lanes, I mean bike lanes. Just because something is both illegal and has a defined fine attached, some people will still do it.
Drivers who are driving usually, hopefully, are paying attention to what they are doing, but the moment the ignition is off, they are in another world, and concern for something like an oncoming cyclist is the last thing on their mind as they open their door. As a cyclist, you have to as much as possible take safety into your own hands. We cannot trust drivers to not swing their car doors in our path, we don't have a crumple zone, we are the crumple zone. And as long as bike lanes are designed without consideration for our safety we shouldn't so easily trust bike lanes either, and demand cities do them correctly or go back to the drawing board.
Some may question why make so much fuss over car doors, isn't it that faster oncoming traffic behind that is more dangerous? There are a few reasons why door zones should be avoided entirely. First of all after you account for intersection and driveway collisions from turning cars, always the most dangerous situations for cyclists, the next most frequent motorist at fault collision with a cyclist is opening car doors, about twice as frequent as being struck from behind. Additionally, those intersection collisions are more likely when riding in the door zone, because you reduce your visibility and buffer to traffic turning at driveways and intersections. This neat little animation, though not about door zones in particular, illustrates how lane positioning effects intersection conflicts.
Depending on the speed of the cyclist and the speed of oncoming traffic, the speed differential between you and a non-moving door may even be higher than the moving cars. The physics of speed differential is a large part of what creates the severity of an impact. Lets take Broadway for example. If car traffic is going the posted speed limit of 25 mph, and I am hustling along at 20 mph, there is only a 5 mph difference between me and the cars, but a 20 mph difference between me and a stationary door. However even if I was riding a much less bike racer sort of speed, of say 15 mph, that is still 10 mph differential between me and a car, and a 15 mph difference between me and a door.
So not only is it more likely to be hit by a door than hit from behind, that impact with the door can in some cases be more severe than being hit by a car. To top it all off, depending on how you make impact with a door, in the most horrible dooring cases, a cyclist falls into the path of oncoming traffic after being struck by the door or after their evasion of the door. As if running into a car door and flying off your bike wasn't bad enough, it could be topped off with being run over. This is how most deaths by car door happen, it's not the door it self, it's the motorist pushing you into on-coming traffic that will be surprised to suddenly find you in their path without warning, and may not have sufficient time to brake or evade. An especially tragic example of this potentially deadly side effect of being doored, happened recently to a mother in New York. In trying to avoid sudden impact with a car door that was suddenly opened, she was still clipped by it, and then taken out by a bus. Being in the door zone turns cyclists into traffic ping pong balls, and presently most cycling infrastructure actually encourages this.
I don't think cities like Santa Monica are really intending to put cyclists in harms way on purpose, though that may be the outcome. I think it is the product of years of political compromise to the motoring majority, which unfortunately seems to put space for parked cars before safety or quality of life outside the metal boxes.
I also think Santa Monica like most cities lacks perspective on the risks associated with door lanes. In one of the round table discussions members of Spoke had before Jennifer Phillips left the city, a representative from Transportation Management said their data didn't suggest the accident risk I was saying about the Broadway Ave. bike lane. First of all, I seriously doubt the accuracy of data avalible for door collisions, since many bike collisions, especially ones that don't result in an immediate hospital trip go unreported. My experience from the one time I was hit by a car, riding in the bike lane interestinglyca enough, is that SMPD, like most police departments in America, discourages cyclists from reporting collisions, much more so than incidents between two motorists.
In the same round table room at the time was SMPD deputy chief Phillip Sanchez, now the Police Cheif of Pasadena. He was a veteran of the Santa Monica police force, and is an avid road cyclist. He was struck by a car door riding on Main St., a street with a bike lane that is for the most part entirely in the door zone. He didn't even file a police report for the door collision he was involved in. Additionally, the number of times you have to swerve around to avoid car doors, drivers pulling out, drivers cutting you off, weigh strongly on the feeling of safety, even if you don't actually get hit. Without further elaboration on how Santa Monica collects it's data, I am inclined to believe any data Santa Monica has on bicycle hazards is incomplete at best.
