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California olive oil is a tough sell. As made in the wine country north of San Francisco, it's in the Tuscan style, meaning pungent and bitter. Even cooks and eaters who have come to prize these qualities—who realize that both mean freshness, and that both are considered positive attributes—often balk at the Tuscan-style price, choosing instead a Spanish or a moderately priced Italian oil. Why pay so much for locally made oil?
One answer to my question presented itself beside a row of olive trees on the high hillsides of McEvoy Ranch, in Marin County near the border with Sonoma, an especially beautiful part of a famously beautiful area. It was early November, just as the harvest was getting under way, and the orchards were in a mild frenzy; the farm workers were checking trees every day to decide when to start picking. Following the suggestion of Shari DeJoseph, the orchard manager, I picked an olive, crushed it between my fingers, and rubbed the oil, juice, and reddish-green pulp over the back of my hand. The fragrance was grassy and fresh but rich, too. The oil and pulp felt marvelously emollient on my hands, and also a bit sticky from the sugars that fresh olives contain, along with the very bitter substances that surprise first-time pickers who pop the berrylike fruit into their mouths. I licked off a bit of the oil (I like bitterness). This incomparable freshness is the best reason to buy California oil, and you'll be supporting an industry that after a decade of baby steps is taking its first strides.
The arrival of these very trees—now taller than I, with pert, tiny, glinting silver-green leaves and firm fruit almost ready to be picked—had been foretold in the early nineties, when I visited Tuscany's poshest olive-oil consultant, Maurizio Castelli, at one of the grand wineries he worked with. Castelli was instructing me on the olive varieties and harvesting methods that produce Tuscan oil's characteristic rasping catch in the back of the throat, often heralded by an emerald-green tinge to the familiar gold. The Tuscan style of oil—powerfully fruity, challenging, and a bit rough—was then all the rage, and Tuscany was pushing Provence off the map of Edens for the well-heeled (could it be incidental that Provençal oil is mild and smooth?). Proponents of the Mediterranean diet were urging people to look for that bright green, which indicates the presence of chlorophyll and other artery-clearing antioxidants. If olives were part of the beautiful life of Tuscan winemakers, why shouldn't Californians in their own paradise plant olives where grapes grew?
Castelli guided me through a tasting he had carefully designed to show peppery Tuscan oils to maximum advantage, and to make me see non-green oils as dull, flaccid, and wimpy. At the end he told me he was very excited about one forward-looking Californian: "We've sent a woman in San Francisco a lot of plants, and we'll go over and produce oil for her." Tuscan oil made right in California, he said, would be the breakthrough that would educate American palates acculturated to wan, rancid oil.
The Californian was Nan McEvoy, a San Francisco newspaperwoman looking for her next adventure. The land on the Marin ranch she had bought was restricted to agricultural use. Rather than buy more of the cows the previous owners had grazed on the hillsides, she thought of the Tuscan oils she had long loved, and ordered olive trees of the varieties Castelli recommended. She installed a crushing-and-processing mill right on the property: ideally, olives should be pressed immediately after being picked, before they can oxidize and begin to turn rancid.
Other landowners were trying to revive California's flagging industry, which began producing oil in the 1870s but had long ago turned mostly to curing and canning table olives. The chief exponents of Tuscan oil were McEvoy and Ridgely Evers. At the same time that McEvoy's trees were arriving in containers from Italian nurseries, Evers, who had done quite well as a software developer, was planting Tuscan varieties at DaVero, his property an hour or so north in Healdsburg, a Sonoma County town that was then still free of the Italianate gloss of Napa County. (It has since succumbed. Clothing and ceramics boutiques and gourmet markets outnumber the seventies-vintage general stores and barbershops that long persisted in Healdsburg's main square. But a few of its businesses are independent and even funky. You can still get what might be the country's best-made cappuccino at the Flying Goat, and my favorite muffin—really a cake doughnut, baked rather than fried—at the Downtown Bakery and Creamery.)
Planting and pressing olives requires very deep pockets. Several of the high-level hobbyists whose oils I tasted and admired in the first wave of the olive-oil revival (including my favorite of the time, Harrison Vineyards) have either gone out of business or gone back to growing the grapes they'd grown before. The industry is changing hands, from well-to-do dreamers with vision and taste to businesspeople intent on making oil pay.
I heard more about the economics when I joined the annual pick-your-own fest at DaVero, where dozens of guests meet on a November Sunday to strap on plastic buckets and try to fill them with olives. I was of course laughably slow compared with professional pickers, but even they can go only so fast. Unless trees are spaced and pruned to be mechanically harvested, as Colleen McGlynn, Evers's wife and partner, explained while we searched branches for hidden fruit, labor costs are prohibitive anywhere in this country. DaVero does not use machines to shake the trees, as many European growers do; the most mechanical help its crews get comes from vibrating combs on long broom handles, which they use to rake fruit off the branches and onto tarps spread on the ground. A pro working as we did would presumably fill a half-gallon bucket—the size we amateurs were using—in a fraction of the forty-five minutes it took me and two visiting San Francisco chefs to fill ours. (The buckets were a bit of Marie Antoinette milkmaidery; pros empty the tarps into big plastic crates.) Our forty-five minutes of labor would result at best, McGlynn estimated, in a tablespoon of oil.
To make us feel better, she pointed out the differences between picking olives and picking grapes. Olives are picked singly, grapes in bunches; in one day a crew of a dozen or so workers can pick three tons of olives, but just one worker can harvest two and a half tons of grapes. "The return on grapes is sooo much better," McGlynn said. "Why do you think Sonoma and Napa are planted in grapes? The minute they don't pay for themselves, a house goes up." And any oil producer must face the consumption discrepancy between wine and oil. People often pay $35 to $40 for a bottle of wine and then finish it in an evening. The same buyers will balk at spending the same amount for a bottle of oil—one it would take them several months to finish. "It's very, very hard to make money on olives," McGlynn said, sighing. "Maybe someday."
Nonetheless, membership in the California Olive Oil Council has expanded from barely two dozen ten years ago to 350, as Albert Katz, one of the first sellers of California oil and now a producer himself, pointed out in a recent conversation. (The council uses international standards to certify oil as extra-virgin—a designation that guarantees careful processing and the absence of defects more than it guarantees flavor. The term as yet has no legal meaning here, but the council has petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to define it.) The new producers expect to break even—and are learning from the previous generation's experience. The first lesson is to avoid wine country, where land often costs $20,000 to $30,000 an acre. Small producers like Katz are also leasing instead of buying land, keeping down production costs, and focusing their marketing efforts. Several large producers have consolidated, hoping to find economies of scale. The largest—California Olive Ranch, in the Central Valley—has adopted a Spanish system (the owners are Spanish) of trellised trees for easy mechanical harvesting.
Katz told me that next year the state's output will most likely surpass that of France. "Yes, they aren't one of the biggest producers," he said. "But we never thought we'd be a player." (Spain, Italy, and Greece are the world's largest producers, followed by Tunisia, whose oil is often bottled in other countries and labeled as if it had been made there—something unscrupulous Californians have been caught doing too. Chile and New Zealand are the news in quality oil. As for bulk oil, the word in California is that China has planted 1.5 million trees, and though even California has almost double that number, any move the Chinese make worries the rest of the world.) Katz points to California Olive Ranch as an example of a California producer aiming to compete on the world market. "You can get a half liter at Trader Joe's for five dollars," he said. "And that's decent oil! It's certainly better than ninety-nine percent of imports, which probably aren't extra-virgin anyway. Ten years ago you couldn't have found a half liter of California oil for fifteen dollars."
Tastes have changed too. Tuscany will ever be popular, and the green antioxidant polyphenols that Tuscan-style oils contain will probably be found year by year to be yet more healthful. But even if they are lower in antioxidants, the milder, golden oils that traditional California table olives produce are perfectly good too—especially if the olives are harvested earlier and more carefully, as Tuscan producers have shown longtime California producers how to do. Regions with climates warmer than Tuscany's, such as Puglia and Sicily, can pick much later, and historically they have, because riper olives produce more oil. For the same reason, growers in California's Central Valley, which has a warmer climate than Sonoma or Napa, historically picked late too. But earlier harvest makes for a brighter-tasting oil, even with varieties that will never have that Tuscan pungency.