Santa Monica likes to look progressive on issues and it has pointed out the miles of bike routes it has as a badge of honor in the past. However quality of bike routes is more complicated to discuss, and bike lanes if done right, take up more space than presently allocated. What good is having miles and miles of bike routes if they usually die off before a destination and are mostly crap anyways. Some of the best streets to ride, like Michigan are not even bike routes, though it is planned to become one. Meanwhile Lincoln Blvd., largely regarded as a death trap by many, full of aggro drivers and nightmarish intersections like Lincoln over the 10 freeway, is a bike route. As I've mentioned before without quality control of what the various classes of bike route mean, the distinctions become mostly meaninglessness.
We have the beautiful beach bike path, but that does little for cycling as transportation. I can't use the beach path to get to the mid city office district, I can't use the beach path to pick up groceries, or go shopping. The bike path is first and foremost a recreational facility, and that is how it is commonly used. It is officially bike only, but everyone knows that is a joke. It's also so poorly integrated into the rest of the city that most people throw their bike into the back of a truck or on a car rack and drive their bike to the beach parking lot to go for bike ride. In it's current state I can't imagine the beach bike path reduces car trips, but most likely induces them, made possible by countless acres of parking real estate for cars on beach front property.
What we call bike lanes in most places are really just left over bits of road way. That space between the parked cars and other traffic, is one of the most dangerous places on the road for a number of reasons. Something Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa learned the hard way. Yet we put cyclists, one of the most vurnable road users, right in the hot spot. We should not accept the garbage of unwanted road space as our lane of travel and call it progress just because it is in theory bike only space. Much of the time bike lanes have cars turning across it, double parked in it, or I have even seen taxis squeeze through them on Ocean Ave., nearly taking off side view mirrors, as a short cut. Bike lanes as bike only only space only exists if it is enforced, and design is such to make it clear they are bike only and practical for that segregation.
All it takes is one incident riding at the wrong place and time to have a driver's car door put you through facial reconstructive surgery or worse. I don't aim to find out the hard way.
Now after saying all this I want to point out I am not anti bike lane, only anti door lanes. Some cycling advocates promote the idea of purely vehicular cycling, and that there should be no separated facilities. Especially as of late I have been riding very much to the letter of vehicular cycling, but I'm not in the camp that is against bike lanes. I think separate facilities that feel safer from other traffic on key routes are an important stepping stone to getting people to consider bikes as transportation and can form the core, to borrow a term from Bikeside, the backbone, of a cycling network. The experience of cities the world over is that if you build good infrastructure for cycling, people will ride. They key word there is good infrastructure.
One of the reasons besides the obvious safety issues, that I have decided to take a more critical approach to these sub-standard bike lanes is that I think poorly done infrastructure can stunt the development of fostering a truly thriving cycling culture, and actually provide ammunition and justification to opponents of bicycling. When bike lanes are done poorly, rather than feeling inviting for anyone to ride as they should be, they are still mostly populated with the same hard core riders that would exist regardless of whether bike lanes were there. As well as for the most part being underutilized for the real estate they take up. When drivers who despise cyclists see bike lanes with a low traffic flow, some cyclists still riding on the sidewalk anyways, and some cyclists trying to avoid doors hovering at the line or just outside the bike lane (in their way as they see it), it paints a picture that justifies seeing cyclists as second class citizens of the roadway.
An experience that left an impression on me of what is wrong with our bike routes, is when my wife's parents visited from Indiana and we all went out together by bike to a restaurant at the border of Santa Monica and Brentwood. The entire route was all class II bike routes for the whole trip, and being led by Meghan and my self, both highly experienced cyclists. My father in law said later, he was pretty terrified at first, but once he adopted a fatalistic attitude he became a lot more comfortable with the ride. Meghan's mom I think had an easier time with the experience since she was on the back of our tandem with me in the drivers seat, so she didn't have to think about the traffic mess, but simply trust that I knew what I was doing.
Feeling as though one must adopt a fatalistic attitude to ride is not how someone should feel riding on what should be the best cycling routes the city offers. Bike Date hasn't been blogging as much lately, but his heartfelt posts about his concern for safety with his kids in tow with the poor design of Santa Monica bike lanes, highlight so clearly what is wrong here. As an individual cyclist he feels fine controlling a vehicle lane when necessary to avoid doors and such, but when he is slower and wider with a kids trailer on the back, he doesn't feel comfortable chancing being rear ended with kids back there. If a bike route doesn't feel safe to have kids with you, or your parents are nearly given a heart attack riding, than our bicycling infrastructure is quite simply a failure.