"The American consumer prefers oils that are not bitter or pungent," says Darrell Corti, of Corti Brothers, in Sacramento, an authority on all foods and wines, especially those of California and Italy. He points out that after years of Tuscan experimentation, Californians interested in Italian olives are turning to southern varieties that might be better suited to the dry local climates (it rains in summer in Tuscany). As McEvoy Ranch and DaVero continue to take on Tuscany, fine-tuning vividly flavored "finishing" oils that are best drizzled on salads or thick soups (or, as Shari DeJoseph recommends, fried and poached eggs), other Californians are taking on much of the rest of Europe—and potentially satisfying the many Americans who like soft, easy oils.
Freshness, and a dash of patriotism, will sell California oil. So will the greatly improved overall quality I found on my recent trip, in a wide variety of styles and prices. But nothing sells oil better than olio nuovo, "new oil," and now is the time to order the last of this season's. As much a sauce as an oil, olio nuovo is unfiltered and contains bits of crushed fruit. It is irresistible on rustic bread that has been toasted and rubbed with a cut garlic clove to make the Tuscan fettunta, a celebratory seasonal snack. The flavors of olio nuovo are so lively and changeable that Ridgely Evers compares it to a teenager.
That freshness means volatility, so olio nuovo should be used fast—by the first flowering of spring, when the season's full-fledged oil, filtered and allowed to settle for a few months, appears. By that time the sediment in olio nuovo will have begun to oxidize in a dark pool at the bottom of the bottle, and the oil will become rancid. Some producers resist selling olio nuovo for fear that customers will open a bottle after May and wonder what went wrong. But a number of the state's most notable producers take the risk, and it's worth calling (see box) to see who still has some available. Olio nuovo is like an instant snapshot of the season's oil; the first of the season's oil is like a fresh finished portrait. I plan to order bottles of each kind from DaVero: I intend to taste that tablespoon I picked.
Suggestions for keeping it all Californian
On the theory that things that grow together taste good together, I asked Darrell Corti what wine would go well with a dish that features olive oil prominently—say, braised fennel with lemon and chicken stock, a dish that always brightens my winters, from the recipe in Barbara Kafka's encyclopedic new Vegetable Love, a book rich in olive-oil suggestions.
Corti recommended one from the foothills of the Sierras in the San Joaquin Valley, near olive orchards: President's Reserve Primitivo, made from the grape that is the genetic ancestor of Zinfandel. The name refers to the president of California State University at Fresno, the only four-year university with a commercial winery that operates as a teaching laboratory. Unlike the better-known teaching winery at the University of California at Davis, Fresno can sell its wine—which is made entirely by (supervised) students. They're doing well in their studies, as both Corti and Ken Fugelsang, a professor and the Fresno "winemaster," told me recently. The Primitivo won best of class in the Italian-varietals division of the 2002 LA County Fair, whose prizes carry weight for both wine and olive oil.
Fugelsang describes Primitivo as a subtler, better-integrated version of the familiar, powerfully fruity California Zinfandel. It's also much cheaper, at about $10 a bottle (call 559-278-9463 to order it). Corti also highly recommends Fresno's "magisterial" Barbera, a usually expensive Piedmontese wine that sells for only $13 a bottle. It would go well with the osso buco from Kafka's book—cooked, of course, with olive oil.
California Olive Ranch
Oroville, CA, 530-846-8000, www.californiaoliveranch.com. The state's largest producer, it uses mechanical harvesting to compete with bulk oils in price—and still guarantee freshness.
Healdsburg, CA, 888-431-8008, www.davero.com. Carefully made Tuscan-style oils from Sonoma, including practically the only tolerable flavored oil, pressed with Meyer lemons.
McEvoy Ranch
Petaluma, CA, 866-617-6779, www.mcevoyranch.com. Especially peppery Tuscan-style oil, pressed at perhaps the state's most sophisticated olive mill.
Nick Sciabica & Sons
Modesto, CA, 800-551-9612, www.sciabica.com. A San Joaquin Valley family firm that kept the olive-oil business alive almost single-handedly for decades, making mostly mild oils from traditional California varieties.
Berkeley, CA, 800-865-4836, www.stonehouseoliveoil.com. Central Valley oil made from mostly traditional California varieties; the "house oil" is blended to be smooth and mild but not dull.
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Caitlin Dorer
Class of 2006
Major/Minor: Biology
Cater Society Of Junior Fellows Research
My name is Caitlin (CJ) Dorer and I was able to explore Europe thanks to the Society of Junior Fellows. I traveled all over Austria, Italy and Germany tracing the roots of world-renowned composers like Mozart, Beethoven, and Vivaldi. I was also able to do an amazing cancer research internship in Italy. This past summer was absolutely amazing in many ways. The research that I did in Naples was so rewarding.
As a biology major, taking part in and creating procedures for cancer research was something that I never really thought was possible. I was able to work with and learn from a multidimensional group of scientists which will be an invaluable experience for my future as a researcher. As a music minor, being able to explore different composers cities was so wonderful. It really helped me get an idea of what inspired them to write such beautiful music. Hearing the music on the street corners of Venice, in the churches of Rome, in the concert halls of Salzburg, and going to an opera at La Scala still seems like it was part of a dream. It was definitely an exciting and unforgettable experience—a dream come true.

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DETROIT - Detroit Pastor Marvin Winans was carjacked Wednesday afternoon as he pumped gas in the city.
The robbery and carjacking happened just before 5 p.m. at a gas station near the intersection of Linwood and Davison.
Pastor Winans, of Perfecting Church, told Local 4 he went inside the gas station to pay when he noticed a group of young men hanging inside the store not buying anything. He said he thought it was strange, but he went about his business.
Once he went back to pump gas that's when he was jumped by at least four men.
Uncut: Winans discusses robbery, carjacking
Winans suffered several cuts and bruises to his face, hands and arms. His pants were also torn to shreds.
"I was on the ground and then they went to kicking me and trying to get the money out of my pocket," said Winans. "When I stood up I called on Jesus, I said 'Jesus', and they started running. I got up and my car was gone."
The attackers were able to steal his 2012 QX56 purple Infinity sedan and his wallet.
Winans said none of the attackers drew a weapon.
He said a passerby from his church stopped and helped him, taking him to his church.
Gallery: Vickie Winans Selling Belongings
Watch: Winans to preside over Whitney Houston's funeral
Read: Lifetime picks up Houston family reality show
Copyright 2012 by ClickOnDetroit.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Townsquare Media Shreveport-Bossier is Looking for Positive, Hard-Working Part-Time Employees
Are you willing to work hard on the ground floor to reach the penthouse? Have you ever dreamed of working in radio? Do you love creating compelling content for the web? If you answered 'yes' to these questions, then Townsquare Media Shreveport-Bossier wants you!
Joining the Townsquare Media Shreveport-Bossier team is a great opportunity to make some extra cash while learning from the very best. You'll get to see how some of the hottest DJs in the Ark-La-Tex do their thing, help create engaging multimedia content, learn the ins and outs of social media and more!
The hours are flexible and the perks are awesome. So what are you waiting for? Get your foot in the door at Townsquare Media Shreveport-Bossier today!
Email your resume to firstname.lastname@example.com, or come by 6341 Westport Ave, Shreveport, LA 71129 and fill out an application during normal business hours.


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It's important to get your cholesterol ("koh-LEHS-tuh-rahl") checked regularly. Too much cholesterol in your blood can cause a heart attack or a stroke.
The good news is that it's easy to get your cholesterol checked. If your cholesterol is high, you can take steps to lower it – like eating healthy, getting more physical activity, and taking medicine if your doctor recommends it.
The general recommendation is to get your cholesterol checked every 4 to 6 years. Some people may need to get their cholesterol checked more or less often depending on their risk for developing heart disease.