So I urge that as soon as possible, Santa Monica begin the process of updating it's Bicycle Master plan, so we can finally move past thinking that is 15 years out of date, and finally accept bicycling as a real transportation choice in this city. LUCE has been passed, the years spent waiting for it can't be the excuse anymore. The citizens of Santa Monica have bikes, they want to ride them, and want to feel safe doing so, and know that their bike won't be stolen when they get back from their errand.


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Cowboys Third Rounder DeMarco Murray Is Ready For Prime Time
The Dallas Cowboys drafted running back DeMarco Murray in the third round of the this year's draft. I was surprised and pleased.
DeMarco attended the University of Oklahoma. In his first game in 2007 he rushed for 201 yards and five touchdowns. He became the first player to score four touchdowns in a half in his Soomer debut. He also entered the OU record book when he had a touchdown run of 92 yards. Let me put it this way, he tied Adrian Peterson's freshman touchdown record in 2007 with 15, that should sum up how talented this young man is.
- All-Time Leader in Points scored (390)
- All-Time Leader in Touchdowns (65)
- All-Time Leader in All Purpose Yards (6,718)
- All-Time Leader in Receiving Yards for a Running Back ( 1,571)
Most importantly with no fumbles!
He said in a recent interview, "I also got to see Adrian Peterson for a year there. And he demonstrated how hard he worked – even when he wasn't getting the ball. It's just about hard work and that mind-set of competing"
DeMarco grew up being a Dallas Cowboy fan. He was born February 12, 1988 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Murray attended Bishop Gorman High School, where he was an all-conference pick three consecutive years. While he played at Grandview his team was 3-time Conference Champions. DeMarco earned All-state honors and Sunset Region Offensive Player of the Year award. He was considered on of the top running backs in his class.
"Everyone overthinks it sometimes or at some point or another. You just have to relax, slow down and let the game come to you. You have to trust your eyes. Your eyes won't lie to you. Trust your eyes; trust your keys and trust your technique and it all takes care of itself. The more reps you get can also helps. But for me it's film that helps me the most. Even mental reps can help you see others' mistakes so you don't make them."
Sounds to me like DeMarco does his homework and will give 100 percent to the team.
When asked about injuries he replied:.
" Some say you use your thighs or hamstrings more because your knee hurts. I just think it's all a part of God's plan. We have no control over injuries. Its just part of life; you can walk down the street and twist your ankle. I'm just blessed to have had the career I've had. "
When asked what he learned most playing in college:
" That playing the position of running back is not just about running with the football. You have to be able to protect the quarterback. That's one of the biggest things that was coached at Oklahoma and we worked on it all year as well as catching the football. You want to be an every-down back and not just a first-, second- or third-down back. You want to be a player that the coaches have trust in you to carry the ball as well as catch and block. I just continue to work hard and take pride in blocking for the quarterback and catching the ball."
The Dallas Cowboys signed Murray on July 29th to a four-year contract worth $2.97 million including signing bonus worth $622,000.
We wish the best of luck to DeMarco and I know he will be a asset to the Cowboys!


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Over at PSX-Scene, member lousyphreak had announced a couple of days ago about his current work on porting the ScummVM emulator to the PlayStation 3 console. For anyone that does not have a clue on what ScummVM is, take a look at this site here: scummvm.org. It has a ton of info on what ScummVm is and does. But basically:
ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed!
A quote from the man himself:
Hi, I am currently working on a ScummVM port for the PS3, much of it already works, but there are still some points which need fixing. The Source is located at lousyphreak's scummvm-ps3 at ps3 - GitHub it builds with the leaked 1.92 SDK, no .pkg yet, it needs to be launched via the homebrew mode of Gaia Manager (the only one i tested it with)
What works:
1.) most of it
What doesn't:
I have only tried a handful of games, this list is by far not complete.