For example, high cholesterol can run in families. If someone in your family has high cholesterol or takes medicine to control their cholesterol, you might need to get tested more often. Talk to your doctor about what's best for you.
Cholesterol is a waxy substance (material) that's found naturally in your blood. Your body makes cholesterol and uses it to do important things, like making hormones and digesting fatty foods.
You also raise your cholesterol by eating foods like egg yolks, fatty meats, and cheese.
If you have too much cholesterol in your body, it can build up inside your blood vessels and make it hard for blood to flow through them. Over time, this can lead to heart disease and heart attack or stroke.
Most people who have high cholesterol don't have any signs or symptoms. That's why it's so important to get your cholesterol checked.
Your doctor will check your cholesterol levels with a blood test called a lipid profile. For this test, a nurse will take a small sample of blood from your finger or arm.
Be sure to ask your doctor how to get ready for the test. For example, you may need to fast (not eat or drink anything except water) for 9 to 12 hours before the test.
There are other blood tests that can check cholesterol, but a lipid profile gives the most information.
If you get a lipid profile test, the results will show 4 numbers. A lipid profile measures:
Total cholesterol is a measure of all the cholesterol in your blood. It's based on the LDL, HDL, and triglycerides numbers.
LDL cholesterol is the "bad" type of cholesterol that can block your arteries – so a lower level is better for you.
HDL cholesterol is the "good" type of cholesterol. It helps clear LDL cholesterol out of your arteries, so a higher level is better for you. Having a low HDL cholesterol level can increase your risk for heart disease.
Triglycerides are a type of fat in your blood that can increase your risk for heart attack and stroke.
LDL cholesterol levels tend to increase as people get older. Other causes of high LDL (bad) cholesterol levels include:
Causes of low HDL (good) cholesterol levels include:
As your LDL cholesterol gets higher, so does your risk of heart disease. Take these steps to lower your cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease:
Find out what your cholesterol levels are. If your cholesterol is high or you are at risk for heart disease, take steps to control your cholesterol levels.
Call your doctor's office or health center to schedule the test. Be sure to ask for a complete lipid profile – and find out what instructions you'll need to follow before the test. For example, you may need to fast (not eat or drink anything except water) for 9 to 12 hours before the test.
You may also want to print these questions to ask your doctor about cholesterol [PDF - 121 KB]and take them to your appointment.
Cholesterol testing is covered under the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform law passed in 2010. Depending on your insurance plan, you may be able to get your cholesterol checked at no cost to you. For more information about other services covered by the Affordable Care Act, visit HealthCare.gov.
Even if you don't have insurance, you can still get your cholesterol checked. To learn more, find a health center near you.
Remember to ask the doctor or nurse for your cholesterol levels each time you get your cholesterol checked. Write the levels down to keep track of your progress.
Making healthy changes to your diet can help lower your cholesterol. Try to:
You can also:
Getting active can help you lose weight, lower your LDL (bad) cholesterol, and raise your HDL (good) cholesterol. Aim for 2 hours and 30 minutes a week of moderate activity, such as:
Or aim for 1 hour and 15 minutes a week of vigorous activity, such as:
Get more tips on protecting your heart with physical activity [PDF - 426 KB].
Quitting smoking will help lower your cholesterol. If you smoke, make a plan to quit today. Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669) for free support and to set up your quit plan.
And if you don't smoke, don't start!
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Airlines Fly as Stocks Sink Following United Continental Upgraded
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The stock market is sinking today, but airline stocks like United Continental (UAL), Delta Air Lines (DAL) and American Airlines (AAL) have taken off.
Shares of United Continental have gained 0.4% to $44.53 at 3:11 p.m., while Delta Air Lines has risen 1.5% to $33.21, American Airlines has advanced 0.9% to $36.45 and Southwest Airlines (LUV) is up 0.8% at $23.36. The S&P 500 has dropped 0.6%.
Helping boost airline stocks today: Raymond James analysts Savanthi Syth and James Parker upgraded its stock to Outperform from Market Perform. They explain why:
We are upgrading [United Continental] to Outperform from Market Perform with a $52 target price due to its earnings leverage to robust industry trends, easing competitive pressure at its key hubs, and attractive valuation. Our 1Q14E EPS is lowered from $(0.60) to $(1.00) because of the negative impact of extreme winter weather, particularly at United's Chicago, Newark, and D.C. hubs. However, we believe investors will look beyond this and focus on strong industry demand, which has led to limited fare sales and two small fare increases in February. Moreover, we believe easing competitive pressure in its hubs should improve unit revenue performance beyond any success United may have in recalibrating its revenue management system. The stronger revenue outlook somewhat offsets the largely one-time weather-related impact in 1Q14.
Morgan Stanley's John Godyn and Nathan Hong, meanwhile, double down on their thesis that something is different with the airlines this time around:
At a high level, we continue to believe that we're in an airline bull market supported by two key pillars: (1) an airline macro goldilocks scenario based on the view that fuel prices are likely to trend flat to down while US GDP is upwardly biased favoring domestically levered companies, and (2) belief in the power of industry capacity discipline...With commentary suggesting continued capacity restraint, [American Airlines] M&A raising industry concentration further in '14 vs. '13 and an elevated but not onerous fuel backdrop tempering competitive pressure – these pillars are likely to remain intact for the foreseeable future. As such, the prospect of another year of margin expansion, balance sheet improvement, cash flow strength, and rising capital returns to shareholders – all amid relatively attractive valuations – reinforces our Attractive View on the industry
Shares of American Airlines have gained 45% so far this year, while United Continental has risen 18%, Delta Air Lines has advanced 21% and Southwest Airlines is up 24% in 2014.


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Politics & Government
Action urged to resume China shellfish trade
Washington state's congressional delegation and others are urging action by the U.S. to allow shellfish exports to resume to China.
The Chinese government announced Friday it would lift the five month-long ban on live shellfish from U.S. West Coast waters. But for trade to resume, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration must put in place new procedures to monitor and certify shellfish.
The ban affected geoducks and other bivalves from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and northern California.
A bipartisan group of legislators from those states urged NOAA in a letter Wednesday to swiftly finalize testing protocols. Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, Rep. Derek Kilmer and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler were among those who signed the letter.
The Associated Press


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New Dungeness Lighthouse
The New Dungeness Lighthouse is one of the oldest lighthouses in the Northwest and is one of the very few that allow families an opportunity to be Lighthouse Keepers for a week. It is located at the tip of the 5-mile long Dungeness Spit in Sequim, Washington. The Lighthouse has been in continuous operation, providing navigational aids to ships in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, since its completion in 1857.
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Its a place undefined in time, a location that no one would ever willingly travel to. Are we there yet? The answer is yes. But its going to take 7 to 8 years for the reality to sink in.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Government Intervention Is Not A Solution
This whole mess started with a housing boom. I remember back in 1998 selling real estate. We would prequalify buyers before we even showed them a house. If you didn't have a down payment, your quest for a home went no further. Later, the phrase "fog a mirror " became popular. When it all collapsed, government stepped in to keep the banks solvent.
As the housing boom took off, there was plenty of employment for everyone and the pay was good. The country was producing more homes than they could consume in 10 years. Everyone that wanted a home had one (or two), with the thought of buying another. Government gleefully raked in the additional taxes created by the economic boom.
Then the party stopped. How was government suppose to pick up the slack? There are no new additional taxes coming in. Tax payments into the government are decreasing and payments out are increasing.
The economic issues we face today stem from the previous mis-allocation of resources. We blindly built and financed too many homes in the name of greed. On top of that, Congress has turned a blind eye to the fiscal bubble created over time with entitlements. Common sense suggests that the debt crisis needs fixing now, but it always gets put off, until after the next election.
We have two real problems, unemployment which is the result of the housing crash. And we have an entitlement bubble that has lead to a crisis over the national debt. In order to stimulate job creation, we need to cut taxes. In order to cover entitlements, we need to raise taxes. If you can't do either, then it's time to print more money. Are we rich yet? As the gold bugs have pointed out, you can't print gold. If you are retired living on a fixed income, you'll come to find out that the government can't print food or medicine either.
So when you hear a politician say vote for me, I can create more jobs, he's not lying; if he wins, he gets a job. Ask yourself one question: Do we really need more government employees? Maybe if we cut government paychecks in half, the problem would solve itself. We could tolerate an inefficient bureaucracy better if we had to pay a lot less for it.
19 comments:
- Sackerson said...
Your style is getting really crisp!
"Voting for President is kind of like buying a washer and dryer and expecting the salesman to show up every Saturday to do your laundry." - Love that.
I think the issues are productive employment, the over-concentration of wealth, and the parking of the latter in established (global and foreign) businesses instead of new (domestic) ones.
The wealthy need to start spending - investing in new factories and technologies and getting people back into decently-paid work.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 5:24:00 AM
Sackerson, with due respect-
New factories? Really? I am a wealthy person, who ran a successful business, before retiring. No wealthy person, or anyone else, is going to invest in a new factory in the U.S. Wages are too high.
The new Bay Bridge in San Francisco (cost- several Billion dollars) was built in China, and floated over here.
Obama's heavily armored new buses (Two, at $1,200,000. each) were built in Canada.
If the government won't even buy stuff made in the U.S. A., no one else will.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 6:23:00 AM
- Sackerson said...
That's why I say new technologies - you need to make stuff that others can't. Bump up R&D, which has been withering on the vine for decades.
Read James Kunstler's piece today. Adjustments are inevitable, it's just a question of whether we manage them or have them forced on us. The globalization that got us here is not sustainable.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 6:30:00 AM
Nothing will change until there is a crisis of massive proportion. It is the only thing that will shake up the political status quo and get "we the people" involved and demanding reform and a realistic course of action. Just plan on more theatre and "do-less" motion until the crisis comes. The FR and Congress are impotent and can not change where we are headed economically. No way Obama will be a 2 termer. Witness Carter, Bush #1 and about 10 others... when the economy is failing, the standing president is toast.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 11:11:00 AM
- Drewbert said...
"We have two real problems, unemployment which is the result of the housing crash."
Uh, no. Unemployment is due to mass layoffs from work of all kinds being shipped out of country. The housing crash is bad, but it is simply reverting to the mean, aligning with wages.
Where mortgage processes in 2005 shady? Abso-f@king-lutly! But they weren't the cause for unemployment.
"In order to stimulate job creation, we need to cut taxes."
This doesn't pass the laugh test. Companies are posting record profits and sitting on huge stockpiles of cash. Google is already paying only 2% on its income in taxes... how much more do you want to lower their taxes to spur a hiring boom? Exxon paid -$156 million in corporate taxes on $30.46b in profits. Read that again... they paid negative $156 million in federal tax.
The super wealthy are still getting super wealthier. The income disparity is increasing.
The reason there are no jobs is that aggregate demand is not there. With $30.4b in profits and negative $156 million in taxes, do you really think Exxon is going to say "Well we'd make a ton of money constructing this new pipeline, but we can only do it if we get negative $200 million in taxes!"
Other than a few out of touch big box retailers, there aren't a lot of struggling large companies out there. They ones that were weak were culled off already. The ones that are left have lots of cash, but no customer demand to start spending it. Cutting government spending is the only thing proping us up right now. Cut the spending unwisely and you'll cut the demand further pushing us further into recession.
Government needs to build things and fix things that are broken. There is a lot of need for infrastructure changes and improvements in the U.S. Keeping that going is an important lynch pin to holding the economy together.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 1:45:00 PM
Government needs to fix things.
Santa Clara,CA just bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of solar panels. All made in China.
Justifacation by government dweeb:
"They were cheaper than the ones made in the U.S."
- Monday, August 22, 2011 5:21:00 PM
Government needs to get out of the way of small business (that's where jobs come from). That is the key area where taxes, bureaucratic red tape and all inhibitions need to be removed. The Fed and Government need to give businesses prediction too... no one will make a move unless they know what is coming down the road. Government needs to give corporations bigger tax advantages if they bring their work back into the country, and tax them more heavily for overseas production. Government needs to downsize. All redundant and poorly reforming agencies need to go. We need to bring our military back home gradiently. The government should be dumping money into things that give value like infrastructure (national railroad system, energy R&D, rebuilding and retrofitting, etc.) So we don't crash and burn, government needs to do all of these things... BUT, once we are moving toward solvency, we then need to get government out of our private lives and business and the economy if we ever hope to have stability. We need to abolish the Federal Reserve too. Congress and the Federal Reserve and misguided regulatory, fiscal and monetary policies over the last 50 years are the cause of all of this. It actually started with FDR.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 8:29:00 PM
reforming was supposed to be performing.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 8:31:00 PM
- Jim in San Marcos said...
Hi Sack
Glad you liked it, thank you for the compliment. I didn't vote for the guy, but I hate to see someone tarred and feathered for all the wrong reasons.
I see things a little bit different about spending. I think that the wealthy are spending on new toys and represent the major share of spending in the economy. They are not getting any interest on their savings and inflation is eating them alive,so why save it, go out and spend it and have a good time.
The question comes up, what business do you start up to generate jobs? I see the opportunities to buy businesses going bankrupt for pennies on the dollar, but in that case, you might just be preserving jobs that were about to be lost.
On of the reasons we have been caught so flat footed is because of computer technology. One person with the right software can replace 20 people. It is reminiscent of the 1920's where we went from an agrarian economy to the industrial age.
The real limiting factor here is the age group from 40 to 60 years of age. How do you retrain them effectively with new job skills at lower wages? I don't see them as "Happy Campers."
- Monday, August 22, 2011 8:33:00 PM
- Jim in San Marcos said...
Hi AIM
I totally agree. But I have one question. How can we get rid of all of the Democrats without accidentally killing any Republicans?
Seriously though, profit is the reason for investment. Just look at the real estate bubble. As you suggest, get government out of the loop and this problem will fix itself (given time).
- Monday, August 22, 2011 8:55:00 PM
I wouldn't mind the Republicans being collateral damage as well. Get rid of them all, from one end of their spectrum to the other end (progressives, liberals, conservatives, centrists, etc. etc. is just a lot of hooey). Both of their platforms are obsolete, their performance is piss poor and their allegiance to our country and its future is... well, questionable. I want a new party with realistic, well-oriented and responsible leaders. It may seem like a dream now but maybe some day it will come true. One thing we know... the broom needs to sweep clean and we need fresh, untainted, uncorrupted blood.
- Monday, August 22, 2011 10:14:00 PM
Some of the people in Congress measure their net worth in the tens of millions of dollars.
Most people in Congress are at least garden variety multi-millionairs.
Their perspective on the economy is skewed, to say the least.
Do you think that John McCain or Barbara Boxer fills up their own cars, do their own grocery shopping, of wash their own clothes?
Dream on.
- Tuesday, August 23, 2011 6:31:00 AM
- Jim in San Marcos said...
Hi AIM
Here is some food for thought. How about giving a person or corporation 1 extra vote for every $5,000 worth of taxes paid? So if you paid a lot of taxes, you get more votes to cast. That way, those footing the bills have a say so on how its spent.
Its a "Pipe dream." But everything else seems to be going up in smoke.
- Tuesday, August 23, 2011 8:33:00 PM
- Sackerson said...
Jim: re "The real limiting factor here is the age group from 40 to 60 years of age. How do you retrain them effectively with new job skills at lower wages? I don't see them as "Happy Campers."":
I think the way forward is in allowing people to take their retirement income (however little it may be) and continue working, probably on reduced hours/days. I think there are considerable health/happiness benefits to being allowed to carry on, so long as you're not overstressed. And the older generation may have something to teach the younger ones in the workplace. Retraining is rejuvenating. Retirement in the old-fashioned sense is a killer.
- Wednesday, August 24, 2011 4:45:00 AM
- Jim in San Marcos said...
Hi Sack
I'm in total agreement with you.