1.) You will get corrupted palettes in most games (corruption is usually just minor)
2.) Beneath a Steel Sky crashes during the intro
3.) Many scumm games crash when showing the overlay (Start button)
4.) in some games the cursor has no transparent colors
5.) slowdowns may occur
6.) MT32 emu shows problems at least in MI2
Source Code: Github
Source: PSX-Scene
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Engineering and IT teams are using MATLAB to build today's advanced Big Data Analytics systems ranging from predictive maintenance and telematics to advanced driver assistance systems and sensor analytics. Teams select MATLAB because it offers essential capabilities not found in business intelligence systems or open source languages:
Physical-world data: MATLAB has native support for sensor, image, video, telemetry, binary, and other real-time formats. Explore this data using MATLAB MapReduce functionality for Hadoop, and by connecting interfaces to ODBC/JDBC databases.
Machine learning, neural networks, statistics, and beyond: MATLAB offers a full set of statistics and machine learning functionality, plus advanced methods such as nonlinear optimization, system identification, and thousands of prebuilt algorithms for image and video processing, financial modeling, control system design.
High speed processing of large data sets. MATLAB's numeric routines scale directly to parallel processing on clusters and cloud.
Online and real-time deployment: MATLAB integrates into enterprise systems, clusters, and clouds, and can be targeted to real-time embedded hardware.
"No matter what industry our client is in, and no matter what data they ask us to analyze - text, audio, images, or video - MATLAB code enables us to provide clear results faster."Dr. G. Subrahamanya VRK Rao, Cognizant
Accessing and Exploring Data
The first step in performing data analytics is to access the wealth of available data to explore patterns and develop deeper insights. From a single integrated environment, MATLAB helps you access data from a wide variety of sources and formats including:
- Databases (ODBC-compliant and JDBC-compliant), data warehouses, and distributed file systems (Hadoop)
- Financial data servers to access live and historical market data
- Internet of Things devices
- OPC servers to access live and historical industrial plant data
- File I/O including text, spreadsheet, XML, CDF/HDF, image, audio, video, geospatial, and web content
Preprocessing and Data Munging
When working with data from numerous sources and repositories, engineers and scientists need to preprocess and prepare data before developing predictive models. For example, data might have missing values or erroneous values, or it might use different timestamp formats. MATLAB helps you simplify what might otherwise be time-consuming tasks such as:
- Cleaning data that has errors, outliers, or duplicates
- Handling missing data with discarding, filtering, or imputation
- Removing noise from sensor data with advanced signal processing techniques
- Merging and time-aligning data with different sample rates
- Feature selection to reduce high-dimension data to improve model predictive power
- Feature extraction and transformation for dimensionality reduction
- Domain analysis such as signal, image, text, and video processing
Developing Predictive Models
Prototype and build predictive models directly from data to forecast and predict the probabilities of future outcomes. You can compare machine learning approaches such as logistic regression, classification trees, support vector machines, and ensemble methods, and use model refinement and reduction tools to create an accurate model that best captures the predictive power of your data. Use flexible tools for processing financial, signal, image, video, and mapping data to create analytics for a variety of fields within the same development environment.
Integrating Analytics with Systems
Integrate analytics developed in MATLAB into production IT environments (23:19) without having to recode or create custom infrastructure. MATLAB analytics can be packaged as deployable components compatible with a wide range of development environments such as Java, Microsoft .NET, Excel, Python, and C/C++. You can share standalone MATLAB applications or run MATLAB analytics as a part of web, database, desktop, and enterprise applications. For low latency and scalable production applications, you can manage MATLAB analytics running as a centralized service that is callable from many diverse applications.


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|Kappel Cousins
I took advantage of the recent sale at Family Tree DNA to order an autosomal DNA test. This test generally does not track as far back generation wise as the Y and Mt DNA tests. It can, however, on occasion capture a distant relationship. The reason for this is Autosomal DNA is non sex linked DNA which is divided into smaller and smaller segments as it is passed down in the family. Everyone inherits half of their parents DNA. This half can be scrambled in any way. So siblings would inherit different segments. We all have small fragments passed down from previous generations. As DNA is passed from generation to generation many segments are lost. So traces of our earliest ancestors can no long be found in our DNA. This test is very accurate going back 3 generations, and occasionally there is a small fragment which can lead us back to 5 generations and little beyond.
|Forgey Cousins
Now it's just a waiting game. I went into the site and provided them with all the info I know about my ancestors in the form of a gedcom file. They also wanted to know the name of my earliest male ancestor on my father's side and the earliest female on my mother's side. They are Andreas Koppel b. 1780 and Elena Gracia who I have no additional info on.