What I was trying to point out was that to 40 to 60 year old group is close to retirement. Employers look at them as dead meat; too old to be considered career people, but old enough to be a liability on their health insurance.
It is not a good group to be in if you are looking for a job.
- Wednesday, August 24, 2011 9:30:00 PM
- frakrak said...
I don't want to be insensitive to business in the U.S., I do get (at least in part) the hardship your countrymen are facing (we are there nearly, with our own industry leaders saying every measure in our output is trending towards a depression!), so with that said, the imagery of Anonymous Monday, August 22, 2011 6:23:00 AM, with a (part) kilometre size bridge floating across the mid Pacific conjures the caption:
"did we do the measuring or did they?":)
It says sooo much about the U.S. and China in sooo many ways!!
Here's a thought Jim, perhaps in the hindsight of history we will be calling the past few years as "The Great Compression," (of wealth that is),
- Thursday, August 25, 2011 12:59:00 AM
All these people in the USA between age 18 to 80 want to work... and they will work for low wages. They'll do anything for a steady job. This is the largest spanning employable age cohort in the history of this country. What an opportunity. What a huge potential of man power.
But The Fed, Congress, White House and Wall St. have set things up so that these people have no work. Productive capacity just isn't needed these days.
Idleness, dropping standards of living, default, rising prices, low morale and despair will breed terrible circumstances. Terrible sentiment.
Uncle Sam, what have you done?
Over the last 100+ years... the Federal Reserve, income tax, FDR's social welfare system, Keynesian Economic Theory, Nixon's axing of the gold standard, de-regulation, public unions,lobbyists, campaign funding, foreign oil dependence, expanding government, and so on, have all come together to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
- Thursday, August 25, 2011 7:21:00 PM
Some say its a double dip recession. Some say maybe the 08 09 recession never ended.
Amazing what government spin, media and public denial can do.
They still don't get it...
a depression started in 2008.
- Saturday, August 27, 2011 1:17:00 PM
- Jim in San Marcos said...
Hi Anon 1:17
Sssshhh its a secret. No depression until after the next election.
We don't want to panic anyone with reality.
- Sunday, August 28, 2011 9:43:00 PM


text:
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Graphic display of portfolio stock values
Format Conversions
Because the dates are formatted yyyy/mm/dd, pofo has a dt_parse() function (line 226) to define the format and convert the date entries to DateTime objects. As an additional service, the cfg_read() function accepts a reference to the @symbols array, which it populates with all ticker symbols that occur, avoiding duplicates (lines 212-215).
The function returns a reference to the%by_date hash that it populates. The keys in this hash are date values in the form of stringified DateTime objects. The values are each mapped to an array of transactions that have taken place on the same days (line 217). In turn, each transaction comprises an array that contains the fields from the corresponding configuration file line – that is, date, action, ticker symbol, and the number of shares. Cash actions also occur here with cash as their ticker symbol.
To see how many shares of one stock the portfolio holds on a specific day, the script needs to work its way through the transactions that occurred in the portfolio up to this date. Therefore, the for loop starting in line 36 first works its way through all actions before the $start date. The hash keys are dates, which the sort command sorts in ascending order.
The loop calls the pos_add() function for each transaction and puts the results in the %pos hash. The hash assigns a numeric value to each ticker symbol in the portfolio. For shares, this is the number, and for cash, this is simply the sum. The second for loop starting in line 79 then does the same calculation for every single day after the start date, until the current date.
Share acquisitions and sales additionally trigger a movement in the cash item; new shares cost money, and the proceeds from selling shares are credited to the account. On every action, the daily share price is applied; the data is provided by CachedQuote.pm.
RRD Tool Abstract
The area graph for the individual items comes courtesy of RRDtool by Tobias Oetiker [1]. The object-oriented RRDTool::OO CPAN module helps to Perlify and elucidate the unusual syntax of this practical tool.
RRDtool stores data from RRD archives by cumulating the measuring points of one or more data sources. In predefined intervals, the so-called step size, an average is calculated. In line 62 of Listing 2, the pofo program sets the step parameter to 24 hours, telling the RRD database to expect just one update per day. The program assigns a separate data source to each stock (map() call in lines 65-72).
The RRD archive can store up to 5,000 values (line 74) before it starts to overwrite the values in typical RRD style. At a rate of one new value a day, it will take more than 10 years for this to happen. The GAUGE parameter in line 69 stipulates that RRDtool should accept the values directly and not cumulate them; however, RRDtool refuses to accept values for times prior to the last stored daily value; to cope with this, pofo deletes any remaining RRD files in line 55 and the RRDTool::OO constructor quickly recreates them.
Line 16 of Listing 2 defines a freely selectable color palette of RGB values. In lines 46-53, pofo selects a value for each share to be displayed from the @colors array, allowing the viewer to distinguish the stocks in the graph.
The %symbol_colors hash holds the symbol/color palette mappings. The order in which the actions occur in the configuration file defines the display order in the graph.
The for loop starting in line 79 works its way through the days to be displayed in the graph. Each time it does, the if condition in line 83 checks to see whether transactions are available for the current day and, if so, calls pos_add() to add them, thus ensuring that the global hash %pos contains the current portfolio configuration.
The sum_up() function then determines the daily balance of the portfolio and stores the cash values of the individual items in the %parts hash index by the share ticker keys (or cash). After this, the RRD object's update() method passes the hash in to the RRD database, applying the time stamp for the day that has just been processed (line 95). The graph() method finally draws the graph output in the positions.png file and writes the legend at the bottom edge of the image (lines 102-122). The listing shown here only uses six colors for shares, but nothing prevents you from adding new colors to the @colors array in lines 16-18.
In lines 31-34, pofo sets the display period to two years in the past until today. You can change this by modifying the $start and $end variables. If you prefer more information on what is going on during the data processing state, just uncomment line 13; easy_init() then initializes Log4perl, and the output from the DEBUG instructions spread liberally throughout the source code will be directed onto your screen.
The script has no concept of stock splits, in which the historic share price data is changed in retrospect, thus leaving invalid data in the cache. In this case, you would need to delete the cache file, /tmp/cached-quote.dat, thereby removing the whole cash. Filling the file again will not take much effort because web requests to the financial servers efficiently retrieve high volumes of data. Enjoy watching your wealth grow!
- RRDtool: http://www.rrdtool.org
- [2]: Listings for this article: http://linux-magazine.com/resources/article_code
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In all honesty, I can't even believe that I am writing this. I'm sure many of you have noticed by now that I am a bit of a Leaf fan, and I can say with certainty that I did not expect Clarke MacArthur to look so available this close to free agency. Yet, as much as it infuriates me it also makes me, and hopefully many other Jets fans, a little hopeful that we may be able to see him here in Winnipeg.
Why Want Him?
Before you even continue reading this, I think you should head over to this article that Cam Charron wrote about MacArthur shortly after the Leafs were ousted from the playoffs. Cam does a great job in pointing out how the Leafs as a whole were a much better puck possession team with MacArthur on the ice over the last three years, and highlights multiple players (Grabovski, Kulemin, Kessel, Connolly & Frattin) that had much better Corsi percentages while playing with him over the last couple seasons.
He provides a versatility and depth that the Jets desperately need in the system, as seen by his ability to move around from the Leafs "shut down" third line, to their top line when Lupul was out for his extended stretches of the season. Clarke is an extremely hard working, defensively dependable left winger with a strong offensive upside. He may not be the flashiest player on the ice, but he can put the puck in the net (he was a 20 goal scorer in 2 of the last 3 years, was on pace to hit 16 this year) and an excellent play maker (only 2 years removed from a 40 assist season). Not to mention he as an attitude and approach to hockey that would be well respected here in Winnipeg. Should he come out West, I would have no doubt that he would become somewhat of a fan favourite in a short period of time.
Why is He Available?
So if Clarke MacArthur is so great, why is he available?