The fact I don't have any stats for my Great-Grandmother Elena points up the problem with several lines. Loss of records and the inability to gain access to records in Nicaragua has created a brickwall nearly impossible to breakdown. I also have a difficult brickwall for my Great-Grandmother Helen Mullen-Mason in Ireland due to record losses. DNA may be the only way to scale these brickwalls.
Another problem on my father's Kappel side is loss of contact with most of his uncles, aunts and cousins. This has left a serious gap in my knowledge of that family which has been a complete mystery to me since childhood. I had heard many stories about my mother's family, but few about the Kappel family in Chicago. I had wondered whether the family was Jewish? I had heard this talked about at my childhood at family gatherings. We were Catholic so the Jewish side was mysterious to me and I wanted to know more about them. There seemed to be a complete backing away from this side of the family due to possible Jewish origins. The sad history of the Jewish people causes many to turn their backs on Jewish heritage in their family. It's too painful for some to deal with. I didn't want to turn my back on this possibility. I wanted to know how the Holocaust may have affected our family in Austria? I was not able to get any answers until recently. I am hoping my DNA test will lead me to a greater understanding of the origins of this side of my family. I have no pictures of my Kappel Great-Grandparents and would like to make contact with a cousin who might have some? Above is a chart showing my current knowledge regarding cousins in this line. As you can see there were 11 children and I only have data for a few. Contrast that with my Forgey family where my knowledge is complete. Even more striking is the nearly complete lack of any knowledge for my grandmother's family owing to the near impossibility of getting anything from Nicaragua, and my young when my grandmother died.
So this DNA test has the potential to expand my family history in many ways. My ethnic breakdown will be as interesting as finding new cousins.


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Node.js® Enterprise Support
New comprehensive plans availableLearn More
Thank you for contacting us. We will get back to you shortly.
March 28, 2013 - by Hannah Simon
A lot has changed since James Simpson, CEO of GoldFire Studios, first started a gaming company ten years ago at age 14. The world of programming, design and business looks and feels differently, especially with the rise of social networks. So when GoldFire Studios took off in 2008, he began looking for innovative ways to shape how people interact with each other through social games.
After launching successful games like PokerRPG and BC Wars, James began developing the GoldFire Network in the fall of 2011 and it just recently launched to the public. The GoldFire Network was built so that games could put community and true social interactions first; you can read more about their mission here.
Specializing in browser-based, real-time multiplayer games means that GoldFire Studios had to choose a high-performance cloud provider and partner. GoldFire Studios had been using dedicated servers, but after meeting some Joyent representatives at the Game Developers Conference in the Fall of 2011, James decided to switch to the Joyent Cloud. The deciding factors? Low latency at scale, transparency and expert support.
"Joyent is the perfect fit for GoldFire Studios because of scalability and performance," said James. "With the kind of games we're building, the load varies pretty dramatically throughout the day, and we're able to use Joyent to scale that up and down in real-time, which is something we hadn't seen with other cloud providers."
The move from dedicated servers to Joyent was "extremely smooth" for GoldFire Studios, without any downtime or other issues, thanks to Joyent's expert and always available support team. And it was cost-effective, too. GoldFire Studios saw their hosting costs lowered by about 60-65%.
"For a while, we ran dedicated servers as extra capacity that were mostly idle. But with Joyent, we can just use the resources we need, which cuts costs quite a bit," James said.
Delivering the best user experience is critical to the success of GoldFire Studios, and they're differentiating themselves from other platforms by using cutting edge technologies like HTML5, Node.js and MongoDB to develop their games, including their newest title CasinoRPG.


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Bioanalytical Services
WuXi AppTec offers comprehensive and FDA/OECD/SFDA GLP-compliant bioanalysis services to support preclinical and clinical development for small molecule drugs, biologics, vaccines and PD biomarkers.