I'll give you two reasons. The first is Tyler Bozak. For some ridiculous reason, a lot of the Toronto based MSM love Tyler Bozak. For even more ridiculous reasons, the Leafs front office seem to love Tyler Bozak as a top line center alongside Phil Kessel. Therefore, Tyler Bozak is most likely going to get a ridiculous contract worth way too much money. (See this Cam Charron article for further explanation) Clarke MacArthur's agent will likely know this, and walk into any contract negotiations simply pointing out how much better MacArthur is in every facet of the game (outside of face offs), and demand that he gets more money. Dave Nonis likely will not like this very much, and let Clarke walk.
Secondly, Clarke MacArthur has become very under appreciated and misused in Toronto since Randy Carlyle took over. Look no further than the Leafs playoff matchup against the Bruins for proof. After the game one blowout, MacArthur was wrongly chosen to be a spectator for games 2 & 3, before coming back to score the game tying goal in game 4, and the game winning goal in game 5 in less than 9:00 minutes of ice time in both games. He finished the series with 2 goals and an assist in 5 games. (Let me remind you that the Pittsburgh Penguins only managed 2 goals against the Bruins in an entire series) Although there has been no publicly stated rift between player and coach, you have to think MacArthur believes he might be better suited on a team where he recieves more respect and ice time.
Why Not Sign Him?
Why wouldn't the Jets go after Clarke MacArthur? In all likelihood, the money might scare Chevy away. Despite the coming reduction of the salary cap MacArthur is going to earn more than his current $3.25-million/year deal, especially once he has the Tyler Bozak contract as a comparable. Personally I would be okay with going around $4-million a year, but with teams like Philly offering up term and dollars like it's Hallowe'en, predicting free agent value is next to impossible.
Even if MacArthur was good to go around $4-million, the Jets already have Andrew Ladd and Evander Kane taking up the first and second line LW positions. Although he would provide the depth that the Jets really need, that's a hefty price to pay for it. A third line role or move to the right wing may not be what Clarke is looking to walk into either (as I mentioned above). Few may know that the Atlanta franchise actually took MacArthur to arbitration in 2010 before letting him walk in exchange for signing Andrew Ladd. Although the team is under completely new management and in a new city, he may also be hesitant to backslide to a team that has let him go before.
To Summarize
It's simple. Clarke MacArthur is an excellent hockey player. He is responsible defensively, can put the puck in the net, and works hard night in and night out. In other words, he is exactly the type of player the Jets want and need. He's the type of player I would be okay with Chevy slightly overpaying for, and would really start to build the organization depth and internal competition Coach Noel needs to motivate his guys. In a dangerously thin free agent pool this year Clarke MacArthur may really be a diamond in the rough, and worth a look if the franchise is to part ways with the waiver wire squad.


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Get street cred for your sweat. The Strava real-time Relative Effort app analyzes your heart rate during a workout and ranks your total activity effort. The deeper you dig and the longer you hold, the higher your Relative Effort

Go Premium ((https://www.strava.com/premium/analysis/relative-effort) and see your Relative Effort after your run and track progress over time.

Relative Effort requires a built-in optical heart rate sensor or a paired heart rate monitor. Be sure your Garmin and Strava heart rate zones are the same.

- Computing Relative Effort
Esta aplicación requiere acceso a:
16 de agosto de 2019
I assured that heart rate settings are the same in both apps... still just showing 0 the whole time during my workout!
Marijn Tulp
29 de mayo de 2019
On my Vivoactive 3 and Forerunner 235, the relative effort was similar to the number of kilometers I ran (e.g. 10 km at normal pace had a relative effort of 10). On my new Forerunner 945, I get very strange, high score (e.g. 10 km at normal pace has a relative effort of 40), while for cycling, the data field works the same as on my old watches. Is this a bug on the Forerunner 945?
21 de abril de 2019
I've just about given up with this. Checked and re-checked that the HR zones in Strava match the data field settings on the watch and still it reads 50% higher on the watch than the uploaded activity on Strava. Tried it from another angle and tweaked the HR zones on Strava slightly to match the ones Garmin calculates and RE on Strava is now about 1/3 of what it was. All this has done is made me realise the Strava RE figure is probably a load of rubbish.
Dee Jay
11 de abril de 2019
Kind of useless. I think regular HR info is much more accurate than such figures which don't even match the ones you get on Strava once your activity is loaded.
11 de abril de 2019
It doesn't work on my Vivoactive 3 Music. I can see it in the watch screen, but it doesn't show any data. It's always with a zero.
Nick Tisdell
28 de marzo de 2019
Worked pretty good for me, often 10-20% off maybe (high). However I just now realized that in your desktop software "Garmin Express" you need to select "IQ Apps" to manage apps. Select the settings (three white circles in grey oval) for the Stra Relative App. In there is where you need to set your heart rate ranges/zones. I thought it was in your user settings... didn't match in my case! Should be automatic IMO. We'll see if the Score is a bit closer tonight! :-)
Lo sentimos, aún no hay estadísticas disponibles.


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As a Bravo junkie, I'll give any show a shot. And now that Andy Cohen and Co. have moved their exploitation machine into Silicon Valley, it's time to watch what the kids in northern Cali are up to.
Yesterday, we dropped into the Seattle offices of Cheezburger. Today we meet the malcontents of "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley." Or, as Bravo is likely hoping, the biggest bunch of self-sabotaging nitwits since that group of vapid chicks navigating the New York art world in "Gallery Girls."
See, there is another rule to making a successful reality TV show in addition to the three I already laid out for "LOL Work:" The more horrible the human beings, the better the TV. Just how horrible are the kids of "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley?" Let's review:
The opening is filled with them spouting off tech-world clichés (again, paraphrasing from live TV, but you get the gist): "Silicon Valley is an amazing place filled with people doing amazing things," says Ben. "I live, breath, eat, shit daydream my company," adds Dwight. "It's like high school, but with only the smart kids, and we have a lot of money," notes Kim.
Well, they are right about one thing: "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" is like high school. Better yet, it's a cross between MTV's "The Hills" and "The Social Network," heavy, heavy on "The Hills" factor.
After a sunny, splashy intro, we open in the sun-filled, sleek abode of brother-sister duo Ben and Hermione. Oh, and they've got these cute little British accents, too. See, they were separated as young kids. She grew up here. He in Britain, and they reconnected to launch their own start-up called Ignite, a lifestyle monitoring something or other that tells you when you're going to die based on your life choices.
Really? Folks would want this? Ben seems to think so.
Oh, and Hermione has used her connections as a tech blogger to set up a meeting with VC Dave McClure by sending him a text of a middle finger. (More on that meeting later).
And then there is the awful factor known as Sarah who tell us: "People are intimidated this package doesn't usually come with a brain." Sarah has somehow weaseled her way into staying at the Four Seasons Palo Alto for free (she says in exchange for her social media prowess).
Signs that Sarah is already awful: She orders room service for her dog, then makes the guy cut up a hamburger patty for it. Also, Sarah calls herself a "lifecaster," which really just sounds more worthless than a life coach, you know, without the helpful life advice. She calls living at the Four Seasons her "bubble," and she talks like a suburban Valley girl who's trying to upscale it a bit by drawing out the most annoying words, like "buu-bbble." Her blog, er, lifecasting site Pop 17 I guess is popular? She brags that one of her tweets is worth $10,000.
(Oh, Bravo, you make it so easy to spot the villains.)
Speaking of awful, entitled women, let's go over to our Type-A Superstar Kim! Kim is Tracy Flick, if Tracy Flick had grown up and wanted to go into tech and moved to San Fran instead of D.C.
Besides her snarky attitude, very unimpressive fact that she used to dance for an NBA team—um, do the Milwaukee Bucks even count?—she left Chicago because it wasn't good enough for her. In the world of Facebook, she is banking on Internet advertising, working for a firm called Ampush. She brags about being in the "land of nerds" and "always wanting more."
Dwight is Code Guy. He spends night and day coding, and he's damn proud of it. Oh, he also sleeps on an air mattress and lives in a disgusting apartment with his partner and roommate. When he's not putting on filthy clothes and making kung fu-like poses in the mirror, Dwight is saying incredibly stupid things, like calling himself and his compadre, "Kirk and Spock," and talking about his "work hard, play hard" mentality.
He's an annoying, yet harmless little nerd.
David is this reality TV show's token gay. Though he's incredibly smart—as he likes to tell us about his three degrees from Carnegie Mellon—and has been successful at Google and other places, he's now broke-ass broke. He's putting his all into founding Goalsponsors, another health program to get people to lose weight. David had a rough childhood, and has such, takes us through the list of plastic surgery and other procedures he's had done. Oh, and then he spray-tans with Sarah in her room
Ready for some drama?
There are two major points of action in the show: One, frenemies alert! Sarah and Hermione cannot stand one another; and two, Ben and Hermione actually land a meeting with McClure. Let's dip in, shall we?
So, back to the spray-tanning. Sarah is getting ready for a toga par-tay. "It takes two hours to get ready for work," she says. "A party can take a lot longer to get ready for, three to four hours…I loooovvvveee wearing costumes."
Meanwhile, Hermione and Ben are prepping for the party, Hermione proudly says, "It's all about costume parties at people's houses!"
And we get the backstory: Hermione and Ben helped Sarah get to SXSW, apparently home girl didn't have the cash to go and no one would sponsor her. (Whoa, so the girl who values her tweets at $10,000 couldn't scratch together $300 for a shitty Southwest flight to Austin?) Regardless, while there, Sarah was supposedly helping Hermione with an event. Sarah, apparently, wasn't happy with the way Hermione was running said event, and sent an "unprofessional" email to her boss. Hence, when pretty blond girls feud.
Wow, this really is high school.
Let's take you through the evening. They drink out of plastic cups, jump into the pool and binge drink, pretty much like every party you've ever been to in your life. Ben hits on Sarah, because even if she is evil, man does he totally have a thing for her, which is causing more drama with the sister.
Side note but equally amusing: Dwight actually leaves this party to go hang out with his nerd friends, standing around what looks to be the equivalent of a card table in a depressing, shitty apartment, slamming shots and saying stupid stuff like, "I better be arrested, laid or blacked out by 2 a.m." No, child, you will not accomplish any of those things slamming bottom-shelf booze in your nerd friend's apartment.
Back to the drama: Sarah and Hermione actually talk. "Sometimes you need to push people," is Sarah's defense, throwing in that she is a better producer and that she made out with her brother. Ooo, snap.
Next day, a hungover Ben and Hermione prep for their meeting with McClure. While Ben is trying to look nice, Hermione basically looks like she slept face-first in a pile of garbage—and she's OK with that. Neither one of them has actually worked up a product demo or finished their presentation, but they are asking for a cool half million. A half million!
At McClure's office, while he's making them wait and sweat it out—a common move for VCs apparently—Hermione decides to take a nap under the board-room table. Until McClure busts her. Oops, embarrassing!
They continue with their pitch, until McClure basically schools them big time: First off, don't be running 42 other companies and coming to me to ask for money… and secondly? He don't need no BMW in a tech product, he just wants a Ford, so he can crank it out, assembly-line style: "I'm not in the business of taking irrational risks," he tells them. Then they end the meeting with fist bump, which grossed me out.
So what did we learn tonight? Next to nothing.
What redeeming qualities do these kids have? Very few.
Do I want to move to Silicon Valley? Hell no.
If nothing else, "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" has shown me that Bravo can unearth truly horrible human beings almost anywhere.
Well played, Bravo. Well played.
Molly Brown has spent over a decade writing about arts, entertainment and pop culture. An admitted lover of crap TV, she blogs at evilmolly.com.


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House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
By Anthony Shadid, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 336 pages, $26.00
The story of making a house is one of the great and ancient archetypes of literature. You could say that it is a story as old as writing itself, since the image of a house, or bayt, underlies the B in the alphabet that the Phoenicians, inhabitants of what we now call Lebanon, invented. The word "bayt" also means family, or clan. The title of journalist Anthony Shadid's memoir resonates with both meanings. An account of rebuilding an ancestral bayt in southern Lebanon, it is a diary of architectural adventure, a personal record of family history, a subtle examination of intricate regional politics, and an Odyssean journey home.
Until a few weeks ago, House of Stone had a happy ending—a fulfillment, the house's past, present, and future woven together in the form of traditional architecture. The new olive tree the author had planted was flourishing alongside the trees of his great-grandparents. In February, though, Anthony Shadid died on assignment for The New York Times in Syria. The rich consummation of the book's final pages was transformed into destiny. His ashes have been scattered in the garden that he designed with a beloved local mentor and that he writes about with such radiance in the book.
Shadid's reporting on the Middle East for the Times and The Washington Post was not only valued in the Western press; he was also respected in the region for his fine Arabic, his knowledge of history and local custom, and the integrity of his journalism. He was born and raised in Oklahoma, a descendant of the Samaras and the Shadids of Marjayoun, a town older than the nation where it is situated. Once a substantial trading crossroads in the days of its Ottoman prosperity, Marjayoun ("a gateway—to Sidon, on the Mediterranean, and Damascus, beyond Mount Hermon; to Jerusalem, in historic Palestine; and to Baalbek, the site of an ancient Roman town … this was a place as cosmopolitan as the countryside offered") supported four newspapers in its heyday. It was and is known as a Greek Orthodox town, but it is also a mosaic of Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, Maronite Catholics. Shadid's Greek Orthodox great-uncle Hana sang the call to prayer from the town minaret, while Muslims broadcast Good Friday prayers from their restaurants in the heart of the town.
The Shadids and Samaras "were part of a century-long migration that occurred as the Ottoman Empire crumbled." Like many others (the steerage passenger lists from the Titanic include large numbers of Levantine names), they left to avoid intensified forced conscription by the Ottoman authorities and outbursts of sectarian violence and banditry that followed the empire's dissolution. They also sought to escape the loss of livelihoods when, in 1920, "France … created a country where none existed," disrupting "history, tradition, clan, and commerce" previously unconfined by borders.
The struggling Marjayoun to which Shadid returns in his memoir, with its power failures and simmering local tensions, has endured the Lebanese civil war and rounds of Israeli occupation and bombing, its people constantly deprived of their own world. Yet Marjayoun remains a locus of Levantine history, where conversations begin with explorations of genealogy, and the exquisite arts of peace have been perfected throughout years of violence.
When the book opens, Shadid, recently arrived from three years in Iraq, is covering the attack on the village of Qana, one of the targets of Israel's 33-day bombing of Lebanon in 2006. As the villagers comb through the ruins of their houses, uncovering the bodies of their dead families, Shadid is compelled to ask himself their question: How can we restore what has been destroyed? He makes his way to Marjayoun to discover the town square gutted by fires. Following a now-buckling asphalt road past cratered, bullet-riddled houses, he finds his grandparents' house rent by a half-exploded Israeli rocket. Determined to make this soil yield something other than spent weapons, Shadid goes off in search of a shovel and digs deep to plant a tiny olive tree, "its trunk no thicker than a pen."
Shadid's account of restoring the house ("Bayt Sitti," or the grandmother's house, as he tenderly comes to call it) becomes the center of the book's complex kaleidoscope of political and personal history. His quest and undertaking (which a fair number of Marjayounis consider insane, thanks to the complicated inheritance laws that ignite unresolvable family disputes) is to preserve its marble-floored liwan, or reception hall, its century-old iron railings, and its majestic traditional triple arcade of windows, but also to "re--
imagine" the house for his family. A friend quotes the proverb "A sliver of land can wipe out its people," but Shadid persists.
The healing of his house also becomes the discovery of a new way to write. Shadid describes how he had slowly come to feel that the craft of journalism shows us "the drama, not the impact … we never find out, or think to ask, whether the village is rebuilt, or what becomes of the dazed woman who, after one strange, endlessly extended moment, is no longer the mother of children." As Shadid rebuilds the house, he is restored to his own life, in all the fullness of its relationships to past and present.