- GLP facility established in 2005 with over 180 experienced scientists
- Data accepted by worldwide health authorities
- Strong logistical support for receiving material and biological samples sent from anywhere in the world
- Selected as preferred vendor for 6 of the top 20 international pharmaceutical companies
- Validated Watson 7.2 LIMS for sample and data management
- Operation in Philadelphia and Shanghai for global support
- US FDA inspected and SFDA/OCED member GLP-certified
- State-of-the-Art Equipment
- LC/MS/MS Method Development &Validation
- Immunoassay Method Development &Validation
- Small Molecule Drug Sample Analysis
- Peptide & Protein Drug Analysis
- Synthesis of Reference Standard & Stable Labeled Internal Standards
- Biomarkers
- Vaccine
- Immunogenicity
State-of-the-Art Equipment
- Gyrolab XP
- MSD Sector Imager 6000
- Luminex 200
- MoleculeDevices M2/M5 reader
- AB Sciex API 5000 Q Trap/Waters Xevo G2 QTOF
- Waters UPLC/Agilent HPLC/Shimadzu HPLC/Leap CTC autosampler
- Tecan EVO automated ELISA workstation
- Hamilton Microlab Star workstation
LC/MS/MS Method Development &Validation
- Development/transfer and optimization of methods for quantitation of drug substances in biological matrices
- Over hundreds of nonproprietary method validated and available for use
- Quick validation in Philadelphia lab to support a potential study
Immunoassay Method Development &Validation
- Immunogen preparation
- Antibody production and labeling (ABGENT – US; WuXi Biology Department - China)
- Assay development/transfer and validation
Small Molecule Drug Sample Analysis
Study Support Capabilities:
- Clinical trials conducted in any countries around the world
- GLP pre-clinical studies
- Generic BE trials
Peptide &Protein Drug Analysis
Study Support Capabilities:
- Immunoassay and LC/MS/MS
- GLP pre-clinical studies and global clinical studies
- BE trials
Synthesis of Reference Standard & Stable Labeled Internal Standards
WuXi's internal chemistry and radio-synthesis lab allow us to offer the advantage of in-house synthesis of reference standards and internal standards with rapid turnaround time and lower cost.
- Clinical Chemistry
- Soluble Biomarkers
- Histology/Immunology
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Vaccine Analysis
- Multi-valent vaccine assay
- Multi-serotypes antibody assay
- High through-put automation
- Screening assay
- Confirmatory assay
- Titration assay
- Cell-based neutralizing antibody detection
Please contact us for more information at
firstname.lastname@example.com (US operation)
email@example.com (China Operation)


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Mental health civil rights
By 1872 the hospital had become overcrowded. According to its designer, Dr. Kirkbride, 250 patients constituted the maximum capacity for a moral therapy insane hospital. There were now 300, and thirty new patients were added in the next year. Dr. Bryce suggested in a speech to the Medical Association that a new hospital be built in another section of the state. This suggestion was not acted upon, and from this point onwards, Dr. Bryce and his successors were faced with overcrowding.
That same year on August 14th, Dr. Bryce died of Bright's disease and, at his request, was buried on the south lawn of the hospital. At her death, his wife Ellen Peter-Bryce was buried beside him. On October 6th Dr. James Searcy, Chairman of the Board of Trustees became the second superintendent. The hospital was terribly overcrowded with a patient population of 1,148.
The state legislature established the "Alabama Home for Mental Defectives" in 1919. That same year Dr. William Dempsey Partlow was named superintendent of all state hospitals.
In 1922 the "Alabama Home for Mental Defectives," later renamed Partlow State School in 1927, was completed. While laws had been in effect for years forbidding Bryce and Searcy hospitals from receiving feeble minded patients, Dr. Bryce and Dr. Searcy had both described the hospitals as "dumping grounds" for the senile, the feeble minded and the paupers from all over the state. The establishment of the "Alabama Home" helped remedy the situation at the insane hospitals.
In 1965 the state legislature passed a law creating the State Department of Mental Health with provisions for appointment of a commissioner and a central office to be located in Montgomery. Dr. Tarwater served as Acting Commissioner along with his duties as Superintendent of Bryce Hospital, Searcy Hospital, and Partlow State School until August 1968.
On April 13, 1972 the Wyatt v. Stickney Court Order established a patient's individual right to treatment. The court also established thirty-five standards for hospital compliance that would guarantee a patient's treatment and dignity in a humane environment.


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"My wife was always a hospital volunteer, a Blue Bird for over 10 years. She always raved about how rewarding she found it. In her memory, I have taken the same shift she worked in Escort transporting patients. Now I understand – first hand – exactly what she meant and why. I thoroughly enjoy the responsibilities and the camaraderie of our group. I also like the lunch!"
Lyman Smith


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**UPDATE: psst.. this workbook, video and ebook are now included when you sign up for the roost tribe full-acess membership!
today i am so excited to share with you a project that has been long in the works. we all know that it's important to accurately describe the items we sell online, but did you know that it's also important to tell a story through your product descriptions? it engages your customers, draws them in and helps them connect with both you and your product. here to help us write killer product descriptions that support our brand story is brittany campbell.
if you happen to recall the interview i did with etsy a while back on how to pitch to bloggers, you might remember that i talked a lot about how much i admired brittany campbell's ability to write amazing product descriptions for her shop, the home ground.
i''m so happy that brittany agreed to come share with us about how to write amazing product descriptions through this engaging interview, printable and thought provoking workbook. to begin, check out the interview above (it's about 25 minutes) to get an in depth look at why it's important to engage with your customers, how to tell a story through your products and how to go about getting started.
to accompany this interview, we've also put together a little checklist for you! just click on the image above to download the pdf. it's the perfect size to keep at your workspace and will serve as a great reminder as you sit down to write your descriptions.
want to learn even more?
finally, for those of you who'd like a more in depth look at this topic, i'm thrilled to be offering this 14 page interactive e-book to the roost tribe! it takes an in depth look at how to write engaging product descriptions and provides a 10 step fail-proof process to mastering the art of telling your brand story through your descriptions. with writing prompts and a place to jot down your ideas and thoughts, it's a must have for any seller, regardless of whether it's on etsy, big cartel or an independent website.
this e-book will be sent out this friday, october 26th to the roost tribe. you can find out more information and learn how to join here!


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August 31, 2010
The Dodd-Frank Act permits the SEC to require that all broker-dealers be held to the same legal fiduciary requirement investment advisers have when providing advice to clients. Should the SEC choose to use that authority, the fiduciary duty as defined by the Dodd-Frank Act would require that all broker-dealers be held to a legal and vaguely defined standard "to act in the best interest of the customer without regard to the financial or other interest of the broker, dealer, or investment adviser providing the advice."
While NAIFA members believe they are already acting in the "best interest" of their clients, the Act does not define what the rules are for compliance with a legal "best interest" standard - thus subjecting registered representatives to the potential of never ending lawsuits. For example, is "best" the cheapest recommended product? The "best" premium relative to the benefit of the product? The product with the "best" historic underwriting and service standards? Is it the one from the carrier with the "best" rating? The fiduciary standard in essence adds a vague legal liability standard that looks back (sometimes after many years) and is enforced after the fact by the SEC or trial lawyers who have perfect vision in hindsight.


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From a 21 Feb. 2007 press release:
The new semi-annual study from Bridge Ratings & Research indicates the number of monthly Internet radio* listeners nationwide has jumped 26% over last year and has increased to 72 million monthly listeners from 45 million at the end of 2005. ¶ In 2005, weekly Internet radio listening was at 15% of the U.S. population 12 and over. This new study shows that as of January 2007 that figure increased 26% to 19% of all persons 12 and older. This translates to 57 million listening to Internet Radio on a weekly basis. See latest digital projections. ¶ Last year's study revealed that 16% of those on-line had listened to an AM/FM simulcast on the Internet. This study, completed in January 2007 with a sample of 3000 persons 12+, showed 21% having had listened to an AM/FM simulcast in the last 30 days. ...
Link: Bridge Ratings. By way of comparison, on a weekly basis, the number of Internet radio listeners is roughly double the number of NPR listeners.
Updated 1 Mar. 2007: Fixed link under "See latest projections" above. --Dennis


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2013 Holiday Gift Guide for Pet Lovers
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Pet lovers are their own special breed! Cater to their fancies with these gifts designed for pets and the people who care for them.
By the Editors of Traditional Home
Produced by Lucy Fitzgerald and Julianne Hilmes
The Cat Scratcher Lounge Deluxe pulls double duty as a sweet nap spot as well as a scratcher. Perfect for kitties who love to climb and scratch on furniture–now you can give them their own! Made from cardboard in a stylish design, the Lounger will take a beating (or scratching) while still looking chic next to human furniture. $49.95 from Wayfair.