In the subtlest of his delicate metaphors, Shadid remakes the house from the very materials of shattered Lebanon, remnants of war reassembled in a structure of peace. He acquires the tiles called sajjadeh, "carpet," as diverse and cosmopolitan as the Levant once was, from many sources: There are tiles from the destroyed houses of a Beirut Shiite neighborhood pulverized by the Lebanese civil war and Israeli bombs, and tiles from the controversial razing of Beirut's old-town neighborhood and market by Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's Solidere company.
Reconstructing the house, Shadid starts to rebuild the world. We follow him through his often-comic navigation of the role of returning expatriate. He respects tradition but adapts it to his temperament. Endearingly unable to endure the violence of the olive harvest, he refuses to beat the fruit from his grandmother's trees and gently handpicks the harvest instead, olive by olive.
Another excellent recent example of the house biography genre, almost an ironic companion to House of Stone, tells the story of Sledmere, a stately house in Yorkshire. The Big House (2005) is a memoir by Christopher Simon Sykes—grandson of Sir Mark Sykes, the co-author of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which dismembered the Ottoman East, or "Asiatic Turkey," for the benefit of England and France. The undisturbed accumulation of centuries in treasures at Sledmere contrasts dramatically with the wounded house in Marjayoun. To read the books together raises a tragic question. Did the continuity of one house depend on the ruin of the other?
Still, the memory of an expansive, more generous world persists in Marjayoun. It is alive in masterly stonework and in the Levantine furniture that draws on all the trees of the region, "walnut, apricot, rose, olive, and lemon," and on the waters of both rivers and sea, with different types of mother-of-pearl harvested from each. And it animates many of the people Shadid meets, especially Dr. Khairallah, an exemplar of Arab humanism. Dr. Khairallah has treated rich and poor and shepherded a hospital through war, occupation, and political betrayal, but he writes Arabic poetry on the walls of his house and crafts ouds, the Arab lute, for collectors and for his grandchildren. It is Dr. Khairallah, "the kind of man I wanted to be … gentle and kind, principled, ever curious," who teaches Shadid to understand his garden. "I learned to respect the garden, where rituals and right actions prevailed."
House of Stone is a tale of spiritual apprenticeship, in which a man learns the difference between bullets and chisels, bayonets and scalpels: between violence that is wanton and the artful demolitions that sustain life. As the builders set to work renovating Bayt Sitti, Shadid sees that "there was meaning to the destruction, an elegance of movement as the house hurtled toward its end and a new beginning."


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The upcoming season of Syfy's supernatural soap Being Human is dripping with drama. And as tempting as it would be to drop a few spoilers, it's just so pleasing to be withholding. So while you wait for tonight's season premiere, you'll have to quench your thirst with these juicy blind items.
- Which troubled couple has finally started coming clean with each other? He's known for his erratic mood swings, but after her traumatic miscarriage, they are both ready for a fresh start. Only problem? After finally seeing his true nature, it looks like she might be hiding a secret of her own.
- Which haunted romantic still hasn't found closure after her broken engagement? Sure, she is finally getting out of the house, but that doesn't mean she's over her bad-news fiancé. Maybe now that the cops have him, she'll finally move on. You know what they say, "When one door closes, another one opens."
- After putting his neck on the line, which old soul just made a serious power play? This guy might be in charge now, but being cutthroat doesn't come naturally. Just how long he can maintain control is anyone's guess.
Sink your teeth into those tantalizing teasers, and don't forget to tune in tonight at 9PM ET/PT for the season 2 premiere of Being Human—only on Syfy.


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Bathroom Lighting
Wall Lights
Bathroom task lighting fixtures are essential for putting on make up and shaving. Bath vanity light fixtures and wall sconces can create task lighting for grooming, without casting nasty shadows. They can also bring a focal point and ambient lighting to the room.
Need help? Learn how to achieve the best bathroom lighting with our Bathroom Vanity Lighting Buying Guide
Ceiling Lights
Instead of using decorative fixtures that don't cast much light in your bathroom, recessed lighting can be used as a supplement. They can either be wired into the ceiling or the mirror. If you are using the mirror option, make sure to place the light fixtures as close to the plane of the mirror as possible and use at least two fixtures and space them so that the light from one works with the light from the other. Use a flush mount light for general light or upgrade the feel to a semi-flush, which is suspended slightly from the ceiling and can a face-lift to your bathroom. For an even more elegant feel consider hanging a chandelier or mini-chandelier which can cast a soft sensual light that is very calming. For an elevated feel, hang these fixtures over a bathtub. An alternative to sconces or over the sink lighting is pendants, which can be hung in front or to the sides of a mirror. They should be hung at a height that provides the best lighting while avoiding being so low that someone could bump their head.
About Bathroom
Bathroom lighting is essential. It can accent the room, provide convenience and safety. A properly lit bathroom should not have shadows. To do this, mount a light fixture in your bathroom above the vanity. Decorative bathroom lighting can enhance the mood and give it a romantic or cozy feeling when taking a shower or bath. But it all depends on the size of your bathroom, for smaller ones vanity lights will do just fine but for larger ones, consider a ceiling-mounted lighting fixture.
- Can I have a stylish yet energy efficient bathroom lighting?
Yes! Today's fluorescent light fixtures offer dimmable ballasts, accurate color representation, cool white and full spectrum colors, all while using higher quality materials and innovative design styles.
- Does my bathroom lighting have to be waterproof?
If you have a lighting fixture close to water such as in a shower, then yes it should be waterproof.
- Should the vanity lights face upward or downward?
This is really personal preference. Down lights typically collect more dust and are brighter. But if you don't like to see the bulbs and are looking for a softer light then upward pointing lights work. They work especially well with high ceilings where the light can bounce off and cast downward.
- Should my bathroom lighting fixtures be connected through my GFCI circuit?
GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) prevents you from being shocked if your electrical appliance comes in contact water. Correctly wired, a GFCI should control all electrical appliances and fixtures in the room where it is installed. For example, in your bathroom, the vanity lighting, electrical outlets and shower lights should run through your GFCI. GFCI outlets are easily identifiable by their "test" and "reset" buttons. Not only is it a good idea to install a GFCI near water sources, it may be required by the Building Code in your jursidiction.
- How do I stop vanity lights from fading the wood border on my mirror?
First you should coat the exterior of the frame with UV resistant varnish and next you should make sure the bulbs face up and do not bake the frame.


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The Civil Wars
Photo: Alexandra Wyman/WireImage.com
And The GRAMMY Went To ... The Civil Wars
(In the coming weeks GRAMMY.com will feature information and video highlights on winners from the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards, held Feb. 12 in Los Angeles. Each installment will offer the winning or related video, and some pertinent, and not so pertinent, information about the track and the artists.)
Song: "Barton Hollow"
Artist: The Civil Wars
Won for: Best Country Duo/Group Performance for "Barton Hollow" and Best Folk Album for Barton Hollow
Previous wins: This year's wins marked the Civil Wars' first career GRAMMY wins
Did you know?: The Civil Wars' John Paul White and Joy Williams met at a songwriting workshop in Nashville in 2008. Williams came up with the duo's name while driving alongside Interstate 65 in Nashville, and has described it as representing the "small battles we all have within ourselves and with others." In 2009 the Civil Wars released a free digital live album, Live At Eddie's Attic, via their website. Their full-length debut album, Barton Hollow, was released in 2011. (Barton Hollow is a real place, just north of Muscle Shoals, Ala.) Of Barton Hollow's 12 songs, 11 are written exclusively by White and Williams. Regarding the title track, Williams has said the duo tapped "into an earthiness, a strength and a kind of grittiness that [John Paul] and I love." The single "Poison & Wine" was featured on an episode of "Grey's Anatomy." Barton Hollow peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard 200. The duo recently collaborated with fellow GRAMMY winner Taylor Swift on "Safe & Sound," a song featured on the Hunger Games soundtrack. The Civil Wars have tour dates scheduled in the UK and United States for the remainder of the year. Williams is expecting her first child in June with husband Nate Yetton, who doubles as the duo's manager.