Don't miss our other gift guides:
All photos courtesy of the retailer unless otherwise noted.
Paw Print Stocking
Hand-felted from earth-friendly products, the Bo Stocking was created for the Obama family's first Christmas in the White House. $76 from Arcadia Home.
Doggy Bow Tie
Make Fido the most dapper dog on the block with this Tweed bow tie. Made to slip over your dog's collar, each tie is made from quality suiting fabric. $39.95 by Best in Park, available from RedEnvelope.
Stylish Dining Bowls
Your dog's dining bowl gets a chic upgrade with the Metallic Dipper Bowl. In gold or silver, the metallic bowls come in sizes for large or small dogs. Also available in an array of solid colors. Starting at $18 from Waggo.
Gold Breed Necklace
Wear your love for your favorite dog with the Gold Dog Necklace from Olive & Cocoa, $124. Available in Labrador, Dachshund, or French Bulldog, it's sure to get tails wagging in no time.
Canine Lounger
For the pooch who has everything, the Refined Canine Outdoor Dog Chaise Lounge allows pups to relax in the shade while taking in the outdoors. $224.99 from AllModern.com.
Distinguished Leather Collars
For your refined four-legged friends, give them the Best in Park Distinguished Collar. Made from high-quality leather with a custom-engraved brass nameplate, it is available for $89.99 from Red Envelope.
See matching leads on the following slide.
Sophisticated Leather Leashes
A stylish leather lead in classic black and chestnut looks striking on your daily walks. $89.95 by Best in Park, available from RedEnvelope.
Heated Kitty House
Purrfect for the outdoor cat, this waterproof Kitty A-Frame Cat House from K&H Manufacturing is heated and features two exits so your pet can't be trapped by predators. $94.02 from Amazon.com.
Black-and-White Poodle Apron
In a striking black-and-white pattern, the ultra-feminine Pleated Poodle Apron is a must-have for poodle lovers who spend time in the kitchen. $32 from Anthropologie.
Kitty Food and Water Bowls
These dainty dishes are just for cats! Designed by Miriam Mirri, the Tigrito Cat Bowl features a playful kitty sculpture that supports two removable stainless-steel inserts. $65 from AllModern.com.
Stylish Pooch Pouch
The Messenger Pooch Pouch by PetEgo is a cute and accommodating way to travel with your tiny friend. Supporting dogs up to 13 pounds, the velvety pouch features a safety leash hooked to the inside that snaps onto your dog's collar. A customizable zip ensures that pooches of all sizes fit comfortably. $40 from AllModern.com.
Faux-Leather Bone Frame
Available in twelve colors, this eco-friendly faux-leather bone frame is perfect for displaying portraits of your favorite pets. Fits a 2x3-inch photo. $20 from Arcadia Home.
Chic Litter Box Enclosure
This swanky litter box enclosure by Designer Pet Products hides unattractive sights and smells while giving your kitty a little privacy. Its elevated opening prevents litter from being kicked out onto the floor. $144.95 from AllModern.com.
Dachshund Dishtowels
Share your puppy love in the kitchen with these sweet dish towels, $22, from Anthropologie. Also available in horses, the darling prints are machine washable.
Cozy Fold-Over Kitty Bed
Kitty keeps cozy in the Hide-a-Way Cat Bed from Doctors Foster and Smith. The catnip-treated bed is generously stuffed with an attached blanket. Starting at $33.49.


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My intrigue in Koren brands is growing and I've decided its time to sort my oily/stupidly try skin out.
is a Korean brand I have found through – well, Ebay, and their skin care range is supposed to be bootiful – well have you seen a Korean girl with bad skin (don't answer that, its a hypothetical question).
Anyway there was the Black Sesame mask, deep cleansing – I love black sesame:
Banana which is a hydrating cream mask:
There is also Honey and Royal Jelly, and Cucumber for the less adventurous.
Then I noticed another flavour…
yes thats right. CHEESE! Cheese flavoured face mask! Can this be real! What kind of cheese is it? Cos god knows Wensleydale smells like heaven compared to Stinking Bishop…
I had to choose one.
Which one did I get?
You have to guess –
a. Banana
b. Black Sesame
c. Cheese
d. All of the above
e. None of the above, you bought a thong instead
The winner gets 50g of stinking bishop wrapped is luxury cellophane!